Admit it, girl. You’d forgive Christian Slater for breaking into your basement, too.

I can’t watch two of my favourite romance movies with a modern audience now knowing they would find the behaviour of the male leads highly questionable. I was so into Untamed Heart while not being a Christian Slater devotee, I was certainly into his “bad boy” bullshit (J.D.’s problematic shit is another issue). I was into his characters in the 90s. His departure from bad boy to misunderstood, softly spoken orphan man with an ape’s heart was a really good move, however.

It’s also another movie I can quote verbatim, everyone brags about that now. When we were starved for entertainment in the 80s and 90s we were far more likely to watch shit over and over. I think I somehow got a copy of this and watched it at home when I was off school. And it had another one of those really well scored scenes I had to tape to keep and listen to, so finding these soundtracks on iTunes decades later has been so fucking amazing, I never would’ve come across them in a store near me, it’s what I can give props to digital outlets for. I think I have this on DVD but I’m watching it on YouTube for free.

Anyway, the 90s had a lot of romances (comedy and drama) where the male protagonists could get away with being “creepy” and “intense”, having said that, they weren’t out and out abusive like some characters are, and now women are into smut, I don’t know why you’d fault me for being into Christian Slater putting up a Christmas tree in Marisa Tomei’s bedroom. She also has to go through sexual assault to make him the hero i.e. all the other men in the film are worse than him, so whatever he does is good comparatively. What I can kinda deconstruct now is, it is kind of hard to prove what the hell Caroline and Adam have in common besides being social misfits. Caroline’s romantically challenged while Adam’s also “innocent”, so I’m sure if a Gen Z kid heard her say “he’s like a kid, but it’s nice” it would really bug them. (I also rewatched Fifth Element and you’re unfairly writing off Leeloo as a baby woman, she has agency and strength and thinks Bruce Willis is weaker than her). There haven’t been as many “baby men” characters I can think of, Adam’s still as strong as a grown man but he seems functionally helpless otherwise, like you have no idea if he’s actually tending to adult things, he eats ice cream, again you’re not supposed to overthink it, it’s meant to be “cute”. And he should’ve taken Caroline to a hospital, she had a concussion. I guess you can put Adam on par with Tarzan, they both have floppy, unkempt hair and are basically nonverbal at the start, and they have an affinity with apes.

But Adam’s been sneaking around and following Caroline under the guise of making sure she’s safe. Or needing to see what sleep looks like. And she has every right to think he’s sketchy at first, he stole a picture of her and lives in a basement that looks suspect from the outside. I think some kind of social service turfed him from the orphanage and got him a job and a shitty apartment. It doesn’t look like anywhere people would choose to live. Caroline living at home is actually more modern, nobody gives her shit for it, it kinda makes her a “loser” in the sense she’s not married with a house and she’s pushing “spinster” age. But nobody can afford to live in their own place on a waitress salary, or even a decent salary, they don’t find a new apartment, she just decides to buy a car instead and hang out in his apartment, she could’ve just moved in with him, really. Plus the Christmas tree actually convinces her Adam’s not so bad, again, deconstruct this, none of this would work in reality, the 90s really needed women to suspend their disbelief. He’s tapping into her inner child so it’s like they’re both very innocently falling in love, it’s cute if you take out all the implications. 90s movies were for distracting you from reality, not reminding you, well most movies were, it’s kinda sucky they’re constantly injecting reality into films now. I was so chronically obsessed with films like this.

The other “problematic” boyfriend is Lloyd Dobler, you have to go to great lengths to defend him even though people constantly reference that one scene, like Flashdance, you KNOW A REFERENCE TO IT, you NEVER FUCKING EVEN SAW THE DAMN MOVIE. Know how I know, Taylor? You think it’s a John Hughes movie. IT’S NOT. I really want to ask everyone who refers to that scene if they either know what movie it even is or if they actually saw it. Know how I also know? Most of the top searches on Google are asking WHAT IT WAS FROM and WHICH SONG WAS ON THE BOOMBOX (the answer differs depending on what was in the final cut and what played on the day of shooting, and guess what? I KNOW IT WASN’T PETER GABRIEL because I’VE SEEN THE GODDAMN MOVIE WITH THE DIRECTOR’S COMMENTARY). SEE. FUCK YOU. So you can’t even say you don’t love Lloyd I’m sure you’ve heard about it and think it’s creepy when it really isn’t. 

Also, Lloyd doesn’t just feel Diane up the way Adam does to Caroline, but to be fair, he’s kinda doing it in a very innocent way, like he’s hesitant and kind of asking by his eyes if it’s okay and Caroline’s like totally into it, he’s not even doing it in a gropey kind of way. If anything, she’s more insistent than him. She kinda assumes they’re gonna bone and he’s not remotely there for that, so is all his other shit creepy in that regard? He’s got this look like, what the fuck is happening? She’s like, Imma make a man out of you, and then she pulls back when he cries, so I kinda wish incels would watch this damn movie and see it’s okay for men to fucking cry and have a woman like Caroline comfort them without feeling emasculated. On the other hand, I have a bad feeling they’d use it to justify their stalker, pining bullshit and think they were more sensitive than they are. (I actually do not remember seeing boobs before, I could’ve sworn she didn’t actually show them).

