• sara reads the feed

    I’m in a dreadful mood, say grumpy things about movies, and kick rocks

    I’m working on a couple reviews right now that feel a little too big for my normal review format. Plus, they aren’t romcoms, so it doesn’t feel urgent.

    Birds of Prey: The Fabulous Emancipation of Harley Quinn was the last movie I saw in the theaters before the 2020 pandemic shutdowns, and for that reason alone, I hadn’t revisited it in ages. There was just a big flip in my life shortly after it came out. Now I feel like I can’t review it without talking about Suicide Squad, The Suicide Squad, and Barbie, because the four movies are all part of Margo Robbie’s search for a big IP girlboss feminism outlet.

    Lucy (2014) is another movie I saw in theaters. This one comes from the days where I would watch anything in the theater, and I didn’t know Luc Besson married a fucking child, so I thought seeing another action movie from the guy who made The Fifth Element would be interesting. Lucy completely baffled me in 2014. Even knowing I would hate it, I wanted to know what I missed, so I watched again.

    I’ve now taken enough drugs and encountered enough rapist abusers to parse the movie, and I have a *real* angry review to write about it. I just don’t know where to start when I’m this disgusted.

    Anyhoo those reviews will be coming at *some* point.

    ~

    My mood is really negative today because I’m having health problems. I need to take time to reorient myself in love and peace because I’m also deciding to withdraw on Substances (namely mood-boosters cannabis and caffeine) so it’s going to be a lotta feeling real crappy for a minute. Right now, you’re getting the crabbiest read of the news possible.

    ~

    Balloon Juice has a current covid news roundup. The tl;dr is that you should be masking again if you stopped.

    ~

    Variety rounds up tributes to Andre Braugher from Brooklyn 99 cast members. My heart hurts, so I’m glad I got to laugh at this story.

    “Insecure” showrunner Prentice Penny, who also wrote for “Brooklyn Nine-Nine,” recalled an on-set memory between himself, Crews and Braugher: “He was so warm with us and then when a white person would walk by, he’d look serious again. He then leaned in and said ‘Gotta keep ‘em on they toes.’”

    ~

    Brian Cox reads a poem by Palestinian teacher Refaat Alareer. Sorry for the twt link.

    ~

    Guttation is one of my favorite things my plants do, and I don’t actually love this art. (Colossal) It feels meant to evoke gross-out feelings with the drippy look of the statues, and the amount of guttation depicted.

    To me, guttation is a graceful thing, a happy thing my plants do when I’m tending them well. I have occasionally reached out my tongue to take a tiny drop of guttation off a philodendron leaf. I don’t poison my plants with pesticides or anything, and a tiny drop has a lot of flavors from something inedible, and it feels precious to be able to taste it. Or I will take the guttation on my finger and see how it streaks like a tear. Guttation feels sweet and intimate to me, but these sculptures feel loud, gross, and visceral–something I’d enjoy, probably, if framed by anything besides guttation.

    ~

    Extremely rich man James Cameron is talking about his jerk-off project to people who just can’t wait to hear what extremely rich man is doing to waste money next. (Variety) Apparently Avatar 3 is going to be more complex. I assume that means he’s going to double down on being racist and tell an even worse story about it.

    If you’d like to hear about how he wasted money in the past, there’s also an article about hiring short people to make his Titanic set look bigger. I feel like there’s a dirty joke waiting to happen here. I’ll get back to you later.

    ~

    This article about ChatGPT getting “lazy” (Ars Technical) is thought-provoking to me, because marketing really, really wants us to attribute humanlike qualities to ChatGPT and it’s succeeding. We talk about large language models hallucinating, we conveniently like to pretend it isn’t stealing from everyone, and people keep acting like these things learn.

    It’s similar to the fallacies that lead us to compare human brains to computers, when they don’t work similarly even a little bit. Psychological pareidolia is natural to us; we humanize everything instinctively. It’s adorable. Marketing is taking advantage of it, and we’re just letting them do it.

