“The Ecstasy of Gold” is one of the most famous sequences in Sergio Leone’s classic 1966 Western The Good, The Bad, And The Ugly. It’s a film that uses cinema in really obvious and flashy ways, to the point of being what is sometimes called a Movie Movie – that is to say, cinematic technique takes the place of real-world plausibility. Most famously, there’s a moment where the characters stumble upon a whole camp that, logically, they would have seen and heard; they didn’t see it because we didn’t see it, it being just off-screen at the time. Rather than being a facsimile of the real world, it’s using the language of cinema to construct sentences and even poetry.
“The Trio” is the more spectacular use of this idea, making all parodies of it redundant through sheer commitment, but “The Ecstasy of Gold” is where everything in the film – the editing, the performances, the set design, the music and incredibly, even the plot comes together to convey a very specific idea specifically because they’re all doing completely different things. At this point in the film, we’ve spent over two and half hours watching Tuco, Angel Eyes, and Blondie trying to get to the graveyard where the gold is buried; Tuco is currently in the lead and has the name of the grave, and Blondie is shooting cannonballs at him. He falls and bangs his head on a gravestone, and one of the best pieces of music ever written for film kicks in.
Ennio Morricone’s aesthetic approach is to simply repeat the same few chords and pieces of music, over and over and over, with variations coming in the instrumentation, which is how I imagine he managed to churn out so many pieces over the years to so many films. Once, for fun, I transcribed “The Ecstasy of Gold” to a synthesizer using only the sounds you’d hear on a Game Boy, and was deeply impressed that the majesty of the composition held up. Repetition in music risks boredom for intensity of emotion, and Morricone’s music definitely falls on the latter.
Tuco stands up, and we see with him that the graveyard is massive. The music is still low and simple here; the melody is sad and reflective, with an insistent piano keeping us focused. Tuco looks down at the grave in front of him and shows the first and only piece of sympathy he’ll have in this entire sequence. TGTB&TU is an anti-war film; this is the moment that anyone would do, where even a dirtbag like Tuco would reflexively react to the sheer number of dead men with awe.
The film then demonstrates its Greatness by pushing even further. Amusingly, Tuco then looks over his notes and throws them away with amusement, and starts exploring. The camera moves slightly and we realize this place was even bigger than we thought it was. Tuco becomes even smaller and more pathetic; there’s a great big of acting where Eli Wallach is unsure as he moves, jerking back in surprise when he notices the dog. There’s a cut as the camera follows him, running the most awkward run I’ve ever seen in my life (and this includes footage I’ve seen of myself running). There’s an odd open circle of bricks in the middle of the graveyard whose real purpose I cannot divine; Tuco runs out in the middle of this to look around, and his greed looks petty and meaningless in the scope of all this death.
We get one of Leone’s beautiful closeups of crusty people; at this point, the melody is being carried by many more instruments, and it’s agonizingly beautiful despite the context. Just like with Shattered Glass, we register something that’s not clear to the character; Tuco is laser-focused on his goal of finding the right gravestone to get the gold, not indifferent to the death around him but not even seeing it.
We see a shot from Tuco’s perspective, slowly passing over the gravestones; whatever we might feel about men dying en masse, we’re looking just as hard for the right grave. And Tuco and us realize together: the scope of his task, given the number of graves here, is much bigger than he anticipated. Tuco begins to run around unsystematically searching, as the music suddenly uses bells to kick into an even higher registry than we expected; even more instruments, including a woman singing, as the camera follows Tuco and reveals that the graveyard is even bigger.
This is the rhetorical point of the scene: however bad you thought the war was, it was worse. However many you thought died, it was more. I had actually forgotten, before writing this up, that the opening shot does actually convey the basic size of the graveyard; ironically, by going in closer, it actually makes it look bigger, tricking the eye into thinking we’re seeing more and more and more. The camera cuts way back out to a wide, making Tuco look small and pathetic again. I love the long tracking shot – possibly overcranked to make him a fraction slower – showing Tuco running through, determined to find this fucking grave; it’s hard to convey ‘this character’s scheme is ultimately stupid and pointless’ without it ruining the story, but it works here because Tuco is looking for a base level of comfort that doesn’t change the horror of what he’s running through.
