• movie reviews

    When Harry Met Sally

    Harry and Sally love the hell out of each other, but it takes a while to kick in. It’s not love at first sight. It’s total bafflement.

    Their lives are unrecognizable to one another. Harry is a cynical romantic who hits on his girlfriend’s best friend the day they meet; Sally takes it for granted there are no Sunday underwear because of God. Her earnestness is only matched by her specificity. When Sally sweetly lists out exactly how she wants her food prepared, she somehow isn’t annoying, and you can tell that people have loved to accommodate Sally her whole life. Harry should be immune, but he’s not, and he’s self-aware enough to find Sally’s effect on him queer. His gaze says “How the hell am I so attracted to this naive nutball?”

    Harry tries to put this complicated charming woman into a box he knows how to handle — like a one night stand — and she resists. Sally is so offended that he isn’t constrained to the same boundaries she respects.

    “Why can’t we just be friends?” asks Sally, to paraphrase.

    “Men and women can’t be friends without involving sex,” replies Harry, to state the main question of the movie.

    When they move on from that strange road trip, it’s years before they see each other again, but they do not forget.

    ~

    Sally and Harry meet again when both of them are in committed relationships. Harry is married happily, sort of. He’s still a cynic, but he has decided to engage with life in good faith, and Sally admires that about him.

    Despite his bluster and bark, Harry is such a good guy that he’s not taking any serious look at Sally yet. They’re a pleasant chance meeting on a flight from one place to another. They’re just traveling between places again, and they brush up against each other, and it couldn’t possibly turn into anything. They determine that means they can be friends. Just friends. At long last.

    But they’ve also been wondering that about one another for years. What would have happened if they had hooked up that night? Could it have changed the trajectories of their lives?

    ~

    Friendship love is my favorite love. The Greeks had a bunch of words for all the different kinds, but philia is the kind held between equals; it is brotherhood, it is your pinkie-locked bestie skipping beside you at the mall. Imagine spending a whole lifetime with your childhood best friend. If those endless summer days where the two wasted time, like, crawling around in a ditch, and playing hopscotch, and throwing rocks at fences could really last forever, what would that be like? Wouldn’t it be better if the two of you could also kiss sometimes? And make babies and a family and have a life together?

    ~

    Harry and Sally get close to one another after major breakups. Both of them thought they had forever. The next step should have been houses, kids, dogs, paying for college, grandkids…

    Instead, they find themselves facing their thirties mutually single. Harry and Sally aren’t traveling anymore, either. They’re both in New York City.

    At this point, they’ve bickered over the offensive idea of a relationship between the two of them so much, it almost feels like a challenge to stay platonic. And they really *like* the friendship. They don’t want to lose it.

    It seems impossible to conceive of the friendship coexisting with a romantic relationship. They’ve both been hurt by love. Harry’s wife left him for an accountant; Sally’s long-term guy married his secretary shortly after their breakup. As far as either of them are concerned, relationships are where love goes to die.

    Still. They have been enjoying their friendship enormously. Their conversations are play. They’re always walking together, confiding in one another, and sharing experiences.

    When Sally tells Harry she’s going to date someone else, she wants him to have a problem with it.

    When Harry tells her it’s okay, it’s obviously not.

    “We’re just friends,” sayeth Harry. Because that is something men and women can do now.

    ~

    Is there anything more satisfying than seeing a couple of idiots realize they’re in love?

    Harry and Sally can’t be with each other until they reconcile all their weird relationship ideas. They have to see their friends, General Leia and Bruno Kirby, have a relationship where they enjoy one another *and* have the love bits. They have to lose the friendship and realize that’s what they wanted from love all along, not so much the sexier bits or the romantic bits.

    How many heterosexual romances are so openly uneasy with the perceived cultural demands of heterosexual romance? Sally’s a Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus type, and if Harry were 35 (ish?) in the modern era, I’m scared to think about what his podcast subscriptions would look like. They’ve been told that whole parts of their selves should belong to friends, not lovers. Lovers are the people you try to escape before they wake up in the morning. Lovers are the people you take skiing trips with. Lovers are the ones you fake orgasms for.

