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Spring Season: Weeks 39/40
Oooof. These last two work sets have been the most exhausting yet, and I don't even know why? Mostly just being dumb and not going to bed at decent times (I don't really sleep either way, but lie-down-eyes-closed time is still more restful than just staying up) probably, but oh my god, this is killing me.
Also I ate way too much yesterday and feel real gross now.
Also we had three days of respite, but our 'rona numbers are back on the climb. Hopefully the brief plateau means we're peaking? lol what is hope
Did I mention our washer died? So my mom's having to take the entire family's laundry to work with her to do it all there, which is a totally great, sustainable thing to have to do until Rona has a new one in at (hopefully) the end of the month. And Christmas is basically tomorrow! Woooooooooo.
This all sounds much more mopey and dire than I actually am, I'm just... tired. Tomorrow night I will be able to sleep again and all will be well for another week.
Someone printed out a calendar with all of the cross shifts highlighted for all of 2021 and man. I just don't know.
The weather is weirdly amazing? We're well into December and the snow is almost... all gone. It's madness.
The sun setting directly in my fucking face means that I pretty much just can't do anything but hide in the corner of my work terrarium from 3 to 3:30, which is very annoying.
I wish I knew stars better. There's this one really bright one to the... east? That's usually the only thing in the sky save the moon when I head to work in the morning.
I watched a fuckton of movies on my last week off. Possibly too many. This is where the spoilers go.
FILMS
La folie Almayer (2011): WOW, YEAH, OKAY, I FINALLY GET THE AKERMAN HYPE. Fourth time's the fuckin' charm, I guess, this was definitely a slow burn but not nearly as brutally boring as all the other stuff of hers I watched this month.
And When I Die, I Won't Stay Dead (2015): Rewatched while doing some journaling. Seemed a lot less cohesive the second time around? I guess once you know the guy's story, it makes it more jarring, the way the narrative seems to jump around with no rhyme or reason. Maybe it's supposed to feel like poetry, but it just feels lazily written, idk.
Another Country (1984): Crazy young Cary Elwes and Colin Firth and Rupert Everett, you say? British public school gays in the '30s, you say? A thinly-veiled Guy Burgess stand-in, you say? HMMM, YES, GOOD. Kinda hokey and melodramatic and anachronistic in lazy ways, with some hilaribad aging makeup on top for good measure, but who even cares look how baby they all are
Big City Blues (1932): The lead in this looked weirdly like Tom Holland at times and it was very distracting, but this was fun. It has a WILDLY abrupt tonal shift right in the middle and gets SUPER dark and Bogart isn't even credited so that was an amazing surprise.
Blondie Johnson (1933): Oh my god, ruthless gangster Blondell is my new everything, I am OBSESSED. Chester Morris and his weird pointy face are always welcome additions, too, but seriously. O B S E S S E D.
The Count of Monte Cristo (1934): Slow to get going, but once you get past the first prison time jump, it's a lot of fun. Choppy towards the end, but that's a hell of a lot of novel to cram into two hours, so I'm willing to let it slide.
The Crowd Roars (1932): One of the first things Ann Dvorak says to Cagney in this is "I wish I were getting off with you" and ha ha, you and me both, girl ANYWAY, this was like an old-timey version of Grand Prix except one third the runtime and it was awesome, the end.
Die Hard (1988): BACK TO THE 'RONA THEATER WATCH #17! because bruce willis looking fine as hell in laser ultra is the reason for the season
Là-bas (2006): A good one to start the day with (that's the nice way of saying there's a lot to it but it's also super fucking boring). I'm sure as a chronicle of how tedious and shitty depression is, it hits hard, especially considering Akerman's eventual suicide, but also zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz. So much totally uncritical musing about Israel, so little time.
Duck Soup (1933): I don't think ANY of these men are qualified for these positions. I've definitely seen this before, but remembered almost none of it for some reason? I was definitely surprised that it's a musical the first time around, too, though. Zeppo can get it.