And then it pushes further again! I’ve seen people criticize the cartoonish ridiculousness of this movie, but that’s what I love about it – that it goes too far and then further again. The POV shot comes back, despite not plausibly fitting Tuco’s actions – he’s not standing in the middle anymore – and this time it’s going faster. The music is more hysterical and outraged, as a brass section takes over the melody; theoretically a triumphant instrument, this time conveying genuine rage at what has happened here. Tuco is running around, blithely unaware of the movie’s moral condemnation of the circumstances he’s running around in; the POV shot spins around so hysterically that the graveyard is simply a blur. There’s too much! So many people have died that we can’t keep it all straight in our viewpoint, let alone in our heads! Senseless, stupid, violent destruction of human life! What’s the point of any of it?
Then we spot it: Arch Stanton. And everything snaps into view.
About the writer
Tristan J. Nankervis
Tristan J Nankervis (aka Drunk Napoleon) has been a writer, pop culture critic, dishwasher, standup comedian, waiter, potato cake factory worker, gamer, TV worker, and various other things. You can find him in Hobart, Tasmania.
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Department of
Conversation
What did we watch?
Red Versus Blue, Season Two, Episode One
“I don’t want this to sound pessimistic, but I think it’s absolutely certain we’re going to die!”
This has a very basic and very funny concept: Church goes back over the events of the first season, trying to prevent everything that happens in Blood Gulch, only to cause everything. This actually only covers half that plot – it was otherwise an insanely long and detailed plot that goes over almost everything that happened, including a great bit where he tries and fails to kill Donut before trying and failing to shoot the grenade that kills Tex (“FUCK! THIS! HORSE! SHIT!” has bounced around my head for over fifteen years). It even jumps to just before the series starts, when Church accidentally kills his commanding officer in attempting to prevent that.
It also occurred to me that, between this and Red Dwarf, I love when comedies have sad-sounding theme songs, especially when the show itself isn’t sad at all.
“I think we should listen to this guy. He seems to know plenty about being offensive.”
“Can it, shitbird!”
“See?”
“Why the hell is daylight savings here like three minutes?”
“Oh no! I’m the team-killing ****!”
“Shouldn’t we bury Church?”
“Fuck that. When did he ever bury us?”
“Simmons, if she attacks you, whistle twice and we’ll know to come down and help. If she attacks Grif, just mild applause will do fine.”
“What happened? The back of my head is killing me.”
“Yeah. That’s great.” [whack]
“Ow, jeez, the front of my face!”
Kind Hearts and Coronets – Considered a classic black comedy, but I didn’t laugh once. Any absurdity gave way quickly to both how unlikable almost everyone in this is, and how tedious the proceedings are. It’s to care about anyone, topped off by an interminable trial to close things out. And also the “Alec Guinness plays eight people” thing added nothing. I am starting to think that the Ealing comedies are not for me.
Perfect Blue – Satoshi Kon’s first film. A second-tier pop idlo quits to become an actress, and has to do with a stalker, self-doubt, roles and photo shoots that collide with her innocent image, and the possibility her pop star self is a second personality now. Had this been made in live action, it might have been a reasonably entertaining potboiler in the style of DePalma (or maybe just something for Cinemax After Dark). But as animation, it takes a very dreamlike quality and depictions of our protangonist’s confusion and imagination have much more life.
Frasier, “Don Juan in Hell,” part two/”The First Temptation of Daphne” – In the former, after Frasier does the right thing and tells Lana to give her ex-husband another chance, he goes away for the weekend to the family hunting cabin and has a “conversation” with Lilith, Diane, his first wife (played back in the day by Emma Thompson but here seen in her youth and played by an unknown), and his mother (played by Rita Wilson, who previously was Hester Crane’s lookalike, using a great Nancy Marchand voice). The conclusion that Frasier reaches about himself after this trip through his past isn’t one I agree with, but the interactions between the women (especially Lilith and Diane) is great. The latter has Daphne discovering that a patients has fallen in love with Niles and out of jealousy going to check the woman out. Daphne’s reasoning for her behavior actually is pretty sound, but wow, this was a bad decision. Also, Frasier and Martin and a gecko hunt a cricket in the apartment, and that turns out to be fun.
