★weekly thoughts, #020★
except it's been like a month -- what I watched, read, listened to, and thought about this week (moodboard, 19 (technically 21) movies, 12 tv shows, 6 books, new playlist, 3 podcasts, etc.)
⋆。°✩moodboard ⋆。°✩
It was my birthday and all I got was this existential dread and general upset. What the fuck is up with that?
oOoOo
I honestly could’ve just posted the Simone Rocha ss25 runway looks as a moodboard — genuinely I am obsessed with all of them. Look through: here.
Especially this look with this Genieve Figgis artwork:
⋆。°✩news ⋆。°✩
I had a lot of newsworthy shit written down — new trailers and actors dropping out of projects and opinions on trends and announcements and events and so on — but the list was getting long (letting this lapse while I half-worked and sorta-added for over-a-month will do that to ya!) and all the news was outdated and all my writing sounded crass boring and lacking at best and I hated the tinny way my voice was shining through trying to come up with new things to say about the same old shit, and it didn’t really seem all that necessary to keep on this post this time. Time seems totally oblivious and uncaring to the fact that I am STRUGGLING and I am TRYING TO GET MY SHIT TOGETHER and I am NOT HAVING FUN.
Just know I wrote everything as it happened and have been boiling metaphysically as I try and try but not hard enough to finish this, that my exceedingly prescient and timely discussions got caught in an ether neighboring Schrödinger’s cat — written and unpublished, I both was and was not discussing, conversing, reciprocating, and so on. I’m timely as fuck and always ahead of the curve actually :p But not anymore because I deleted the whole news section in favor of reviews — a post can only be so long before people ignore it, so I had to prioritize 👏 people 👏!
Also — Venice and NYFW and TIFF and NYFF are or were (depends on when this gets published) in full swing — I have such fomo. Woe is me.
⋆。°✩movies ⋆。°✩
19 movies
(and, again, they are completely unordered — no rankings or anything. I saw The Substance last night, but that will be in next week’s post 🤭)
THE FIRST OMEN, directed by Arkasha Stevenson and written by Tim Smith, Stevenson, & Keith Thomas, story by Ben Jacoby, based on characters created by David Seltzer
HOLY SHIT this movie slaps!! Holy holy holy. Nell Tiger Free is so amazing in this. I am so high off this movie — it’s stylish and scary and grounded and fun and I enjoyed it quite a lot. Visually, this was really up my alley — really stark sun-filled visuals that support both the starchiness of the papal life and the clarity of living with purpose/being in community, all the while bordered on all sides and in all scenes by eerie imposing shadows; lots of really borderline-gothic outfits and stylings, lots of quick-cut gore-adjacent imagery. Some really holy-shit really well crafted scenes of horror and chaos and confusion. The story wound around really well in my opinion, where this felt very fresh and contained while adding a lot of depth to the OG Omen franchise. Everything just flowed really well without being dependently crafted around its prequelness, and it deepened all those themes about piety and the church and religion and good v. evil really well while breathing new unique life and thematic juice into it all. The acting was really great, the writing. It just totally blew me away. Beautiful women.
Stevenson directed an episode of Legion and of Brand New Cherry — well yes I get it now I see that. Horror is alive and fucking well!
ALIEN: ROMULUS, directed by Fedé Alvarez and written by Alvarez & Rodo Sayagues, based on characters created by Dan O'Bannon & Ronald Shusett
I was in the theater with my parents buzzed off one cucumber martini and I had a BLAST. I liked this one, maybe even a lot. Very fun; cool gore and conceptual stuff — there are so many icky aspects of the xenomorphs and I’m glad because this did seem to really explore all of them, milky bloods and acids and blood and alien spit and mucus-y sacs and goo and blood. Great cast, the younger cast made this feel akin to more horror-y stuff than sci-fi, which is Not a dig or anything because I think this franchise straddles that genre blend really well, but just trying to say I can see the through line from Evil Dead to Alien that Fedé walked. Fedé and I are co captains of the bring-gore-to-every-horror-franchise campaign actually. I like the way they handled the synthetics, where there’s a sense of distrust bubbling under the surface like in the other franchise films but then here it’s not in an entirely corruptive way. In a very anti-big-corporation way that isn’t necessarily predicated on the individual synthetic but more just like Fuck Weyland-Yutani period exclamation point all-in-bold Fuck Big Synthetic. Like exactly. Truly great pair of leads amidst a really overall great cast. I would die for Andy. A bit too much stepping on the franchise’s toes in attempting to fit into and fill its shoes — did we really need a “get away from her… you bitch”? — but for me personally that didn’t weigh the good stuff down too much.