    ~

    Variety again: Anne Hathaway is right to say that she couldn’t have done Barbie instead of Margot Robbie, though I think Hathaway does have the look/charm. She’s simply not on the girlboss feminist arc Margot Robbie has been. Literally only Margot Robbie, coming out of her experiences with WB as Harley Quinn, could have made Barbie the way it turned out, and people seem really happy with its level of engagement with gender issues.

    They also note that Hathaway would have been Black Cat in Raimi’s Spider-Man 4, which means there’s no universe where we don’t get subjected to an extremely shallow portrayal of a feline-themed comic book character by extremely flat Hathaway, who is much more Barbie Comics than DC Comics. (No insult.)

    ~

    Chain pharmacies are bootlickers who will give cops anything they want without a warrant. (Engadget)

    ~

    “Ew, animal sacrifice from ancient cultures!” says the title of a blog published within a culture that lives off meaningless mass death. (Ars Technica)

    It’s a good read after the title, though.

    Ancient writings describe equid sacrifices in the Mediterranean, sometimes involving hundreds of animals, but there had previously not been much evidence to back this up. There were far fewer than a hundred at Casas del Turuñuelo, although most were equids. The ages of all sacrifices at their time of death were estimated by signs of wear on their teeth. Most were found to have been male working animals in the prime of life, and eight of them had wear caused by iron bits found in their mouths. This provides further evidence for them having been used for war, transportation, or agricultural work.

    Something that stood out in Phase 1 was that the equids in that phase had evidently been sacrificed in pairs or at least positioned that way postmortem. The archaeologists suggest they might have pulled carts together before death. There was also an instance in Phase 2 where the necks of two skeletons were crossed in the center of what was once a courtyard. Whether this was part of a ritual associated with either a deity or the afterlife of a deceased owner is unknown.

    Why horses, in particular, were sacrificed remains an open question. The researchers think there is a possibility that they were used in a funerary sacrifice so the deceased could enter the afterlife alongside their loyal companions. This has been evidenced in other ancient cultures, such as the Scythians of what is now Russia and Ukraine, who would sacrifice horses at a funeral. Whether this was the case for at least some of the equids at Casas del Turuñuelo is still a mystery.

    ~

    The New Yorker spends more time reviewing Wonka than I would bother, and it sounds like what it looked like in the trailers.

    ~

    My absolute favorite read of the week was this article about a mother helping her local addict community with harm reduction. It’s wonderful, meaningful work, and NPR handled it with great sensitivity.

    Renae occasionally monitors illegal drug use at her home for Christina and a few dozen other people she’s grown close to over the years. It’s an informal, rarely discussed version of the controversial overdose prevention centers, also known as supervised consumption sites, where trained staff supervise people using drugs. Those clinics are endorsed by the American Medical Association and other leading medical groups but condemned by critics who say they sanction, even endorse, drug use.

    Heavy but good read. Very human. Very loving.

    ~

    Fun photos over here on Al Jazeera English: A new kind of quinceañera celebration — for Mexico’s elderly

  • source: Miramax films
    movie reviews

    She’s All That (1999) *****

    Does any movie get more nineties than this one? Saying “after losing his girl to a Real World star, Freddie Prinze Junior does hackey-sack on stage at a slam poetry event” makes me feel so nineties, I just exploded in neon abstracts and skateboarded away listening to ska music.

    She’s All That is one of those cultural touchstones for for a generation that I missed out on. I was just a little too young for the movie, and my older sibling didn’t care for it either, so I wasn’t exposed until I spotted it on Netflix. Back in the 00s, the fake-bet-relationship movie we loved was Shakespearean 10 Things I Hate About You.

    (Interestingly, 10 Things came out of the same year as She’s All That, sort of like when Antz and A Bug’s Life came out in the same year, or Repo Men and Repo! The Genetic Opera, or Dante’s Peak and Volcano.)