The Practice, “Appeal and Denial” – Bobby prepares for the re-trial of his friend. This is week five of this story, with another to come. It’s not a bad story, but it’s also not really that exciting and I don’t know why it’s going so long other than that this was the start of serialization on all drama shows. The main case has a Black man accused of killing his wife, and the only witness is a cop. But when Eugene and Helen discover his somewhat shifty behavior on the stand is because he’s hiding he’s gay, both have to figure out how to approach things without outing him. To their credit, neither do. And Jimmy and his client have to cope with a judge who is a well meaning, sympathetic sort who insists on telling the defendants inspirational stories about Ray Charles. René Auberjonois got an Emmy nomination for this, but it’s not nearly his best work. Still, he never did get one for DS9.
MASH, “Der Tag” – Potter orders Hawkeye and BJ to be nice to Frank. This somehow leads to Frank ending up drunk and asleep and at a battalion aid station, with a toe tag. A solid focus on Frank, who really just wants to be liked, but that our heroes can’t manage it for more than one night does not speak well of them. Joe Morton appears as the man in charge of battalion aid.
Great point about how the animation makes Perfect Blue much more intense and hallucinatory: it’s a world (and a psyche) trembling on the edge of unreality.
Wrote about PB on the former site! Terrific film and terrifying in it’s ominous portents about social media and the further fragmentation of the self. I do regret watching the English dub as this apparently robbed the final words of some ambiguity.
It’s a Wonderful Life – Ever the miracle that this movie ends up on the right side of emotional corniness after a barrage of bizarre decisions. To wit:
– George Bailey is kind of a dick throughout his life, yet Jimmy Stewart finds a relatable angle to his frustration that we still root for George even as he mopes around wasting Mary’s time. His surly scenes are given just the perfect amount of weight to lend his altruistic acts honesty; an ounce more and this would be a tale of two Potters.
– Speaking of which, Potter is such an obvious and cartoon villain that our hero can insult him to his face and we’re still on the side against the elderly disabled guy. This should be a battle with a straw man, but the movie pulls it off by positing Potter as a ghoulish projection of what a bitter George could become rather than a flesh and blood human being.
– Also speaking of which, people are the same in any era, still needing convinced not to crawl toward the favor of the people who don’t care about them. George is the one man able to convince the townspeople to resist the Potter machine, yet he himself only thinks to go to Potter’s desk at his worst moment (in addition to the “we’re not so different, you and I” moment here it’s also the subtle delineation between the men – George is willing to take meetings with Potter, while Potter has been holding onto the insult George lobbed at him for close to 20 years).
– While the movie is unrelenting toward Potter, it has a tender spot for alcoholic Uncle Billy (sent to “an insane asylum” without George). Clearly a not well enough man to function by himself, the movie doesn’t underline it any further than not presenting him as a serious solution to any problem.
– Some great actor/character synergy when Donna Reed is handed a terribly thankless role and brings such a spark that we only barely notice when she’s asked to sell the “tragedy” of being an unmarried librarian.
– The finale takes exactly what it’s earned and no more, but the investment it’s made in the townspeople and George mean the payoff keeps mounting like a table full of wadded bills (underrated line lost in the din is Annie’s donation of the money she was saving to divorce the husband she doesn’t have yet). It’s momentous and yet so simple: all he had to do was ask.
My favorite Christmas movie, to the point where I teared up at reading your last bullet-point here.
He’s at his worst and he looks to the one single person in town who won’t be helpful simply because the guy has money. George’s crisis, in real time, lasts a little over an hour (barely enough time to yell at his family and get drunk) and he almost kills himself within that time. His wife solves the problem in half that time. Reach out, people are waiting to be heroes themselves!
This wrecked me on George’s crisis here though! His dad dies and George steps up. The bank run hits and George steps up, extremely well – he is backstop and pitcher in one, this is the crisis point for everyone in town and he meets it. The fuckup at the end is surely bad but not that cataclysmic and yet because of where George is now he personally has more to lose and that snaps him in half. The town is there to save him, but what if it’s not? I think this hits the nuclear family precarity like no film before or since, and George’s total despair and its myopia is extremely real. Why is it real? Because it’s true, and all the wonderful feelings in the ending can’t deny that nagging sense that, as a Texan once put it, in America you’re on your own. George takes weight that he must learn to share, the other side of that sharing is giving up claims for yourself. That is a hard thing to do, and the movie’s refusal to sugarcoat the selfishness of its heroes (Mary as well as George) is one of its great strengths.
