Nevertheless, a century removed from their first Hollywood appearance, Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy continue to be celebrated both on-screen and off. Not only do audiences love their movies, they adore the men themselves. This all-encompassing fandom highlights the pair’s magic ingredient, one so rare in the performing arts: transparency. The two men allowed themselves to be known by all, inside and out, and their movies serve as an extension to this transparency, rather than a buffer between artist and audience. Laurel & Hardy’s exaggerated capers don’t lie, but rather blur the lines between cinema and real-life, indicating a genuine humanity behind the clowning. After all, Laurel & Hardy always played themselves.

Whatever occupation that writer Stan Laurel conjured up for the pair – whether down-and-outs, foreign legion soldiers, wealthy socialites, or students at Oxford – they rarely felt the need to alter their looks, mannerisms, or even their names. Their performances were true to life, capitalising on many facets of their real-life personalities.

Performer Jackie Gleason noted that Oliver Hardy “[…] was a delight to watch drinking, because he was just like his character. He’d wipe a drop off the glass, pick it up with his pinkie way out, sip it, put it down, tap it, very much like the character that he played”.

The pair never broke character, even when breaking the fourth wall, which often consisted of Ollie impatiently glaring at the camera as absurdity unfolded around him.

Such mannerisms, from which much of their humour was derived, were reinforced at every possible comedic opportunity. If Hardy could sternly push Laurel to one side in order to enter a building first, he would. If ever there was the opportunity for Laurel to remove his hat and ruffle his hair, whether out of confusion, satisfaction, or just plain boredom, that iconic bowler would be off in a flash. Their contrasting body types also played further into their characters, with Hardy always celebrating his weight by finding comedy in it, despite the many health problems he would later experience.

Outside of their films and stage-shows, the pair always dutifully played up to their roles, such as when they attended the birthday party of an obscure British Railway station. Footage shows Hardy snatching a comically oversized key from Laurel, before making an idiot out of himself by attempting to unlock a door which Laurel then opens with ease. It’s possible to hear the crowds roaring with laughter as the pair bring fiction into reality – or, more accurately, highlight how true to life their movies were.

Oliver Hardy portrayed himself as a pompous bully with a delicate ego. He knows less than what he thinks he does, and can be exceptionally lazy and decadent, even when dire circumstances demand otherwise. Stan Laurel was the humble underdog, clumsy and scatter-brained. Despite the two men being affable and intelligent behind the curtain, these less desirable aspects had more than a grain of truth to them. Hardy could indeed act entitled, clocking off at 5 to hobnob with stars like Bing Crosby, whilst Laurel was a humble workaholic with a thousand ideas.

This dynamic was complementary, but inevitably led to fall-outs. As depicted in the 2018 biopic Stan & Ollie, the pair’s behind-the-scenes arguments often trumped their on-screen squabbles. Such heavy topics as contracts, careers, relationships, and personal health, dominated many of their disagreements. These off-screen issues shine through in their movies; of all the double-acts that ever graced the silver screen, Laurel & Hardy truly knew how to argue.

Alongside their reputation for honest, no-frills comedy was another development which helped the pair to achieve success: talkies. Many of Laurel & Hardy’s silent contemporaries suffered during the shift to sound, a theme explored as recently as 2011 in the French comedy-drama The Artist. Charlie Chaplin, for example, had a voice that audiences did not feel suited his image. Although sound allowed him to expound on the morals of man, such as in his satire of Hitler in The Great Dictator (1940), for many Chaplin exuded more charm when mute.

Stan & Ollie, on the other hand, had their career skyrocket when sound film became popular in the late 1920s. The pair’s voices suited their characters perfectly; Stan’s croaky British twang highlighted his innocence, whilst Ollie’s Southern accent matched his bossy aggression down to a tee. In a way, the fact that the duo never pretended to be anyone else meant that any addition to their characters would seem fitting, provided it was honest.

Sound also allowed Oliver Hardy to show off his excellent singing voice, something which only his music-hall audiences would have so far appreciated. “Blue Ridge Mountains”, a duet with Stan in their iconic Western Way Out West (1937), reeks of class, one of those rare moments where two comics can do something with such sincerity that even the odd gag doesn’t detract from its effect. They sing a heartfelt song in beautiful harmony, and one doesn’t know whether to laugh or cry. Few comedy acts can elicit such a response, but Laurel & Hardy’s films have many such instances.

What talkies really spotlighted was Laurel’s excellent writing ability. Verbal gags had occurred in their silent films in the form of title cards, but the spontaneity of sound added to their liveliness and frequency. The Live Ghost (1934) sees Laurel refusing to join a ship’s crew due to the ocean being “infatuated with sharks”. Hardy’s overconfident idiocy is summed up in his correcting of Laurel: “he means infuriated with sharks!”. Talkies paved the way for catchphrases, too, such as Hardy’s furious “Why don’t you do something to help me?!” and Laurel’s crumple-faced cry to the camera.

But whilst sound was elevating these on-screen arguments to a wittier and more bitter intensity, every new film added to the canon of an inexplicably close friendship. Of such bickering double-acts it’s often asked, “how are these two still friends?”, and Laurel & Hardy’s characters are no exception, remaining inseparable throughout their 107 films together despite their blatant differences and violent disagreements. Yet the seeds of believability are always being sown; the impromptu duets, the shared laughter at others’ expense, the unashamed bed-sharing in Laughing Gravy (1930) – these all betray, in the most warm and adorable way possible, a very real friendship.

This dichotomy feels believable because it’s real; much like the arguments, this heart-warming inseparability was merely a reflection of the two men’s reality. Just like their on-screen counterparts, the real Laurel & Hardy would remain best friends until the very end. Even after Hardy’s death in 1957, their legacy was so cemented for Laurel that he refused to perform again without his partner of 30 years.

The pair’s fondness for each other was more than evident when seen in the things they had to say about one another.

Stan said, of Ollie:

“Hardy inspires me. He is like the character he portrays because of certain individual traits. To me, he is refreshing, so darned human! His humour lies in the funny way he thinks. I can look at him and know just what he is thinking. His moods are very funny to me, the moods of a born comedian.”

And Ollie, of Stan:

“Laurel is the most unselfish man that ever lived and the funniest man in the world, as a comedian, as a writer and as a human being. He is so distinctive that he stands absolutely alone. He doesn’t depend upon funny clothes to make him funny, he is funny in himself. And I have sense enough to stand back and let him be funny.”

