• image credit: Netflix
    movie reviews

    Movie Review: Irish Wish (2024) ***

    2024-03-16 /

    I was fully prepared to five-star Irish Wish before I watched it. This checks all my boxes in concept: It’s sort of a holiday-themed Netflix romcom starring Lindsay Lohan. I love Falling for Christmas (2021). I don’t currently have St. Paddy’s Day movies on rotation, but I was willing to start a pile.

    Irish Wish features Lohan’s character wishing she were marrying her long-time crush while she’s in Ireland for his wedding. Thanks to magic, she swaps places with the bride (a friend of hers). Of course, this is a whole monkey’s paw affair, where it turns out what she wants isn’t what she needs. The changed circumstances highlight to Lohan that she’s not meant to be with the crush. It also helps her realize she’s in love with the guy who played Jack Crusher on Picard.

    The milieu establishes that love is a soul mates affair, and I like soul mates in a fantasy setting. Crush and Friend manage to fall in love again despite the situation-swap. And when Lohan manages to undo her wish, she still ends up with Jack Crusher. They were always meant to be. Aww.

    Lohan is perfect in this. Even better than Falling for Christmas! (Which came from the same creative team, too.)

    This is as good as any Netflix romcom, with all the usual asterisks added and then dismissed. You don’t eat Kraft dinner and complain it didn’t taste like filet mignon.

    There have also been a lot of monarchist nonsense in Netflix romcoms, and those tend to be my less-favorite. Fantasies of wealth (and the accompanying security) are a staple of the romcom genre in general. I don’t begrudge anyone their fantasies of security, but I appreciate when a romance makes it easier to swallow by taking us far, far away from real-life politics. Give me Aldovia instead of England, please. (Letterboxd)

    Irish Wish did not distance itself from real imperial politics.

    The wealthy crush’s family lives in Killruddery House (Wikipedia), an English-occupier house in Elizabethan style. The only filming location necessary to Ireland is the Cliffs of Moher, a famous tourist destination, which feels like a very shallow scoop off the top of Irish-themed things. And Lohan’s tricky little wish isn’t manipulated from one of the many potential local Irish spirits, but Saint Brigid. (Wikipedia)

    The mere inclusion of Brigid explicitly in her saint form is one markedly post-Christian reformation. In an attempt to be fair, I’ll note that an overwhelming percentage of modern Irish people identify as Catholic. 94.1% of Irish identified as Catholics in a 1961 census; even in the 2022 census, 69% continue to identify as Catholic. I tripped across these numbers reading a nuanced essay about Brigid as a historical saint, pre-Christian goddess(es), and as a title on Stone, Soil, and Soul. (It’s a substantial and worthy read.)

    Paganism isn’t just history in Ireland; as with most indigenous cultures, contemporary peoples continue to observe their traditions. (Psyche) The colonial presence of the British still hasn’t been accepted either. A united Republic of Ireland continues to be a hot topic, and the party in favor for election this year would pursue it. (NPR)

    Hence Irish Wish calls itself Irish, but it’s a specific Ireland: a colonized, Catholic Ireland, where Lindsay Lohan’s crush is a selfish manipulative Irish-accented occupier whose family wealth comes from conquering and her Happily Ever After comes with the much-cooler English hero. Why is the romantic couple American and English in a movie with “Irish” in the title? Kind of a letdown, y’all.

    It’s a reminder of the deeply conservative nature at the heart of Hallmark-style romcoms.

    In this case, my Kraft dinner came tainted with a memory of my Irish grandma swearing about the English, and there was no way I could possibly enjoy it as much as Falling for Christmas.

    So I guess this one isn’t starting off my St. Paddy’s Day-themed watch list. Considering St. Patrick was all about converting the Irish to Christianity (Time), I wasn’t married to it anyway, but I really like all the silly green decorations of the holiday, and I like having an excuse to slap Irish flags and cartoon leprechauns on everything. I’m not gonna say I’ll never revisit (Lindsay Lohan is so charming! she’s doing great y’all! I love to see it!) but I’m not keen on this approach at all. I’ll keep my fingers crossed for my grandma’s dream of an English-free Ireland though.

    (image credit: Netflix)

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    image credit: Warner Bros.

    The Matrix (1999) *****

    2023-12-29
    source: Columbia Pictures

    Movie Review: Groundhog Day (1993) ***

    2024-02-02
    credit: Vertigo Releasing

    Review: Crimes of the Future (2022) *****

    2024-01-04
  • source: Warner Bros.
    movie reviews

    Movie Review: The Cell (2000) *****

    2024-03-15 /

    The Cell (2000) starring J.Lo is a science fiction horror movie about entering a serial killer’s mind to locate a victim who hasn’t yet died in his basement. It’s very sexual, very gory. It looks like the music video for Closer by Nine Inch Nails and somehow feels a bit like Silent Hill, though its closest genetic relative is surely Silence of the Lambs (1991).

    I can’t explain why this is one of my favorite cozy movies BUT IT IS. There is something truly SO COZY and reassuring about the flimsy serial killer genre. Where they are monsters, not people. Where there is some mystery to unpack and not merely senseless violence. Where law enforcement CARE and are hellbent on solving problems.

    As usual, mental illness is thrown under the bus for our serial killer here. He’s got a kind of fictitious viral schizophrenia called “Whelan’s Infraction,” which is magically brought about by trauma involving water. In this case, our killer was “activated” by a violent baptism.

    Law enforcement catches him early in the movie, but Whelan’s Infraction has rendered him sorta-semi-braindead and he has a living victim with ~40 hours left.

    Luckily my wife J.Lo has been working as an unusual kind of therapist: she goes into the mind of a sick billionaire’s son using a fictitious machine. This “neurological connectic transfer system” can “map the mind and send the signal to another party.”

    This is in an era (have we even left that era?) where people are obsessed with this idea that there are broken little children inside serial abusers, giving them mystique and charm. Its story depends on the extremely common mistaken assumption that a childhood history of abuse explains adult abusers. “Why Does He Do That?” by Lundy Bancroft is an interesting rebuttal to that myth (though I recommend reading it with caution, as it’s very triggering).

    I don’t mind the pseudoscience, including the bad psychology. Everything about The Cell feels unreal, inside and outside the shared dreamscapes, in a manner that is extremely cohesive. After all, The Cell is firmly in the fantasy universe where cops Actually Do Stuff and serial killers are brilliant; why bother with real science?