Anyway, she’s also super sensitive to his obvious Autistic traits of being uncomfortable around strangers, she’s very careful about bringing him out of his shell, so it’s nice to see so many people at his funeral in the end. She can’t even tell people in the beginning since Cindy gawps over it. (I also do a really good impression of Rosie Perez in this film but it’s stupid racist). She goes along with double date Cindy sets up, Cindy’s a pushy friend, they have this typical 90s gal pal relationship where they bicker over dumb shit but still love each other as family. Adam getting stabbed reveals how sick he is, which leads me to a realisation I made as an adult: That hockey game kinda killed him. Like, I know it’s not possible for Caroline to even know, I think all the excitement busts his heart. I didn’t think that as a kid. Either way, you can’t technically blame her as this is about bodily autonomy and the right not to be operated on, mans don’t want a new heart, you could even argue against Caroline agreeing to it while he was unconscious and unable to consent. So I think from this point on, they’re accepting this is finite and he could die basically whenever, even though he gets maybe a year, I don’t know. It’s still unexpected and sad when he does die. Also, he does little wood carvings you could sell on Etsy, that’d have been a nice modern twist.

Anyway, throw your anti-creep BS in the bin and just watch the movie, girl. You’ll see what I mean.

Ferris…

I idolised Ferris as a kid, the movie’s never been properly replicated, nobody would dare. But through an adult lens, he’s a giant ass. Cameron’s clearly neurodivergent but he needs someone to help him appreciate life more. Ferris is still an ass. I’m highly neurotic myself, I still wouldn’t steal a car, go on a joyride, crash it and still feel like my dad will be “okay” about it.

I think I loved the whole vibe of this film, I was usually watching it on a day off from school or when I had the house to myself. There’s a degree of almost magical realism to how he can’t be caught even in the most absurd circumstances, you feel he has that level of trickster god (someone said the same on YouTube) who can bend everyone to his will. Cameron’s the only one who “suffers” for the supposed greater good of growing some balls. But people don’t credit Hughes enough for tapping into the whole Gen X ennui of the time, I wasn’t a teen until the mid 90s however, but as an older millennial I was already affected by that same sense of directionless and pointlessness that could only lead to living day by day. It had to be absurdist or else it’d make no actual sense. Rooney assumes a kid on a day off will do kid shit. Ferris does high end, expensive shit supposedly with an infinite money glitch. You kinda root for Genie to catch him, Jennifer Gray understood the assignment, you can’t recast this film with a modern cast, get bent. But anyone who’s out to stop Ferris is thwarted, Parker Lewis Can’t Lose can’t exist without this movie. Hell, this was also Charlie Sheen’s most convincing role to date. Matthew Broderick should avoid ever doing any sequels, it was lightning in a bottle, everything else pales in comparison. 

The music was actually a huge thing for me, especially the “museum scene”. I didn’t know this was an instrumental version of a Smiths song Hughes also played in Pretty in Pink. I don’t think you can find it on iTunes, only the one with lyrics, but I found it somewhere on Acquisition (Mac’s answer to Napster/Limewire) back in the day. I was still using that up until 2005. Other stuff on the soundtrack I did find but I was obsessed with some of the score, stuff you can’t find, I still have the tape I recorded certain scenes onto, so when I could put that shit on my iPod, that was the best. If I’d been able to put the movie on my iPod back then, and I could’ve carried it around as a kid, I think I would’ve put up with a lot of shit.

Anyway, I don’t have much to say about this, nothing profound. Ferris isn’t even intelligent, but he sounds philosophical to a teenager so that’s enough. Adults will say he grew up a loser but you can’t lose that level of cool even when you grow up.

The Baz Luhrmann of it all…

I have fonder memories of Strictly Ballroom and Romeo + Juliet, which I only saw once in the cinema then went to rave about to my very confused grandfather.  I’m risking seeing it now with the sense of hatred for the frenetic slapstick camera bullshit he pulled in Moulin Rouge, which has led me to hate it despite being okay with it from when I did see it in the theatre. I couldn’t stomach it now, in very literal and figurative senses.

I can also see why every English teacher back in the 90s fucking despised this. All you had to say to one of them is, “And then Romeo takes drugs” and they’d lose their shit. I don’t know why I had to read parts out for this in English I kinda hated it, I couldn’t get away with being wrong in that class, ever. 