Fun fact, the bit where Billy drunkenly falls off-screen was an accident and the actor improvised his “I’m alright!” which makes it much funnier. Think it’s mentioned that his wife died, hence the alcoholism?
I never feel like George is actually a dick throughout his life, he’s overall kind and cheerful despite all of the frustrations piling up over the years (hence why Mary notices right away that something is wrong when he comes home certain he’s going to prison – he’s not normally this angry and emotional). PS. I used to think Potter was cartoonish and then the past ten years happened!
The pull in George’s character is an enthusiasm, like Cary Grant in HOLIDAY, to find a sense of self actualization through experience vs. responsibility to his community, which, within the structure of his society, means putting the business to rest and letting Potter take control. From a dramatic standpoint, the notion that he could have been given a time out, and that this opportunity is still somewhat open to him, is quite poignant.
Love the comparison to Holiday here. Grant ultimately leaves the rat race but by making a stronger commitment to Hepburn and implied bohemianism, still a responsibility of sorts – Stewart doesn’t even get that. He’s in town for life.
True, there are a lot of Potters out there these days.
I (playfully) call George a dick because I hadn’t remembered there are roughly equal numbers of scenes of George being magnanimous or heroic and George acting out his frustration (though never to the degree of the Christmas scenes). He’s such a jerk to Mary when he goes over to see her! I think giving George a prickly side works in the film’s favor. Rooting for a perfect saint to get what he deserves would be less interesting.
Agreed, he has to be pushed to be truly altruistic. Not a hard leap because he’s a good man. Still a leap.
I hadn’t noticed until you mentioned it, but the scene in which George goes to Potter for relief is echoed in THE GODFATHER’s opening, in which the pride (and fear) of the undertaker being in the debt of the personification of forces that hold power, and having to allow the consequences of that debt to potentially play out, feel very palpable. The political economy of IaWL is built more on reciprocity engendered in charity than Capital, and it seems very clear as to why this film was largely ignored at the time of its release as the Cold War made even the most conservative form of collectivity suspect.
Another note that someone pointed out to me recently is that after Clarence saves George, he runs past Potter’s window and wishes him a Merry Christmas, despite the wrong that has been done to him..
Including but not underlining those moments is what makes this special instead of maudlin.
A more conventional take would have Potter get a comeuppance for stealing Bailey’s deposit, but the unsaid implication that Bailey wins out, at least in the short run, is its own form of justice.
Lol Potter going “Whatever you fucking loon” is hilarious.
The Shop Around the Corner
I too would go to this amount of trouble to avoid being given the wrong Christmas present. Charming, funny romance with a particularly luminous Jimmy Stewart (who whiplashes, in a recognizably human way, between vulnerability and mild sadism). Per that parenthetical, lots of people who feel like people: despairing, selfish, shallow, kind, grandiose, warm.
Matinee
For Movie Club, but since it got delayed, I’ll probably rewatch it before we actually get to meet. In the meantime, I’ll just say that I would like a Mant! poster for Christmas.
The Outfit
The Mark Rylance one. Takes a while to get going, but once Rylance is improvising surgical techniques and chatting with a wounded (and none-too-bright) gangster, it’s clicking along nicely–but only for a while. I don’t know: I like parts of this a lot, but it felt like the flashes of liveliness kept dying away, and I’m also incredibly sick of surprise reveals that a seemingly mild character had a secret life that made them more prepared for this moment. Let me watch someone become a badass, I’m begging you.
Deadstream
Conor recommended this for Streaming Shuffle, and a Streaming Shuffle it shall become! Fun, scary, and a bit Raimi-esque.
A Different Man
Another Streaming Shuffle candidate. This is an interesting, slightly Twilight Zone-ish film, but partway through, Sebastian Stan’s character makes a major, life-altering decision, and the story doesn’t feel like it adequately builds up his reasons for doing so either before or after the fact. Stan is really good here, though: early on, I figured he was using more overt body language (in particular, a hand-on-hip move) because he was in heavy facial prosthetics and couldn’t rely on expressions, but later, after his character’s facial tumors have semi-magically disappeared, giving him a kind of Cronenbergian rebirth into conventional happiness, he still uses the gesture, because it went a level deeper than I assumed. It wasn’t just “I, Sebastian Stan, am trying to convey Edward’s emotions,” and it was “Since people don’t pick up on Edward’s facial expressions, he’s gotten used to conveying them in other ways.” All in all, not bad, and I applaud its ambitions and weirdness, but this should have been totally my jam and was not even my jelly.