Emily Brontë's Wuthering Heights (1992): God, that whole 'author telling the story' framing/narration is hacky as fuuuuuuuuq. As for the rest of it, it starts off promising, a more overtly sexual take on the story that could be interesting, but the moors are too pretty and Catherine is too sweet, there's just no bite to anything here, and the romance falls completely flat; there's no depth to it, nothing behind the darkness, Heathcliff is just an asshole, the end. HOWEVER -- and this cramming is probably where a lot of the choppiness comes from -- it actually adapts the back half of the novel as well for once, which earns it a LOT of bonus points in my book.
D'est (1993): Extremely boring shit! Some cool hats.
De l'autre côté (2002): Really great stuff here, and it's almost all unbearably sad! I'm using great to mean important and difficult in this case! It's really awful! The only Akerman documentary I watched that managed to be better than painfully boring tracking shots! There are a lot of those, too, though!
Bande de filles (2014): Really good! After seeing a few Sciamma movies, I was a little leery of the only one about black kids being gang-centric, but she probably knows more about Paris youths than me, I'll stay in my lane. Once Vic breaks out and starts going it alone, it lost me a bit, but there was still lots to like, and the Rihanna scene is one of my favourites of the year.
Gold Diggers of 1933 (1933): This is still delightful, and the ending is still an absolutely BATSHIT thing to end on, tonally. It comes SLIGHTLY less out of left field when you know it's coming and can see the themes of 'the Depression fucking blows, y'all' running throughout, but at the end of the day, it's still a fun, romantic romp about fabulous babes scamming dudes and dancing around that ends on a giant, depressing dirge about America's forgotten veterans. WHAT.
He Was Her Man (1934): "Oh, I think I'll squeeze in one more go-round with Cagney and Blondell before the month is out, one last little pick-me-up to take me into my next work week." And then he fucking DIES AT THE END OF THIS ONE. WHAT THE FUCK. I WAS SO CAUGHT OFF GUARD. Just cruising along, having a good time, then realizing that hey, this movie is almost over and I'm not seeing any way for him to get out of this and they're clearly setting it up so she can be happy with Nick in the end and oh my god is this seriously how it's gonna end??? None of these things are complaints, it was really good and those two make me very happy even when they're tragic, but BOY was I lulled into a false sense of security by all these delightful pre-Code romps where everything just works out perfectly at the last second. Also, had nobody in Old Hollywood ever met a Portuguese person before?? Those ACCENTS, my GOD.
The Heiress (1949): The de Havilland hype was totally worth it, this is so charming and sumptuous that it just gets under your skin and settles gently in for the duration, even while wielding its tragedies like a scalpel. Beautiful ambiguities and a total gut punch of an ending. RIP to a real one.
It's Alive (1974): I'm very conflicted about a lot of the morals seemingly at play here. Very much NOT conflicted about mutant murder baby, though. The best baby.
Jo Jo Dancer, Your Life is Calling (1986): Not a showcase of what made Pryor great by any stretch, but a very different example of it? 100 minutes of the mortifying ordeal of being known, I can't even IMAGINE ever baring myself like that.
The Last Vermeer (2019): BACK TO THE 'RONA THEATER WATCH #13! Typical schlocky Hollywoodization of an interesting historical anecdote, everyone seems like they're having fun with it, costumes were nice to look at all big and detailed like that. A good time!
Lawyer Man (1932): SUCH a weird little movie, a compact-yet-aimless legal drama with a genuinely kinda shocking amount of open corruption just on display and taken for granted, go-nowhere romantic subplots, and a scene where hired thugs eat a giant cake with their bare hands? Was that even a movie, or something that just kinda happened to me for an hour?? Amazing.
Lenny (1974): I'm not actually familiar enough with Lenny Bruce to know how close to the mark Hoffman is here with his performance, but it's a hell of a turn either way. Every single shot of this movie looks like a lost still from Sin City and it rules.
Luminous Motion (1998): VERY WEIRD. I actually really dug it while it was still just a fucked up eternal road trip movie, but once they start trying to settle and get into the weird Oedipal crazy kid shit, it falls apart fast. Also, the lead in it is the kid from The Santa Clause, which my theater has at the moment and I immediately decided I needed to do a That Fucking Kid double feature.