    As I get older, the more I see The Cell as a fetish fantasy. It’s always obviously had major elements of fetishism. As I’ve grown, I’ve seen how many people really have explicitly serial killer, horror, and murder-related fantasies as part of their sex life, and i’m like, ohhhhhh. That’s what I’m watching. Perhaps my associations of the security in a well-controlled BDSM environment are also why I find it so cozy!

    The performances are really good too.

    Vince Vaughn is the lead detective in the movie. Yes, THAT Vince Vaughn. His role is not meant to be remotely comic, but I still laugh at everything he says. They realize the killer (Vincent D’Onofrio) has an albino dog. And Vince Vaughn says all grittily, “He’d love a dog like that.” SURE VINCE. His performance doesn’t detract from the film; I would have no notes if I weren’t familiar with him from other media.

    The ability for J.Lo to commit to a movie where she was surely not seeing things we’re seeing, in sequential order, cannot be overstated. Director Tarsem Singh does a LOT of practical effects, but even so, there’s a lot here demanding an actor’s very best imagination. She’s extremely believable. (Fun fact: according to IMDB, Sandra Bullock was originally meant to play this role. I can imagine it, but I also think it would have been a weird fit for her career.)

    The physicality of Vincent D’Onofrio’s performance is so amazing. He manages to feel both like a vulnerable boy at times, and like a looming monster at others. He is beautiful and ugly.

    Last time I watched The Cell, I was coming off a Hannibal/Lambs binge, and I enjoyed it but the story felt more lacking. Coming at it from watching more horror movies, it felt pitch-perfect. This is a great example of a movie that makes more emotional sense than rational sense, much like The Fountain (2006).

    ~

    On a note about the format I watched: The Cell doesn’t seem popular enough to have a remaster, so my version has those dots up in the corner indicating reel changes. There’s a lot of other visual grit too! The Cell is very consciously cut so that there are dramatic tonal/visual shifts whenever reels change! Many movies used to be edited with TV commercial breaks in mind as well, and it’s striking how anachronistic it feels a quarter of a century later.

    (Image credit: Warner Bros.)

    (This review was adapted from my live watch thread on Bluesky.)

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    source: Columbia Pictures

    Movie Review: Groundhog Day (1993) ***

    2024-02-02
    image credit: Universal Pictures

    Movie Review: Marry Me (2022) ****

    2024-02-10
    The Rock and Chris Evans. image credit: Amazon

    MOVIE REVIEW: Red One (2024) *

    2024-12-24
  • bluesky,  facebook

    end of winter ramblings

    2024-03-13 /

    Posted 2/25/24.

    I’ve seen art students go from stick figures to fully rendered oil painting style in less than four years of study. Most people don’t need to get that good, and you’ll start getting drawings you like a LOT sooner, and you also get loads of dopamine from the process.

    AI feeds into your insecurity. So many people are like “I’m going to sit down and do this!” and then they can’t handle the fact they suck at it, so they quit. To paraphrase Adventure Time, sucking at something is the first step to being awesome at something. You just have to accept sucking a lot for a while. Don’t be a coward.

    Use of AI to illustrate is cowardly and lazy. You’re going to be here in four years; the time will pass either way. Work on your shit. Take classes. Study technique broadly. Practice what you like a lot. (I mostly stick to an illustrative style and it’s REALLY SATISFYING)

    …I don’t like the grumpy tone of my own thread because I want to be nurturing rather than mean, always, but I get SO FRUSTRATED. this AI shit is death by a thousand knives. I struggle to be at my kindest when it feels so awful all the time.

    Posted 2/26/24.

    Why Is My Decade Old C-Section Scar Bothering Me Again? And Other Reasons I Find Body Horror Relatable: A Memoir

    ~

    repeating to myself: two dogs is enough, two dogs is enough, two dogs is enough–

    ~

    9yo Sunshine told me that emoticons are better than emojis. “Do you know what emoticons are?” he asked me, like I wasn’t using them twenty years before he was born.

    Apparently : ) is better at expressing emotions online than 🙂, which is cartoony and cheesy.

    I birthed tech hipsters.

    ~

    My 13yo and I were watching an interview with Biden from last night (the one on Seth Meyers). I knew what Biden was talking about so I could follow him, but it was difficult; 13yo couldn’t follow him at all. Then I put on the 2008 Obama acceptance speech and blew my kid away.

    I’m like, “Can you believe we ever had a president who could actually talk?” and they were like “wtf that happens?” They were born in the Obama era but don’t remember him. As far as they’re concerned, America is defined by Trump. Ain’t that depressing.

    fwiw Obama had a *lot* of problems because, you know, president of an incredibly violent empire, but also, on the shallowest level possible, he was *incredibly* attractive.

    I am biased toward Obama because his administration had such massively tangible helpful impacts on my life. Thanks to his admin, I had insurance through my parents until I was 26; I also *had* to be given space/time to pump at the office. I would not have been able to nurse Eldest without the ACA. I have always been Medically Complicated so I have an emotional attachment to the president spearheading the admin that spared me a lot of active fear and gave me better access to healthcare. god, his admin also passed the laws that let me buy my first house. like! they helped me so much.

    Posted 2/27/24.

    I was joking with my kid about naming our next dog “Jesus” and the idea is so funny to me, I can’t get it out of my head

    Imagine yelling for Jesus at the dog park

    Calling the vet to make an appointment for Jesus

    Posted 2/28/24.

    I must come to grips with the fact that I am fully a conspiracy theorist who loves random drama. For instance: I still totally believe in Fake Melania, Disney made “Frozen” so you can’t easily google about Walt being frozen,

    and I am SO eyeballs-deep in Kate Middleton conspiracies.

    ~

    snuggly bedtime with my 9yo is still just the best time <33 also brushing my 13yo's hair <33333 ~ I thought I could handle doing a Dark Urge BG3 run if I skewed toward redemption, but there’s no preventing what happens when [SPOILER] joins your camp and they are one of my FAVORITES and now idk I don’t wanna I get really attached to everyone in this game ~ After being off cannabis for a bit over a month now, I think it's safe to say that I am just a silly nonsensical person in general and that's not going anywhere. 😆

    Posted 2/29/24.

    Another smoldering migraine day. Can I just chop my head off maybe?

    Posted 3/1/24.