    10 Things was an adaptation of Taming of the Shrew, but She’s All That considers itself a Pygmalion story. It cares more about the disparate classes of the heroine and hero than the heroine’s difficult personality. Freddie Prinze Jr’s character is both prince and fairy godmother; his belief in Laney helps make her transform into the princess version of herself. In the end, Laney remarks that she feels like Julia Roberts in Pretty Woman (but not a sex worker), which means she’s talking about the Pygmalion elements.

    The movie is telling us what it means to be about, and I think that’s interesting because it’s not really the impact. The actual impact on culture for She’s All That was becoming iconic for the ugly-girl-turns-hot trope. You know, when we pretend a normal- or hot-looking woman is ugly/unattractive/undesirable because of her hair and glasses.

    I hadn’t seen this movie before, but I saw the parody in Not Another Teen Movie. So I was surprised that She’s All That *wasn’t* the worst iteration of the trope. Laney has been struggling with low self-esteem, congested creativity, and sometimes insults herself out loud. Darling young Anna Paquin acknowledges that post-makeover Laney isn’t really improved, just different.

    The actual change isn’t a haircut, contact lenses, and higher contrast makeup. It’s Laney deciding to participate in the world.

    In fact, it’s a lot like the execution of the same trope with Toula in My Big Fat Greek Wedding. It’s not that Toula wasn’t hot before. She just believed her family calling her some dowdy old woman and put herself out to pasture. Laney has put herself out to pasture because of grief.

    The heartfelt element of Laney’s journey is probably why She’s All That originally resonated with audiences. Freddie Prinze Junior is a pitch-perfect pining hero, too.

    Including a dance scene from Matthew Lillard and prom choreography echoing West Side Story adds just enough camp to keep disbelief suspended. This was really a nice mix of sincere and silly, plus some 90s gross-out humor I couldn’t handle in the era and still kinda don’t love.

    Don’t look away when they’re in the cafeteria. This movie was shot at Torrance High School, the same school used in Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and Sarah Michelle Gellar makes an appearance in costume as Buffy the Vampire Slayer. SMG doesn’t just share fictional high schools with the movie, either. She’s still married to Freddie Prinze Junior. Awww. That means Buffy gets pining love eyes from Zack Siler to this day. <3

    (image source: Miramax Films)

  • sara reads the feed

    Migraine, labor history and present, cool use for sisal

    A migraine has set in right behind my left eye. This looks to be the third day with the migraine in residence. I am grumpy, I don’t like anything, if you touch me I might bite you.

    ~

    People are mad, but Sophie Coppola claims she tried not to make Elvis the villain in Priscilla. (Variety)

    Well, if Elvis didn’t want a legacy as an abuser, maybe he shouldn’t have groomed and abused an underaged woman.

    Maybe folks should be mad that culture has put us in a place to lionize abusers so that we feel compelled to take up defense of abusers when we learn they are abusers, instead of turning to embrace the survivors.

    ~

    This day in labor history… (Lawyers, Guns, & Money)

    ~

    Captive in a chicken coop: The plight of debt bondage workers (NPR)

    Note that bonded labor is illegal in India, but persists.

    Although the Indian parliament banned bonded labor in 1976 for infringing on human rights, it was never fully eliminated. Bodies like the International Labour Organization documented a reduction in the prevalence of bonded labor but found that it continued in various forms in rural areas, often targeting people from communities that were marginalized by India’s caste system.

    …Earth’s changing climate forced more people to seek these “debt bondage” jobs, researchers say. When local harvests fail due to drought, workers on these farms may feel they have no option other than to travel to places where they can earn a living, even if that means they must agree to forced labor conditions.

    And paying back the contractors is more difficult now as well. Record levels of heat may mean the bonded laborers can’t put in as many outdoor hours or may have to work at a slower pace… The sugar industry – India was the leading global sugar producer until last year – has been hit by an increasing number of droughts that have taken a toll on a crop that consumes a lot of water.

    ~

    A Sinhala family drama called “Tentigo” is getting a Tamil remake in India, and the concept sounds amazing. You had me at dead guy penis family shenanigans. (Variety)

    ~

    Verizon fell for a fake search warrant and gave a woman’s stalker her info. He traveled several states to get arrested outside her home with a knife.

