Australia is sending a strong message to domestic abusers worldwide: You’re not welcome here.
Australia has recently broadened a migration law to bar any person who has been convicted of domestic violence anywhere in the world from getting a visa to enter the country. American R&B singer Chris Brown and boxing star Floyd Mayweather had been banned from the country in the past, following their domestic violence convictions. Now the ban applies to all foreign visitors or residents who have been found guilty of violence against women or children.
Even convicted domestic abusers who already have visas and are living in Australia can be kicked out under the new rule. The government is using the rule, which took effect on February 28, 2019 to send a message to domestic violence perpetrators.
“Australia has no tolerance for perpetrators of violence against women and children,” Federal Minister for Immigration, Citizenship and Multicultural Affairs David Coleman said in a public statement. “The message is clear: if you’ve been convicted of a violent crime against women or children, you are not welcome in this country, wherever the offence occurred, whatever the sentence.”
The ban is supposed to make Australia safer, but not everyone is happy about it.
“By cancelling the visas of criminals we have made Australia a safer place,” Coleman said. “These crimes inflict long lasting trauma on the victims and their friends and family, and foreign criminals who commit them are not welcome in our country.”
However, Australia’s neighboring country of New Zealand has long taken issue with Australia’s policy of exporting convicts, and this new policy highlights why. Under the new rule, New Zealanders who have already served their sentences for domestic violence and lived in Australia most of their lives could be kicked out and sent to live in New Zealand. Such circumstances raise questions about when justice has been served and the role of rehabilitation in domestic violence convictions.
Australia, like many other countries, is trying to come to terms with its domestic violence problem.
Barring domestic violence perpetrators from other countries sends a strong message, but it’s only meaningful if the country also tackles the problem among its own citizens. According to a Personal Safety Study conducted by the Australian Bureau of Statistics, about 17% of Australian women and 6% of Australian men have experienced partner violence since the age of 15. And the numbers have remained relatively stable since 2005.
That may seem to indicate that little progress has been made; however, as Australian law professor Heather Douglass points out, the numbers only tell part of the story. Since most people in abusive relationships don’t report the abuse until after they’ve left, it could simply be that more are leaving, which is a good thing. There has also been a marked increase in people seeking domestic violence services in some areas, which, again, is a good thing. For far too long, domestic violence was swept under the rug while victims were often too afraid or embarrassed to seek help. More calls for help could mean that the stigma associated with domestic violence is starting to fade.
The most recent data shows that about one in 68 children in the U.S. are affected by autism and boys are four times more likely than girls to be diagnosed.
Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) is marked by communication and social difficulties, sensory processing issues, and inflexible patterns of behavior. Almost everything that researchers have learned about the disorder is based on data derived from studies of boys.
However, researchers are starting to learn that ASD manifests differently in girls. This has led many girls to be undiagnosed or misdiagnosed.
“The model that we have for a classic autism diagnosis has really turned out to be a male model,” Susan F. Epstein, PhD, a clinical neuropsychologist said according to Child Mind.
via PIxaBay
“That’s not to say that girls don’t ever fit it, but girls tend to have a quieter presentation, with not necessarily as much of the repetitive and restricted behavior, or it shows up in a different way,” Epstein added.
Stereotypical ASD behaviors may also get in the way of recognizing the disorder in girls.
“So where the boys are looking at train schedules, girls might have excessive interest in horses or unicorns, which is not unexpected for girls,” Dr. Epstein notes. “But the level of the interest might be missed and the level of oddity can be a little more damped down. It’s not quite as obvious to an untrained eye.”
Girls with ASD are usually better at hiding their autistic behaviors, so they suffer in silence.
Paige Layle, a 19-year-old eyelash technician from Ontario, Canada, has autism but because she’s a social butterfly, most people don’t realize she has the disorder.
“I get that a lot, that because I’m good-looking, nothing can be wrong with me — so I want to show that mental illness is diverse,” Layle told BuzzFeed.
To help people better understand how autism manifests in girls and women, Layle has made a series of videos on her TikTok page.
“I decided to start making videos because of an audio that was going all over TikTok that was making fun of autistic people. I hated it. I feel like many people don’t understand how many people are autistic,” she said.
Layle’s videos are eye-opening because they shatter some big myths about autism and show how difficult it can be to live with the disorder, especially if you don’t know you have it.
