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Spring Season: Weeks 21/22
Where even am I? Slowly losing all concept of time and space over here. Brother is off with his dad for a month, so at least I only have to clean up after one other family member for a little while.
Maybe it's not happening that slowly, maybe it happened very quickly. It's kinda crazy how much I got used to working 12-hour shifts? Not mornings, never mornings, but like, the shifts themselves don't feel outrageously long? Sometimes I sit down to work and putter around for a bit, and OOP, it's three hours later and feels like no time at all has passed. Wild.
Did I mention we bought a new vehicle last time? We bought a new vehicle! That seems like a very big thing to omit! My life is one long blur now! I co-signed, even though I don't actually drive on the regular, because mom's credit is garbage and mine is great, so we got 0% interest, which is cool. It's a Jeep Grand Cherokee! Blackout package! Given how fucking decrepit our old 2010 Acadia was, it's a hell of an upgrade. Also, I'm just covering the payments myself and adding them to what my mom pays me at the end of every month since my credit score is now riding on her making them on time and tbh I don't trust her that much. Not with money, anyway!
Am somehow both super tired by and getting kinda used to this whole 'watching what I eat' business. I'm SO OVER IT, but it's also proving very sustainable, so bleh. Down almost five more pounds or so? Which is satisfying, but lacks the immediate, constant gratification of just eating until I don't want to eat anymore, so it's still hard. I watched The Man with the Golden Arm recently (SEE MOVIE SPOILER ZONE BELOW), and there was a bit that really resonated with me: Frank Sinatra's heroin dealer is comparing that addiction to his own addiction to candy (which he then goes on to say he kicked by going on a massive candy binge, so his motivations here are V. SUSPECT, but that's not the point), which is very fucked up, but the way he did so really hit me. He described going without as leaving him feeling 'unfinished', and that's it exactly. I'm never left hungry, I'm absolutely getting enough to eat, but there's still something missing, that anti-hunger sense of fullness, of being done that's more of an intangible thing than just not being hungry or even of 'oof, I really fucking overate' (A FEELING I ALSO KNOW WELL). And I'm just constantly feeling that lack, and it sucks. I ate over a pound of blueberries in a single sitting this week just to try getting there for a few minutes without jacking my calories up, it's real bad! WHATEVER, THAT'S ENOUGH OF MY WEIRD ISSUES FOR ONE UPDATE, I just gotta keep reminding myself that this isn't forever and I'll have a lot more room to pig out once I hit a weight I'm happier with.
...I just realized I might have Monday off of work, I'mma try to get this entry off a day early. To the movies!
Ongoing themes for the end of the month included Jean-Luc Godard movies, Frances Marion scripts, and Saul Bass credits!
A Bundle of Blues (1933): Fun little Duke Ellington jazz short!
Le gai savoir (1969): I think I'm just watching all these Godard movies out of spite now, tbh. More tedious, pseudo-intellectual bullshit. Christ.
Seconds (1966): Rich white guy mid-life crisis drama, but make it WEIRD. Had a little bit of trouble following it at first, but once the switch happened, I was sold. Fuck, this is so good. Rock Hudson just laying it all on the line.
Black Beauty (1971): Maybe you need to be a horse person to care?
Storm Center (1956): Let's go with... unsubtle. The message is a good one, though (fuck censorship and McCarthyism!), and I laughed real hard when the kid cracked his head on the table near the end.
Je vous salue, Marie (1985): Godard turns his lens toward hacky, obvious religious parable, hooray. Not nearly as godawfully tedious as some of his other shit; mostly just kinda bland, no matter how much full frontal female nudity he packs into it. Some real nice cinematography?
The Human Factor (1979): The South African apartheid romance angle was interesting, as was the bizarre obsession with Maltesers, but otherwise kind of a dry snoozer of a spy movie.
Snatch (2000): Good dags. D'ya like dags?
For Ever Mozart (1996): THE TITLE'S A PUN, DO YOU GET IT? Godard tackling such thought-provoking material as 'war is bad' and 'kids today don't like boring arthouse films'. Nicely fast-paced, but goofy, just goofy.