Laurel & Hardy didn’t reserve their love for one another. They were famously gracious to their followers, and infinitely grateful to those who continued to attend their live shows after their movie careers had begun to dwindle.

In his later years, Stan Laurel had his phone number listed in the LA directory, happily chatting to those die-hard fans brave enough to call. Funnily enough, his home number had been revealed decades previous in their hilarious short Blotto (1930), where Stan would recits to the telephone operator: “Oxford, oh, six, one, four!”.

Even the author feels the echoes of Stan & Ollie’s warmth in the form of a photo autographed for his mother, who was too ill to attend their 1954 performance at the Birmingham Hippodrome. Throughout the world there will be similar mementos of their loyalty, with many fond memories to accompany them.

In 1951 the pair released their last ever feature film, Atoll K. Poor reviews reflected a decline in their career, and many audiences were saddened at how old and ill the two gentlemen looked. They were both heavy smokers, and Oliver Hardy would suffer a heart attack three years on, and die three years after that from a series of strokes. His partner Stan would join him eight years later, at the age of 74. Stan’s funeral was attended by countless admirers including fellow star Buster Keaton, who stated, “Chaplin wasn’t the funniest. I wasn’t the funniest. Stan Laurel was the funniest.”

With their comedy, Laurel & Hardy tapped into something immortal. Their legacy will no doubt live on for as long as people will want to laugh. They emerged as cinema was taking over the world and set many precedents; it may mostly have been two men in ill-fitting suits fighting over incomplete tasks, but that only serves to highlight how childish true comedy is, and how primitive the act of enjoying it.

Still today, audiences can sense that the two men were enjoying themselves immensely. Once they’d met their lifetime comedy partners, Stan & Ollie insisted on having fun up until the very end. They didn’t look down on audiences; on the contrary, they allowed audiences to look down upon them, never taking themselves more seriously than was necessary. Laurel & Hardy made fools out of themselves for others and, despite their fame and wealth, didn’t lose sight of what was most important; beneath it all, being human.

Written by Louis B Scheuer

You can support Louis B Scheuer in the following places:

Twitter – @louisbscheuer
Instagram – @louisbscheuer

In this list, we look to celebrate some of the very best writing of the 2020 calendar year by sharing with you the 20 Most Popular Articles of 2020. These articles have each been written and published in 2020, but are ranked based on their overall readership and not their average daily readership, meaning that articles released earlier in the year hold an advantage over those released later in the year due to having more days in which to earn clicks and visits. Furthermore, articles that cross multiple pages – Ranked lists, Top 10s, etc. – hold an advantage as they earn more than one click per read.

These 20 articles are pieces we consider to be signs of what type of content we should be focusing on heading into 2021, the very best articles The Film Magazine has produced in 2020.

Follow The Film Magazine on Twitter to keep up to date with all of our film articles. 

Articles that nearly made it: Pitch Perfect Movies Ranked; No, You Are – Deconstructing Dinesh D’Souza’s Interview with Richard Spencer; Final Destination Movies Ranked; Happiest Season (2020) Review.

20. Misbehaviour (2020) Review

Author: Annice White
Twitter: @annicewhite_

Based on a true story, Misbehaviour chronicles the real-life feminist movement that opposed the Miss World competition of 1970. Starring the likes of Keira Knightley and Jessie Buckley, this film was deemed decent but unessential at a 15/24 rating here on The Film Magazine, with Annice White describing it as “one you’ll want to see, but don’t worry if that’s only on TV”.

Read here.

19. The Only Movies Your Douchebag Ex Has Ever Seen – Top 10

Author: Joseph Wade
Twitter: @JoeTFM

A tongue-in-cheek portrait of the various types of film bro you’ll likely find on a University film course or muttering about Tarantino at a party, Joseph Wade’s “The Only Movies Your Douchebag Ex Has Ever Seen – Top 10” drew an extraordinary response on social media. If you’ve ever had an ex who was a little bit horrible, self-involved or self-aggrandising, this one’s for you.

Read here.

18. 5 Reasons Why Klaus Is An Amazing Christmas Film

Author: Sophia Patfield

This article from Sophia Patfield was released just weeks before the end of 2020, but earns a spot in our top 20 nonetheless owing to its spirited and joyful celebration of modern Christmas animation Klaus (now on Netflix). If you need any reason to watch this independent animation (other than the holidays), then this list may be for you, though be warned… there may be spoilers.

Read here.

17. Safdie Brothers Movies Ranked

Author: Leoni Horton
Twitter: @inoelshikari

Josh and Benny Safdie have long been establishing themselves as unique and noteworthy filmmakers, but in 2020 their careers reached new heights with the much celebrated Uncut Gems, starring Adam Sandler. As something of an expert on the brothers’ career, and someone who has written extensively about their work across The Film Magazine, Leoni Horton was the perfect candidate to rank their output, showcasing her knowledge and clearly defining the reasons for her order in this ranking of the Safdie Brothers’ filmography.

Read here.

16. M. Night Shyamalan Directed Movies Ranked

Author: Joseph Wade
Twitter: @JoeTFM

Since bursting into the mainstream with The Sixth Sense in 1999, screenwriter-director-producer M. Night Shyamalan has proven a divisive figure, his work varying in quality from the abominably bad to the assuredly genius, his twelve-strong filmography – including Signs, The Last Airbender and Split – ranked from worst to best here by Joseph Wade, a writer whose Masters Thesis focused on the theory of film authorship.

Read here.

Whether you think so or not, the action classic starring Bruce Willis and the late, great Alan Rickman proves that one can set a movie at the most magical time of year without packing it full of seasonal tropes. After all, Christmas isn’t fun for everyone. It can be a dark, gritty, dangerous time, especially if you’re a downtrodden bureaucrat, an alcoholic cop, or a kid who has just been gifted an apparently harmless and adorable mogwai.

In this Movie List, we here at The Film Magazine have scoured the annals of film history to put together this selection of 10 Excellent Non-Christmas Films Set at Christmas. Ten films we’re sure will add a different flavour to your holiday watch lists.

Follow @thefilmagazine on Twitter.

1. In Bruges (2008)

10 Best In Bruges Moments

Martin McDonagh’s thrilling feature debut transports us to Bruges, the Belgian town that’s “like a fairy tale”, as Ralph Fiennes’ cockney villain constantly reminds us.

