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Summer 2022 - Week 4
One of those weeks where seven days feels extremely short, so I'm gonna have to actually accomplish shit around the house to avoid blinking and being back at work with nothing to show for it, I think. That's cool, I think I can manage it.
So far I have NOT done anything beyond that barest amount of tidying, but a good night's sleep was task #1 and that's taken care of at least. I think I'm going to continue to putter around and watch stuff and read and then maybe take a bath before Dynamite? And then make an actual 'being a person' gameplan for the rest of the week.
BUT FIRST. WAY TOO MANY FEELINGS ABOUT BETTER CALL SAUL and also some other stuff, too.
FILMS
Body Heat (1981): They just don't make 'em as unabashedly horny as this anymore. Sad! I think my favourite thing about this movie is how, in between all the sex scenes, everybody gets exactly what they deserve in the end. Well, maybe not the high school friend who gets murdered or the sweet little girl who gets traumatized by the sight of William Hurt's dick, but everyone who matters.
Crestone (2020): Is there any more upsetting sentence in the English language than "My friends from high school are SoundCloud rappers now"? That is a horror novel opener. Anyway, this is like an anthropologic treatise on the stupidest (yet mostly harmless) people in existence. They're almost endearing in places? And then one of them will start rapping about Sonic the Hedgehog while another goes fishing in an abandoned cooler filled with human feces in order to get a jar of peanut butter that he's spotted and you just want to die.
Pink Floyd: Live at Pompeii (1972): Have I really not hit any Pink Floyd in my 1001 Albums project yet? They seem exactly in that list's wheelhouse. Wild. Anyway, there's a really striking emphasis on the simple physical movements making all of these sounds over and above any psychedelic nonsense they might otherwise evoke that makes this kind of a must-watch tactile experience of a concert movie? Also: damn, those guys were all mega-ugly! Good for them.
SHORTS
The Acquaintances of a Lonely John (2008): Sometimes you just wanna watch some early Safdie stuff without making a commitment to having some big stressful time, you know?
The Black Balloon (2012): go little guy go, also there can be no freedom without casualties
John's Gone (2010): I like this, but I struggle to find any comedy in it?
Swallowed (2016): I gotta amend my previous assessment of this thing somewhat, it's more of a cross between Unedited Footage of a Bear and Ryan Nemeth's cream-based horror vignettes from Being the Elite. Still not very good!
TELEVISION
Better Call Saul 6x09: It was inevitable, and I'm gutted! Are prequels the most painful kind of tragedy? I don't know, maybe!! But there are so many ways the inevitable separation could have gone down and I go back and forth between convincing myself this one wasn't AS bad as it could have been (she's alive, after all) and just wanted to curl up forever (because she was never gonna die, obviously nobody can ever feel safe watching a show like this, but there was no way Jimmy would be able to continue as a person, even one as fucked up as Saul, if Kim had died unless MAYBE it was of the most natural of causes, it just made no sense) because 'they accidentally get Howard fucking killed and she gives up her entire career out of guilt and leaves Jimmy forever' is surely one of the BIGGEST oofs that ever could have been on the table OH MY GOD I JUST REALIZED THAT'S HOW HE COULD GO FROM THE 2ND BEST TO WORLD'S GREATEST LAWYER MUGS, BECAUSE SHE'S NOT ONE AT ALL ANYMORE, JUST FUCKING LET ME DIE. Anyway. Anyway!
The worst part, of course, is that she's entirely correct! They're perfect for each other, and will always love each other, but at what fucking cost? So what? Kim's fatal flaw was always her stubborn impulsiveness, but she never lets that get in the way of her sense of what's right. She'll do the wrong thing, and she'll do it for a really long time (because she's having too much FUN), but when the dust settles and the consequences become apparent, it's never too late to do the right thing in her world. Unlike guys like Jimmy (or Walt, for that matter, since they went all in on the Breaking Bad parallels when she went after Gus last week), it's impossible to ever get in SO deep that there's no point in doing whatever you can do to be better tomorrow. She'll chuck bottles off a balcony to blow off steam, but she'll also go sweep up the mess in the morning. That's all this was; sweeping up the mess she made. And because the consequences were so much worse than some broken bottles this time around, that means going scorched earth, giving up her job, her husband, her entire LIFE in one fell swoop and just dealing with it.