*slight spoiler sans-detail:
I almost started chanting alien baby in the theater. That shit was so fun! So gross! So cool! Gooey icky shit in space for the win! Also, I know because blah blah at work I oversaw an article about him, the final creature is played practically by an actual actor, Robert Bobroczkyi in his first ever acting role — he genuinely looks like that, like his proportions are preserved under the fx. I love when there’s a practical actor behind a cool monster in movies.
They used cgi to bring back a dead actor though, which I found to be distracting, annoying, and just plain bad. Blah blah they got permission from the family, who thought of this construction as redemptive of the actor’s loss of roles later in life, I still thought it was morally iffy and stylistically clunky. Also the plot and dialogue added in somersaults to justify why they were there in a way that was, again, clunky.
DEADPOOL & WOLVERINE, directed by Shawn Levy and written by Levy, Ryan Reynolds, Rhett Reese, Paul Wernick, and Zeb Wells, based on characters created by Rob Liefeld and Fabian Nicieza
(spoiler-free review mostly, dw)
Homoerotic undertones* be damned, this movie had no idea what to do with itself.
Comic book lore excitement be damned, this movie had no idea what to do with itself.
For something being defended as if all detractors “just hate fun,” this sure was soulless as fuck!
Had some of the ugliest and most poorly conceived fight scenes — which were routinely amateurly set up with a “you guys are gonna lose your shit” ramp-up that made them all the uglier and more disappointing because I didn’t lose my shit — and some of the most rushed and odd-paced dialogue and editing (Ryan Reynolds I have my gripes but he’s usually got his brand of comedy down, but he was rushing rushing rushing through his lines!). I liked the first two Deadpools actually, and I am extremely fluent in both pop culture and comic book, but like???? So off-paced to cater to that weird odd “we’re doing wish fulfillment folks!” center — there were so many moments where pauses were clearly added in to wait for applause, but nobody in my theater ever applauded so it just felt off. Everything connected really poorly, I deeply hated the story and its lack of storyness, there was a lot of just characters showing up for no reason other than they wanted to show up, which felt really creatively boring. This was fun, mostly sorta kinda, but more importantly, this was ass. Badly paced, edited, conceived, written, choreographed (though this was too CGI-heavy for me to earnestly call anything choreographed), balanced, and just relentlessly ugly and flat and meta-boring. Left so many threads hanging in service of some empty “oh but we’re funny” cause — it wore on itself very quickly so that the fun wound down. I also had a problem, the same problem that I had with Scream 5, where writers for some reason decide that talking about being meta is being meta — like no, that’s just bad writing and a crutch, it’s okay sometimes and self-awareness usually works but the fun is not in the overt “we are meta” of it all but instead in the “this is a clever connection between point A and point B that is dependent on the connection itself being funny rather than the simple existence of a point A and a point B” — if it’s the bulk of your ‘meta’ jokes you need to fix yourself and find some other quips please (the The Proposal joke was good though). The movie had people pop their heads in but mostly in the flattest way possible (and they kinda butchered my baby Laura) — it was people reading off a script in character together like one of those fan-service lockdown-era cast zoom table reads. The story was not a story, it was two characters walking their way out of a concept that was too boring and too loose, like that shit was aimless and bad. It had its moments — nothing is ever completely without merit — but so many elements of this were the most uncreative choice forward that I just found myself sighing that this is the best they could come up with. It lost like 75% of my goodwill for the few shining good moments because those moments were sandwiched inside an oversized sub of mediocrity. I felt the money going limp as I watched this; it felt so unbelievably cheap despite the huge budget. Please please please leave the we’re-only-filming-on-sound-stages-in-front-of-LED-screens phase of action movies to die!! It’s so easy to rant about this movie, and there definitely were a fair amount of good elements that, sure, probably deserve as much gassing up, because I did have a solid good time watching this with my brother, but ultimately overall I was disappointed. Not even 2000s X-Men movie characters or Blade killing og Toad did it for me. Like it just felt so hollowwwww. Also, this is such a stupid gripe, but they had such a good setup to make the end credit scene whatever the fuck that Thor throughline they kept bringing up was, and then they just….. didn’t? These people had wayyyyyyyyy too many things to juggle and they did it so badly.