The plot, twisting like the canals of Bruges itself, features comedy, betrayal, love, blood, and guts, whilst Christmas lights just happen to gleam all around.

If you want to feel a little seasonal without being beaten over the head with Christmas spirit, this Irish dark comedy starring Colin Farrell and Brendan Gleeson may be exactly what you need.

2. Brazil (1985)

Terry Gilliam’s dystopian epic shows us what those shopping-mall Santas can be like off-duty. Much like the Christmas industry, every kind face has a nasty one beneath.

Very little is nice about Brazil, which tells the story of Sam Lowry (Jonathan Pryce) seeking love and freedom in a Kafkaesque nightmare. Cinematically beautiful and ultimately terrifying, Gilliam’s vision of the future mirrors much of today’s world. We see that, behind the shiny consumerism, there are systems upon systems upon systems of red tape, corrupt officials, and crushed dreams.

Recommended for you: Katie Doyle’s ‘Movies I Had a Religious/Spiritual Experience with’ Part 3 (featuring Brazil & In Bruges)

People have not been very nice about David Lynch’s Dune (1984). An ambitious adaptation of Frank Herbert’s 1965 sci-fi bestseller, the movie has been described as “impossible to follow” by Empire Magazine, “pointless” by Roger Ebert, and “a huge gigantic sadness” by none other than Lynch himself. Such sentiments were echoed by cinema-goers, leading to Dune bombing at the box office and enjoying little appreciation outside of a meagre cult following.

But its cult status is not completely unfounded; beneath unconvincing effects, a monotonous structure, and what feels like an incomplete narrative, is a science fiction achievement parallel to the works of Stanley Kubrick or Ridley Scott. Lynch’s sadness is illuminating; he knows what Dune could have been were it not for his failures in assuming artistic ownership of the project. There are even a few fans, both those who’ve read the book and those who haven’t, who deem Lynch’s Dune to be the definitive version, warts and all.

With so much hype surrounding Blade Runner 2049 director Denis Villeneuve’s attempt, earmarked for release in late 2021, Lynch’s interpretation risks being overshadowed and written off as a complete failure. It’s high time we explored what Lynch may have got right, what nuggets of brilliance shine through, and what aspects of the book were given justice on the big screen, in ways that only such a master of surrealism could have pulled off.

So why is there so much anxiety surrounding the filming of Dune?

It is indeed an epic and complex tome, packed to the brim with characters, lore, literary devices, and esoteric science-fiction concepts. The book mostly follows Paul Atreides and his plight to redeem his dynasty, House Atreides. His family are bid by Emperor Shaddam IV, ruler of the known universe, to supervise the desert planet Arrakis (also known as Dune). Paul’s father knows something is amiss, and such suspicions are confirmed when the evil Baron Harkonnen, acting as a pawn for the Emperor, invades Arrakis and kills Paul, the last heir to House Atreides – or so the Baron thinks.

Paul secretly survives, along with his mother Jessica. She knows her son to be the subject of an ancient prophecy; he is the Kwisatz Haderach, the one who will lead the natives of Arrakis to overthrow the aggressors, though this is a campaign at risk of becoming a bloody, horrific jihad. At the centre of all this politics is The Spice, a potent drug found only on Arrakis. Spice extends life, activates spiritual insight, and is even used by navigators to manipulate space-time. It’s what everyone’s addicted to, and what everyone’s fighting over. Spice is what makes Dune such a valuable planet to govern, it being an otherwise inhospitable desert-scape inhabited only by huge sandworms and standoffish natives.

This synopsis misses out a thousand details, and as Villeneuve correctly stated, “it’s a world that takes its power in details”. It can be difficult to grasp one aspect of Herbert’s universe without understanding the universe as a whole. For example, Dune’s philosophical implications are mixed up in its biosphere. Its hero’s coming-of-age story has more than “theological overtones” as Ebert suggests – its theology defines it, encompassing it. And wrapping all this up is The Spice, a complex and occult drug that informs the world’s religions and technologies, and the motivations of every individual character, of every warring faction, of every dumb animal.

How does one fit all this, including the appendices, glossary and map, into a two-and-a-half hour film? With difficulty, it seems.

Plot and structure are the primary failures of Lynch’s Dune, with important lore left unexplained whilst other mundane concepts are hammered home. Herbert’s mantric style of repeating a pertinent phrase (“Fear is the mind-killer”) translates badly to cinema when interrupting scenes in the form of jarring internal monologues. Surreal cutaways ruin otherwise grounded and engaging sequences, a constant shift that leads to a sort of narrative nausea. Then suddenly we’re plunged into a segment of such epic proportions that we feel as if the film is about to end, even when there’s still an hour left on the clock.

But Lynch gets so much right, even in his pacing. Amidst all the chaos, he finds time to let important scenes linger. For example, Paul’s mother Jessica has much political and personal rivalry with the Bene Gesserit, the order to which she belongs. By training Paul in the “weirding ways”, she is attempting to fulfil a terrible prophecy, something that attracts the vitriol of her Reverend Mother. Their interactions, and the subsequent test of pain which the Reverend Mother inflicts upon Paul, are given space to breathe.

A similar slowness is employed when Paul is being informed about Arrakis and the mission of House Atreides. We learn a lot about Dune – its nature, geography, and politics – through Paul’s ‘filmbook’ and his conversations with close confidants. Even interactions between the evil Baron Harkonnen and his red-haired acolytes, or the Emperor and the deformed Guild Navigators, are given time; we learn more than just lore. We see where they live, what they wear, even witness some personal habits. The Baron’s disgusting pustules, maniacal laugh, and quasi-sexual abuse of boys, are not integral to the plot. They are, however, absolutely integral to us despising the Baron, and are arguably more important than many narrative details that Lynch had to leave out.

In these slower scenes, both the dialogue and the space in between are charged with emotion, politics, and smattered with references to the wider world. Not only is the plot developed; the Duniverse is too. Rather than merely speaking about the task at hand, characters and factions are always mentioning one another. Even if we’re not particularly informed about the Spacing Guild, the Great Houses of the Landsraad, The Fremen, and the Order of the Bene Gesserit, hearing these names indicates a rich wider world. It throws us, a little scared and confused, into a universe we don’t fully understand, leaving us hungry for more.