In the first video, she explains how the initial research done on autism was only on boys or men.
“Girls usually end up showing different traits than guys do. Which is why it can take us years to get diagnosed. I was 15 when I got diagnosed and that’s considered early for a girl.”
She also explains that girls often are diagnosed later because they are better at hiding autistic behaviors.
“This is something we call masking. Masking is basically just being like a really good actor.
It’s where you take traits that everyone else is showing and start portraying them as yourself. It’s like a lot of copying going on. … In your mind you don’t think you’re copying. You think that this is normal and everyone feels the same way you do.
You basically feel like an alien and you’re really good at hiding that. Which is why I don’t seem autistic.”
In part two, she discusses the idea of being high-functioning.
“Get high-functioning and low functioning out of your vocabulary. It doesn’t help anybody. I know you may think that saying ‘Oh like you’re high-functioning’ is compliment. It’s not a compliment. It’s also like a reminder that I’m just masking, and it’s so hard.
Masking is the most exhausting thing in the world… ‘High-functioning’ is basically a label that you can use to be like ‘Your autism doesn’t affect me that much.’ But I’ll tell you that everyone you think is high-functioning is greatly affected by their autism.”
In part three, Paige discusses common autistic traits that girls have.
“I am overly social. I give way too much eye contact. I’m really good in social situations. It’s also very common for girls with autism to have other mental disabilities or mental disorders as well. I have seven and one of the main ones is OCD.
All of these mental illnesses stem from having autism. But OCD, anxiety, and depression are very common, especially in girls. Just the feeling that the world needs rules for you to understand it. That’s why a lot of autism special interests include things like anatomy, the human body, psychology, just figuring out how the world works is our way to figure out how to live in it.”
In part four, Paige discusses the topic of masking.
“When you’re in the autistic closet and you are not known to be autistic yet … you like subconsciously know that you’re weird and you don’t know how to act or how to be.
It’s like the way you walk, the way you talk, the way you wear your hair, like your mannerisms. Like everything you say. Everything you think. Everything you think that you enjoy. It’s all what you are accustomed to from your peers.
I’ve been diagnosed for four years and I’m still trying to figure out who I am and what I actually like to do. You just get to used to creating this mask that when it’s like ‘Hey, you can take it off,’ It’s like what the frick is underneath it? I don’t know what’s going on.”
There’s a lot of men out there that shy away from discussing menstruation with women. But any man who’s ever taken a class in basic human biology or had a mother, sister, wife, girlfriend or any other woman in their life should know the basics of how it works.
That’s why a mother on the Mumsnet message board was completely “shocked” that her daughter’s teacher told her to “hold in” her period.
Does he think a woman can hold in her period like it’s pee?
Mumsnet is a UK website where parents come together to discuss anything from adoption to women’s rights. This post appeared under the “Am I Being Unreasonable” thread.
via Mumsnet
According to the post, the 15-year-old’s teacher prevented her from using the bathroom because he legitimately thinks women can hold back period blood. Or he knows a bit about biology but still decided to put her in the position to be mortally embarrassed.
The mother later said that the lessons last two hours so the girl had a long time to wait before being able to change her pad.
A few parents said that the teacher was correct to say no because students often lie about their periods to get out of class.
But most parents thought the teacher did the wrong thing and needs a lesson in basic biology.
One poster was irate but completely right about the issue.
Another believes the daughter should have disobeyed the teacher and gone to the bathroom.
This poster did a great job at re-framing the situation so that the teacher’s actions seem even more ridiculous.
Why should the mother even have to justify herself?
The $50,000 question: What subject does the instructor teach?
It started with a simple, sincere question from a mother of an 11-year-old boy.
An anonymous mother posted a question to Quora, a website where people can ask questions and other people can answer them. This mother wrote:
How do I tell my wonderful 11 year old son, (in a way that won’t tear him down), that the way he has started talking to me (disrespectfully) makes me not want to be around him (I’ve already told him the bad attitude is unacceptable)?
It’s a familiar scenario for those of us who have raised kids into the teen years. Our sweet, snuggly little kids turn into moody middle schoolers seemingly overnight, and sometimes we’re left reeling trying to figure out how to handle their sensitive-yet-insensitive selves.
A mother of two with an uncanny amount of wisdom gave a solid gold answer all parents need to read.