Emma Corrin ilyy.
CUCKOO, written and directed by Tilman Singer
The only thing you need to know going into this movie: Hunter Schafer is so hot and she wields a butterfly knife and plays guitar throughout this movie. I kind of want to buy myself a butterfly knife. I think that could be a cool move.
Kind of felt like a movie whose core was periodically interrupted with flashes of way-too-quick exposition, info dumps, or odd-toned action that peaked out like a bird out of a cuckoo clock (in the sense that the flow was a bit start-and-stop), but that isn’t necessarily a negative thing. Lots of great sequences and fun dialogue — very pretty and pretty fun! I loved the aesthetics around showing the high octave screams. But also… not every movie or monster needs a message or purpose, but it would’ve been a plus if there had been one that tied to all the various throughlines in the movie? Like… I think the core gist that I got is the hypocrisy of aligning ownership with preservation, of claiming help when really you’re facilitating exploitation, right down to the cover/superficiality of Köneg calling himself a preservationist as he buys land on which to develop high-end villas. But even that was just a bit.. lacking when it tied to the cuckoos? A lot of this felt like there was something big missing, or that the explanation was put together not because it was what everything was working towards but because that point in the story required an explanation. A few plot points that never got resolved and whose depth was never fully realized. I think there was so much overtness with a lot of the elements and everything so all the subtext for each theme didn’t go as far as it could’ve. But still good — I wanna be clear that criticism and enjoyment aren’t mutually exclusive !!! I am not a one-note person and I can analyze the things I watch without making some grand pure “good” or “bad” ruling. This was fun! Dan Stevens is great as always.
HIT MAN, directed by Richard Linklater and written by Linklater, Glen Powell, & Skip Hollandsworth
Lots of fun because of how entirely charismatic and attractive Glen Powell and Adria Arjona are. A bit stupid, but in a totally warranted and intentional way. Great supporting cast. I liked the voiceovers, which I feel like I usually criticize/don’t like. Very fun.
A QUIET PLACE DAY ONE, directed by Michael Sarnoski and written by Sarnoski, John Krasinski, & Bryan Woods
Was pleasantly surprisingly charmed! Obviously Lupita Nyong’o is insanely talented and beautiful and perfect and amazing, but I was also quite charmed by Joseph Quinn? He was really sweet! Really tightly-told and well-cast, with quite an emotional arc for Lupita’s character and an overall emotional (if a bit cheesy, which isn’t a bad thing but maybe something to note?) third act. Good action set pieces and on-your-toes pacing as the characters made their way through the city. Great cat, though at times he was a bit of a dick — as cats in horror should be. It’s a bit weird how they decided to flesh out the rules of the world/aliens because honestly it didn’t really always track, but it did allow for some nice sequences so who cares.
I read that there was a deleted scene where Joseph Quinn’s character comes out and also maybe admits he was contemplating suicide, which, holy shit why did that get cut.
Ultimately, I think this franchise, the first two movies more than this one, are as fun as they are exhausting/self-aggrandized, but I was more into this iteration than not.
However. It is the literal apocalypse. If you are caught in the apocalypse in your work suit, you have permission to TAKE YOUR TIE OFF! Lol my mom was so annoyed that he wore the tie fully tied the entire movie. Fully took it off and then put it back on many times — why?
WORKING GIRL, directed by Mike Nichols and written by Kevin Wade
Now I finally understand Season 5 Episode 1 “Work Hard or Die Trying, Girl” of Bob’s Burgers!