When it comes to casting, everyone has a different image of a book’s characters in their heads, but Lynch’s casting choices are nonetheless sophisticated and wise. Kyle MacLachlan, later used by Lynch as the star of Blue Velvet (1986) and the TV show ‘Twin Peaks’, has the deep eyes and stoic gaze of our Paul. Much like his literary counterpart, Paul begins as an observer, carefully watching the plot pass him by, and ends up as a warrior, bringing about change with that self-same humility and strength of character. His interactions with his father are strangely stilted and sentimental compared with the rest of the film – in a similar vein to Lynch’s The Elephant Man (1980) but with less depth. Otherwise, however, Paul’s father Leto (Jürgen Prochnow) is a commanding presence, and his concubine Jessica (Francesca Annis) is dutiful, intelligent, with eyes that genuinely express fear for her son’s life. Lynch, in what little time he affords it, finds soul in this family unit.

The evil Harkonnens are also well cast. Kenneth McMillan’s Baron may be a little overly-manic, a little comic-book, but such criticisms are overshadowed by his great successes; the Baron Harkonnen is a revolting, drooling, leering creature, with a shrewd glimmer in his eye. More contentious is the casting for the Baron’s nephew Feyd-Rautha, played by none other than Sting of The Police. Seeing the pop icon in Dune breaks immersion for some, but it’s nonetheless an example of Lynch taking on board one of Frank Herbert’s primary aesthetic tenets: not everyone nice has to be attractive, and not everyone evil has to be ugly. Herbert describing Paul’s most loyal friend Gurney Halleck as a “rolling, ugly man” is just one example of the believability that Lynch took to heart, unashamedly giving good guys unattractive qualities – like Thurfir’s drug-induced rashes and inhumanly long eyebrows – wherever he felt fitting.

In addition to his casting, Lynch expertly uses the visual medium to differentiate between factions. The Harkonnens are perhaps least faithful to the book; rather than being Romanesque, barbaric, and above all functional, Lynch appears more inspired by psychosexual artists like Giger, resulting in the Harkonnen aesthetic being unexpectedly stylish and shiny, albeit surreal and funny. Nonetheless, he expresses well a planet blighted by industry, and individual rooms in the Harkonnen Headquarters are appropriately cold and metallic.

The design choices for the Harkonnens are probably the most contentious. If we’re discounting poor digital and practical effects, such as the sandworms that look like Muppets from the wrong angle, there’s little else to fault. The planet Arrakis is just as vast and orange as one imagined. The Atreides’ castles and ships are grandiose but functional; the Fremen hideouts are ancient but futuristic, sporting a minimalist, art-gallery-style smoothness in contrast to the rugged climate of their planet; and, towering above the design of all other factions, is the palace of the Emperor. The first set we see, it blows us away. Adorned with blocky gold and turquoise allure, it’s like futurism, art-deco, and Aztec lustre all rolled into one. It’s alien and strange, stunning and beautiful. Courtiers mill about in strange costumes, accompanied by pugs in equally strange costumes, and those of us who’ve read the book immediately know where we are.

Much like with his conversations, Lynch lets us enjoy these set pieces. We’re given long shots and sweeping pans of the universe and its environs, rather than the handheld action that seems to permeate much of modern cinema. After all, so much of Dune is in the world, in the details. These achievements in pacing prove that Lynch’s film was not too long, and that in fact the two movies he initially fought for could well have spelled success for the adaptation – considering that Alejandro Jodorowsky’s mid-1970s attempt was intended to be twelve hours long, the fact that Lynch fits so much into just over two is astounding. As a result, Lynch unfortunately leaves out large chunks of the story, including the jihad that is so central to Paul’s spiritual journey. To his credit, though, he keenly explores some fundamental elements of the book rather than squeezing everything in at the expense of depth, a brave and admirable stance to take in the face of baying Frank Herbert fans.

Lovers of “Dune” are not as other sci-fi readers; “Dune” is their Bible, and Herbert something of a messiah. Its universal truths have resonated with a portion of every generation since its release, and its literary devices for exploring theology, psychology, philosophy and addiction credit “Dune” much literary merit over many other soft science fiction and fantasy novels. Lynch, rather than shying away from these integral elements, dives right in with numerous surreal segments, many of which are confusing, poorly written and badly executed. But, as absurd a claim as it seems, Lynch had the right idea. To ignore these themes, expressed in the book through a mixture of internal monologues, passages of scripture, and descriptions of mystical visions, would be to ignore the very soul of the book.

Lynch is equally brave in his attempt to represent the technologies of “Dune”, with varying success. The voice, a psychological vocal technique that Jessica (and later Paul) use to command enemies is shown to us via an alien-like, low-pitched filter over the actor’s speech. It’s symbolic rather than realistic, but no doubt memorable. The same can be said for the personal shields that block fast-moving objects, facilitating knife combat over gunfights. Lynch employs some blocky CGI effects, dated and comical enough to break immersion, but once again memorable. One could have used much more subtle effects for each of these technologies, but Lynch makes them strange and unforgettable rather than allowing them to sink into mundanity. Whether or not they’re well executed is a different matter.

In conclusion, it’s hard to decry many of the criticisms levelled at David Lynch’s adaptation. He blames studio interference, and an admission that he sold out, claiming Dune (1984) to be his career’s only failure. Despite many agreeing, there is undoubtedly something special buried in its flaws. With intellectual and cinematic majesty akin to Forbidden Planet (1956) and 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968), Lynch’s defective masterpiece goes lengths to capture the mature, mystical, psychedelic qualities of “Dune” in a way that sets it apart from bog-standard science fiction. Lynch doesn’t want to think about it, or talk about it, and will not be seeing Villeneuve’s interpretation, but those of us who see genius in this much maligned flick can enjoy the film, seeing it as a valiant effort, a near-success, and a lesson learned.

Recommended for you: Where to Start with David Lynch

Written by Louis B Scheuer

You can support Louis B Scheuer in the following places:

Twitter – @louisbscheuer
Instagram – @louisbscheuer

Folk horror must, by definition, have some emphasis on folklore, usually witnessed from the perspective of outsiders who find themselves at the mercy of an isolated, tradition-led community. This needn’t always be the case, The VVitch (2015) being an example with no such cult to arbitrate between the predators and their victims, but community is no doubt a primary theme of our two films.

Both The Wicker Man and Midsommar set the scene with the sound of whistling wind, the former accompanied by the icon of a green man, the latter by a snowy Swedish landscape. These little prologues tell the audience that something is already brewing, something ancient and unstoppable. When we go on to meet our protagonists in their natural habitats, their fates have already been set, although herein the movies establish their key difference.

