Disengaged

I realised the other day I’ve stopped engaging with films and TV shows (and music as well to a degree) and I’m just 100% involved with reviews and commentary. I’m spoiling shit for myself, sometimes I do see it much later when I filter out the info. Or I’m just not prepared to watch the whole thing so I’ll just watch it via not watching it. (If I can find a film a reviewer provides a full commentary track for, I will watch it, it was how I tolerated one film I only got through 20 mins of).  All my entertainment hours are dedicated to YouTube and not movies. Aside from the one Mubi movie I watched the other day, I’ve not seen anything I wanted to see. Our power went out and only one movie I’d consider watching was on but once the power came back on earlier than anticipated I had no intention of going anywhere. 

I genuinely hate going to the movies now, I was way more chill buying a ticket by myself and going in alone during the day, I took a day on my own just to see Secretary, I think I still needed a newspaper to check the session times. I hate I pay for streaming services that don’t give me what I want when I want, or threaten me with removing it if I don’t watch it before they yank it, which I don’t do, I’ll let it go rather than force myself to sit and watch. I pulled out of two movies recently from either utter boredom or a snack incident I don’t want to illustrate (it was during a horror movie too so that’s kind of ironic). And I wasn’t like pumped to watch this shit. I’ll watch whatever someone else wants because Netflix gives me decision paralysis by just showing me bullshit thumbnails, and forgets when I tell it I don’t want the trash I hate reminding me of it. I have to persistently curate my content to avoid shit. YouTube gives me control to a degree, except when it also forgets shit I tell it to leave out of my recommendations, I am PISSED I cannot do any kind of word blocking like Twitter provided, I despise Instagram only scans comments and not accounts and it fails on tags I tell it to ignore. I hate me looking at one thing leads to everything thinking I want more of the thing. I bailed on Electric State in pure anger of its lazy as fuck execution, appalled I was only a third into it and was bored senseless. I try not to get mad since people act like I’m overreacting to how bad something is. This blog exists for a reason. And to prove I don’t like movies, sincerely don’t and no longer care, I didn’t apply for a position for a movie and theatre reviewer realising I have to leave the house to see theatre shows and be involved with the arts scene. I don’t want to have anything to do with it now, or be forced to watch local movies and theatre shows I just don’t know enough about, I don’t want to have the social aspect of showing up, making notes, learning about adjacent shit to make comparative, intertextual statements. I’m so exhausted and disinterested in all of it, and that brings me to a topic that means I’ll start bleeding my personal life into this blog and I do this a lot. I don’t need to vie for attention constantly, chase people for clicks or try to work my way up to a sustainable art based job. I don’t even really like the idea of being in any kind of administration role. I’ve put things into an oversaturated market, I see other people doing the same and then beg for my attention and I have no time for that behaviour anymore. Don’t ask me to commit more to the arts, there’s already a conundrum over buying US products while nobody is realising so much of your media is distributed by US companies if you’re buying, you’re contributing because you have nowhere else to go other than illegal channels. Streaming services never intended on being ad free, everyone’s trying to make more money to live the life they’ve become accustomed to from small amounts of fame, instead of using what you got in those vital 15 mins and saving it for your future. I can’t feel that sorry for people in those circumstances, I don’t want to buy movies or keep subscriptions for shit I won’t watch on repeat. I will try to buy a physical copy of shit I have seen more than once. And that is with the awareness that money will go to Amazon and back to US distributors, because you want me to support the artist. See the pickle that presents? If you add to this the refusal for streaming services to ever release physical media of any kind that they can effectively (and have in some cases) remove from the internet permanently (thus proving only shitty things and bad behaviour live forever, shows and movies do not), you’re making a case for the resurrection of piracy. And in light of that, YouTube reviews and commentary are turning into the only way some of us engage with a piece of media because we’re restricted by region locking and limited distribution and streaming exclusivity. We can’t give these people money so we have to find other means, it’s beyond a joke. I’m spoiling my movies by watching reviews and I want to see them, I want to experience this shit and you simply refuse to make that process easy.

Also, I’m very into commentators being industry adjacent even if I’m not a fan of the way they present that information, I appreciate people who aren’t enmeshed with Hollywood finding a platform to discuss what we can’t get from mainstream media. I appreciate YouTube doesn’t gatekeep as much information as mainstream media does. I know it’s being actively censored all the time, but there’s less of a filter. I sure as hell won’t migrate to the TV streaming platform it wants to introduce. But I have to resent it for raising people who don’t have talent high enough to get deals people at the bottom can’t get. I will always hold resentment for the internet and social media being a culprit in drowning out more talented voices. I’m not appeased by the freedoms offered to even produce media from unknowns.

Matt Johnson got me to sign up for Mubi

I’ve seen an ad for a film Matt Johnson featured in last year and it’s been on my Insta feed so often I went fuck it, I’ll take a week of Mubi, watch as much shit as possible in seven days and cancel. I think I can get Challengers and some other shit. ( I can’t so it might be region locked)

Matt Johnson represents the unattractive nerds I simped after in high school, or the guy who made me laugh way too much but wasn’t going to date me anyway. So his movies are just magnets for me. This isn’t one of his movies, so now he’s much more natural in Matt and Mara, even though his name is literally Matt Johnson. He and Mara are writers and I’m gathering so much intel to justify staying out of this world. I thought this was muddily shot but it’s much cleaner now. I’m so determined to speed run as many movies as I can so if I can find any other shit of his, I’ll watch it.

