Category: Film

Asteroid City

I very much enjoyed Asteroid City but not everyone will, that’s for sure. It is EXTREMELY GAY and worships intelligence and wordplay. It’s also got some stuff in it that makes so little sense but is so funny or beautiful that I think the director (Wes Anderson) stuck it in because he couldn’t leave it out, and that’s a comment too.

It’s about life, death, love, the lies our families tell us, the omissions our families make us live with, and exactly how continuously weird acting is, all set in a heat shimmered pastel palette. All the stuff about an alien is a McGuffin disconnected from the plot.

The speech the General gives is one of the funniest and most subversive things I’ve ever seen. If I ever make a goodies reel, it will be there.

pollen so bad

My eyes are not actually dry but they are very gummy. My nasopharyngeal parts are gummy too. I’m not coughing but my chest feels tight. (AQI good pollen counts moderate)

Tried Fatburger yesterday. White Spot is superior in virtually all ways, and not that much more expensive.

I miss my grandsons. Spoke to Keith yesterday. No word on whether Janice has left.

Watched John Wick Chapter 4. The clunkiness of the script poses a bit of a challenge but the fight scenes were exactly the way I like them and Donnie Yen was fucking perfect as always. (I mean how do you get typecast as a blind martial artist??? by being fucking good at it.) IT’S A COMMITMENT it’s like 3 hours long. All action movies should be ninety minutes or so. It is a law. Unobserved, sadly.

I am continuing to practice la la la on the ukulele. My brain appears to work okay today.

I am continuing to wrestle with edits on TB. The last pass was to make sure that every word of every line of dialogue in the first part is a) to the education level b) in character c) germane d) unmagical (ie there is a plausible way the character could know it to say it). I suppose editing dialogue without cementing the plot bunnies in place is useless & pointless (deck chairs, Titanic, Augean stables, etc.) but still I endeavour to persevere in the worst way possible – which was standing up in a hammock last time I checked.

Elon Musk is going to turn Ron DeKrampus loose on twitter in an effort to help him get elected.

I don’t get these people, but I guess I don’t have to.

For the first time, Russian nationals fighting for Ukraine have made incursions and captured enemy weapons and tanks inside the Russian border. What impact that will have to escalate the war is anyone’s guess.

 

 

a little sad but also relieved

I note that our trip to Victoria this weekend is not going to happen, and I’m sad, but the hours of waiting with two bored children have been avoided, and that makes me relieved. Seeing on twitter that early morning vessels are cancelled due to crew shortages just adds to the feeling of horror escaped.

Saw The Artifice Girl yesterday. It has issues (the way auteur movies often do – Franklin Ritch wrote, directed, edited and starred in it) but as a full-court practical, emotional and philosophical examination of AI it works very hard and delivers its message with verve and precision.

Tatum Matthews as the title character, ‘Cherry’, is absolutely pitch-perfect. If you’re looking for an action fest, this is the exact opposite, it’s a very talky movie. SF movies like this are uncommon and should be seen. It’s also a feminist film, in unsettling ways. Combatting child sexual exploitation and trafficking is everyone’s business and the idea of making it an AI’s business and that it represents a moral hazard to the AI (in the film) is brilliant in my view.

Anyway, it accomplishes its goals and I’ll be thinking of a couple of scenes a lot over the next few days.

 

Hey mOm another character has entered the frame on TB. Her name is Lucie and she’s Omar’s step-niece. You’ll meet her in a couple of months I imagine.

Shifting emphasis

I’m thinking keep the blog but make it just the release point for a podcast (with a complete and accurate transcript so visually impaired and deaf people can consume it) on a regular schedule. I have some ideas. LOL. I am, after all, an idea factory. I’m making a list of episode subjects and am considering various formats.

I don’t know why, but I’m thinking of a film made in Africa (I was 18, forgive me if I didn’t keep my class notes about which country it was filmed in and I can’t find anything in Wikipedia.) In it, the present day in a bustling city is depicted in colour; but his fantasies about becoming rich and immigrating are in black and white. I remember at the time being much struck by the emotional resonance of this; that your fantasies are so shopworn as to no longer be vibrant, and as a visual metaphor for the protagonist’s internal life I’ve rarely seen the equal.