Millie (1931): You know what? All men ARE tramps. Glad someone had the guts to finally say it. This movie is seriously about how men are mostly just sex-obsessed assholes and will always fuck you over, even the pretty good ones, and you're better off without in the end. Awesome.
Modern Romance (1981): "You want happiness? Get away from the box."
Museum Hours (2012): Gentle and charming. I love the way the opening museum scenes made me start hyperfixating on visuals, so that the rest of the movie felt like a series of shots that could totally be hanging on the wall of one somewhere.
My Brother's Wedding (1983): God, I love this movie.
Mysterious Skin (2004): By no means an easy watch, but certainly a worthwhile one.
Night Nurse (1931): Peak pre-Code goodness, this is still ridiculous, wonderful trash, full of gratuitous changing scenes, nurses cuddling in bed together, and evil chauffeur Clark Gable.
Olivia (1951): Toxic nineteenth-century lesbians, great dresses, almost no male speaking roles, why isn't everyone talking about this movie all of the time, it has everything??? Like, this shit isn't coded, it's an explicitly queer movie from almost seventy years ago??
Ornette: Made in America (1985): jazz is like bicycles
Parting Glances (1986): Wonderful, light hangout movie, just a really great time chilling with that classic queer undercurrent of looming death that you could never entirely escape in that era. Buscemi is... unsettlingly young.
The Phantom Tollbooth (1970): A typically Chuck Jonesian treat just to look at, which is good, because the actual material... well, it's trash. Maybe you had to have read the book as a kid to care? GREAT ANIMATION, THOUGH.
Portrait of Jason (1967): Gah, the hostile turn this takes at the end still manages to catch me off guard, it's SO upsetting.
Red Road (2006): Creepy, voyeuristic excellence. Gives just enough puzzle pieces for you to have the shape of the thing, keeping it from ever being a frustrating watch even though you know throughout that you don't have the full picture yet. What The Fuck Are You Doing Oh My God: The Movie.
Rumble: The Indians Who Rocked the World (2017): A little cheesy at times, but there's lots of great, important, too-long-neglected music history in here. It's pretty embarrassing how few of these people I was aware were native!
The Santa Clause (1994): BACK TO THE 'RONA THEATER WATCH #15! DID YOU THINK I WAS FUCKING KIDDING? Look, this is not a good movie by any stretch of the imagination, but I watched it SO many times when I was a kid, it was one of the tapes at my babysitter's house, and it's exactly the kind of bullshit nostalgia I needed to kick off the holiday season. :)
Sud (1999): Rough stuff, both for the subject matter and all of the excruciatingly boring downtime that is Akerman's whole deal.
Spectre (2015): BACK TO THE 'RONA THEATER WATCH #16! OKAY, I'M BACK TO BEING IMPATIENT FOR NO TIME TO DIE. I wasn't looking forward to this one as much as the other random Bond films that have played this past month since... I've seen it in a theater before. However, once it actually started, it occurred to me that it's been so long between movies that I never saw it in the nice, new theater, so I still got an upgraded experience, which was fun. Five years later, and I still can't believe they went Full Blofeld.
Spellbound (2002): A lot of weird, rah-rah American exceptionalism aside, this was great, if FAR too stressful for post-work viewing. I immediately needed to go take a bath to unwind, and I'm so glad spelling bee culture was never a thing here. I want to hug all of these children, even the real weird ones.
The Spy Who Loved Me (1977): BACK TO THE 'RONA THEATER WATCH #14! I can't believe how long I underrated this movie, it's easily the best of the Moore films and I like it more every time I see it. And getting to see it on a big screen? Chef's kiss, baby. Maybe it's because the book is one of my favourites and this has nothing to do with it (for good reason, it's BONKERS and would obviously never work as a movie)? WHO CAN SAY.
Tarnation (2003): Painfully self-indulgent in the best possible ways.
