He's the Devil. But I can change him - Lucifer

From ploughing through just over five seasons of Lucifer, the series inspired by Gaiman's Lucifer series, that seems to have more Easter eggs than actual relations to the original comic series, (Lucifer being adjacent to the Endless of the Sandman series), it's only now occurred to me which particular romance novel bullshit cliche this show's managed to turn on its head: He's a monster, but if I love him enough, he will change. I can change him.

This show sadly suffered from a string of other cliches: the classic Unresolved Sexual Tension that becomes irritatingly drawn out with Chloe and Lucifer, the "We can't reveal we're dating without pissing off the ex who's also a friend" cliche with Mazikeen, Amenadiel and Linda. Fake Lucifer shows up after thousands of years in Hell and tries to trick everyone he's legit. Thankfully that one was resolved in an episode because I cannot abide those storylines, especially if they take an entire season to resolve and you're infuriated with all those characters who keep missing all the giveaways, sometimes by a gnat's wing. Soap operas lean on this way too much.

I won't go into this much. Gaiman's interpretation of  biblical stories did inspire something I wrote, to the point I thought maybe I borrowed a touch to much from his retelling thinking it was in line with the original texts. But Lucifer himself is, for all his irritating moments, more lovable than certain other bad boy personas in other stories that women seem to find attractive, the way someone who buys "fixer-uppers" to resell on refurbish, only she won't let another woman buy him even if he wants to leave. For all the tropes the show suffers from it's certainly addictive. A bunch of celestials and demons navigating the rigors of being human while trying to reconcile their own flaws makes for more interesting watching. You get a lot of Buffy/Angel vibes from the storylines and characters, however I've not fostered as much resentment for their actions than I did with those in Buffy. The writing and comic timing's slightly sharper than your average Buffy episode too. You could see a show like this really falling on its ass from poor execution and casting, if they've done anything right it's choosing their leads, especially in terms of chemistry.

Where it falls down the most is the crime drama aspects, then again, you can see a lot of stretching and poetic license in those shows as well, the Jerry Bruckheimer aspect really obvious. I don't know whether it's the every crime is a murder aspect that gets so dry you have to keep coming up with convincing plots and who-dun-its every episode and have every crime tie into something to do with Lucifer's motivations or character development. There's still a healthy amount of self-awareness and sass, and the drama doesn't feel too forced. I'm considering reading the comic series but my fascination with comics tends to wane after my initial interest, I have other books I've not even touched after wanting them for their art styles and possibly interesting premises. I don't remotely consider myself a Gaiman fan. I don't think he's a total rockstar but he has had his moments of arrogance. I get the question "where do your ideas come from?" gets tiring or irritating to a creator you feel the need to be passive aggressive and glib in your responses, but from the perspective of the not-so creative, you're better off indulging their question since they're dying to know how to be as imaginative as you.

Don't envy creatives, by the way. They're constantly comparing their ideas to others, which is what I'm also doing watching Lucifer. Just appreciate what they do because you're the lucky party in this. You get to enjoy the fruits of their agonising labour.

Portrait of a Minimalist Love Story

If you've ever found the score of a movie intrusive or overwrought, or even overused in its means of conveying tension or romance, sit a moment with a movie like Portrait of a Lady on Fire and appreciate the silence, the absolute lack of a score. While you're there, you might want to consider its elegance, how a single frame might very well indeed be that painting. Pause the movie and notice the composition of light and shadow, how a character's skin appears as soft as a carefully made oil painting. Marvel in the simple tableau of three women preparing food, how you could frame this and hang it on a wall to study and admire. How it would've captured another painter and compelled them recreate it. Then listen to the voices, (read the fucking subtitles you philistine, fucking suffer through it if you must), appreciate the simplicity of this story, the depth of these impressively drawn characters, the tension of their longing stares, the electricity between them, of what is wanted but cannot be touched, just as you shouldn't lay a finger on a canvas in a museum. Wait for the fumbled strains from a harpsichord, the dulcet but powerful mingling of choir voices, paced by rhythmic clapping, that gives the exact emotions one should feel from a well-placed score. Let the other sounds take precedence and add richness to your viewing. While you're at it, throw all your tawdry notions of sapphic love in the fucking bin and take a moment to see this as a perfectly written, gorgeously presented love story. Disregard the genders, don't belittle it. It's a love story, don't make it stand apart from other love stories. Don't you dare call it shocking, or liberal propaganda. You cannot politicize love.

It's a beautiful movie. Accept it for what it is.

The Crown is Fiction, people.

I've come to realise that movie adaptations and depictions of actual events that include blatant fabrications annoy the shit out of me. I recently watched the Dennis Nilson biopic with David Tennant, which was performed really well and interesting to watch, but when I looked into the particulars I didn't really appreciate it wasn't entirely committed to reality.

Then I watched the Crown. Two episodes in I gave up. Olivia Coleman is wonderful but I don't really want to sit through the seasons she's not in. And I don't like it when they insert fake characters. I do understand these are dramatisations, which take certain liberties with the story, which may involve swapping out certain historical persons to play the same role, or changing the chronology to suit the story. But when you're inserting entirely made up people to dramatise an aspect or work to the new narrative, at what point do you trust your audience to find out that person never existed? Because you're marketing the Crown to ignorant Americans. So what makes you think they're not going to spout this as factual. When we're living in an environment of "alternative facts" the people who think that's okay are going to believe this as fact. They're already doing it. And now the Brits have to clear their throats and ask you all very politely to take The Crown as fictional. Not historically accurate. This is while the fucking Gutter Press likes to sell magazines and papers based on fake royal arguments and conspiracies about Diana's death and Harry's real lineage.

Des, the show about Nilson, changed some names and took liberties with character development and I understand the point of it, that certain people don't want to be named in these stories and if they have that right they should be granted it. And yes, the royals have some right to their narratives as well. But they've created this bubble in which people can imagine certain things, mixed with the personal accounts the palace prefers you not to know. History isn't perfectly retold. Historians play more than one role depending on who's in charge. I don't believe now they make people up, not if they want to keep their jobs. Writers for TV shows have to make you pay attention. Making up shit in the Crown doesn't make it that entertaining. Interesting factoids about Elizabeth become dot points. As a character in this show, she's not particularly interesting, she's torn between her man and her country and her duty and blah blah boring. Philip and Edward are whiny prats, the latter burdening poor John "Churchill" Lithgow with demands get his bird a proper title. Meanwhile this poor woman is claimed to have three ex husbands in the show and only two on Wikipedia. Why add another? But Edward pines for her and claims it's all in the name of Love. (Cue Beatles classic). The other problem with the show is the writing isn't good. It doesn't have the same brilliance you expect from these shows. Again, it's not for the Brits. But looking at requests to have more disclaimers and clarity on the show, I have to agree now, it's not a docudrama, it should much clearer in its intent. I don't remember seeing any disclaimers which is standard for this kind of thing. Even if it's making Charles look bad, when he did a lot of that on his own, if it's not true to history it shouldn't make claims to be. They managed to soil their own reputations to an extent. It's bizarre they should be looking to their own children, who've become pillars of decency by comparison now the princes have settled with families. I've always felt bad for them, William's my age, weirdly I've pitied him for his position and what the tabloids do to someone as upstanding as him. It's almost the perfect situation you have one son willing to carry on regardless as it were, while the other departs and does his own thing. I don't think it has to have as damaging an effect as it's claimed.

But this is coming from someone who likes Sophia Coppola's Marie Antoinette despite it being incredibly liberal and modern in its execution. I'll watch the Other Boleyn Girl as mindless period pap despite it having two Americans with bad British accents and one Australian in the three leads. Whatever version of Robin Hood you watch is wrong. You can get a lot of fictional stories from periods in history. If it's recent history, where you have a better chance for evidence, where it's not founded in folk law, maybe take a few pains to be clear before you present something purporting to be based on "historical" events.

The X-Files - I thought I loved it more than this...

I remember being all about this show as a kid. It was pretty cool and different. And it was approved by the household parental advisory committee: My mother. She loved it way more than me, to be honest. And I guess I had thing for Mulder that my pre-adolecent brain kinda dug, so something about his voice (I think) made me record an episode of this to a cassette tape. Reason being, while we had the means to record these episodes to VCR, sometimes I'd commit them to cassette tape too, so I could at least listen to the episode later. I also did it for movies I couldn't get copies of at the time. So I have a lot of this shit in my brain by sound alone. It's stupid, but a lot of people will tell you they can recite movies purely by the script alone. I'm one of those people.

The episode I happened to record was Eve. I did start to watch the show on SBS for free a while back. Until I saw an ad. And not just any old ad but an ad for my fucking job. And that was all it took. I cancelled my account, which actually involved sending a stroppy email to SBS to get it cancelled since there was no manual cancellation option.

Then I got Amazon Prime for reasons, and I might cancel later I don't know. But they happen to have it, and I only suffer through a preliminary ad for another Amazon show I can at least skip. I got a bit impatient trying to do a proper binge to get to this particular episode, I did record it off TV about ten or more years ago. But I haven't forgotten anything of the dialogue at all. Fun fact: I made myself look like the most obnoxious smart ass during a science lesson, where I paid no attention to the hot teacher asking the class how many chromosomes we have. So, people were guessing random numbers, and a not so particularly bright friend of mine said when asked, "I dunno, 1000?" I was reading a book or some shit so I didn't hear the question, but that was when I confirmed what we were guessing and said "46". Not only did the teacher look bummed out I had guessed her supposedly unguessable question, I actually went back to reading a book and not paying attention. One of the thousands of reasons I was hated at school, for just knowing random ass trivia that got me by as an average student. It probably pissed my teachers way more, especially considering I wasn't a top science student despite my dad being an actual science teacher, and I sucked at maths despite mother being a maths teacher.

Anyway, I thought X-Files was better than what I remembered, so watching the first eps I was like, wait wasn't this show far more brilliant? But watching this episode, I think this was when show found its stride. I'll go back and watch the other two I didn't finish after this, and I think I could keep going for a while. I really lost the thread by the end of high school, I can't remember specifically what happened other than I just wasn't into it. This episode is particularly good. The twin child actresses managed to pull off the diabolical looks and ingenue tricks without being to irritating. I have a lot of nostalgia for the music too, I would listen to this a lot on trips to Perth or driving around the city since I knew it'd kill time. But I see a nitpick of sorts. The agents agree to getting soda after Scully mentions the sweet flavor of the poison the girls use. Minor gripe. Plus Mulder could've shot the tires out when Cindy's kidnapped but whatever. The leads had that chemistry that really made the show popular and made them an iconic onscreen couple. I never fully agreed with them being romantically involved, even when the show creator was saying they loved one another I just wasn't buying it. And while I may have bought the movie soundtrack for that one Foo Fighters song (again, CDs were my only option if I wanted a song at the time), I didn't love the movie at all. I did later watch the episode where Mulder technically finds his sister, and another episode way after Robert Patrick was on and nobody (I can't verify that) was watching. The show did a good blend scientifically believable outcomes and "what if" open-ended plots. Since it all pivots around government conspiracies that turn out to be true it wouldn't gel for it not to have that element.