    These adorable fools are all heart, no matter how many walls they put up. Harry is sickeningly in love with Sally. All of her, especially the quirks. He thinks that it would be great to be friends who make out and have a family. Of course he does! Sally is Meg Goddamn Ryan.

    And imagine. Once these two finally get their shit together, they get to spend the rest of their lives with their best friends.

    ~

    He and I met in 2006. I was starting at my new job as a computer operator; he was already working there as a student worker. It was so naughty for a full-time employee like me to date a student worker, even though I’m several months younger than him. When I walked away from him, he chased; when he caught me, I was the one who said, “Ah ha, I’ve got you.”

    It must have been inevitable. We were the only two young people working in that building. There was no reason for the two of us to be such a perfect fit. I wasn’t a perfect fit anywhere, sticking out like a sore thumb. He blended in anywhere, but wasn’t a fit inside of himself. I helped him be naughtier. He tied a weight around my ankles so I wouldn’t float into the clouds as often. But we had so much fun. We ran around like children getting into trouble–we were children–and he loved me so hard, I eventually forgot to hate myself.

    ~

    In my eyes, When Harry Met Sally eclipses and predominates the whole of its genre. The story is very dear to me, but When Harry Met Sally is also just a really well-written screenplay in the hands of a great director. Rob Reiner is a genius. Nora Ephron is at her vibey best.

    Then we have a flawless Billy Crystal, who gives a performance with pining eyes that rival Colin Firth’s. That’s right. You wouldn’t necessarily expect that from the guy who wrote America’s Sweethearts, a black comedy take on romcoms. He manages to bring so much charisma to a character who should be nothing but caustic. The way he plays Harry’s cynicism softening for Sally should be cinematic legend if it isn’t.

    I couldn’t sing Meg Ryan’s praises enough. Apparently her character’s picky qualities came from Nora Ephron. There’s a lot of fondness in the screenplay for the kind of woman who knows what she wants, and I’m not sure Meg Ryan is capable of playing someone I wouldn’t want to hang out with. She’s just so cute. And it’s fun seeing her in this movie, because she looks a whole lot like her son Jack Quaid wearing a wig. They have the same smile.

    You should also remember that Rob Reiner is the cowriter and director of This Is Spinal Tap. The comedy is *outstanding*. The dialogue snaps along, and it still makes me laugh every time.

    Since I’ve been watching so many new-to-me movies and enjoying the heck out of them, I wondered if I wouldn’t like my “old classics” as much. Like, would having a broader view of the genre change my extremely intense feelings about this? And the answer is no. When Harry Met Sally remains the perfect movie for watching any time in the period between autumn and New Year’s Eve, and it makes me love these two neurotic weirdos even more every time.

  • credit: Netflix
    movie reviews

    Christmas Inheritance (2017) ***

    Hallmark-style Christmas romances are probably best framed in that way, rather than actually summarizing the plot. This is one of those genres where predictability is considered a feature rather than a bug. I tell you it’s a Hallmark-style small town Christmas romance where an heiress visits her dad’s hometown and falls for an artist/innkeeper, you can imagine every beat.

    All of the expected occurs. The movie stands on its marks when it’s supposed to, and there are no major disappointments. Indeed, this is the rare small town romance that acknowledges unhoused people. Usually small town romances seem to happen in a fantasy land with no relation to reality. This one peeked into reality long enough to say, “Maybe we treat everyone like humans who exist in our idyllic small town?” and I appreciated it.

    Otherwise there is really nothing to be said about this. It’s a Hallmark-style movie about a Hallmark-style heiress and they live Happily Ever After. It helped me realize I definitely prefer Christmas romance movies that have an emphasis on the com, though. My personal taste is for louder comedy. Or any comedy. This was a pretty sedate romance.

    I really liked this hero, though. Dudeface is a normal looking- and acting-dude on the outside, but he’s a deranged little Christmas weirdo and the actor doesn’t seem to realize it in the portrayal. It’s objectively hilarious to get sad about your ex and listen to “Silent Night” loudly in the office. He sits around sadly drawing Christmas stuff, like reindeer. He’s kind of a little defensive shit when he learns the heroine kept a secret, but it feels appropriate to this man’s emotional coping level. When someone is angrily drawing kitschy Santa Clauses… I don’t know man. That’s weird. I love weird. The Hallmarky dedication to a Christmas theme has entered such surrealist territory that I had to get on board.