    I had two writing sessions today. I want to reorient myself toward writing-for-publication, but it’s been hard. I had to learn a lot of new skills to write my gothic fantasy book – it was extremely intense to write, and extremely meticulous to edit so far – but it was really easy to commit myself to writing sessions because it’s all I wanted to think about. Working on ATTBTM feels like a beautiful dark dream.

    The Descentverse never felt like that. It was something I wrote to cope because I didn’t have any coping abilities. You’ll recognize Rylie’s werewolf as a metaphor for mental illness run rampant and autistic meltdowns. Elise represents so much of my anger toward men (fathers in specific). My overwhelm from medical trauma, and a desire to be hurt, is all over Deirdre’s books. And so on.

    But nowadays…I feel better. I have other ways of working on my stuff. Which means I need to find a whole other way to write books that I’m not using to cope, and which aren’t a dreamy love affair like the gothic fantasy book. I want to be able to write projects that I *choose* rationally. I don’t need to do a *lot*. I just need to be able to put out a book or two a year that has some relationship to the market.

    This begins by finishing the most important outstanding projects: Fated for Firelizards and Young Swords. Neither of these scratch my happy itch. I don’t need to hide from reality in them. So how do I build a healthy working relationship with writing instead of… *gestures at the wasteland of my life*

    I think it’s going to involve scheduling somehow. Schedules are hard. BUT today I managed to get myself in for two writing sessions, and that is super good. Longer sessions, or a third session, could get me back to a reasonable rate of writing, but I think it’s gonna be more important to write *daily* since I like to spend whole days crocheting/drawing now. Gotta figure out how to balance it. I’m sure I can do it now.

    Once I’m done with those, I can finish my horror novel, and THEN I can start on the litfic I’ve been percolating. It’s a take on Bluebeard’s wife among the nouveau riche, it’s gonna be a real spicy one! The only other project that jumps to me is a cyberpunk-sorta thing that I’ve been percolating *even longer* (literally a decade now) but I kinda hope that publishing litfic will better position folks to understand what I’m doing with the cyberpunk thing.

    (I think this will also be easier now that I quit weed, but quitting caffeine is a special added challenge lol)

    Posted 3/3/24.

    As a loud, energetic, imaginative youngest child, it took me a LONG time to contextualize the Annoying label. I got it a lot. I still think of myself as annoying occasionally, but it’s okay to be a little annoying.

    I was just talking with my spouse about the labels we’re given in childhood and how they can really stick with us. I was also labeled Liar by my dad. Nothing I said could be believed. I was constantly told I was doing things I absolutely was not. I was an Annoying Liar. Y’all, that is a LOT for someone to come up with.

    I know some of y’all have come up with even more, even worse labels, and I think sometimes those attitudes follow us into adulthood when we should have long since let them go.

    Posted 3/4/24.

    i’m a lil bummed that my most popular review on letterboxd is currently snark about j.lo’s documentary. all the time i’ve spent writing thoughtful review essays, and of course the one that gets any traction whatsoever (still quite minor) is when i’m just snarking about batshittery.

    i remember the first time i read a sarcastic recounting of a movie. it was oooold internet, talking 2002, early livejournal. someone recounted the events of queen of the damned sarcastically. it was seismic! a major influence on how i regard *everything*. of course i also review like that sometimes.

    but i don’t really wanna do that as a THING because it’s also a little bit mean and it plays into our less-favorable instincts as humans. yk? i wanna have fun without the mean bits. it makes me wanna just delete the review. don’t LOOK AT THAT ONE

    ~

    Cutting caffeine out of my system has killed me. I am dead. Nothing works. Don’t have words. Life is sleep.

    Posted 3/5/24.

    I wish I had a salon chair at home tbh. I do everyone’s hair and I’ve started also doing skincare for my family, and it sorta feels like tending five people is excuse enough for the setup. I like fussing over everyone. It’s very pleasant. It would be easier if I could just sit them in a chair and recline them to a sink to do the wash/rinse. facials would also be easier like that.

    but salon chairs are not exactly small and it’s not like i can just…leave it in front of my kitchen sink. or any other sink. and once i start thinking about putting in a sink just for the chair, it gets into “too big/messy/expensive/complex” territory.

    Posted 3/5/24.

    Natalie Portman got divorced, so I’m pretty sure that means I have a chance

    Posted 3/9/24.

    did i ever tell y’all about the time i met a friend’s boyfriend for the first time, and he said “i don’t like man-hating feminists” and i whipped around to growl at him with demon eyes: “I AM THE MAN-HATING FEMINIST”?

    i’ll take “least surprising stories about sara” for twenty, alex

    Posted 3/10/24.

    My grandpa visited me for my birthday. It was also just his birthday.

    Me: Happy birthday!

    Grandpa’s girlfriend: He’s eighty-three now.

    Me: Wow, grandpa! You’re finally old enough to be president!

    I just had to share that with you guys because I think it’s the funniest I’ve ever been in my life.

    That said, this dude still fully does all his manual labor around the property (he has a pretty big acreage) and he’s sharp as a tack, which is why I don’t really care about any presidential candidate’s age. It’s all about policies. But that’s not the point of my story, the point of my story is that I’m hilarious.

    Posted 3/12/24.

    I know I’m an idiot because every time something I’ve written gets ripped off/copied, my reaction is mostly “good, you never could have made something that great on your own. Out here improving the mean quality of writing and not even trying 💅🏻”

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    Punxsutawny Says Spring

    2024-02-11

    April’s social media rambling

    2024-05-04

    ̶m̶a̶r̶c̶h̶ every month is madness

    2024-04-04
  • sara reads the feed

    Toxic Community, cicada wee, weakly heteros

    2024-03-13 /

    My life is pretty boring right now. I’m mostly just sitting around being available to my kids when they need me, aggregating information about the outside world, ignoring mealybugs on my plants, getting wrist pain from crocheting, drawing silly cartoons, and Having A Lot of Opinions.

    I’d still normally have interesting things to say about that, but lowering my caffeine intake has really kicked my butt. If you’re bored about hearing how I am not Getting Anything Done because of multiple successive withdrawals, don’t worry. I’m bored of experiencing it. This crap takes months.

    Plus all these substances are how I’ve self-medicated my neurocognitive issues, so everything I know about Getting Stuff Done In That Condition is useless to me now. I have to relearn like. everything. again.