    I’m sure Verizon will respond with new bureaucracy and red tape, but none of that will matter. Cops are domestic abusers too, and everyone has an agenda of their own. Nobody should have access to this information. Privacy is critical.

    ~

    Julia Roberts turned down “You’ve Got Mail.” She thinks that “My Best Friend’s Wedding” deserves a sequel. (Variety)

    I don’t know that Roberts could have done YGM. She’s so charismatic and charming, but in a different way than Meg Ryan. I’d rather watch Meg Ryan performing mostly alone. She’s got this powerful physicality. Roberts is better when she’s opposite someone, imo.

    MBFW could have a sequel that is an actual romcom, sure. Because MBFW was a black comedy taking a perspective on a villainous female archetype, not a romcom.

    ~

    The FDA approved a CRISPR treatment for sickle cell, which is soooo cool. (Ars Technica)

    ~

    Digby’s Hullabaloo brings very important news to our feed readers with the birth of this new baby monkey.

    ~

    This Malaysian Oscar submission sounds rad. Puberty body horror? Gimme. (Variety)

    ~

    Sorry for the link to Twitter, but having one’s funeral with people dancing in the aisles and Nick Cave performing is the only church funeral aesthetic I’ll accept.

    ~

    Forced to become British: How Brexit created a new European diaspora (AJE)

    The traditional view of naturalisation, the process by which an immigrant becomes a full citizen, is that it’s the final step in the journey to integration. “But in the case of Brexit and Europeans in the UK, the opposite happened,” says Nando Sigona, co-lead of the Rebordering Britain & Britons after Brexit (MIGZEN) research project. “People hadn’t felt the need to naturalise because they felt safe and comfortable as Europeans in Britain. Now they were forced to naturalise to defend themselves.”

    The act of naturalisation, therefore, made people feel less “British” – or at least less “included” in the UK – rather than more.

    Instead of citizenship being a celebration of belonging, many Europeans have naturalised in a state of resentment and have felt even like they’re doing it under duress. “[Our interviews with Europeans] have found a complete lack of trust in the British state,” Sigona says.

    ~

    China is turning COVID quarantine centers into apartments for workers. (NPR) Even though China’s got a lot of *serious* issues as a state, I’m jealous of how they pull together massive public works and then have *something* to work with afterward. These flawed but tangible creations. It doesn’t feel like my government is even capable.

    ~

    Ars Technica talks using sisal as a fiber for homemade menstrual products. You know sisal rope: we wrap it around the cat trees because kitties love to claw it. I imagine it’s not as scrapey when repurposed for application to the cooterial region.

    Plus sisal is an invasive plant, so this is a good use.

    ~

    Alas, Chuck E. Cheese is eliminating the animatronic team in all but 1-2 locations. (NPR) It makes sense, but it’s weird how they didn’t even mention FNAF in the article. There’s just a huge chunk of culture that explicitly associates the animatronics with horror now, and there seems to be zero engagement with that. I guess they don’t have to consider it a part of their brand identity if they don’t want to, but kids’ horror is huge, and I think they’re missing out by not tucking away the robot mouse for use in the Halloween season.

  • credit: 20th Century Studios
    movie reviews

    Die Hard (1988) ****

    Dear Rory,

    I finally came up with a pitch for reviewing our favorite Christmas movie, Die Hard.

    Like I totally agree, there’s no point trying to give a traditional review to Die Hard. I don’t think I can come up with a better way to explain it than you did. Whatever interesting 1980s class commentary might happen irt blue collar figures versus the globalist corporate entity is super-numbed by the fact that cops don’t belong in the labor movement ever, at all, period. And I don’t think we’re at the point where we’re ready to tackle The Die Hard Problem (movies and TV making Black actors the face of the justice system to avoid engaging with the racial dynamics of our carceral system). That takes away a whole lotta more-substantial commentary on the flick. Maybe when I start watching 80s action movies?