I like the pace of this and the kind of improv/mumble core vibe it’s giving without that level of pretentiousness. It’s also one of those woman a bad marriage falls for someone else and you don’t know if she’ll leave the husband. It’s giving Adaptation, she’s a very muted Meryl Streep, less sexual or sexually driven and more seeking something with the fear of realising her desires. Her interactions with her students made me realise how little fucking one on one interaction we really got. Was I supposed to go to my lecturers and force them to help me with my independent study project? Did I cheat myself not going to an extra course? I was so disillusioned and disappointed and I felt unmotivated to do my absolute best. She doesn’t belong in the husband’s world at all. And the husband’s the classic “oh, he doesn’t get her really, he’s passive aggressive, he’s an arrogant musician who just plays when he wants. and has musician friends who are assholes to her”. But funnily, Matt’s not entirely kind, either, and I’ve dealt with that too, their attraction doesn’t make them nice to you, he’s kinda neggy too.

I’m not familiar with the director but if I can find the other film he did with Matt, I’ll watch it too, despite it possibly being the spiritual prequel to Matt and Mara. I can absolutely identify with poor Mara trying to engage with her students, her husband, her child and her colleagues and her own boss. Matt’s also unapologetically confused and ignorant to a lot of stuff but still knowledgable. He belongs more in her world, but I couldn’t live with a writer, personally. I’d be too pissy about any success and I couldn’t trust a man being mean to me or condescending about my work. Matt still has his “manic” moments but he’s not “Matt” the way I understand him, he’s grounded but still insistent about his opinions. Mara defends him to other people. I don’t know enough literature to even have a casual conversation, I can’t blend with artists, I’m a guy in A Crash Test Dummies song complaining about artists when you go out with them.

And I’m struggling to think of a “cheating” movie that didn’t portray the cheated upon as perfect and kind and not deserving of being cheated on. It’s inexcusable to some regardless, but narratively it’s integral for the audience to at least understand the motivations of the main characters’ intentions. Even if nothing happens, like Lost in Translation, people will still see emotional cheating, and it’s still important to make their significant others less appealing by comparison.

Mara does a very depressed Bevis as Cornholio impression with her turtleneck. I feel like there’s a meta commentary about Matt as a director and creator being off the wall and controversial. He’s hiding behind death of the author stuff and being completely off the wall. Mara’s husband dips on her because he has to do another musician thing and Matt does it for her. He takes her to Niagara Falls. They kiss under the water, a nice reference to them in the square jumping over one of those fountains that come up out of a grate (I thought they were in Perth, which is the other reason I stopped on the trailer). Her friend’s already mentioned conferences are just hotbeds for affairs with likeminded people who are in their element. I’m so glad I never got this far, I have opinions nobody gives a shit about.

Matt runs into another familiar face, which will likely affect his “relationship” with Mara, strained now because she booked a separate room on another floor for him. He’s bailed on her obviously so she gets room service and refuses to go meet him with this other girl. I’ve seen that trope before, that was Bill Murray in bed with the lounge singer and now Scar Jo is pissed as hell, especially when she finds the earring of the most famous person at the conference, they fight and he tells her he loves her, she accuses him of emotional manipulation. She goes back to her husband. I prefer the pacing again, this is a lot of quick, impactful moments, we don’t linger between anything.

Matt’s father’s also dying and he passes and Mara’s immediately sympathetic and he has to face the bureaucracy  of death. Including dressing for a funeral, and the writer (I identify with this I think people believe I would’ve coughed up the most profound wedding vows or a eulogy of great import and I don’t have fucking words for this in reality) doesn’t know what to say. The funeral becomes another awkward moment for them both removing a crucifix to lie it on the ground despite Matt not wanting to touch it. 

I also saw A Ghost Story ages ago and that was hardcore mumble core I missed all the dialogue but there’s a moment the husband shares his song only we don’t get to hear it. She reconnects with the husband, takes a dry cleaning receipt, puts it in the book he wrote full of her ideas and it ends there. The trailer had this clip but there’s no context to tell you it’s the end. I like it, I don’t know if I’d buy it but I’m glad I saw it.

I’m bummed as I’m not seeing a lot on Mubi so I need to do searches. I need to do some digging for a week.

Heavenly Creatures…

I had a friend when I was eight or nine I think, who was probably so desperate to escape her reality she made up stories of cartoon characters and celebrities coming to her house and doing stuff, some of it way too explicit for a kid to be saying. We went outside where something was buried, (I think she said it was a kangaroo) and she had a story about it. She was imaginative, even before I was, and I basically believed her. Her sister had cancer, and her mother was pretty mean about how badly she was doing at school. I had a few friends like that whose parents were just assholes to them for not doing well when they might have actually unaddressed difficulties.

I haven’t seen Heavenly Creatures for ages and I forgot how much Juliet was like this girl, full of cheerful fantasies she gives to Pauline, who’s so enraptured with Juliet she joins in on the fantasy. Juliet’s certain too her novel will be published so Pauline gets caught up in her own writing, and her poem is absolutely stunning.