We finished “One Day as a Lion”. mOm, picture Totally Boned if it was a het couple and set in the hottest ass end of Oklahoma (and people get shot…). I personally loved it (there were so many little beaut touches), Jeff was so so and said the script needed a punch up and the ending was too abrupt (both valid comments.) It is TOTALLY an ‘instant family Harlequin Romance with dead bodies.”

I forgive Scott Caan (son of James) his ‘career’ as a rapper (I believe I have made CLEAR my opinion of white rappers who did not come up in the business credibly integrated with Black ones) if he can produce little bloodstained film confections like this.

I have to do my Lumosity and get dressed, Jeff wants to do a schlep this morning. We don’t normally go on the weekend. Just checked to make sure they’re open at 7, since we hardly ever go on Sunday (the organic homo is usually all gone.)

As predicted air quality (the Alberta fires) is moderately bad (60 and variable) and today’s going to be the hottest day of this heat wave so don’t do a goddamned thing outside today. Just sayin.

Efforts to teach Buster to count to three are going badly. All he does is start salivating when I count to three, since that means I’m about to drop some treats on his little tuffet. Considering that other people’s pets do things like speculate as to whether a new human baby brother will cry when being stuck in the car seat I feel sad until he commands me to pet him, at which point I calm down.

 

Finished Gettysburg

It is a long movie.

There is a reunification of the couple at the end, in this case two brothers on the Union side. That Zizek dude is ludicrous in some respects (I refer with awe to his belief structure, which is arcane) but he’s such an inventive and compelling film critic that he makes every other film critic I ever ran across look like a series of slurs designed to invoke a picture of someone unblessed with any powers of reason, rhetoric, charisma or observation.

My estimation of Tom Berenger went up – I didn’t remember his performance at all from the first time I watched it, but he obviously gets more dialogue in this version. Sheen’s performance, consistent and attention-worthy as it was, made Lee seem a lot more ‘dreamy’ as Jeff put it than was necessary and it might have been actor-sweat well spent to make that dreaminess more like complete mental and physical exhaustion after two solid years of war.

My mood is so much better today I am equating normalcy to giddiness. I have folded my laundry but I haven’t put it away.

Time to make phone calls.

tiresome

Still exhausted from all the sturm und drang of the last couple of days, but things calmed down.

I have not yet met Sam and Oreo, the new cats at Junction, but it’s something I look forward to.

Ke Huy Kuan winning best supporting actor for his role in the candidly amazing “Everything Everywhere All At Once” is so well deserved I can’t say how much. He was a) a sophisticated actor (an actor playing an actor) b) a universe hopping battle ninja c) a henpecked husband and d) a fully realized human being. He was the spindle that movie whirled around. Crying and saying to his mother ‘Mom I won an Oscar’…. just amazing – hugging Harrison Ford, with whom he starred in his first important film, so many years ago…. I didn’t watch ‘The Big Show’ but I got a feed full of it this morning. Happy feelings.

I have lots of other thoughts about what’s going on in my world, but sometimes the inside voice is the one to use.

 

I’m reviewing myself

First biscotti I’ve baked in many many long months are ready. Time to head out to deliver them. Or not. I’m feeling sessile, again again. As soon as I stopped baking them the stove threw an F1 error so I guess the stove has quit (it’s either a control board or a door sensor.)

Got an hour into Babylon (2022) and realized I literally could not sit through it in a theatre; my viewing habits are so fussy I’m thinking it should have been a mini series so you didn’t get more than an hour of it at a time. Margot Robbie is, as always, eye-popping. I learned from her wikipedia article that she extemporaneously slapped Leo DiCaprio as part of her audition for ‘The Wolf of Wall Street’ and I AM SO HERE FOR THAT FACTOID. Anyhoo…

I committed many voracious re-reads of (the almost totally fictional, thoroughly and salaciously scandalous and culturally influential Kenneth Anger book) ‘Hollywood Babylon’ as a youngster, so I know ‘how this story ends’ (please see my song “Slimfast and Methadone” for my reaction to this story line which I wrote almost fifteen years ago); and I can’t *feel* anything about it that the moviemakers might intend; not a good way to watch a movie. Knowing the source material too well is cloying; we’ve known young good-looking people are just meatpuppets for the rich for HOW LONG? NOW?

