march is OVER (happy birthday sydney!! and happy birthday matt!!) life is puddling along, busy and busy and busy. the past 4 weeks have felt like nothing has happened yet sooo much is going on.
let’s see… main highlights…… rat weekend happened, delayed secret santa was great, rat awards went great, sad noro event (bad!), the oscars happened (good!). got some tattoos. celebrated keegan’s birthday (i beat him in dutch blitz. once.). i went to a manchester united watch party and reconnected with a friend from college. manu respectfully did not embarrass themselves! i went to a symposium that was good bc i met cool people and visited the times center for the first time (so beautiful), bad bc my butt hurt from sitting for 8 hours. i did broadway rush for the first time and saw the picture of dorian gray (more below)! and then saw all nighter a few days later with madi which was lovely (more below)! work is busy bc of march madness, i am working so much for march madness. did jury duty. did more work. etc. etc. working endlessly
angel and i went to the met to see their photography exhibit called ‘floridas’ and we were so happily surprised. it was a well-curated exhibit and was an opportunity for us to look at the place we grew up in through a different lens. the artists were not native floridians, one photographed florida in the 70s and the other photographed it in the 2020s. it was touching honestly to see people treat florida with such care and love. an inspiring visit, it’s at the met until may 11, check it out!!!
angel and i also went to the hands off march last weekend. some good times were had and i met/saw some brilliant people but i can’t really walk away without wondering what the point was. sure, cathartic, i think, seeing the sheer number of people. does it really matter when half the crowd is chanting “free, free palestine” but there’s some district assemblyman campaigning for himself, amy klobuchar is patting herself on the back, and huge throngs of JStreet-affiliated protestors. the unified message is hardly unified. hm hm hm
we did take photos and as a photo exercise, it was excellent. i am a baby photographer and am still figuring out what that means for me. and at the march, where there were so many people marching and there were people who were just passing by or on the sidelines. lots of action to chew on. it also led me to this video which i really liked, will make an effort to attend more crowds and events!!
(((craft corrrrrner)))
artistically down, i tried to paint a pigeon a couple weeks ago. went badly. didn’t like it. wasted my last bit of watercolor paper. so i bought canvases and will go back to acrylics
knittingly UP, i’ve completed my sweater!! it’s done!!!!! faced some ups and downs in the blocking process but it is fully complete and wearable and fits me well :))) onto the next!
vloggingly UP, i am very happy to present to you the first vlog of my trip last year. watch it if you want!! i’ll be putting this and the future ones on a usb to keep, maybe a disc if i can swing it. i had a lot of fun exploring and figuring out the style/pace. if you do watch, i hope you enjoy it!!! forgive any audio issues or weird VO. i’m not a natural and my nose is perennially stuffed
(((consuming corrrrrner)))
some movies i’ve loved since last we spoke:
sing sing: it cannot be overstated how utterly good this movie is and how utterly robbed this movie was. narratively perfect. artistically perfect. it very plainly displays the value of humanity and the humanities. without qualm and without compromise. it was wonderful to watch and reads like a love letter. colman domingo is incredible in this. now streaming on max!
face/off: angel’s been begging to watch this for a while and i regretfully fell asleep in the middle of it (gummy’s fault, not my fault). i did wake up and finish it the next day and holy fuckkkkk. this was amazing. i’m becoming a john travolta sympathizer bc the work he delivers here is out of this world. totally fun and iconic action. boat stunts, girl stunts, dove stunts. loved!!
kiss kiss bang bang: another angel pick, i was so pleasantly surprised by how much i liked this. rdj is very much being rdj here which can be grating sometimes but workssssss. michelle monaghan is also here and she is beautiful and frantic and perfect. the star of the show for me was val kilmer. he was hilarious and perfect and charismatic. loved him here, will love him forever. great little mystery, i only wish that director shane black wasn’t weird about women. like he’s weird about it, why are men always campaigning against well-liked women.