Une Femme est une femme (1961): See, now Godard is so much more bearable when he's just goofing on tropes and techniques and genres instead of disappearing up his own ass for some dull deep dive. This was fun! He seriously just seems like a guy who really loves film with all his heart and so desperately wanted to make his own even though he has absolutely no vision of his own or anything interesting to say whatsoever. He wasn't letting that stop him from being a French New Wave darling! Definitely helps that everyone involved in this one is v. easy to look at.
Bohemian Rhapsody (2018): RETURN TO THE THEATRE LUCKY #13! This movie is real not great, but my brother really loves it for some fucking reason, and after his appendix exploded earlier this month, I wasn't going to begrudge him his pick, so.
Down in the Delta (1998): The platonic ideal of the mid-'90s family drama that I used to watch on TV all the time. It's good, but all the tension is gone by the half hour mark?
Iron Man (2008): RETURN TO THE THEATRE #14! This came out the summer after I won a year's worth of free movies and snacks in the old theatre's Oscar pool, and to this date there is no movie I've seen more times on the big screen, by a SIGNIFICANT margin. Like, it's not even close. Made me real happy to get to rack up another play after all these years.
Riffraff (1936): Oof, Harlow is great here, but Spencer Tracy is so completely fucking devoid of any scrap of charm, he is just a horrible, irredeemably awful piece of shit throughout. Makes for a tough watch whenever he's onscreen, even before you throw the dodgy politics into it (unions: MAYBE NOT SO GREAT??). I liked it when he got called a splunge and hit with a fish, and the weird pivot to prison escape drama in the last act was a lot of fun.
The Wind (1928): Why is this always classified as a drama or romance, it is 100% existential sandstorm-based horror and it fucking rules.
Film Socialisme (2010): Goddamn, this would have pissed me off if I didn't speak French. Making the subtitles an intentional middle finger is certainly one of the more conceptually interesting things I've seen from Godard, but this shit was already boring enough without reducing all of the dialogue to cartoon caveman talk (that he apparently calls 'Navajo English' because HEY, WHY NOT MAKE IT RACIST, TOO).
The Man with the Golden Arm (1955): I loved the scene where Frank Sinatra made Kim Novak promise to bury him with his golden arm.
The Boy with Green Hair (1948): I had no clue that Dean Stockwell was a child star, so those opening credits were a JOURNEY. Anyway, he was VERY good, and this was a surprisingly poignant film for one with such a weird goddamn central metaphor (his hair turns green because he's a war orphan? and this way... people can't ignore him and the impact that war has on children?? ...KAY).
The Big House (1930): I just love Chester Morris' weird pointy face so much. I also love how unsubtle this movie is with its messaging, characters will just stand around and have conversations like "Boy, the whole prison system is pretty fucked up and irredeemable from the ground up, huh?" "Yup, shore is!" and it's awesome. Also, I care about Robert Montgomery a lot more than I did the last time I saw this, and it's wild how this movie positions him as the protagonist only to have him and Morris kinda trade and both play against type without really changing their roles any? Morris is kind of a piece of shit, but he's nice when he wants to be and forever loyal, while Montgomery seems like a good dude who made a mistake, but ends up being such a spineless weasel in the end; really nicely ambiguous morals at play.
Sleepaway Camp (1983): O_O
O_O
O_O
8D
But I'm a Cheerleader (1999): I myself was once a gay.
Bullitt (1968): My complete inability to follow the plot of this movie made me feel very, very dumb, but the car chase lives up to the hype.
Min and Bill (1930): Such a better take on the same ending than Stella Dallas. Instead of making the tragic, self-sacrificing mother figure someone to be pitied as a cop ushers her away in the rain, Marie Dressler gets to make losing everything and doing it all for the kid into a moment of triumph, smiling as she's taken away for murder while the happy couple sets off. Baller af.
A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984): RETURN TO THE THEATRE #15! Did Johnny Depp get un-cancelled? I can't keep track.
Lovely & Amazing (2001): Kudos to Catherine Keener for playing a character so unrelentingly awful in so many different ways without a single redeeming trait to the extent that every negative emotion she has to experience feels like a personal victory. Jesus. Like, other characters in this suck, too, but she makes them all look like fucking saints. Great cast amidst all the hamfisted white guilt, though. Emily Mortimer! Clark Gregg! Jake Gyllenhaal! A McDillet!
David Holzman's Diary (1967): Really wasn't sure how this was going to go down, since the kind of movie it's riffing on typically makes me want to gnaw my own wrists open until it's over, but I loved it a lot?
The Lord of the Ring: The Two Towers (2002): RETURN TO THE THEATRE #16! TWO EXTENDED EDITIONS DOWN, ONE TO GOOOOOOOOOOOOOO.
Cowboy (1958): Real nice low-stakes, slice-of-life cowboy drama. Also it's basically a love story between Glenn Ford and Jack Lemmon's characters??? Was not expecting that!!
Turn It Up (2000): AND INTRODUCTING JA RULE (as the most hilariously unthreatening tough guy in history).
Auf der anderen Seite (2007): All of the coincidental near misses had me rolling my eyes pretty hard, but overall this was solid. It's like Crash, but good!
My Own Private Idaho (1991): Was very happy to finally cross this one off my 'seriously, why haven't I fucking seen this already' list. Have a nice day.
Secrets (1933): Three wildly different movies just kinda... loosely stitched together? Starts as a stuffy-but-charming Victorian romance, with penny farthing flirtations and dramatic elopements and a real cute bit where Leslie Howard helps Mary Pickford undress and it takes forever because she's wearing a million layers. AND THEN SUDDENLY IT'S A WESTERN?? With evil cattle rustlers and dramatic shootouts and baby death?? And then there's a time jump and it's a portrait of an upper-class marriage under duress by a politician's philandering! WHAT IS EVEN HAPPENING. But Pickford and Howard are super adorable together, so it still kinda works? Weird stuff!
Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery (1997): RETURN TO THE THEATRE #17! This shit holds up well enough to marginally soothe my ongoing agony over still having months to wait before seeing No Time to Die. Marginally.
Hero (1992): Sleazebag Hoffman is my favourite Hoffman. What a super weird movie, it's pretty corny in that '90s star-studded feel-good sort of way (HOW MANY TIMES CAN THEY SAY THE WORD 'HERO'), but also kind of feels like it's sneering at itself for it the entire time? It's fun! Also, I really liked Andy Garcia in it, how often does that guy make an impression?
Pierrot le Fou (1965): Holy shit, I found another Godard movie I don't hate! VICTORY. This one is also mostly just Jean-Paul Belmondo and Anna Karina being beautiful and charming together, am I truly that easy??? Probably. Anyway, this was fun, except for that one real racist Vietnam War sketch that went on so long I think I pulled all of my cringe muscles. Also there was way too much plot for the dippy, artsy style to actually convey in any way, so it was all just kinda confusing? Belmondo climbing on things, though! *__*
Walk on the Wild Side (1962): Weird, messy mix of a super boring central romance being orbited by a bunch of endlessly compelling supporting characters, mostly women. Lesbian madam Barbara Stanwyck! Bitty, jaded Jane Fonda! Anne Baxter as an unfortunately latina widow who is so in love with the boring lead that she's genuinely happy to just play the enthusiastic wingman for him! Ditzy prostitute Joanna Moore who's just happy to be there! Tiny Fonda's face turn at the end was the best part, I had a lot of fun with this one.
Alphaville (1965): Ended my dive with probably my favourite thing I've seen from Godard, so that worked out! It's nowhere near as thought-provoking as it seems to think it is, and I faded a bit in the back half when the endless monologues start, but overall I was SUPER charmed by the whole gimmick here, where it's all intergalactic sci-fi dystopia according to the dialogue, but to go off of the locations and sets and costumes, it's just a contemporary Paris-set neo-noir. That Lemmy Caution was apparently an existing character who had already been in a bunch of straight noir films before this just adds to the weirdness and I love it. Once again, Godard just clowning with genre and tropes and shit ends up being SO much better than when he's trying to be all D~E~E~P, which just ends up being every parody of shitty arthouse films you've ever seen.
Ghosts of Mars (2001): I've done it, you guys. I've crafted the objectively worst science fiction double feature currently within man's capabilities. Finally, my work is done. Finally, I can rest.
Maybe it's not happening that slowly, maybe it happened very quickly. It's kinda crazy how much I got used to working 12-hour shifts? Not mornings, never mornings, but like, the shifts themselves don't feel outrageously long? Sometimes I sit down to work and putter around for a bit, and OOP, it's three hours later and feels like no time at all has passed. Wild.
Did I mention we bought a new vehicle last time? We bought a new vehicle! That seems like a very big thing to omit! My life is one long blur now! I co-signed, even though I don't actually drive on the regular, because mom's credit is garbage and mine is great, so we got 0% interest, which is cool. It's a Jeep Grand Cherokee! Blackout package! Given how fucking decrepit our old 2010 Acadia was, it's a hell of an upgrade. Also, I'm just covering the payments myself and adding them to what my mom pays me at the end of every month since my credit score is now riding on her making them on time and tbh I don't trust her that much. Not with money, anyway!
Am somehow both super tired by and getting kinda used to this whole 'watching what I eat' business. I'm SO OVER IT, but it's also proving very sustainable, so bleh. Down almost five more pounds or so? Which is satisfying, but lacks the immediate, constant gratification of just eating until I don't want to eat anymore, so it's still hard. I watched The Man with the Golden Arm recently (SEE MOVIE SPOILER ZONE BELOW), and there was a bit that really resonated with me: Frank Sinatra's heroin dealer is comparing that addiction to his own addiction to candy (which he then goes on to say he kicked by going on a massive candy binge, so his motivations here are V. SUSPECT, but that's not the point), which is very fucked up, but the way he did so really hit me. He described going without as leaving him feeling 'unfinished', and that's it exactly. I'm never left hungry, I'm absolutely getting enough to eat, but there's still something missing, that anti-hunger sense of fullness, of being done that's more of an intangible thing than just not being hungry or even of 'oof, I really fucking overate' (A FEELING I ALSO KNOW WELL). And I'm just constantly feeling that lack, and it sucks. I ate over a pound of blueberries in a single sitting this week just to try getting there for a few minutes without jacking my calories up, it's real bad! WHATEVER, THAT'S ENOUGH OF MY WEIRD ISSUES FOR ONE UPDATE, I just gotta keep reminding myself that this isn't forever and I'll have a lot more room to pig out once I hit a weight I'm happier with.
...I just realized I might have Monday off of work, I'mma try to get this entry off a day early. To the movies!
Ongoing themes for the end of the month included Jean-Luc Godard movies, Frances Marion scripts, and Saul Bass credits!
A Bundle of Blues (1933): Fun little Duke Ellington jazz short!
Le gai savoir (1969): I think I'm just watching all these Godard movies out of spite now, tbh. More tedious, pseudo-intellectual bullshit. Christ.
Seconds (1966): Rich white guy mid-life crisis drama, but make it WEIRD. Had a little bit of trouble following it at first, but once the switch happened, I was sold. Fuck, this is so good. Rock Hudson just laying it all on the line.
Black Beauty (1971): Maybe you need to be a horse person to care?
Storm Center (1956): Let's go with... unsubtle. The message is a good one, though (fuck censorship and McCarthyism!), and I laughed real hard when the kid cracked his head on the table near the end.
Je vous salue, Marie (1985): Godard turns his lens toward hacky, obvious religious parable, hooray. Not nearly as godawfully tedious as some of his other shit; mostly just kinda bland, no matter how much full frontal female nudity he packs into it. Some real nice cinematography?
The Human Factor (1979): The South African apartheid romance angle was interesting, as was the bizarre obsession with Maltesers, but otherwise kind of a dry snoozer of a spy movie.
Snatch (2000): Good dags. D'ya like dags?
For Ever Mozart (1996): THE TITLE'S A PUN, DO YOU GET IT? Godard tackling such thought-provoking material as 'war is bad' and 'kids today don't like boring arthouse films'. Nicely fast-paced, but goofy, just goofy.
Une Femme est une femme (1961): See, now Godard is so much more bearable when he's just goofing on tropes and techniques and genres instead of disappearing up his own ass for some dull deep dive. This was fun! He seriously just seems like a guy who really loves film with all his heart and so desperately wanted to make his own even though he has absolutely no vision of his own or anything interesting to say whatsoever. He wasn't letting that stop him from being a French New Wave darling! Definitely helps that everyone involved in this one is v. easy to look at.
Bohemian Rhapsody (2018): RETURN TO THE THEATRE LUCKY #13! This movie is real not great, but my brother really loves it for some fucking reason, and after his appendix exploded earlier this month, I wasn't going to begrudge him his pick, so.
Down in the Delta (1998): The platonic ideal of the mid-'90s family drama that I used to watch on TV all the time. It's good, but all the tension is gone by the half hour mark?
Iron Man (2008): RETURN TO THE THEATRE #14! This came out the summer after I won a year's worth of free movies and snacks in the old theatre's Oscar pool, and to this date there is no movie I've seen more times on the big screen, by a SIGNIFICANT margin. Like, it's not even close. Made me real happy to get to rack up another play after all these years.
Riffraff (1936): Oof, Harlow is great here, but Spencer Tracy is so completely fucking devoid of any scrap of charm, he is just a horrible, irredeemably awful piece of shit throughout. Makes for a tough watch whenever he's onscreen, even before you throw the dodgy politics into it (unions: MAYBE NOT SO GREAT??). I liked it when he got called a splunge and hit with a fish, and the weird pivot to prison escape drama in the last act was a lot of fun.
The Wind (1928): Why is this always classified as a drama or romance, it is 100% existential sandstorm-based horror and it fucking rules.
Film Socialisme (2010): Goddamn, this would have pissed me off if I didn't speak French. Making the subtitles an intentional middle finger is certainly one of the more conceptually interesting things I've seen from Godard, but this shit was already boring enough without reducing all of the dialogue to cartoon caveman talk (that he apparently calls 'Navajo English' because HEY, WHY NOT MAKE IT RACIST, TOO).
The Man with the Golden Arm (1955): I loved the scene where Frank Sinatra made Kim Novak promise to bury him with his golden arm.
The Boy with Green Hair (1948): I had no clue that Dean Stockwell was a child star, so those opening credits were a JOURNEY. Anyway, he was VERY good, and this was a surprisingly poignant film for one with such a weird goddamn central metaphor (his hair turns green because he's a war orphan? and this way... people can't ignore him and the impact that war has on children?? ...KAY).
The Big House (1930): I just love Chester Morris' weird pointy face so much. I also love how unsubtle this movie is with its messaging, characters will just stand around and have conversations like "Boy, the whole prison system is pretty fucked up and irredeemable from the ground up, huh?" "Yup, shore is!" and it's awesome. Also, I care about Robert Montgomery a lot more than I did the last time I saw this, and it's wild how this movie positions him as the protagonist only to have him and Morris kinda trade and both play against type without really changing their roles any? Morris is kind of a piece of shit, but he's nice when he wants to be and forever loyal, while Montgomery seems like a good dude who made a mistake, but ends up being such a spineless weasel in the end; really nicely ambiguous morals at play.
Sleepaway Camp (1983): O_O
O_O
O_O
8D
But I'm a Cheerleader (1999): I myself was once a gay.
Bullitt (1968): My complete inability to follow the plot of this movie made me feel very, very dumb, but the car chase lives up to the hype.
Min and Bill (1930): Such a better take on the same ending than Stella Dallas. Instead of making the tragic, self-sacrificing mother figure someone to be pitied as a cop ushers her away in the rain, Marie Dressler gets to make losing everything and doing it all for the kid into a moment of triumph, smiling as she's taken away for murder while the happy couple sets off. Baller af.
A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984): RETURN TO THE THEATRE #15! Did Johnny Depp get un-cancelled? I can't keep track.
Lovely & Amazing (2001): Kudos to Catherine Keener for playing a character so unrelentingly awful in so many different ways without a single redeeming trait to the extent that every negative emotion she has to experience feels like a personal victory. Jesus. Like, other characters in this suck, too, but she makes them all look like fucking saints. Great cast amidst all the hamfisted white guilt, though. Emily Mortimer! Clark Gregg! Jake Gyllenhaal! A McDillet!
David Holzman's Diary (1967): Really wasn't sure how this was going to go down, since the kind of movie it's riffing on typically makes me want to gnaw my own wrists open until it's over, but I loved it a lot?
The Lord of the Ring: The Two Towers (2002): RETURN TO THE THEATRE #16! TWO EXTENDED EDITIONS DOWN, ONE TO GOOOOOOOOOOOOOO.
Cowboy (1958): Real nice low-stakes, slice-of-life cowboy drama. Also it's basically a love story between Glenn Ford and Jack Lemmon's characters??? Was not expecting that!!
Turn It Up (2000): AND INTRODUCTING JA RULE (as the most hilariously unthreatening tough guy in history).
Auf der anderen Seite (2007): All of the coincidental near misses had me rolling my eyes pretty hard, but overall this was solid. It's like Crash, but good!
My Own Private Idaho (1991): Was very happy to finally cross this one off my 'seriously, why haven't I fucking seen this already' list. Have a nice day.
Secrets (1933): Three wildly different movies just kinda... loosely stitched together? Starts as a stuffy-but-charming Victorian romance, with penny farthing flirtations and dramatic elopements and a real cute bit where Leslie Howard helps Mary Pickford undress and it takes forever because she's wearing a million layers. AND THEN SUDDENLY IT'S A WESTERN?? With evil cattle rustlers and dramatic shootouts and baby death?? And then there's a time jump and it's a portrait of an upper-class marriage under duress by a politician's philandering! WHAT IS EVEN HAPPENING. But Pickford and Howard are super adorable together, so it still kinda works? Weird stuff!
Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery (1997): RETURN TO THE THEATRE #17! This shit holds up well enough to marginally soothe my ongoing agony over still having months to wait before seeing No Time to Die. Marginally.
Hero (1992): Sleazebag Hoffman is my favourite Hoffman. What a super weird movie, it's pretty corny in that '90s star-studded feel-good sort of way (HOW MANY TIMES CAN THEY SAY THE WORD 'HERO'), but also kind of feels like it's sneering at itself for it the entire time? It's fun! Also, I really liked Andy Garcia in it, how often does that guy make an impression?
Pierrot le Fou (1965): Holy shit, I found another Godard movie I don't hate! VICTORY. This one is also mostly just Jean-Paul Belmondo and Anna Karina being beautiful and charming together, am I truly that easy??? Probably. Anyway, this was fun, except for that one real racist Vietnam War sketch that went on so long I think I pulled all of my cringe muscles. Also there was way too much plot for the dippy, artsy style to actually convey in any way, so it was all just kinda confusing? Belmondo climbing on things, though! *__*
Walk on the Wild Side (1962): Weird, messy mix of a super boring central romance being orbited by a bunch of endlessly compelling supporting characters, mostly women. Lesbian madam Barbara Stanwyck! Bitty, jaded Jane Fonda! Anne Baxter as an unfortunately latina widow who is so in love with the boring lead that she's genuinely happy to just play the enthusiastic wingman for him! Ditzy prostitute Joanna Moore who's just happy to be there! Tiny Fonda's face turn at the end was the best part, I had a lot of fun with this one.
Alphaville (1965): Ended my dive with probably my favourite thing I've seen from Godard, so that worked out! It's nowhere near as thought-provoking as it seems to think it is, and I faded a bit in the back half when the endless monologues start, but overall I was SUPER charmed by the whole gimmick here, where it's all intergalactic sci-fi dystopia according to the dialogue, but to go off of the locations and sets and costumes, it's just a contemporary Paris-set neo-noir. That Lemmy Caution was apparently an existing character who had already been in a bunch of straight noir films before this just adds to the weirdness and I love it. Once again, Godard just clowning with genre and tropes and shit ends up being SO much better than when he's trying to be all D~E~E~P, which just ends up being every parody of shitty arthouse films you've ever seen.
Ghosts of Mars (2001): I've done it, you guys. I've crafted the objectively worst science fiction double feature currently within man's capabilities. Finally, my work is done. Finally, I can rest.
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