And then we jump to Jimmy in his Full Saul Era and the show as we knew it is over, because... we don't need to see the rest. Without Kim, being this guy is all he has left. No more reasons to try and be better, just the best Criminal Lawyer around.
Hahaha I'm in so much pain! Why is this my favourite show ever? Because it does a montage like no other? Four episodes to go! THIS IS FINE.
Bonus Points: Mike telling Gus that 'the lawyers' were even better at selling the story than expected dovetailed so nicely into Kim going into full bullshit mode with Howard's widow, cool as a fucking cucumber, even as she broke towards the end and tried to ever-so-slightly un-gaslight this poor woman, just a little. Also really happy we got some measure of closure with Nacho's dad. :( this is my bcs happy face
GLOW 3x06: Some of these conflicts feel like they just come out of nowhere, but maybe that's just what happens when you camp.
Ms. Marvel 1x06: Man I wish I liked this more! I'm not gonna say it was a disappointment, since the production was kind of a mess and I wasn't expecting much to begin with, but I'd certainly hoped they'd pull off something not so... dull and poorly-written, oof. It's not Inhumans bad or anything like that, but like, F&WS was pretty poorly-written in parts, too, yet that was more just periodically frustrating (that fucking boat), I still cared about the characters (barring the dirt-tier villain) and what was all happening, while this was just... bleh. The most interesting things about this were the cultural stuff and wrapping my mind around the ClanDestine pull (OF ALL THINGS, like did they just do a google search for 'djinn in Marvel comics' and say 'fuck it'???), I never once managed to give a shit about the actual plot or any character other than Kamala. They even went and did the thing I've been joking about them doing for YEARS (making Kamala a mutant) and I'm just completely ambivalent about it. Maybe because so much else felt so wildly divergent from the established character already (ffs you don't get to do the 'embiggen' moment for the easy comic reference pop if you specifically changed her powerset to something entirely, wildly different already!! so dumb), I couldn't appreciate the delicious irony of it? IDK, IDK, I had no particular fondness for the character going in, and now I'm looking forward to seeing Iman Vellani hopefully get to actually do cool shit in The Marvels, so it certainly wasn't a net loss of time, just... bleh.
Queer Eye Germany 1x01: HA HA HA, I FOUND MORE FEEL GOOD SCHLOCK, I'M GOOD FOR ANOTHER MONTH, even if I have to read subtitles throughout so can't multi-task during anymore.
Riverdale 6x20: A triple guillotine execution. 1500s flashbacks. The actual devil shows up again. Parallel universes. Blowing up a ghost train. Pop's is on a hellmouth. And Betty's resurrected sister washed her feet so she doesn't have the serial killer gene anymore. I have no commentary. These things just... happen now.
Star Trek: Enterprise 1x01: What was I gonna do, NOT watch Star Trek on a Thursday? It's been more than six months in a row of new episodes! It's a habit now! So even though SNW left me jonesing for some TOS, I figured I'd instead take this opportunity to finally sit down and watch the one Trek show I don't believe I've actually seen every episode of! Hoshi is the only remotely likable person in this pilot, but we'll see how it goes!
Westworld 4x04: Ahaha, finally some bullshit that makes my head hurt, it's been too long!