better man: DO NOT DISCOUNT THE ROBBIE WILLIAMS MONKEY MOVIE. i don’t mean this sarcastically or with any sense of irony. this is a good movie. it’s a musical biopic so it comes with the typical pitfalls of a standard narrative arc (want famous, get famous, feel bad, be bad, rehab, happy). but it approaches the story with all the bombastic swagger and fuck you attitude of a west midlands youth that it makes the formula take a complete backseat. it’s so unapologetic and doesn’t really treat robbie very nicely but you still back him because he’s so honest about his ambitions. it’s so successful with its creativity. and yeah corny, yeah saccharine, for sure. but so fun and i found it pretty emotionally devastating. i was actively sobbing two or three times. when i wasn’t in tears, i was in total awe. the musical sequences feel alive and imbued with originality. if i’ve learned anything in the past year, the answer is to always watch the monkey movie.
the monkey thing honestly becomes an afterthought after a while, you hardly notice it
this movie does threaten to unseat rocketman as my favorite musical biopic
saved!: LOL i loved this. the script was so fucking funny. liberally used slurs in the way that only early 2000s movies could do (see: gangs of new york) but to very great effect. awesome cast, awesome performances, awesome haircuts. juno’s super christian spiritual predecessor. it was also really cute seeing a little baby jena malone lead a movie. she’s so fun to watch :)
an affair to remember: has been in my netflix watchlist for months and finally netflix threatening to remove it got me to watch. this was blissfully good, so romantic and shot so beautifully. the colors were dreamy as and set off the story so well. cary grant is THE leading man playing a playboy scoundrel. it also would not be a cary grant movie if he didn’t make a joke about the age of his female counterpart but i DIGRESS. gossip girl watchers will remember the episode where chuck tells blair to meet him at the top of the empire state building else they will never be together. and blair was like, ‘you can’t ‘affair to remember’ me!!!’ (he totally did). but credit to gg showrunners, it was a great homage episode that drove the plot of gg forward. love understanding context!!!
the accountant: ok so this isn’t a fantastic movie. it’s a little ridiculous while also taking itself a little too seriously. anna kendrick kind of sticks out like sore thumb here. but it is totally totally totally worth watching this to see ben affleck and jon bernthal together. i told angel this but it was exceptional to see them share scenes bc they both have the innate ability to complement their scene partners and elevate their performances, they play so well. for them to be on screen at the same time, simultaneously doing that for each other…… it’s magic. i only watched this because i’d heard such great things about it's sequel. with the knowledge i have now, i’m so excited for more autistic accountancy!!!!!
in a similar vein, i watched salt (2010), the angelina jolie spy movie. and it wasn’t a fantastic movie, it was ridiculous. but thank GOD it took itself seriously bc it gave me room to have SO much fun. angelina is almost unfathomably good and beautiful here. i loved this, i’ll love this movie to the ends of the earth. liev schreiber and chiwetel ejiofor are also phenomenal. chiwetel is almost so, so perfectly cast it hurts. i’m so thankful that they didn’t go w the original tom cruise version, but i’d be a lot happier if there was a salt 2 :)
paterson: ohhhhh this was lovely. a really gorgeous palate cleanser. a sweet and languid breath of fresh air from the world we live in. it follows paterson, a man who lives in paterson, nj, who leads a simple life with his wife and dog. we meet the characters of paterson and lightly learn the history of paterson. this is the best. my second jim jarmusch. i always equated him to paul schraeder in my mind, which is so unfair. jarmusch’s films are so grounded but digs out the simple magic of regular life. good good good
some other stuff i’ve been consuming:
the picture of dorian gray (in order of consumption)
book: i’ve finally finished reading the picture of dorian gray!! i really, really loved it. i knew nothing about the premise before reading, i just knew oscar wilde wrote it and that it was classic. suchhhh a good book, i’m so happy i went in blind. while reading it did feel uneven at times but now that i’m done with it, it was so brilliantly crafted. the artist’s preface at the beginning has to be one of the most perfect pieces of writing i’ve ever read. i want to read it every day of my life.
