636 Heaven's Gate

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ptatler
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Re: 636 Heaven's Gate

#226 Post by ptatler » Sun Jul 21, 2013 2:58 pm

I tried to gather up all my thoughts on GATE here. "There's no success like failure. And failure's no success at all."

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djproject
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Re: 636 Heaven's Gate

#227 Post by djproject » Sat Aug 17, 2013 3:54 pm

OK. I finally saw the film for myself.

Before I begin, I knew what I said earlier. It came off as bold and grossly presumptuous of me. There were better ways to chime into the conversation. But I wanted to contribute my thoughts to continue the discussion. That's all.

My initial suspicions were indeed confirmed: the same problems I had with *The Deer Hunter* were present in *Heaven's Gate*. This time they were even more apparent as Michael Cimino had a hand in pretty much everything.

There's no denying whatsoever that the production is superb, even inspiring. This was definitely a film that was made with tremendous love and care and it shows. But love is not enough.

What keeps this film from being great beyond just being a personal masterpiece (and there's no denying that either) is in the story (and especially its execution) and the stylistic contradictions. With the former, there were moments where you didn't really know who was who and other times where you knew too well who was who and why. For instance, I knew that Canton wanted to stop those miserable "thieves and anarchists". I didn't really knew what Averill saw in the town or even in Ella, other than he likes a good screw and he can buy her things. With the latter, there was a jarring contrast between the more real moments and the moments where a story point is made. This is the equivalent of performing a piece of music that goes from second-species counterpoint to electronic music. (Not that I'm against contrasting styles. But it works when the contrasting parts work seamlessly.)

Those are not problems if you want to just make a work for yourself. However, if you are trying to make it for an audience, then they are problems. And this is especially if you are trying to let an audience sympathise with your characters. I personally felt like I was witnessing a world from a distance but was never a part of it. And yet I'm supposed to care about what was happening. Most of the time, I didn't.

So does the film succeed as a work of Cimino? Definitely. Does it succeed as a work for a general audience, especially in America? No.

I'll be glad to expand on that more if needed.
Last edited by djproject on Wed Aug 21, 2013 5:18 pm, edited 1 time in total.

rohming
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Re: 636 Heaven's Gate

#228 Post by rohming » Mon Aug 19, 2013 12:38 pm

this will be somewhat reductive as i'm sure this is the type of film that rewards repeated viewings...but for every scene and or/shot that captivated, there was another two or three that seemed pointless and could have been easily excised. at the same time, i can understand how a much shorter cut would have totally undermined the rhythm and atmosphere Cimino was going for, so...i guess i just wished that some of the scenes had more individual merit beyond the great production value and gorgeous cinematography.

i think the character work was probably the most disappointing aspect, in the sense that there are aspects that are great with most of the characters, but absolutely none of them feel fully realized except for maybe Ella. Averill at the start seems like an interesting, complex protagonist but by the end he amounts to a contradictory cipher--by intention or not, this means the film's closing pathos have little impact, at least for me. Nate Champion has quite the arc but it's hard to buy and i think it kind of hurts that we never get to see him and Averill as friends (now that's something that SHOULD have been added to the film in place of one of several lifeless scenes between Averill and Ella or some of the handful of minutes of citizens making noise and shouting...or maybe Nate should have been the friend at Harvard instead of Billy, whose death ends up having absolutely zero impact on Averill, at least as far as we get to see). but it's like, Nate's leading the Association's efforts, the Wyoming stuff starts with him killing a man (probably my favorite compositions in the movie there, amazing stuff), he knows Ella's on the death list but lies that he doesn't, something bad actually happens to Ella and he does a complete 180. that said, Champion does end up one of the more likable characters and it's too bad the film loses focus and kills him off just as the love triangle with Averill and Ella was starting to get really interesting.

it's funny that Jeff Bridges was playing a perpetually drunk character named John Bridges who went by J.B. (so, appearing as himself, i guess) but, again, the film hinted at interesting aspects of the character (he seemed infatuated with Ella, who didn't reciprocate at all) that went nowhere before he got shot to death.

maybe that's the film's M.O., get you intrigued just enough in the characters to then foil your expectations by not resolving much of anything. cuz that's more real or organic or something, i dunno.