The opening duel scene is too comical to be dramatic but too over the top as well. It actually feels like it’s ripping off Pulp Fiction. The orchestral music and quick zooms kind of work one second then fail to the next. But both soundtracks were straight fire. Listening to shit from that period, the 90s was peak soundtrack time. The acting could be so much worse so far. It’s also pointless to follow along with the play it’s actually butchered, and this is badly ADRed as well. Leo does not recite this well, I also found out Romeo is pronounced “incorrectly” to compensate for iambic pentameter. Given this is not a farce, it’s kind of infuriating it’s being presented as such. It does have comedic moments but I thought they were subtle. Baz is anything but subtle. And the Benny Hill speed-ups are just obnoxious, it lends to this obscene impatience he has with setting up his stories. It’s also a weird edit to have Juliet distracted by fireworks then suddenly fully dressed on the balcony staring at them. Again, his pacing is insane. Mercutio isn’t donning a wig one minute then all of a sudden it’s on his head.

Leo sucks in this. I’m sorry. And fuck me, Mercutio is on some shit there is no need for this level of theatrics. I think it was also heavily catering to the rave culture of the mid 90s, it’s very club kid coded too. And it’s insinuating Romeo’s off his tits on pills. Also these movies were borrowing a lot of disco, so kids my age were copping it in a resurgence, and they forced us to learn proper dances to it. I don’t think they do it now but someone convinced schools to teach us the Nutbush or boot scooting to the worst song of the 90s. The radio was festooned with all this shit but it wasn’t bad necessarily. Claire Danes carries this, meanwhile Paul Rudd looks sofa king hot I’d pick him over Leo any damn day. He’s at least a gentleman. He’s being such a delightful dork as he was in Clueless.

And it doesn’t look too saturated but the camera work is still distracting. At least the nurse pronounces his name correctly. Now I have to resist not downloading the damn soundtracks.

Also wherefore art thou doesn’t mean where is he but why he is, why does he have to be an enemy. I think Baz was told to tone down his silly bullshit for the romance scenes at least. Moulin Rouge overdid everything on that front, I think he thinks he’s doing operatic when he’s doing something more offensive ending in ‘tic’. The score hits harder, it’s a well done scene. I thought I was into Shakespeare in Love but it might be atrocious now, I don’t know.

The “foreshadowing” is stupid, since we know how it ends but they pull a fakeout. Did Romeo have to literally fall over again? Is he supposed to be this fucking clumsy? Then everything turns into a music video of Venice Beach. Man, the ADR on the beach set is so bad.

Quindon Tarver got completely dumped after this I didn’t know he died in an accident and he was the same age as me, but I can’t hear him sing “Everybody’s Free” without thinking of “Not the Sunscreen Song”.

The editing of the fight with Tybalt and Mercutio is all over the damn place. And Mercutio isn’t some god who can summon actual plagues. And the fake storm looks hella bad. There’s a wide shot of Romeo running off with a car, like suddenly we need wide shots to compensate for all the frenetic closeups. And I get Benvolio is supposed to be kind of a dude bro but it’s too much. Never trust anyone who tries to update Shakespeare for the kids.

It doesn’t suck. I’ll give it that, it doesn’t absolutely suck. It has hacked the whole thing to absolute shreds, again, for the kids.

Talk Show Host by Radiohead is one of their best tracks. I think the costuming works, it’s not flamboyant compared to what Baz likes to do, it’s less lurid and that’s saying something. I did like the neon aesthetic it had going for it.

I’m sure that amount of candles would produce some crazy amount of heat. Also, the Friar had more than enough time to intercept on Romeo offing himself before he realised Juliet wasn’t dead. And I’m sure the girlies were screaming when Romeo doesn’t see her move. And she takes way too long to get his attention.

And it does have a certain attention to detail, it’s extravagant the way drag and pageantry is always in excess. I’m not going to watch Great Gatsby I’ve heard it’s terrible, this gave Baz way too much leeway for his other projects. It was fine, I didn’t actually hate it at all, I assumed there was way more Benny Hill buffoonery and Nicole Kidman sucks at that, I’m sorry, she’s not capable of being fun or funny. John Leguizamo has some fun moments but he and Mercutio really ham it up, but overall it works. The operatic nature fits, it’s not well shot and edited but Baz likes to overdo it and kind of stun you into not noticing.  