Wrestling
AEW Dark 4x31
AEW Dark: Elevation 2x29
AEW Dynamite 4x28
AEW Rampage 2x28
Before the IMPACT 2x28
IMPACT! Wrestling 19x28
MLW Fusion 5x22
NJPW on AXS 6x20
NJPW on Roku 1x84
NJPW Strong 3x27
NJPW XTRA 1x28
NWA Powerrr 9x05
NWA USA 3x05
We are STARDOM!! 3x28
So far I have NOT done anything beyond that barest amount of tidying, but a good night's sleep was task #1 and that's taken care of at least. I think I'm going to continue to putter around and watch stuff and read and then maybe take a bath before Dynamite? And then make an actual 'being a person' gameplan for the rest of the week.
BUT FIRST. WAY TOO MANY FEELINGS ABOUT BETTER CALL SAUL and also some other stuff, too.
FILMS
Body Heat (1981): They just don't make 'em as unabashedly horny as this anymore. Sad! I think my favourite thing about this movie is how, in between all the sex scenes, everybody gets exactly what they deserve in the end. Well, maybe not the high school friend who gets murdered or the sweet little girl who gets traumatized by the sight of William Hurt's dick, but everyone who matters.
Crestone (2020): Is there any more upsetting sentence in the English language than "My friends from high school are SoundCloud rappers now"? That is a horror novel opener. Anyway, this is like an anthropologic treatise on the stupidest (yet mostly harmless) people in existence. They're almost endearing in places? And then one of them will start rapping about Sonic the Hedgehog while another goes fishing in an abandoned cooler filled with human feces in order to get a jar of peanut butter that he's spotted and you just want to die.
Pink Floyd: Live at Pompeii (1972): Have I really not hit any Pink Floyd in my 1001 Albums project yet? They seem exactly in that list's wheelhouse. Wild. Anyway, there's a really striking emphasis on the simple physical movements making all of these sounds over and above any psychedelic nonsense they might otherwise evoke that makes this kind of a must-watch tactile experience of a concert movie? Also: damn, those guys were all mega-ugly! Good for them.
SHORTS
The Acquaintances of a Lonely John (2008): Sometimes you just wanna watch some early Safdie stuff without making a commitment to having some big stressful time, you know?
The Black Balloon (2012): go little guy go, also there can be no freedom without casualties
John's Gone (2010): I like this, but I struggle to find any comedy in it?
Swallowed (2016): I gotta amend my previous assessment of this thing somewhat, it's more of a cross between Unedited Footage of a Bear and Ryan Nemeth's cream-based horror vignettes from Being the Elite. Still not very good!
TELEVISION
Better Call Saul 6x09: It was inevitable, and I'm gutted! Are prequels the most painful kind of tragedy? I don't know, maybe!! But there are so many ways the inevitable separation could have gone down and I go back and forth between convincing myself this one wasn't AS bad as it could have been (she's alive, after all) and just wanted to curl up forever (because she was never gonna die, obviously nobody can ever feel safe watching a show like this, but there was no way Jimmy would be able to continue as a person, even one as fucked up as Saul, if Kim had died unless MAYBE it was of the most natural of causes, it just made no sense) because 'they accidentally get Howard fucking killed and she gives up her entire career out of guilt and leaves Jimmy forever' is surely one of the BIGGEST oofs that ever could have been on the table OH MY GOD I JUST REALIZED THAT'S HOW HE COULD GO FROM THE 2ND BEST TO WORLD'S GREATEST LAWYER MUGS, BECAUSE SHE'S NOT ONE AT ALL ANYMORE, JUST FUCKING LET ME DIE. Anyway. Anyway!
The worst part, of course, is that she's entirely correct! They're perfect for each other, and will always love each other, but at what fucking cost? So what? Kim's fatal flaw was always her stubborn impulsiveness, but she never lets that get in the way of her sense of what's right. She'll do the wrong thing, and she'll do it for a really long time (because she's having too much FUN), but when the dust settles and the consequences become apparent, it's never too late to do the right thing in her world. Unlike guys like Jimmy (or Walt, for that matter, since they went all in on the Breaking Bad parallels when she went after Gus last week), it's impossible to ever get in SO deep that there's no point in doing whatever you can do to be better tomorrow. She'll chuck bottles off a balcony to blow off steam, but she'll also go sweep up the mess in the morning. That's all this was; sweeping up the mess she made. And because the consequences were so much worse than some broken bottles this time around, that means going scorched earth, giving up her job, her husband, her entire LIFE in one fell swoop and just dealing with it.