The Wicker Man shows us Sergeant Howie (Edward Woodward), a devoutly Christian copper with a stiff upper lip. His peers may chide him for his virginity, but he has the love and respect of his church community and beautiful fiancé. It’s his search for a missing girl on an isolated Scottish island that will throw his world off-kilter, whereas Midsommar’s Dani (Florence Pugh) is already in turmoil.

Dani’s sister has committed suicide and taken their parents with her, and Dani is half-heartedly consoled by her boyfriend Christian (Jack Reynor), who resents their relationship but is too cowardly to break it off. It’s this exact cowardice, in fact, that leads him to invite Dani on a trip to a pagan commune in Sweden, organised for him and his friends by the suspiciously affable Pelle (Vilhelm Blomgren).

The journeys are different in tone – The Wicker Man’s soundtrack by Paul Giovanni is gorgeously folky compared with Bobby Krlic’s horror-style drones for Midsommar, for example – but when destinations are reached the similarities resume. Robin Hardy shows us a paganic sun flag and a close-up of an eye painted on the dinghy on which Howie is rowed ashore, a shot repeated later in the film when he attempts to leave the island. We’re made to look at maypoles, ceremonial outfits, door knockers that look like monsters. Ari Aster does much the same thing; runic symbols are thrown our way at every opportunity, whether painted on the walls or shown from a bird’s-eye view in the layout of a huge table. The film is rich with tapestries, temples, and carvings.

Sometimes a character will explain to another what an object represents, such as when Howie is outraged at the school teacher telling her pupils of the maypole’s phallic connotations. Sometimes their meanings are brought to life in the plot, like when a series of paintings in Midsommar hints at later events in which a virgin seduces Christian, supposedly by putting her pubic hair under his bed and in his food.

Much of the time, however, these symbols are left to speak for themselves. They’re displayed as if they’ve an inherent power, as their attached religions would have us believe. They are integral to the world-building of these films, more so than the costumes or set pieces in your average horror; they hint at something that we do not understand, suggest to us that these tales are not self-contained but another chapter in an ancient saga. Displaying these icons in all their glory is in keeping with a folk tradition that appreciates the inherent power of imagery. Like a religious painting or stained-glass window, both films use the visual medium to its maximum symbolic potential.

And who’s to say there isn’t a little appreciation thrown in, too? There’s certainly a sympathy for the antagonists not present in many other folk horrors. The VVitch and Trollhunter (2010) are essentially monster films with not much emphasis on worship or power. The cults in The Black Death (2010) and Apostle (2018) are not viewed in flattering lights, and are in fact painted as delusional even when their beliefs are well-founded. The Blair Witch Project (1999), which it could be argued lies on the edge of the folk-horror genre, features iconography in the witch’s portentous twig-constructions, but these objects are to scare and scare only.

Meanwhile The Wicker Man’s Lord Summerisle, played by Christopher Lee in what he considered his best film, calmly explains his people’s fertility rituals to a dumbstruck Sergeant Howie. He lays out his philosophy and allows us to make up our own minds – unless one is as devoutly pagan-hating as Howie, it’s hard not to be a little taken in by this charming and level-headed leader. Midsommar offers similarly charismatic elders to explain their traditions, and Ari Aster goes to even further lengths to invite us in; unlike Howie avoiding every heathen tradition like the plague, the young people in Midsommar are at times largely receptive. And although Josh (William Jackson Harper) is studying the Hårga tribe closely for his dissertation, it is Dani who really opens up to their practices.

Midsommar has been described as a long-winded breakup movie. What’s uncertain is to what extent the tribe orchestrate this fate; it’s suggested that, with their respect for providence, the Hårga merely ease the dissolution of a relationship that’s already doomed. They meddle just the right amount – Christian is tempted into infidelity, but we know that a better man wouldn’t have succumbed. Dani’s new friend warns her away, and when she ignores them and catches Christian in the act, the tribe becomes a family for her to fall back on. This leads to a memorable scene in which her heaving sobs are replicated throughout the girls who empathise with her in ways her boyfriend never could.

It’s reminiscent of what Lord Summerisle says at the climax of The Wicker Man, addressing a trapped Howie in his fool’s outfit: “You have come of your own free will to the appointed place”. He does, however, go on to admit how much his people have controlled Howie’s every thought and action since he arrived. Much like the Hårga, they operate like an unstoppable hive-mind, leading Howie to the island and hindering his escape, always keeping each other updated as if they’re having meetings we’re not privy to. Yet to some extent, they may have allowed fate to take its course. Both films let us make our own minds up.

What is the price these people pay for such an unshakeable sense of community? The mother of the girl that Howie is searching for tells him bluntly: “You’ll simply never understand the true nature of sacrifice”. It seems a tad unfair when directed at a church-going virgin, but there’s no doubt that the islanders are authorities in the subject. The superiority of these films over many other folk horrors is their complexity; a tribe can be barbaric in our eyes whilst also displaying wisdom, functionality and beauty in abundance.

Midsommar presents to us a delectable grey area when its elders stoically commit ritual suicide. As a well-spoken and sensitive senior explains: “Instead of getting old and dying in pain and fear and shame, we give our life, as a gesture”. We’re invited to compare their barbarity with our own, and ask whether their horrifying acts, including the graphic human sacrifices by fire, are merely the necessary underbelly of a culture that, in many ways, functions very well.

After the movies’ effects wear off, we’re back in the real world, where we can safely view such communities as deranged and indoctrinated. But for a couple of hours, Robin Hardy and Ari Aster transport us to places where these acts accomplish something magical, strengthening a community or an individual at the small cost of a few lives. It’s from here that the true horror stems, and although Aster has achieved something monumental in its own right, Midsommar holds much of the same wisdom as The Wicker Man in this regard. In a way, the films compliment one another; our protagonists’ journeys may differ, but both end up being a part of the tribe’s ancient plan whether they like it or not.

Written by Louis B Scheuer

You can support Louis B Scheuer in the following places:

Twitter – @louisbscheuer
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Way back in 1997, Christopher Nolan released Doodlebug, a short film about a man trying to squash a bug in his cramped apartment. The director’s trademarks were already present; claustrophobia, existential dread, and a surreal twist that suggests a non-linear chronology. There’s little time for the character development or emotional depth one might expect from a feature length movie, and little need for either of them in something so well shot, thematically concise, and lasting only three minutes. But has Nolan moved on since Doodlebug? Are his later efforts really more rich and substantial, or is he merely stretching the same whacky concepts over two and a half hours?