This show's definitely another victim of fan adoration overkill. The movies and subsequent six episode "return" weren't worth it, to me anyway. At least Kumail Nanjiani got a chance to be in an episode, which was fun but stuck out more in the new episodes since the previous two were heavy in the content around Mulder and Scully reuniting. We got shorter seasons out of it but I don't think they rated well enough. I think I had a copy of the comic first edition around somewhere, it was okay. I think being a hardcore fan would've sucked but any time there was a mention of a reboot I had to roll my eyes like I do with most shows, even the ones I either never liked or loved too much. (I'll save my Red Dwarf rant for another post).

I want to keep going with the thought it'll shake off its early 90s hokey feel. I got some momentary Goosebumps vibes. The tension's there but the special effects and some goofball acting. I do not remember any of these episodes, so now I'm thinking I wasn't that into it or I genuinely only saw them once. I'm sure this was scary in the way Twilight Zone was super scary back in the day, as that element isn't holding up. I think once the production improves and the scripts get more interesting it'll get better. I don't know if the first season didn't maintain a deliberate serial format until there was a clear run for the show. I'll stick it out since I wasn't committed to anything.

I forgot I never posted this. I couldn't make it past the gender bending episode. I haven't been back since, even when I considered skipping to later seasons. Nope. Done with this nonsense.

Tarantino.

My brother kinda sorta went to film school, basically he did a BA in Media Studies from memory. But before that, he got popular for a while performing a scene from Reservoir Dogs as part of his Country Week Speech team performance. I sat with him as he wrote out the lines and paused the VCR to scratch down Tim Roth's spiel which he uses to convince everyone he's not a cop. He got by minus the swearing. I wasn't there but he pulled it off. He was the only one to win a trophy for our school, all the sports teams and the debate team didn't qualify. So he kinda built a legacy from it. (In truth it was his actual speech but this performance part helped).

After I finished high school he came home from uni and showed me Pulp Fiction. It really wasn't like anything else around, despite it being so heavily influenced by many genres. It's a great movie. It deserves its icon status. We all spouted that Ezekiel passage (which is heavily modified from the Bible). Royale with Cheese was a meme before memes. John Travolta was suddenly relevant again. Samuel L Jackson proved he's a motherfucker of an actor.

I've seen most of Tarantino's films, but not Django and Death Proof. I didn't think I'd enjoy Hateful Eight as much as I did, it was great. I've probably watched Kill Bill more than the others, I'd love to see the Whole Bloody Affair, which amounts to the vision he had for both volumes to be one original cut. If I have to complain about any of them I'd say I can't deal with Inglourious Basterds, not that it isn't well made or terrible, I just couldn't handled the protracted tension of most of the scenes and the final moments leading up to the end are fucking unbearable. I probably wouldn't watch Jackie Brown again.

Once Upon a Time was one I did look forward to seeing despite spoiling it for myself in general. I feel like I should read more about the Tate murder from what little I know, I know bits about Polanski, whose name I forgot, so I resorted to googling "rape rape" in reference Whoopie Goldberg's defense of his actions, since their was a lot of contention over Polanski's stat rape charge regarding a 13 year old girl. I won't digress suffice to say we probably need a better definition of rape by now.

But I'm kinda not digging Once Upon a Time. I think it's taking far too long to tell a really short story. It looks fantastic, it deserves the accolades for production design. There's cool stuff going on with it. I don't think Margot Robbie's being objectified, I don't see why having less lines in her case diminishes what she does on screen. She's telegraphing a lot with her performance, we're spending time with her as an audience and getting to know her. There's nothing really narcissistic about her watching herself on screen. DiCaprio's pretty great I thought some of his scenes so far were a little forced he's fun to watch. Planting him in the Great Escape almost worked. I preferred Pitt's character overall. But I haven't been as captivated, the build up to the real story's taken quite a while, when you'd really have a sense of what was going on way before with Tarantino, even if he had spent more time building mood and scene. It's less dialogue heavy, which is pretty good considering it suits the mood. I'm fine with him doing fantasy versions of recent history, I don't think people were half as dumb believing his version to be the truth, not like those idiots who thought Titanic was "just a movie". But I paused Once Upon a Time to do stuff, then forgot I'd been watching it and almost started watching 4 year old Batman Vs Superman script doctor videos. So, clearly my investment was low.

Based on the ratings via Rotten Tomatoes, Tarantino's movies seem to be in a fall of diminishing returns, this last feature a slight uptick. I know he's not as heavily praised or revered as he was 20 years ago, he still gets listed with the modern greats, he reached auteur status and I'll pay that. I've never spat on his shit, I don't care how controversial he is most of the time, I agree with his stance on simulated violence. You have a choice, nobody forces you to watch this, kids haven't gone into diners and stood on tables shouting if anyone moves, they'll execute every motherfucking last one of you. His brand of violence is kind of lampoonish, it's overblown. And yeah, it's fuckin' fun, JAN! I think he writes more interesting female characters than most. I know he screwed over Uma Thurman, I was oddly fascinated with their work on Kill Bill, she was supposed to be more of a collaborator by the vibe I got from old promo interviews. But she kept a brave face while a certain producer ran Hollywood with a perverted fist of bribery and casting couch nightmares.

Polanski is probably an asshole. Weinstein's definitely an asshole. Tarantino claims to have kept him out of reach of Thurman, I'm inclined to believe he did, and I try not to shit on people who didn't speak out to the general public at the time. Everyone was stymied and threatened or felt intimidated if they spoke out. Some may have felt the lack of evidence meant it wasn't right to go forward. Hollywood's got toxicity issues. Having said that, I don't defend Tarantino as much as I would have back then. I used to agree that a character that uses derogatory terms is being a representation of real life so a script with that language should get a pass. Now, I'm probably more squeamish about it I can't defend it as readily. I think his time in the anti-PC patrol's kinda over, whether the recent apologies he made were sincere or forced by his team is up for debate.

And Once Upon a Time is actually really disappointing. Considering it's leading up to a particularly dark ending, the payoff is pretty minimal. It's got such a happily ever after vibe of an ending, which is fine for the title, but I wasn't all that attached to any character to care the outcome. Pitt's character's way more enjoyable, he's basically the hero. Robbie's fine but I'm supposed to fall in love with her character, she's the princess or damsel of the story, and I didn't care that much she survived. I don't know her friends in this well enough to care they live. The hippies, if you have no context, don't seem to be that malevolent, just a bunch of bullies, so without the context of the Manson murders and his cult, you wouldn't know to hate them. And the payoff with the flamethrower gag just feels like complete fucking overkill. The violence meter's been turned down as low as it could go, (at least in terms of how much we're exposed to) as if Tarantino's finally succumb to all the backlash and this was his response to the bad language/anti-violence crowd, like it's not fun to rile them up so we get a watered down but very well presented Tarantino film. It was weird. Maybe I'd watch it again but this was underwhelming for all the hype.

 

Midsommar, Hereditary and the concept of Grief Porn

With the idea of something appalling being transformed into a type of ironic pornography, heralded by the Saw franchise giving rise to torture porn, Ari Aster's movies Hereditary and Misommoar, to me, are examples of grief porn. I don't think glorying the depictions of women grieving in guttural groaning and sobbing is intended to be appealing, but I noticed between the two films the focus on women going through the painful loss of loved ones, forcing us to live in their space perhaps longer than we'd prefer. The director seemed to have a fixation with this depiction, and wants us to share in it rather than turn away.

I wasn't thrilled with Hereditary, though I did appreciate it. I'm not a huge fan of Toni Collette when she's using her American accent, it's convincing but her performances seem so much more forced to me than her earlier Australian work. But she's never failed to convey the wretchedness and ugliness of sorrow, that hideous twist you can get in your face when you're bawling, cheeks wet with tears, all the saliva in your mouth stretching between the teeth. (She did this just as well in Muriel's Wedding). It's hard to watch but Aster insists we do. Hereditary's fractured story is slightly harder to follow, but its imagery remains after one viewing. You ponder its aspects to a degree.

Midsommar, however, extends this notion of grief so much further. It's a lesson in withholding and denying the process of grief to its fullest extent. It explores ageing though the views of an isolated cult in Sweden, who execute a long ritual every 90 years to bring fertility and prosperity through human sacrifice, with the acceptance suffering a natural death of old age is worse than willingly expiring at 72. Where the visitors see two people forced into sacrifice, we're meant to see something beautiful about having the choice to die. We're not supposed to value the outsider's view becoming too old as being right or good. And I had to appreciate that, regardless of the gruesomeness of the deaths in the film. It reminded me more of the ending of a show, David the Gnome, where the titular gnome and his wife come to the end of their lives and celebrate this, heading to their resting place on a hill where they turn into trees. For a kids' show, it was such a beautiful way of exploring death as something that no one should truly fear. To force people to live in a frail body is more disgusting to me than giving them the right to a humane death. 

We move mostly with the character Dani, experiencing all her pain from the death of her family, that she bottles up to protect others from. Meanwhile, her beleaguered boyfriend of four years, Christian, is contemplating leaving her due to her ongoing depression, this disaster making him feel obligated to stay while desperate to leave her sphere of pain and sorrow. He comforts her but not in any sincere way that makes her feel loved. The only person who accepts her pain (more than she does), is the foreigner Pelle, the one leading her and Christian, with their friends, to the isolated community. The language barrier is used to hide the truth of what the outsiders are walking into, but I don't see this as a slight upon the villagers to turn the audience against that culture. I think there was some backlash, and the village's traditions were a mixed bag of others, there's definitely Amish and Nordic cultures involved. One of the village elders is aware enough of the world outside and how they view things. They fund their lives by selling their wares, they don't break traffic laws. They understand more of what's beyond them than the outsiders do of them.