    His main appeal to the heroine is that he’s really caring toward his community, and I love a nurturing hero. Plus, our heroine gave a really good performance that seemed naive but sincere, rather than spoiled, so they were a cute match.

    It’s important to note that Andie MacDowell accidentally brings smoldering lesbian bakery energy to the kitchen with Clarke from The 100. Of late, Andie MacDowell has taken up the career of a working actor, and she appears in all sorts of commercial projects to do a professional, sexy job, looking hotter than I’ve ever seen her, and it’s actually possible there’s no chemistry between them but I’m just feeling gay for Andie MacDowell.

    As I always say, a movie is queer cinema if it gives me queer feelings, but again: our heroine is Clarke from The 100 (pronounced “The Hundred”), who is a bisexual icon. Just because Clarke (both the heroine and actress have a name too) is only in a wispy brief love triangle with two men in this movie doesn’t erase the fact I know Clarke wanted to scissor Andie MacDowell the whole time. Bakery milf/heiress energy? Anyone on board with me? No? Just me, as usual? Okay, cool.

    Anyway, I’ve been watching so much Christmas romance lately that I feel comfortable saying this is a mid movie in the genre, no matter how often it lets me see Clarke’s muscular thighs and Clarke’s generous rack and think about Clarke ~baking ~cookies with Milfy MacDowell.

    If you wanna see a woman transform her environment with kindness, pop over to Last Holiday. If you want small town, watch Single All the Way because it’s gay and it has Jennifer Coolidge. If you want bisexual heroine energy, try Christmas With You. If you wanna see Andie McDowell, google.

    (image credit: Netflix)

  • sara reads the feed

    My bff caffeine, Indian folk metal, hello darkness my old friend

    If you’re in America, did you know the CDC says you should be masking again?

    Broad rejection of masking, to me, feels like I am living in an entire country of people who don’t wanna wear a condom because “it feels better bare, baby” and “I’m clean, I don’t got nothing, look at me.” As if you cannot spread many, many STIs without visible symptoms and as if feeling good during this social interaction is more important than avoiding life-threatening illness.

    When I’m plowing your wife, I use a dental dam and gloves, and when you go out to visit family this winter, wear masks. Don’t spread gross stuff. That’s a public health message from your friendly neighborhood dirtbag.

    ~

    It feels “right” to be cutting myself off of caffeine over the course of the longest nights of the year. I’m so much slower and less productive. Taking this week to curtail myself really highlights how much of 2023 has been a flurry of creativity mostly because I’ve been abusing caffeine. I’m bummed to go a week without barfing out drawings and crochet, but I need this. Everyone needs breaks.

    I used to drink caffeine heavily to be productive, but I’m talking about “before I had kids.” I had to quit while pregnant both times (which was awful) and I didn’t love the caffeine in my milk when I was breastfeeding. Plus I’m really sensitive to it anyway; usually after a few days of slamming too much caffeine, I don’t sleep *at all* and I’m not productive anymore.

    This year I cracked the fact that if I’m not sleeping on caffeine, it’s because I’m deficient elsewhere (iron, the B-complex of vitamins, magnesium) so I’ve been abusing the heck out of it, to beautiful results.

    But everything doesn’t grow all the time. The echeveria in my windowsill has been drooping because her florets always face the line of the sun, and the sun has been sweeping just over the horizon. So her florets are basically sitting on the shelf. She drops the leaves that she can’t support with winter sunlight. Even my winter cacti have kinda said “fuck it” to flowering right now.

    Everyone’s asleep. I should sleep too. Humans aren’t meant to be “on” and growing all the time.

    ~

    Yesterday YouTube recommended this delightful song to me. It’s self-identified as Indian folk metal, and the screamed chorus of “de dana dan” is so catchy. It means “bring the beatdown.” It’s pronounced like “die, danadan DIE, danadan DIE” in the song, which means it sounds about right for the message in English too. The whole song is about kicking the crap out of abusers, which I think is a beautiful, wholesome message that clearly transcends language barriers, although the multilingual performance is excellent.