    Anyhoodles, yes, the copaganda is way beyond the scope of this review, so I was thinking I should just treat it like it’s any other holiday romcom.

    I know what you’re thinking. People are bored of arguing about whether Die Hard is a Christmas movie.

    But are they bored of talking about Die Hard as a Christmas Romcom?

    The argument here isn’t, “Is it a Christmas romcom?” but rather, “Who’s the romantic pairing?” Right? I think that’s the argument for our review.

    Let me take a whack the pros and cons of each potential romantic hero for our central heroine, John McClane. (Obv he’d be the heroine; he’s kind of a manic pixie copboy who likes to frolic barefoot through the park broken glass.)

    Holly Gennaro: This is the second most obvious romantic hero for John. Holly’s his ex, and a lot of people love ex reunion stories. There are cute kids involved. Bringing a family back together is such a nice hopeful visual for the ending. Plus, Holly has to realize that John being a *massive* pain in the ass is endearing when it’s aimed at a villain, which is romantic character growth if I’ve ever heard it. Also, Bonnie Bedelia is sooo smokin.

    Sgt. Al Powell: The physically distant but emotionally intimate relationship between Al and John is reminiscent of classics like You’ve Got Mail, Serendipity, Your Place Or Mine, and The Holiday. They love each other long before they’ve ever locked eyes. John and Al are smooching atop the thin blue line. It’s romantic?

    Hans Gruber: My personal favorite and the most obvious pairing. As with Rock Hudson and Doris Day, we love seeing a couple with spicy chemistry. Entire romcoms are built on a couple arguing with each other. Nobody argues like Hans and John. The way they lob quips back and forth between each other is basically foreplay. Their playful banter once they finally meet blows the top off the building. Plus, dreamy Alan Rickman has a history being Austen heroes, so he’s got the chops to sweep a giggling John off his bloody feet.

    What do you think? People are going to love it if I write a review like this, right? I really think I’ve stumbled onto something genius here.

    Hope you’re having a great time six feet away from me, which I could know if I spoke to you instead of sending this email.

    Love, Sara

    (image credit: 20th Century Studios)

  • movie reviews

    The Proposal (2009) *

    I go into movies daring myself to like them, at least when I’m on a themed watch. I think it’s more work and more interesting to find reasons to like something that you ordinarily might not. The Proposal came out in 2009, a year when I was going to see basically every movie in the theater out of boredom, so I already watched and disliked this one. But 2009 was “early days” and my story literacy was much lower.

    If you asked me for a review of The Proposal in 2009, I would have said something like, “Everything is super sexist surrounding Sandra Bullock’s character and the end doesn’t resolve stuff right.”

    I expected to have a much more complicated reaction to this movie now. And my review is certainly wordier and more-informed.

    But basically, everything is super sexist and the end doesn’t resolve stuff right.

    In The Proposal, Sandra Bullock is a Canadian about to get deported from the United States despite her work visa because she fucked around and found out. She insists Canadians aren’t the type we’re trying to get out of the country. I think she actually said that immigration enforcement is only there for terrorists, which is the way women like Sandra Bullock in 2009 says “not white people.” ICE is a monstrosity that terrorizes loads of people and Bullock’s character is fine with that but it’s not supposed to terrorize her. She dismisses all the people out in the immigration waiting room as like gardeners and stuff. Sandra Bullock’s character is massively racist.

    Anyway, Bullock isn’t disliked at work because of her racism, but because she’s cold and work-driven and doesn’t fuck around with the feelings of people around her. This is another autism-coded Sandra Bullock character, like in Miss Congeniality, and yeah it all comes across super sexist. Her assistant, Ryan Reynolds, extremely insecure and defensive in his masculinity, runs around saying absurdly sexist things about this woman, and fostering an environment where everyone at work hates the powerful boss-lady.

    I think we’re supposed to feel bad for him that this racist woman involves a sexist guy for fraud. Bullock leverages her power bribe Reynolds into faking an immigration marriage with her. And now we’re off to the cute part of the movie? Where they fall in love? Presumably? I want them to both kill each other.