Twenty three years has seen the release of the much-hyped Tenet, a primary criticism of which has been its use of sound. Similar complaints were leveled at Inception (2010), The Dark Knight Rises (2012), and Interstellar (2014), with viewers feeling that actors were mumbling, and important spoken sections were hard to make out above the near-constant soundtrack. Although this may seem like a job for the sound department, Nolan is incredibly involved in his films from conception to release, and has long allowed his sound design to greatly affect the tone and pacing of his movies.

The endless music and marked lack of silence in Nolan’s feature films really afford them some of Doodlebug’s claustrophobia. Tenet’s thumps and booms and screeching synthesisers sync up with every scene, something which is artful and stylish and keeps the blood racing. Like a true action movie, there are few quiet spaces to reflect or to feel. If the music stops, it’s probably because a gunfight has broken out, or a helicopter is deafeningly taking off. The interactions between main characters, even those chillingly toxic ones shared by Andrei (Kenneth Branagh) and his wife Kat (Elizabeth Debicki), are fast and plot-heavy. Some scenes slow a little compared with the rest of the movie, but all the pacing is so elevated above real life that much of one’s viewing is spent trying to keep up.

It’s known that Nolan is a huge Bond fan, and if Tenet, Inception and Memento are merely action thrillers exalted to complex and psychologically challenging levels, must an audience expect slow thoughtful pacing when there are so many twists and turns to get through? The issue is that Nolan boasts more than this; he employs prestigious actors in roles written for them alone, and gives his characters a wealth of emotions and troubled backgrounds that beg a certain degree of exploration.

One scene in Tenet sees The Protagonist (John David Washington) note that Kat is asleep – another director may have allowed for more space between it and the dialogue, but when The Protagonist looks at Kat, her sleeping form is on screen for a fraction of a second before talking resumes. The same can be said for Inception’s maze scene: it’s a potentially engaging passage where Cobb (Leonardo DiCaprio) gives Ariadne (Ellen Page) two minutes to draw a maze that it takes one minute to solve. It’s their first exchange alone, and despite Ariadne making three attempts, the scene is over in about forty-five seconds. Another director may have lingered, may have let the lessons and their insinuations sink in. Not Nolan, who keeps the soundtrack going throughout and segues quickly to another scene before most viewers have a chance to process what has happened.

It’s interesting that most conversations about Inception are little to do with the protagonist’s grief, self-deceit and existential dread. The film’s main pull is certainly its complicated plot, as if mapping out the narrative is a set challenge for viewers. Plot appears to be a priority with Nolan, and every part of the film merely serves it. There are times where character development is breezed past once it has done its duty to the narrative, even if further exploration would have charged the storyline with more emotion and thus an incentive to keep watching. There are, however, a handful of exceptions to this rule…

Interstellar had tear jerking moments, and expansive characters with room to breathe. The opening scenes that follow Cooper (Matthew McConaughey) and his children inhabiting a barren and doomed planet earth are uncharacteristically slow, and later there’s a devastating scene in which he watches video messages from his children, now grown up in his absence due to the relativity of time and space.

Though nonlinear time is a strong subject of Interstellar, its primary theme is love. Interstellar, The Prestige (2006), and Dunkirk (2017), certainly hit home emotionally more than Nolan’s action-packed spectacles. Whether it’s through their slower pacing, period set pieces, or more believable plotlines, these latter two films feel as if they are set on earth, whereas Tenet and Inception almost pride themselves on being a sort of self-contained madness, a nice neat puzzle to solve rather than a sprawling question about humanity.

But perhaps this is not the way we should be approaching Nolan’s works…

Regardless of whether his films make an audience laugh or weep, could it be that the crazy concepts themselves are where the depth lies? Nolan, who studied English Literature, invites audiences to dissect and analyse his themes in a similar way that one is encouraged to read Shakespeare at University. Maybe his intention is not always to get through to his audience immediately, but rather to send chills down their spines over the coming weeks as the implications of his plot begin to unravel themselves in their minds, perhaps with the help of some online explanations.

As stated above, Inception may well be about grief and existential dread. There is something terrifying about the way Cobb may be kidding himself into thinking he is not dreaming, just to spend more time with the love of his life. Tenet similarly explores Andrei’s willingness to turn back time with his wife by his side, despite her clearly loathing him. He would rather live in a fantasy world of his own creation than face his own mortality and shattered relationship. This may have shone through if Branagh’s nuanced performance had been afforded more screen time, but the film had a lot to get through in its 150 minutes.

Christopher Nolan’s first blockbuster Memento features a similar vein of self-deceit. Leonard (Guy Pearce) has no short-term memory, and so the movie runs backwards in time, each scene explaining how the previous one came about. This illness is cleverly exploited not only as a narrative device but by its sufferer himself; he knows that he will forget anything he does not record, and gladly does this in order to give his life purpose. He deceives himself into continuing a fruitless search to avoid confronting a terrible grief. However oddly the director delivers such a theme, it’s far from shallow.

Dunkirk is the intense and claustrophobic war movie that many wanted, but still utilises a non-linear timeline. Events unfold for some characters before others, and whilst adding to the warlike chaos of the movie, this device serves to express the differing experiences of the Dunkirk evacuation from the perspectives of ground troops, the navy, and the air force, all of whom would have remembered the event as taking very different lengths of time. It could be viewed as a gimmick, a Nolan trademark crowbarred into a potentially straightforward drama. It could be viewed as clever, informed, and sensitive. Some of it must come down to personal taste.

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Whatever you think of each movie, they’re certainly momentous tasks to watch, as viewers find themselves juggling the plot, themes, and emotions of individual characters, all while trying to enjoy the picture as a whole. Not surprisingly, it may take a quote from the director himself, responding to complaints of Interstellar’s sound mixing, to shed some light on how his films are intended to be enjoyed:

“I don’t agree with the idea that you can only achieve clarity through dialogue. Clarity of story, clarity of emotions — I try to achieve that in a very layered way using all the different things at my disposal — picture and sound. I’ve always loved films that approach sound in an impressionistic way and that is an unusual approach for a mainstream blockbuster, but I feel it’s the right approach for this experiential film.”