Three on a Match (1932): The last time I watched this, it was for Davis. This time, it's for Blondell, who has much more to work with. Once again, child-killing gangster Bogart steals the show in the last act.
Tomboy (2011): :(
Totally Fucked Up (1993): "Heterosexuality sucks, even as a board game."
Trog (1970): Ridiculous nonsense. Crawford kills it. WHy dinosaur time????
Naissance des pieuvres (2007): Another one for the 'this is phenomenal but being a teenage girl sucked enough the first time, do I really need painfully resonant revisitations of it?' box. It's not a very full box, and it takes a lot to want to open it.
A Woman's Face (1941): Plays into all of my least favourite 'being ugly makes you a bad person' tropes, but goddamn it, Crawford is a beast, the noir stylings abound, and it has the LEAST murderable kid in film history, it all works way better than it should for me. I should really get around to watching the Bergman version one of these days.
Working Girls (1931): There's some nice stuff about class here, and the fact that all the guys only exist as contrivances for the women to pass around while they deal with their own shit is fun, but it's kept down by a weird lack of charisma.
SHORTS
Anybody's Woman (1981): On second thought, maybe I don't ever need to revisit Variety.
Approaching a Breakthrough (2017): This guy sucks so much and I love him.
The Boatman (2016): Sad and sweet and something else, too. Fire flashbacks and missing my grandfather.
Call Your Father (2017): Delightful and exhausting.
A Catalog of Anticipations (2008): HUH.
Dirt Daughter (2019): Eh. Weird for weirdness' sake with not much of interest to say. I did love those cow print heels, though.
Het bijzondere leven van Rocky de Vlaeminck (2010): Goofy, funny, leaves you with something to think on when it's over. Very nice.
Horse Day (2015): Fun format. The subject matter wasn't particularly interesting for me beyond the initial 'oh, huh, I didn't know this was a thing', but the telling is just so joyous here that it never gets stale.
Influenza (2004): Brutal violence, pitch-black comedy, not much of a point that I could see? Solid, though. Bong!
The Lonedale Operator (2018): Pure, unadulterated love of film. <3
My Daily Routine (2011): Productivity is just a frantic, slow suicide. This is really good, though.
Nettles (2019): I had to restart halfway through because it was nooooot holding my attention at all. A neat idea, executed extremely tediously. Definitely got me thinking about my own nettles, though.
Pillars (2020): Some nice imagery, but no strong throughline for any of the themes to hang on to. Distant, in spite of the tears and long, gauzy closeups.
The Potluck and the Passion (1993): Why are people so damn eager to get back to group socializing, this shit is stressful. Really good, but Dunye's fourth wall breaking meta stuff has really diminishing returns and contributes pretty much nothing here. The couple that shows up to the party late with KFC is goals.
Quiet as Kept (2007): Sliiiightly more black people in Star Wars than there were the last time I watched this? Still relevant, though.
Several Friends (1969): Still having trouble clicking with this one, a bit too much of a realistic hangout for me, I think.
She Don't Fade (1991): Confusing, but charming. Paula rules.
Some Analog Lines (2006): Nice little essay. Kinda drags his brother a bit with the thesis, which is pretty funny. I don't know if analog methods really will always still have their places in the world, but I hope they do.
Stand Up (2008): A thoroughly unpleasant experience for all of the senses! Not bad.
The Trophy Hunter (2012): More of an ad than a film, but deeply depressing regardless.
Vanilla Sex (1992): An interesting anecdote, told interestingly. There's always another way to be othered.
TELEVISION
All Elite Wrestling (October 20th - 28th, 2020): BRANDON VS. PETER, FEUD OF THE YEAR. I cried. I actually cried, the goofy fucking jobber feud made literal tears of joy roll down my face at its conclusion, what EVEN. The first eight (!) minutes of that week's episode of BTE do a great job of summing up the epic journey. I'm still pretty emotional about it, tbh. Also: SO not ready for Hangman and Kenny to face off at Full Gear, but I want to be caught up on AEW by the time 2021 starts, so I'll have to put on my big girl chaps and crack it open on my next day off. SO CLOSE.