Jo Eberhardt, a fantasy writer and mother of two from Australia, penned a reply that is so spot on that it keeps repeatedly popping up on social media. When you nail it, you nail it—and this mother nails it.
“Ah, puberty,” she wrote, “It changes our sweet, wonderful little boys into sweet, eye-rolling, angsty, accidentally disrespectful, but still wonderful young proto-men.” Yup.
Eberhardt then described a discussion she had with her 11 1/2 -year-old son when he started going through this stage—a conversation they had in the car, which is usually the best place to have potentially uncomfortable discussions with kids.
She told her son that she’d messed up in the way she’d talked to him about puberty, then explained exactly what was happening in his brain.
“I’ve spent all this time talking to you about the way puberty changes your body,” Eberhardt told her son, “and what to expect as you go through the changes, but I completely forgot to talk to you about what’s going on in your brain right now. Puberty is the time when your brain grows and changes more than at any other time in your life — well, except for when you’re a baby, perhaps. So I really let you down by not preparing you for that. I’m so sorry.”
Her son accepted her apology, then asked why is his brain was changing.
“That’s the amazing thing,” she told him. “Did you know that your brain grew and developed so quickly when you were little that by the time you were about five or six, your brain was almost as big and powerful as an adult’s brain?”
“But here’s the thing,” she continued, “Even though your brain was super powerful, the instructions were for a child’s brain. And all the information about building an adult’s brain was a bit… let’s say fuzzy. So your brain did the best it could, but it didn’t really know what kind of person you were going to be back then, or what shape brain you were going to need.”
“Now we come to puberty,” she went on. “See, puberty is amazing. Not only is your body being transformed from a child’s body to an adult’s body, your brain has to be completely rewritten from a child’s brain to an adult’s brain.“
“That sounds hard,” her son responded.
“Yeah, it is,” Eberhardt replied. “That’s why I wish I’d warned you first. See, it takes a lot of energy to completely rewrite a brain. That’s one of the reasons you get tired quicker at the moment — and that, of course, manifests in you being crankier and less patient than normal.”
Eberhardt paused, then added, “That must be really frustrating for you.”
Her son looked over at her, wiping his eyes. “It is,” he responded. Sometimes I just feel really angry and I don’t know why.”
It’s amazing what happens when we explain to kids the physiological reasons for what they’re going through.
Eberhardt continued, “The other thing is that one of the first parts of your brain that gets super-sized to be like an adult is the amygdala. That’s the part that controls your emotions and your survival instincts. You know how we’ve talked about fight/flight/freeze before, and how sometimes our brains think that being asked to speak in public is the same level of threat as being attacked by a sabre tooth tiger?”
Her son laughed. “Yes. So you have to tell your brain that there’s no sabre tooth tiger to help you calm down.”
“That’s right,” Eberhardt replied. “Well, that’s what the amygdala looks after: sabre tooth tiger warnings and big emotions. So, the thing with puberty is that all of a sudden you’ve got an adult-sized amygdala hitting all your emotion buttons and your sabre-tooth tiger buttons. That must be really hard for you to manage.”
Her son nodded and said, “Sometimes I don’t know why I say the things I do. They just come out, and then I feel bad.”
This is the moment where what a parent says can make or break a kid’s spirit. But Eberhardt handled it with empathy and expertise.
“I know, Sweetheart,” she said before explaining:
“See, the last part of your brain that gets rewritten is right at the front of your head. It’s called the frontal cortex. And that’s the part of your brain that’s good at decision making and understanding consequences. So you’ve got this powerful adult amygdala hitting you with massive emotions, but you’ve still got a fuzzy child frontal cortex that can’t make decisions or understand consequences as quickly as the amygdala wants you to. It pretty much sucks.”
“So it’s not my fault?” her son asked.
“No, it’s puberty’s fault your brain works the way it does,” Eberhardt answered. “But that doesn’t mean it’s not your responsibility to recognise what’s going on and change your actions. It’s not easy, but it’s not impossible, either. Your feelings are your feelings, and they’re always okay. But you get to choose your actions. You get to choose what you do with your feelings. And, when you make a mistake, you get to choose to apologise for that mistake and make amends.”
Eberhardt said she then paused for dramatic effect. “That’s how you prove that you’re becoming an adult.”
It’s also remarkable what happens when we empathize and communicate with our kids instead of simply chastising them.