This is now the fourth or fifth full length movie I haven’t been able to finish in the last month. I blame the pandemic. It’s me. I know it. Is Babylon technically deft and scathingly funny? Yeah, very much so. I’m just a lump of melted down critique rn. So my review is of me. Allegra is having a little moment of wondering when I stopped being able to sit through a two hour film. In my defence, ‘Babylon’ (2022) is three hours long. Apart from more inclusion of Black, Asian and gay characters, the novelty of wretched excess in the service of entertainment for the masses has kinda worn off for me. So it’s not really a review, like I said, and it’s very very funny in spots. I just…. can’t. I’m tired of this story.

I think I need to get back to work on my own stories. I spend a lot of time thinking about Totally Boned. The whole point of it is two broken people find each other and start healing, and since neither of them are conventionally attractive men, it’s not something that would ever get adapted as a script or screenplay.  (Plus in my universe if you kill someone, even to protect loved ones, you don’t get to Jack Ryan your way out of it thinking that ‘they had it coming.’ Two mothers are now grieving dead sons, even if they were total assholes, they probably got mom flowers.) Brad and Omar would both get ‘glowups’. Remember the white man laughing at the warthogs getting frisky and the Black man who was acting as his guide remonstrating with him, “They are beautiful to each other.” That doesn’t fly in visual media….

another fine morning today

I did absolutely nothing yesterday except

one load of laundry

production of two meals, both of which involved standing and cooking, which miraculously I am now able to do after weeks of having trouble standing for any period of time

calm avoidance of invitation to Jerome’s (Mike called around 4 and I told him to drop by after if he went). I just thought my lack of social contact would turn into me autistic gabbling for hours while being worried about COVID and RSV and I couldn’t hack it

creating that L.M. Sacasas quote from yesterday using the absolute stinkpot software ‘paintbrush’ although it IS simple enough for my grandchild to use, so…

training, cuddling and brushing Buster repeatedly over the course of the day, including holding paws with him when his feets were cold (he genuinely likes holding paws with people, it’s adorable)

realizing that the balm from the bee place did actually heal the crack in my heel (I’d started bleeding, most distasteful) and now I need to reapply to the dry bits (face hands elbows etc.). It spreads well and smells lovely. Looking forward to getting more, stuff’s miraculous.

Realizing that it’s time to do Paul’s feet again. I’ll call him today and try once again to find out what he wants me to do about the car.

Checking if I have enough money to pay Suzanne, I do. However her car has been totalled thanks to this fucking weather we had last week so we may need to go get her.

continuing to produce coughs/mucus – substantially noisier than yesterday though I feel no worse, and in fact my mood continues to trend good although I had quite a crying jag yesterday evening thinking about how I’m likely to survive Buster and HOO BOY but I def. feel better today.

a complete review of Part II including copy edits and clarity edits

bringing the mail in… hey, there was mail!

Talking to Dave on the phone, and how lovely to hear his voice. He awaits word of a launch for his book. It continues to emit its own vibrations in this ever renewed universe.

posting in multiples to facebook, tumblr, twitter and dispensing goo on reddit

cheating to get the Wordle of the day after four guesses(Suzanne never cheats but she has a better starter word and doesn’t just guess, she has a system)

doing my Lumosity training, my scores have risen dramatically thank goodness

rewatching Here There Be Dragons (Expanse S2E11) which has SO MANY OF MY FAVOURITE LINES AND SCENES from that show

falling on the treats that Jeff brought back after his dental appointment with the savoir faire of a starving seagull           I M SNAKKY

taking a call from Tammy at the airport. It was an absolutely lovely conversation, she was SO sweet to me, and helpful too. That convo was everything about why I love her so much even if we slide past each other once in a while in terms of understanding – we talked about the book she gave me (about Henrietta Lacks) and the rest of the visiting she did, about what she’s going home to (she never takes ten days off so she’s expecting… a lot of emails, overflowing cat litter since the housesitter won’t have done it etc.) and she told me about the last hour of Banshees of Inisherin after I told her that brO and I bailed on it and you know what??? I’m not sorry we did; as much as I ADORE the two principal actors it was just too fucked up for me. Colin Farrell can do shit with his eyebrows that funambulists drool over.

Calling Rex Murphy a ‘harrumphosaurus’ on various social media platforms. I mean I could call it a day just with that one comment, I M JEENYOUS

Emailing my mOm a picture of a parrot perched on a bird identification book and looking with interest at a picture of a conspecific.