    ~

    I’ve been banging on the “power companies are going to kill us all” drum ever since the Camp Fire in Paradise, California killed so many people, thanks to PG&E’s unmaintained infrastructure. That was over five years ago now. I wrote a book partially inspired by it called “His Memory in Ashes.” Anyway, the huge Texas panhandle fire this year was…drumroll please…caused by unmaintained infrastructure from the power company. (NPR) This is gonna keep happening. There has been no political willpower to fix it and the people with money don’t wanna.

    ~

    NPR published the most selfish article about how a wife’s desire to have Her Old Life Back is equally (or more) important as her high risk husband’s desire to mask against COVID. You know what, lady? I bet he’d like to have his old life back too. A lot of us would. Public health doesn’t matter to America. We would rather just let people die and be disabled so that people like you can fuck around with the illusion of having Your Old Life Back.

    ~

    In ongoing “Community is a great show that had the most absolutely toxic work environment possibly ever” news, Joel McHale reports he once dislocated Chevy Chase’s shoulder in a scuffle. (Variety) I’m sure nobody was sad he did that, but even so.

    ~

    BookRiot recommended Black Paradox by Junji Ito. I haven’t read that one so I’m gonna pick it up.

    ~

    Cosmopolitan talks about the human rights violations of child labor in influencer families (my phrasing, not theirs).

    ~

    You know I can’t resist Weird Organism Stories so here’s an Ars Technica piece about how cicadas pee in jets instead of droplets. Amazing!

    ~

    Ars Technica also reports on Air Pods Pro possibly getting “hearing aid” mode, which is cool. I actually use the “aware” mode on my noise-cancelling headphones (I have both Apple and Bose) to limit the amount of auditory input I receive from the world, which is kinda the opposite thing, but I already think of them as accessibility devices is the point here.

    ~

    A private space rocket launched in Japan exploded seconds after leaving the launching pad. Bummer for the company, but awesome for those of us who like to watch explosions. (AJE)

    ~

    Colbert’s studio didn’t want him to show KStew’s Rolling Stone cover. (Variety) The heteros really just can’t handle the raw sexual power of gender fuckery. They’re so weak.

    ~

    Netflix is putting Jennifer Lopez in a mecha suit. I’m so happy. (TSFKA Tor dot com)

    ~

    A company is gonna try mining helium-3 from lunar regolith. (Ars Technica) There’s nothing humans won’t try to exploit, even our Moon.

    ~

    Lawyers, Guns, and Money shared a good chunk of an interesting NYMag article about gender/sex. NYMag is paywalled, so the LGM link is the one I’m sharing.

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    Sara Reads the Feed #3

    2023-11-17

    Sara Reads the Feed #2

    2023-11-16
    Captain Mother

    Murder buckets, Dr. Orangutan, and To All The Jays I’ve Smoked Before

    2024-05-04
  • A tan pitbull reclined on a white couch, smiling a doggie smile with front paws crossed.
    Rory Links

    Rory’s links #4: Institutional rot

    2024-03-12 /

    One of my biggest lifelong Roman Empires is the British Royal Family. I’m hardly unique amongst elder millennials whose moms loved Princess Diana and hated Camilla; Diana’s death was a big moment in my tween years. I paid attention to the major happenings for a while—I mean, I watched Will and Kate’s wedding live—but it wasn’t until The Crown aired and Harry and Meghan’s mistreatment went super public that I realized the depths of the institution’s rot. I made a concerted effort to follow the royals the year leading up to Queen Elizabeth’s death because I could tell that was impending, and I’ve been watching stories somewhat closely ever since.

    That means I was ready for this year, and all the speculation around Kate (and Charles-William to a lesser degree).

    To start this linkspam, I really recommend this Nieman Lab piece from a former Buzzfeed News royal reporter. To understand the BRF, you have to understand how symbiotically parasitic the BRF-royal rota relationship is, and this article breaks it down beautifully in context with recent gossip on and briefings about Kate Middleton. There’s also a timeline of events from the end of December through March 6th, if you’re wondering about the specific current events.

    You also have to understand that, while the BRF will make moves similar to influencers, they’re a major branch in the UK’s political system. It’s why four major news agency pulled a Kate-and-kids family photo posted for UK Mother’s Day after it was determined the photo editing didn’t meet journalistic standards. Will and Kate have long edited their family pictures—this Tiktok has a really good examination of past Photoshop fails all the way back to when Charlotte was a baby. The approach is one thing if you’re an actor or you’re selling something. When your next head of state is pulling this as apparent proof-of-life for his missing wife (and throwing her under the bus after), that’s something else.

    None of this answers what’s actually going on with Kate. The likely answer is probably some variation of the stated one, that she had a major health incident and hasn’t been up to public work. There are other theories both related to this and unrelated that have varying levels of credence, and maybe we’ll find out some of them are true. I personally find it less interesting than why this is so big now: basic lack of institutional competence has eroded public trust (for good reason!), and Charles wanting to hoard more money by slimming down working royals is blowing up in his face big time. The only people out there doing engagements—which are showy busy work at best most of the time, but vital to the monarchy’s survival—aren’t getting press or cameras. Kensington Palace, which should be taking up the bulk of the work in the face of Charles’s cancer treatments, has terrible comms strategies, making blunders minor celebrities with common sense would never go near. It’s a complete trainwreck.

    Maybe this specific event will fizzle out in another couple months, and will mostly be forgotten by the end of the year. But I have seen nothing that convinces me that Buckingham or Kensington Palace have the endurance to keep up what they’re doing in the long term, or that they will learn from this. They haven’t yet.

    A few links I enjoyed from the last monthish of the newsletter She’s a Beast (I think, a couple might have come from other newsletters):

    A journalist tried resume spamming bots, with some level of success. Just another one of those feeling-glum-about-capitalism days.

    Sports bras can restrict your breathing. I use sports bras as soft binding for gender reasons sometimes, so I wasn’t super surprised by this. The study in question seems to suggest that problems arise mostly during hard exercise and because bras get picked while people are at rest and not during most intense physical activity. Not sure how the average person should solve this one.

    On boring problems: an essay considering the way problems change depending on age. Approaching 40 means thinking about this kind of thing a lot, so while it’s a bit of a bummer, I found value in having some level of my experience mirrored back at me.