While we're supposed to be fearful of this commune, there are sinister elements there, however subtle, I found myself choosing their side, and agreeing with so much we're supposed to oppose in their actions. I was so on their side to the point I wanted Dani to end up with Pelle. To my mind, Pelle was the true hero rescuing Dani from Christian's inconsiderate friends, punishing them for their disrespect of not only her, but the community as a whole.

While Josh, the student working on his thesis on midsummer festivals, purports to be respectful of other societies as an anthropologist, he commits more acts of ignorance and selfishness defying the requests not to document or photograph certain aspects of the community. His duplicitous behaviour is what gets him killed. Buddy and group douche, Mark, is there for drugs and women, committing one heinous act of pissing on the sacred fallen tree, making himself the epitome of the ignorant American tourist who doesn't come to experience or appreciate, but to take what he wants of the culture he's immersed in, all while bitching about the aspects he finds threatening, like ticks and the midnight sun. He's purposefully so unlikable you don't really care he's later involved in the final sacrifice, it's an appropriate comeuppance. Christian is somewhat more nuanced at first, his decision to steal Josh's thesis idea since he's not figured it out putting them at odds to further fracture this group. Two other outsiders, Simon and Connie, from the UK, aren't explored as deeply, only showing respect for the community until the first ritual is exhibited. They decide to leave, but of course, they don't escape. 

Where we're seeing hints of horror movie tropes by way of the group being broken up either physically or emotionally, Midsommar somehow takes the sinister behaviour of the community to a much more interesting level. Suspicions are aroused but we're cognisant of what's going on, we're not subjected to too many shots of furtive members, perhaps one or two stare in disdain at the outsiders. Given the movie is just soaked in sunlight, we're not seeing so many shadow-ridden shots obscuring the horror. In fact, the world the travelers leave behind is darker and more darkly lit. Dani weeps in the dark with Christian after her family dies, we're detached from her at this point. But her later moment with the women of the village is shot in dusty light, where we're with them, curled up with her, grieving with her. So much of the last moments give an empowerment to Dani, you revel in her becoming the May Queen, the levity of the music in the final scenes gives rise to a sense of relief and joy, the time for grieving is coming to an end to bring absolute acceptance. Oh, and the black guy isn't the first to go.

Pelle might be the quintessential bad guy of the horror genre luring these victims to their death, but his compassion for Dani and happiness of her rise to May Queen make him a bizarre hero. To me, he was so much more the hero of Dani's story, he remembers her birthday when her own long term boyfriend completely forgets. For every moment Christian fails to make her happy, Pelle is there to show her true concern and consideration. He's eventually heralded as one of the honored of the final ritual for fulfilling his duty in bringing the four outsiders to the village, and I didn't hate the guy. I didn't hate the people of the village. I was completely on their side and didn't give a damn about the others being sacrificed. You're meant to hate these guys for their attitude to other cultures. They're genuine pricks from the start, faking their friendliness towards Dani while demanding Christian break up with her so she's not killing their fun. For anyone who's ever been guilt-tripped into smiling or getting over their pain for the sake of others, this is your type of porn. This would vindicate anyone who's been alone in a circle of friends who can no longer tolerate their misery. Dani's depression is so acceptable to us, but to her friends, she's just a drama queen, they dismiss her endless fear of her sister doing something drastic, they work to exclude her and begrudgingly include her, Christian's passive-aggressive offers for her to hang out with them clearly centred around the hope she'll decline, while he can say he at least asked. He wants to run off to Sweden, he's persistently looking for exits from Dani in his internal conflict not to abandon her. And while he might unwittingly fall into the final trap set for him, you want Dani to exact her revenge for his betrayal. 

This is a giant middle finger to anyone who has tried to shit on the process of grief, and allowing others to grieve. It's such a cautionary tale for those who hide their feelings from partners and persist with dishonesty for the sake of the feelings of others, and who constantly take the blame for others disappointing them. And as we're exploring the fractured relationship between Dani and Christian, we're warned of the consequences of withholding and dismissing a significant other. To the point they were offering couples counseling to audiences. You're yelling at Dani and Christian to confront their issues in that hypocritical way you know you wouldn't do yourself in the same situation. The falseness of kindness and skirting around the problem is pronounced as much as the gruesomeness, reminding us life can be ugly. Dani knows the others are condescending to her, she suspects Christian wants to leave and she laughs off their perception of her. She's thoroughly ashamed of her sadness, constantly running away to smother her panic attacks and crying. That's the horrific part that held the mirror up to my face. If you've not run to hide your emotions you might question why she does. She's fighting with herself and her own internal bullshit so much harder, and she's out in the middle of nowhere on an Ativan withdrawal on mushrooms. That's the horror of it.

Much like Hereditary, we're truly forced to face the ugliness of death and grief. In Midsommar, we're asked to celebrate the ideas of death, and any squeamishness on the viewer's part isn't allowed for. Aster presents death and misery with a patient request to accept this. He doesn't indulge in the gruesome moments, in all honesty the bloodiest parts weren't so convincing to me to make me look away. I wasn't scared by this movie, I enjoyed most of the last scenes, it was probably the ritualistic sex that was more discomforting, but that was juxtaposed with Dani's grieving to culminate in her expulsion of pain and acceptance of loss. We're empowered by this, granted permission at last to actually cry with her and live her relief through her smile. Despite her almost pantomime flower gown and headdress, you're not laughing at her. Her dancing is euphoric and distracts from the horrific events going on outside the dance. You have a moment to fear for her safety too, she's become the final girl in a sense, but she's not bolting or denying the community their desires to celebrate. She's very much the willing tourist who allows this to go on around her until she acclimates, just as Christian advised her to do, the final irony of the film. To everyone's eyes, Dani's become a neurotic nuisance. To us, she's entirely justified. The assholes are everyone in Dani's life. They're the bad guys, mostly for gaslighting her into thinking nothing is bad as it seems. Christian's friends think he should dump her, her friend thinks Christian's not working in her best interest. Even when she has every right to be miserable, no one can truly put up with it, and she's not even demanding they do. What's frightening about this film is it delves directly into that persistent fear of not being there for someone at the vital moment they finally decide to act on their threats of suicide. And how forgiveness is harder to receive.

I know I'm really not supposed to be on the cult's side, but I was so in by then, agreeing with the community, with their humanity. They were humane, sacrificing others doesn't seem as abhorrent as it should be. There's something beautiful about it. I don't hate them. Dani's experience of death protects her from overreacting to the sight of it, initially shocked, her disassociative state protects her until she's alone, whereas her inexperienced friends recoil and protest. And they're punished for it. They're punished for persisting with the research, for their selfishness. They accept Dani's passiveness. She's fearful of staying but in truth, this will become her home. Pelle's insistence she should be there is played out. I was mentally shipping them despite his actions. In essence, Midsommar is probably the most beautiful horror film I've seen. Aster's direction is solid, I appreciate the hard cuts to transition from place to place, there aren't too many sweeping establishing shots, it's all measured out and obvious compared to Hereditary (which was supposed to be a family drama that accidentally became a horror movie). The journey is disjointed and full of sweeping upside down shots as we cross the threshold into the new world. And it's certainly something you need to see twice to appreciate the subtle clues you missed initially, like the painting over Dani's bed. Another shot of Christian in a mirror with Dani by the door convinced me he'd gone down a hallway to sit and she was still at the front door while he's so much further away behind her and not in front. The dialogue matches those tedious arguments you have with a loved one where you can't be honest but you're angry and cornered and don't want to fight. A horror film that can convey that much human nature without being boring or cliched is a certain diamond in the rough of jump scares and tired tropes. Hereditary did achieve this to some degree, Midsommar just makes more sense and seems more artful in its approach. The music may start out in a classic, ominous manner but that's gone by the end.

So I'm already watching it again just to see what I missed. I wouldn't write this off as another horror film, it has too much to offer beyond what we expect out of horror now. Its presentation is too beautiful to disregard. Its message is too powerful to dismiss. Asking you to go in with an open mind isn't enough. Just be prepared to face things you know you can't and it becomes so much more rewarding.

I did miss some aspects that were pointed out in someone else's discussion over which reading can be considered "correct" i.e. Dani has a good ending/bad ending. That being, Pele is also a victim of the cult who was orphaned (possibly by them, we don't know) so he's less of a willing participant and more likely another brainwashed outsider. Also, there are other conflicted villagers who are suffering for having to execute the outsiders. My excuse for reading Dani's fate as a good thing is she's too compelling and relatable to me, I can't disengage from her being poorly treated by everyone in her life. You have to have been in her position where you've had a period of depression and anxiety that had no catharsis whatsoever and you're trying desperately to get over it and on with your life so as not to be a burden, (like Dani's trying to do, I'm not willing to say she's refusing to change) to understand how vindicating it is for her grief to be accepted and dealt with finally. If she's had a psychotic break in the end (which is what happens when I do what she does and ignore all my shit), what does that say about how she was treated by her supposed family as opposed to how her new one is treating her? She wasn't supported or even liked by anyone, all her friends think she's too much they don't even suggest she gets psychiatric help so they don't have to cope with her. It's very much, "there goes Dani again" even though her biggest fear was realised in her sister offing her parents, can she not just "get over it?" I hate people like that so fucking much I'm willing to excuse a protagonist getting them killed. There is nothing left for her if she ever went back home. She's a clean slate, my guess is she's intended to become a part of the cult who may or may not align herself with their values. She's got another 90 years (which she won't survive as she'll be expected to die at 72) to realise they're going to do to some other woman what they did to her. We don't need to know that part. We're only focused on that smile and what it entails, which depends entirely on how you identified with her from the outset.

I also thought the village decided to off Christian, it didn't fix with me that this is her choice, but really it isn't if she's been brainwashed into seeing him as a piece of shit. I hate him enough it didn't matter to me how he ended up there, but he's also not a bad person, just a douchy one. But if you've been surrounded by douchy guys all your life, it's hard to root for him. My overall take was this whole thing is the fictional end result of a couple not communicating their needs and wants in a healthy manner. Why else would they have been offering marriage counselling to the audience? And I don't think the old couple are cool with throwing themselves off the cliff, I more agreed with a person's right to die before they become too old to care for themselves, I don't want you pushing granny off a cliff, kids. I want to go when I want to go and I support the right for all of humanity to own that choice. There are a lot of subtleties this movie has which I missed completely, largely from me being so engaged with Dani's emotional journey and her vindication, I'm actively willing to let huge amounts of evil behaviour slide out of my own sense of cynicism towards people who don't maturely deal with their emotions, or the notion of death. If Dani hadn't been drawn so distinctly as she was, I might have been less engrossed with her and more aware of the sinister nature of the cult. Had I been there myself, (which by the way, you could never coax me out to a place like that even if it was entirely benign, you can barely get me on a plane to Europe anyway) I would've wanted to leave a lot sooner. I wouldn't have wanted to respect their community or engage with any ritualistic behaviour. Aster stated he wanted people leaving his film to feel uplifted by Dani's ending but I'm sure he knew how divisive it would be, that you're going to set off arguments in comment sections but it's getting people talking about the movie, either way. Hereditary is less easy to defend, the cult just gets their way, there's no escape for the son or the family. I think the uniqueness of Midsommar will make it entirely impossible to replicate or remake, same with Aster's other films. If you're leaving a movie like this not thinking about it on some level, then it's failed in achieving its goal.