Melanie Griffith was soooo charming actually! This was actually really fun and great! A little bit creepy in an ‘80s way with Harrison Ford’s character, but honestly not too horribly so. This was so romantic in the sense that they had great chemistry and also in the sense that this was such a generally romantic sort of empowering story. I’m going out on a limb and saying something super unique that nobody else has ever said ever, but I love an underdog! Sigourney Weaver is sorta outside her typecast in this in such a fun way. I felt very moved by the end of this I’m not going to lie! My grinch heart swelled three sizes! But then as it was zooming out of her office I had PTSD flashbacks to the end of that Robert Pattinson movie “Remember Me” (iykyk).
ALIEN, directed by Ridley Scott and written by Dan O’Bannon & Ronald Shusett (rewatch)
There are a lot of good movies out there, but this is a Good Movie, capital-G capital-M. So iconic. So amazing. So unsettling. So simple and effective. So hot honestly. Just a Good Movie.
ALIENS, directed by James Cameron and written by Cameron, David Giler, & Walter Hill (rewatch)
I remember really not liking this the first time I watched it, I think because I had such a specific expectation following Alien — but this time around I had a blast! It is not the same movie as Alien and that is both the point and the allure. I love the fleshing out (going into the rest of the series) of the corporate corruption and who the ‘real monster’ is, and though I am very anti-military I found this movie’s framing of the soldiers as being inherently expendable to the Powers That Be very compelling. Ripley is so beyond badass and I like that the androgyny of the OG movie isn’t necessarily curtailed in this one so much as it shows that no matter what misogyny always reigns supreme — like, just believe women and then maybe you won’t be killed by an alien super entity!!! If Sigourney Weaver is warning you about unkillable alien life forms, believe her !
I just know that when Ripley looks at Newt, “not a lot, just forever” is blaring in her head.
ALIEN^3, directed by David Fincher and written by Vincent Ward, David Giler, Walter Hill & Larry Ferguson
Didn’t love this one for all the obvious reasons, but it still had a lot of fun sequences of cat-and-mousing. I don’t like how long it took for the story to get going though. I also didn’t love how the prisoners were portrayed/pigeon-holed, though I don’t know exactly what a better version would have been either. Ripley is so boss with a shaved head.
KILL BILL VOL. 2, directed by Quentin Tarantino and written by Tarantino and Uma Thurman (not sure the extent of how much of this Uma wrote, but she’s credited and I’m crediting her!) (rewatch)
Rewatched with my friends whom I haven’t seen in a while after walking across the Brooklyn Bridge with them (my first time, very Broad City), which was very nice. I kinda forgot how hard the second volume goes, it’s very fun. You can say a lot of things about Quentin but I’ll give him this, nobody is doing movies so earnestly anymore, nobody’s okay with risking silliness when shooting for the cool moon — he really knows how to set a tone!
PROZAC NATION, directed by Erik Skjoldbjærg and written by Galt Niederhoffer, Frank Deasy, & Larry Gross (based on the book by Elizabeth Wurtzel)
I was thinking to myself, I kinda want to watch a sad movie. And then I thought to myself, now, isn’t that a little masochistic? Why not just keep watching your silly sitcom? And then I responded to me with well, sort of one of the hallmarks of that d-word I’m not going to say is that nothing is interesting to me right now at all, so maybe I need to feed the beast and just watch something sad and then I said well you have a good point, but no we’re going to watch a regular movie and then I watched this.
Christina Ricci ily so much! And Jessica Lange! Great cast! This was actually not as good, or as cutting, as I expected, but I am happy to have watched this so that I can be the best cliche I can be. Really great performances and writing, just not fully it for me. I liked it.
GIRL, INTERRUPTED, directed by James Mangold and written by Mangold, Lisa Loomer, & Anna Hamilton Phelan, based on the book by Susanna Kaysen (rewatch)
The whole time I was watching Prozac Nation I was just in my head wanting to watch this. So I rewatched this. And then that led me to rewatch May, because Angela Bettis was in both movies, but then I got burnt out because 3 movies in a row is a lot sometimes, so I didn’t finish May and therefore didn’t include it in this wrap up. But — May is a really good movie, too. Weird girl horror, would recommend.