    I’ve been thinking a lot about how modern life requires reverse-engineering experiences more natural to the function of the human body and brain. A couple interesting links for this: How to rewild yourself, with an aim at reconnecting with nature, and Here’s how to rediscover your childlike wonder, which privileges awe and play as worthwhile experiences.

    Also related to the above, the title of this article (The art of doing nothing: have the Dutch found the answer to burnout culture?) is misleading; I think it’s a better look at Dutch culture and its relationship to burnout than a broader remedy for the problem. That doesn’t bother me, though. I like seeing different cultures’ approaches to work.

    The Case for a Paper Fitness Journal is a specific essay weighing demands of digital versus physical paperwork for fitness, but it’s broader more applicably. There are great uses for apps and programs to track a variety of things and topics. I’ve been using Obsidian lately for information management and broader project conceptualization. But for a lot of day-to-day work, little is more clear and specific than writing in a notebook. If it gets overwhelming, I only need to turn to the next blank page.

    YouTubers broadly have their busiest season in November-December, and they will often take January or even February as time to rest and rebuild. The last month marked the return of a lot of temporarily dormant essayists to my subscriptions page. Here’s a quick glimpse at some recent videos essays (which you can read via the transcript on the page if you’re not adverse to flawed subtitles that are often auto-generated):

    The Queer History of The Lord of the Rings by verilybitchie. I was really into the origins of Eowyn’s story.

    The Rise and Fall of Muppet Cinema by Patrick (H) Willams. “Muppet Cinema” is mostly shorthand to refer to the period in film, especially the 80s, where puppets were a key element. I like the way the essay denotes CG as cartoons and puppets as theatrical without being dismissive about it. Different tools for different uses!

    The American Idol Theme Park Experience by Defunctland. My big theme-park experiences in the last decade were all West-Coast Disneyland, which didn’t have this attraction, but I could absolutely imagine having an annual pass and deciding a day on a trip would be spent on this. Also a valuable look at American Idol as an IP. (So that’s what JLo’s been up to when she hasn’t been making movies.)

    Saltburn: The Tumblr-ification of Cinema by Broey Deschanel. Excellent deconstruction of both Saltburn and the 1999 adaptation of The Talented Mr. Ripley, from which Saltburn takes a lot of its ideas without realizing why they were there.

    Twilight by Contrapoints. The chapter titles say it all here; the essay uses Twilight to explore philosophical perspectives on fiction, desire (both related and unrelated to fiction), fantasy, power, death, and identity. I’m not sure I agree with every point here—and there’s a more glossing over of the racism baked into Twilight than I would have liked—but overall, a meaty three-hour essay that was exactly geared toward my tastes.

    Hannah Montana’s Guide to Life Under Capitalism by Alexander Avila. Glad I watched this one before all the gossip about Miley’s family started making the rounds. I’ve been a big fan of deep dives on children’s sitcoms lately (see also: Quinton Reviews covering iCarly, Victorious, and Sam and Cat), and you can’t talk about Hannah Montana without talking about class. Also made me both laugh and unsettled by using AI politician voices to read quotes.

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  • essays,  movies

    Alien (1979) is a great lesson in cinema for horror kids

    2024-03-11 /

    Yesterday I watched Alien (1979) with 13yo Moonlight, the eldest of my offspring. I’ve been musing how to review it since. The greatness of Alien is well-understood. Even Letterboxd rates it at an average of 4.3, and I seldom run across movies so uncontroversial.

    On a personal level, as a writer and as a child-bearer, I think Alien is fascinating in how queer it is. Secondary character Joan Lambert is canonically mtf trans per its sequel. Ripley was written to be a man and gender-swapped. (CBR) The order in which people are killed on the Nostromo is “woke” enough to please a modern moviegoer like myself; they clear out the white men (including one android) before killing Yaphet Kotto’s character, then Lambert, and gender neutral Ripley is left as final girl along with her final cat. Horror deaths are known to be moralistic: it is inevitable that the people seen as “bad” in some way (promiscuous, drinkers, drug-users, queers, and often nonwhite people) will be killed first, and the final girl is ultimately the purest of them. Alien’s kill order alone can be seen as a political statement.

    As the movies continued, the pregnancy body horror of it all is further teased out and expanded upon, but even Ridley Scott’s initial outing has undertones of pregnancy commentary. It’s queered up by implanting an unwilling man with a baby alien in this first movie. It reminds me an awful lot of my nonbinary ass exploding my second baby via emergent c-section.

    These subjects have been thoroughly explored by others, and way better than I could. I don’t want to explore them again. I don’t have anything to say except that “There is a shortage of perfect movies in this world. It would be a pity to fail to recognize this one.”

    Instead, I’d like to note that Alien is a perfect horror movie to share with kids as part of cinema education. I think kids inclined toward horror tastes should watch Alien.

     

    Raising conscientious horror kids

    My kids have grown up in an era where horror for kids is an entire *thing*. Mascot Horror as a subgenre (TV Tropes) has been defined, if not outright invented, in the time of my kids’ lives; much like Mommy, they enjoy a dark skew to their content, so it’s natural they would fall in with Mascot Horror.

    Navigating horror for kids as a mother is interesting. I believe a lot of families either ban violent/disturbing content outright, or simply stay hands-off their kids’ media diets, because either options is easier than trying to navigate it with them. Parenting is *always* a matter of too many concerns and not enough time/energy to handle it. Media consumption is low priority compared to the numerous high demands of Life.

    When my peer parents were blocking YouTube so their kids wouldn’t get tangled up in extremely dodgy Elsagate stuff (Wikipedia), we chose to let them stay online, unfiltered, unblocked. We kept our media consumption devices in the same room for many years so that we could keep an ear/eye on what they were watching, and “Pick a different video!” was a frequent call across that room. This spurred conversations about why we thought a video wasn’t appropriate. We told them how to navigate these things themselves, and one of my main urgings was simply: “If it makes you feel weird or bad, don’t watch it.”

    Of course, they watched stuff when we weren’t supervising, and they ended up having to figure out how to filter things for themselves. Multiple times, they brought videos, games, and memes to me with questions, or just generally asking for feedback; knowing that they would never be in trouble created a fertile ground for us to communicate.

    The result is kids who have extremely developed opinions about what they like, what is good and bad, what is safe and what isn’t. They know what to do with themselves on the internet and among media. They like horror a lot. That part has never changed.