    ~

    It’s fun seeing how the diet industry has about-faced to insist upon the medicalization of fatness. This article from NPR about Oprah and Weight Watchers is full of the exact same diet industry nonsense I’ve seen my entire life. We’ve always seized upon the HOT NEW THING and claimed that someone can sell us the solution to the problem.

    Here we are claiming that it was wrong to blame everyone’s willpower (okay) but now it’s right to treat it just like a disease and use medication (um). WW is saying, “omg we were so bad and naughty about our old diet industry bullshit but we know better now and won’t do it again uwu <3” while…doing the diet industry thing.

    At this point, after a life of eating disorders, decades of unfortunately studying dietetics for ways to punish myself and rationalize that punishment, and maintaining a personality that is 50/50 fatphobic and fatloving (based on how mentally healthy I am at the moment), the actual problem seems obvious to me: Society is a fucking mess, we drive a lot and don’t move a ton, it’s easy to eat calorically dense foods, and stressed-out people are gonna eat more. Society keeps us perpetually stressed without relief.

    Of course WW wants to sell a solution to something it literally cannot solve. So I guess nothing has changed here. I shrug and wait for the diet industry to change again. Fat, carbs, salt, semaglutide, shaking your butt with an old timey machine wearing high heels, god only knows. A healthy human is a happy human and our society isn’t happy.

    ~

    Threats of a Tarantino Trek movie have been haunting the community for a while. Variety describes a pitch for a violent, bloody movie with swear words.

    Tarantino is one of those directors I think is *so interesting* that I was actually kinda vibing on the idea. You never know who’s a proper trek nerd! But this description sounds bad frankly. I’m sad we didn’t get it. lmao. I love interestingly bad things!

    My ethos with adaptations/additions/sequels to things I loved is that nothing can ruin the original. They can fuck around all they want, and I can just hide in the wholesome comforts of Star Trek IV if I don’t like it.

    ~

    On Twitter, Master Replicas announced a coming Moopsy plush. AhhhhHHHHH!

    ~

    Once border battles hurt the rich white people, the rich white people thrash on the ground and whine. “What about US?” (The New Yorker)

    ~

    Meanwhile AJE reports that Sri Lankan tourism is improving after a crisis. I have super mixed feelings about tourism as an industry since realizing how destructive/predatory tourism tends to be, but it’s also the main income for a lotta places at this point. So I guess I’m just watching and scratching my head for now.

    ~

    I’m a little behind on news I wanted to share. China’s had a really awful earthquake. This is an older update from AJE (like a day or so ago), but I don’t have a more recent article to link offhand.

    ~

    Psyche always has good reads. This one is relevant to the season: “At what point does the Santa myth become a harmful deception?

    I was wounded enough learning my parents were messing with me that I originally planned to keep no secrets from my kids. We weren’t gonna do the Santa thing. Then I had little kids. I realized babies don’t care, and toddlers/preschoolers have no differentiation between reality and fantasy. Santa’s like Batman to them.

    So we just chugged along doing Santa until Moonlight said “I know Santa isn’t real” and now Sunshine knows, and has told me he knows, but also has such a loose relationship with reality that he doesn’t seem to care. God, what a vibe.

    ~

    Tor shares the trailer for Daniel Kaluuya’s directorial debut. I didn’t know he was interested in stuff behind the camera! You’ll often see this with TV show actors whose contracts restrict them from acting in competing projects. They take up the directorial lens to expand their skills and further their career. I don’t think I see it in movies as much, but good for Kaluuya! I’m excited to see what his eye is like.

    ~

    BookRiot reports on legislative action to fight the sweep of book bans.

    ~

    The Jiggly Wiggly Space Tiggly has an amazing look at Uranus. No pun intended, but always accepted. (Engadget)

    (I don’t like James Webb so I don’t call the telescope by his name.)

    ~

    Here’s an awesome article from Ars Technica about worm-murdering fungi.

    When it senses a live worm, it will trap its victim and consume it alive—pure nightmare fuel. …Led by molecular biologist Hung-Che Lin, the research team discovered that the fungus synthesizes a sort of worm adhesive and additional trapping proteins to get ahold of its meal. It then produces enzymes that break down the worm so it can start feasting.