Girl, Interrupted, apart from the one weird scene between Winona and Whoopie Goldberg that added in racism that literally wasn’t a part of Susanna’s book, is such a top tier movie. It’s a cliched sad-girl-who-likes-movies movie for a reason! I love it a lot! Winona is so hot! Angelina is so hot! Jared Leto is… there. The entire cast is really very good.
BARB & STAR GO TO VISTA DEL MAR, directed by Josh Greenbaum and written by Annie Mumolo and Kristen Wiig (rewatch)
Top tier movie honestly. I love it so much. Barb and Star are the most of all time. 10/10 yes. I can, have, and will rewatch this forever.
Also — I need a sequel with Tim Robinson and Sam Richardson… like please I’m being so serious I need this duo duo.
SLC PUNK, written and directed by James Merendino (rewatch)
I. Love. This. Movie. More movies should just be some cool dude introducing the audience to everyone at the party. I am completely and totally a fucking poser but I’m a sucker for blue haired Matthew Lillard!
DINNER IN AMERICA, written and directed by Adam Rehmeier
There were quite a lot of moments that I didn’t really like or wore a bit thin for me, but the ultimate end point, and the chemistry, made this all worth it. Like HELL YEAH showing punk in spirit over punk in aesthetic, hell yeah showing a non-manic-pixie weirdo (sort of applies to both characters to a degree), hell yeah destruction as connection and anti-everything as a uniting sort of ideology! This movie has been in my watchlist on Hulu for like 3 years, and then it started trending on tiktok so I finally got off my butt and watched it — also because I missed out on seeing Strange Darling in theaters and needed a Kyle Gallner fix. Emily Skeggs and Gallner are both very charming (though not blanketly — sometimes people who try so hard to be, like, an ‘anti-phony’ type of punk or anti-establishment end up being really cringe to me, and I think Gallner’s character got right up to that edge at a few points). Music Boyfriend the song actually is such a bop, and Emily deserves more of the tiktok acclaim that this movie is getting — she’s the best part of the movie.
RACHEL GETTING MARRIED, directed by Jonathan Demme and written by Jenny Lumet
I liked this, but I’m also really not a fan of this type of handheld camera. Anne Hathaway should be in everything and do everything. Rosemarie DeWitt is also really great. Everyone is great but it didn’t save the movie for me unfortunately — feeling very middle of the road on it.
I USED TO BE FUNNY, written and directed by Ally Pinkiw
Unfortunately I disliked every single aspect of this movie. I don’t think it was a bad one, it’s just one I didn’t like even a little. Sorry! I found it really boring and cliche and derivative and un-unique and unfunny and boring. Sorry.
FIRE ISLAND, directed by Andrew Ahn and written by Joel Kim Booster (rewatch)
Rewatched this and it’s honestly already kind of a classic. Very fun! Love it! Genuinely could probably rewatch it many more times! Everyone in it are such stars.
⋆。°✩ television ⋆。°✩
12 shows
(technically 13 — I’ve been depressively rewatching HIMYM — but I don’t want to talk about that ass show… Barney is quite literally a sex offender wtf was this show lol)
FANTASMAS (season 1 all episodes through to finale)
“Baby, who taught you ‘plight’?”
THIS FUCKING SHOW !! Julio !! I need Martine Gutierrez in a horror movie STAT! I will write it for her. I need it now now now. Emma Stone and Cole Escola and Rosie Perez and Rachel Dratch as Real Housewives was perfect.
The finale was sort of…. emotional? with everyone coming together and watching a performance and everything. Julio getting that fulfilled little ending? Just such a great show in every way and on every level. Approach and execution both get a 10/10 from me. Very fun very cute very silly very on-point and measured and over-the-top and artistic and just plain good.
ENGLISH TEACHER (season 1 episodes 1-4)
Holy Shit does this show have a ton of funny moments — end of Ep. 4 had me crying laughing. One of those shows where each episode is better than the last. Genuinely, please, do yourself a favor and watch this one! And it’s one of those shows that feels tuned-in without being preachy, feels prescient without being out of touch, and is just so on its shit. Really funny group of characters who fit and flow so nicely. Am having a ton of fun with this.