     

    Kids’ media is pretty nuts anyway

    What kind of horror is “safe” for kids?

    Critically, I must point out that plenty of non-horror for kids is upsetting as hell. Kids’ media is often much more upsetting than you’d think. Consider legendarily upsetting content like Bambi, Where the Red Fern Grows, The Brave Little Toaster, The Bridge to Terabithia. Kids’ media often goes straight for the places kids are most vulnerable, like death of parents, or separation from family. This stuff is scary already!

    If anything, a movie like Alien is soft for kids. They are in no real, tangible risk of going to a planet in Zeta Reticuli, getting attacked by face-grabbers, and then hunted throughout the Nostromo by a big juicy monster.

    Alien also isn’t all that scary for most of its length. Most of it is tension and build-up, deliciously so. Deaths mostly occur off-screen. The effects are great, but not too egregious.

    I wouldn’t watch an especially gory movie with the kids, but they do play shooter games, and some level of tension and violence is fine. That rules out less-tense horror-comedy movies like Renfield, which loooves gore. The sexualization of Ripley is minimal in screen-time, which is also a concern with kids’ comfort levels. I can’t show them the hilarious Chopping Mall, for instance, because that’s in a much more exploitative tradition of horror. M3gan was a great horror movie for kids (to the point it’s kinda too boring for adults). We’re All Going to the World’s Fair is an amazing queer horror movie for the internet generation, but it’s incredibly slow and vibe-based, appealing more to Millennials.

    Alien stands on top of all of these. It’s not too gory, but it’s a little gross (like the robot exploding into a glitchy white-blood mess). It doesn’t have sex scenes. It’s also, frankly, just a great movie.

     

    A whole cinema culture class in a single film

    I actually watched Alien with Moonlight for the first time when they were eight, maybe nine years old. It’s more a feat of attention span than enduring anything scary at that age. Considering Moonlight was neck-deep in FNAF at the time, and well inured to jump scares, they mostly walked away thinking it was fun to watch a movie with so much space ship in it. (Space ships are awesome.)

    A few years later, Moonlight has seen 2001: A Space Odyssey, and loads more movies for grown-ups. They asked to watch Alien again. A young teenager is capable of thought abstraction in a way that an 8-9yo is not. I realized that Alien was kind of a perfect movie to watch in order to teach them more about cinema in general.

    We had great discussions while watching Alien. It serves as a platform for lots of topics.

     

    Alien has strong visual language. It begins slowly, with long shots of the vessel’s exterior and interior, and shots are roomy. The pacing is methodical. At first, the most dramatic things are considered with a sort of distance; medical procedures performed on the first victim are partially viewed through windows by the other crew.

    Immediacy of the style increases as the emotional intensity does, too. By the time Parker and Lambert are attacked, the shots come quick and tightly framed. Ripley’s survivalist last act loses all the methodical dolly shots and steadycam, shaking more as the camera runs along with her.

    Moonlight specifically noted the use of strobe light as a way to increase agitation in the viewers. Strobe is very unpleasant, but it makes you feel anxious like Ripley does, whether or not you’re paying close attention.

     

    In context, Alien teaches about cultural call-and-response. Not only has Alien influenced countless media that came after it, there are prominent elements in conversation with major predecessors. The style of the early moments are a lot like 2001: A Space Odyssey (ten years Alien’s predecessor) and the long panning shot of the Nostromo’s underside is a lot like the first sight of a Star Destroyer in Star Wars: A New Hope (two years Alien’s predecessor).

    I’d actually say one of its biggest influences is Jaws (four years Alien’s predecessor). I might even argue that Alien is best described as Jaws vs 2001.

    All media is engaged in cultural call-and-response, and this is important for people to understand. It’s how you learn to tell what’s derivative versus what’s genre trope versus what’s a direct reference to add commentary to something else. You could not have Sunshine or Event Horizon without Alien, nor many other SF/horror movies. You also probably wouldn’t have Doom or Half-Life without Alien. The impact is seismic, and accentuating this element to young cinemaphiles can provide context for a whole lotta culture.

     

    The politics of Alien are fascinating. Moonlight is the cusp of Gen Z and Alpha; their generation is not expected to do better than my generation, which is not expected to do better than our parents’ generation. A lot of this is due to runaway unregulated corporations. But this problem isn’t new. In 1979, Alien pointed a finger shamelessly at a parent corporation (Weyland-Yutani) for its unethical practices.

    At some point, the movie reveals that the corporation deliberately sent the Nostromo to retrieve alien specimens and bring them back to Earth, regardless of how many crew died in the process. You can easily tie this to the unethical practices of unregulated corporations by watching a few episodes of John Oliver. It’s always been a practice for Big Money to throw lives away in pursuit of profit. (In this film, Ripley theorizes Weyland-Yutani wants the aliens for military use; it’s expanded upon elsewhere in the franchise.)

    As I mentioned in the beginning of this post, the deployment of horror tropes and who the movie kills first is also extremely political. We often think of the past as being more regressive. But we’re in a time when trans people are spectacularly unsafe and often targeted directly by policies and less directly by stochastic terrorists; more than forty years ago, we had a movie casually throw in a couple of *very* gender nonconforming characters, one of which was trans. These are the kind of people society often marginalizes and feeds to the meat grinder.

    The fight we’re fighting now isn’t new! For all its antique-looking retrofuturism, Alien had a lot of ideas we’re still battling with, right now.

     

    Alien is defined more by what it doesn’t show than what it does. It remains a truism of art that the best stuff happens off-screen (off-page, in the gutter, out of frame, etc), and Alien demonstrates this element of craft perfectly.

    The truth is that you don’t need great special effects to tell the story you want. Alien *does* have great special effects, but a lot of it is never really seen beyond glimpses. That’s not the point.

    The focus remains on a naturalistic approach to the characters–showing them working, in their common life, with minimal backstory. We don’t really know why Ripley is so calculated and intelligent, but you feel like you know her anyway. Natural closure describes everything you have to know. This kind of subtlety is often lacking from blockbuster products in our current era, but understanding the raw power of closure opens up so much media to the viewers, and it makes for better artists, too.

     

    Alien is a perfect movie to talk about cinema and art at large, and it’s a perfect lesson for horror kids in general. This is one of those evergreen flicks that I think should be taught to everyone for generations to come.