This morning I’ve done my Lumosity, cheated once again on Wordle (I should just stop doing it, it’s morally hazardous), mentally congratulated the Ukrainian forces for fending off every single fucking rocket the Russkys sent toward Kyiv yesterday, made coffee and consumed it, made peppermint tea for Jeff, shuffled stuff in the kitchen and started thinking about eggs and toast (again) for brekky. It’s easy and the cast iron pan’s perfectly seasoned now; how I love hearing the snap of eggs in butter on a nice hot stovetop.

I’m thinking of ordering more no-drip undies today. I don’t have much planned, but do I really have to? Do I?

 

 

 

god this is hard

Well I committed an emotional mistake in front of my grandson tonight and I’ll be lucky if I haven’t scarred him for life. Anyway I decided to show him video of what his mum looked like when she was Riker’s age and there is actually video of her, she didn’t get completely eaten by second baby syndrome and not have any pictures. He got to see John when he was slender and hirsute, and then there was Kaitlyn as a toddler and then Grandma Caspell. I backed out of that and then we watched Keith jump out of an aircraft in a tandem jump – had a video taken as a souvenir, and that was awesome, although thanks to the swipe of the passing breeze across his brow his expression was not always as dignified as he might have preferred in retrospect.

He got to see how red and enormous his mother’s infantile hemangioma was – and how it completely vanished. I had a hemangioma when I was born too.

Then I found the video, before in the brilliant sunshine taking off from Lake Weslemkoon, and after, of the crash at Buttonville Airport that nearly took the lives of Paul, Wally Solotow, me and both the kids – Katie in utero.

Hearing my own voice as Paul took video of the crashed aircraft at the darkened side of the runway, calmly saying that Keith took no permanent harm and that if he was experiencing discomfort he’d be crying, put me in no stable state of mind. I’m fine and I’ll be fine since I have a minor child in the house but I IMMEDIATELY changed the name of the file so I never have to watch it again without a goddamned content warning. Bugger me but that was awful. Of course I knew then that Paul was taking video, but the great river of time had released me from that memory, and now I was watching the lopsided aircraft in the terrible light and there it was in realtime.

I ordered mickey d’s for supper for Alex and then forgot to order Jeff’s burger.

8520 words

didn’t get the wordle this morning

sigh

sundry various miscellany potpourri

Jeff very kindly got me a copy of ‘Road Food’, Misha Collins’ show about regional US cuisine. Really enjoyed the first episode. Jeff is no fan of Vietnamese cuisine, but I am; watching the show start with Pho for breakfast (when I used to have it after I got off midnights all the time at the 24 hour place (name keeps changing) on Kingsway) was MOST enjoyable, I could practically smell it through the screen. His former castmates have started a new ‘Winchester property’, it airs for the first time this month.

We watched ‘Catherine called Birdy’ and enjoyed it mightily. The closing credits are absolutely delightful, and everything beforehand was very well done; a perfect star vehicle for the inimitable Bella Ramsey (previously from Game of Thrones and Worst Witch.) I find it amusing that if I’d known Lena Dunham was behind it I probably would have given it a miss, but many of the writing and interpersonal lapses of her past incarnations are not seen here. A woman’s allowed to get smarter. I won’t infest my site with it, but if you care, google Lena Dunham controversy and be prepared to wonder if she has any friends who don’t share their drugs with her. I mean, I could easily say a hundred controversial things before breakfast but she acted like she literally didn’t understand what she was being called on half the time, and dissolved into tears at charges of racism.

Please note that if you’re a settler accused of racism, it’s probably true! Screaming about it doesn’t help. Sit with it and stay off social media until you can represent yourself as a person capable of self-improvement. Not saying I am that person. I have moved my views somewhat but I’m in the post-wallow stage of antiracism (sample of wallow: ah me! hoW CoudL I haveKN OWN … my PAreNTS did their best – there were only two people of colour in my entire grade school, blah blah blah yes I’m 63 and white in Canada, of course I bathed in racism and ableism erryday) in which I feel a brisk disdain for white crybabies and prefer deeds to words on the subject.

There are 50K Beavis and Butthead fanfics on AO3. Jest reviewing my life choices over here.

5278 words on Part II.