SUNNY (season 1)
I was sort of iffy after the pilot, wasn’t super invested, didn’t want to continue with the show. But then my mom and I soldiered on and honestly? Was so locked in by the finale. Very windy and fun. I’m fully in love with both Mixxie (Annie the Clumsy) and Masa (Hidetoshi Nishijima) tbh, and also love Rashida Jones’ whole entire wardrobe. Rashida walks an odd line in it — she’s giving a really superb performance, but also her grumpiness seems almost forced, maybe because she’s so known for other types of performances, so it feels a bit constructed and fake but not in a way that takes away from the performance because she is doing a good job. I’m not quite sure how to explain it; she’s not fully believable but also is fully believable and above all else you do really root for her and stand by her. Episodes 8 and 9 are so incredible and great and such opposites, the iffyness of the first few episodes is so overwhelmed by the greatness of the run of the last few episodes. I am ready for season 2 !
HOW TO DIE ALONE (season 1 episodes 1-6)
I love this show so much already! Cheesy like a sitcom should be but never overly so, really really really down-to-earth and charming without being distilled or like ‘condescendingly PG’ still very fun and adult. Like this shit is so good and compelling already, really charismatic lead who feels multi-faceted and layered and fun and vulnerable. Great cast of characters, motivations, dialogue, set options. Just tuned-in and firing on all fronts, this is already really focused and heartful and fun.
SLOW HORSES (season 2)
I miss Olivia Cooke. This was a great season but also felt a bit weirdly-paced because it is a six episode season like what? Great cast and writing and directing, but something about spy stories lately makes me uncomfy — something about showing that there is corruption inherent in government but also government is what’s going to save us from corruption just feels odd and self-patting-on-the-back. But this is fiction and I enjoyed the story quite a bit. Really fun and winding with a really fun cast and great story/twists. Could be a bit better paced or fleshed-out because, again, the age of streaming has ruined season structure in tv, but oh well not the fault of the actors or probably even the creatives behind the camera either. Hats off to Saoirse Ronan’s husband!
PSI COPS! (season 1 episodes 1-10)
Very quick, fun, deadpan-acrobatic in tone and pace. I’m surprisingly so in (I say this as someone who half pays attention or watches this while doing other shit — it holds entirely all of my half-attention). Like it’s one of those shows where an unexpected chuckle-scoff-laugh wrestles out of my throat at least thrice an episode. I am enjoying it, it’s silly and wry and stupid and goofy and fun. It’s bad, but perfectly so. Kydd and Felixx should ****. Feels sort of akin to Llamas with Hats actually, but more 2020s and a bit more mature. Not mature, just more mature because it’s, like, an actual realized conceptualized show. But also there’s probably much better comparisons to be made I just was a loser in middle school and my friends and I would watch Llamas with Hats and that’s what first came to mind.
SMILING FRIENDS (season 1-2)
Watched this after being fed the funniest clips on tiktok, and honestly the highlights were the only thing I really needed to watch because this was definitely good and fun but also sorta… fine. Like definitely good, but the degree to which people are hyping this show up really set me up for disappointment. Loved a lot of it, but somehow not fully. Charlie and Pim are so dang fun, so are everyone else in-office. I admire this emergence in animation where there are these combos of animation styles and an emphasis on, for lack of a better word, intentionally ugly styles, because I think it’s very fun and a specific breed of artful. Mid but in a good way — mid is not derogatory.
THE UMBRELLA ACADEMY (season 4, episodes 1-6)
I’ve lowkey hate-watched this entire show. It isn’t a bad show, I guess, but it does have a very odd immature early Tumblr vibe that I dislike, and I want to be clear that when I say hate watch I don’t mean that as an indictment on the show itself — every project has its audience, has a lot of love and creativity put into it from filmmakers and storytellers, and is deserving of a lot of respect for being a full and finished story — I more just mean it ain’t for me and also I’m being a bitch about it. Sorry to Gerard Way (btw, why no MCR in the show??). The cast are sweet and cute together. There was a weird love triangle this season, and a disappointingly CGI-heavy monster where practical FX could have looked very cool and gross. Weirdly-paced since this season was only 6 episodes, very aimless and joyless. Cheesy dialogue and somewhat nonsensical characterizations, odd-toned plot points that didn’t ultimately work for me. Very stupid and not in a good way. Bittersweet ending that honestly wasn’t horrible, but the getting there was (horrible). Not for me in the slightest even though I watched every episode, but this also was very clearly the worst of the 4 seasons.