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    movies

    Rory’s 2023: Oscar results

    2024-03-11 /

    Airing the Academy Awards at a different time slot on the night in the US when we sprang forward in the time change sure was a choice! It worked out for me because I missed the ceremony entirely, and I would have been frustrated if I had been watching livetweets/reactions as it happened. But it also meant I didn’t have a decent outlet for my opinions on winners, and everywhere was quiet by the time I was really ready to talk. Time for a bonus post!

    Here’s the results in full. I’m going in order based on the official site’s order. Some of the awards are split into two prongs of commentary: campaign notes and personal notes.

    Actor in a leading role

    Campaign: Cillian Murphy’s win for Oppenheimer is not remotely surprising. He was the frontrunner the entire season, and Paul Giamatti ever getting any attention was more because he was spotted with his Golden Globe at In-N-Out than actual momentum. (The Globes are uneven as a precursor award: they awards dramas and comedies separately, and their voting pool doesn’t feed into the Oscars.) Oppenheimer getting the most nominations and wins also supported Cillian Murphy’s campaign otherwise.

    Personal reaction: I’ve liked Cillian Murphy in a lot, but this was neither his most interesting role nor my favorite performance in the category. I’m glad Bradley Cooper had no real chance, though.

    Actor in a supporting role

    Campaign: See above, sans the Paul Giamatti meme.

    Personal reaction: I don’t think the nominees in this category were very strong this year. That Robert Downey Jr. was one of my favorites of the bunch is not really a compliment, but as I said in my Letterboxd review of Oppenheimer, supporting actors tend to shine in Nolan films. As far as career awards go, I don’t have the energy or inclination to get mad about this one; I just think the nominees should have been better.

    Actress in a leading role

    Campaign: This was the only acting category with any uncertainty. Both Emma Stone and Lily Gladstone took major precursor awards, and if Lily Gladstone had been white, that she took the SAG award should have been a solid lead. But Lily Gladstone didn’t even get a BAFTA nomination, and that tipped me off to her probable loss (as well as Letterboxd’s fondness for Poor Things; there’s a lot of industry professionals on there). I’m not sure what the overlap in the voter base is between the two awards, but the BAFTAs and the Oscars have one major thing in common beyond who votes in both: a bigoted voter base.

    I’m sure a lot of people will point to Lily Gladstone not campaigning for Supporting Actress for her loss. It’s a convenient excuse, but BIPOC actors, especially with marginalized genders (Lily Gladstone uses she/they pronouns), never have stationary, fair goalposts. I suspect another excuse would have popped up if this one hadn’t.

    Personal reaction: This win was the biggest reason why I didn’t want to watch live updates this year. It’s a terrible, boring choice on the part of the Academy. Poor Things was a visually-beautiful film propping up gross amount of misogyny and ableism. Emma Stone’s performance was obvious in a way the Oscars like. Why award good when you can award big and loud, especially when it props up your own bigotry?

    Actress in a supporting role

    Campaign: This basically had Da’Vine Joy Randolph’s name engraved on the Oscar in advance. Well-run campaign for a deserving performance.

    Personal reaction: I think this was the best round of nominees out of any acting category this year. Saying America Ferrera was probably the most-underwhelming of the bunch is wild when she’s such a soild performer. (I hated her Barbie monologue, but she did what she could with it.) Danielle Brooks was the most obvious nominee out of a massively-solid Color Purple cast, Emily Blunt was one of the better women-in-a-Nolan-film actresses, and Jodie Foster surprised me in a generally-underwhelming Nyad. But Da’Vine Joy Randolph was definitely my favorite.

    Animated feature film

    The Boy and the Heron was a good winner here, even if I think it should have bumped something like Maestro for a Best Picture nod. (I hate how animated films get siloed.) I thought Spider-Man had a solid chance, but I wasn’t a huge fan. Disney-Pixar really dropped the ball this year; I liked Elemental, but very few people did, and it was certainly the most flawed of their nominees in a while. I’m not surprised that my pick of Nimona didn’t win; I’m just glad it seemed to do well this award season. Robot Dreams had a really late, limited release, so it never really had a chance.

    Cinematography

    Another Oppenheimer win. Not a surprise or an insult. I didn’t feel too strongly about most of the nominees this year, but I didn’t even begrudge Maestro’s presence here. Could have been better, could have been worse.

    Costume design

    Not surprised Poor Things won, and it’s one of the least-offensive spaces for it to win, but my pick would have absolutely been Barbie. People really underestimate movies using preexisting fashion for this award.

    Directing

    Campaign: Christopher Nolan won the DGA, and Oppenheimer was always the favorite for Best Picture, and that meant he was a pretty solid lock for this. I’m annoyed and completely unsurprised he won the year he did a biopic instead of genre.

    Personal reaction: I like a lot of Christopher Nolan films! I don’t like Oppenheimer, but it’s better than Maestro and Poor Things. I think my pick out of the nominees would have been Jonathan Glazer for The Zone of Interest, but there was no way a movie that challenging would pick up a major award like this.

    Documentary feature

    I didn’t get to any this year, so no opinions on my favorites. 20 Days in Mariupol is on YouTube for free in its entirety, so I’m curious if that helped its chances. I would love to know if freer access to nominees aids in campaigning, especially for ~smaller awards. (I don’t believe in smaller awards, personally, but the Oscars treats picture, director, actors, and screenplay as their big ones.)

    Documentary short

    The one nominee I didn’t watch in this category won. Figures!

    Film editing

    Another Oppenheimer win, not undeserved; the pacing in that movie and juggling of multiple storylines while staying coherent is not easy. My pick would have been Killers of the Flower Moon—for better or worse, the editing made a long movie bearable—but I’m not mad.

    International feature film

    This is always such a weird category. I don’t object to having more inclusion for non-Hollywood films, but the Academy uses this to silo foreign-language film while often awarding the more palatable countries. I only saw Zone of Interest in this category, but it was good quality, at least.

    Makeup and hairstyling

    That Poor Things’s win here is one of the most palatable options to me shows how bad the nominees were this year. (Thankfully, Golda and Maestro didn’t win.) But I bet they mostly won for Willem Dafoe’s visible scars, and I don’t feel uncomplicated about that. It’s deeply silly to me that Barbie didn’t get nominated here.

    Music (original score)

    I didn’t feel too strongly about any nominees this year in terms of quality; I barely noticed scores in most movies I watched, except Killers of the Flower Moon, which I found a bit obtrusive. Oppenheimer’s an okay choice; Ludwig Göransson did the music on Community and produced some Childish Gambino as a result, so I’m kind of tickled by his win here.