Stranger Things Didn’t End When it Should’ve

I’m technically on an ER binge but dinner entertainment’s been taken up by the last, most redundant season of Stranger Things. Netflix’s obsession with making movie quality/length episodes which are overfunded and overhyped has never been more obvious with this show. I get this was their biggest originally produced show, but that was literally a decade ago. And nobody signed on for five seasons, they fucking signed on for one, so you can forgive your core acting like they’re so fucking over this and phoning it in the whole time. Noah Schnapps finally gets more than a couple of lines but isn’t particularly good enough to engage me (and I don’t know how expects to have a career after what he said, I don’t think he did since he’s barely got one now). Maya Hawke is going overboard, she’s not burnt out but she’s not cynical, she’s overly goofy. Everyone else is pretty much exactly the same if not more insufferable, there are a lot of montages and a lot of “planning” for their “crawls”, another obnoxious nod to D&D. The way the dialogue’s written you can tell someone’s taken a cursory glance at one player handbook and shoehorned in references, yeah we get it. Plus they’re sneaking in other sci-fi references while forgetting how endearing it was originally. It’s basic bitch writing since the episodes are too long and need padding out. Jonathan’s hair is… the most distracting mess I’ve ever seen. They’ve toned it down on Steve’s iconic cut, everyone else’s hair is still badly designed even by 80s standards. The costuming now looks comical especially when you’re putting little kid clothes on older teens who are clearly more developed than they canonically should be (if there’s been any binding going on in that area, that’s proof enough this show should’ve ended last season and not now). They’ve absolutely de-aged characters because of this, littler kids have Noah Schnapps’ baby face on them. I totally get people have made 20 somethings play teens forever now but in this case, it’s so laughably inexcusable and so avoidable. I get COVID got in the way but they could’ve shut this shit down well before then, we didn’t need five seasons, people barely wanted four and I was absolutely pissed it didn’t end back then. But the show’s getting better ratings, it seems to be nobody wants to say bad shit about anything anymore, you can’t be critical without seeming “mean” and anything overhyped has to have reviewed favourably like it’s a crime to shit on it. Anything with that much hype rarely earns it.

Max is the only interesting character left and all she does now is monologue. I think they de-aged her since she’s a lot taller than before, they even briefly de-age Winona. Sorry, having the tech doesn’t mean you find excuses to use and abuse it flagrantly. Also, get over the Kate Bush scene, you’ve singlehandedly ruined that song for other people and other shows, I kinda wish she hadn’t given you permission to use it. (I prefer the Placebo cover, too, which is blasphemous). The scene they used it for wasn’t that cool so using it for ‘memberberries’ when it was only last season shows they have nothing original to add. Every episode feels like a short film, too much visual and not enough decent storytelling. Vecna’s basically the Nothing now, he exploits the weak and hopeless to make himself powerful. It’s even gotten to the point the worlds are about to be sucked into a vacuum and destroyed slowly like the Nothing did, even though it’s a “wormhole” scenario.

Anyway, we did not for the love of Christ need to see Max and Holly waste so much time before they ran for their gates to weep over how strong Holly needed to be and how it wasn’t about the music despite Robyn making a big deal about the “songs” attached to the people in the Upside Down. I don’t know how Robyn knew Holly loved Tiffany, Mike would’ve explained Will’s affinity with the Clash, who Nancy hates. And we had to suffer through a big drawn out scene about how Jonathan and Nancy hated stuff about one another but trauma bonded anyway and loved one another but didn’t want to actually get married. The fact people are demanding the deleted scenes be replaced when the ones we have are tedious as fuck, no action moments like this you’re rolling your eyes through, like Netflix picked the wrong shit to edit out and the promotion suggested we’d see more than we’re getting. Again, fans who demand so much and get pissy about what they do get don’t get my sympathy. Netlfix only cares you gave them a decade of subscription money, they don’t care how dedicated you were to the show. Well, they care insofar as they got your money by teasing you with more Stranger Things than you deserved, they didn’t intend for it to turn into this so your rabid fandom produced this half-assed response. I’m not saying I’m not impressed by some of the scenes they did, they weren’t predictable, but they’re not saving me from giving the rest of it a scathing review. 

And they made the unforgivable mistake of having a ‘90s brand logo in a scene, reminiscent of the Starbucks debacle from Game of Thrones, again I did not care enough about this show to notice or care but this is a studio error from being under the pump to rush to print and edit episodes, a symptom of having a rabid fanbase who threatens to remove their subscriptions if they don’t get what they want when they want it. Fans need to realise the pressure being exerted on these people to get a product out quickly not perfectly. So they’re not going to look at every damn frame and shot the way you expect. I really wish these people would spend a day in an editor’s shoes, or any other crew member, they do their best under shit conditions and you demand perfection when any one of you in that position would’ve easily fucked shit up under pressure. Grow up. Yeah, the production staff could’ve picked it up, but the boom operator in a lot of movies has been blamed for letting the mic dip into random shots, even on a fucking Scorsese movie he spent literally forty years trying to make. These fuckers are not being paid enough. The money you throw at Netflix and HBO doesn’t go dollar for dollar into these people’s pockets. They’re even giving the finale a theatrical release, and the episode we just watched was supposed to be nearly two fucking hours. It didn’t need to be, and one cast member is already comparing these fans to Snyder Bros wanting the offical cut based on a bullshit rumour spread probably for clicks on articles. Just the way these articles are literally being padded out with random fan quotes because the subject has no real substance beyond reiterating interviews and adding context and links to other articles on the same website. This is why I can’t do this work for a living. You’re not saying anything, you’re not contributing anything to journalism with this fluff. And you have to work so hard to signal boost it you have to write clickbait titles to even hope to get eyeballs. I couldn’t even get an article through an automated review process to get any audience, so I gave up.

I will have more to add at the end of this buffoonery.

I did add more but Blogger stops autosaving on published posts. I had a theory this last episode is trying to be Oscar bait since it’s running in theatres but it’s missed this year’s deadline so next year, maybe. It doesn’t make sense to distribute to theatres unless Netflix is pretending it cares about theatres. But this episode was awful, and people are already accusing the haters of homophobia and nothing else, when it was a bad coming out scene/scenario, and it didn’t need to be this big group love in. Well, it kind of did I guess but having people there who do not know you, it’s a little much. It’s Will’s meeting with the goddess, Southern Oracle mirror gate moment. It was another tedious scene that could’ve been cut down all while people still insist there are reams of footage we’re not seeing. You think you want three hour episodes but you don’t, not ones with pacing issues and dialogue problems as bad as these, not ones with barely any action in between. Not ones with embarrassing epiphanies from dumber characters who owe their inspiration to smarter characters, who are kind of too smart at this point for kids their age. Writing nerds who know literally everything and can decipher complex notes and explain them to the dumb character and audience is a total stereotype. Nerds tend to have niche interests and don’t have encyclopaedic levels of knowledge at their disposal. I know you want a sassy, smart black girl who can make the boys look dumb, but those schools do not have elite level intelligent students who always know the answer and drive teachers nuts with it. You wanted some “you go, girl” moments out of her. I dunno, I don’t care and I wish someone would just leak the entire last episode script or synopsis or just something digestible so I don’t have to endure 2 fucking hours of them stringing all these things back together to conclude with something fans will be split on at best and downright furious at worse.

I was somewhat right they spent so much fucking time on unnecessary dialog, I was so bored with the wrap up scenes that were boring as hell. I didn’t cry when El died, I didn’t cry when they were all wrapping up D&D. When they managed to kill the big bad with a coordinated attack and Winona chopped Vecna’s head off, the movie was over for me. It was done, it should’ve been done. But no I think we had to endure another 40 minutes. I get you had to have a fake out victory, that was all too good to be true, but not actually seeing what happened to Linda Hamilton and her army was anticlimactic. I didn’t care El was even sacrificing herself. I get Mike had to lose her to grow up and Will had to stop being afraid but if they were expecting like massive “fuck yeah” reactions from when Will went full core wizard, it didn’t earn it. It did not earn a theatrical release for how cheap it looked. It wasn’t as bad as Game of Thrones but it definitely means I will never watch it all from scratch for any reason, I’m only glad it’s actually done and I don’t think it’s blowing up the internet the way they wanted to.

I’m watching a few takes on how badly this went down and there’s been mention of a stage play that’s supposed to flesh out HenryVecna’s arc. This shit drives me so insane. Stop making inaccessible supplemental material (comics, graphic novels, TV series, fucking plays, probably the hardest one to consume) then blame the audience for being ignorant to it when the diehards tell them “Oh, well it’s all explained in this thing you will never read/see. It’s on you for not being an uberfan”. Shut up. The point is you built a whole emotional arc for the audience which needed a worthy catharsis and you failed to deliver it. The studios keep burning these people out into absolute fuck it states because they never asked to be where they ended up, but these guys committed to delivering something even if it wasn’t the same plot/characters, you surely wanted five seasons but you didn’t want to make this season as it was. So are the fans to blame for loving the first season way too much? It’s a weird scenario.

Just a Girl… Interrupted

I get Winona Ryder’s voice stuck in my head on a loop when I think of how I framed my future to other people: “I plan to write”. She was met with dubiousness and concern, as much as I should have been, the admissions woman is still, “But what do you plan to do?”. I’m a writer, I make no money, and maybe Susanna lives on royalties from the movie, but I was allowed to make stupid bold statements even if I couldn’t stand by them. 

It’s a weird book to read, it’s not remarkable it’s only full of things people normally never see. I don’t even know if a “wrist banger” is a thing. A lot of what I see is audio-sensory issues, along with the dissociation, the absence of linear time, the sense something may have been a dream. I think Wynona should’ve gotten an Oscar as well, she didn’t even get a look-in by then, I thought she did, I can get she may have been salty.

I heard Kesha was denied her keyboard in ED recovery and I think that’s horribly mean, so Polly being disciplined for wanting to play is saddening. Again, if you gave space for expression when desired, people would recover, you shouldn’t punish pain with removal of soothing items. The lens isn’t entirely on a Dutch angle, it’s slightly askew when Susanna comes in. I can’t be mad at Angelina but I don’t appreciate the Tumblr Aesthetic bullshit around her character. We have to look at everything through Susanna’s perspective. Having an Irish nurse is still a thing these days. I tried to be “good” when I still had my marbles it’s hard to be when you don’t. I’ve lost bits, been in dazes, nightmarish ones. Living in a nightmare is all I can describe it as, you can’t wake up or sleep to make it go away. You may as well sit still your first few days so the poor nurses who have to do 15 minute checks can find you. Also, it doesn’t help autistic people when they need to leave a room you get roped into therapy, you’ll have passive aggressive counsellors telling you to stick around and commit to it whether it works or not. (Also, take the laxatives if they offer you them, you WILL need them if you’re on any meds that fuck with your metabolism, unless you’re suspected ED or similar to Daisy, you won’t get them). Also, tonguing your meds won’t work if they give you wafer meds. Also, they won’t indulge you keeping chicken bones under your bed. Just eat the cookies they leave for you, sweetie, there’s free tea and coffee (some reason me microwaving milk at night was a fascination, how I eat my food is a topic of conversation all the time). Unless your parents actually support your illness, don’t keep them in your life and medical consultations. Especially if they’re like Susanna’s. Sometimes your family accidentally adds to the issue, it’s not their fault, it’s better they don’t bring their opinions into it. Also they may actually just chuck a piece of paper at you with your initial diagnosis which will be full of misquotes because they misunderstood everything you said. It still happens to me. Also, they do take you out in public but you have to be at a point of relative normalcy. Nurses also LOVE to play, “I’m not with them” when they take you for walkies around the compound. But I do love the ice cream parlour scene. It’s another movie with those TikTok soundbites that get overused one month then disappear and reappear if someone’s late to the party. Also, I have had someone nod off in front of me, so Susanna talking to a sleeping doctor is realistic. If they’re not sleeping they’re inattentive and distracted easily, I liked to call my first doctor out on that shit. Also, hospitals at night especially the corridors are super liminal. Madness is liminal too.

Clea Duval gets literally no respect. When you do a biopic for Oscar noms it’s often the case you get outshined by the people who aren’t there to impress anyone. I fucking hate Jared Leto but he was so good back then before we all discovered his insane ego. I liked Angelina back in the day, I like she’s not a celebrity who insists on being on camera, but I think her inflated ego got the better of her for a long time. Winona seems more down to earth now.

Susanna’s kinda over-admired as the main character, the boys all love her, she’s so pretty. I don’t think the real Susanna experienced it. I don’t really want to reread the book again, I don’t want to write one either. There’s not that many “feel good” moments. I think Lisa’s needlessly a total bitch as an antagonist, I don’t believe she needed to be that narcissistic. She’s supposedly sociopathic. And yeah, raising promiscuity in women as a fault while it was encouraged in men is sexist. I was sad she chose to stay over leaving with Toby, I think it’s shitty she got sprung for making out with two guys in one day. You can’t make out with orderlies but you will notice patients forming their own sorts of cliques and social groups while judging you for being on the periphery by choice. Also, don’t wear the “lazy, self-indulgent” accusations, they don’t let you leave after those accusations so it cannot be true, if it were, they’d let you out. The very fact Susanna has to demand reasons for why she’s stuck there, why she cannot leave, why she isn’ ready, just for a nurse to reframe it as “oh, it’s all your problem, you’re not crazy”, I’m not even kidding, I’ve had that happen to me. Nurses tried to reframe it as an anger management issue, everyone has issues with their boss, I do, you don’t see me sitting in a psych ward about it. That’s a fucking opinion, it’s not a diagnosis. Deal with the anger but don’t let people dismiss the diagnosis. It would be highly irresponsible of a doctor to hold you as an involuntary patient for no good reason. Valery tells Susanna to write it down and deal with it but Susanna’s been trying to do so this whole time, it’s dehumanising to be detained and then denied a proper explanation. I’ve written it all down and I’m still dealing with it.

This movie does instil a proper narrative to a book that’s more like a series of vignettes. I don’t think the lesbian angle was necessary, someone wanted to see the main characters share a kiss. Lisa terrorising Daisy is sad but poignant, there’s no real recovery, there wasn’t back then, there isn’t really now. Defining recovery is personal. 

The shots feel very misty and soft. Daisy killing herself is really to drive Susanna back into hospital and break her from Lisa. RIP Britney, we lost a perfect one and it wasn’t fair. There’s an interesting “high road, low road” shot when Lisa leaves Susanna with Daisy’s hanging body, Susanna curled up in the bedroom doorway upstairs as Lisa callously walks out the front door. I did analyse some of this in university based on one viewing. One thing my experience lent to was adding some kind of perspective in essays pertaining to self and the body.

Also, they won’t let you keep a dead previous patient’s cat on the ward. I get pet therapy is good but honestly letting people bring animals to work or anywhere and they’re not an assistance animal is mean to people with allergies and phobias of animals. Also, you need supports when you leave but unless people are willing to give them to you, you have to force yourself to fit moulds on the outside that don’t suit you. I went back to school for two years then had to be given a job via a very casual interview by the agency who was supposed to find me a job. I think they should have better supports, you kinda get kicked into an uncaring community assistance program if you go in publicly, privately means little too, you think you’re winning by not paying, trust me, I have gone through two separate government funding avenues and have wound up relying on private providers anyway. I don’t think Susanna was personally terrorised the night before her release, the tension mostly comes from the somewhat false narrative as it can do with biopics.

If you’re sane now, it’s a privilege because you’re not noticing reality. If I notice it, it’s self-indulgent and I’m ignoring what I have. Nothing is fair and you should be mad and insane and refusing to conform. And I don’t think this film should have a Teens Choice Award. I know a lot of ED girlies and other mental health girlies probably over-idolise this movie as some kind of ideal they could’ve known instead of what they got inside. I have to put up with people’s perceptions of it as friends and family members of patients, but I’ve been kinder to those who were admitted. At least they know about it. I do know people who kinda glorify this depiction over the reality of it but again, I don’t think they’ve really had a horrible inpatient experience that’s contributed to literal medical trauma and made hospitals inherently unsafe environments for you.

I just realised we got books on tape in lieu of VHS copies.

I got stuck on a channel that’s made a handful of video essays on Disney movies and their cultural significance and historical relevance or allegorical importance. I appreciate the way people can marry historical education within the framework of pop culture, you’ll never find this stuff on network TV unless some station took it and chopped it up. It’s why Netflix trying to do this with the Toys that Made Us was such a bad idea. You ain’t no Defunctland, baby.

I saw very few Disney films before the Little Mermaid. I think I was supposed to see Snow White once and saw Charlie Brown and the Wizard of Oz instead. I never saw it on home video, nor did I see Cinderella and Sleeping Beauty (which I actually would like to see now). Best I got was Aladdin and Beauty and the Beast and Lion King, the really good ones. But there were a handful of less popular ones, like the Rescuers, Robin Hood and the Fox and the Hound, that I had as a book and tape version, that were popular and cheaper to buy for your kids. I don’t even remember asking for them, I think because we didn’t own a VCR and sat in the car on long trips out of town, it was better to just inundate us with these. Even at five, I sat in my dad’s van with the key in the ignition just to run the tape player and listen to our books. Or we’d be on a single foam mattress pretending to be sicker than we were in a warehouse while my dad did his work. I carried my little black radio with me for ages.

So my memories of those Disney films is reduced to whatever the abridged book on tape version was, along with pictures which were just stills from the movie, of course, so they would’ve been much cheaper to make than VHS. Now I’m seeing clips from these movies and I’m remembering what I saw in the book but there’s nothing from the movies themselves. I’m not so bummed, seriously if you’d given me a book on tape adaptation of the Last Unicorn, I’d have still loved it. I technically did it myself by recording the whole thing onto a cassette tape, like I did with multiple movies, contenting myself with listening to it, which is apparently something a lot of kids did. I think buying VHS tapes was cost prohibitive, video rental stores didn’t start selling whatever wasn’t being rented or what was removed to be replaced with new stock. I bought a bunch of DVDs from the local rental place who were closing down and I don’t know why I got them, I haven’t watched them, I was sick and spending money I didn’t have. But I have a stockpile of DVDs now, some of which turned out to be damaged despite me rarely touching them, I still wound up buying the final episode of Six Feet Under off YouTube since my disc was unwatchable. So I used to settle for listening and building the movie in my head as best I could, either from pictures or memory. But it’s odd to have a nostalgia for movies I never actually saw.

American Gothic - That devil’s the pesky one, ain’t he?

I remember Lucas Buck being so much more malevolent than mischievous. He’s really just an irritant while he gets what he wants, so whenever Caleb thwarts his temptations, he’s more of a cartoon villain who’s thinking, “I’ll get you next time, kid.” He and Caleb’s angel sister Merlyn are in a tug-of-war over Caleb’s soul, his cousin Gail brought back to town once he’s orphaned, only for her to be seduced by Buck.

The show’s about as good as I remember but I had no idea Sam Raimi was involved at all, the fact Bruce Campbell shows up for one episode was absolute evidence of this but I blanked on that. Bruce is a good sport too, he’ll get in makeup for a shot. Even the score is a little noir mixed with Twin Peaks. A lot of basic horror tropes pop up in egregious Dutch angles, montages of fire overlayed with that film negative style shows and movies used at the time to make a normal image somehow scarier. The violin stings come in often. But there’s a charm to it the way Raimi likes to be a little campy and overblown. That’s the tone I’m getting this time around, sappy one-liners, cheesy editing and quick closeups. This was another show that moulded my brain in terms of how I approached fiction, that and it had a certain seductive quality to it, it wasn’t so horrific I wasn’t allowed to watch it but it was on late at night so we had to tape it like a lot of shows. I don’t even know how I discovered these shows before the internet other than TV commercials.

I think the show did a good job of making sinners out of angels while the devil manipulates already maligned townsfolk into further strife more to get back at them for their slights against him. If anyone happens to benefit without being in debt to Lucas is a fortunate byproduct of Lucas’s revenge. Merlyn commits selfish acts out of a sense of unfairness, she’s malevolent in her own way to punish Trinity and Lucas, but he has the upper hand over Caleb. The doctor saves Lucas from a potential gunshot wound when he could’ve easily let the lady shoot him. But he doesn’t report her.

I get why Buck is “ever-present” but it’s a bit comical when he just appears behind people. I like Selena stands up to him more and tells him to shove it. Lucas’s “mother” comes back to town to get Matt to kill him. Gary Cole gets to mack on alotta ladies.

Also the way I’m watching it was not the intended network order since they cut four episodes from being cancelled but then didn’t release them in order for DVD and syndication. So I say I’d never have seen them on TV where I was since it never aired again where I was (far as I know). And tacking these onto the original series like they’re supposed to be in this order is jarring and makes you disinterested in them as they were probably removed for having the least amount of through-line that wouldn’t wreck the ending. They’re filler episodes anyway so why bother unless you’re a completionist. Plus the Potato Boy one is way too “after school special”, even the closing credits are saccharine. Dr. Mike’s suddenly back, Lucas is acting like Caleb wasn’t totally possessed last week, Merlyn’s same as always.

Next episode Gail’s lamenting over leaving Trinity, the key she found in the car is suddenly significant. I don’t even think she’s fucked Lucas and gotten pregnant so if this was supposed to set up her sudden infatuation with him, it’s annoying they took it out. More so for the scenes where she finally investigates Lucas, it’s like they just didn’t care to develop her relationship with Lucas so it’s weird she’s suddenly all over him. And she’s trying to convince Caleb to go with her. Her ambivalence keeps her there. And Lucas manipulates her further tempting her with the truth. Matt picks on her about Lucas, so does everyone else, but he’s the fuckin’ devil, that’s the point. (The Mayfair Witch show seems to have borrowed somewhat from this but in truth, that thing looked so bloated with derivative shit it’s impossible to tell). Plus Gail’s mother might’ve been carrying a baby, the fact Lucas is so evidently around when people were younger and he’s not aged a bit doesn’t seem to bother anyone. I don’t think they even cared about developing Gail’s past properly for how much they made a big thing about her coming back for answers not just Caleb. Suddenly she’s finding cigarette burns on her wrist so it’s implied Lucas is messing with her to think her dad deserved to die. She finds the box for the key she got earlier in the series.

I think the next missing episode was a Ben-centric one so these all look like earlier episodes that would’ve fleshed out a lot of shit that feels so out of nowhere if you don’t have them. It also establishes Merlyn was haunting him a lot too, not just Caleb. And one of them had the scene where Gail’s joking about Lucas to her recorder only to get in bed with him. IMDB thankfully has everything in order since AI on google doesn’t. If I were in charge of the Internet Archive I’d have uploaded them based on IMBD’s listing. I’d do that as a career, just upload shit to a website, but you need coding skills from what I can see. This particular episode has a terrible scene with Lucas’s voice “echoing” to gail, it’s corny AF, the rest of it’s fine but again, I don’t know if this is Raimi camp or meant to be taken seriously. Ben gets way too much dirt on Lucas now he has to go over every “accident” or mercy killing Lucas happened to be around. Merlyn knows she can’t implicate Lucas she can only prevent more bullshit. Again, would’ve been nice to have that context for how often Merlyn doesn’t get Buck in the shit for his wrongdoings. As long as Lucas can bend all the truths into pretzels he’s fine. Plus Caleb has another moral conundrum so he’s showing Lucas’s “teachings”. He’s more complicated than a Damien character since he’s using Lucas’s moral ambiguity to “punish” bad people. Caleb has to learn free will sometime, but leaving this whole episode out again denies the audience a chunk of character development for him.

The other one was the ghost of the Boston Strangler coming back to “kill” Merlyn, I guess this must’ve been the most redundant besides the Potato Boy episode, that really had nothing going for it. Merlyn’s supposed to be Caleb’s spiritual guide so she can help him do kind deeds, it gives her more importance than if she was just dissuading him from Lucas’s influence. It’s a very big argument for nurturing the devil’s son to avoid any supposed nature. The Strangler tries to make a deal with Merlyn to double cross Lucas but she goes against him. I liked Merlyn was presented with the problem of evil if it meant Lucas’s undoing, then it was justified. It’s a clever show, not brilliant but clever and could’ve had a bigger audience. Caleb ends up thwarting the Strangler before he obliterates Merlyn and she’s scared Caleb’s about to succumb to the darkness, so this had a decent amount of story in it too and they still dumped it. I got through them all and I’m annoyed I didn’t do my own control the way it was set up online, it would’ve been a pain in the ass hopping around. The fact you couldn’t trust network TV to deliver on late night, low rating shows, they didn’t really care how you felt, you could write the network and bitch but unless you sent avalanches or had fanbases like Twin Peaks did, which was a feat to organise, mobilise and execute a campaign to keep it on TV without the fucking internet, there were no avenues to complain. Your favourite show might’ve just been filler if a broadcast schedule had an unexpected lull in programming.

Anyway, I got sidetracked and really wasn’t watching this at all by the end, it was very much on in the background, again because it was out of order and those episodes were slower anyway. I would say it’s still worth a watch, I can see the potential and it’s something maybe a reboot could save, it has a bit of a Goosebumps/Who’s Afraid of the Dark? feel but for adults.