I’m not a Peter Jackson fan as such, but I considered this my favourite film of his. I forgot how theatrical Winslet is besides Pauline’s churlish silence. It’s such a chaotic film, his camera work is frenetic, his sets have a lot of intricate detail, the sepia tones reminiscent of old photos. Everything’s operatic and sweeping and romantic, almost in a maniacal sense. You get a lot of Bridge to Terabithia vibes, by the Lovely Bones he had more money to create this fantastic worlds the girls basically hallucinate, if you want an actual folie a duex, it’s this story. It’s a tragedy with some comedy, basically the girls use dissociation and fantasy to escape their reality.

I also had nuns come to me in the religious hospital I was in (Mummy and Daddy would never put me in the poor’s hospital). Jackson’s penchant for dealing with pantomime horror and gore is also put to good use, someone else could’ve made a rather dull or twee representation of this true story. And people probably assume Titanic was Winslet’s first role, when it was this one. She really outshines everyone, and Melanie Lynskey doesn’t get enough props for how talented she is, she wasn’t just the sappy stalker neighbour she played in Two and A Half Men, she can perform nuanced accents really well, most people never knew she was from New Zealand. She’s great in Yellowjackets. But it feels like a repeat of Ghost World where Thora Birch was just a good an actress as ScarJo but by her own admission, wasn’t “pretty enough” or willing to be pretty enough to get the same roles ScarJo did. Winslet went on to win more movie roles, Lynskey stuck to independent films, but I haven’t detected her being bitter at all.

The clay people scenes stuck in my head as much as the very Lynchian moment the girls run at the camera screaming. I assume this is part of his imagination so it’s impressive he could be this creative with the story. He felt it was better to focus on their relationship rather than the trial regarding the murder. He’s pieced together such a believable fantasy realm full of romantic movie moments, Juliet sweeping down the stairs to Pauline like a movie heroine, shades of Gone with the Wind in the staging and music and soft lighting. I still find the clay people so off-putting but such an ingenious way to bring you into their world, their love scene is less graphic by translating it through this weird clay people orgy in the castle, and he gets away with lots of fake blood and body horror that he’s known for. Their obsession with film and Orson Wells is more immersive and bizarre, and again Jackson gets to play with horror and thriller tropes to include in this amazingly cohesive blend of movie genres.

I feel like the ageing makeup on the father is a bit over the top, I don’t know if he looked too young at the time. I like Juliet’s father comes off as the villain of the story, despite Jackson saying it was a murder story with no villain. However, Pauline and Juliet defend him more than anyone and he’s the most keen to split them up without them realising. This dichotomy is well explored. Her parents were absolute assholes, they lie they’re still together after privately divorced, which was a common occurrence at the time, you think the British are proper but it’s all a smokescreen to cover up their negative aspects. If they’d been alive now, society might’ve treated them better even if they’d had unhealthy thoughts. I have this thing about blaming Society in media whenever a character is conflicted or adversely affected by a social norm being forced on them, that if you removed the norm, they’d likely have avoided their misfortune. Putting it all in a diary isn’t a good idea obviously, but Pauline wasn’t planning on getting caught, most moiderers don’t.

Gay conversion therapy also features in the story. Pauline’s affections for Juliet are “unwholesome” and also reciprocated, so rather than have Juliet’s father “fix” Juliet, he decides Pauline’s parents should get her fixed instead, it must all be Pauline’s horrible influence. She’s mentally disturbed, essentially, but going through a phase she’ll grow out of it, but they can also “zap” it out of her when the technology becomes available. None of that will work. I don’t think they were necessarily unwell, just traumatised and desperate to escape their oppressive existences, the courts declared them sane but were less certain if homosexuality was at play given Pauline doesn’t admit same sex attraction to any other woman. And homosexuality was an illness, practically a comorbidity of insanity, or intrinsically linked. Using Pauline’s diary obviously excludes Juliet’s thoughts but there’s so much for Winslet to work with from Pauline’s account of her. Juliet’s letters are included.

Some people also need to take a lesson in when not to use any music at all. The murder scene is interlaced with the fantasy of them separated for good. You can only hear screams trapped in an empty void. No music, and the score is otherwise present and used for effect, but the lack of it gives the scene more weight and terror. Crash evidently abuses music for emotional effect to a manipulative degree, as do a lot of other movies.

The trial is then a footnote to the story, set to tragic music, the two were told to stay apart as a condition of their release, they were too young for the death penalty. But the separation condition wasn’t true, apparently. And Pauline has no individual Wikipedia page, bizarrely, Juliet does, she managed to go by a different name and get published and wasn’t found out to be a murderess until much later. I vaguely remember a documentary that brought the murder to my attention, and I’m always fascinated by romances that were broken apart by horrid circumstances. Sapphic yearning is a whole sub-genre of romantic and erotic fiction, you could have really exploited this aspect but Jackson’s respectful in his portrayal I just want to know the reaction people had to his clay people orgy scene. It obviously survived scripting, pre-production, production and pre-screening, and he’s kind of New Zealand’s answer to Jim Henson, having his own production company full of people who can come up with these costumes, it’s sort of his brand. I don’t want to see Meet the Feebles or any of his older films, but I remember seeing them in video stores as a kid before I realised Jackson was behind them, so when he was given Lord of the Rings, it felt worth pointing out his background. He’s been lauded for his practical filmmaking, I do appreciate Lord of the Rings from a film perspective I just don’t love them to sit through them multiple times. So this will remain my favourite film of his while I’m not inclined to explore any other film of his once or more than a couple of times. I was irritated by the Hobbit being three movies, which wasn’t his plan, we collectively know where the blame lies for that shit.