And then we jump to Jimmy in his Full Saul Era and the show as we knew it is over, because... we don't need to see the rest. Without Kim, being this guy is all he has left. No more reasons to try and be better, just the best Criminal Lawyer around.
Hahaha I'm in so much pain! Why is this my favourite show ever? Because it does a montage like no other? Four episodes to go! THIS IS FINE.
Bonus Points: Mike telling Gus that 'the lawyers' were even better at selling the story than expected dovetailed so nicely into Kim going into full bullshit mode with Howard's widow, cool as a fucking cucumber, even as she broke towards the end and tried to ever-so-slightly un-gaslight this poor woman, just a little. Also really happy we got some measure of closure with Nacho's dad. :( this is my bcs happy face
GLOW 3x06: Some of these conflicts feel like they just come out of nowhere, but maybe that's just what happens when you camp.
Ms. Marvel 1x06: Man I wish I liked this more! I'm not gonna say it was a disappointment, since the production was kind of a mess and I wasn't expecting much to begin with, but I'd certainly hoped they'd pull off something not so... dull and poorly-written, oof. It's not Inhumans bad or anything like that, but like, F&WS was pretty poorly-written in parts, too, yet that was more just periodically frustrating (that fucking boat), I still cared about the characters (barring the dirt-tier villain) and what was all happening, while this was just... bleh. The most interesting things about this were the cultural stuff and wrapping my mind around the ClanDestine pull (OF ALL THINGS, like did they just do a google search for 'djinn in Marvel comics' and say 'fuck it'???), I never once managed to give a shit about the actual plot or any character other than Kamala. They even went and did the thing I've been joking about them doing for YEARS (making Kamala a mutant) and I'm just completely ambivalent about it. Maybe because so much else felt so wildly divergent from the established character already (ffs you don't get to do the 'embiggen' moment for the easy comic reference pop if you specifically changed her powerset to something entirely, wildly different already!! so dumb), I couldn't appreciate the delicious irony of it? IDK, IDK, I had no particular fondness for the character going in, and now I'm looking forward to seeing Iman Vellani hopefully get to actually do cool shit in The Marvels, so it certainly wasn't a net loss of time, just... bleh.
Queer Eye Germany 1x01: HA HA HA, I FOUND MORE FEEL GOOD SCHLOCK, I'M GOOD FOR ANOTHER MONTH, even if I have to read subtitles throughout so can't multi-task during anymore.
Riverdale 6x20: A triple guillotine execution. 1500s flashbacks. The actual devil shows up again. Parallel universes. Blowing up a ghost train. Pop's is on a hellmouth. And Betty's resurrected sister washed her feet so she doesn't have the serial killer gene anymore. I have no commentary. These things just... happen now.
Star Trek: Enterprise 1x01: What was I gonna do, NOT watch Star Trek on a Thursday? It's been more than six months in a row of new episodes! It's a habit now! So even though SNW left me jonesing for some TOS, I figured I'd instead take this opportunity to finally sit down and watch the one Trek show I don't believe I've actually seen every episode of! Hoshi is the only remotely likable person in this pilot, but we'll see how it goes!
Westworld 4x04: Ahaha, finally some bullshit that makes my head hurt, it's been too long!
Wrestling
AEW Dark 4x31
AEW Dark: Elevation 2x29
AEW Dynamite 4x28
AEW Rampage 2x28
Before the IMPACT 2x28
IMPACT! Wrestling 19x28
MLW Fusion 5x22
NJPW on AXS 6x20
NJPW on Roku 1x84
NJPW Strong 3x27
NJPW XTRA 1x28
NWA Powerrr 9x05
NWA USA 3x05
We are STARDOM!! 3x28