Her son responded with a perfectly understandable and relatable, “Puberty sucks.”
“Puberty absolutely sucks,” Eberhardt responded. “I’m not in your head, but I can only imagine that it’s a mess of confusion and chaos, and you don’t know from one minute to the next how you feel about things.”
Her son looked at her in surprise. “Yes! Exactly!”
“If it’s confusing for you living inside there,” Eberhardt continued, “imagine how confusing it is for me, when I only see your actions.”
“That must be really confusing,” her son agreed.
She nodded. “Do you know what that means?”
“What?”
“It means sometimes I’m going to make mistakes. Sometimes I’m going to get upset at things you do because I don’t understand what’s going on in your head. Sometimes I’m going to forget that you’re halfway to being a man, and accidentally treat you like a child. Sometimes I’m going to expect more from you than you’re able to give. This is my first time parenting someone through puberty, and I’m going to make mistakes. So can I ask you a favour?”
“What is it?”
“Can you just keep telling me what’s going on in your head? The more we talk, the easier it will be for both of us to get through this puberty thing unscathed. Yeah?”
“Yeah,” her son said.
When we let our kids know that we’re going through these various phases together, it’s easier to work with them instead of against them.
Eberhardt said they “had a cuddle” before they got out of the car. She also said this conversation didn’t magically make her son always speak respectfully or make her remember that he’s not a little boy anymore. However, it did open up lines of communication and gave them a shared language to use.
For example, she wrote, “He knows what I mean when I say, ‘Sweetheart, I’m not a sabre tooth tiger.'”
Ebehardt wrapped up her excellent answer by saying that she and her son are “muddling through this crazy puberty thing” together, and that she’s “completely confident that he’ll come out the other end a sweet, wonderful young man.”
It’s always so helpful to see examples of good parenting in action. Ms. Eberhardt’s response is something all parents can tuck away for the appropriate time. It’s also a great reminder that our tweens aren’t trying to try us—they’re just trying to get used to their new and improved brains.
Jimmy Carter was way ahead of the rest of America when he put solar panels on the White House. On June 20, 1979, he made a proud proclamation:
In the year 2000 this solar water heater behind me, which is being dedicated today, will still be here supplying cheap, efficient energy…. A generation from now, this solar heater can either be a curiosity, a museum piece, an example of a road not taken or it can be just a small part of one of the greatest and most exciting adventures ever undertaken by the American people.
The 32-panel system was designed to heat water throughout the presidential residence.
“President Carter saw [solar] as a really valid energy resource, and he understood it. I mean, it is a domestic resource and it is huge,” Fred Morse, director of Carter’s solar energy program, told Scientific American.
“It was the symbolism of the president wanting to bring solar energy immediately into his administration,” he continued.
Unfortunately, Ronald Reagan, who was no fan of alternative energy took the panels down form the White House when he took office a few years later.
Carter was right about two things he said in that dedication. First, his panels are currently on display at The Smithsonian Institute, the Carter Library, and the Solar Science and Technology Museum in Dezhou, China.
Second, renewable energy has become one of the most important American endeavors of the new millennium.
There’s no doubt that President Carter was way ahead of his time.
Carter has always been a man of action, evidenced by his hands-on approach to building homes with Habitat for Humanity. So in 2017, he leased ten acres of land near his home in Plains, Georgia, to be used as a solar farm with 3,852 panels.
The 94-year-old Carter still lives in his hometown of Plains with his wife in a two-bedroom home that’s assessed at about $167,000.
Three years after going live, Carter’s solar farm now provides 50% of the small town’s electricity needs, generating 1.3 MW of power per year. That’s the equivalent of burning about 3,600 tons of coal.
The system is state-of-the-art with panels that turn towards the sun throughout the day so they generate the maximum amount of power.
“Distributed, clean energy generation is critical to meeting growing energy needs around the world while fighting the effects of climate change,” Carter said in a SolAmerica press release. “I am encouraged by the tremendous progress that solar and other clean energy solutions have made in recent years and expect those trends to continue.”
“There remains a great deal of untapped potential in renewable energy in Georgia and elsewhere in the U.S. We believe distributed solar projects like the Plains project will play a big role in fueling the energy needs of generations to come,” SolAmerica executive vice president George Mori said in a statement.