Skins, it’s good enough as it was…

I’m a OG Skins fan - season 1 and 2 and nothing after. And I did do S3 & 4 hoping to really like them, but I had a couple of failed attempts and just didn’t care for what I saw ultimately. Effy’s a great character, easily the best, I simply couldn’t buy her being upset her parents might be splitting. She’s sympathetic to her mum’s nervous breakdown but I felt like she hated her dad too much to care if he left. Season 1 is a lot of fun but Season 2 kinda makes me sad.

I did see this legally on streaming and was pissed as hell the soundtrack was modified. After Daria was badly affected by the lack of licensed music (I had to concede it wasn’t that bad but my discs skipped a lot and I got sick of watching it recently so I gave up), I’ve been annoyed any time a favourite scene has been regurgitated onto streaming without the song that made it my favourite scene. This is a show with an already banger soundtrack, much like Daria, you don’t fuck with perfection, unless you put clauses in your airing contracts to only ever use licensed songs in the original broadcast and never again. Streaming has really fucked with these things.

But being a Degrassi fan, I figured I’d like Skins but I cannot even remember what prompted me to watch it in the first place, I might’ve been bored enough, it was probably around the time I was living without a streaming service and trying to find whatever I could to entertain myself like Queer as Folk. Skins has a lot more humour since it was a UK show, it was better written than Degrassi, it walked so Euphoria could run, and I’ve heard too much bad about Euphoria to give it a chance now, so no. Also, I can’t stand Sydney Sweeney and she’s overrated as fuck. (I also realised I can’t watch Gilmore Girls and tolerate Melissa McCarthy at the same time). I think My Mad Fat Diary was also pretty close to matching Skins for humour and drama being well blended but I prefer Skins.

I’m aware a lot of people find shows insisting on raw (and I do mean raw) depictions of teens are offputting but I think for the most part they weren’t as pointlessly gratuitous as 13 Reasons Why. Tell a lie, it all gets a bit OTT by end of season 2.

I guess I can go over the characters, who are really well rounded and believable with understandable flaws. Michelle’s kind of stuck out to me halfway through season 2, I always get bummed out by love triangle/amnesiac storylines, but Michelle’s desperation to get Tony back and up after he’s had a traumatic brain injury is very teenage and unreasonable. You get she’s heartbroken after Tony admitted he loved her before being smacked by a bus, and it’s a very soap opera trope that’s actually handled convincingly, but she’s really unfair and impatient with Tony. Up until now, he’s been a dick on multiple levels, she’s been through the wringer, she’s a victim of his egotism, but at that point Tone’s been… hit by a fucking bus, has a sketchy memory and nerve damage so he’s lost his mojo. I do like Shell overall but she’s very snotty by the time they go on the camping trip she insists upon. She also sleeps with Sid, Tony’s other victim of manipulation, Sid being madly in love with Michelle until he finally realises Cassie’s the one. And he fucks shit up with her too. Michelle and Sid aren’t meant to be, and Tony realises this despite messing with their emotions and convincing Sid he should go after Michelle after he cheats on her with a snobby girl whose weird affectations I’m so obsessed with I imitate her all the time, Abigail. I liked Michelle with Abigail’s brother, Josh, who is technically mentally unhinged and makes Tony into a saint later, but it’s a bummer. She and Sid have a collective trauma from Tony’s accident, Sid’s compounded by losing his dad and Cassie with his dumb assumptions. So when she sleeps with Sid finally it makes total sense. I wouldn’t call her a chav, she’s really cool and pretty without being a total stuck up cow, her concerns are complex but still excusably teenage. Her mother’s the selfish type who victimises themselves after multiple divorces but they still have a good bond and can actually express care for one another. So Michelle is okay, but Cassie is so much prettier and got stuck comparing herself to Michelle.

Sid’s a lot of fun and absolutely adorable but stupid as fuck, he’s more depth than Anwa in terms of horny virgin boy (Anwa does get a girl pretty quickly while Sid goes without for a while). He suffers from Tony’s manipulations as well, Tony being a bored egotist and overachiever of upper-middle class parents, so he stirs the pot with his friends and throws emotional grenades and takes Sid for granted even if they’re childhood friends. Sid’s been in love with Michelle forever but tolerates her being Tony’s girlfriend while watching her be treated like crap, but he can’t exactly treat her better. Meanwhile, poor Cassie (who’s manic pixie dream girl coded but subtle and toned down, she’s more fairylike) falls in love with him, though he a) doesn’t care because Michelle and b) remains oblivious to Cassie’s obvious hints. He doesn’t deserve her, she’s emotionally unstable and he’s emotionally immature, so he can’t handle the misunderstanding (cliched as it is) that she’s not fucking two gay Scotts she’s living with. Sid’s insecurity fucks him over but you do feel sorry for him, his dad (the angry Doctor) takes out his insecurity on Sid, his mum (who was in an episode of British Whose Line I’ve watched to death) eventually takes off and only returns after the dad dies. Sid remains an underachiever but he’s still loveable and him standing up to Tony is great, but he’s always compromised by his mates, so he’s loyal to a fault and it really fucks Cassie over. Justice for Cassie. The fact NOBODY is okay with him and Michelle speaks volumes. I do love Sid but he’s a twat. And he accuses Cassie of not being there for him when his dad died but she literally came back to see him and didn’t actually fucking cheat, and couldn’t use a computer to prove she wasn’t screwing the Scotts. So she didn’t do anything, it was a misunderstanding, and she doesn’t apologise for anything really, she didn’t fuck a kid. She was cheated on and he bitches about having to apologise. Shut up, Sid. Now I dislike you.