    It turns out Reynolds is ALSO RICH. We only care about rich people in this movie. I note this because class is a major element in romcoms! You often see cross-class romances because the fantasy of economic security gets a lot of people real horny, understandably. Bullock’s “While You Were Sleeping” is notable for being about people who feel like they could be your neighbors. Here, the wealth of Bullock and Reynolds’s characters is not part of a fantasy, but simply a fact that relieves Bullock’s character because she won’t have to bother putting up with poor people stuff, like a studio apartment.

    I will resist a full synopsis. I don’t think The Proposal is worth my effort.

    However, you should know that it turns out Ryan Reynolds is a “Kennedy of Alaska,” and his character actually has Tlingit descent via his grandmother, Betty White, who spends a while chanting and doing drums in the forest wearing regalia reminiscent of First Nations. This provides an opportunity for the racist character played by Sandra Bullock to have a “charming” dance scene and butt-shake to Lil John and the East Side Boyz. This movie is the whitest thing I’ve seen in a while.

    Bear in mind when I say “the whitest thing,” I’m talking about the structures of whiteness, the things that Whiteness as a Caste in America loves. The power plays. The wealth. Colonization. Dismissal of nonwhite people as human beings.  The movie itself holds narrative approval for racist attitudes without challenging them, which is enough.

    There’s also a character played by Oscar Nuñez, who seems to be a family employee? of the Alaskan Kennedys. He’s named Ramone and stands in dubious positions of subservience. He’s a waiter at one point and a stripper at another. One nonwhite guy to serve them all? That’s not weird. His presence reminds me of the way Mickey Rooney was called upon to play a racist caricature for “comic relief” in Breakfast at Tiffany’s. It’s almost like Bullock’s remarks being dismissive of nonwhite people is held by the person who wrote the screenplay and is thus incapable of writing a nonwhite character who is fully human rather than a leering caricature of servitude.

    Regardless, I don’t think cutting the racist remarks from Bullock’s character, the Tlingit art used without context, etc would have saved the screenplay.

    This screenplay is just kind of crap.

    It’s barely a romcom, for one thing. It’s a romcom the way people who don’t understand romances write romance. It’s a movie where two attractive people realize the other person is actually a human, and because straight people don’t really need to know their partners in a meaningful way, they decide to be together at that point. They show us enough interaction between Reynolds and Bullock to justify a physical attraction, and even a friendlier work environment, but they barely have enough involvement for me to believe they’ll be long-term friends.

    Neither of them markedly changes over the course of the movie. The plot changes *only* how they view one another, which takes us from bickering and drenched in toxicity to…respecting one another to do less sexual harassment (he likes grabbing her ass while she tells him not to do that).

    Bullock arrives at the “grand gesture” from Reynolds and neither of them have changed! At all! Love didn’t change anything. Nothing healed.

    This movie shallowly touches upon the beats of a romcom without understanding why the machinery works. Even tropes I ordinarily enjoy, like the heroine falling in love with the hero’s family, and the mere presence of Betty White, did not stop me from hating The Proposal all over again.

    Romance should feel seismic and inevitable, and this just felt cynical, horrible, and shallow. Also racist.

    So of course I looked up the writer. In addition to Kurtzman and Orci making their era-appropriate uncredited contributions, this is mostly written by Peter Chiarelli, “a former creative executive at MGM who decided to use his downtime after the company was bought by Sony to do some writing.”

    That is exactly the kind of person who seems like they’d have written this movie. Full insult. I’d hate to see what was in his screenplay before Kurtzman and Orci got to it.

    ~

    Turns out my 2009 impression of The Proposal was more than adequate. Including this movie in a watch of greater romcoms is a waste of time, and I walked away hating everything a little more instead of feeling hope.

    (It’s a little funny revisiting this because I’ve hated Ryan Reynolds and Sandra Bullock since the late 00s and I couldn’t remember why. Now I remember. They suit the project well. Full insult.)