I found a deleted scene where Dani opposes the ritualistic drowning of a child and prevents it, and she leaves telling Christian she thinks they should get out, meanwhile he's still thinking about himself and his thesis. He argues in favour of them staying to document this, she's seen through the bullshit and knows they're being duped. This reframes the entire film and the cult as being intentionally malignant and manipulative too early in the story. Meanwhile, Christian's pissed that Dani wants to go, she calls out that he doesn't love her (he doesn't) then they have a classic psych vs anthropology major battle of wits. (Accusing the psych girlfriend of using textbook words to define their relationships is actually a very tired trope). He decides she's still emotionally manipulating him and making him feel trapped. He walks off and she suddenly feels abandoned, and isolated to be at the whims of the cult. From that, all I can tell is Christian's just setting her up as the emotionally manipulative one. He's more supportive of the cult's rituals but he still selfishly agrees with for his own gains, he wants the glory of documenting the tribe and the credit that carries. She doesn't defend the death ritual after all, I interpreted her reaction as more bemused but ultimately accepting. She corners Christian into admitting he doesn't love her, he's too afraid to admit it's true, he's so desperate to get out without looking like the bad guy. He's treating her gifting him something as a demand for reciprocity and not simply a gift, now he has to look at his own behaviour and he's not willing to admit he fucked up. He walks away with the upper hand and she's left alone in confusion when she was actually acknowledging they were over and she was being too clingy. He's all, I have work to do, she's trapped there either way. The cult needs to isolate and sow discord between them so his betrayal is more painful to Dani. However, this scene has too much impact on the situation. I think it's more subtly conveyed with the number of small near fights and little tiffs they have over how they feel about one another. Others wish it was there to justify why Christian is a huge manipulating piece of shit and deserves some kind of comeuppance. I know their relationship is the theme of the story much less than the notion of cults and ritualistic behaviour, that's a backdrop to the drama of Dani's inability to grieve within the confines of an emotionally abusive relationship with a person who's too chicken to end it. He's so obsessed with being painted the bad guy he'll fuck with her emotions before letting her have that. She seems much more settled with the idea they could be over meanwhile he's refusing to come to the table and reach an amicable end thinking she's going to make sure everyone knows he left her. Their trust has utterly disintegrated by this point. But rightfully, Dani is the one actually keeping it together and being objective about the danger they're in, Christian's the blinded idiot who's fallen for everything. He even says he mistakenly told their friend Josh about his decision to do his thesis and now he's competing with him instead. I find it kind of hilarious he's supposed to be working yet we never see him make notes, whereas Josh is diligently writing everything down, he's later punished for taking pictures. The cult are fully aware of their intentions and exploit them accordingly, which is where we question whether it's necessary to disregard a culture's need for privacy in order to document their behaviour. The comments on this video are as divided as the audience was, either people want it to prove Christian deserves to die, or they want to leave it out so it's less obvious Dani's cottoned on to the cult's sinister nature. Someone was straight up mad it proves the argument Dani was brainwashed. I don't think the intention is for everyone to decide that, if you did fine, if you didn't, that's also okay. Let the movie be ambiguous, it's people's fear of ambiguity that ruins movies like this. It's part of the director's cut so now I'm kinda glad I didn't see it. Or maybe I'm not. Fuck, now I have to watch the actual director's cut.

I could go on about this fucking thing in so many ways, I kinda hate it got reduced to a horror movie about a cult and now less people see it as a simple drama of a doomed relationship. That they weren't trying to support survivors of cults and rather wanted to save people's relationships or make them examine them suggests that was the crux of the film. It's not supporting a cult mentality but it's presenting them differently to how we're accustomed. Everything's designed to make you question rather than blindly accept. It's not a conventional horror movie. Another comment said the horror of the film is the toxic relationship. That was my point, the horror for me is Dani drowning on dry land. If you think the horror is coming from the cult, that's not really the point. It makes me feel this movie only spoke to people who've understood and experienced toxic relationships and panic attacks. The cult is the test of that relationship more than anything. Maybe it convinced one person to leave their toxic relationship. I don't think it convinced anyone to actually want to join a cult where acceptance is conditional and performative.

Ain't reality a pisser?

I'm kind of a Judd Apatow fan. I didn't think I'd like Knocked Up or 40 Year Old Virgin. They're fun movies because of the people in them but yeah, Seth Rogan's only okay in small doses now.

I'm sorry, ladies. I'm not on any woman's side in these movies. I'm sure Kathrine Heigl loved pretending to be OK with Seth Rogan's stoner bullshit when in real life she'd never date a guy like him. I thought she was okay in this too, if she'd maybe not bitched so much later she wouldn't have been considered such a C. But to be fair, Andy Dick does kinda go overboard feeling her up, his hands go way too low. Someone brought it up in an article because it's been over ten years since the movie came out, so that means clickbait articles are at an all time high if you can say, ten years since X remember this?? Huh? Cheap. It really wasn't trying to do what she claims. There's a scene where she's accepting of Ben's shit. And maybe pregnant psychos need to be put in their place, because, yeah, Fuck You, Hormones.

Apatow's kids are the cutest.

The best thing Apatow does is really take those cliche Hollywood moments and ruin them with big doses of reality. But it's all done so charmingly. I don't think one suffers as much from the same lack of editing as his other films. It's a sweet movie that tries to be fair to both sides of the deal, the guys aren't in the right with their bullshit. It's about young people facing adult situations when they basically don't want to. I don't think the movie would've been praised as highly if Apatow were saying what she suggests. I don't think she was agreed with. I don't think there was a contingent of feminists coming out in support, because they didn't really rally behind her, she became a magnet for bad press and stopped getting work. She wasn't needed for the sorta sequel, obviously. Apparently she was able to improvise like most of the cast is clearly doing, so if she was deciding to take the character in that direction, then complaining she was directed to do it. Oh yeah, that's right, she snubbed her Emmy nomination by saying she didn't deserve it based on what she was given to work with, i.e. being a coma patient I think. Whatever. 

I only came here to say I have all the movies I possibly ever wanted to own, save a few I'd like but aren't desperate to obtain yet, and I'm watching this. Out of all of them.

No thank you, Mr Blumhouse. I do not accept.

I vaguely remember Blumhouse being involved in the Craft "Reboot/Sequel". I was hoping it'd die the way the Heathers sequel was always destined to fail. I'll never watch the mess of the Heathers series reboot. And I highly doubt I'll stomach this piece of shit called The Craft: Legacy.

Slapping the word Legacy on a title doesn't make it cool by default. The trailer basically makes the girls look like hippy fairies waving their fingers around with flickers of light. And a picture of Nancy just looking like Nancy, which is basically a screenshot from the original printed on a fucking Polaroid, NOBODY TOOK A PICTURE OF HER LOOKING LIKE THAT. I LOVE how reboots use PROMOTIONAL MATERIAL for their "PHOTOS" of the old cast. And hoping for more Easter eggs will be a fucking waste of time. This is basically Blade Runner all over again, nods to the original few and far between. Giving the script to a woman would make sense if the idea of a girl getting picked on for getting her period in class wasn't a mess of a concept some teenage boy would write. Somehow the original writers being male didn't prevent the original movie from being heralded as a goddamn feminist masterpiece (I disagree) but they achieved this along with an actual practicing Wiccan in Fairuza Balk, who lent her knowledge and managed to give a degree of "authenticity" to the movie. We don't see magic fairy dust emanating from anyone's fingertips, Jesus even that piece of shit fluffy nonsense Practical Magic was more realistic and that had a shit story and shittier special effects. The illusions are supposed to look real, glamours are meant to look REAL. That fireball in the shop, yes it looks shit but at least it's supposed to be real fire.

Nobody asked for this monstrosity and again, here we are with nothing new or interesting to show for it. Blumhouse's business model of hits and misses obviously keeps the lights on and gets them accolades they probably don't deserve overall. But then one of the writer/directors of Dumb and Dumber has an Oscar. Get Out's a great movie, I can claim to have enjoyed Happy Death Day. But they've been around since 2006, way longer than I realised. They're doing a remake of the Thing. That'll be like the third one?? They were behind BlacKkKlansman, which was good but heavyhanded with its stereotyping. I just don't support them putting their grubby fingers on the Craft for any reason. Sorry.

If it is any good and gets good reviews, I still don't think I can watch it. Even with David Duchovny as the dad. Sorry, Sarah's dad was lovable and funny. There's nothing wrong with the movie. It's just another title, another cult you can cash in on for no good reason. Why couldn't COVID come in time to trash this production? It's trashed its release instead and that's possibly good enough, I guess. it not getting a theatrical release is fine they probably knew it wouldn't do well with concerned audiences in the middle of social distancing. I sure as shit wouldn't pay to see this in a theatre. I spend more time trashing this and the first film's shooting script here.

And I would've seen the original had I been older at the time, or more willing to sit in a theatre with a parent.

Cuties is the New Kids

You can be forgiven for thinking the current outrage over a French movie called Cuties is the first public debate we've had over child exploitation, particularly in relation to exploitation of a sexual nature. But it's a repeat of an argument I have very vague memories around concerning a little indie breakout called Kids.