Despite critics’ constant endeavours to get to the bottom of his plotlines, this quote suggests that their efforts may be misguided if they wish to fully understand his films. Perhaps Nolan, under the guise of creating complex plots whose logic needs mapping out, has spent his career doing something wholly illogical: telling tales of pure feeling. Perhaps, much like his hero Stanley Kubrick, he has been using cinema as it ought to be used; as an audio-visual medium for expressing an emotion, an idea. Seeing Tenet in the cinema, as with many of his other films, is an unforgettable experience. One’s senses are bombarded, and one is left with surprisingly few questions after the film’s end. The story makes perfect sense according to its own science-fiction rules; it may be difficult to follow every twist and turn of the plot without a clear mind and a notepad at the ready, but the emotions, the motivations, and the gravity of the situations, shine through without hindrance.

Nolan’s films are more like pieces of music; they are a sensory experience, and the complicated plot is merely Nolan’s idiosyncratic way of writing. The way his soundtracks sync up so perfectly with the action makes the two inseparable, like an opera or musical play. He can’t resist far-out science-fiction concepts, but these do not define his style. It’s common to see those credits roll and feel as if there’s something you’ve missed, but a complicated plot only has so much depth; once it’s solved, it’s solved. What Nolan does is give viewers some meat to chew on, no matter how buried that can seem; some pure essence of raw emotion, something that scares them, something that confuses them, something that shocks them and gets the blood pumping. This often runs the risk of alienating those who want to get stuck in by making them feel like they’ve missed far too much of the storyline to appreciate the spectacle, but Nolan doesn’t really demand you understand everything. He takes you on a wild ride, and whether you like it or not, you’re unlikely to forget it.

Written by Louis B Scheuer

You can support Louis B Scheuer in the following places:

Twitter – @louisbscheuer
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CGI is often best when it goes unnoticed. Like the seams on a dress, it can hold films together whilst being completely invisible. Whether it’s touching up a mansion, filling out a crowd, or altering eye colours, computer graphics allow filmmakers to defer all those nasty fiddly bits to post-production. It’s often cheaper, and always less stressful than getting everything right on the day; in theory, it allows a director to focus more on that which they really want to get right the first time around. And even if those things don’t go to plan, CGI may still step in to save the day. There remains, however, a school of thought unflinchingly loyal to animatronics. These lifelike robots were used extensively in cinema before the rise of digital effects, and maintain a passionate following today. Many of Hollywood’s most memorable monsters were created using complex and expensive contraptions, and some of them continue to captivate audiences.

Even a hardened animatronics acolyte wouldn’t suggest that CGI be replaced with robots in every circumstance though; for this particular epic battle between these two adversaries must be judged on equal footing. Fortunately, there is one area in which both techniques may excel, or fail catastrophically. It’s what you really watch out for in a movie, really scrutinise, because you know it isn’t real. It’s blood and guts and horrible monsters, of course.

Much-beloved New Zealander Peter Jackson is an ideal first case study. For many, he is the industry’s biggest CGI casualty; in contrast to recent years, his early splatstick efforts employ models, puppets, stop-motion and animatronics to achieve their memorable comic-book gore. The stop-motion and puppetry are often unconvincing despite the charm, but the animatronics, such as the zombies from Braindead (1992), hold up exceptionally well. During one bloodbath a man has the skin of his face torn off – a well-timed cut replaces the actor with a convincing model, his face-muscles revealed as it writhes with pain. The shadows are on point, because the shadows are real. The blood glistens as it should, because the blood is real – real stage blood, that is.

This excellent animatronic legacy makes Jackson’s descent into digital effects yet sadder; he’s even been compared to George Lucas for his overenthusiastic lauding of CGI. Viggo Mortensen, who played Aragorn in The Lord of the Rings, said that “whatever was subtle, in the first movie, gradually got lost in the second and third”, ruminating that “Peter became like Ridley Scott – this one-man industry now, with all these people depending on him”. It’s as if the two men saw two different movies, and Jackson now wishes that LOTR had utilised more CGI, not less.

Most who did love LOTR still had issues with Jackson’s The Hobbit adaptation, and not only for its strange elf-elf-dwarf love triangle. Many of its CGI creatures lacked presence, failing to ignite the fear that a good monster should. Similar criticism is leveled at the aforementioned Ridley Scott, whose use of CGI gets increasingly grandiose as the quality of his plots dwindle. Meanwhile, George Lucas is lampooned for his remasters of the original Star Wars films in which digital creatures trundle about in the background, sticking out like a sore thumb.

The Hobbit (2012)

These criticisms have been widespread, and often much less polite than Mortensen’s. In the face of such disapproval, it’s interesting that so many masters have abandoned practical effects for their digital counterpart. What has led to this ongoing misuse of effects? And, does it really tell us that animatronics are king, or is there something else going on?

It’s worth mentioning that Jackson, Scott, and Lucas are fairly veteran examples. After so many decades in the business, these men may be a little sick of playing with models; they’re fiddly and expensive, require multiple experts, and add a lot of stress to photography when compared with CGI, which is largely deferred to post-production and whose mistakes can be relatively easily corrected. A world-weary director may have trouble mustering up the passion required for models when they already did it the first time around. That said, one hopes things haven’t gotten so dire in Hollywood that there are no artistic reasons behind the abandoning of practical effects.

Alien (1979) features one of animatronics’ greatest successes. The Giger-designed xenomorph, models for which included a robotic head with over 900 moving parts, looks fresh and realistic even by today’s standards. It’s shiny, bathed in shadows, and the acid glistens from its jowls. But Alien is not without its pitfalls, one example being the baby xenomorph during the infamous chest-bursting scene. It scuttles away as if pulled along by a string, and without the complexity of its fully-grown counterpart the model looks mechanical and comical. The film’s effects are generally a triumph, but there remains the odd moment where better technology could have saved the day.

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With this in mind, a strength of Scott’s – despite the mixed reception of his recent efforts – is his continued use of animatronics alongside computer-generated effects. Alien Covenant (2017) employs another impressive xenomorph head, but liberally uses CGI to fill in the cracks. The result is effective in parts, but disappoints in a similar way to the original: in Covenant, the baby xenomorph (or whatever its bizarre Covenant equivalent is called) has not been saved by digital effects. Rather than quickly glimpsing a dubious model, Covenant allows us full view of the creature, now computer-generated, from multiple angles. Squirming and ricocheting about like something out of The Mask (1994), the absurd critter jeopardises the viewer’s immersion. It’s doubtful that Scott would have dared such drawn-out shots of the monster had he not had CGI at his fingertips; could CGI’s greatest crime be how it oversteps its remit in this regard? Does it affect the plot and pacing of a film because directors incorrectly assume that it can do anything?