    (I didn’t post a banner image on this article because I looked it up and Disney owns The Proposal, and I’m not going to argue fair use for editorial purposes on a negative review with Disney.)

  • sara reads the feed

    Productively neglectful, really cool science, movies I don’t want

    Yesterday was mostly a fun variation of my normal-of-late routine where I watch at least one movie and write a review about it.

    I actually spend November/December every year watching comedies, especially romcoms, even if this is the first year where I’ve put a sincere effort into reviewing the stuff I watch. Usually I do more genre — SF, horror, and fantasy — in August through October. Yesterday a short film kinda fell in my lap which is more of a September watch, if you ask me.

    The John Experiment‘s premise is near-future science fiction, and its impact is ultimately psychological horror. So, you know, September stuff.

    This one is special because I know the creator and I got to chat movies with her a bit. It was a lot of fun!

    Also, I reviewed Much Ado About Nothing, but I otherwise didn’t watch movies. I’m trying to take a break consciously every day or two. It feels kinda *too* good to slam movies and reviews all day. Like, overstimulating? Instead, I did a bunch of drawing, some essay writing, and then I under-stimulated myself by playing more Baldur’s Gate III with Rory.

    ~

    I’ve been avoiding the doctor for a couple years. I go in a couple times a year, mind you. I’ve got asthma and psychiatric needs which absolutely *cannot* be ignored. But I’m doing my best to ignore everything else because I hate it and I don’t wanna. It feels like if I’m seeing my doctor a few times a year already, that’s enough, and my body isn’t allowed to do anything else.

    Of course that’s not how it works and not how it ever has worked.

    I had a big blood sugar crash yesterday. I’ve always had reactive hypoglycemia from taking an SSRI – basically, my body over-produces insulin. If I eat properly, it’s not a problem, but I struggle to eat “properly” because of an eating disorder. So yesterday, big crash.

    I feel so shaken after things like that. Probably because it’s massively depleting, but it’s also just scary. I don’t love the idea of trying to hash this out with my doctor. I hate running around for appointments.

    ~

    The makers of No Man’s Sky are promising a game where they generate an Earth-sized planet. I am benignly skeptical. I was there when they marketed NMS with a whole long list of features which never materialized and watched it turn into a base building game. I like NMS. I just won’t listen to a thing Hello Games says until I can see the game itself.

    ~

    This article about fungi encouraging ice formation is the most mind-blowing thing I’ve read in a while. (Ars Technica) I’d always heard that ice forms at lower temperatures with “pure” and undisturbed water, because impurities permit ice to form quicker, but never thought further than that. I guess I assumed it was a surface area thing?

    Organisms such as bacteria, insects, and fungi produce proteins known as ice nucleators (non-protein nucleators can also be of abiotic origin). These proteins can kick-start the formation, or nucleation, of ice at higher temperatures than pure water would freeze at.

    This is one of those things where I read it and I just wanted to throw my pen to the desk and pace around the room thinking FURIOUSLY about everything new-to-me I just glimpsed.

    ICE NUCLEATORS?

    Shit that’s so COOL.

    ~

    Speaking of cool stuff, researchers seem to be developing these sorta…synthetic mini-organs? (Engadget) to help people with diabetes produce insulin properly, with fewer external devices involved.

    First, the scientists figured out a way to insert nylon catheters under the skin, where they remain for up to six weeks. After insertion, blood vessels form around the catheters which structurally support the islet devices that are placed in the space when the catheter gets removed. The newly implanted 10-centimeter-long islet devices secrete insulin via islet cells that form around it, while also receiving nutrients and oxygen from blood vessels to stay alive.

    Medical symbiosis? Shit that is ALSO so COOL. And this is one humans are coming up with!

    Often, when I learn about science and medicine, I’m surprised how basic our understanding remains. A lot of the stuff we use on a practical level day-to-day isn’t necessarily more complicated than, say, a medicine that just adds a single molecule to your body and then your body does the work because it has the molecule. This “islet device” seems something else entirely.