I think I've been here before talking about it in relation to Ken Park, but at the time, without an internet to see this film, Kids held some kind of urban legend status. It was heavily derided as child pornography masquerading as social commentary, cashing in on the "It's 10pm, do you know where your kids are?" campaigns blasted across public TV back then. It was genuinely a commentary on that rhetoric, the parents in Kids, few as they are, remain oblivious and inactive. The first girl we meet is home alone while Telly has sex with her in the first scene, (which I believe was cut out of some versions). We meet Telly's mother, who's up to her neck in looking after a younger brother and does little to police Telly and Casper's movements. Aside from this, we spend more time with adults like the taxi driver who picks up Jennie and the nurses at the free clinic, one of whom drops the bomb on Jennie that starts the ticking clock of finding Telly before he sleeps with another underage girl and unknowingly infects her with HIV. If you want a premise to this movie, that's essentially the narrative. It's the depiction of kids boasting about sex acts and engaging in sex acts, violence and substance abuse that we're forced to exam through the lens of a teenager. It was an important film - but did we need to see a protracted rape scene in the finale? Did we need to see Telly aggressively having sex with two girls who plead with him to stop? Larry Clark and Harmony Korine believe we did. It's an exploitation film. It served a purpose and leaves and indelible mark on the viewer, it's a movie you cannot forget or unsee.

And there wasn't a massive gap between this and Cuties. Falling between and receiving higher praise than Kids was Thirteen, which probably owes a lot of its attention to Oprah interviewing the director (I can't find the clip sadly but I remember it). It convinced me to watch it, it's not a bad film, but it's also less insistent on showing graphic sex scenes. The self-abuse, drug use and shoplifting spend much more time in the spotlight. While Tracy and Evie are almost successful in seducing an older boy into a threesome, they fail and he throws them out, meaning the movie kind of threatens to go there but doesn't, which isn't necessarily a bad thing, pulling a punch or two is fine, you can derive tension from what is not seen. And we don't see anything particularly gratuitous in that regard, there's cutting away from the oral sex scene, and while Tracy tries to provoke her mother over the fact she wears no underwear, I didn't that to be overly shocking, it was oddly comical, but others would be shocked, of course. I'm probably desensitized to so much now, and I saw this before I saw two other Larry Clark films, Ken Park and Bully.

While Ken Park was banned in this country I don't think it's impossible to find. The commentary is hard-hitting, the message seems to be sincere, but it still begs the question: Did we need to see that amount of teens having sex? You could trim a lot of this out, to be honest. Did we also need to see one of the sickest scenes of elder abuse and murder in another scene? You'd think us discovering this would be impactful enough. No. Ken Park set out to shock audiences as Korine and Clark always do. And while Bully is based on a true story, Larry Clark lends his needless pervy-eye to the piece with a crotch shot of one girl. It's toned down compared to Kids, but it's still exploitative. Did we need that crotch shot, Larry? DID WE NEED IT? NO.

Cuties apparently exhibits questionable behaviour in the form of twerking and exposure. Netflix failing to market this piece as a thoughtful commentary on the effect of social media on young girls has landed the female director in hot water and I do feel for her now, but I still raise the same question to her. Did you maybe go too far with some of your shots? Can they be trimmed down? I know what you're trying to say but, sadly, people don't like the way you've chosen to say it.

Evan Rachel Wood, the star of Thirteen, agreed this director went too far, interestingly. Maybe implying instead of choosing to be overly explicit should've been done here. You don't want to be conflated with white male perverts at this point. If the director is signing off on this, is it because a producer insisted upon it? The director's word should be final. So this had to have been intentional. Intentional, but pointless. Creating controversy really doesn't help a film ultimately. If the medium is the message, you didn't use the medium properly. Hiding behind a cultural norm of sorts (it's French, they treat their children like miniature adults, however not all the French agree with it) is just as unacceptable. And hiding behind the left as a defense from being attacked by the right is also pretty bad. Because a lot of leftists also disagree with it. Now the right think the cultural elite genuinely are manufacturing child porn.

I don't believe in full censorship. I do believe in moderation. I can see why people get offended by these movies. I understand it's so confronting and unsettling, like real life. I get you see a movie to escape that. But if we don't learn anything from the film at all, if there's no real consequence, there's no point to your movie. If you haven't made a case for how to fix the problem, and yes I'm aware it's not a film-maker's sole responsibility to fix the issue they present, if you've just "examined it" and "presented it", it's going to fall remarkably flat. I don't know how this director can recover from this backlash now. I don't think she's made child porn, but she's made a name particular for herself, one she may not deserve. If Woody Allen had made this film, he would have been crucified. His intentions may have been identical, however his reputation will forever proceed him (and he's been defended by a lot of female actresses as well).

I don't think the right amount of consideration went into this movie. Which is sad because it's imploring its audience to consider the exploitation of children. While inadvertently exploiting them. I would like to see this but I don't think I could stomach the amount of twerking and crotch shots. I'll be persistently demanding the point of this angle and ask why I'm being beaten over the head with it.

Better Call the Emmys

I've decided while I like Breaking Bad, I love Better Call Saul. I almost passed this by from the bad promo I saw on Stan, which is a solely Australian based streaming service (which I just discovered is owned by Nine and Fairfax which sucks because they're harbingers of misinformation and borderline fake news) but we don't get this bad boy on Netflix. I got another account for the free month to watch this after lending someone else's account and passing it up for a while because I wasn't getting use out of it.

I feel like Better Call Saul had the better dish of characters. Okay, you've got crossover with Gus and Mike, a little Tuco thrown in (which initially felt like fan service when I first watched the pilot but I loved it second time around). But throw in Rhea Seehorn as Kim Wexler , who is so fucking stunning and nuanced, her zigs when you think she'll zag are beautiful. Plus Michael McKean as Jimmy's brother Charles, who's masterfully playing Jimmy's protector and clandestine saboteur by somehow being the most tragic and sinister character on television, you've got a pretty magical recipe for drama with a better helping of good comedy from Odenkirk. Because what fucking universe could you see this character portrayed by anyone but him? Breaking Bad brought the pain with its cast of misaligned good guys. You can't ignore the ground it broke, you can't find another show that really matched the tension and dark comedy.

Saul's just weirdly more entertaining. And it's going into its own dark territory, somehow making certain life or death scenes palpably tense and unbearable even when you know the characters ultimately survive. The stakes are still high. And not all of Jimmy's choices are central to the plot, Gus features more as a buildup to how he established and maintained his grip on the town's drug cartel, fleshing him out was a good choice too, there were so many breadcrumbs left in the original series that made him worthy of inclusion. And getting Mike's backstory brilliantly laid out, we're almost spoiled with amazing moments Breaking Bad couldn't deliver. Gilligan knew he had to deliver with this prequel and he certainly does, but to have it surpass Breaking Bad is remarkable. You may hate the phrase "defies expectation" but shit, least it actually did. I did enjoy El Camino but I haven't watched it again. Going through the motions with Breaking Bad is difficult and I don't do it regularly. I can't remember last time I sat through it, it takes a certain mood to want to go there. (I also haven't ever bothered to rewatch Six Feet Under, I think now I'm less depressed I don't identify with the self-destructiveness of every main character so Brenda and Nate would just shit me to tears, they're fucking hard to root for in the end, both individually and as a couple). 

I haven't rewatched Saul yet and since the last season isn't due until next year, I have plenty of time to reacquaint myself with the story, which is what I'm doing now I've exhausted all my YouTube channels (and I'm also avoiding content again for a while). But I have a pretty firm memory of most of the events, the characters are too memorable for you to really forget their actions. I had theories concerning the fate of Jimmy and Kim that are being blown out of the water and I'm so happy about that. She's not Skyler, I think they've been very careful about not having any analogous characters - Jimmy isn't Walt. Chuck isn't Hank. It's an entirely different show. Sure, selling it on its own without Breaking Bad would be difficult, if not impossible, but conception on this began very early on in Breaking Bad's production, it wasn't cooked up when things were winding down and they were looking for new material for another show. The point is, it holds its own. It has its own flourishes and quirks that differentiate it. The characters are fascinating, the production is just as brilliant. Casting's stupidly on point. My only criticism, which is no fault of the show, is that Odenkirk's starting to look much older than he should by this point in the original timeline, there's only so much you can do about that with makeup and wigs. The black and white forward flash intros compensate with this, we see Jimmy's thinning scalp, rimmed by his Cinnabon visor, before we see his face and thick mustache. I'm dying to know how this all turns out because I know I'm wrong about everything and I certainly want to be. You're better off not even speculating and just going along for the ride. I think the last season I'll anticipate with more excitement than most people had for Game of Thrones. And I don't think it's going to disappoint. They may not have had a conclusion in mind for Breaking Bad but I want to believe there's a set path for Saul even if we know the ultimate conclusion. There are still surprises in store, and I think we'll see it with Kim. I have a theory she's the key to Jimmy's exile to strip-mall lawyer life in a worse way than her just getting sick of his shit, like you're led to believe. I think there's a tragedy in store much bigger than her leaving him. The thrill of the grift has her more entangled than Jimmy. I don't have to expect brilliance, I know we'll get it. I don't think we have a disappointment in store at all.

Nolan... Seriously I don't know anymore

I get the hype around Christopher Nolan movies. They're visually very beautiful and interesting, he's a good director in that regard. I'm not a fan of the Dark Knight Trilogy however I enjoyed them well enough, I don't purposefully watch them, they're in my bucket of, "would watch again if someone else put it on". (I'm actually more fond of Batman Returns, I know that's not a masterpiece and personally I'm not Burton fan and hate the hype he gets whenever he does shit with Depp, but Batman Returns has a nostalgia thing for me). I appreciate Heath Ledger's Joker (we never say him as the Joker, it was always his), however I didn't appreciate all the cringe edge-lords quoting it trying to be cool, it made it all comical and stupid and ruined the performance for me. I don't think Interstellar and Inception were amazing, I can see why they do get the hype they do. Visually compelling, different narratives, there wasn't much out there that was similar at the time. I vaguely remember Memento. Outside of all those I haven't seen anything else of his. Until I watched Tenet. And it was pretty good.

There's other stuff outside this that drew me in, mainly once I saw Martin Donovan, star of many a Hal Hartley movie, has a small role in this, and getting to see him on the big screen was great, for the five minutes he was on there. I'm also throwing all my enthusiasm behind Robert Pattinson's trajectory because he supposedly committed career suicide very early on being attached to one franchise that shouldn't have been a measure of his ability at all. He's awesome, I hope he fired whichever agent that told him not to pass on his breakout role (some reason having a smaller role in another franchise that irritates me wasn't enough). So now when I see him in anything that gets a lot of critical acclaim and he gets the props, I feel happy. I feel like things I hated didn't have such a toxic effect on everything they touched.

But I figured out after watching Tenet, when my ears stopped ringing from the ludicrous onslaught of the heavy bass soundtrack and shit 'splodin' and bullets pingin', that there wasn't a fuck of a lot of character development going on. He's not lazy about this, but a couple of characters seemed to purposefully lack the required depth for you to care while delivering the core concepts through the Nolanesque exposition style we've all come to know and like? Maybe?