You could hate Anwa a lot for how “extra” he is, but this is Dev Patel pre-glowup and he’s good value. He doesn’t do a lot of shitty crap aside from reject Maxxie, his gay best buddy, for being gay since he’s Muslim. Until we discover his dad’s an absolute legend and doesn’t even care about Maxxie or gays, and he just said, shit is fucked, my God’ll sort it out in the wash so it’s all fine. It’s adorable. Anwa’s dad is a champ. Anwa’s sadly been misguided about his own religion, it’s kind of sad he didn’t know his own dad was more accepting. And he is a hypocrite, praying five times a day doesn’t make him less of a scoundrel kid. But he’s silly and loveable and a drum n’ bass poser who’s easily led around by his cock. I do like him, I get why he sleeps with Sketch, Maxxie’s stalker, he can’t help himself and falls for her antics. He makes me laugh, he would’ve made me laugh as a teen. He’s mum’s a doll as well, she’s more forgiving of his bad grades. He and Sketch kinda just wind up in the same place and he freaks out knowing she’s all he’s got left. None of his mates can party with him, they’re already leaving.

I should move onto Maxxie, the openly gay dancer whose dad is Bill Bailey and dances with a dog, it’s fucking cute. I love Maxxie to bits, he gets bullied by the homophobes in his council flat, one of them a closeted gay who jumps him in the woods. He’s highly confident and talented and knows it. He’s got a lot going for him but he kind of fades into the background after Sketch is revealed as his stalker. I think they could’ve done so much more with him. He even gets screwed by Tony’s brief brush with bisexuality, and it sucks he gets thrown under the bus for going along with it in front of Michelle, unbeknownst to him. You can kind of tell when channels and networks don’t commit to gay characters because of complaints or lower ratings, so he’s mostly tokenised by then. Justice for Maxxie. He and Anwa are the closest, but he has a history with Tony and takes care of him after the accident, so he’s forgiving, unless it’s Sketch and Anwa for sleeping together. But he loves his friends dearly and we love him. He’s also obscenely spunky. I’ve a soft spot for him. He and Anwa make up after Sketch turns Anwa into his clone, I can’t believe I forgot that, she gets “dahumped” and the boys are back on. I won’t say anything separate about Sketch, she’s caring for her disabled mother so she’s pathetic but they still villainise her as well because of her obsession. She’s just stuck to Maxxie from her fixations she doesn’t really have much to do on her own other than poison Michelle to take her place in the musical and frame the sketchy drama teacher with molestation. Maxxie does get a boyfriend at the end called James but they don’t do anything physical. James shows up at the funeral, now he’s one of the gang, but he feels awkward about it. Poor Maxxie really is relegated in season after Sketch.

Chris is a complete bellend on the surface but he’s probably the best of the guys. He’s basically drug addled and abandoned by his mother early on, his dad also refusing to acknowledge him. He’s lost an older brother, we find out later it’s due to a neurological condition, so Chris’s ending is so tragic for how positive he is the face of persistent adversity from his own fuck ups. He’s his own worst enemy but you root for him anyway. But when he does get his shit together, his psychology teacher Angie comes back to take advantage. She sleeps with him in the first season, really mucks him around, and they make her look like a right hag by the time she comes back to take advantage. By then, he’s hooked up with Jal, Michelle’s bestie who also gets trodden on by Michelle’s obsession with Tony. He and Jal are perfect and Angie manages to ruin it, by way of Cassie being interfering and weird (I will get to her, I’m so mad at her character assassination after she leaves Sid). He does move in with Cass later, winds up a pothead and finally dies tragically, unaware Jal’s pregnant with his baby. Chris could’ve been a character in Trainspotting for how he fucks anything good up with his own compulsive shit. But he’s too loveable to hate. Tony does care about him more than you would expect, Chris’s mum leaving is grossly unfair, he’s not in a secure place as a kid and is destined to be a screwball adult. It’s not entirely his fault. Angie at least leaves him with her flat and he tries to patch shit up with Jal, who he’s taught to “live a little” in exchange for “trying harder”. He can at least rationalise why he’s a fuckup and he pulls it together even if it’s to sell drugs with Cass, they have a nice place. The set up of his brother’s death leaves no hint of it being hereditary, him being sick still comes as a shock, he’s more tragic for being abandoned by his family and he goes on living even though he knows there’s a chance he’ll suffer the same fate. Jal tells him she’s pregnant while he’s conked out and he’s afraid she’ll leave if he’s sick, she does eventually tell him the truth, I thought she didn’t. His mum comes back knowing he’s going to get worse so it’s more obvious she ran out of fear of losing him too. We end up meeting the dad at the very end when he tells Sid he doesn’t want the mates there. We’ve only heard his voice before, he’s more slimy and judgemental and accuses all his friends of ruining Chris’s life. So Tony steals the coffin and Britney’s playing and it’s brilliant, and they fuck it up on the stream. The dad has to suffer through false platitudes and losing the coffin, and fireworks the kids let off whilst standing on the hill above watching Chris’s funeral.