Yay! Very Raimi-esque with the escalation of mayhem and sense of “How much mental and physical damage can we put this idiot through?”
Just how many The Outfits are there? Though of course the original Parker novel is the best.
Yeah, I quite enjoyed The Outfit but would be happy to have the last ten minutes or so lopped off. Don’t know why filmmakers think an out-of-nowhere “it was secretly this the whole time!” retcon is nearly as satisfying as watching a character have to navigate situations that unfold in front of us. I like how everyone that comes into the shop has a piece of information but not the whole story, so there’s a lot of tension from having to keep track of who knows which lies. A good selection for a “made during covid” film festival.
THE SHOP AROUND THE CORNER is, behind the film mentioned above, my favorite old Hollywood Christmas movie. Next in line would be the good natured but borderline blasphemous MIRACLE AT MORGAN’S CREEK
The Outfit: hahaha fuck yeah! yes!
Starring Mark Rylance: well this fucking sucks. what the fuck
As Simon implies, get on the 1973 flick. On a better note, fuck yeah Matinee! John Goodman is a national treasure with countless fantastic performances but this may be his best one. A ham among flacks, a prince among men, the Falstaff of the drive-in. No one better to get rooked by.
The Wiz – First half: Lots of fun songs and amazing urban-fantastical production design! Second half: Okay, I see why The Wiz is characterized as a disaster, even if that’s a tad unfair. The Erd self-help goop screenwriter Joel Schumacher and Diana Ross were immersed in at the time seeps into everything and the whole starts to feel exhausting. Sidney Lumet also probably shouldn’t have been the choice for director, as despite his extreme competence and professionalism, it’s evident he’d never made a musical before given the static camera moves and sometimes bewildering wide shots. Would not call this a bad movie. The performances are committed, especially Jackson’s rubber-legged Scarecrow moves* and Nipsey Russell, but it sure is a strange one and the product of a frustratingly large ego (Ross’).
*He is objectively a better actor than Prince and that’s the only time I’d hand it to MJ over the Purple One.
marathoned Frozen and Frozen 2 with sick kids. On at least the 20th rewatch, man, Elsa’s dad sucks. Locking Elsa up away from her sister is probably the worst way to handle it. Despite being rescued by (and marrying!) a northuldra girl and knowing that obviously dams don’t strengthen waters, he still repeated the false version of events to his half-northuldra daughters. The intro of the first movie makes more sense considering that the king was super racist to his own wife and daughters.
speaking of shitty dads, continued watching Succession, through s3e1. Kendall’s repeated heel-face-heel (of course, since he’s both self-serving and spineless, it’s really just heel-heel-heel turns) turns are comical. It’s closer to an arrested development gag than to a real dramatic twist.
One funny writing gag is that the Roys speak mostly in nonsensical vulgar metaphors, (hilariously lampshaded when Kendall threatens Stewie who yes-ands the riff) while whenever they interact with people at the edge of their orbits (the pierces, gil) they use literary metaphors. This is because the Roys are all dumber and more venal than they think they are, except maybe Roman who knows how venal he is.
When my little sister was taken with Frozen, my older sister and I were gobsmacked at how awful her father was (and its maybe to the film’s credit that this isn’t overemphasized).
They thankfully did not make the movie basically a therapy session for working out how elsa feels about her dad while rapping in the style of lin manuel miranda.
succession
kendall: “i’ll cut off your—“
stewie: “cock and shove it up my ass, and then pull it out my
nose or something. Yeah yeah. Whatever. We’re buying your company.”
At a certain point these overly vulgar threats loop around to just being goofy, and the roys don’t get that. They talk like david simon tweets (like an extremely vulgar moron) and they can’t pull it off. They sound more like the wu-tang skit where they’re trading elaborate threats than like tupac sounding like he actually intends to murder someone.
“I’ll see your butthole shut and then keep feeding you and feeding you.”
—no you won’t.
“my 44 will sure all your kids don’t grow. Fuck you, die slow.”
—maybe you will do that.