Star Trek: Discovery (3x07/3x08): See recent Star Trek DISCOurse posts!
Also I ate way too much yesterday and feel real gross now.
Also we had three days of respite, but our 'rona numbers are back on the climb. Hopefully the brief plateau means we're peaking? lol what is hope
Did I mention our washer died? So my mom's having to take the entire family's laundry to work with her to do it all there, which is a totally great, sustainable thing to have to do until Rona has a new one in at (hopefully) the end of the month. And Christmas is basically tomorrow! Woooooooooo.
This all sounds much more mopey and dire than I actually am, I'm just... tired. Tomorrow night I will be able to sleep again and all will be well for another week.
Someone printed out a calendar with all of the cross shifts highlighted for all of 2021 and man. I just don't know.
The weather is weirdly amazing? We're well into December and the snow is almost... all gone. It's madness.
The sun setting directly in my fucking face means that I pretty much just can't do anything but hide in the corner of my work terrarium from 3 to 3:30, which is very annoying.
I wish I knew stars better. There's this one really bright one to the... east? That's usually the only thing in the sky save the moon when I head to work in the morning.
I watched a fuckton of movies on my last week off. Possibly too many. This is where the spoilers go.
FILMS
La folie Almayer (2011): WOW, YEAH, OKAY, I FINALLY GET THE AKERMAN HYPE. Fourth time's the fuckin' charm, I guess, this was definitely a slow burn but not nearly as brutally boring as all the other stuff of hers I watched this month.
And When I Die, I Won't Stay Dead (2015): Rewatched while doing some journaling. Seemed a lot less cohesive the second time around? I guess once you know the guy's story, it makes it more jarring, the way the narrative seems to jump around with no rhyme or reason. Maybe it's supposed to feel like poetry, but it just feels lazily written, idk.
Another Country (1984): Crazy young Cary Elwes and Colin Firth and Rupert Everett, you say? British public school gays in the '30s, you say? A thinly-veiled Guy Burgess stand-in, you say? HMMM, YES, GOOD. Kinda hokey and melodramatic and anachronistic in lazy ways, with some hilaribad aging makeup on top for good measure, but who even cares look how baby they all are
Big City Blues (1932): The lead in this looked weirdly like Tom Holland at times and it was very distracting, but this was fun. It has a WILDLY abrupt tonal shift right in the middle and gets SUPER dark and Bogart isn't even credited so that was an amazing surprise.
Blondie Johnson (1933): Oh my god, ruthless gangster Blondell is my new everything, I am OBSESSED. Chester Morris and his weird pointy face are always welcome additions, too, but seriously. O B S E S S E D.
The Count of Monte Cristo (1934): Slow to get going, but once you get past the first prison time jump, it's a lot of fun. Choppy towards the end, but that's a hell of a lot of novel to cram into two hours, so I'm willing to let it slide.
The Crowd Roars (1932): One of the first things Ann Dvorak says to Cagney in this is "I wish I were getting off with you" and ha ha, you and me both, girl ANYWAY, this was like an old-timey version of Grand Prix except one third the runtime and it was awesome, the end.
Die Hard (1988): BACK TO THE 'RONA THEATER WATCH #17! because bruce willis looking fine as hell in laser ultra is the reason for the season
Là-bas (2006): A good one to start the day with (that's the nice way of saying there's a lot to it but it's also super fucking boring). I'm sure as a chronicle of how tedious and shitty depression is, it hits hard, especially considering Akerman's eventual suicide, but also zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz. So much totally uncritical musing about Israel, so little time.
Duck Soup (1933): I don't think ANY of these men are qualified for these positions. I've definitely seen this before, but remembered almost none of it for some reason? I was definitely surprised that it's a musical the first time around, too, though. Zeppo can get it.