Mortensen had insights on this subject as well, saying of Jackson’s adaptation of The Lovely Bones (2009):

“I was sure he would do another intimately scaled film like Heavenly Creatures, maybe with this project about New Zealanders in the First World War he wanted to make. But then he did King Kong. And then he did The Lovely Bones – and I thought that would be his smaller movie. But the problem is, he did it on a $90 million budget. That should have been a $15 million movie.”

This comparison of the humble Heavenly Creatures to the elaborate Lovely Bones is transferable to the Alien franchise. The original Alien was an intimate horror-thriller with a single monster, often seen in low-light. The very occasional dated effect is forgiven by the fact that it is, undoubtedly, a masterpiece of cinema. Scott’s recent Alien movies are huge, yet pack a fraction of the original’s punch. The same could be said of The Hobbit with its vast amount of unnecessary CGI sequences, most of which do not appear in the book. It begs the question whether, rather than facilitating directors to produce plots on a grander scale, CGI has encouraged it, often with dire results.

Probably the best example of this CGI-led silliness is The Thing. Like Alien, John Carpenter’s original 1982 horror featured a small cast being tormented by one monster in a confined location, in this case an arctic research station. The villain has no form of its own, but ‘absorbs’ into other living creatures and mimics them. Viewers are kept on the edges of their seats, wondering which character is going to burst into a mass of spindly legs and pulsating tentacles.

The Thing (1982)

The Thing’s animatronics are themselves a talking point. Despite the waxing and waning of their realism, the creations are so grotesque, and the real-life models have such presence, that the special effects become more than just a way to represent a monster; they are a novelty of the film, a reason to go see it. It’s hard to forget the scene of one man’s severed head crawling on spider legs from under a table; the insect-like movement of the electronics, the glistening surface of the model, are so animatronic, but a suspension of disbelief, helped along by some fantastic performances, makes The Thing (1982) damn scary.

It’s a different story with Matthijs van Heijningen Jr’s 2011 prequel of the same name. In the first five minutes a vehicle falls deep into the ice amidst a whirling mass of CGI. The events depicted are already too spectacular to be scary, and although that may be a criticism of the writing, it’s apparent that a smaller effects budget could have encouraged a more subdued and appropriate opening.

The thing itself is discovered frozen into a block of ice, but the tension of it slowly thawing out is dashed when the creature suddenly bursts from its icy prison and disappears into the ceiling. It is very digital. Creating such gravity-defying effects with animatronics would have been so difficult that a director may have resigned themselves to cleverer angles, dimmer lighting, or just a less corny entrance from the antagonist. We see more of the creature later, but nothing as memorable as its predecessor. It’s a shame that The Thing (2011) is so saturated with digital effects in plain sight, and even more tragic that they replace a number of animatronics designed by the crew which presumably weren’t working well.

The Thing (2011)

Interestingly, younger directors with big enough budgets are still embracing animatronics. J.J. Abrams, who began making movies in the late 90s, uses a mixture of practical and digital effects throughout Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens, and it shows. He wished to “go backwards to go forwards”, opting for real droid models over CGI effects to emulate the feel of the original films. Whatever one thinks of his Star Wars effort, he had the passion and money needed to surpass the Star Wars prequels in terms of realism, and in fact many other science-fiction films besides. It’s in stark contrast to Lucas’ remasters, which suggest an abundance of money but a scarcity of passion.

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Whilst emphasising CGI’s widespread uses throughout cinema, it’s certainly tempting to side with animatronics when it comes to monsters and gore. Before concluding, however, it’s worth cleaning up some of the insults thrown at CGI, and some of the praise showered upon animatronics.

It’s true that digital effects from as recent as last week can look dated, but this is not a new phenomenon. Since the dawn of cinema thousands of B-movies have been lost to the annals of time, many with laughably diabolical effects. To suggest that all 70s sci-fi had the finesse of Alien, or all 80s horrors the impact of The Thing, would be absurd. Masterpieces aside, movie monsters have always had a hard time of convincing their audiences.

It must also be considered how much nostalgia plays a part: CGI hasn’t had as much time to build up the goodwill that animatronics has enjoyed. And despite that, Playstation 1 graphics already give millenials that fuzzy warm feeling of a bygone age. Perhaps many digital effects look poor merely because they’re new, and so we assume that they should be better. It’s hard to tell which of today’s effects will stand up in decades to come, or at least be lent a modicum of charm through their ageing.

CGI is also now invaluable for ‘fixing’ footage of animatronics, or even replacing them entirely when things go wrong. Us viewers don’t know what The Thing (2011) looked like before its models were abandoned, but it may be safe to assume that they were every bit as immersion-breaking as the effects eventually settled upon. Although animatronics have a legacy of memorable gems, cinema is more ambitious now than ever, and perhaps CGI’s encouragement of bigger projects should be welcomed. As stated, many of our favourite digital effects are unnoticeable. Dare we guess what some of our recent animatronics may have looked like without digital intervention?

CGI is largely the way forward. Computer graphics are still in their infancy, and already have some great films under their belt. Animatronics deserve their cult following, but they’re largely an old and innocent tradition being viewed through a rose-tinted lens. Neither form of effect should be abandoned, but in our world of digital media CGI is probably going to be the default choice for most filmmakers, with animatronics being used where the director possesses enough expertise, passion, money, and time.

Computer technology is going in directions that we cannot possibly imagine. It can be remastered if the original effort is poor, and is far from soulless when done well. It has had its fair share of embarrassing moments, and it’s evident that many directors think it’s much better than it is. This overuse can, ultimately, ruin some potentially incredible scenes, and some potentially incredible films. But let’s not blame poor directorial choices on CGI alone: if animatronics are outside of your budget, or simply just not your thing, digital effects are your friend. And, if you are aware of the limits of digital effects, and are an able director who will not get carried away with a relatively primitive technology, then CGI is the way. As incredible as models can be, they must, in most cases, step aside for the winner. But whatever technique a filmmaker prefers, one important lesson shines through: do not let special effects run the show.

Written by Louis B Scheuer

You can support Louis B Scheuer in the following places:

Twitter – @louisbscheuer
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