I don’t know if I’ve ever seen a harsher burn than the Roy kids talking like David Simon tweets. Both sides obliterated. Nothing will grow here.
What did we play?
Last Strahd of the year, and we fought a roc. I was sure, totally sure, it was way beyond us, but it turned out not to be that hard. Well, except for the one character who always puts himself in harm’s way and was down to one hit point. I was a tiny bit frustrated with how my attempts to talk to the other players before hand and make a plan didn’t really get far. And more than a bit frustrated with one player who didn’t even participate in that chat and seems determined to not be much of a team player and also isn’t really engaging with us overall. I suspect she is dealing with a lot of stuff IRL but her character is a shapeshifter and she seems to utterly ignore any suggestion she use that to fight the roc. Anyway, time for a break before more fun.
The family is still obsessed with Blue Prince all these months later. We’ve got all but five of the trophies (figgin’standardized test ) and my daughter and I are convinced there’s something big still hidden in the game (we resolutely refuse to go crawling to the Internet to have this confirmed). We have all the clues mister policeman, but I’m having trouble putting together the New ones. Also concerned that we’ve overlooked something obvious. We crawled the parameters of the estate a few times ago and uncovered a number of secrets we had walked past too many times, how many more did we miss?
I went to a great Chanukah party and because it was chockful of queer gamer nerds who were Jewish, they all agreed that dreidel is a boring game so they made up a new version, A Fistful of Dreidels, and even created rules. Lot of fun to watch though I was busy helping make latkes and chatting with people.
I want to know more! (I assume it’s followed by A Few Dreidels More and The Good, the Bad, and the Dreidel.)
That was my joke but I’m not sure anyone got it.
Bionic Commando on Nintendo Entertainment System
I pulled out my NES while doing some closet cleaning, and decided to test it with this classic, which I’ve never actually gotten very far in. I made it to the third-ish level this time, which is probably the farthest I’ve ever made it. I’ve gotten a handle on the grapple mechanics and especially the lack of a jump, which the game makes surprisingly well without. It’s intuitive and deliberate, which is fortunate, as the start of the game requires a lot of exploring to make sure what the basics of the game are, where to go next, and how to power yourself up properly. It’s very much like early Zelda II in that way, with levels working kinda like dungeons. I definitely will try to play this in full in the near future, as not only is this game very fun and cool already, but I really want to play that ending with my own hands at some point.
Hell yeah.
One thing that I always did was spend a little time in the second section of Area 1 to grind out killing enemies and at least get a few health upgrades before proceeding. (The “Rearmed” remake changes this enough you don’t have to, but on the NES, it’s highly useful.)
Anyway, one of my very favorite NES games; feel free to hit me up with any questions.
THE GOOD, THE BAD, AND THE UGLY is the first film that I saw that made me realize that movie’s speak in a language system and thus offer more than a mirror to the way one normally perceives time and space in real life. As you point out, the way that this scene delineates the setting (the Civil War) from the motivations of the characters is central to Leone’s intent. This is not a film specifically about the War between the States, even though it is set in that place and time, but a story of opportunism set in a palimpsest where the contest for land and control changes, but the individualism of the colonial mindset is permanent.
I considered writing a section about how this scene demonstrates the concept of cultural appropriation in that Leone is flattening the meaning of a specific American war by placing his Italian experiences over it – a graveyard full of dead American Civil War veterans would presumably mean something different to a freed slave – but decided it undermined and distracted from my point for someone I merely find interesting.
I find that the remnants of a Mexican presence in Leone’s frontier to be an important facet of his revisionism, like ghost signs through which progress must go through before a national myth is reborn.
Year of the Month update!
Here’s the movies, albums, books, TV, and games from 1985 for you to write about next January.
TBD: Ruck Cohlchez: Tim and/or Fables of the Reconstruction
Jan. 2nd: Gillian Nelson: Return to Oz
Jan. 5th: Tristan J. Nankervis: Rambo: First Blood Part II
Jan. 9th: Gillian Nelson: Advice on Lice
Jan. 16th: Gillian Nelson: The Wuzzles/The Gummi Bears
Jan. 19th: Tristan J. Nankervis: The Breakfast Club
Jan. 23rd: Gillian Nelson: The Golden Girls
And there’s still time to write about anything from 1948, like these movies, albums, and books.
Dec. 20th: Lauren James: The Lottery