After playing in other people’s bands and making two albums under the band Hand Habits, Meg Duffy is taking their music to new, adventurous territory. Their forthcoming album Fun House, which is due later this month, is the result of several life changes onset by the pandemic, and now, Duffy is ready for a breath of “Clean Air” with their latest single.
Along with releasing their new single “Clean Air,” Duffy shared a stirring video directed by V Haddad. It juxtaposes the song’s tenderhearted nature with the chaos of moshing bodies at a Hand Habits live performance, allowing Duffy to find serenity in disarray.
Speaking about their inspiration behind “Clean Air,” Duffy said, “When writing songs for Fun House, I had become exhausted and bored by the idea of writing more songs out of blame, spite, or anger. ‘Clean Air’ is about finding clarity, leaning into acceptance, and acknowledging someone else’s experience as truth without blame or resentment, even when it differs from our own.”
About the LP as a whole, Duffy recalls how the pandemic led them to discovering a different side of their music:
“When the pandemic happened, everything stopped. I had been touring consistently for five years, both on my own and playing in other people’s bands, so I wasn’t really writing a lot in between. It had been full pedal to the metal in terms of traveling and scheduling, which meant I really didn’t have a lot of time to think about how I felt or really check in with myself. Then, when the world basically stopped, it turned out to be the longest I’ve been alone in my entire life — without being in a relationship, without being on the road, without working myself to exhaustion — and the result was really like, holy shit. I slammed on the brakes and everything psychologically that I’d been pushing down and ignoring for the past few years suddenly flew to the foreground.”
Watch Hand Habits’ “Clean Air” video above and find their Fun House cover art and tracklist below.
The Brooklyn Nets are reaching a point of being stuck between a rock and a hard place. All-Star guard Kyrie Irving has not been vaccinated against COVID-19, and with New York having strict rules that require workers to get vaccinated, Irving is unable to play in games or participate in team activities that take place in the city.
A recent report by Brian Windhorst and Adrian Wojnarowski indicated that the Nets’ optimism that Irving will be able to join the team sometime soon is “waning,” and that his continued reluctance to get the vaccine might put the team in a situation where they “could ultimately have to make hard decisions on Irving’s future.” Whether or not this means the team would try to trade him or just trudge forward without him with the hope that he gets vaccinated or New York changes its rules remains unclear.
In the eyes of Stephen A. Smith, there is one person who can step in and play a role in convincing Irving to do what he needs to do. Smith called on Kevin Durant to play a role in remedying the “distraction” by having a blunt conversation with his teammate.
“It is up to KD to step in and step up and say, ‘Yo, bro, I’m with you, I’ve got your back 1,000 percent, so long as you on this court with me, but if you not gonna be on this court with me, you going up against everything we planned,’” Smith said. “’Nobody planned on a pandemic, nobody saw that coming, but these are our circumstances and our situations.’”
Smith went on to say that he believes Durant could, ultimately, decide “to either reel him in or give the Brooklyn Nets the OK to move on from him.” This does not, of course, mean that Smith thinks Durant will advocate for Brooklyn to trade Irving if he won’t get the vaccine — he has reported in the past that Durant stepped in and single-handedly squashed talks on an Irving-for-Ben Simmons trade — just that this is the power Durant possesses within the organization as its best player.
As Kristen Wiig once sang during a Björk impression on SNL, “Welcome Iceland, there is no sunlight. You are on fire, a demon taaakes your faaaaace…”
Which is to say, there is an uncanny quality to the landscape of Iceland that makes anything shot there feel slightly otherworldly. It’s a setting that naturally lends itself to horror and fantasy. With Lamb, A24’s new movie from director Valdimar Jóhannsson, co-written by author and Björk collaborator Sjón, it’s a little hard to tell where the otherworldliness of the setting ends and the otherwordliness of the story begins.
Lamb, winner of the “prize of originality” at Cannes, is a movie that exists in a kind of middle realm, between folklore and reality. Trying to describe Lamb without spoiling it is a bit like trying to make sense of an ancient proverb, where you can tell that it’s an expression of a recognizable human feeling, it’s just been filtered through so many different languages, time periods, and realms that you now have to squint to understand.
Attempting to divine exactly what the hell kind of movie you’re watching is a big part of Lamb‘s appeal, perhaps the appeal. This quality, however, creates something of a marketing conundrum. Experiencing art is best done with no expectations; selling art necessitates creating them.