    Recently I also learned that fungi can foment ice formation, so I’m just kinda more in love with the mycelial world than ever.

    ~

    Variety is happy to share the news that actor Kate Micucci is cancer-free.

    ~

    Amazon has acquired the rights to WH40k movies and TV, and I am so used to seeing it stylized as 40k that it took me a minute to figure out what the title was saying. 40,000 what now?

    Henry Cavill is known to be a nerd. Reddit apocrypha says he cared a lot more about The Witcher’s canon than the show’s team, which is where that schism came from, allegedly. He is signed on to executive produce WH40k.

    WH40k in itself is such a criticism of massive systems like, say, corporate feudalists like Amazon, that I guess I’m just hoping for a pleasingly aesthetic interpretation more than a biting one. I’m sure they’ll just revel in the juicy violence.

    (The 40k in WH40k comes from sacrificing 40,000 people every day to an empire’s machine. Certain types of fans miss the nuances of this metaphor a lot.)

    ~

    Oof I really haven’t posted in a couple days. Did I even celebrate Chile rejecting a conservative constitution? (AJE)

    ~

    I have hundreds of articles to catch up on, so I’ll probably be back again soon. Happy Wednesday! I hope you’re unproductive!

  • Diaries,  writing

    Progressing on Dwarrow stuff for ATTBTM

    I spent a while yesterday working on nachīga, the language the Dwarrow use in my gothic fantasy novel. *Most* the work this new draft of the novel requires is actually on the Dwarrow, not the Àlvare, who are actually quite well developed.

    (I call dwarves Dwarrow for two reasons: Tolkien liked calling them Dwarrow, and also because “dwarf” means a lot of different things in English, including certain species of animals and a human skeletal disorder. Differentiating concepts linguistically should be done thoughtfully in fantasy, imo.)

    There’s so much work done on my Dwarrow that it’s easy for me to forget I’m missing some significant pieces. The Dwarrow were the first part of worldbuilding I did on this book, in fact. I wrote out this manifesto for the idea of how a society consciously aware of corruption and hierarchy might structure itself to prevent these things from growing.

    And that came about from thinking about Dwarf Fortress honestly – because in worldbuilding games, we take it for granted that we (the player/king/god) must provide every life form in our societies with food, housing, and medicine. But this is not the case in America and we find the idea revolting. We tell cultural stories about how unhoused people or those who are visibly ill are at fault for these qualities, villainizing the disfigured rather than the beautiful housed rulers who decided it’s okay some humans live this way.

    So I’ve got this weird manifesto about the society, I have maps, I have a lot of functional questions answered (levels of technology? applications of it? sanitation? fantasy mass transit?). But I actually didn’t do one of the most important parts of worldbuilding, which is the language itself for nachīga!

    It wasn’t essential to understand nachīga in the first draft. I wanted time spent with the elves to feel alienating, hostile, and foreign, so I integrated a lot of conlang words initially in order to distance readers from these hoity-toity fair folk. Meanwhile, Dwarrow were supposed to feel like a homecoming: wrapped in a big blanket of warm acceptance. I used common names for things to make it easier to follow and feel more familiar.

    A long time ago, years now, I created the Àlvare language-first. Every value I wanted for my elves, I put into the language. Being excessively elaborate. Deliberately obscure. Musical. Information-dense. Curated. So you can see why it would then feel weird coming “backwards” for my Dwarrow to finally arrive at the point where I need to design a language reflecting values/etc that have been elaborated on elsewhere. It’s a distillation rather than a foundation.

    Lots of fun getting into nachīga, though. Once I’ve determined rules for phonology and grammar and stuff, I use a software called Vulgarlang to produce my vocabulary. I go from “scratching my head over rules and IPA symbols” to “1500 vocabulary words in the dictionary” in a few minutes. It’s *really* satisfying.

    Since I spent so much time doing thoughtful worldbuilding stuff yesterday, I think today I should write cartoon dragon p0rn.

  • movie reviews

    Five Christmas Romcoms Worth A Watch

    I like to spend the whole period between Halloween and Christmas watching Christmas movies. It’s not about great cinema; it’s about vibes.