play: i did know about this play coming to broadway in the back of my mind but it wasn’t why i chose to read the book. but my finishing the book aligned really nicely with the broadway play’s previews + angel going out of town. i had a free friday night and no one around to listen to me talk for hours so i went and did rush, successfully got a standing room ticket, and went to see queen of queens, sarah snook, perform the entire show. lots of potentially gimmicky elements make up the show but i found it all very successful!! it is mostly a 2 hours monologue which does get exhausting but there are strong efforts to be inventive throughout the showd. technically, SO impressive. the choreography and the camera coordination is fucking flawless and incredible to see play out on stage.
movie: i watched the 1945 adaptation and it was ok! i didn’t really like how they adapted the book at all. it was extremely straight, extremely boring, and i feel like they got the characters all wrong. but holy moly does it do some extraordinary things with cinematography. unsuccessful as an adaptation for me but is worth the watch to see how creative they get with the camera. thanks!
there is a 2009 adaptation starring ben barnes (!!!) as dorian gray that i hope to see one day. but ctfu at there being an actor in the cast called cato and google uses a photo of alexander ludwig as cato in the hunger games as his headshot
all nighter: by the girls, for the girls. i stepped in a little late (citymapper wronged me) but i loved this, i had a lot of fun with it!!! it was interesting because it kind of gave student production a little bit but 100% to its benefit. the cast was very strong but the standouts were havana rose liu and julia lester. havana brought a lot of complexity to her already complex character. her voice is so soft, i was kind of worried that she wouldn’t hold her own on-stage, but she has such a magnetic presence my worries were forgotten immediately. and julia completely owned the stage. she is such a star and i’m so excited to see her career progress!!! love u
sunrise on the reaping (the hunger games #0.5): i rock with this! kinda hard actually!! i had some pretty knee-jerk reactions to the first like 10%, lots of name-dropping and connecting to the previous books. it felt a little fan service-y at first. but i’m sorry i ever doubted u queen. i found this to be re-invigorating for myself as a fan and for the series as a whole. i still maintain lukewarm feelings on TBOSAS but i do want to revisit to see if i can come around to it more. but i thoroughly enjoyed SOTR and it has me back in the hunger games’s clutches
i’ve just started listening to this podcast called what went wrong. the hosts basically break down everything that went awry during the filmmaking process. bad directors, costume mishaps kevin costner, faulty props, studio nagging, you name it. for every production ever, everything that could go wrong has definitely gone wrong and the movie and crew miraculously live (sometimes) to tell the tale. movie podcasts are kind of tough sometimes, bc generally i’m not looking for a ton of critique and opinions, i’m looking to learn and hear cool stories and this pod is perfect for that!!! well-researched, fair, and full of love for the movies, this has been a great work day listen. also pairs well with watching the studio (awesome show!)
it’s a lot of fun hearing about the kooky ways things can go wrong. but an important aspect of this pod is that it recognizes how personal of an endeavor making a movie is. nothing is treated like a punching bag and they always commend the efforts that went into pushing a production forward
another movie ‘pod’ i return to now and then is director’s commentary. it’s just some guy uploading audio files of different movies’s director/actor commentaries. awesome way to rewatch movies without rewatching movies. esp if you’ve dvd special features live on!!!!!
andor s2 trailer: the last thing i’ll leave you with is this. i’ll look really silly if this isn’t as good as s1 but where else am i gonna place my faith (if not in tony gilroy’s writing and diego luna’s big brown eyes and stellan skarsgard’s wig)? i’m excited to tune in, i hope you are too!
thank u for being here. feeling antsy for the weather to get warmer and stay warmer. bet you are too :)
lots of love,
sarah