A24’s trailer for Lamb amplifies some of the film’s most unsettling qualities, creating something that’s arguably art in its own right. It also seems to advertise a horror movie, which Lamb is decidedly not, frequently unsettling though it may be. It’s more just charmingly “off,” in some ineffable way.
Speaking to star Noomi Rapace (who was born in Sweden and raised partly in Iceland) and Icelandic director Valdimar Jóhannsson was a similar experience. I had many questions, about the many animal stars of Lamb, the logistics of trying to film them, about what it was like delivering live lambs on camera, etc. But best laid plans often had a way of devolving, into Rapace helping Jóhannsson translate some arcane observation into English, or them both attempting to recount a famous Icelandic ghost story. Which turned out to be probably far more enjoyable than it would’ve been if they’d both been able to speak perfect English or tell the story perfectly lucidly.
There’s a vague spookiness to the way Scandinavian and Nordic people describe the world, even when their English is nearly indistinguishable from a native English-as-a-first-language speaker, as Noomi Rapace’s is (she even played a Brit in Prometheus). Like when she says of a pregnant sheep, “You can see that their pain is approaching.”
It was the ideal conversational companion to Lamb. Sometimes it’s the groping to articulate a feeling that can’t quite be articulated, the space between feeling and conveying, that resonates as much as the sentiment itself.
—
So did you get to deliver a real lamb for this?
NOOMI RAPACE: Several. That’s on my CV now. If you ever need a baby lamb delivered, just call me.
How did that come about?
RAPACE: I was shooting a movie in New Orleans, so I didn’t have any time at all to practice. I landed in Iceland on Sunday and on Monday my hands were inside of a mother sheep, pulling out a lamb. But I did, I watched a farmer do it twice before, and then he was standing next to the camera if something would go wrong. But to be honest, I had just had to jump in. I grew up on a farm, so I was used to physical work and it’s like, you can’t really be emotional. You just need to switch on your practical mind and just do it, you know?
Was there a consultant whose job it was to figure out when the sheep were about to give birth for you?
RAPACE (to Jóhannsson): We had the farmer, right? He kind of, I remember him going and touching the belly of the sheep and saying when she was ready
VALDIMAR JÓHANNSSON: You can see it easily, based on how they behave.
RAPACE: They start moving around in a strange way. You can see that their pain is approaching.
But, logistically, did you have the environment all lit and staged ready for the birth to happen?
RAPACE: It was natural light. The cameraman was ready, and I was waiting in my trailer for the knock. And then it’s like “Okay, a lamb is coming” and just running down to the barn and like jumping in and there he was. And you know, it was crazy, seeing this little creature coming out and opening his eyes for the first time and standing up and breathing, it was so magical and scary at the same time. Life is so powerful and fragile.
JÓHANNSSON: And that was the reason why we were shooting in two [separate chunks]. I think, because when we came in, I think it were only like 10 sheeps who could give birth in that area. Because the sheep cannot travel around Iceland because of the restrictions.
So Noomi, you were raised both in Sweden and Iceland. And Valdimar, were you raised all in Iceland?
JÓHANNSSON: Yes.
When Swedish and Icelandic people make jokes about each other, what are the things that they joke about?
RAPACE: We like each other! I mean, it’s more Icelandic people and Danish people that have some issues. And Swedes and Norwegians have some. I have this Norwegian movie coming out next week or something, two weeks, called The Trip, and we were just at Fantastic Fest in Austin, Texas and I had both movies there. I got that question, about Icelandic and Swedish people, but we’re good, we like each other. I mean, I’m both. But Swedes and Norwegians, we have a way more complex relationship. Would you agree with me?
JÓHANNSSON: Yeah, I think that is right.
What’s the Denmark/Iceland conflict?
RAPACE: We can trace it back to the times of the Vikings, right? My grandmother, she told me that you had to learn Danish in school. You had to have second language.
JÓHANNSSON: You learned Danish. Even now. So, there there’s a little bit…
RAPACE: You were adapted against your will.
JÓHANNSSON: Exactly.
So the animals are obviously important characters in the movie. Were they cooperative as actors?
JÓHANNSSON: Yes. It took so much time doing every scene when we were working with the animals, but it worked. The actors have to wait and luckily Noomi’s a very patient person.