    If you’re into vibe maintenance, you know what I’m talking about. You need the soundscape, the background colors, the ~mood~ that you can only get from a couple of people with really nice teeth falling in love adjacent to Christmas lights.

    Keeping a movie going on the TV is cozier than putting up a fake fireplace (slightly) but you can’t necessarily give a movie more attention than a fake fireplace. It’s time to wrap presents. Your cat is on the wrapping paper. The kids want to open another bottle of sparkling cider. You’re wondering if you can fit in the closet with the presents, without cats or kids.

    Right now you’re not keeping up with elaborate plots. Rewatching movies every year means you don’t have to. You always know when the good parts of When Harry Met Sally come around. If you miss it this year, you’ll see it next year.

    So when I put something new on my rewatch list, it has to be special. It has to endure revisiting every 12 months, but only being revisited with as much attention as Swiss has cheese. It has to be predictable enough that I don’t get too caught up in worrying over the characters’ drama. I appreciate good needle drops. I want over-decorated Christmas sets whenever possible.

    I found a few movies worth adding to the yearly rewatch list, so here’s my suggestions for a few you may or may not have in rotation.

    5. Single All the Way

    If you like the traditional Hallmark-style romance, you might appreciate this version that features a male couple. The simple fantasy of an accepting family in a cute town with affordable real estate prices should belong to all sexual orientations.

    From Christmas photo shoots, to excessive sweater-wearing, and Jennifer Coolidge over-directing a very dramatic Christmas play, Single All the Way has all the pretty things you could possibly want to ignore on your television.

    4. Four Christmases

    I think people skipped this once because it was advertised as a Vince Vaughn movie, and I bet you know what I mean when I say that. Bringing up Four Christmases in conversation made people say, “Isn’t that the one where the kid beats up Vince Vaughn?” and the fact I have to say “yeah, sorry, that’s the one” isn’t starting this recommendation off on the best foot.

    But that’s a pretty brief part of the movie, which is in service of drawing a picture about messy families – like the Vince Vaughn version of the cousins in My Big Fat Greek Wedding getting into trouble. It’s part of the process wherein Reese Witherspoon realizes she wants to have a family with Vince Vaughn. Their relationship is adorably nontraditional for holiday romances. I think long-time committed couples will especially appreciate how these two keep it fresh.

    It’s not the most vibey suggestion, but the central couple is so cute I have to recommend it. And I bet it’s not one of your favorites yet.

    3. What Happens Later

    This is the first year that What Happens Later has been eligible for watching, much less existing or rewatching, but I immediately gave it a position of honor on my mental shelf of Holiday Rewatches. Meg Ryan might be my favorite 90s/00s romcom darling, and my wifemommy is just as good as ever.

    Contemplative and moody, What Happens Later is a slow-paced conversation between two very charming actors enjoying one another’s company immensely. Although it gets sad here and there, it’s mostly a magical look at love later in life between sweet goofball Meg Ryan and a caustic bag of luggage played by David Duchovny.

    I read the stage play this was based upon before seeing the movie, and Meg Ryan did a wonderful job tweaking it just a bit to make the story warmer, but no less theatrical. This one will flow nicely in tone between more well-worn classics.

    2. Falling for Christmas

    Hear me out. Even if you like the Hallmarky Christmas movie subgenre, you might not love the idea of watching Lindsay Lohan; I know there were times in her life where she wasn’t delivering her best performances. But this woman is perfect in this movie. She is every corny pink-drenched atom of clueless heiress turned flannel stepmommy that you could ever possibly want.

    I’ve also watched enough holiday romances by now to realize that chemistry between the leads is entirely optional. These two are actually into each other somewhat. And despite dealing with the usual budgetary issues that Netflix holiday romances tangle with, they manage to get some good song moments, too. At some point you realize the movie has gone from silly-garish to an actual aesthetic, and it feels like you were transported onto a hot cocoa mix box logo when you weren’t paying attention. I love this one.