BATMAN: CAPED CRUSADER (season 1, episode 1)
Casting Diedrich Bader — who voiced Batman in the brave and the bold — as Harvey Dent is sort of inspired. I was listening to the Las Culturistas episode “top ten batman villains” (more on that below), and when listing off why Two Face is a good batman villain (criteria: gay and bad) Bowen and Matt missed the most important piece — Harvey Dent and Bruce Wayne are actually gay for each other. They’re in love, they both told me so.
I love Babs, even if, though it’s very classic Batman, she’s aged up to be Bruce’s age instead of Grayson’s. Oswalda is cunty and a Mother and still very Penguin. John DiMaggio (he of Jake the Dog fame but also the dude voiced the Joker a few times, most notably in Under the Red Hood) voices Detective Bullock. Hamish is doing a great job as Bruce/the Bat. I’m having fun!
Also, I didn’t add it in the movies section because, again, I’m feeling burnt out and don’t want to write anything, but I watched the Lego Batman movie. Will Arnett is perfect. Love.
SOUTH PARK (pilot)
Ok I lied on previous posts I watched all of Family Guy and it’s crass in stupid ways but it has its moments and is soothing to watch when high and is funny — I needed a new animated stupid show to watch and I trust Havannah aka Boring Blue Boy with my life (on like every level I believe I may be in love with her) and they recommended this show a few times and also I was convinced to watch this because the ads for the most recent South Park movie about Ozempic seemed funny and all this to say I am only one episode in and I don’t hate it so shall keep going.
THE SOPRANOS
Sort of obsessed with Meadow’s college life not gonna lie. Have only watched like 1 episode in the past month because, if you didn’t notice, my attention span has been flushed down the potty. But I am enjoying this show a lot a lot a lot.
CURB YOUR ENTHUSIASM (season 6 episodes idk)
Larry ! Your drip is too swaggy your head is too bald your glasses too chic your grampy attitude too grumpy, your apologies are too slick. They will kill you!!!
As always, Ily Susie!
⋆。°✩books ⋆。°✩
6 books
my storygraph account
MANHUNT by Gretchen Felker-Martin — Finished!
Wow.
Really brutal, but also full of a lot of love, which I found to be really impactful and compelling. Also full of a lot of hate. Sad book but also very cool conceptually and I love the apocalyptic world building. Great characters. I think there’s something to be said for using visceral body/anatomy elements in a story about trans-ness that doesn’t fully only focus on the trans of it all — as in, focusing on the body in a blanket sort of way, where bodies and organs are so on the surface for everyone alive and dead, so that everyone is gross and everything is biology and the endtimes become blanketly apocalyptic even though there are obvious tiers to who has it the worst. I’m definitely explaining this wrong and I don’t mean to, all this to say not only did I like the book but I think it was entirely successful in achieving what it set out to achieve and accomplish, and I found it very compelling. I also really liked how informal and real the narration was from both characters; very down-to-earth. Wasn’t my favorite but I definitely am happy I read this.
ALONE WITH YOU IN THE ETHER by Olivie Blake — Finished!
I was kicking my feet and beaming every time the two leads were near each other for a very good chunk of this, which is to say — successfully very romantic. But also Part Four (“Firsts”) was really annoying to me, sort of like the prelude’s use of set directions, and drove home for me that some of the stylistic choices in this book interrupted the stylistic parts that I loved so abruptly that it made me like those parts that I loved a little less — but I admire the approach and the ideas in trying new things to show how mindsets and viewpoints and headspaces were changing. Some of the sections are approached in ways that are meant to be abstract but sort of just rub me the wrong way and feel a bit pretentious. But that doesn’t take away from the book for me, either! I love a lot of this book — how neurotic the story and characters are, how honest and clear each character approaches each other amidst their lives of dishonesty and distance, the thoughts expressed, the connections, the characters and their interactions. A lot of really greatly-written thoughts and sentiments, like a lot of lines that really cut home. Enjoyable and romantic and I loved both leads. If they ever make this into a movie I think Havana Rose Liu should play Regan.