RAPACE: It was so hard for me. Honestly, there were days when I was like “does this end, this waiting game?” Mostly for the cat. The cat was the worst. The cat was the total diva on set. They didn’t want to play when you want them to play. And then as soon as we said cut, he did exactly what we want him to do. I was like, “what is wrong with you, Carlos? We were waiting half an hour.” Long waiting game always for the lambs to fall asleep, all the space in the house. And then finally the lamb was asleep and they handed over the lamb to me and we were like, (whispering) “camera, action.” And then the lamb immediately woke up and was like “baaaaahhh.” Everyone out, starting again.
Were there different trainers for each animal group?
JÓHANNSSON: We had two and we also had a lot of farmers. And sometimes we also brought in some people if it was needed.
The trailer for the movie, it’s really cool, but it sort of looks like a horror movie. Do you have feelings about how the movie is marketed and how they should try to sell it?
JÓHANNSSON: I really like the trailer. I think it’s very interesting. And I think they know what they’re doing. But, it also depends on, because now we have been meeting a lot of the audience, some people feel it’s like a horror film, but others think it’s just an action film. I say they can choose.
RAPACE: What did you think?
The only movie that it reminded me of was Border, the Swedish movie, which I loved. I don’t know how you describe that genre. Do you have any thoughts on how you would describe that?
RAPACE: Let me just say that, Vince, ’cause I was asked to do Border and I couldn’t do Border because I was trapped in another contract. Then one of the producers on Border is also producer on Lamb. So when I couldn’t do Border, he came to me with Lamb. So, maybe we are creating our own genre, starting with Border.
JÓHANNSSON: Border for me, I would not say it’s a horror film.
It’s like… a folkloric realism kind of thing.
RAPACE: Yes, and also very matter of fact. You’re not adding any extra weight, you’re not making it spooky or weird. It’s very in daylight, it’s right here. It’s one little obstacle, that one [supernatural] thing that is true. But others still like, they’re doing coffee and they eat mac and cheese.
This movie, it’s hard to sell without spoiling. Do you have any thoughts on what you tell people what this movie is about to keep from ruining any secrets?
RAPACE: It’s a love story. It’s a story about healing and motherhood and that you would do anything to… if you lose the one thing you can’t lose — a child, for me — it would be… I have a son and I can’t even go there, you know? If he would be taken away from me, I don’t know what I would turn into. I think that desperation and need to find something to hold onto, you’re allowed to do anything.
So what was the place where the filming was done? Was it all in the same place?
RAPACE: Yeah. In a valley up in the north part of Iceland.
What is that place like?
RAPACE: (to Jóhannsson) You grew up there, right? I mean close by.
JÓHANNSSON: Yeah, close by. Probably like one and a half-hour away. What was so nice about it was there’s nothing almost around, a few farms, but you could shoot like 360 degrees and you can see out of every window from the farm and it had been a farm for like 20 years. So we could just make it the home that we wanted to for Maria and Ingvar. It was a perfect location.
RAPACE: But it was a lot of energies there. It was like a very old tale. Do you remember the neighbor’s farm? My grandmother told me there was, with the guy who forced his bride to marry him. It was a lot of stories around there, like old myths and stuff.
JÓHANNSSON: Yeah, yeah, it’s a very famous, probably the most famous ghost story in Iceland.
So what was the ghost story?
RAPACE: It’s a man who wants to marry a girl, but she didn’t want to marry him, right? And then…
JÓHANNSSON: Oh, no, he’s going to pick her up…
RAPACE: On his horse. Yeah.
JÓHANNSSON: And then on the way, when he’s picking her up, he is going over a frozen river and the…
RAPACE: Oh yeah! And the ice breaks, and then he drowns.
JÓHANNSSON: And then he comes to pick her up, and when they’re going away from the farm, his hat…
RAPACE: He doesn’t have the back of his head.
So did you have the setting in mind for the movie first or the story?
JÓHANNSSON: Probably the setting, because I made like a sketchbook with a lot of photos and paintings and drawings. I knew that I wanted to make a film with sheep farmers. It’s just also how the location somehow should be.
RAPACE: You work very much from a visual. You have an image, you have a photograph, you have a painting, and then that kind of guides you. Other directors I work with kind of maybe starts with a psychological construction.
I mean, it works. You don’t need too many words in this movie to make it work. Is that helpful for you, as an actor, to not have the burden of memorizing a lot of lines for a movie?