Huppert was absolutely fantastic in this, though. a lesser performance and the middle of this movie would have been a total slog. as it was it felt more like slightly unfulfilled potential.

interesting that Dourif got his name so far up the credits for basically a 2-minute "viva la revolution" speech, a scene where his wife dies that you watch from a distance and that might as well have been played by stand-ins, and the random shot here and there where you can admire his neatly groomed beard or watch him over-eagerly throw explosives.

side-note: Waterston actually twirls his mustache in this, doesn't he? maybe i was just seeing things because of how blatantly evil the character was...and yet we only get to watch him die for a half-second while Walken somehow remains on his feet for about a minute while being shot dozens of times over by a firing squad.

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tenia
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Re: 636 Heaven's Gate

#229 Post by tenia » Tue Sep 17, 2013 1:08 pm

Carlotta has announced the extra features of its limited 80€ boxset:

- a 50 min discussion between Cimino and Michael Henry Wilson
- a featurette about the restoration
- ITWs with Kristofferson (9 min), Huppert (24 min), Bridges (18 min) and Mansfield (9 min)

+

- the OST CD
- a 20p reproduction of the theater booklet distributed for the film premiere
- a 288p reproduction of the Shooting Bible from Cimino
- a 44p portfolio with behind the scenes pictures
- a 56p analytical booklet with archives articles and an essay by Jean Baptiste Thoret

Unfortunately, no new anamorphic copy from the 149 min cut, which was in discussion to be included on DVD within this limited release. Instead the 2 DVDs are just for making the boxset a Dual Format release.

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Re: 636 Heaven's Gate

#230 Post by j99 » Sat Dec 07, 2013 8:26 am

Just watched the Second Sight bluray, and while I agree the cinematography is superb throughout, I still cannot understand how they got the sound so badly wrong. Unfortunately, there are no subtitles, and it's still difficult to hear the dialogue above the background industrial noise. It must be the worst sound in a film I've ever encountered.

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Moe Dickstein
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Re: 636 Heaven's Gate

#231 Post by Moe Dickstein » Sat Dec 07, 2013 7:17 pm

The sad part is the sound is actually improved from what it was


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djproject
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Re: 636 Heaven's Gate

#233 Post by djproject » Sun Sep 07, 2014 7:54 pm

I just saw this.

While it does tighten the storytelling considerably (the first DVD disc reduced to forty-five minutes), eliminating the egregious moments (like Nathan's "feeling" that Averill is in the house and that whole Averill playing Solomon to two homesteaders who do nothing but spit at each other and yell Russian[?] curses at each other) and even takes some creative turns (using the prologue as a flashback for "after the battle" as well as a concluding scene), it still reveals the fundamental flaws of its storytelling. I still don't really know what Averill sees in those immigrants (apart from perhaps a common sense empathy) and I certainly don't see what the big deal is with the relationship between Averill and Ella (other than good screw and he can buy her things). The cattle ranchers, and Canton especially, are still flat and mustache-twirling villains who want to stop these "thieves and anarchists" and they can because "we know the President". And the biggest missed opportunity is for us to know these homesteaders with more depth and nuance. All I really know is they like to skate and they steal cattle not just to feed their families but to get laid too.

Other than Cimino's lacking in telling a compelling story, the other big problem I have with the film is the obviousness of its agenda. This was to show that "American imperialism" (whatever that means) didn't just began in Vietnam but has a past with roots planted deep. And thus the cattle ranchers are the money-grubbing capitalists who are disinterested in sharing what is considered communal property and the homesteaders are just the poor workers who are trying simply to make ends meet (which is interesting because they themselves consider what they do is wrong ... even though they do it anyway). My problems with it are: 1) it's an overdone story, 2) because it's overdone, you have to really make it compelling enough for me to care, 3) the claim is that it's "real" and "true to life" but they still come off as strawmen or ciphers and not real human beings (even if you hear the homesteaders speak in German or Russian). Have all of that play out for 219 minutes at a deliberate pace becomes tedious in the end.

The way I see it, either make a full-on polemic but make it short (which is what the "butcher cut" did for the most part) or make sure your story and your characters have some dimension. To paraphrase a Plinkett observation: for all the time and money spent on making the film look authentic, the story and characters are as lifeless as any of the props used.

(And yeah, it's interesting how I do see this as a kind of direct ancestor to Titanic, in terms of it being a big spectacle with attention to detail, making its risks and having a c-grade love story with flat characters. But Cameron, unlike Cimino, knew how to deliver the goods to his audience.)
Last edited by djproject on Tue Apr 10, 2018 8:55 am, edited 1 time in total.

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Re: 636 Heaven's Gate

#234 Post by copen » Sat Sep 19, 2015 3:00 pm

Is there a comparison somewhere on the web that lists the alternate takes between the long version and the edited 149 minute version?

wiki re: 149min version-
This cut of the film is not just shorter but differs radically in placement of scenes and selection of takes.

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Drucker
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Re: 636 Heaven's Gate

#235 Post by Drucker » Mon Dec 21, 2015 10:46 am

I finally got around to seeing this film last night and it really blew me away. I've never seen Deer Hunter and am only a little familiar with the background/history of this film, but even with what I had read on the board, I really did not know what I was getting myself into beforehand. I just wanted to echo some sentiments that others in this thread have made throughout the years, namely that the film really breezes by for a 3.5 hour picture. It also seems all too fitting a time to watch this film, as one of the first lines delivered in Wyoming is "go back where you came from." It's truly heartbreaking how ever-lasting this sentiment seems to be in America (and I'm sure in other parts of the world as well). Cimino's film really, really, feels like you are there. It feels less like people dressing up in the late 20th century as an absolutely perfect period piece.

I could go on and on, but I see no point in repeating things others have said. I would like to say a few quick things about the film's politics, which were shockingly relevant, and shockingly progressive from a filmmaker whose previous film I have read is very racist (a charge I have my doubts about). One of the most important, and again relevant, details in the film was when either the governor or head military person invoked "the president." Multiple times, there were people who claimed that the death list went beyond local governance or the chamber of commerce, but the president himself had given the directive to execute the plan. In today's political context, it seems people are often trying to disassociate themselves from like-minded movements. I can't help but think of guns rights activists who earnestly try to separate their own military-worship and xenophobia from the white supremacists who actually do follow-through and execute innocent people. In other words, the same people that parade around mosques carrying semi-automatic weaponry feel they shouldn't be lumped in with Dylan Roof (the person who shot the people in a South Carolina church). By invoking the president, I feel Cimino's script lays the blame for the evil in Wyoming at the feet of the entire country. You cannot read a history book and just think there's a few bad apples, somehow apart from the entire system, who engage in evil, criminal acts, and somehow the rest of the history of America is noble. There is nobody without blood on their hands. I believe the more I think about this film, the more parts of it that will apply to.

There's obviously endless parts of this film relevant as ever today, especially the notion that a group of rich imperialists will hire poor assassins to kill poor immigrants. It's always the poor fighting amongst each other trying to do the bidding/fighting against the rich.

All in all, I'm happy all I knew about the film was to expect an epic western. How lucky I am to be able to watch this masterpiece in 2015 with little knowledge of it, and getting to see it in pristine condition on blu ray and without pre-judging it. The most absurd claim on this thread is that somehow these characters aren't fully developed. I don't know where that idea could come from, and perhaps it's because we don't get every backstory and motivation explicitly spelled out, but there wasn't a performance in the film that I wasn't in love with. What could be more realistic than conflicted actors who don't have the strength on their own to fight against injustice? It's pretty clear the motivations and internal torment of all of the principle characters, and perhaps a second viewing is in order if anyone really feels the characters were underdeveloped!

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Re: 636 Heaven's Gate

#236 Post by movielocke » Wed Feb 17, 2016 4:13 am

I very much wanted to like this film, and there is a lot in it to like. The cinematography, first and foremost, and the excellent work from Huppert and Kristofferson.

Throughout the film there are inspired sequences, moments and ideas that are remarkable, but in spite of that, the film never cohesively gels together, in part because the central love triangle melodrama isn't very effective, and these seemingly central characters are just periphery actors around the settlers in question, so the film revolves around the labored angst of kristofferson while the purported plot only engages briefly with the proletariat subjects of that angst.

There are enough completely WTF moments throughout the film that I do understand why anyone would think that work this good was "one of the worst movies ever made." I could easily imagine focusing on just the ridiculous moments, piling them up in one's rubbish heap of memories when writing about the film and never seeming to run out--this sensation of endless garbage from the film with which to attack it is, in part, because it is especially hard to shake the miasma of pretension off the film after it spends thirty minutes of worship of Harvard students, which doesn't actually establish any relationships or meaningful information, it sets the tone, of course, but everything conveyed in the Ivy-fellating opening is later repeatedly hammered into your skull with winning dialog like, "You're a traitor to your class!" and "You're so stinking rich you just pretend to be poor" etc.

It is really frustrating, because there is real possibility of something great being possible with this material, but the overall product is not.

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tenia
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Re: 636 Heaven's Gate

#237 Post by tenia » Wed Feb 17, 2016 4:50 am

While I really liked the movie when I discovered it with this new restoration (first through the Criterion BD, then in theaters, then with the French release), I agree that there is a focus which is definitely lacking, and it shows also in the pace of the movie which is all over the place.

It felt as if everything was part of a grand scheme to set up a mood which IMO works well as an all-embracing one, but it also felt as if you could cut half of the movie out and still be missing nothing. The Harvard opening is indeed symptomatic of that : it's 30 min long because it sets up a lot of Hurt's and Kristofferson's characters personality but is it so useful in the end ? Not really. Couldn't it be done with a much smoother way, or maybe a shorter introduction ? Probably.

Still, while I expected to get bored quite a lot, I ended up watching the movie 3 times over the course of a year (the 2 last times pretty close from each other) and while the movie obviously is too long, it has been all 3 times quite entertaining.

My GF, who is not really a movie buff and faaaaaaar from being curious about overlong poorly received westerns made in the 80s, also liked it quite a lot (though she found it to be a bit too violent / brutal to her tastes, especially the rape sequence).

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Re: 636 Heaven's Gate

#238 Post by Altair » Mon Apr 09, 2018 5:22 pm

Looking at Caps-a-Holic, the new German BD of Heaven's Gate seems to have the 154 min theatrical cut in HD, featuring the original colour timing.

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Re: 636 Heaven's Gate

#239 Post by tenia » Tue Apr 10, 2018 4:19 am

It seems a bit far-fetched to say it has the original colour timing. If anything, it just looks slightly warmer and more contrasted than the Criterion while, if I'm not mistaken, Zsigmond originally graded the movie with a sepia tone.

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Altair
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Re: 636 Heaven's Gate

#240 Post by Altair » Tue Apr 10, 2018 8:18 am

Yeah, that's true - I've seen Heaven's Gate in 70mm and it was more sepia toned than any BD, but am I right in thinking (apologies if I've just made this up), that the Theatrical Cut shown in the US had its colour timings changed?

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Roscoe
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Re: 636 Heaven's Gate

#241 Post by Roscoe » Tue Apr 10, 2018 8:51 am

I wish they'd restore more of the subtitles -- that little exchange between the couple where the wife is outraged that the sheriff is going to a brothel on Sunday is untranslated now.

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Re: 636 Heaven's Gate

#242 Post by Magic Hate Ball » Mon Aug 13, 2018 11:09 am

Finally caught up with this, Vincent Canby et al were a little unfair but I feel for Pauline Kael when she said it's a movie "you want to draw mustaches on" to shame it for its lack of observation.

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domino harvey
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Re: 636 Heaven's Gate

#243 Post by domino harvey » Mon Aug 13, 2018 11:34 am

What does that even mean?

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tenia
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Re: 636 Heaven's Gate

#244 Post by tenia » Mon Aug 13, 2018 11:47 am

The full quote is "“Heaven’s Gate” is a numbing shambles. It’s a movie you want to deface; you want to draw mustaches on it, because there’s no observation in it, no hint of anything resembling direct knowledge—or even intuition—of what people are about. It’s the work of a poseur who got caught out." and I still don't understand better what she meant.

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Re: 636 Heaven's Gate

#245 Post by Apperson » Mon Aug 13, 2018 12:00 pm

I assume, due to her repeated mentions of lack of insight, that drawing mustaches on the film would ruin the film and expose it as shallow in the same way it would drawing a mustache on the face of a shallow figure of influence would, because they have nothing beyond the way they look. (Disclaimer: I have not seen Heaven's Gate, this is just about the Pauline Kael quote)
Last edited by Apperson on Mon Aug 13, 2018 12:33 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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Re: 636 Heaven's Gate

#246 Post by Magic Hate Ball » Mon Aug 13, 2018 12:22 pm

It has a silly script full of cheaply drawn characters who have frustratingly little to say, but the film is so self-serious that you want to, as Apperson states, expose its shallowness by highlighting its pretenses.

edit: I should note, since I've only been catty so far, that I went into this movie with a lot of good-will, and that there's a lot about it that I enjoyed, particularly the cinematography and its portrayal of the West as exhaustingly bustling. John Hurt's arc was extremely intriguing - he was my favorite part of the battle sequence - and all the ephemeral bits were the best part of the film, particularly the roller-skating sequence. It's the way it doesn't cohere that's annoying.

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Altair
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Re: 636 Heaven's Gate

#247 Post by Altair » Wed Aug 15, 2018 9:34 am

Having seen Heaven's Gate multiple times over the past few years - first on the Carlotta BD and then later in 70mm - I think what resonates about the film is that Cimino really engages with the idea that the West was full of immigrants: not immigrants like in Ford films, where people have Oirish accents, or have a Polish surname, but actual immigrants, people who can't speak English, who import their Eastern European customs and traditions, both in dress and behaviour. In the cattle barons' eyes, they're essentially the same as the Native Americans; hence, John Hurt's exclamation, 'You can't kill them all, they're not like the Indians.' Only they are, for all essential purposes. It chimes with Cimino's interest in immigrant American communities (Russian-Americans in The Deer Hunter, Chinese Americans and Polish Americans in Year of the Dragon) and here, in Heaven's Gate, he refuses to sentimentalise or exoticise them. One of the most wonderful scenes in the film is the roller skating dance, which is the counterpoint to the Strauss waltzing at Harvard at the beginning of the film - one is European 'low culture', the other European high culture, but ironically the former is deemed as part of an un-American culture, and the latter seen as a natural part of American upper class life. Kris Kristofferson is the only figure who (temporarily) bridges the gap between these two Americas. It's partly why I think Isabelle Huppert's performance works: a French prostitute from Quebec, she becomes the figure through which Kristofferson is able to empathise with the working class immigrants, able to cross class boundaries.
SpoilerShow
Hence, when she is killed, it makes intuitive sense that Kristofferson would retreat back into his money, to paraphrase Fitzgerald (and certainly in the depction of the American class system at work, Cimino comes weirdly closer to capturing Fitzgerald than any of the straight adaptations of The Great Gatsby).
I feel like contemporary reviews such as Kael's and Canby's were reviewing the man as much as the movie, and it's clear from Steven Bach's book, but also the deceptions Cimino spread about himself, that he was a less than admirable figure, nightmarish even. Yet he had a run of four films, from Thunderbolt and Lightfoot to Year of the Dragon which range from very good to great. His analysis of white working class Americans with immigrant backgrounds, feels all the more prescient today.

More importantly, it is the last true American 'epic': only one process shot in the entire film (back projection was used when Kristofferson is on the yacht), simply unimaginable today. The crane shot of the train pulling into Casper, Wyoming, rivals Leone's similar shot in Once Upon a Time in the West: a complete world is created in a single image. Cimino had a true gift in being able to convey the geography of a place, be it Harvard (ironically they actually shot this sequence in Oxford) or Wyoming. Indeed, I think Cimino borrowed from Leone the idea in Once Upon a Time in the West of making what seems to be a very simple narrative, very convoluted, which is either fascinating or maddening, depending on your perspective. I lean towards the former. (I am however, sympathetic to those who claim the final battle scene is overlong: it surely could have been cut down more.)

Yet I feel the charge that the characters aren't well developed is unfair: what more backstory do we need? And anyhow, while Sam Waterston plays a straightforward villain, both Kristofferson or Christopher Walken's characters are morally ambiguous, neither fitting easily into a 'white hat'/'black hat' dichotomy. The film feels very 'un-Western' in the sense that Cimino clearly cares little for the narrative conventions of the genre (even less so than Sam Peckinpah) - it works more as a period piece that looks at late 19th century American politics (again, very unusual to this day in Hollywood). It's hard to think of another major studio film that has tried to tackle these issues on this scale subsequently.

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Re: 636 Heaven's Gate

#248 Post by Magic Hate Ball » Thu Aug 16, 2018 5:35 pm

It's not that they don't have backstory, it's that, as characters, there's not much to them - by the end of the movie, I knew only slightly more about Ella as I did in her very first scene, which is a problem for a character who is the hinge of a love triangle. The immigrants tumble through the movie as alternately comical and tragic buffoons, mostly used as set dressing for Kristofferson's tediously benevolent superman-of-the-people. When we're looking at pretty things, it's a good movie, but when the characters open their mouths, too often it's jarringly generic, and it's really frustrating because the potential is so clearly there.

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Re: 636 Heaven's Gate

#249 Post by knives » Thu Aug 16, 2018 5:38 pm

Why would we need to know more about her?

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Magic Hate Ball
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Re: 636 Heaven's Gate

#250 Post by Magic Hate Ball » Thu Aug 16, 2018 5:46 pm

If I'm going to spend three plus hours in the company of a small set of characters, I'd rather they not be kept at arm's length unless there's a compelling thematic reason.

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