Emily Brontë's Wuthering Heights (1992): God, that whole 'author telling the story' framing/narration is hacky as fuuuuuuuuq. As for the rest of it, it starts off promising, a more overtly sexual take on the story that could be interesting, but the moors are too pretty and Catherine is too sweet, there's just no bite to anything here, and the romance falls completely flat; there's no depth to it, nothing behind the darkness, Heathcliff is just an asshole, the end. HOWEVER -- and this cramming is probably where a lot of the choppiness comes from -- it actually adapts the back half of the novel as well for once, which earns it a LOT of bonus points in my book.
D'est (1993): Extremely boring shit! Some cool hats.
De l'autre côté (2002): Really great stuff here, and it's almost all unbearably sad! I'm using great to mean important and difficult in this case! It's really awful! The only Akerman documentary I watched that managed to be better than painfully boring tracking shots! There are a lot of those, too, though!
Bande de filles (2014): Really good! After seeing a few Sciamma movies, I was a little leery of the only one about black kids being gang-centric, but she probably knows more about Paris youths than me, I'll stay in my lane. Once Vic breaks out and starts going it alone, it lost me a bit, but there was still lots to like, and the Rihanna scene is one of my favourites of the year.
Gold Diggers of 1933 (1933): This is still delightful, and the ending is still an absolutely BATSHIT thing to end on, tonally. It comes SLIGHTLY less out of left field when you know it's coming and can see the themes of 'the Depression fucking blows, y'all' running throughout, but at the end of the day, it's still a fun, romantic romp about fabulous babes scamming dudes and dancing around that ends on a giant, depressing dirge about America's forgotten veterans. WHAT.
He Was Her Man (1934): "Oh, I think I'll squeeze in one more go-round with Cagney and Blondell before the month is out, one last little pick-me-up to take me into my next work week." And then he fucking DIES AT THE END OF THIS ONE. WHAT THE FUCK. I WAS SO CAUGHT OFF GUARD. Just cruising along, having a good time, then realizing that hey, this movie is almost over and I'm not seeing any way for him to get out of this and they're clearly setting it up so she can be happy with Nick in the end and oh my god is this seriously how it's gonna end??? None of these things are complaints, it was really good and those two make me very happy even when they're tragic, but BOY was I lulled into a false sense of security by all these delightful pre-Code romps where everything just works out perfectly at the last second. Also, had nobody in Old Hollywood ever met a Portuguese person before?? Those ACCENTS, my GOD.
The Heiress (1949): The de Havilland hype was totally worth it, this is so charming and sumptuous that it just gets under your skin and settles gently in for the duration, even while wielding its tragedies like a scalpel. Beautiful ambiguities and a total gut punch of an ending. RIP to a real one.
It's Alive (1974): I'm very conflicted about a lot of the morals seemingly at play here. Very much NOT conflicted about mutant murder baby, though. The best baby.
Jo Jo Dancer, Your Life is Calling (1986): Not a showcase of what made Pryor great by any stretch, but a very different example of it? 100 minutes of the mortifying ordeal of being known, I can't even IMAGINE ever baring myself like that.
The Last Vermeer (2019): BACK TO THE 'RONA THEATER WATCH #13! Typical schlocky Hollywoodization of an interesting historical anecdote, everyone seems like they're having fun with it, costumes were nice to look at all big and detailed like that. A good time!
Lawyer Man (1932): SUCH a weird little movie, a compact-yet-aimless legal drama with a genuinely kinda shocking amount of open corruption just on display and taken for granted, go-nowhere romantic subplots, and a scene where hired thugs eat a giant cake with their bare hands? Was that even a movie, or something that just kinda happened to me for an hour?? Amazing.
Lenny (1974): I'm not actually familiar enough with Lenny Bruce to know how close to the mark Hoffman is here with his performance, but it's a hell of a turn either way. Every single shot of this movie looks like a lost still from Sin City and it rules.
Luminous Motion (1998): VERY WEIRD. I actually really dug it while it was still just a fucked up eternal road trip movie, but once they start trying to settle and get into the weird Oedipal crazy kid shit, it falls apart fast. Also, the lead in it is the kid from The Santa Clause, which my theater has at the moment and I immediately decided I needed to do a That Fucking Kid double feature.