Spectacularly tall Elizabeth Debicki (Australian apparently) probably has more of a backstory to work with and much more ground for you to give a fuck about her, but the Protagonist (yeah, that's the guy's name, played by John David Washington, who kicked a lot of ass in BlaKkKlansman) really isn't designed for you to know his past. He's the blank slate CIA operative. And he plays alongside Pattison's Neil (Just Neil) who makes a rather pointed comment halfway through that if the Protagonist gives enough of a fuck and they make it through this ordeal, he'll spill his guts. He's studied the required subjects to understand the mechanics of the universe they're in, and this isn't Nolan's biggest headfuck of a movie. I figured out one twist early on, and you're compelled to find out how things got where they were. The flashbacks were reminiscent of Inception, the mundanity of the technology and some of the dowdy set pieces were great, so it wasn't so heavily reliant on special effects as it was the effective use of reversing certain sequences. The only drawback of this was there was one scene that reminded me too much of the backwards bar fight in that one Red Dwarf episode. Nolan at least did well to not make this look so comical - you're not watching people regurgitate food. But the movie then seemed like a vehicle for this technique i.e. wouldn't a reverse car chase and a reverse battle scene be super cool, how do we incorporate a movie around that? You can't argue that necessarily with Nolan's story, it's interesting and adheres to time travel fundamentals, it's structured properly even when things seem like there's a big mess of dafuq going on. I liked it more than I expected to.

Chuck in Michael Caine in a sitdown cameo and Kenneth Branagh as the bad guy, who isn't effecting a terrible Russian accent and portrays a decent antagonist, you've got a decent package deal. I wasn't so convinced of the bad guy's motivations, wanting Godlike powers by way of commanding when the world will end was a tad generic. Him being a wifebeater made him way more unlikable. His story sets up most of the moralistic points of past generations making shit worse for future ones and those far enough in the head deciding humanity is too much of a fuck up and they could possibly reverse climate change on the off-chance enough of us die and don't wipe them out via the Grandfather Clause. You're not finding new concepts in that department, Nolan's ability to present them in an interesting way proves to be his bigger draw card. Considering I would sit through this again, it's getting more points from me than his previous masterpieces. I would hope he doesn't reach the kind of levels James Cameron has now. Because can you imagine a world with 4 more Tenet movies without wanting to puke? No. It doesn't exist. It's less likely than future people using entropy to reverse the direction of bullets. (Side note in 2023, I am an asshole who is immensely happy the current strikes have put another delay on the upcoming Avatar movies. I'm so happy about this it's disgusting but every time Jim doesn't get things his way, I feel a little happier inside).

As a side note, I didn't mind Interstellar on rewatch, it had decent moments. It's commentary on love being quantifiable however makes a lot of the dialogue sound like an essay delivered by overemotional actors. I'm not saying there weren't moments of genuine emotion either, but McConaughey's delivery at points is really stupid, he's sort of drunk in his mannerisms, and he has to play dumb as the audience surrogate, I understand he's forced into the mission with little time to spare but he was briefed on the mission before agreeing so how did they end up so much further into the mission with him still trying to get his head around relativity? Or wormholes. I like Anne Hathaway and she doesn't overdo it in this. The punchline being that both plans were viable all along just because one was set up as a kind of diversion due to not having any hope of fruition, that seems like too much of a happy ending. We get space stations and a chance at life on another planet? Once they were explaining the repopulation on the human race from frozen embryos, I checked out on the premise humanity had a right to survive that fucking long. We don't. I can only think of a handful of people genuinely worthy of life and I'm not one of them. The dialogue gets too hammy, and Nolan's ability to stretch out a penultimate scene is parallel only with Tarantino at this point. By which I mean they completely overstay their welcome. You're shouting "DUH" at McConauhghey once he pieces shit together rather than biting your nails, which is the intention. I enjoyed Hateful Eight much more than Inglorious Basterds. You have to put those guys in the same bucket when it comes to the level of hype surrounding one of their releases. They're meticulous directors who aren't guilty of being prolific, we aren't saturated by their art, we're treated to it for the amount of time dedicated to their films. They're both brilliant in their own ways but Tarantino's the better writer at least in terms of dialogue. Sorry, I don't find Nolan's dialogue to be particularly human sometimes when he's making political or philosophical statements. And we have to believe in the future the argument for there being a falsified moon landing has now been confirmed and is in the text books, in a parody of anti-religious education. The story is also easier to follow than Inception and Tenet, but ultimately the twist is identical to Tenet's. I'm waiting for Nolan to make a female protagonist who isn't responsible for their own destiny whose entire arc depends on them setting their own future in motion by some time travel mechanic.

I'm now hearing about the relentless soundtrack in Oppenheimer (which I did want to see initially but now I'm like, meh. And neither Barbie nor this inspired me to visit a movie theatre, but I want to know five years from now if its cultural impact will be remembered and pondered over). Anyway, when the Red Letter Media guys mentioned the presence of a constant score in Oppenheimer, it just set off so many issues I had with Tenet. Then I realised, oh his scores get a lot of hype from people, I know someone who listened to them at work, so he must think he can just have them there constantly in the movie so we never get to catch a breath in terms of tension. You really did have entire two person dialogue scenes with this constant, annoying score just loud enough to be distracting. It's the opposite of trying to build tension with everything else, a score shouldn't be ever-present. Supposedly Barbie used a similar technique with one song and that might be different, it's not the same to use theme and variation, but you can oversaturate it with a certain melodic sting like in Indiana Jones or Star Wars. It's obnoxious even then. Do it constantly with no pauses and it's too much. I am seeing this horrible trend of overhyped male directors who just get too much praise for their work they think they can give masterpiece after masterpiece when it's really not the case. Even with Greta Gerwig, I see her using characters as mouthpieces and I'm not interested in Barbie now because of this, the same thing bothered me with Marriage Story, and Lady Bird just didn't mean much to me. So seeing clips of Barbie I'm thinking, no I don't have time or patience for this personally, far be it from me to stop anyone else, but Barbie's her first mainstream hit really, if you've not seen her work, you'd not know any better. I like the idea of the Barbie movie, but Trixie Mattel can't even decide if she liked the movie. Trixie, Mattel's biggest product they did nothing to actually create, can't decide if the Barbie Movie is good. I get it. I had Barbie's existential angst as a child, I preferred my ponies, but I also knew about societal ladders and gender disparity (maybe not the wage gap but that there was a firm distinction), I just don't have time for people stumbling into third wave feminism this late in the game. I like Nolan was pissed off about it being paired, meanwhile Gerwig clearly didn't give a shit, and now her movie's doing better financially too, I'm very pleased about that. About as pleased as I was when Jim lost to his ex-wife at the Oscars. Any time that man's denied awards, I feel good inside. And Avatar 2 choked at the last Oscars. Here's to Avatar 3: Revenge of the Fire Nation getting trounced financially and critically. (I know it'll still do well financially, but I'm sure it will make less and receive less praise and less accolades. I'm sure of it, so it pisses me off he insists on continuing when this whole thing's been going on for over a decade longer than it should).

The Virus that Killed Avatar

I found the list of delayed and suspended films impacted by COVID and I can honestly say there's not a single one of them I give even a remote shit about to be disappointed. There's a bunch of Avatar sequels nobody wants, a third installment of a franchise being torched by a transfobe, (and starring a questionable actor guilty of domestic abuse) and wasn't particularly wowing audiences to begin with, and a bunch of Disney live action remakes I can't draw a breath to watch. Given their recent attempts at reboots have been subpar and stupid why the hell would I be invested in the Little Mermaid? (Truth be told it probably would be pretty cool however someone's already beaten them to the punch with a different take on the story - and it was live action). And boohoo, the Home Alone remake's on hold. I'm sure Mac's just devo.

 Theatre chains will probably be dead and buried by the time these movies are released. You'll end up seeing Avatar 2-5 (We didn't even need one) on a streaming service, making James Cameron cry. Oh, no wait, he's gauging 4 and 5 being made on the success of 2 and 3. Now you can't even finish them, Jim, why are we bothering? How's that ticker of yours? Not being funny, but will you have all your marbles by the fifth installment? I guess Stan Lee was pretty spry but he was also possibly a victim of elder abuse.

After a number crunch only around 16 are new movies. 9 are sequels to franchises that died well over a decade ago, (Avatar is a potential franchise) Disney has four remakes, three of which are previous cartoons, and when you say Disney remake now it won't be identical to the animated version. And 7 comic book movies, some of which are sequels also, were all either had production suspended or delayed. If this were maybe twenty years ago when I actually looked forward to seeing certain films, I'd be so fucking upset. I think I looked forward to going to the cinema not so much the movie I wanted to see (except Super Mario Bros. I can't even explain what my obsession was with the film and I had to wait so long to see it). I didn't know I was seeing the Little Mermaid until I heard my brother tell my aunt I was going while he saw Back to the Future III. We went to the only theatre in town to see one movie (I keep thinking it was a Snoopy movie but I can't remember) and I wound up watching Wizard of Oz, which I didn't like and never have. It was fun until I got to university then it just stopped being fun. But I always went on my own to see shit I wanted when I lived alone. I was kind of annoyed I had to see Hackers and not the Craft because I didn't need my parents with me to see it, and this was right when I was allowed to go alone. I don't even like going now, I get stressed out. I guess I'd be okay on my own in a small theatre seeing something indie, like I did with Secretary. A trip to the movies just became part of our trips to Perth from Bunbury. It was a treat. It was also 30 bucks cheaper. So you're not parading out a brilliant list here, and some of these movies are coming to Netflix anyway. There are a couple of 10th Anniversary re-releases like Scott Pilgrim. (I hate that's more popular now because when shit I hate starts rolling up to that particular date I have to worry about the new editions with bonus stuff). I'm sure it was once considered the lowest to have a release on streaming after a limited theatre run, or with no theatre release at all, but when you have respected directors legitimizing the format, egos like James Cameron start to get all butthurt.

And do we need another Tomb Raider movie?

For a definitive list of impacted stuff: go here

She's 15, brah

And as we all know, 15 gets you 20.