For Trotsky Tuesday, please enjoy the famous combination of anarchist ideals like free love and nudity plus scientific excellence embodied in this wikipedia article about ´Élisée Reclus.

I’ve gotten to the stage in the pandemic where I’ve now imagined all my friends and relatives dying of COVID (except Onty Mary because she just WON’T, THAT’S WHY! I DON’T HAVE TO EXPLAIN THAT TO ANYONE) or sequelae and gone to their funerals in my mind. Somehow I get to arrange all those funerals too so I get things how I want them. As you know I enjoy funerals and memorial services and do like a good one. Anyway, if I sound like I’ve been randomly crying throughout the day, here’s what made me cry.

A newborn calf with really bad respiration after a tough birth, dying in its owner’s arms. A Ukrainian woman making a video for her boyfriend on the front and her apartment takes a direct hit while she’s making it. Dozens of Canadian disabled people on twitter begging for food because they have nothing in their house for Thanksgiving. Not being able to do Thanksgiving with the family. Being too lazy to cut olives for pizza. Wondering if this phone call to my mOm will be the last one. Being glad that my daughter trusts me enough to talk to me about important stuff. Being terrified to lose this housing situation. (This place is literally 50% cheaper than any even close to equivalent housing situation in all of the lower Mainland.) Being so tired that I forgot my evening meds. Every time I go to the grocery store now, I cry. I cry about the abundance of food that’s going to disappear into the maw of climate change. I cry every time I put something like coffee or almonds or chocolate in the cart. Not much, I’m not sobbing, but I’m leaking.

The pandemic is dragging us all through a slow motion mass casualty event. We’ve been abandoned by politicians but the wise expect that. What we never expected was neoliberalism is such an indelible feature in our world that it has made the people we thought we could trust – the public health authorities and epidemiologists – into villainous murderers.

During and after the Great Mortality (as the black death was known at the time) people became much more selfish, lonely, profligate, violent and distractable (by contemporary accounts, anyway, as I read in Tuchman’s ‘The Distant Mirror’.)

It’s all happening again now, and I’m in the middle of it with everyone else. These moments of sadness are because it’s easy for me to feel sad. Many beautiful things are dying, but we must rush on regardless and be adults and hide our grief.

another perfect day

Around noon went for a walk with Paul in Everett Crowley Park. First we drove all over hell’s half acre trying to find a decent parking spot at one of the usual parks. That’s how we ended up on the garbage dump park. It’s a good place to go if YOU NEED TO PET SOME DOGGIES. I got very very tired and couldn’t walk any farther very fast. Then we got home and I nuked up some chicken vegetable rice for Paul, and then he hung around. I did his toenails (they weren’t scandalous, like the last time, but they needed to be done). Then I checked my blood pressure which was 105 over 71.

Morty Face by KushMastaFresh on DeviantArt

This is 30 points lower than normal. What in the actual hell is going on. I don’t actually feel good at that blood pressure – I sure don’t feel like DOING anything. Picture shown above is Morty, from the sci-fi animated modern classic Rick & Morty. It’s okay fOlks! you are not expected to watch it or like it; it has machine gun delivery of multiple concepts, not always in the best of taste (that’s one way of putting it, check that face shown above). But I love Morty because he’s grown a spine over the last seasons.

Paul long-term-loaned me John’s resonator guitar.  <—- this after he realized at Peggy’s that he can’t even pull a guitar out of a case without fighting it. I have to add a string but it looks like all the bottle slides I bought attracted a guitar I can use them on. They’re the kind of guitar with a big perforated metal plate attached where the soundhole usually is.

Mike called and released himself from self-jail; he brought his unbelievably sweet new parlour guitar and played nothing but songs Paul knew, which was deft of him, because Paul has happy and enthusiastic about singing along.  He also gave Paul the long anticipated tour of the Delica. Long about five I kicked Paul out (nicely) but he got to have all that social contact and stay the hell out of his own house for the afternoon, which has a crying baby in it. Ryker has a cold and he freaks out when he can’t breathe and so there is much screaming. STILL NO FUNCTIONING FREEZER AT PAUL’S PLACE!! JFC landscum, you need a blunt punt.

above-noted picture is almost 15 years old. That’s Mike and Paul at a minimalist costume party, back in the day

I had ONE Fat Tug last night ENJOY MY ABSTEMIOUSNESS.