I want to discuss Cassie before I get to Jal. We don’t see Cassie as a destructive force initially, she’s basically Cassandra from the Greek mythology (we get a Pandora who I do love but not enough to see her with Effy in season 3). From the start she’s fresh out of the psych ward from an eating disorder and (I think) pill addiction. Her oblivious hippy, wino parents ignore her and her issues, she takes care of the baby they’ve birthed for no good reason. (Her dad’s also from Men Behaving Badly, I shouldn’t love that show as much as I do). She’s lonely and latches onto Sid, she’s not besties with Michelle, she’s also self-destructive and vulnerable and Sid doesn’t care as much as he claims to. Her ED’s not really a focus later on, she’s a drifter and acting more and more unhinged, though she brings up the power not eating had over others. Once she knows about Sid and Michelle, who wouldn’t have done it had Sid not been a tool, she spirals and basically ends up homeless with nobody. So she’s so fucking mad at everyone but she get so villainous and I hate it. She hooks up with girls and guys and gets Chris in trouble. I hate it when she’s not a bad character, it means she’s less “manic” and more evil which sucks. She eventually disappears to America after finding Chris dead and Sid chases after her at last. We don’t know if they find one another, the show ends there. Also, I don’t know how she funds this shit, she’s dropped out of school and doesn’t have work, she sells drugs when she’s living with Chris. She can’t get a fucking break and it shits me since she’s my favourite and I love her. She’s kind of part of the group but not, and kind of everyone’s supplier. Cassie did nothing fucking wrong. Sid doesn’t deserve her. She proposes dating Tony to get back at Sid and Michelle. He’s much nicer to her after the accident. But Cassie basically whores herself out and makes rent from selling drugs and still seems to have more agency on her own. She’s probably too mean to Jal when they go on their weird little adventure and she gets even more cryptic about Chris. To be fair, Cass is actually there for Jal when Michelle ditches her again for Tony simping after all that time. And Michelle comes through in the end but still has to chase Jal and deal with Cassie as well, Cass isn’t all that forgiving either. Oh, god I forgot about the bitchy principal blasting Funky Town during Cassie’s makeup exam. I’ve had to do a deferred exam and nobody let me dance. And I still pulled it off after an actual nervous breakdown, people were legit mad I actually did well. Cassie’s then forced to sit through dinner with the enemies. Sid’s needlessly vicious to Cass, expecting her to be okay with it is a bit much. They do kinda bash her up like that one sick friend who they all get sick of dealing with. Cass and Shell have very similar noses actually, she’s reasonably pissed Michelle and Tony might not even make it through college. She doesn’t want people to leave her but she can’t deal with Chris going and has to run. I don’t really like she’s so often left alone, she and Chris make good pals for how silly they both are, I don’t know if they were hinting at some flirtation, seriously when they are together they’re much better suited.  She can’t even face him and Cassie has to deal with Chris losing a chance to see his mum again. She’s forced to see a lot and nobody supports her through it. She’s probably the most the traumatised overall, everyone else kinda moves on from their worst moments. She fucking has to watch Chris die and everyone treats her like a pain in the bum. It’s horrifying and there’s nothing she can do, people persistently bail on her and she leaves the country. She runs into a guy called Adam and lives with him haphazardly and learns not everything has to be transactional but the bad shit won’t end. I don’t get why she runs to America specifically. I know they made the US version, maybe this episode was a backdoor pilot, by the looks it’s not but it could’ve been during negotiations to make the US version. Adam leaves her too and lets her live in his place as compensation for fucking abandoning her too. He leaves her with an apple and a fresh start if she can get her shit together.

I’m going to leave Tony until last, so I’d rather mention Jalanada. Jal’s the token black of the show but they do well to avoid that aspect since she’s from a rich family with her music producer/artist dad. Her mum’s taken off, and the school treats her musical accomplishments as their achievement because nobody knows she’s not an impoverished black girl. The music thing falls by the wayside while she puts up with Michelle and Tony’s drama, even though she knows about Abigail and doesn’t make it clear enough to Michelle, she picks up the pieces after Tony mid 2000s manages to send naked pictures of Abigail from Josh’s phone so Michelle thinks Josh is a psycho. Jal’s a much better friend than anyone deserves, she looks after everyone like the sister/mother hen type. She gets her clarinet smashed up by drug dealers who Sid fucks over. But she’s forgiving too and she forgives Chris. They are a good couple and Jal deserves better, she’s ignored by her dad for her dropkick brothers who have no talent, and her mother leaves the family, she’s not square with her dad who says she plays “rootie tootie” music. I appreciate they made a point of her being affluent but still horribly lost. I know she goes to a major music school audition after losing another contest earlier on, we see her with the clarinet in that godawful 9/11 musical. She struggles to be the hot one but when she breaks out of her shell everyone adores her. Jal’s great and a better person than Michelle, and Michelle still makes everything about her while Jal’s pregnant and stuck with bigger bloody problems. Jal didn’t deserve anything she got, she’s the best to her friends and they don’t give her much back until after Chris dies. Her dad trashes her for being pregnant, I think her mum comes home but at least her bros are sweet to her in the end. She’s carried a lot as the only girl who’s got too much expectation on her compared to her siblings. She goes spare when Chris is wheeled away, it’s sad they have the best relationship only for Chris to die. I think she ends up terminating the kid. She and Michelle bond the most at the end, Michelle’s technically in a better place and Jal confesses to the abortion and Michelle takes Jal to where she met Chris. Michelle’s a good egg when the chips are down, Jal’s able to let go and really say fuck it in memory of Chris.