I watched Mermaids ages ago and remember enjoying it. It's pretty chick-flicky but it has some substance. And I'm the last person to yell "She's too young" at a movie. I'm way too liberal about that shit to begin with. But in this instance I'm definitely thinking the age disparity in the main romance is pretty damn egregious. Winona's character is 15, pre-Heathers. And her love interest is 26. And Cher's not putting the kibosh on this either, she's encouraging it from day one. It's a cute movie and it's early 90s so again, shit like that you could get away with it. I think Alicia Silverstone was barely 15 in The Crush and that's way worse. Lolita exists. So I don't really know why I'm bothered by this, except I've probably spent too much time on Degrassi boards seeing people get bent out of shape about older man younger girl narratives. I don't like the double standards where women get a free pass because every boy by the age of 12 wants to get laid and she'll make a man out of him. It's BS.

But I barely remember this movie now and if I saw it at 15 I was probably fine with it. I thought the boy was 18 at best. I don't actually see why he couldn't have been, he looks too young for 26 anyway (Scratch that, dude looks old enough so I guess a younger looking guy wouldn't have worked. And I thought he was Matt Dillon for a second. So yeah, not a bad movie just a bad thing in it. It's nothing I've not seen before but it's definitely something you could gloss over way easier back then. I try to explain that to kids who gawp at that shit now. They have higher moral standards, which is a good thing. It really is, it's awful I've come to just accept this shit being a reality.

Oh, and Cher's a better actress than she is a singer.

Ironically, in the movie Boys, Ryder plays a 25 year old who sleeps with a minor (I assumed he wasn't until it's mentioned she's contributing to the delinquency of a minor, and the parents obnoxiously call him "sonny" the entire time). She's basically using him to evade the cops, it's a pretty terrible movie that wouldn't pass the creep-o-meter by today's standards. But yeah, the 90s were all about them hot double standards. I think I thought these movies were way more romantic than they were, they all had the same aesthetic and melodrama I was in love with at the time.

Yet another argument for physical media.

If Netflix needs to do anything, it should be sending emails out to customers letting them know what's due to be removed so you can fucking watch it before you miss out. You have to go to rando websites who have the schedules of what's going each month. I know this is a thing. But I saw Under the Skin sitting there, like it appeared, and just as quickly it was fucking gone. I've seen it twice illegally now and I'm pretty fucking sure I checked for it back then on both services I am PAYING FOR and came up short. A24's yanked its content. So no Midsommar, which I think was on there to. I get complacent and I'm not in the mood for shit, so what streaming services effectively do is rely on you to keep paying for shit you assume will always be available. I've been trying to get DVDs of stuff I've streamed illegitimately. I can watch fucking Storytelling on Stan, minus the bigass black bar blocking out the black man fucking the white girl.

Now I'm watching Magic Mike because it's a decent movie, and I didn't pay first time around for that either.

I'm bored, pissed and need distractions my subscription services are supposed to cater for. But I'm only solidifying my original arguments for never paying for this shit. You're always stopping me from giving you my money.

The hell is wrong with you.

The Kindergarten Teacher and Little Man Tate

I coincidentally watched these within a day of each other as the latter was on another streaming service and I've taken to just rewatching stuff I already have on DVD on these services out of laziness. All it's done is make me realise my DVDs are sometimes the worst quality and badly formatted (overstretched widescreen, grainy resolution) but I settled for this substandard shit because I was like, well I have it on DVD, so I don't care. Now I actually do when I can see the remarkable improvement in HD. I won't go 4K for any reason (no device and no incentive) I don't believe in excessive resolution, just a marked quality of picture and relatively decent sound. I don't intend on installing surround sound in any house, I need to hear it clearly and the playback has to be crisp. That's it. Netflix can't even deliver on sound quality as the vocal tracks always sound diminished, apparently due to compression issues.

So, I saw Little Man Tate and decided to watch it as we're all still kinda going through COVID to varying degrees and this is a comfy blanket movie for me. I love the aesthetics and performances, I even picked up on a little running gag where I hadn't seen it previously. It's a sweet movie, it doesn't suffer too much from late 90s lack of PC terms, for Jodie Foster's directorial debut it's such a simple but effective movie and she really delivered on something that possibly had traces of her own child star experiences. Who knows. It's just a well-rounded, well-developed film.

But I'd watched the Kindergarten Teacher the day before and saw so many juxtapositions with Little Man Tate - the unlikely child prodigy from less than favourable background, the fixated teacher who sees the potential going squandered and the eventual fight for ownership of the child's future and current circumstances, down to the emotional manipulation on the teacher's part. Dianne Wiest's level of sinister behaviour isn't note for note but there's definitely the sense of justification in her actions, all she needs to do is elevate the child above his terrible life and bring him into the light for the world to admire, regardless of whether it's the best thing for him. Maggie Gyllenhaal's Lisa may already have a family, unlike Wiest's character, and she's far more dissatisfied with the state of the cultural landscape, especially in terms of her alliterate children, one of whom wants to be a marine, against her better judgement. She shows compassion to all her students but expects better from the poet Jimmy because of his perceived advancement, one this child is less aware of as he's not being propped up or recognised at home for his genius, he's simply a weirdo. Neither Fred or Jimmy are strictly diagnosed as autistic, Fred is simply gifted, a term we don't bandy about as much now. Fred's mother still admires his intelligence and perspicacity, whereas Jimmy's father fears his son will have nothing of a life in any academic capacity, the uncle being a failed writer of sorts who edits for a newspaper. While Lisa and Jane show immense fear of their respective student's possible mediocre existence without their unique guidance, Lisa crosses more boundaries than Jane, who negotiates with Fred's mother, Didi, perhaps more out of fear for her own physical safety. I appreciate we don't see mayhem when both Fred and Jimmy go missing, there's no frantic montages involving police reports or pleas to the public. We don't see any police in Jimmy's case until the very end, where he has the understanding he's landed in danger despite his trust of Lisa. And we still ultimately pity Jimmy for taking the path away from her at the expense of his possible greatness, him being ignored and infantalised proves Lisa's accusations right away, he doesn't have to wait to suffer her perceived consequences. Meanwhile Fred gets the normal existence of an average kid while still being nurtured as a genius, where he finds happiness and accepts he's not extraordinary or immeasurably unique. Fred does yearn for what Didi can't provide but can't appreciate what she gives until it's removed.

I had misconceptions from both trailers for this movie. I remember the part in the trailer where you see Fred hit the floor from leaning in his chair and thought the kid suffered seizures. The Kindergarten Teacher trailer uses that weird plucky violin music similar to the Mother! trailer where you really feel like something way more sinister will happen in the film. It's actually expertly handled by Gyllenhaal, there's nothing pedophilic about her approach, she's overly affectionate, probably unacceptably by today's standards, but I thought in the trailer there was an implication of her being attracted to whatever adult traits Jimmy possessed in his mind. But she wishes to nurture him, and seems to be grooming everyone around him into trusting Jimmy in her hands. Of course that's what actual child molesters do, I don't doubt that. But I don't see her sexualising Jimmy. She wants to abandon her average family and be Jimmy's mentor and mother. You assume her intentions are far more malignant by way of plagiarism but I was sure she was tricking the students and teacher of her poetry class by testing Jimmy's words on an ignorant audience, that wasn't a twist to me. She has to accept her own mediocrity as a creator, she is derivative and unremarkable, but is happy to be Jimmy's ambassador, her daughter ironically planting this seed with a throwaway angry comment. Jane believes she's more parental when Fred is in her care but we only discover she has no ability and admits to this internally at least once she loses Fred. We get more of a sense of her childhood abandonment that Fred so eloquently recognises, but doesn't fully appreciate ultimately. As such, Jane treats Fred as her parents treated her, as a small adult who doesn't require physical or emotional comforting.

The Kindergarten teacher is also expertly designed in its simplicity. You see the best being made of small budgets in both films, where the acting has to take precedence as it's so crucial to the delivery of the narrative. Both are beautifully presented stylistically, both narratives play out satisfactorily, I think the Kindergarten teacher leans more on building dramatic tension because of its lack of comedic aspects compared to Little Man Tate. And I would watch both again quite happily.

Can't do this but can do that

This is just a random thought post. I refuse to watch the entire director's cut of Lord of the Rings because I couldn't deal with that amount of content, which is about 10 plus hours (maybe closer to 12). What I can do is watch one guy for six hours straight as he goes through his entire BluRay and DVD collection, and he's got about three hours to got. I'll probably quit in half an hour and finish it tomorrow. My point is this is infinitely more boring by definition that Lord of the Rings and I'm not giving up for anyone. He rants and bitches about editions and region codes and different versions and the lack of a BluRay edition or a region free edition. He feels my pain so succinctly. I still maintain that if you put me in a court room to defend myself over digital piracy my entire defense would be: I have money and you refuse to let me give it to you. Series aren't re-released in BluRay if the DVD versions undersold. I've had to ask for US versions to finish TV series collections because this country only bothered to release the first one or two, and based cutting off the rest on the fact people wanted box sets so they wouldn't buy the individual seasons.

Degrassi bought me here. And now I feel like a tool

I decided to binge the newer seasons of Degrassi recently, subsequently stumbling upon their very active Reddit page. Long story short, people ask for other recommendations, and there's been a few mentions of actors from the show who went to do other stuff. I wasn't that interested in seeing another of their actresses don a bald cap and fake cancer, but apparently the creator of the show decided to try and do a series set in LA about struggling actors, featuring Manny Santos, the struggling actress from Degrassi. The LA Complex.

It's total trash but I have a few notes. I don't know why you would let a character wear the same shirt for the first two episodes which happen over two days, other than he's forced to sleep elsewhere. Just like Melrose Place, you have the resident older bitch (only Amanda kinda came on the scene later from memory, I don't think she was part of the spin off pilot), played by Jewel Staite, and she pulls it off. Her arc is more interesting as a recovering alcoholic (her denial is pretty big) washed up actress who may or may not be scamming a rich dentist out of seed money for some proto-Cohen Brothers to make a movie. The dentist doesn't care she's doing this and later on the proto-Cohen Bros don't even seem to give a shit they lost funding for the movie that may or may have not starred Ellen* Page (who was still big in 2012, but barely - she got done dirty). Apparently it's mentioned in season 2 and they got Ellen but you don't see much of these two again so they were background characters. They lose Ellen, of course. But you don't much care about this storyline since it's so C tier. Later drunky's washed up enough to get a role on a Sharknadoesque movie, which she's also fired from to have to take a celebrity rehab role even though she's not really an addict (according to her). She's smart enough to keep control of her own narrative but she still bails when she realises nobody gets real help there. She ends up filing for bankruptcy to get out of being sued and actually becomes a waitress. Then she goes back to try and make the Cohen kids' movie in the complex, so they suddenly matter as characters. Washed up alcho manages to skim money at her new job while guerilla filming the project with no money and the Cohen's filming it in single takes. Which is illegal as fuck but funny as fuck too. They pull it off to make a cool artsy trailer by the end of the show.