    ~

    BookRiot rounds up romances without the third-act breakup.

    ~

    Hugh Grant hates Wonka. (Cosmopolitan) Like, I get it. I hate it and I haven’t even seen it, much less performed in it. I don’t expect anyone to love their job, either. But I’m sick of this miserable lipless man being miserable and lipless and everyone tittering like that’s a personality.

    ~

    Yes, we are talking about Avatar 3 (Variety) even though we didn’t want Avatar 2 and Avatar 1 was forgettable if not for the fact the franchise bafflingly continues.

  • image credit: Lionsgate
    movie reviews

    Much Ado About Nothing (1993) ****

    Hey, nonny nonny!

    Herein lay a review for another Shakespeare adaptation starring our good noble Denzel Washington, looking even hotter than he does in The Tragedy of Macbeth. My God, man. You’d think the purring voice alone would be all the hotness that could reside within a single man’s body. Then he’s running around the countryside, riding on a horse, bouncing around with his mantitties inside that vee neck, and I’m just like. My God. Lord Denzel. (Prince Denzel?)

    Credit: Lionsgate, by way of my cell phone snapping my computer screen. oh yes i did that.

    Bear in mind that I didn’t do any research to make sure I have details about the play or movie remotely correct, and I don’t care, so please don’t correct me.

    There are several plays by Shakespeare that I know very well. I performed a small part in A Midsummer Night’s Dream as a teen. I’ve written a lesbian vampires adaptation of Romeo and Juliet. The Scottish Play is another favorite, and so is Taming of the Shrew. But Much Ado About Nothing is a blank for me. I’ve seen it performed live–once–when I was a kid–but that’s it.

    Anyway, as far as I can tell, this is Shakespeare’s Silly Bitches Play for Bitches Acting Silly. Literally, there is much ado about absolutely nothing, and we love every minute of it.

    Like there’s something about Emma Thompson arguing with a bearded guy. I don’t know, I couldn’t look at any man when she was on screen.

    I’ve got mixed feelings about Emma Thompson sometimes. She did this whole odd former-Yugoslavian accent thing for Last Christmas, which is my most recent exposure, and…I did not know what to think about that. Here, I realized I wasn’t enamored with her delivery either, but…

    Goodness. That smile. The way she just sort of flows everywhere in those gorgeous dresses, with her hair, and my lesbianness.

    wait oh my GOD is that KATE BECKINSALE?

    Image credit: Lionsgate

    I got all the way through the movie once without realizing who it was. I saw her name in the credits, then completely forgot she was meant to be there. I couldn’t pin the young actress’s look down. I’m bad at faces. I was like, “For one thing, it’s definitely NOT Mia Sara.”

    Since looking things up didn’t sound interesting, I just kept staring at this gorgeous young lady thinking, “Oh, she’s so pretty. I wonder what she’s doing these days? Is she still acting?”

    It’s KATE BECKINSALE, Sara! I just liked a more recent movie of hers! And I’m pretty sure I swore fealty to Selene the first time I ever watched Underworld!

    The number of times I have dreamed about this actress (as a character) drinking my blood is making me have such deep thoughts about the adorable young woman to blood drinking vampire milf pipeline. Like, if I had a nickel every time–

    Okay, so I’m reviewing a movie, right?

    Well, it’s a straightforward adaptation of the Shakespeare Silly Bitches Show, translated quite literally, with a sorta ambiguously historical setting and lots of Italians (?) speaking in English accents, or like Denzel Washington. If you don’t enjoy watching it, then you probably just don’t like watching Kenneth Branagh’s vacation videos. Obviously this whole thing was a ruse for hot talented people to giggle in a beautiful place wearing pretty dresses.

    Or wearing…not dresses.

    image credit: Lionsgate. nipple credit: Keanu Reeves.

    I didn’t find the movie especially interesting on most levels. It doesn’t have anything to add to the core play, as far as I can tell, except for the sheer vivacity of beautiful actors.

    So obviously it was a *great* movie and I highly recommend it completely on artistic merits.