    1. Last Holiday

    Queen Latifah stars in an inspirational romance about celebrating life through grief. Sounds corny put that way? I’ve never met a movie that made me feel such a genuine outpouring of emotion. Queen Latifah absolutely destroys my soul with a beautiful performance, and the story is such heartfelt Christmas magic. Last Holiday is a great balance between my stylized platonic ideal of a Christmas movie and a flick that actually has stuff to say on a spiritual level. I *went places* watching this.

    The subplot I always think about is Queen Latifah with the woman who’s having an affair. Our heroine isn’t nice confronting this woman when the opportunity arises, but she’s extremely *kind*, and the blunt honesty transforms her life. I can’t describe how the bumps along that bit spoke to me, and that was just one of many very lovely moments packed into this.

    I’m convinced Last Holiday is the king of all Christmas romcoms. Somehow it totally flew under my radar until this year, and now I don’t want to live without it. I have to put it at the top of this list in case Last Holiday hasn’t graced your life yet. But maybe you already love this one too! I was surprised when I started talking about it and had folks coming out of the woodwork with superlatives.

    What kind of movies are your perpetual holiday rewatches?

  • sara reads the feed

    Principles of exercise, mental rest, and imperfectionism

    I’ve mentioned before that I see what traffic goes where on this site, so I know that people *generally* don’t read the posts I don’t link on social media, and I almost never link SRF posts. Nonetheless, I enjoy the effect of dailyish blogging. For one thing, my sibling often still reads it, and Rory’s basically the only audience I ever care about, period. It’s a nice way to bring up news articles I might forget to discuss. I prefer not to be super-duper verbal irl. It’s always been easier to communicate like this.

    Also, just writing informally like this each day is good for me. It feels very good in terms of my writing skills, which feels weird to say, given that I have written so many millions of words that it isn’t worth counting. I am now so deeply sunken into nonverbal hobbies like crochet that I can go hours barely even *thinking* words, much less trying to form a coherent message out of them.

    I suspect that doing link round-ups with little life updates is giving me more or less the benefits of journaling. I also journal. But that’s almost all doodles (and 50% of those doodles are penises and boobies) so YES, it’s just good to be writing each day in some format.

    If I were motivated, I would try to flog all my friends into starting blogs and tell them how good it feels to stay in the practice of casual writing. Epistolary relationship with the void? But tbh I just want everyone to start blogs so I can follow them there and spend less time on social media. 2005 internet, I still miss you, forever.

    ~

    My kids put together a couple of gingerbread houses today. My family is the opposite of perfectionist. For us it’s like, we keep at it for a few minutes while the experience is novel and we’re enjoying the Christmas vibes, but then we’re putting these barely-decorated gingerbread monstrosities on the shelf and eating the candy. God knows when we’ll remember to throw out the dusty carcasses of cat-licked half-decorated desiccated gingerbread houses.

    We’re weird disasters together so I feel VERY holidays right now.

    ~

    Blue Origin’s New Shepard rocket will return to flight tomorrow after over a year grounded (Engadget)

    ~

    In Surreal Portraits, Rafael Silveira Plunges Into the Mysteries of the Human Psyche (Colossal)

    ~

    Olly is going to Sweden for Eurovision 2024! Is this the year I care about Eurovision?? (Variety)

    ~

    Julia Roberts has opinions about her characters post-movie, shared with Entertainment Weekly. I have not gotten an impression that Roberts is actually fond of romcoms so I’m not surprised these are a little odd. Anna “maintained her waist size.” Mmm.

    ~

    The FDA is investigating whether lead in applesauce pouches was deliberately added (NPR)

    Yikes.

    ~

    Kuwait’s Emir Sheikh Nawaf has passed away at the age of 86. This isn’t an area of world politics I know much about. Here is Al Jazeera’s roundup of statements from other world leaders, and NPR’s obituary has some more information about his career from an American perspective.

    ~
    Pakistan is using artificial rain to fight pollution. (AJE) It’s interesting to hear about geoengineering remedies for such issues, but it sounds like areas of effect are limited, and I gotta wonder what happens once all those air contaminants are in the water supply.

    ~

    The Marginalian has a fascinating read comparing principles of exercise to writing. I think about this all the time! Actually, I compare principles of exercise to just about everything all the time.