I like it's an ensemble but I don't like everyone I guess. It's not trash. The gay closeted rapper storyline has more depth to it than what's going on with the rest of the cast and it ends real bad by the end of the season. It's a 2012 show so you're going to have to put up with a lot of words that you can't say now. Plus self-hating violent gay man is getting old now too. It's what happens if you binge shit like this from that period but at least he's more developed than that. He has to keep the role of straight gangsta rap artist who can't finish his album while he's forced to go ultra straight and marry a good Christian girl rather than the intern love of his life he beats the shit out of. He tries again with some lawyer instead, gets all aggressive again. It's not handled badly. The lawyer says he has to go back to the poor intern kid who was like a main character season 1 and suddenly just gets written out because he wasn't interesting enough compared to the gay rapper. The intern kid just wanted to cut beats and produce. For like Drake and shit (YES they MENTION DRAAAAAAAKEEEEE). Manny flies all the way to Montreal with gay rapper to see kid and of course she comes back and says "he doesn't want to see you" because we couldn't get the kid back. Oh but wait they do. (I forgot the kid has another boyfriend on the IMDB list). Gay rapper apologises, it's touching. Then you're left wondering if Manny and Gay rapper will get home without crashing. Manny's fine and has a new hunky guy she picked up at an extras beach shoot, who turns out to be a pilot who can't talk about his job. Sounds like a set up for a bigger plot in the non-season. And Gay rapper ends up okay in the end. Hooray for him. He works it out with the lawyer boy, it's all cutesy but wow way to fuck over the poor intern kid who taught him how to love. Then his dad's in a coma and he keeps stroking out and dies. He gets more story time considering he's not technically a main character, the intern is, but he has more going on that's worth exploring, I guess. Another Degrassi alum BLT (Dayo Ade), comes back as the rapper's record producer.

The kid comedian/writer is amusing and dorky, he gets shat on by Paul F Tompkins which is great, who pops up later. Man's a good sport. Comedian kid also manages to end up to his neck in pussy when he's struggling to get laid initially. He plays dumb a bit too much and it's annoying. The Australian first time actor on the ER/General Hospital plays a dropkick drunk self-abuser pretty well but he's harder to feel sorry for. I don't know if I buy his backstory as much. The dancer/porn star's probably more my favourite, I like she's not bitchy and we get to see the good side of porn, it's a literal candy land. You think she's going to get screwed by another washed up drug addict actor after they make a sex tape to launch their careers, then she agrees to the porn stuff then stuffs up another audition. Sorry, now I dislike her. The drug addict actor comes back where they follow through on him getting a job on the same rehab show and he plays off Straite's character as well, he was pretty good value for how little he's used.

They have a "house band" so to speak, a band who lives in the titular complex, which is a shitty motel so it's great they're not livin' large. But this band kinda provides music for the scenes and parties but they're living there rehearsing a lot so you wonder if they get real actual gigs, because the drummer looks WAY too happy to be playing parties in a shitty motel for I'm assuming room and board?? I can't really give that any more crap than Lynch having acts at the end of Twin Peaks the Return to promote them. And they don't suck as a band either, later on they kinda have a Pixies vibe with a bald male lead who does great harmonies with the brunette Kim Dealish girl.

It's a fun show, it's relatively interesting, you don't necessarily hate the fact they're struggling in LA, you give enough of a damn. It's calling out the industry on how stupid it is. Bad Momagers get shit to for forcing their lactose intolerant kids to eat dairy. And guess who shows up as one but DREW'S Torres's FUCKIN' MOM. Who's like a bigger bitch in this. Cassie Steele brings her A but she was actually good in Degrassi against a lot of people. Meanwhile she cuts a backing track for the gay rapper but somehow still winds up with no fucking money, there's no mention of her being paid at all. She even goes commando again! And sits in her bra in front of Alan Thickie. Check out those blurred lines. She's great pulling off the religious BS for a part and teaming up with the "incest" twins on the show to cover their offscreen banging, which is fun, especially when it goes into threesome mode. And of course they gang up on her and get her fired (but she does more work in that area instead of shutting up). There are some predictable moments but these ones are fun at least.

They nix the porn angle since the dancer gets the gig she doesn't think she was going to get for six entire episodes. She's replaced with some homeless kids who stumble on a commercial being filmed in the fucking woods and of course the younger one gets a moment onscreen. The sister is only 18 but that's only an issue when the wrong older man is hitting on her, mainly the director of the commercial who was not remotely interested in helping her or her brother. Otherwise some other kid's dadager (I don't know if they were a thing) is fair game after one free lunch. She's kind of interesting as she's navigating the hell of child auditions which is better than doing it from a momager angle, but the kid seems to figure out how shit works way faster than she does, plus she's fucking it up for him by not letting him act (which involves a kidnapping scene with a "pedophile"). She's still stupid quitting - they sue you for that, you know. So her character is more obnoxious considering she's got no Plan B if this fucks up. So she thinks she's protecting him when she's basically fucking up his whole life. You need the money, dumbdumb. And him screaming at her is like completely justified. Of course he runs off and freaks her out and she has to have a learning curve. Which she doesn't actually learn from and seems to be less responsible than her brother that ran away because she's sleeping around kinda. They make friends/boyfriends with the proto-Cohens and that kind of justifies them all being there still. The dad comes back after she begs him and he shows up the moment they don't need him of course, so he's deadbeat dad. Her getting mad and refusing to go is ridiculous considering it's kinda her fault he's there. He basically attempts to kidnap the boy in front of the whole complex and they all have to step up and stop him. Sis gets a 1900 on her SATs but can't afford college (I thought you had to pay for the SATs too I think one of the Cohen's pays). Of course dada takes him anyway because reality and the law so of course she may as well just stay. Which kind of disqualifies her since she's not gunning for a movie career which is the premise of the show. But she decides to go so that makes sense.

The comedy writer gets a gig on the team for Paul's talk show where the ruthless girl he stole the jokes from is still riding him but it's getting absolutely stale and she can't shake him anyway, and it's a fucking kink with them in the end. He's still annoying but you're more on his side. Plus, again, you have to factor in the transphobic he/she bullshit too.  After the back and forth and duking it out for the job they wind up together even though he wanted Manny to begin with. Most of their stuff is funny especially with the head writer asshole on Paul's team and Paul coming back (decidedly trimmer than he started) to fire the kid when he takes a coke bullet for the head writer guy. The girl turns out to have kinda griffted her dad out of money to be a comedian instead of going to med school so she gets cut off and she has to live with comedy writer. Because they're good for each other really. You know those couples. Him and Manny make nice. Then she marries pilot boy but she doesn't know him and wants to annul the Vegas wedding they have after he proposes. I don't really understand how you can do this there seems to be some kind of money making scam here in quicky weddings and quicky annulments. The comedy duo wind up living together and she has to move to another state and why are we even setting that up - last episode. She won't take him with her despite porno dancer tells him over the phone to do it, he needs to stay or he won't get work.

The Australian manages to burn down his house but you're still waiting for the insurance agency to catch him, which doesn't come up again until near the end. Some celebrity signs him up as a rent-a-boyfriend, the washed up alcho telling him to do it then getting jealous because they end up boyfriend/girlfriend after casual shit. While he's rented out the husband of the celebrity comes back and they all end up buddy buddy where she's there controlling the shit out of both of them, but of course she reconciles with the husband and the Australian can't leave because abandonment issues. His self-harming arc is still believable. Someone shows up claiming to be his sister to the point she gets a DNA test.

Scientology even gets a drive-by dissing, because again, 2012, that was a banger year for their publicity team. And UUUGGGHH the sister is with the church and the Australian's dumb enough not to know, so I think they have to set up his indoctrination and the washed up aging actress will have to bail his ass out but I don't think they get that far because the show was canned after 19 eps and I think it'll end on a cliffhanger at this rate with 3 eps left. It's more than watchable. But she calls it the Church of Scienetics which is like what a portmanteau of Dianetics and Scientology?  So they want the actor because he's supposed to have money and that's their demographic. Idiots with money. He falls for the sales pitch after the bogus evaluation so it's all stacking up so far. But he's smart enough to see the cost is stupid so he comes in with some reasonable doubt, which is nice so I'm hoping maybe he goes haha no and the sister fucks off. Boy needs family but not that kinda family. He breaks because the they break him. Washed up doesn't want him on Cohen Bros movie. And people laugh at him. I think they had to call it Scienetics to not get sued. Least dumb complex landlord clues him in and he trashes the sister. A book mentions this show in particular using the name. I'm thinking they wanted to avoid any possibility of glorifying or showing it in an positive light. There were shows doing this in the 90s that were way too fucking soft about it. They plant another famous actor to bait Aussie boy. And they even boast about that whole "We beat the IRS" slant. That's a selling point for them. He agrees to drunky's movie deal it's kinda sad but they hint at them reconciling at  the end. The insurance people FINALLY catch up with him so I'd love to see how his new cult buddy pals get him outta that one. He gets ARRESTED oooh boy. And drunky starts to panic about the skimming credit cards, well same ballpark. This all doesn't come out how I expect they get bailed out by the Scientetics people then the sister macks him anyway and he leaves the cult because they want to kick her out and distance him from her and she gets "abducted" by a guy in the suit. He kinda just leaves the church and you see the sister at the end but you don't know where it's going (nowhere) So that blew my theory.

Of course we get a couple of cliffhanger moments you wouldn't give enough of a shit about if you really wanted a season 3, most of the main lines are tied up. I don't even know where you'd go with the rest of it anyway.  It's trying to subvert those ol' expectations at points but some of it's a bit ham-fisted. The story lines have some uniqueness to them, even if they are kinda beat for beat. But obviously everyone's complex and the situation's equally complex (and it gives you a complex) so it's playing into its title well. I guess it had enough originality and enough of what was cool at the time to get picked up but I don't even know if they were thinking long term. I can't remember if six episode first seasons are kind of cursed to do badly, they give you 13 more as a caution and then look at the numbers halfway and go yes or no. It was serviceable. It kept me interested enough to pause it or go back over parts I missed. But it wasn't worth watching again.

*Post published prior to Elliot Page announcing transition.