Mike finally got to look at Suzanne’s friend Richard’s bag of photography equipment. JFC IT’S A NIKON FE an absolute classic manual camera with one of the first built in digital light meters. AND THE MANUALS for it and the lenses. Cash on the barrelhead it’s worth no less than $250, but Mike doesn’t want it because he’s not a Nikon user. I am currently considering my options, but I think I’ll advise Suzanne before taking action.

Spoke to Keith on the phone. He appears to be doin’ okay.

Currently running a 12% kudos to hit ratio on Landslide – the number’s actually going up. This never happens so I’m finding it weird.

Found out that the Seagull (the one that isn’t Smokey) was put away in E minor tuning so I noodled away on that for a while and I think I may have the core melody of some soundtrack stuff.

Mike said he used to wear a special watch with a pulse ox monitor but he said he had to stop, since it kept telling him that he was dead every night. (Thought pOp would find this amusing.) It came with his new Samsung phone. His new Samsung phone is incredible, the camera alone is goggleworthy. I don’t care, I’ll probably get a simple-phone if I ever live alone again but I’m never having a cell phone again, otherwise.

Mike says his project – his Sisyphean work project – six times now he’s tried to set up a customer service department off shore and six times an internal shift in priorities has moved it. It was in Spain, it was in the US. It was in Costa Rica. This time he just sent his luckless lead tech into the mouth of a typhoon in the Philippines. Anyway, he hopes he survives all the corporate bullcrap long enough to get laid off, with a package, (word is as a French company they’re used to making big payouts to make employees who are now surplus to requirements GO AWAY) and then he’s going to take the Delica and drive across this country and dip a toe in the Arctic and Atlantic oceans. Please let me know if you want him to come visit you after he’s laid off, because he IS AWESOME. HE’S SERIOUSLY THE BEST.

Jeff keeps having interesting dreams. I imagine I dream every night, but I sure don’t remember them. I guess I keep it all for waking life.

Then, a stunning variety of products, after which we watched Everything Everywhere All At Once, which is a good movie to watch while impaired, and Michelle Yeoh, Ke Huy Quan, Stephanie Hsu and James Hong are absolutely amazing in this. I believe I raved about it on my blog the first time we watched it, but it really is a trip to set a wildly inventive and ecstatic movie amid the drab exigencies of Chinese immigrant life. Mike was impressed as hell and said some variant of (with amusement), “It’s a damned good thing they’re speaking mostly Mandarin, if it was Cantonese it would be triggering.” This with respect to the ghastly way Michelle Yeoh’s character treats Stephanie Hsu’s character in the movie. THEN I FOUND OUT THAT Yeoh, Quan and Hsu are going to be a family again in a Disney action comedy tv show? WHO’S WRITING, ALLEGRA YELLS & chomps popcorn impatient-wise.

At some point Mike went home. IT WAS SO GOOD TO SEE HIM.

Worked hard on Totally Boned yesterday; couldn’t stay hydrated. Didn’t practice enough. That will change lol. I need to drink 16 oz of water RIGHT NAOW

I had another perfect day, y’all. I’ll be checking my blood pressure again for sure though. Whatever is wrong with me, it can’t kill my good mood.

dear ones

Long … long talk with Paul yesterday about his life changes, and then home made sugar free iced tea, tuna salad and a small serving of chocolate ice cream for lunch.

Buster has been in a weird mood of late. He’s been asking for stuff at odd times of day, at times when there are other people in the house, which he very rarely does. Training or ‘sitting pretty’ for brushing usually takes place under specific circumstances or times of day. I think he’s got one hell of a furball parked up in there somewheres.

Watched 13 Lives – the dramatization of the rescue of the Thai soccer team from the cave. Viggo Mortenson is AMAZING. Colin Farrell quietly disappears into his role. Viggo embodies a highly intelligent, very autistic and brilliant technical diver; the script is fantastic. The Thai people and government aren’t represented as ‘needing rescuing’ they are ‘asking for assistance on something they don’t have the expertise for’ and the way people come together for the outcome is better than any fiction. Congrats Ron Howard on another great movie and RIP Saman Kunan and Beirut Pakbara the Thai Navy Seal divers who perished at the time of the rescue or afterward from an infection acquired during the rescue.