Millie (1931): You know what? All men ARE tramps. Glad someone had the guts to finally say it. This movie is seriously about how men are mostly just sex-obsessed assholes and will always fuck you over, even the pretty good ones, and you're better off without in the end. Awesome.
Modern Romance (1981): "You want happiness? Get away from the box."
Museum Hours (2012): Gentle and charming. I love the way the opening museum scenes made me start hyperfixating on visuals, so that the rest of the movie felt like a series of shots that could totally be hanging on the wall of one somewhere.
My Brother's Wedding (1983): God, I love this movie.
Mysterious Skin (2004): By no means an easy watch, but certainly a worthwhile one.
Night Nurse (1931): Peak pre-Code goodness, this is still ridiculous, wonderful trash, full of gratuitous changing scenes, nurses cuddling in bed together, and evil chauffeur Clark Gable.
Olivia (1951): Toxic nineteenth-century lesbians, great dresses, almost no male speaking roles, why isn't everyone talking about this movie all of the time, it has everything??? Like, this shit isn't coded, it's an explicitly queer movie from almost seventy years ago??
Ornette: Made in America (1985): jazz is like bicycles
Parting Glances (1986): Wonderful, light hangout movie, just a really great time chilling with that classic queer undercurrent of looming death that you could never entirely escape in that era. Buscemi is... unsettlingly young.
The Phantom Tollbooth (1970): A typically Chuck Jonesian treat just to look at, which is good, because the actual material... well, it's trash. Maybe you had to have read the book as a kid to care? GREAT ANIMATION, THOUGH.
Portrait of Jason (1967): Gah, the hostile turn this takes at the end still manages to catch me off guard, it's SO upsetting.
Red Road (2006): Creepy, voyeuristic excellence. Gives just enough puzzle pieces for you to have the shape of the thing, keeping it from ever being a frustrating watch even though you know throughout that you don't have the full picture yet. What The Fuck Are You Doing Oh My God: The Movie.
Rumble: The Indians Who Rocked the World (2017): A little cheesy at times, but there's lots of great, important, too-long-neglected music history in here. It's pretty embarrassing how few of these people I was aware were native!
The Santa Clause (1994): BACK TO THE 'RONA THEATER WATCH #15! DID YOU THINK I WAS FUCKING KIDDING? Look, this is not a good movie by any stretch of the imagination, but I watched it SO many times when I was a kid, it was one of the tapes at my babysitter's house, and it's exactly the kind of bullshit nostalgia I needed to kick off the holiday season. :)
Sud (1999): Rough stuff, both for the subject matter and all of the excruciatingly boring downtime that is Akerman's whole deal.
Spectre (2015): BACK TO THE 'RONA THEATER WATCH #16! OKAY, I'M BACK TO BEING IMPATIENT FOR NO TIME TO DIE. I wasn't looking forward to this one as much as the other random Bond films that have played this past month since... I've seen it in a theater before. However, once it actually started, it occurred to me that it's been so long between movies that I never saw it in the nice, new theater, so I still got an upgraded experience, which was fun. Five years later, and I still can't believe they went Full Blofeld.
Spellbound (2002): A lot of weird, rah-rah American exceptionalism aside, this was great, if FAR too stressful for post-work viewing. I immediately needed to go take a bath to unwind, and I'm so glad spelling bee culture was never a thing here. I want to hug all of these children, even the real weird ones.
The Spy Who Loved Me (1977): BACK TO THE 'RONA THEATER WATCH #14! I can't believe how long I underrated this movie, it's easily the best of the Moore films and I like it more every time I see it. And getting to see it on a big screen? Chef's kiss, baby. Maybe it's because the book is one of my favourites and this has nothing to do with it (for good reason, it's BONKERS and would obviously never work as a movie)? WHO CAN SAY.
Tarnation (2003): Painfully self-indulgent in the best possible ways.
Three on a Match (1932): The last time I watched this, it was for Davis. This time, it's for Blondell, who has much more to work with. Once again, child-killing gangster Bogart steals the show in the last act.
Tomboy (2011): :(
Totally Fucked Up (1993): "Heterosexuality sucks, even as a board game."
Trog (1970): Ridiculous nonsense. Crawford kills it. WHy dinosaur time????
Naissance des pieuvres (2007): Another one for the 'this is phenomenal but being a teenage girl sucked enough the first time, do I really need painfully resonant revisitations of it?' box. It's not a very full box, and it takes a lot to want to open it.
A Woman's Face (1941): Plays into all of my least favourite 'being ugly makes you a bad person' tropes, but goddamn it, Crawford is a beast, the noir stylings abound, and it has the LEAST murderable kid in film history, it all works way better than it should for me. I should really get around to watching the Bergman version one of these days.
Working Girls (1931): There's some nice stuff about class here, and the fact that all the guys only exist as contrivances for the women to pass around while they deal with their own shit is fun, but it's kept down by a weird lack of charisma.
SHORTS
Anybody's Woman (1981): On second thought, maybe I don't ever need to revisit Variety.
Approaching a Breakthrough (2017): This guy sucks so much and I love him.
The Boatman (2016): Sad and sweet and something else, too. Fire flashbacks and missing my grandfather.
Call Your Father (2017): Delightful and exhausting.
A Catalog of Anticipations (2008): HUH.
Dirt Daughter (2019): Eh. Weird for weirdness' sake with not much of interest to say. I did love those cow print heels, though.
Het bijzondere leven van Rocky de Vlaeminck (2010): Goofy, funny, leaves you with something to think on when it's over. Very nice.
Horse Day (2015): Fun format. The subject matter wasn't particularly interesting for me beyond the initial 'oh, huh, I didn't know this was a thing', but the telling is just so joyous here that it never gets stale.
Influenza (2004): Brutal violence, pitch-black comedy, not much of a point that I could see? Solid, though. Bong!
The Lonedale Operator (2018): Pure, unadulterated love of film. <3
My Daily Routine (2011): Productivity is just a frantic, slow suicide. This is really good, though.
Nettles (2019): I had to restart halfway through because it was nooooot holding my attention at all. A neat idea, executed extremely tediously. Definitely got me thinking about my own nettles, though.
Pillars (2020): Some nice imagery, but no strong throughline for any of the themes to hang on to. Distant, in spite of the tears and long, gauzy closeups.
The Potluck and the Passion (1993): Why are people so damn eager to get back to group socializing, this shit is stressful. Really good, but Dunye's fourth wall breaking meta stuff has really diminishing returns and contributes pretty much nothing here. The couple that shows up to the party late with KFC is goals.
Quiet as Kept (2007): Sliiiightly more black people in Star Wars than there were the last time I watched this? Still relevant, though.
Several Friends (1969): Still having trouble clicking with this one, a bit too much of a realistic hangout for me, I think.
She Don't Fade (1991): Confusing, but charming. Paula rules.
Some Analog Lines (2006): Nice little essay. Kinda drags his brother a bit with the thesis, which is pretty funny. I don't know if analog methods really will always still have their places in the world, but I hope they do.
Stand Up (2008): A thoroughly unpleasant experience for all of the senses! Not bad.
The Trophy Hunter (2012): More of an ad than a film, but deeply depressing regardless.
Vanilla Sex (1992): An interesting anecdote, told interestingly. There's always another way to be othered.
TELEVISION
All Elite Wrestling (October 20th - 28th, 2020): BRANDON VS. PETER, FEUD OF THE YEAR. I cried. I actually cried, the goofy fucking jobber feud made literal tears of joy roll down my face at its conclusion, what EVEN. The first eight (!) minutes of that week's episode of BTE do a great job of summing up the epic journey. I'm still pretty emotional about it, tbh. Also: SO not ready for Hangman and Kenny to face off at Full Gear, but I want to be caught up on AEW by the time 2021 starts, so I'll have to put on my big girl chaps and crack it open on my next day off. SO CLOSE.
Star Trek: Discovery (3x07/3x08): See recent Star Trek DISCOurse posts!
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no subject
Probably Venus.