RAPACE: I don’t mind memorizing. I’m quite fast with that. But it was, on most of the films I’ve done, I feel like they’re too heavy on dialogue. We don’t need it. You’re kind of feeding the audience with information by talking instead of doing, and it was so liberating working with Valdimar. It’s like, you know, we don’t need to say much. And funny enough, Vince, Valdimar thinks it’s too much dialogue in that. The next one he’s doing, it’s going to have less dialogue. So, but no, then you start to embrace and welcome other ways of communicating. If you do a scene where there’s a lot of talking, you know, they’re going to cut between that line, to that line, to that line. People can be in it like 70%. But if it’s not dialogue, you need your whole body. Like the way I lift this cup will tell the story. If I’m slow, if I’m shaking, you will read into every little detail in my body language.
JÓHANNSSON: I always imagine that it’s probably more difficult for the actors that way, not to talk. Because you have to tell me something just with a hand gesture.
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SPOILERS REVEALED BELOW THIS LINE, CONSIDER YOURSELVES WARNED
When you have a half-human, half-animal character you naturally wonder, like, how did that come about kind of a thing.
JÓHANNSSON: Yeah. Well, you know, at least the farmer was inside when it was happening. [presumably, when the creature was born]
RAPACE: I mean, like that Christmas scene in the beginning, I think Maria feels that there’s a dangerous energy, something approaching. She’s standing looking out of the window, she knows that something is there and she shakes it off and they have dinner. They have the Christmas dinner, but that’s when that shape gets I guess maybe raped or something.
JÓHANNSSON: Could be.
RAPACE: Could be. I mean, they are very stressed and it’s not a lovemaking act for sure.
‘Lamb’ is available in theaters everywhere on October 8. Vince Mancini is on Twitter. You can access his archive of reviews here.
Current Jeopardy! champ Matt Amodio has been a non-stop record-breaking machine, and his latest feat was so impressive that former champ Ken Jennings couldn’t help but react. During Monday’s episode, Amodio’s unique play style shattered the ceiling for the highest earnings in a single day as he continues to light the Jeopardy! charts on fire and take out everyone in his path. Via Yahoo! Entertainment:
The contestant finished last week with his 33rd consecutive win, replacing James Holzauer as the second winningest player in the game’s history. He followed up that record-breaking performance by setting a new single-day money total, thanks to a very brave Final Jeopardy! wager.
Amodio, who had $41,800 more than the next highest contestant bid a whopping $37,000 on the last clue. The correct answer garnered him $83,000, his biggest one-day winnings yet.
The impressive one-day haul caught the attention of Jennings who took to Twitter to voice a simple, practically speechless “whoa.” After seeing Jennings’ tweet, Amodio couldn’t believe his latest move earned him praise from the former champ.
“Whoa. I made Ken Jennings say ‘whoa,’” Amodio tweeted in disbelief.
But that humility quickly turned to his trademark cockiness as Amodio switched gears moments later and fired off a cheeky reply while quote-tweeting Jennings.
“Now if only I could get that Ken Jennings smell out of the #Jeopardy winner’s podium,” Amodio playfully tweeted as his hot streak continues to have no end in sight.
In the video for FaZe Kaysan’s debut single as a producer, plenty of FaZe Clan showed out to help support their newest member’s foray into music. After dropping the single, “Made A Way,” a few days ago — which Kaysan co-produced with Wondagurl — today the emerging producer has shared a video to accompany it. In the clip, Kaysan and Lil Durk start off driving around LA, before meeting up at a mansion in the Hollywood Hills for a multi-course feast. They link up with fellow FaZe members at the house, like FaZe Banks, FaZe Swagg, FaZe Temperrr, FaZe Rug, FaZe Adapt and FaZe Rain.
Later on, after plenty of clinking wine glasses and feasting, Future joins up for an evening and delivers his verse while a party slowly begins to build. Though the video doesn’t stray too far from the typical rap video script, we do get a few nods to Kaysan’s gaming background with shots of him at his computer, and the presence of his other Faze members. It sounds like this initial song is just the start for him, too, and he’s already performed live for the first time as an opener for Jack Harlow at the FaZe Clan Summer Tip Off in Las Vegas this summer.
Check out the clip above and keep an eye out for more from Kaysan coming soon.
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