PIGLET by Lottie Hazell — Finished!
I am a sucker for anything that will explain in vivid detail the process of cooking a delicious meal. I found this really interesting and evocative, a bit obsessive and emotional and everything. I really enjoy the theme that is becoming more prevalent in books linking food and feminine chaos — I think it’s really fun, and while to be a woman is not to be disordered or beauty-obsessed, food is able to give a really interesting balance of domestic and artistic that always ends up working for me. This would pair well with Summers’ “A Certain Hunger” I think, like two very different sides of a coin that is by necessity, though not limitingly so, the same.
DEMON COPPERHEAD by Barbara Kingsolver— part way through Chapter 14
I love the shirking of structure that’s really only achievable when you know so keenly how structure should exist and what it should subsist of — I am so fucking hooked! It’s actually crazy because the one thing that tends to always bother me is when authors use wrong or mismatched tenses, or don’t know how to place their events in time, but this switches between past and present tense (not time-wise, just tense-wise in narration) so often and I love it every time.
Every time I read a good book it’s like a. I am the first one to ever read a Good Book or to read This Book (this literally won the pulitzer, this is therefore not the case) and b. this is the first Good Book I’ve ever read. Really can’t stress enough that I am down and in with the book so far. Really enjoying it.
THE LONELY CITY by Olivia Laing — like 25 pages in, but then my libby hold lapsed so will read again soon when my next hold ends
“The revelation of loneliness, the omnipresent, unanswerable feeling that I was in a state of lack, that I didn’t have what people were supposed to, and that this was down to some grave and no doubt externally unmistakable failing in my person: all this had quickened lately, the unwelcome consequence of being so summarily dismissed.” Excuse me? Are you allowed to write that?
Finally got this off hold at the library (but, as said above, I’m an idiot and didn’t finish this fast enough)! I’m really into it so far, I like the thoughts expressed and the personal tangents on different elements or adaptations of loneliness.
A LITTLE LIFE by Hanya Yanagihara — reread
I’m going to be so completely honest, there are certain things that I imprinted on because I read/watched them at specific moments in time, things I think I return to in probably fucked up masochistic ways, and this book is one of those. I was super depressed when I read this for the first time, so, though I think it’s so fucked up for someone to conceive of something like this book when they are so removed from anything relevant IRL, I did really enjoy the act of reading it. I still remember finishing it and crying in the common room of my sophomore apartment. It’s one of the books I have downloaded on my phone’s kindle app, so I will reread it sometimes — and I know I sound so fucking insane to say that. Outside of the trauma porn of it all, it is a lot of really clean and compelling writing about physical facets of life, art and food and literature and architecture and law and design and theater and film and living as a person who knows other people and so on, that, paired with a lot of really introspective thought processes and contradictions from various characters, and some really laid bare thoughts painted in a very stark light, makes it sort of comforting to read. If I am in a bad mood I can skip around to really tragic bits (though I never re-read stuff about Jude’s backstory). It’s just a book to me; it’s also a book that I agree with most criticism of and would never necessarily recommend. I never said I was a healthy person.
⋆。°✩music ⋆。°✩
monthly playlist: it’s virgo season: woohoo:
Listening to a lot of Ruined (a few recent episodes I’ve loved are the Escape Room ep, which is a movie I personally really love for some reason, Alone 2020, and Firestarter), Las Culturistas (my favorite recent episodes being the Tina Fey ep and the Batman Villain ep), and Too Scary Didn’t Watch (my favorite recent episodes being the Twilight series eps, Abigail with Paul F. Tompkins, Alien: Romulus with Haley Joel Osment, and Longlegs) ofc !
Also have been listening to Soap&Skin on shuffle quite a bit.
Also I guess this sorta fits in the music section — I am thinking of buying myself a DJ deck for my birthday. Thoughts? Recommendations?
Important Links: