The Boys Vs Jessica Jones

The one thing that shit me the most about Jessica Jones was it really brought the conversation of superheroes out into the public in places you felt it didn't belong. I was shocked people at work were into Arrow as much as they seemed shocked I played D&D. So these "cool kids" had nerdy tendencies basically but still threw nerds under the bus. But people raving about Jessica Jones annoyed me more, beyond the fact she was one of the first third tier or lower superheroes that nobody had heard of who was getting their own show. Because I didn't like it. And I think the second season highlighted what I'd disliked about the first.

I didn't like her as a character regardless of how damaged she was. The exploration of her being a rape victim by way of hypnotism was interesting and well developed, but Kilgrave to me seemed like a stupid villain with weird tendencies. I can't even remember what his motivation really was but he did have one. He reveled in manipulation, and I guess I've created a character who's almost identical to him who was also less focused. But I didn't enjoy the show. I saw why others did, but I didn't. Firstly, I got so confused by the casting of two blonde actresses of similar appearance and age that I mixed them up and thought they were the same person. When one was having sex with a guy I was like, "Wait, isn't she the lesbian lover of the lawyer?" I won't make that an alliteration but feel free to use it. No, one was Jessica's step sister, (the one character I did like) and the other was the disposable lesbian girlfriend. So you've lost points on casting. Couldn't the lover be a redhead? I liked Carrie-Anne Moss more in this as well, I always hated she was an ex-Model's Inc actress who got a break via the Matrix. But I hated Luke Cage, and most of the other characters didn't enthrall me either. I guess maybe Jessica's junkie friend, but not in the second season, which really butchered his and Moss's characters. You were supposed to think it wasn't really Jessica's fault she let the junkie get desperate but she was never sympathetic enough for me to buy her guilt over it, or anything else. Moss was overplayed as the predatory lesbian whose suffering is meant to justify her bitchy behaviour. And introducing Jessica's mother was overkill as well, she pretty much ruined the second season. And I just didn't buy Krysten Ritter all the time. She had the look down-pat and she had the right amount of cynic sneer required, but she didn't make me like the show. So when people cut into the second season I was thinking, "Okay, so now do you see what I hated about the first?". If she felt that bad about getting Cage's wife killed, why was she just boning him selfishly to begin with? I didn't think that made her complex, just selfish. So I never really felt bad for her. Dragging Kilgrave back into it because people love David Tennant and think his character was the best was such a pathetic play for attention. He's in the third as well. Netflix effectively cancelled the series, it wasn't enough to really bolster the MCU outside of the cinematic component. It felt like an experiment if nothing else. So I probably won't bother with season three. And I'm not the only one.

All of this was happening as my disinterest in the genre was starting to grow. I thought I was the only one suffering but it was becoming a real thing: superhero fatigue. So, it turns out comic book writers were also afflicted with this back in the day and they had to write "anti-hero" narratives. Fortunately for assholes like me, the Boys actually holds up.

I heard about it through Red Letter Media but wasn't down to get into it. The pilot had enough to hook me in. Every character has enough nuance you're surprised by their actions rather than underwhelmed. The casting was nearly spot-on. The irony was there in right amounts. You got which character was the corresponding Marvel/DC analogy without really cringing at it from a parody perspective, since the characters were fleshed out in their negative aspects as well as the stock-standard positive ones. Nobody's a hero, everyone can have the propensity for villainy but you're not ever 100 percent sure if they're going to follow through or not. I loved Starlight most of all, she could've been butchered but they handle her arc so fucking well. This show has all the sardonic nature Jessica Jones failed to really deliver. Angry but innocent Hughie goes through one of the best character arcs depicted in a long time. You're down to get revenge as much as you're backpedaling when the sight of blood makes this shit a bit too real. I didn't buy Simon Pegg as much as his dad, I think my familiarity with him made him that too much out of place. Elisabeth Shue fucking rocked. She was the right amount of evil without losing any humanity. The Deep and Homelander have your skin crawling while still selling the tortured backstories. There were plenty of squeamish moments by way of moral dilemmas. The #MeToo movement isn't shat on in the process, the commentary is spot on, respectful and still capable of highlighting any inequities that have arisen so you're not taking anything at absolute face-value. I wasn't fond of A-Train so much but he had some great moments. Queen Maeve as the previous "It" girl of the crew imparting her wisdom to Starlight while still learning too many hard truths on her own was pretty cool. I don't know if her having a lesbian lover wasn't too shoehorned but once you know she had to pair up with Homelander to disguise her less "wholesome" preferences, it makes sense. You buy them never being in "civilian" clothing, it's pointed out how ridiculous it would be if superheros lived in their ridiculous costumes. The show basically nails the "road to hell being paved with good intentions" premise Zack Snyder tried to play with in Man of Steel and Suicide Squad. There's a clearer understanding of the characters, their intentions, their faults and their broken moral compasses. They weren't bad guys trying to be good, they're good guys effectively gone bad via celebrity and the allowances that grants, all the while toying with the idea of them being bought and sold like cattle for political gain. And the politics in this is convincing as well. It all works in ways other movies and shows couldn't make it work. Including Jessica Jones.

The craziest thing was, the production value on this show was above the level of even some recent DC and Marvel films, especially in terms of special effects. It didn't need to go into massive disaster scenes because you didn't necessarily have a "big bad" to fight, which made it subtle. But when they had to pull off something convincing, it worked. I'm sure Zon had bags of money to throw at this, maybe even more than HBO paid for Game of Thrones, because you've seen where they've really flubbed with their special effects. The point is, they spent the money well where it absolutely counted. Even the fundamentals like colour pallets and basic direction and cinematography and editing, it's still better than something you've paid to see in a fucking cinema in the last five years. It's standing on its own merits and kicking so much ass. It's not perfect but I'm so into it. I'd read the books, and I can't say that of any comic series I've seen in movie or TV format. Including Jessica Jones.

Sorry, feminists. I'm backing the Boys and I'll be annoyed if Amazon doesn't keep renewing it. I'm not upset Jessica Jones is over. Did it really have the legs to carry it beyond a first season to begin with? Of course it didn't. Maybe the Boys doesn't either but there's a lot more to play with in terms of premise and plots. Or maybe it'll play out for two solid seasons and end satisfyingly. I hope either way it doesn't make me more sick of the genre than I already was.

Why I Hate Musicals (from Bridges Burnt)

Why a Heathers musical has to exist (along with a series I'm refusing to look at), I have no idea. I understand the musical has to have context for non fans, but reading over the plot line on Wikipedia, after skipping through an animatic of the opening number (which seems to interlace slightly more modern insults) I'm constantly saying out loud "that's not what that meant" or "that didn't happen that way" or "this is shit". All the stuff I would've been muttering obnoxiously if you'd ever taken me to the production of this. AND OH JESUS THEY MADE KURT AND RAM'S DADS GAY THAT IS STUPID. The whole point of that scene was to illustrate the "reaction to a limp wrist with a pulse" argument had Kurt actually lived. And the joke about loving your dead gay son. It's ironic enough on its own without that shit. JD barely suggests offing Heather Duke, he never tells Veronica he loves her until he thinks she's dead. Unless this is all based on the draft which I have read but can't find, (and I know damn well two gay dads aren't a part of this you've done this to make homosexuality seem like it was accepted when in the movie, it's barely accepted by the protagonists because THE EIGHTIES. But you making this NOW means you have to fluff it up- and Kurt and Ram's death is "okay" because everyone became more tolerant. THAT WAS THE PUNCHLINE: NOBODY DID).

Oh and apparently Veronica gives JD an ultimatum to give up the violence, instead of just breaking it off when he shoots a radio. You couldn't shoot a radio in a musical?? Oh and HE AGREES. AND MARTHA SUSPECTS JD MURDERED KURT AND RAM WHAT IS THIS BULLSHIT. And there's a West End version that differs from the off-broadway one so if you can't even have a single narrative in a musical why butcher a movie and make it into what you THOUGHT the movie SHOULD be? Martha "mourning" Ram and throwing herself off a bridge but surviving is ridiculous. Theatre trick: one sound effect of screeching tyres  after she's walked off stage should be enough because THAT'S HOW THEY DID IT IN THE MOVIE. And her motive to be like the cool kids WAS ENOUGH. And WHAT THE FUCK HAPPENED TO BETTY FINN?? You had NOTHING for her? No song about how she'd miss her own birthday for a date? Oh she gotten eaten by Martha. No shit they just blended the two characters and decided Martha was more integral, which she is, but there's room for Betty in there somewhere FFS. Or maybe not because this thing actually seems more bloated than the film, and the original shooting script was pretty bloated. JD chooses to take the bomb Veronica can't diffuse, making his act look more noble than it was. She diffused it, he didn't have to die. He was just offing himself in the most appropriate way and Veronica knew it was the right thing. But, again, the argument this movie might be advocating suicide at all would be more apparent in some idiot's interpretation of this scene. Other dross: Veronica CONFESSES at Flem's love in only to be laughed at and Heather Chandler's ghost haunts Veronica persistently. Because the audience would've been confused about the main Heather not really being in the show. And the antagonists get killed off early to be replaced by JD. That's the other punchline. You're not on JD's side once Veronica shuns him.

Someone recently put the blame of 4chan users and incels on the movie. Like it has a lot to answer for when it was more poignant and cutting than the John Hughes movies. It didn't sanitise anything or condescend, it proved the media was to blame for glorifying suicide. "Nobody's going to care about exact handwriting". The gritty details don't matter. Virgin Suicides was probably the only other film to prove this. Christian Slater taking too many "disaffected bad boy roles" didn't really mean much when Fight Club became a thing and Tyler Durden replaced him. JD Salinger didn't want his book in this movie, kids. Moby Dick was the replacement text/subtext. Oh and Doris Day refused to have her version of Que Sera Sera in the movie so we got Syd Straw (who tried to rewrite the history of They Might Be Giants) and Sly and the Family Stone. I want someone to drive me around for hours with this playing while I lay in the back. Anyway, I don't think Heathers is to blame.

They even made a watered down high school PG 13 version for kids to perform. The critics mostly didn't appreciate the bubblegum nature of it. Yeah, two gay dads at their not gay sons' funeral isn't enlightened or progressive, it's camp and kitschy. Oh, LIKE MUSICALS. I see why.

This is trash and I don't see the point of it. OK I was too young for this movie even when I finally watched it, (And I didn't want to because I was a 90210 fan and didn't want to see a movie where Shannon Doherty was killed- I think this was before I got over this and was a cynical bitch 12 year old who ate the movie up with a spoon) but the fans of this would've come in way after the fact. Having a younger audience who's only been exposed to Glee and can't afford to actually go to broadway musicals much, or theatre arts students who are generally effusive and colourful, doesn't prop this up as a legitimate thing or mean it'll be enjoyed by everyone. But it has its fan base. Some people just eat this shit up. I'm not one of them. I might like the odd song from Lestat and I'd still like to see the Book of Mormon one day. But I probably won't. And this isn't a rock show. It's fucking musical theatre. The girl playing Veronica was right for the part by audition but was bagged for being overweight and unattractive. She played against a guy who looked a little too milquetoast - they looked like theatre arts students. It just isn't going to work for me. But the person right for the part should get it, in most cases. It makes no difference to me, I'll never see it and I'm clearly taking out my moderate frustration on this musical. It's better than being mad at the other shit I've trashed lately.

I placed this here also because I've been going over the shooting draft from the writer, who contributed to the musical, and seeing the words "mythic bitch" in the script, which weren't in the film but added to the musical, I'm now wondering how much of the new adaptation was what the writer wanted. Of course, there's the famous prom in heaven scene based on JD's ideologies that we'll all get along when we're dead. This is where JD falls down as a character to me. He seems to hate humanity but wants to be loved. He does act sort of tortured but there's a subtlety to Slater's performance that really sells it. I can't see another actor really pulling it off. But him saying he'd kill everyone because no one loves him, that was where I always thought, did you really care? Veronica never says she loves him either, she's just in over her head.  The movie actually does a better job of you believing Heather Chandler is genuinely more fucked up and put upon just in a couple of scenes. You know she's being used by college guys and it makes it more convincing, along with JD's assessment of the magazines in her room, that she was completely suicidal. The musical just makes her haunt Veronica. It's fantastic the movie doesn't resort to this and only uses one dream sequence.

The polling montage also does enough without the added dialogue from the script. I think there's a lot in there that works in the writer's mind but not on screen. Oh, and there's a throwaway line about the Breakfast Club, but I think the movie didn't want to besmirch John Hughes at the height of his career.  And the line about Veronica "having a sense of humour" implies she was also a bitch all along and now it's gone sour, while the musical (rightly so I guess) has to prove Veronica was a good girl gone bad trying to be good again. She's called out for dumping Betty once she knows she's hot, but again, all we ever know is she wanted to be one of the Heathers and now she doesn't. Giving that any more weight is unnecessary. You see the photobooth shots of Heather C and Veronica. It holds up.

Really, she's more a lost soul. The picture of her and Betty as witch and angel respectively says a lot more. Veronica's disillusioned with her life, she's a genius who's wasted her talents and has no direction. She has to go to college but you have no idea what for and it has to be Ivy League. It spoke to more of a sense of ennui and restlessness coupled with resentment and a fear of being ousted. (The lost line about her not having anyone to eat lunch with still didn't ring with me. I honestly wasn't that scared of being rejected in high school unless I'd grown too attached for the most part I drifted and needed to be alone). There's more than enough motivation shown there for her to fear being rejected by Heather. The script also cuts a lot from Heather Chandler initially, Veronica's essentially the main character but you're not losing anything in Heather's lines. She's quipy in the script but so much of it's cut.

Side note: convenient-speak sounds way better than 7-11 Speak. Brands didn't want to be associated with the movie any more than Sallinger and Day did.

Another clue (I feel like I'm live reviewing the script now) Betty's described as overweight, which could explain them lumping her into Martha's character in the musical. I love the 50s look they go with for Betty too. It's so her. Oh yeah I forgot Veronica also had a cat called JKF. And you think JD's heavy with the life and death stuff but he equates a condom full of spunk to a dead baby saying it's not hard to end a life. I think you get enough of JD's world view without this, and yeah again you can see producers shaking their head at this stuff. But it doesn't mention JD doing a poor effort of trying to stop Veronica taking the wrong cup, so I feel like this is something clever not considered until later. And Heather's "affection for regurgitation" never struck me as an insult but she's clearly not on her game by then. Or throwing up at a frat is the worst thing you can do so you deserve to be destroyed. There's a reverse kind of Porky's shower scene after Veronica takes a fully clothed shower, where the girls all join in and the guys are pissed and confused they're not seeing nudity.

I think I'm not reading the script I found (I seem to remember Veronica's favourite meal was something Hawaiian ) Oh and I forgot about a creepy scene of the mortician kissing Heather's brow. Betty also gives a nice Christian prayer to Heather we never see. And JD has weird accessories like a Rebel Without a Cause lunchbox and a helmet saying "The Real Killer" on it like the actual gun he owns and the coat don't speak to his persona enough. He has a lot more lines that kinda make him more chipper and excitable than that as well. Some of it really is adult doing what they think kids say. Again, Slater has so much swagger they don't sound right, or they were edited out. Oh, and Veronica almost kills her cat as a joke after JD goes into more explanation over the "I'm Lying" bullets. There's enough there again you can drop the explanation. I was a dumb kid and didn't get the joke that JD's scamming her but it's obvious enough.

You're also missing a throwaway line where one of the cops questions the delay between the two shots, but they're scene to be dutching up their car so them being stoned is translated. And it's a commentary on lazy 80s cops who steal evidence anyway. What irritated me about the musical was Veronica's confession. The movie sells everyone buying the suicides so well you can totally believe the lack of suspicion. The teachers reconvening includes the English teacher tutting the bad spelling in Kurt's note compared to her praise of Heather's. I like there isn't too much call back shit in this too.

Instead of "Everybody's sad but it's a weird kind of sad", we traded good for weird. And she brings God into it saying it's him vs JD. I vaguely remember the line but it doesn't fit. Religion's kinda glossed over. And there's not a lot of harping on about the media coverage compared to the script. (The one thing that drives me nuts about the copies I have of the movie was for some reason, the kid yelling from offscreen "fuck you" to Flem telling them to lock their paws isn't in my version. I have it on the VHS one but not the DVD. I think I gave someone another DVD copy I had so I'm actually considering hunting down the region 4 version to see if it's different PS I have two versions of the Last Unicorn for ironically this very reason - can't say damn in cartoons. PPS as of now since I found this on streaming services, same line's cut out, like was there someone who hated the editor for leaving it in because it's so perfectly timed).

Another difference I didn't pick up was Veronica sees Flem's publicity stunt as something good and there's a moment the cliques are told to get together by Flemming to prove peer pressure is dead at Westerburg (fun fact two: school's named after Paul Westerburg) whereas in the movie she's immediately cynical and calls it chaos. JD's argument they're scaring people into not being assholes holds up more against Veronica believing Flem has the answer. She even tries to convince JD going with Flem's way is the better way (the our way is not "our way" thing actually didn't hit me until way later). Big Fun's video doesn't make it into the movie, JD seems to think there's some celebrity and acclaim coming his way from it but the radio scene is a lot less cornier. The script really tries to sell the anti-media angle too. JD even throws the "You used to have a sense of humor" line at her and Veronica wants to side with Flem when the movie makes it clear she hates it.

Catcher makes more sense when JD's convincing Heather Duke of a hostile take over, but Moby Dick still sort of works too. Sort of. I bet the writer was pissed for having to make that change with a public domain book. Guess the lesson is never reference living authors. And Heather Duke is spooked by JD's offer more than suspicious of it and she has a more mystical transformation than the movie sells it as. Heather Chandler's dead and she's instantly more confident. Seeing her with the scrunchy and her stealing the keys is adequate. I feel like the writer's kind of assuming he's too smart and the audience won't get it.

Veronica really tries to work Flem's angle I guess to show a dichotomy between JDs way and hers, but I'm glad they scrapped it and made her more critical of it. And there's a delightful scene where Veronica's trying to apologise to Heather Duke to salvage the friendship like they can survive this while Heather's sucking David from Remmington's cock. I don't get croquet enough to get Veronica knocking Betty out anyway. The script makes it like a resignation. Betty's right. She'll always finish last. Veronica and Heather have a fight over the TV special they're organising, all this BS would've dragged the movie down to a fucking snail's pace. I think I'm reading a different version to the one I had too, I don't remember a lot of this at all, certainly not a televised picnic. It's all geared to get the school publicity but again it's bogus and kind of reads like a weird dream sequence. I thought I'd copied this version but I don't think it's the one I read now. It moves back to an opening scene where Veronica's running down the street and again there's no mention of her standing in for a croquet hoop. I'm sure the script I read had a similar scene where they're just playing. Yeah I found it. The shooting script was much different. But it's not the one with the different favourite meal. I actually wish I could find the copy I had now.

I could do a side by side comparison of these two drafts all on its own right now. The shooting draft has a more cynical Veronica. There's no mention of the picnic, it's "doing Chinese at the Food Fair" (12 year old me took that as making Chinese food at an actual school food fair) I think the TV show thing makes Heather Dukes funeral make more sense with the armbands and 3D glasses. I like the movie toned all this shit down.

I know the script I had ended with the prom scene. I read an article discussing it, I don't know what I did with it. Which is weird considering how much I've salvaged from high school. I started this post to prove things the musical got wrong may have had more to do with the original author but I've gotten sidetracked. I didn't think Heather M had to be in the final scene of the musical with Martha and Veronica. But I think the musical doesn't have Heather's attempted suicide, which is a beautifully shot scene in the movie. The ethereal lighting and colours of the film just seem so unique compared to movies out at the time. Even the Heathers not being conventionally dressed you could still buy the preppy shoulder pad look and how they all made it look sexy and convincing. And it works when they look overdressed for the frat party. There really aren't many movies that pulled off the content and subject matter that well. The homages are fine, you can put up with a line showing up in Gilmore Girls I guess. But the musical? I won't go near the TV show knowing how badly half a song from the movie pissed me off.

It's a sacred text. A sequel would've sucked so hard but Ryder wanted it badly once her career was flagging. I don't know. I rant too much these days and it's late. I should go to bed. This week has been weird.

Whenever I find a movie I like has been made into a musical, I'm going to come here and rant myself to death in protest. Why? Fucking why? I'm serious about this. Not every single movie needs to be one, and if you see a hole in the market, it seems like people will just make unofficial musicals anyway. The idea of a stage play version isn't anywhere near as bad, especially for the Breakfast Club (I looked it up because my list of favourite movies turning into musicals is growing) being nearly a bottle movie confined to one massive room you could easily turn into a full stage. But Benny and Joon? Why have a song about raisins? One of the pieces on the soundtrack is called Raisins. The score's quite lovely and well produced, it suits the quirkiness and the drama, so why a musical? Who is this genuinely for? Have we stopped writing musicals from nothing? Did Hamilton make you feel sad because you can't rap and your musical theatre chums aren't getting work, so you'll reimagine a movie as a musical? For who? Who IS THIS FOR?

Oh, Mother!

I put off watching Mother! because I knew the premise. Now I'm watching it will a full understanding of what means what and what the allegory is and it's still not such a great movie. So far. Shaky cam is making it hard for me to actually physically watch it. I know it gets gory which was the other reason I was put off. 

You could identify with the essence of giving too much to those who hurt you. J-Law's not doing a bad job of this but she's coming off as the beleaguered hostess who can't say no. So I'm sure it'll become annoying and less sympathetic.

Walking into this movie blind would make it more interesting. Considering the "plot" it's supposed to be taking, there's been some confusing turns. Michelle Pfeiffer seems pretty right for the part the director's written for her but a damning indictment on the actual character she's meant to be. Javier Bardem works in his role so I don't know which direction they'll take his character in. I wasn't paying enough attention to realise he's a poet so when he finishes his masterpiece I had it in my head it's a novel. It's still hard to watch it without going "do ya get it?" after seeing Red Letter Media's review. But I'm curious about the ending so I'm in it for the long haul. I can't remember what I read on Wikipedia.

I changed my mind, it probably pays to know who's who because some of the plot points are silly enough that if you don't know what's going on it comes off as plain ridiculous. It makes it interesting in a way, but sort of comical at points when I think it's meant to be taken seriously. So I'm trying not to laugh at shit I probably shouldn't find funny. It is kind of a fifth grader's understanding of the narrative. Or maybe I'm missing something. It's trying to be clever and it's not really achieving this. Throwaway lines about the Apocalypse are relatively amusing but trite. Now that shit's amping up it's definitely getting ridiculous and not at all subtle. It's at peak "calm your tits" right now and it's got 20 minutes left. I didn't find Kristen Wiig's character all that funny or clever either, she represents Herald, since each character is referenced as a key character but not by their actual biblical names. It may have looked smarter on paper. Not by the dialogue.

I've been flipping my television off for the last 20 minutes. It's ham-fisted and not at all subtle. Or even clever. It got a slow clap and a no from me, Dawg.

I saw this was nominated for some awards by the Alliance of Women Film Journalists and thought, oh, the feminists dig on this. Until I saw the list of nominations:

Most Egregious Age Difference Between The Lead and The Love Interest Award  to the two leads

Actress Most in Need Of A New Agent to J-Law

AND....

AWFJ Hall of Shame Award to the director.

Aww, considering he was trying to make a sympathetic portrayal of Mother Earth I'd say this confirms the boy dun fucked up.

It also went up for Golden Raspberries, again the three above all earning nominations (a double whammy for Javier that year for Pirates too). I'm actually more shocked by that to be honest.

I don't think I've seen many Darren Aronofsky movies outside Requiem and Black Swan, and I wasn't a fan of the latter like most people were. I found Black Swan not all that subtle either and Natalie Portman putting in effort to look balletic and convincing is commendable but the rest of the acting was, to me, over the top. A lot of guys seem to like her performance outside of the lesbian stuff. It just didn't strike me as that captivating. Aronofsky definitely looks like a pretty smug guy who was given too many props.

I knew this movie would bother me later. Primarily, conflating Mother Nature with Mother Mary when the bible itself makes no direct reference to Mother Nature. It has Grecian origins and ended up more a pagan concept. Catholics call Mary the Queen of Heaven, so for artistic lisence I'm assuming Aronofsky conflated the two for the purpose of his narrative, which is ironically cyclical, perhaps to point at history repeating and man being doomed to forever commit the same mistakes for all time. Or that God himself will keep trying until he gets a good batch of humans but keeps forgetting them being shitheads the last time, so he falls in love with them all over again. The stupid thing is also, the God analogy in Bardem's portrayal seems woefully ignorant of his creations. He's more, hey I found these people wandering around and took pity on them, not "they're here because of me". So this version of God has no omniscience or omnipresence to know what the fuck is going on when he's not in the same room as Mother. He should fucking know what's going on and not be bemused or astonished to find her upset or beaten. He should've known she was up the duff from their one fuck session. It's garbled. Man and Woman (who comes off more like her predecessor Lillith but still reeks of internalised, Christian misogyny that it was ALL Woman's/Eve's fault they were kicked out) are still in the house (Paradise) when they should be out in the fucking fields fucking. They're not. The two sons are played off as assholes rather than one being more pious than the other, as if to still confuse us over which son was which. It's all so horribly in your face by the end of it, mostly with the torture of Mother and the consumption of the child. Oh, yes. We get it. The Body and the Blood. We GET it. Man sucks. Man is greedy. Man takes and while Mother gives and gives ad nauseam. Seriously. Too much. I think this could've been done on a subtle level. Not with an actual fucking mushroom cloud when Paradise explodes from Mother finally going nuclear. The earth caving in on itself and swallowing it down into Hell makes way more sense but clearly we had to throw a "man made the bomb/Apocalypse" analogy instead. Like I said, mixed metaphors and garbled logic. Because, from what I understand, the story kept changing during its conception. So some holes popped up along the way.

Toxic Marriages in Gone Girl and Phantom Thread

I thought I was clever figuring out the major twist of Gone Girl before I saw it, so I didn't bother with it until today only to discover the bigger twist is it's a black comedy and has a bucket-load of dark humour and irony for something marketed as a murder mystery. I thought this was going to be too pedestrian a story for Fincher to take on but he made the whole thing more interesting. Dialogue wise I wasn't buying it initially but I settled into it and stuck around long enough to see it all play out.

Phantom Thread also threw me for a fucking loop. I was expecting something fairly basic by way of plot lines, and while the false endings were irritating, I couldn't say I saw the ultimate ending coming. Again, narrative wise you could call it a kind of murder mystery, the love interest setting up her story to another party (who could be a detective or a journalist) that explores Daniel Day Lewis's character and her intense obsession with him that he reciprocates eventually in the most bizarre sense, the pivotal moment suggesting murder is genuinely afoot. Then the central characters take toxic to the most literal level.

But both narratives portray marriages as foundations for hatred, resentment and co-dependence that almost can't function without these negative aspects, suggesting you're destined to live in a sham in abject misery hating one another. Or worse, lashing out or using means of torture or manipulation to keep the other person with you. I feel like whoever wrote Gone Girl had such a cynical view of men, women and marriage. The amount of divorces and cynicism around marriage make these narratives more believable and depressing as fuck. Great way to sell the package to millennials. You're already telling young girls abusive boyfriends are hot and the better option and negging is totally cool, now let's suggest you marry a guy you'll hate the fuck out of but be so obsessed with you'll refuse to let him go.

I found both movies tended to drag out despite having very short, succinct scenes. Once you've cottoned on to Gone Girl's Amy, you're only a third of the way in. You pick a side eventually, the only thing I found a bit hokey was the conceit that makes Amy famous and more attractive to the public was contrived and not realistic at all; she could've been famous for any number of reasons beside the writer trying to be original. (Six Feet Under featured a similar story line with Brenda and Billy being the inspiration behind two children in a story book written by their psychologist mother so it's not that an original idea). You don't really get a sense of why Amy's become unhinged at all, and it's rather cynical towards women as well, I can see why some feminists would hate this portrayal, not that it isn't done effectively. You find Amy sort of distasteful even while she's meant to look innocent. You don't end up hating Nick even with his egregious flaws. You don't think he deserves what he eventually gets. But a huge amount of their tensions are the most pedestrian: he gets surly and childish and she refuses to become the nag he sees her as. I think I missed what makes her so manipulative ultimately.

The couple in Phantom Thread were more appalling in their dynamic. You despise Reynolds and find Alma's affection confounding, but when she grates on him you can appreciate his reaction to a point. Her determination to keep him seems more volatile than his temper when cornered. He has some kind of undiagnosed behavioural issue and Alma is quite young and naive to begin with, growing up under his influence. But his brand of negging is on a whole other level. His suggestion he can "give her bigger breasts and take them away" purely from the way he designs his dresses would make most women slap him senseless. His charm is hardly worth these moments of arrogance, but Alma refuses to abandon him.

Interestingly, both stories feature a close sister character, a twin in Nick's case and an older sister and manager in Reynolds', the latter doing far more to sabotage Reynold's relationships than Nick's. Both sisters are depicted as being a touch too close to their brothers, however Alma seems to fall into some degree of favour with Reynold's sister ultimately; she proves herself a worthy companion despite the two women fighting over Reynold's disposition. And both male leads have close relationships with their mothers and are severely fractured by the deaths of these matriarchal figures. In Reynolds' case, no other woman can compare.

So walking into both these films my expectations were well and truly subverted. I can't say I'd watch either again but both are unforgettable and unique in their own demented, sad and dark ways. Reflecting on them both now I've only just seen how many similarities they have for being quite different types of films.



I have to add now I've had time to digest Gone Girl that it's actually ludicrously comical the lengths Amy goes to as part of her revenge, and her history of incriminating men also seems so overblown and fantastical, it falls so much into romance revenge fantasy it could be considered a type of pornography for jilted housewives. Nothing of Nick's persona or actions make him even remotely worthy of that amount of effort. That there has to be that amount of blood to ruin him or that much to win him back. He's so typical and unremarkable and cookie-cutter as a character and she's romanticised their courtship so excessively. Or she was convinced they'd be an exception to some societal rule that all marriages are hard work and fraught with misery and conflict. And when that fails, over something so typical as them losing their jobs, you decide to go overboard when he takes a typical stance of infidelity. And you'll fabricate some abusiveness too when you could just fucking leave the guy. But no. Apparently this schmuck is worth you bleeding yourself. Reading a bunch of books and watching crime documentaries apparently makes you qualified to let your own blood with the precision of a registered nurse and adept at faking a crime scene. And able to craftily steal a pregnant woman's urine. This had to have been satirical. It plays the media as idiots and shallow. It was such a commentary the characters had no real depth besides the sister, and even then, you know nothing of her life beyond she's devoted to Nick. It's a black comedy. Don't call it a drama, it's too ironic for that.

But the fact it illustrates that having rough consensual sex that could result in vaginal tearing and scratching consistent with rape muddies that argument so dangerously you could imagine it being used as an argument against someone in reality. Which is why that issue has become so contentious and makes victims' arguments less valid. Like we need that level of internalised misogyny where dumb men can use that as a defence "she wanted it rough" and dumb women can use it as an attack "I said no but he did it anyway". Don't put those ideas in their heads.  

Cameron Crowe circa 1992 and Beyond.

I watched Singles at age 14, well before I saw Crowe's debut, Say Anything... Me coming to love that film hinged entirely on a tape I had of soundtrack songs performed by nobodies and sold for cheap as compilations, this particular one being for Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (it may have been 1 or 2 I can't remember). The song was In Your Eyes by Peter Gabriel, but for some reason was marked as Say Anything from the movie of the same name. And since the tape didn't seem to have any info on the original artists, (it may have been in the liner notes) it took ages for me to find the song after I warped the tape from constantly listening to it.

Singles seemed to be a great film when I was in high school. I even wrote a report on it senior year, the same year I finally saw Say Anything. They're relatively different films about love with similar sentiments and shots of kissing in the rain, but I went to watch Singles the other day for the first time in ages, after I'd watched Say Anything, and Singles made me cringe. So much so, I turned it off after twenty minutes, when the character Steve is talking about how he learned about sex in a satirical flashback of him in as a kid in a doctor's office mishearing sperm for the word "spam". Then I asked, how could a movie about two high school graduates discovering they're made for each other despite vastly different backgrounds be more mature than a movie about twenty somethings looking for love in the early 90s?

Fact is, I don't know, other than Crowe drew two very unique, believable teens, Lloyd and Diane, better than he did five adults, most of whom live in the same complex of single bedroom apartments. Singles is essentially a comedy with drama elements, while Say Anything poses as a romantic comedy only to slide effortlessly into dramatic territory without breaking stride. I'm not going to go into the problematic nature of Lloyd's pursuit of Diane through a 2019 lens. I've grappled with it and you have to distill what you see - Lloyd is still charming, respectful and idealistic, he does give up on Diane eventually and she's ultimately conflicted over being with him. You want them to survive the drama concerning her father. In a nutshell, Diane is the perfect student who's been coddled by her father after her parents' divorce, and she's placed her unending, implicit trust in Jim, while his drive to see her succeed is essentially sullied by him squandering money from the residents of his aged care facility. There are deleted scenes padding out this premise of Jim lying to the courts over where the money is going (a box in his house, or in items around the 9000 dollar mark, as Diane discovers), but the bulk of this story is intact and drives the drama of the film, while Diane and Lloyd's peculiar romance and courtship decorates the comedic parts. Jim's behaviour is ultimately worse than any criticism you could throw at Lloyd, who valiantly takes the high road convincing Dianne to mend ties with Jim before she leaves for England, after she swears never to speak to Jim again. Jim actively breaks up Dianne and Lloyd out of his own delusion Lloyd is no good for her; he's a professional kickboxer with no direction but who still won't buy, sell or process anything sold, bought or processed, or work in the military with his absent father. (see Lloyd's manifesto). We root for Lloyd essentially from his optimism, which is defined by Crowe as a revolutionary act. With the right sense of positivity everything will essentially work out, they basically do, at least for Lloyd and Diane, but not without major struggles brought upon them by Jim's actions.

But with Singles, the drama winds up slightly forced, culminating in Steve and Linda's roller coaster relationship that hits an unexpected pregnancy within weeks of them getting together. For the sake of cutting out too much explanation, here's that essay I wrote:

"The feature film “Singles”, produced by Cameron Crowe and Richard Hashimoto, follows the stories of five twenty-somethings living in Seattle at the the height of the grunge scene. The title reflects not only the fact four out of the five characters live in the same apartment building with single bedroom units, but the issue of dating and being single in America in the nineties.

Linda Powell, an environmentalist, has a problem with relationships in the sense that she trusts the people she becomes involved with too much and when they hurt her [so] she becomes cautious. Steve Dunn, who works for the Department of Transportation, also has a past of broken relationships, coupled with an uncertainty about dating and sex. While he wants to be cautious and focus on his work, he finds himself involved with Linda and the pair go through a rocky relationship involving pregnancy and the issue of marriage. Meanwhile, the young and somewhat naive Janet Livermore is grappling with the idea of “doing something bizarre” before she gets to twenty-five, since she believes that is when “bizarre becomes immature”. While she is confident and cheerful, she has a body-image problem and is willing to change herself for her boyfriend’s sake and not hers. Her boyfriend, Cliff Poncier, (the delusional musician who has a string of occupations including working at the coffee house Janet works at), has a more casual and somewhat sexist attitude to women, and does not appreciate Janet or respect her, while she is crazy about him and delusional to the fact he is tagging her along. Debbie Hunt also has a casual attitude about dating, and goes through men in her search for the perfect partner. While Steve and Linda seem to have a more mature idea on dating, Janet, Cliff and Debbie come across as being very immature and young in their attitudes*. Each character represents differing attitudes in the arena of dating and searching for the right person to be with, and their various stories make up the film’s content.

The film is structured to be a visual book, using elements of a documentary as well as chapter-type sections, each with a different title. The film begins with Linda’s monologue on how she ended up in her house in Seattle after leaving college. The viewer follows her story and sees how easily she places trust in Louis, a Spanish man from the university, and she is brokenhearted quicker than she falls in love with him. In the next chapter named “Have fun, stay single”, the viewer meets Steve Dunn, who also gives a monologue on his recent break up with his girlfriend and his father’s pessimistic attitude to commitment. Steve and Linda meet in a crowded club and their relationship begins from there. The viewer then meets Janet, and she tells the viewer about Cliff. These monologue explanations are used throughout the film, either with the characters regarding the viewer or through voice overs. While the stories are separate, they become intertwined as the characters learn about incidents outside their own story and they explain it to the viewer. For example, Cliff tells the viewer about Debbie meeting a man at an airport after he told her he liked her earrings. This shows Debbie’s character is still important, but she is not a major part of the film and gives a greater satirical edge to the film through her dating mishaps.

Flashbacks of Steve’s childhood and Linda’s bad dating experiences also add to the satirical nature of the film and give a visual interpretation to the viewer. Close ups are used in conversations involving two characters, to give the viewer a closer insight into how they relate to each other. This is seen when Steve and Linda are arguing over Steve’s decision not to call her for four days. Juxtaposition is also used in the chapter called “Blues for a T-shirt”, when Debbie says to Steve, “She doesn’t want you tugging at her bra strap. She wants mystery, she wants drama, she wants excitement. Believe me, I know women.” and in the next scene, Linda says to her friend Ruth,  “I don’t want drama, I don’t want excitement, I just want to trust him.” This use of dramatic irony** shows the viewer the characters are still really confused about relationships and are easily conflicted by other people’s attitudes. The viewer could then relate this to incidents in their own life when they were pressured or misguided by friends.

Close ups on certain objects symbolise the memories the characters have. Steve offers Linda his garage door opener and Linda becomes disturbed by this as she offered her door opener to her last lover who the viewer met at the beginning of the film. Later on, Linda drops a plate on her kitchen floor and as she stares at the pieces, she is reminded of the time she dropped a plate in Steve’s kitchen and sentimentality takes over, causing her to go back to him. These little symbols remind the viewer also of previous incidents(*), and they get a sense of what the character’s inner thoughts are, despite these objects being trivial and unimportant to others. The montage of shots used to show the weeks Steve and Linda are together is practically identical to the montage in the feature film, “Say Anything”, also by Cameron Crowe, in which two opposite characters fall in love and go through a serious relationship similar to Steve and Linda’s.

The final scenes of the film involve Cliff and Janet’s reunion and as the shot changes to a overview of Seattle, their voices overlay the shot. Cliff asks her, “Does everybody go through this?” and Janet replies “Nah, I think just us.” At that point, various disembodied voices can be heard talking and arguing about relationships and people and these voices become intermingled, proving other people do, and always will, go through the problems the characters in the film went through. The film is essentially a comedy, but the dramatic overtones in Linda and Steve’s relationship shows the viewer the serious side of dating and adulthood in the nineties.

The feature film “Singles” is actually too polished and well acted to even be considered a mocumentary (mock-documentary), but it does accurately represent young adults’ attitudes to relationships and growing. While the characters are all considered to be adults, they grow emotionally through the film. Janet has a list on how she wants her perfect man to be, and has to cut it down to be realistic, and even then Cliff does not fit into it. Janet learns, through the plastic surgeon she visits to get breast implants, that she has to realise that Cliff may not be for her if he can not accept her, and when she does, she becomes stronger, wiser and more independent. Cliff, meanwhile, sees the error of his ways and tries to win Janet back, but to no avail. Steve and Linda convince each other they can still be friends, but Steve realises they love each other and should be together, and the two characters learn to not be afraid when it comes to trust. All the characters come under the delusion they do not need to be with people, but in actuality, they really need to be with someone, and the film is constructed to prove to the viewer Steve and Linda belong together, as do Cliff and Janet. This theme is prevalent in the film and is what makes the film realistic and completely believable. The characters each have their own believable eccentricities so the viewer can relate to them and their problems. Overall, “Singles” is a fresh and real interpretation of adults and how they change through love,  friendships and life in contemporary America."






I wrote this when I was 17. I keep forgetting how much smarter I was in school. That aside, the statements above still fit, just my attitude to the movie changed seeing it through the eyes of someone now over ten years older than the characters in the film, and who has cultivated a committed and mature relationship that isn't co-dependent. Maybe the mood I was in the other day wasn't appropriate for romantic satire. It still seems that Say Anything has more relevance now than a film about Gen Xers in their 20s. You could remake both films within this current decade and the issues would still basically translate. Jim could still be embezzling money from old people or just committing fraud in general. Linda would still be an environmentalist and Steve could have a contrary job in transportation or urban renewal or whatever. Janet could still work in a coffee shop to payoff her student loans and Cliff could still be in a band, it just wouldn't be grunge, I guess.  You could substitute the members of Pearl Jam for the members of My Chemical Romance or some shit. The only major difference would be the inclusion of cell phones rather than digital watches that can store "twenty numbers" and garage door openers. And maybe Lloyd would still send that letter to placate his friend Corey's romantic obsession with big love and drama, rather than a generic text or email. I'll posit here the one major thing that bugs me about Say Anything is despite us still being heavily involved in Corey's epic break up with Joe, including her deluge of songs about him and her shrine of a bedroom dedicated to her and Joe, we don't get a scene of her and Lloyd saying goodbye. She coaches him on how to deal with Diane breaking up with him, but she essentially vanishes after that. We even get an expository scene of Lloyd's "girl" friends (all three of them) discussing the infamous "second date". Lloyd kind of has guy friends, but Crowe makes sure the girls in Lloyd's life are the ones he should be listening to, not the four guys at the Gas and Sip who sit around without women "by choice". And Lloyd makes out a tape to Corey to monologue his post breakup pain. She's too integral to just be forgotten. I feel like the film is lacking this goodbye, even while Lloyd and his onscreen off screen sister Constance probably have less depth and coverage than this friendship. We're introduced to the gang, Corey's voice is the first we hear, and yet, no goodbye scene. It would be a question I'd raise to Crowe if I ever met him.

I always feel like I'm younger though watching these movies. Diane and Lloyd seem older to me, maybe because I kind of go back to a teenage state of mind watching this. But with Singles, I couldn't get my brain in that gear, I couldn't relate even when I understood the movie rather explicitly as a teenage virgin in high school, as expressed above in my ridiculously analytical essay. (If  YouTube had existed back then, I probably could've started my own review channel). You get the sense Diane and Lloyd have both been through their own sexual experiences enough to know they love each other at eighteen and you believe they can make it despite the common acceptance high school romances don't always last. It's harder to picture Steve and Linda together, or even Cliff and Janet, making it to old age with the same level of love and commitment. But I think it's set up to make you wonder if they'll make it, when Diane and Lloyd are simply destined. The ding at the end of Say Anything signifies more than the disparate voiceovers leading into the credits of Singles.

So it's pretty obvious I love Say Anything more. I'm not a fan of Crowe's later films like Elizabethtown, which was an insufferable movie, and Jerry McGuire isn't that great. Vanilla Sky was too long, and I didn't see We Bought a Zoo. I had no idea about Aloha until Red Letter Media mentioned how badly it did. Almost Famous would have to be my only other favourite Crowe film, essentially being semi-autobiographical but still charming and lovable, and one I'd probably watch more often than Singles. Maybe one day I'll sit through Singles and won't cringe.

(*) I have no idea what I was planning to put against this.


*I started thinking about Singles again the other day and I just about started a whole new post saying what I said above. So I'm glad I didn't. I still can't bring myself to watch it. **Look at pretentious 17 year old me. My early university essays were about this level and did well, like I said, I feel like I was smarter and more analytical when I was in school.

But anyway, I put a headband in my hair and remembered Bridget Fonda wearing one and how I wanted her haircut and her general look, I think I even rocked a pork-pie hat at 12, I basically dressed like Blossom. Then I went to look at pictures from the film and remembered she'd been seen in public looking different. So different the Daily Mail had to write a nothing article about it and describe in detail how different she'd gotten without making disparaging remarks about her weight. And the photos they used of her from the 90s and early 2000s were all of her in a bikini or scantily clad enough to show off how thin she was, which was probably the result of the insane pressure Hollywood applied to actresses to get and stay thin. It's in such poor taste, especially when her character's body issues are played for a joke in Singles. I get why she feels inadequate, Cliff's holding her up against unrealistic body standards, which is the point, she shouldn't have to change (I love Bill Pullman's character in this, I love he's thirty... three - so OLD - and he doesn't know how to have fun. You can kind of believe he wouldn't do the surgery, which is like I think an injectable, she's not prepped she's in a fucking doctor's office in a dentist chair, but of course no real surgeon would hesitate giving her pointlessly larger tits. Them negotiating over her size is a funny scene, I like they play him as a potential love interest, but it's unrealistic). But yeah, Janet's entire character gets affected by probably one of the worst periods of unrealistic body and beauty standards we fucking suffered through. Gen Z kids are like, wait, y'all weren't fat back then. You looked normal, Britney looked normal at the VMAs, why y'all calling her fat? The "fat" girl basically looks healthy, everyone around her conventionally thin looks moderately starved. Yeah, we did that. The Kardashians were resurrecting and hyper-inflating the most disgusting body ideals, you want concrete in your ass, blame them for making it popular. Meanwhile, Bridget Fonda likely looks like this because it's worked as a reasonable disguise for the last twenty years and y'all being out there acting like she's brave for looking normal is super gross and nobody cared. I had to face my own internalised fatphobia reading this tripe, if you ever once in your life were conventionally beautiful and thin, you're not allowed to ever deviate from that. So I'm glad she did, and I think she just did it to disappear, so giving her unwanted attention is unfair. Had I seen her, I'd just let her live. (I also didn't know she married Danny Elfman. He's had some weird shit brought up about him recently).

When revealing the subtext becomes a spoiler

When Darren Aronofsky's Mother! came out, I was genuinely interested in seeing it based on the trailer, despite how intense it seemed to be, and how many horror themes it seemed to have. Then (I think) the female star* outed the premise of the film that should've been explored within the viewing, not granted to you prior to viewing, and I had far less interest in watching it. By exposing its allegorical nature and giving me too big a clue to the underlying theme, you're effectively robbing anyone the chance to consider your film clever or interesting, because they're going in with the twist or conceit already in their mind.

Long before "spoiler culture" became a huge issue, a little movie called the Sixth Sense was out, and it was revolutionary (it's not), word of mouth really catapulting it into the public consciousness. The compelling twist of the film became infamous. So most people were respectful and didn't spoil this for anyone who hadn't seen it, even though most people after bragged they saw the twist coming anyway. I was sort of interested but not desperate to see it. Then I walked into my friend's house while they were watching it, and it was in the last twenty minutes of the film. So I spoiled it for myself, and I didn't care, I kinda laughed it off like pfft whatever. And when I bothered to see it, I thought the acting was overbearing and not particularly good, and the amazing twist wasn't even really interesting. I didn't particularly care this poor child was suffering from his affliction of seeing dead people, and Toni Collette seemed to be hamming it up. Bruce Willis was okay, he proved he could do a dramatic role. Haley Joel Osment is a better actor as an adult than he was a child, when I found him really one note and a bit too cutesy to really appreciate his abilities, so of course he kind of vanished and has only recently reemerged. Overall, I don't like the Sixth Sense because I couldn't get past those flaws just to praise it for an interesting twist, and as we've seen from M Night's recent output, his gimmick couldn't support future films, and he was woefully average and overhyped from this one movie. But the movie came out before Twitter, and when the internet was still so young you couldn't run to a device and just blurt shit out to have it broadcast.

Conversely, I spend time listening to more reviews than I do watching films, and a discussion on the Piano Teacher, with Isabelle Huppert (who I fucking adore) major spoilers included, didn't deter me from still wanting to see the film and judge it from the descriptions offered. In some case, an in depth discussion of a film might be the reason you go and see it. I've also read Wikipedia articles, like I did for Call Me By Your Name, but wound up watching it anyway. I enjoyed the Piano Teacher a lot more, to be honest, even considering thematically, they're quite similar films. Red Letter Media talking about Neon Demon got me to watch that too, and it annoyed the shit out of me, so I've been super reluctant to watch any more of Jay's picks, especially when Turbo Kid wasn't as great as he'd made it out and the Manic Pixie Dream stand-in was obnoxious as fuck. DNF.

I would want to tell you Ex Machina is a particular type of film, and a very powerful one at that, but I feel like that would genuinely spoil the ending for you. It's an amazing film that took a weighty subject and presented it in relatively simplistic terms without sacrificing its cleverness or intelligence. Aesthetically, it's quite stunning for the budget it was granted, so it made good of this by confining the majority of the story within one location, which seamlessly blended its two contrasting settings of the sterile interior and the lushness of the woods and mountains outside. I love movies that can combine near-future elements with modern ones, so you're not subjected to cliched futuristic costumes, and the CG won't get too dated, I feel like this might be on T2 levels of reasonably ageless graphics and effects. I had meant to see this based on the trailer and just kept putting it off, but the trailer doesn't spoil anything in terms of themes or story. Me telling you it's a great "fill in the blank" movie would definitely spoil it. I don't even really want to say anything about the characters themselves, it's better you simply watch it and make your own conclusions as you go, as it carries itself in terms of tension very well. There was a false ending I thought would've been justified however it would cheat you out of the fate of each of the characters.

My point is, don't ever think that telling someone what a movie is "about" in terms of themes won't effectively spoil the movie. If the trailer and the interviews of the cast aren't raising it outright, or feel it's not necessary for you to know, it's for the best. No wonder everyone can't decide whether discussing certain aspects of movies constitute as genuine spoilers now. To me, this one definitely is.

*Jen Lawrence has fallen out of favour with me from this and her general arrogance. Sadly she got a biggish enough ego now she thinks she can call out journalists translating their questions from their phones as "not paying attention", or she can rub her ass on a rock at a sacred site and not apologise sincerely for it. Granted, I think her copping shit for that and other things really made her turn on the audience but it was more that she seemed to "suffer" through public appearances like this shit was beneath her. And wearing blue paint was unreasonable. Whatever. We have Emma Stone now. She's a perfect replacement anyway.

Wiener Dog, and other movies I managed to see

I knew about Wiener Dog, another inclusion in the Todd Solondz cinematic universe, if you want to call it that. I think I'd read somewhere Dawn Wiener returns but I'd forgotten this until her character, now played as a sheepish blonde, runs into Brandon, her crush, and he calls her Wiener Dog. I'm not sure if the movie itself is set directly after Dollhouse as she's dead by Palindromes and we open on her funeral, as it was filmed in 2016 but it doesn't mention the period in which it's set. Wiener Dog plays as a great little short movie anthology, the stories linked by the inclusion of an abandoned wiener dog, who's first left with a family with a son in remission from cancer, the father adopting the dog for the son against the approval of the mother. After the dog is too sick the father sends the dog to the vet to be put down, where we find Dawn, who rescues the dog. Since she reunites with Brandon, we also catch up with Brandon's Down syndrome brother. He's since married a girl with Downs and they live in a nice house but tend to function as children, so like the dog, they've been sterilised to prevent accidental pregnancies, a very dark commentary on how we treat pets and the intellectually disabled. Brandon has a bit more heart to tell his brother their drug addict father has died, they have a moment and he leaves with Dawn, giving us some hope for both of them considering how they parted in Dollhouse. We don't see how the dog leaves the couple but it winds up with Danny Devito, playing a failed screen writer who is mocked by a JJ Abramsesque ex-student for his "what if" story device, meanwhile left taunted by the possibility of his script getting off the ground. The dog becomes part of his bomb hoax plot as revenge on the college he's been teaching at, where he's also accused of being too negative. So we leave him and the dog is finally adopted by the mum from Requiem, her granddaughter showing up to take some more money for her artist boyfriend's new installation, that Wiener Dog eventually becomes a part of. This is a pretty typical Solondz movie, I didn't find much fault with it and only saw it from signing up for SBS on Demand, the same service with two other movies I haven't bothered finishing, Dogville or another indie film.

Under the Silver Lake was another film I wanted to see based on the trailer. I don't want to say you need to have a Lynchian sensibility to watch weird movies with bizarre plots, but you sort of have to love Lynch to appreciate them This is quite tame in terms of its subtext and narrative. I didn't get all the pop culture references but liked most of them. It did suffer from too much information and drawn out scenes that could have been shortened, and I wasn't that impressed with the song writer scene, that was cringey with its implication of who wrote modern music. It's an accessible film with its clues but you're not fond of Andrew Garfield's character at all points. The movie pits itself as a commentary on the inherent sexism in Hollywood and leaves a lot of clues just to this theme but you can't always cheer the main character on since he's pursuing the same ideal from the mystery woman he falls for within in the space of an evening after meeting her. He is invariably punished on his odyssey by a skunk, stray bullets, magic cookies and generally being rejected by women and the industry as a whole. We discover fairly quickly he's out of work but isn't making serious moves to land another job.  Silver Lake doesn't have a satisfying ending but you don't feel like there's any ambiguity that might plague you the way a Lynch movie may. It was okay.

I wasn't going to see Call Me By Your Name after reading the Wikipedia entry. And I couldn't do the peach scene but I also wasn't captivated by this overall. I know there's subtlety being used and you're to spend time basking in the beautiful cinematography depicting "Somewhere, Northern Italy". I could put up with the lack of subtitles as there was enough context in each scene. And I can see why this was problematic in its subject matter but it does present the relationship as "something that happens", which is condoned by the father of the younger protagonist. The boy's naive pursuit of a girl his own age is handled reasonably well, she forgives him once seeing his heart's been smashed by the older American man Oliver, even if you're lead to think Elio's using her to make Oliver jealous. And Elio doesn't claim to be outright gay, you accept his urges as being something more of a pansexual nature (peach not included in this) - he's attracted to Marzia and not opposed to having sex with her, but his heart belongs to Oliver. You don't warm to Armie Hammer's dorky Adonis Oliver until he sees what he's doing to Elio, when it's far too late and he has to return to America. I didn't really feel for Elio until the tragic end of the film, and I found Elio's character somewhat unsettling with his weird agitation, though he did play a surly, hypersexed teen convincingly. You don't know what to think of Oliver, whether he's genuinely using and toying with Elio, or if he's trying to relive his youth through Elio by the way they wrestle and romp through the fields like boys.

I'm surprised this movie has copped flack for its representation of an older gay man with an underage boy. Like Brian and Justin in Queer as Folk was never a thing, and the show also upheld as the relationship legit the very minute Justin is of age at 18. Plus in this case Brian is pushing 30, not 25, like Oliver. Being set in the 80s upholds the requirement for Oliver and Elio to leave this as a private matter anyway, but Elio's father doesn't shun Elio for the romance (due to implied personal experience) and I think that was the only heartfelt, genuine moment where I felt more for Elio. I wasn't taken in with this until a third of the way in but I didn't hate it overall. Setting it against Oliver's studies of Grecian sculptures being indicative of Plutonic romances, most would see that as a tool through which we're meant to condone Oliver and Elio's relationship, but that doesn't fly with everyone, and I get it. I don't harp on about these "Lolita" type representations to most people, considering I've seen Mysterious Skin and Leon more than once, and I've read End of Alice a few times as well. King Cobra also dealt with the same narrative but it was done poorly and no one bothered to see it so it wasn't an issue, either. And that was based on a true story. When you're going over the legalities of these relationships and considering the younger component the "instigator" or "seducer" of the relationship, you're immediately met with the "adults should know better" argument, which is true, but it glosses over that a) this shit does happen, sadly, and b) the child in the equation sometimes doesn't view themselves a victim. Legally, they are. Emotionally it might be a different story. I'm not advocating anything here or making excuses for MAPs or NAMBLA, they don't need propping up or sympathy. Ultimately if an underage kid is hitting on you as an adult and you act on that shit, you are and will be held accountable, not them. So if you're thinking you can Woody Allen your way out of that, get fucked. We're a bit too woke for that now. Europeans tend to also consider children to be small adults so there was a lot of the environment around which Call Me By Your Name is set.

Either way it's a sad as fuck love story which is represented as exactly that.

Eighth Grade. Wanted to relate but couldn't

I'd wanted to see Bo Burnham's directorial debut based on the trailer, but from the get-go I was pretty sure I wouldn't totally relate to the main character. Kayla Day isn't entirely cookie cutter, and she's played by the gorgeous Elsie Fisher, in a zits and all portrayal of a girl about to enter high school. There were darker turns in this I was moved by, but the dialogue overall wasn't incredibly convincing between the father character and Kayla. The film's representation of current teenage life couldn't be relatable to someone like me who was spared the disaster of social media in high school. Most people my age are grateful the advent of smartphones was well past our high school graduation. Owning a computer wasn't even a priority for most families and hardly anyone in my senior year was that computer literate compared to eighteen year olds now. The internet was still a novelty when I was leaving school, and I had my own struggles with it, but when Kayla was lost in her social media world, the haunting tones of Enya's Orinoco Flow playing over her screen time, I clicked with her. At twelve I genuinely wished I had an Enya song playing in my life all the time, and I lived in music and my own stories, ignoring other kids and failing to make connections, and wishing I was someone else. But then I left Kayla and it was harder to be engaged with her struggle. I did get panicky before going out to socialise, not that I suffered genuine panic attacks. I just wasn't desperate for friends. I was desperate to be left alone. I made no real effort to make connections I was either spoken to or ignored or ridiculed. I was pretty much branded a freak from my behaviour anyway. Kayla doesn't earn much ridicule for being super quiet, but some of her actions would've actually gotten her teased back in the day, like giving the snobby Kennedy a thank you letter after her party than deriding her at the end of the film for the inevitable snubbing. I would have longed to have the level of indifference Kayla received from her peers. People didn't like her but they left her alone. My weirdness didn't go unpunished by any means. And if I'd had a smartphone with Facebook, I'd have had the assholes in my face outside of school. I already had someone faceless making my life miserable by the end of school, so it was hard enough having so-called friends giving me as much shit in person.

Case in point, I found a lot of letters from school from people who were mad at me or desperate to be my friend again and I remembered how much of an asshole I was to others. Those letters ended up in the trash. I heard a recommendation that you go through those letters to explore who you are now, but I'm sure the people who wrote them to me don't think about me anymore. I honestly hope they don't. I have clearer memories now of my shitty behaviour than I do of the shitty reactions I received. But finding people I knew had it worse and seeing they had much better lives, and weren't destroyed by the treatment they received, made me happy for them. I would hate to be remembered for anything horrible I did, but I sure someone does. Consider this a formal apology to them.

Eighth Grade offers such a refreshing portrayal of teenage life with genuine teens in it, something everyone longs for but struggles to really accept when presented, because we're not ready for the realness we crave from our media. The casting is on point, but I wasn't engaged with this as I wished I could be. It's not something I want to go back to, and some of the soundtrack was loud and distracting, intended to evoke tension but going past the point of annoying. I wouldn't take this review as gospel. Please go and see it because it's genuinely very good. The only other thing I found less believable was the kid jerkin' it during sex ed. This could very well have happened, if you go to Harmontown you'll realise the lengths some boys went to just to get rid of some pent up urges, but kids at my school must've been markedly repressed by comparison, meaning we didn't do this in public. Again, this is me not finding much common ground with the film, not a slight on the film itself. I'm disappointed with myself for not loving it, not with the movie.

High Expectations: My Friend Dahmer and The Favourite

Both of these films have been on my list in the last year, The Favourite at the top. The trailer had tantalised me for so long and the idea of a strange examination of Queen Anne's sapphic's relations with two women from the director of the Lobster just appealed to me. The cinematography was probably more unusual than I'd assumed, the fish-eye lens only one main characteristic. Since I'm alright with Lynch's approach to filmmaking, I could tolerate it in the way others may have found annoying. Olivia Coleman earned her Oscar. Rachel Weiss was brilliant and Emma Stone is my fucking hero. Easily her best performance. It wasn't a perfect film, even if I'd tolerated the cinematic approach, I did find it probably too much by the end. Otherwise it's an enjoyable romp and there's so much to love that I can't wait to see it again. Bear in mind, I did have to go searching outside of paid services to watch this because Netflix takes too long to gain the rights to their films and I was sick of waiting, but I'd probably buy this on DVD. I've been increasingly infuriated with streaming services failing to really capitalise on the popularity of a movie and move to grab it before another service might, however they've been fixated on original content that not everyone will want to see, and it appears to be at the cost of acquiring these sorts of films. I thought since they'd gotten the Lobster, the Favourite would surely make it there. Unless it's only gone to the US, and since our cinema releases aren't always in time with the US, we have to wait longer for shit to drop on streaming services, too.

My Friend Dahmer has been out for a lot longer, and could've easily been bought by one streaming service but sadly I did have to go looking elsewhere. This is a slow burn of a film, and don't expect anything graphic. The examination of Dahmer's descent into madness was probably more interesting than what he went on to do, which becomes the epilogue of the film. There are teasing moments of tension but for the most part this didn't really have me as engaged as I'd hoped from the trailer. There were scenes that could've been shaved back without losing anything, but it illustrated that unlike some of his contemporaries, Dahmer was more someone starved of love and understanding in a time that frowned upon his certain desires, and his inability to form healthy bonds with people most likely drove him to murder. I've found him more fascinating as a murderer than most case studies, I did see one documentary some time ago. I believe the confessions came from a want to end his turmoil and he was prepared to be killed in prison. Ross Lynch delivers. If you're not feeling some degree of sympathy for Dahmer by the end of this, I'd be surprised. Alex Wolff, who've I've seen in other things and notably starred in the Hereditary (which I'm meaning to watch but waiting for an evening I can stomach the content - someone's review of the Suspiria remake put me off going down that road when I'd been keen to see it), gives a great, sympathetic portrayal of Jeffery's close friend. I didn't know anything about this friend of course, so I wasn't sure what his fate would be as others may have been. This was based on the graphic novel of the same name. Again, if you're waiting for something really grotesque from this, you're not going to see much. Still a pretty great film and one I'd probably watch again and enjoy.

NSP + TWRP = JOY

I'm kinda pissed there aren't any reviews for Sunday's Ninja Sex Party show at the Astor. So fuck you, here's mine.

I went into the Q&A after spending more for a ticket just to see Danny (if you're that big a fan of the band I'm sure you'd have gotten a ticket for this portion of the show - I know the money was steep but this was the first time I've paid more for a higher tier ticket and actually felt like I got my money's worth and then some). And I could've asked questions but I felt like the other fans should've had more of a chance. They had them prepared and I didn't and they were diehard fans so it's only fair. It's my policy at these things to let the bigger fans have their moments even if I think they're being jerks. I knew we weren't getting a full M&G since we received a signed poster (mine got a little trashed as I was using it as a rhythm stick/megaphone - and I almost left it behind where I got food sooo... ) But they were gracious and tried to pay the most attention to everyone, and gave us an hour so it was generous. Plus I was too choked up seeing Danny in person to speak anyway.

Side note, I am a Game Grumps fan first. But I was always a Last Unicorn fan, and them doing a cover of the theme made me love them more. Via the covers I finally got into their original albums, and I'm glad I gave myself a crash course in the last few months, and their songs are memorable so it's not like I was struggling to sing along. I felt bad I hadn't realised Tupperware Remix Party would be doing a set of their own (which makes total sense considering they've come 22 hours to perform) and my God did they kick a lot of ass for a Canadian comedy band in nutso disguises, nunchucks and scissor kicks included. I'd love to know if they've heard of TISM, since they were a joyous mashup of that band and Daft Punk. A lot of jokes and synth, and the songs were just so catchy I didn't care I didn't know them. They got a lot of love and I wasn't disappointed about the wait, I was more astonished they were going to be on stage over half an hour longer and still had enough energy to keep up until the encore where they closed with another of their collabs with NSP.

I got way more than I expected out of NSP once Danny and Brian were on stage. We were treated to a full animated intro with ongoing story including a dinosaur (the remainder of the suit was stopped by our shitty customs officials so I hope they released it before tonight since they're just done with their Sydney show) from outer space come to wreck the show, and we all got to yell hysterically at it to kill it, that was cool. Ninja Brian* stuck a guy's shoe down his pants, massaged it lovingly against his groin and threw it back after the crowd failed to get Danny to drink out of it. (did it again with the same guy's other shoe later on). TWRP's unique brand of humour slotted in perfectly with NSP's, you can see why they're happy to perform together live. It was a show about acceptance and love, and the crowd was surprisingly into it (for the most part - a couple of kids were complaining of headaches from all the shouting. I was doing a lot of shouting, I'd been on my feet most of the afternoon and I was sweating bullets and loved every fucking minute of it.) The braver comrades danced it out to Cool Patrol even with the people behind them unwilling to humiliate themselves. (sidebar here, I was surrounded by young guys, two either side of me who were so fucking into it I could happily have my own dance party and a:  not feel ashamed and b: not't have to worry about being felt up. I'm a girl who goes to shows alone and even when I was hit on it was still very tame). Everyone was respectful and cool, but we were all too cool to talk to one another later I guess. The energy was kinda sucked out of the place once the band were offstage). Someone had mentioned they might do a cover of "Land Down Under" by Men at Work (who were subsequently sued for ripping off "Kookaburra sits in the old Gum Tree" so I was wondering if they could get away with it) and I shuddered to think it, but their rendition, like so many of their covers, was actually good and they killed it. Danny knew it well so it wasn't like he was struggling with it either. So I was cool with it in the end. Yes, a band with a Jewish superhero, an American Ninja and four Canadians in full spandex costumes made me patriotic for five minutes that night - a grand fucking achievement I might say.

But the mix was tight as fuck, they sounded just as good live. Danny can sing like a motherfuckin' angel and he even got us to do the harmonies for Heart Boner, which was glorious. TWRPs guitar solos were phenomenal and Brian's an excellent, professional keyboardist. Even with the mask you could tell he was having a fuckin' ball. They even busted out Release the Kraken, complete with animated video and Brian with a dumb squid on his head, playing the titular Kraken. 

I had a horrible suspicion we'd get a small, lukewarm crowd with pockets of fans having their own little dance parties while the majority of the crowd just stood there, which is how most They Might Be Giants shows begin, however they pick up steam by the end. The steam was there the whole time for NSP and TWRP, I had too much fun to be shitty about being on my feet, I just wish I'd tried to get closer than I did. Honestly, if I'd paid 200 bucks for this I still wouldn't have felt ripped off. I do know it's so hard for people to get to shows but the general admit tickets were still sadly less than other bands and festivals on right now. Now I'm just waiting for Danny to get back and tell everyone how well it went. There was a promise they'd come back.

I don't think you can say this very often that you went to a show hoping the band had a better time than you and got everything they wanted out of the night, and that your enjoyment was just a bonus. YouTube celebs are in a different category, they don't have publicists and agents keeping you from having a relationship with them, they're aware of how important the fans are since they genuinely got them there, it wasn't just the money it was the undying support, and we had an NSP army over here, as it turns out. So fucking kudos to you, Perth. For once you did not disappoint. I only felt sorry for anyone who lived near the Astor - we were loud as fuck. There were rowdy pockets that probably got overexcited but honestly, I get it. You're wigging out and you paid to have fun, and freak flags could fly millennial-style. It was rad. I wish some jaded rock reviewer had been there now and had been blown away after going in with no understanding or limited expectations of TWRP and NSP and gone, holy shit, that's how you do a rock concert. And if anyone thought Danny's smiling hadn't been genuine, then you don't know him, and you don't know NSP.

A+++ show and will definitely go next time.

*I got off the bus right when Brian was heading in the opposite direction. He saw my Last Unicorn shirt and had a slight smile on his face, I gave him a glance as I passed and let him go on, not entirely sure it was him until the Q&A since I recognised his shirt. Let a ninja have his day out, kids. I know they like to go out and not be noticed. It's all good.

Nostalgia hurts

I stopped listening to the radio once the internet came along. I think once I wasn't living on my own and had other stuff to entertain me, I didn't see the point. It's not like you need an actual radio anymore, but it's the music and the presenters these days who've put me right off.

I loved the old presenters on the one station I bothered listening to. Before it was broadcast in our country town, we had to live with commercial radio, and I'd be up late with my radio playing quietly, stupidly hearing the Pina Colada song so often I know it pretty well. It was just noise. But by 1997 we were able to pick up the only rock station with any remote credibility. It was the same station that told me Phil Hartman had died in May of '98, the same station that let one third of the Doug Anthony All Stars and a weird comedy performer present their breakfast show. We liked the music they played, it wasn't a commercial station and we had it on most of the time we weren't listening to our own albums. But the best thing was this was all pre-social media, so we didn't have the unwashed masses tweeting or hashtagging direct to the presenters. You had to hang on the line to make a request or answer questions. You had to fax and mail entries for competitions. There was some control and no instant gratification. Now if I choose to listen to this station I have to be prepared to put up with over-excited presenters who sound really insincere. I have to listen to the unwashed masses if they have an opinion. And I'm only here for the music. They're replaying 1998's Hottest 100. So I'll have to tune out the speaking interludes of them discussing the compilation album cover art or to other's nostalgia over certain songs.

I just showed up for the playlist.

Breaking Bad and Moving On. (With Addition after El Camino)

I enjoyed Breaking Bad. It's not a show I would watch regularly, since it's such an emotional slog. And I don't know if the writers had the ending we got in mind from the beginning. Jessie was supposed to die at the end of season one, but wound up being such a compelling character he was basically the other star of the show and worth continuing his story. I wasn't a Skyler hater but I got why people hated her. I think I hated Marie more, and Hank becoming the ultimate bad guy for Walt and dying in the end made for really amazing tension in the final season. Even with its below average episodes and weaker story lines, it was still a solid show.

But is it a solid show that needs a movie? I don't think so.

Jessie riding off into the sunset as Walt lays dying was a perfect ending. Do we need to see Jessie's life now? Maybe he's gone nuts. He's been tortured and he's lost everything but the freedom he has at the end is exhilarating. Walt kind of smiling up at us from the floor of the lab with the house full of bullet riddled bodies close by, perfect. He's free in his own way. He's going to die from cancer anyway. Do we need to see him in jail? Maybe you do. Maybe some people needed him to face the consequences beyond losing his family. And do we need to see his family now living in witness protection? I think that'd be boring. I'd make a show about the daughter Holly growing up to find out about her dad and going off the rails, and maybe she tracks Jessie down to learn the truth and he goes mental.

I love seeing Mike in Better Call Saul, and I thought I'd hate the show. The pilot felt fan servicey AF, but the development of Jimmy and Kim, and watching Kim persistently surprising you with how she reacts to Jimmy's schemes, how she's so strong and compelling but so human in her love for Jimmy which we often don't believe due to her moments of coldness - it's a fucking joy to see. Throw all the awards at this woman, honestly she's become one of my favourite actresses. She's perfectly nuanced, wanting to do shit by the book but getting a rush from breaking the rules for the greater good, hoping it's what she and Jimmy will do in the long run. Her inner conflict over how they take down Howard is conveyed so perfectly in her subtle mannerisms whenever she watches Howard spiraling. She never gives herself away to anyone. And you know she disappears, but she's not like Skyler, which I imagine people were expecting. You see Jimmy's lack of personal confidence making him paranoid about her never believing in him and surpassing him professionally until she walks out on him. He's trashing the best thing in his life and now we can see it truly coming undone. Playing this out over a series is perfect. I wouldn't want to see a movie of this.

And I don't think a Breaking Bad movie is totally necessary. I love how it ended. There was a conclusion, it wasn't a cliffhanger and it wasn't all that ambiguous. I was satisfied. Apparently, not everyone was.

Cut to October 2019

I'm going to add my massive addendum here and say I take just about all of this back after having seen El Camino, that just dropped on Netflix without a lot of fanfare which is great. I saw an Instagram post thinking this was coming out in a month. Nope. It's here. And it's pretty great. Jesse was deserving of a proper ending and I think taking a strange kind of haphazard Kill Bill narrative with Jesse inadvertently getting revenge on the other men involved directly or indirectly in his captivity was a great move. We get to hang with Badger and Skinny Pete but we're not overloaded with their contribution, they kind of get their own redemption of sorts. And the "flashbacks" of scenes we weren't privy to but that shaped Jesse's character and motivations were handled so well, I didn't feel like Walt or Jane or Mike were forced into the script in any way. It felt very natural to have a kind of flashback/forward narrative. Aaron Paul really is masterful here showing Jesse's transformation as reformed criminal while still effortlessly giving us the Jesse we all came to love. The major problem I noticed was his teeth were way too white for someone who'd been in a cage in the ground for months but that's literally the biggest and most pointless gripe I had. And I wasn't even really watching it attentively I was slipping in and out but still captivated enough, however I will watch it again, perhaps after giving the series another run through. In fact, it might be more fun to watch now. I think I've forgotten a lot more than I thought since I had to be jogged about certain characters. Otherwise it was a good way to give justice to a character that did really need a better ending. Admittedly I spoiled a  moment for myself seeing someone in the cast list. And the instagram post also spoiled the ending for me but fuck it, I didn't really mind. I want to think between this and Better Call Saul we'll see a fitting send off for the three unlikely amigos, I think Jimmy really deserves to have his own moment of glory after hitting rock bottom but I feel like it'll end with Jimmy just accepting his new life in some capacity. Or falling on his sword. It'd be really beautiful if we cut ahead and find Kim stumbling across him but I think the implication is she's well and truly gone and he doesn't deserve to have her back. Even if it ended with bygones that'd be nice.

But the Breaking Bad saga is over for me and I think trying to do any kind of other spin off or rehash would actually be a mistake. It's just nice to know this movie wasn't. It's more like a cinematic extended episode you're not following any other characters and you hear the fate of people like Lydia through radio and television news. Bringing Jesse's parents back in was also a nice touch. I think it's sweeter to imagine Jesse at forty in the same white knit sweater, on a fishing boat off the coast of Alaska, smiling off into the distance, than it is to see him stark raving mad on the run. I like they didn't bring Skyler and the kids back into it. A street sign ends up being the only real nod I saw to them. (I just finished reading a very stupid ABC article on it that had to remind people of shit they should already know and didn't feature many  "easter eggs" and I think that street sign was one of them and they missed it so.... There's another article making really tenuous links as well in that classic "this coulda been a reference to X episode in Y season but we're fuckin' reaching and need to fill our clickbait quota for the day- though they picked up the street sign reference too.) Whatever. It worked. Vince is a champ, it was cute he got to have a little standoff put in as well. I enjoyed it. Nothing I said above back in January turned out right and I'm glad.

Twin Peaks, The Missing Pieces and Bobby and Shelly: Doomed to Fail.

I've barely explained how I came to be so in love with Twin Peaks, other than it was a show I saw when I was fifteen and wildly into abstract film, books and music. I watched the series, disappointed by the tragic ending for Cooper and the lack of a firm resolution. I knew of the prequel, Fire Walk With Me. I'd seen trailers in the video store. It was probably the first R rated movie I saw, and I wasn't quite 18 but I was allowed to watch it.

Laura Palmer is the type of character people resonated with so much they basically fell in love with her, much like Lynch did. Her dichotomy was so complex and not a total cliche, she was unique but still the embodiment of the All American Girl. She had a reason for exploring her darker nature: the darkness was out to devour her and by harnessing it she could possibly survive it. Until, in a sense, she didn't. Fire Walk With Me eventually ends with Cooper comforting her while her angel arrives, but in essence, they're both still confined. So Coop being trapped in the Lodge forever was something as a fan you never truly got over.

The rest of the town comes out of the original series to varying degrees of misery, bar one couple - Shelly and Bobby. You really had the sense they were going to survive despite her being a waitress and him being the high school football captain. You don't really know how they even got together, other than Bobby's "professional" relationship with Leo, you assume he got closer to Shelly through this but it's never explored. According to the wiki, she and Bobby dated in high school and after Bobby cheated with Laura, she took off and met Leo and married him. This is in the Final Dossier by the by, I suppose as a response to no one getting their backstory. Laura's diary states she and Bobby were together at 14 and he drifted towards Shelley but I won't split hairs. You just accept they're having an affair, they're hot as fuck, their chemistry is off the charts and you're rooting for them to make it. You know Bobby and Laura were never going to make it. And once she's gone, Bobby still goes through a process of mourning and surfacing trauma from all she made him do. Laura's diary hints she's aware of Bobby and Shelly, and she doesn't care as she's sleeping with Leo anyway and filling in for Shelly so there's no love lost. But I wanted them to make it. They survive Leo and Bobby's basic immaturity, you're happy for them.

But they don't make it.

Cut to 25 years later and much to everyone's astonishment, we're getting a new Twin Peaks. I should mention here receiving the Missing Pieces was such a gift after having read the original screenplay, as we'd been left to believe this footage would never be seen. Most of it was as close to how I imagined it, but we don't get much more of Cooper's fate beyond another minute from the script. So I should've known. We do see Annie's fate and the fate of the ring. But with the new series, no one knew what to expect and it was brilliant as it was frustrating.

We only discover the result of Audrey's accident in the bank through dialogue; that she's been in a coma and allegedly raped by Coop/Bob to produce a son who plays somewhat of an integral role. (It seems to be a fan theory). What drove me nuts was Ben Horne's involvement with Donna Hayward's mother and him being Donna's real father, not to mention him being possibly dead by the end of the second season, was all glossed over. Maybe I missed some dialogue but nothing comes of Doc Hayward's assault, he ends up Skyping Truman's replacement, (his brother - Side note, yup all this shit's in the Final Dossier.)  Richard has decided to carry on the drug trafficking legacy of the town, associating with some shady guy that ironically Shelly is dating now she's left Bobby offscreen even though they've since had a daughter Becky, who's also been sucked into the cocaine crowd in town and is in her own abusive relationship, Shelly playing a bleeding heart and letting her get away with shit. I was genuinely disappointed they failed to survive, even with Bobby becoming so law-abiding he ends up working for the Twin Peaks Sheriff's Department. Mark Frost stated they divorced amicably after drifting apart, thus proving young love is doomed to end in tragedy.

And while you thought Hank would be stuck with Nadine forever, she has an about-face, shovels her way out of the shit thanks to Jacoby, who's gone bonkers, and lets Hank go. He immediately proposes to Norma and they live happily ever after. That was a nice moment, and you see Jacoby and Nadine have a moment that suggests they'll both end up alright in the long run. I like to think they both take off in his Winnebago and have some weird nonsexual, platonic companionship in their golden years. Nadine was a complicated character, you felt for Hank when she snapped out of her dumb delusional state she was a teenager and in love with Mike. Oh, and Mike ends up working in an employment office. That's about it for him. I think Lynch had enough sympathy for Nadine to not hang her out to dry. You think her watching Jacoby's rants is going to end in disaster and not an epiphany, and he had a certain affection for Norma and Hank not to leave them apart any longer.

The Return was a roller-coaster as we followed Coop's odyssey from the Lodge. We all kinda fell for Dougie Jones so it was nice he was kind of left behind to live with Diane's half sister. (I didn't even really pick up that was who she was in relation to the show. I didn't think she necessarily needed that obvious a link to anything. She was just some beleaguered wife living in Las Vegas who knows her husband is a gambler and a liar. I liked she just accepted the new Dougie and that Cooper did genuinely come to love her in his own weird way but obviously couldn't stay with her.)

I don't think we were meant to get a conclusive ending for Cooper. Just seeing him wake from his coma and that he's left the Lodge was a beautiful moment, even if he basically goes back in looking for Laura. Him trying to "save" her from that moment was eerily romantic and heartbreaking too. But we're left with more questions. So if you're surprised by that, you're not Lynch fan.

I do try to respect his direction with this story. I've just glanced through the Mark Frost novel which is way more involved than I realised, it's extensive and comprehensive but not something you could read from cover to cover without skipping over shit. It's amazingly presented as well I haven't spent any time with it I just jumped into the Return after doing a basic original/FWWM rewatch.

Lucy eventually has her baby who turns out to be Michael Cera, which is fucking perfect and hilarious considering he wasn't even born when the series was on, neither was Amanda Seyfried, which of course makes sense in the context of the show. Lucy and Andy have a few tedious moments but Andy proves useful when he's transported to the Lodge to speak with the Giant. He's braver now and sort of stalwart. I'm not sure I was all that thrilled with Bob and Coop's final confrontation, with the kid from England with the green glove. That was pure Lynch I guess. James's insufferable song isn't so insufferable this time around, but the Maddy/Donna clones on backup are kind of creepy. Donna's little sister Gersten isn't really recognisable, apparently Alicia Witt reprised the role and was barely identifiable. The books seem to hold way too much pertinent info to explain who we're looking at in the new series, I didn't feel like I was tuning out so much to miss who was whom or what was happening. The first episodes were triumphant so it was sad to have dips in the story where certain aspects or characters become too tedious or pointless. The randoms in the Road House every episode were like tapestry to add some vague backstory at times, i.e. that Billy guy who was too disgusting to look at. I suppose this was all part of the melodrama and the soapy nature of the original. I don't know. I guess I'll peruse the books once I have both. There's a thousand more levels now with these texts.

Twin Peaks is a labour of love for the fans. You either get it, or ya don't. I don't think there's any such thing as a "casual" Peaks fan.


Addendum. Reading the diary implies now, by the logic above, Shelly married Leo at 15, if she was Bobby's age, as Laura mentions Shelley as Leo's wife well before Laura's sixteenth. Unless Bobby dating her happened when Shelley was roughly 17. So splitting hairs might be appropriate. I don't know why it bothers me because it was so much easier to assume Bobby was banging an older woman.