    Music (original song)

    What Was I Made For? was my choice and winner! Wild how young Billie Eilish is with two Oscar wins.

    I watched the I’m Just Ken performance and it was a lot of fun! I wish Jack Black’s Peaches had been nominated so that could have had a performance, too. Shame that Tenacious D’s cover of Baby One More Time can’t be eligible for next year’s awards.

    Best Picture

    Anyone paying five seconds of attention to the campaign would have known Oppenheimer was going to win here. I didn’t agree with the choice, but it could have been worse. (If you didn’t see my last Oscars post, I ranked Best Picture nominees there.)

    Production design

    Again, a Poor Things win I’m not offended by. I think Barbie and Killers of the Flower Moon were also very worthy contenders.

    Animated short film

    Didn’t manage to catch any of the nominees this year. Shame.

    Live action short film

    I only saw Henry Sugar and The After, but The After wasn’t very good, and I think Wes Anderson should have been in longer-form categories for Asteroid City instead, if he got nominated at all. Still, I can’t believe this is his first Oscar win! Maybe Bradley Cooper should go short form if he’s that thirsty for gold.

    Sound

    Basically everyone who saw The Zone of Interest mentioned its sound, and it makes sense; sound was obviously crucial to its storytelling in a way that is uncommon for the average movie. It definitely would have been my pick for the category.

    Looking at the nominees, it’s interesting that multiple people are nominated for multiple movies: Tom Ozanich and Dean Zupancic both got nominated for The Creator and Maestro, and Richard King got nominated for Maestro and Oppenheimer. Hollywood really is a small world.

    Visual effects

    Decent win for Godzilla Minus One. I haven’t seen it, but it was a small team working on a small budget for a non-Hollywood film, and I’ve heard the VFX was very effective.

    This is a category that has a lot of mistreatment built in; a lot of the biggest-budget films will be effects heavy, not hire directors who have effects experience or value things like storyboarding, and exploit their employees to a ridiculous degree. Disney-Marvel’s the worst origin of the problem, so it’s impossible to see a nod for Guardians of the Galaxy 3 and not think of it.

    Godzilla Minus One is not immune to these accusations either. This Vulture article has the director speaking directly about mistreatment in Japan and how their in-house studio handled things. (Apologies for the paywall.) With the budget and the probable timeline, it seems likely the workers weren’t paid enough, and the director being one of the winners for the VFX award after prior VFX industry experience meant he probably knew what he could get away with. I don’t want to ignore the probable problems here! That this is a good win in a Hollywood context shows how hard VFX artists have it (and also, how tough capitalism is on its workers both in the US and in Japan), not a sign of positive growth.

    I just think people should aim for better. No, Hollywood shouldn’t have budgets in the hundreds of millions and pay a bunch of VFX teams peanuts with dangerous amounts of crunch built in. But a small team doing a lot of a film’s heavy lifting should get a decent chunk of upfront budget and good backend, too. Pay labor what they’re worth, and don’t kill them in the process!

    Writing (adapted screenplay)

    American Fiction was my choice for this category, so I was happy to see its win! A lot of films have one element that stands above the rest, and for me, American Fiction’s was in its writing. Which is appropriate for a movie about writing. It’s definitely a writers-love-stories-about-writing win.

    Writing (original screenplay)

    Anatomy of a Fall wasn’t my choice, but I’m not surprised it won. Screenplay often goes to writer-directors who get nominated for things like Best Picture/Director but have no real chance at those awards in a particular year. Amount of nominations and how many are in the ~big categories matters for overall wins. Anatomy of a Fall had Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Actress besides. Screenplay is kind of an honorable mention win, in that context? This also applies to American Fiction a bit: it got Best Picture and Lead/Supporting Actor nods.

    That’s not to say neither screenplay was deserving! Even if I wasn’t into Anatomy of a Fall, I thought it was trying interesting things. And a lot of nominations is no guarantee; Maestro was just bad, and its lack of wins despite nominations suggests that I’m not the only one who thought so. But the Academy loves politics and bigotry more than quality sometimes. Like, I thought Past Lives was a better screenplay than Anatomy of a Fall, but it didn’t get a director nod or any acting nods, and that happening when it was made by a Korean-Canadian director with a Korean-Canadian female character at its center is not a coincidence. Anatomy of a Fall had a female cowriter (who was also nominated for Director), so it’s an easy Diversity Win! for the Academy to point toward.

    Otherwise, it’s worth mentioning that this was an oddly-controversial category this year. I’d like to think May December’s diminished chances for this award and more awards broadly was because of the ethical qualms I mentioned in my broad 2023 movies post, but I don’t give Hollywood that much credit. May December was deliberately mocking the industry in a less-friendly way than American Fiction, and I think that’s what killed it.

    And I saw the Variety article about The Holdovers’s alleged plagiarism right after I put up my Oscars post, of course. (Hat tip to Sara for the link.) I haven’t done a comparison of the two sources myself, but if you’re interested, there’s a comparison document at the bottom. The behind-the-scenes on this was happening right around voting time, and the article’s drop was a big “this is why it isn’t winning” banner.

    A couple last thoughts

    I saw a lot of people say this was a good awards season, and I disagree. The Oscars deferred to a lot of its worst instincts on the majority of its predictable wins (of which there were far too many, if you like a good upset) and its surprises. I didn’t enjoy watching most of the nominees. The word “value” made it into a lot of my reviews, for better or worse.

    Obviously, it’s still early in the year, but I don’t have a lot of hope next year’s Oscars will be any better. COVID and bad practices around short-term illness/long-term disability are still affecting production (even if no one wants to think so), the SAG-AFTRA/WGA strikes have changed this year’s release schedule as much as last year’s, and studio heads would rather strike finished films out of existence rather than share them, to name just a few of the industry’s structural problems. Maybe there will be some actual thought about what’s going on; I do think there were some hints in this year’s nominees that Hollywood knows things are broken. But even if major course corrections happened quickly, it won’t be fast enough to save next year’s award season.

    But I don’t want to be right about this. I love the craft and creative expression of filmmakers, and there are always worthy contenders that get overlooked every year. There’s plenty of room for my doomer instincts to be wrong. I sincerely hope they are.

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