I’ll put in a bit about Effy from what we get of her. She’s actually a big part of the story as Tony’s much cooler, far more delinquent little sister, the pair of them simpatico in driving their dad mad and implicit in each other’s misbehaviour. Tony is protective of her to a massive degree when Josh manages to use her in a scheme for revenge on Tony incriminating him against Michelle, who he really liked and was genuinely kind to but then he also gets villainised once he demands Tony have sex with Effy while she’s passed out on his mum’s clean pharmaceuticals. Effy isn’t even aware Josh is using her, she’s just gone out for a night with a stupid friend and it’s like most of her usual nights out. She’s along for the ride and willingly gets injected but winds up a pawn. Tony’s traumatised by the ordeal and we get to see how terrified he can be. Effy winds up reading him stories, she witnesses him getting pancaked and has the biggest reaction we’ve seen from her. She reads Orpheus and Eurydice to him, this is when the Greek mythology gets deeper. Effy’s then planted as the new Tony and our major character, then she becomes the new fan favourite. I love her maturity, she makes Michelle and Sid look like tossers when they show up to check on Tony. She protects him as he did her, they don’t get in fights, but someone else asks if he wants to fuck his sister so whether they were hamming up a weird intimacy between them, I’m not sure. Effy rules. I kinda like to leave her at the very end of season 2 when she’s eyeing the camera from Tony’s bed, bookending the shot of Tony we got at the start. Effy fixes shit, she gets shit done, she’s more mature than all the others, she’s too cool for everything. I prefer seeing her less of a mess than she is later on. She practically picks up the fucking pieces of all their shambles, including her own parents. She parentifies everyone it’s insane. I like she gets her own episode at her all-girls school where she’s dumped after her night with Josh. Then she has to babysit Pandora, and she tells her outright she doesn’t have friends. I think that’s actually why I love Effy a lot. I think maybe the weird friend she went out with who talked too much was going to be Pandora, can’t verify it though. Effy just treats people’s soap operas as beneath her since she’s too smart to fall into this crap herself. Even though she shuns the notion of caring about others and for once Tony calls her on her BS.

So we get to Tony Stonem, our “hero”. Nicholas Hoult is a treasure though I hated him as JD Salinger, I do love he made friends with the Kombucha Girl and they did an interview on YouTube which thrilled me a lot. You think he’s the real villain for how he uses powerplays on his best friend and girlfriend, but ultimately we learn he weirdly loves them as this mismanaged throuple and he has to win back Michelle while convincing Sid he doesn’t love Michelle at all. He’s rarely humiliated or even made to look slightly like a fool, so Michelle having enough of his shit momentarily is a shock. He loses his friends over the Josh stunt so he’s not rewarded for his bollocks, then he comes to his senses, gets pancaked and loses them again. You hate Abigail for manipulating him despite him using her against Josh and Michelle. I don’t have a paragraph for Abigail I just love the way she says “fronds” in her posh voice, she’s hammy otherwise and too soapy as a pesky foil to Tony and Michelle. He’s still enough of a dick people don’t help him until Effy’s in trouble. I don’t like the girl he meets at the college, he’s still going through his Underworld journey to get back to himself, he’s frustrated by his temporary disability and ends up in embarrassing situations but the little girls all love him too much to laugh at him being “mental”. Him being impotent doesn’t fuck with him as much as it does Michelle, he isn’t that angry until that mystery girl helps him get his mojo back, he still slips into “old Tony” and calls Michelle nips which she can’t stand, it’s more out of spite by then for going with Sid. They’re his family but they don’t see it for him being so manipulative. They love Tony but he has to learn to love them back. This was such a huge role to take and pull off as sympathetically as Hoult does, he’s memorable in the way you don’t want to remember James Van Der Beek as Dawson. He’s a cheeky boy who grows up eventually, his parents still think he’s a selfish twit and don’t cope with his accident, he puts more into recovering himself and what he lost than anyone around him. It’s sad Michelle and Sid kind of abandon him so they have to look like twats by then. Sid fails to stand up for Michelle to Tony, he comes back and puts it right, and Cassie gets to benefit from Sid being knocked in the head. He’s right about everything. Sid’s not enough for Michelle and he doesn’t love her the way she needs. And he gives Cassie a hug which she deserved more than Sid. Tony does get what he wants eventually and has some humility still, you don’t believe he can be moved by anything until he loses everything. But he fights to get it all back again and you want to see him get it. He’s fragile still but more optimistic.