    The one I think about most is overload: You need to push past your normal limits in order to grow. I personally think of it as “training to 120% of what you need to do.” If you’re Beyonce and wanna look Beyonce-sharp at Beychella, you can’t just rehearse for Beychella. You commit to an overall training plan that will make you physically capable of doing a performance 120% the size of Beychella, so Beychella is effortless.

    I think this 120% preparation principle probably applies to a few areas in life. I wouldn’t describe it as “overload” in regards to writing though. What I usually do is write at least 120% of the words that actually get published. For all the functional, useful words I write, I also write off in other directions to condition myself. (Fanfic, poetry, essays, movie reviews, etcetera.)

    Another useful principle is specificity: In order to get better at writing novels, you just gotta write novels. It’s also more granular than that. You get better at writing urban fantasy by writing UF. You get better writing close POV writing close POV. And if you *only* write those things, your skills are not *entirely* transferable; you will need to get specific to learn about writing romance if you’re coming from a thrillers-specific background.

    But I would argue the Principle of Rest is actually most important, and it’s the principle I’ve taken everywhere to extremely healing results. When you exercise (especially as you age) (and especially if you do high-stress stuff like heavy compound lifts), you need to rest in a very deliberate way. You can’t just keep running around willy nilly if you’re training for a marathon. You have to make sure you’re sleeping a lot, drinking a lot of water, doing light exercises to keep comfortable, and sometimes you don’t train at all. Sometimes between marathons, you might need to take off months! (I think I heard a marathoner gasp somewhere just when I typed it. But I said what I said.)

    The same thing goes with creativity. You can’t push-push-push, even when it feels great. You must consciously, deliberately rest from that kind of creative activity. You need things that help you turn off entirely. And you need stuff that refills your cup.

    If you’re a writer, you don’t need to do ice bath plunges out of a hot tub. What you might need is a week away from words occasionally. Stop writing and go for a bunch of walks. Take extra time to nap. Watch a bunch of trashy junk tv. Draw penises in your journal.

  • movie reviews

    Christmas With You (2022) *****

    I have to give five stars to a movie that makes me goofy-smile while watching it, hands clapped to my cheeks, happily rocking in my chair. This did it for me, and it’s not exclusively because I’ve been in love with Aimee Garcia since she was on Lucifer.

    This is a pretty standard Christmas romcom, so the tropes can really tell you what you need to know: heroine falls for the hero’s family, celebrity falls in love with small town guy, pop star collaborating with songwriter.

    I always like to say how it’s about execution rather than idea, and the execution here just works for me on all the levels. This is a very standard Christmas romance done simply and competently, in the best possible way.

    The director (who is a woman!) Gabriela Tagliavini did a beautiful, emotional, heartfelt job making this movie. The casting is all on-point. Lots of great performances. Lovely music. Warm, pretty cinematography. Open adoration for Latino culture. The story checks every single box I want checked in a Christmas romcom superlatively.

    Heck: even the Gen Zers are given fantasy fulfillment in this one. A 14-going-on-15 year old girl precipitates the meet cute between our H&h when the pop star notices Kiddo’s TikTok cover of her song. I love it.

    Heroine Aimee Garcia’s performance admittedly carries the movie. She’s so open and charismatic and you can see her character’s thoughts all over her face. This girl is *working*. The fact I feel Freddie Prinze Jr doesn’t meet her level is, I think, because he’s actually just playing the meek smalltown single Daddy so well. He sorta provided a more “real” performance in She’s All That relative to the stylized approach of the movie too; the more grounded approach here just kinda got a little outshined by all the pink sparklies and the pop star (as you would expect). They don’t have especially hot chemistry, but they are very warm and friendly, and I find that to be wholly appropriate for the holiday genre.

    I don’t really have anything to analyze here; this is exactly the kind of thing that lets me turn off and just relax and enjoy myself all the way.

    ~

    Fun fact: Aimee Garcia is a vampire. Freddie Prinze Jr is 47, and he looks about 47. I assumed this was a weird unremarked-upon age gap romance because Aimee Garcia surely had to be twenty years his junior. Nope! The woman is 45 years old. Since goddamn when? Twenty years from now? Can you believe I got through 400 words of review without talking about her ass in those leather pants? Wait, shit. Goddammit.

    (image credit: Netflix)