They all gather to read their results and realise they’re about to be separated anyway. Michelle and Tony have to face splitting. Anwa has his results already but we don’t know until Maxxie reads them and he goes home to Sketch defeated. Sketch is just desperate to have a date with him and keep him. Jal goes to Chris’s grave and his dad speaks to her at last, admitting he was a shit dad. The guy who plays the dad’s been in a few things as a nervy type. Jal’s basically standing with the grandad of her aborted baby. Anwa goes to see Maxxie off, he’s not even really been in this season comparatively, Maxxie convinces Anwa to go with them, Sketch left behind. I don’t think the show wanted to give her anything good for how antagonistic she is. Cassie’s trying to get by in the US as a waitress, I don’t even know what her status is, technically she could be deported but she’s white so that’ll never happen. Sid, Michelle and Tony have to tie their crap up while they drive Sid to the airport to find Cassie. Time to Pretend by MGMT plays, it’s memorable and they fuck it up in the stream. I had to plug a decrepit external drive into an outdated Macbook Pro just to fish these files off it then onto a USB stick because the external drive was too old for the Linux system I run off the TV, just to see that scene as it was. Tony and Sid finally have a good moment. It’s got the feel of a proper final episode where the actors are really saying goodbye. You can have a short a sweet series with more impact than something lengthy. Tony realises he’s losing his mates and his girl anyway despite all the drama. He’s not ready for it to end. It’s stupid how people think you should feel before ending school, it’s not the same. Tony and Michelle admit they had a good thing but it won’t last. Sid gets treated like a vagrant looking for Cassie, and we get Effy in all her potential glory.

The show’s properly encapsulated in these two seasons. There doesn’t need to be more. I kinda hate there is. I love all the parents, they have more influence than some Degrassi parents, they’re flawed and willing to compromise with their kids, though I do hate Tony’s dad a lot. He’s a twat and I hate his mum can’t cope without him and takes Tony’s pills when the dad’s so detached from the reality of his family’s troubles. They could’ve made all the families the same income bracket, there’s enough deviation from the norm while still staying in a believable lane. Also their “next on” trailers were really well edited and clever. The theme is great, the vibes are great, the mid 2000s was a great period for shows that genuinely didn’t age that badly. I always try to do character bios so the plot jumps all over the place. But this is as good if not better than I remember, I still think Cass gets way too much shit for how she reacts to shit like she’s supposed to roll over and live with it. Tony and Michelle eclipse a lot of the other characters because romantic leads so often do, the ensemble gets watered down, but Chris and Jal make a big part of the ending. Because Maxxie and Anwa could only have race/sexuality issues once you deal with it, you have to find something else or give them nothing. Maxxie having a female stalker was interesting but we don’t see anything of his dancing or trying to make it into a dance school the way we see with Jal and her music college. There’s only 19 episodes, we get what we get and it’s good. And I like finishing there, I don’t need more.

 

Sex and The City - It’s just one of those shows.

I caught this in chunks when it was airing, it was enough to cite it in media class essays. I didn’t watch it religiously but I saw enough to know about Carrie and how it all ended before those insufferable movies came out. I liked how all the relationships were tied up neatly, it seemed like a really nice way to end everything. I’ve gotten sucked into recaps and deep dives on the new and old series, and it put a few characters in a new light, I didn’t see enough of Steve to realise how toxic and childish he is. Big is still the worst, Carrie doesn’t deserve the treatment but she kinda does, I guess. I hated she cheated on Aidan. (I wish I could watch Northern Exposure because I adored Corbertt’s character, he was better than the lead and had a great energy that offset the lead’s cynicism). So I was pro-Aidan only to realise he was pretty needy and judgemental and fell victim to the need to make the non-endgame love interest look bad enough you root for the other guy/girl to get the main character back. Carrie is an awful human being, but she was human enough to relate to. I grew up thinking I was alone in my concern about having bodily functional issues around an intimate partner would be met with disdain, so I had to cover all that up, I didn’t know it was a common concern for women that you don’t be a human being in a man’s space. Women are shamed for being human, usually by other women, most men don’t care. But feeling comfortable on that level was so important and I felt seen by the show, it gave me a degree of respect for its content and what it was achieving in terms of discourse. It was also as guilty of missing the point and being horribly prejudice against certain demographics much like Queer as Folk did, and it would’ve been as ageist too.

But it’s also horribly dated now, I know what a diaphragm is, and I also used to be concerned about that stuff before I had sex. I wasn’t sure what to expect from it, I at least met someone who was reasonably mature, I did decide to avoid inexperienced guys in that regard to spare myself any embarrassment. I’m glad I didn’t date many guys or had experiences that would result in STDs. Pregnancy scares, however, are par the course, shit happens and I wasn’t a fan of the pill. I’m still not.

Sadly, I think the show got permanently stuck in a time-warp. The characters are in their early 30s, but the actors are closer to 40, so I’m finding a lot of boomer/gen x- cuspers (like me being a millennial-gen-X cusper) tend to have boomer mentalities and can’t seem to progress into the 21st century. I thought this was a strictly 2000s show but it began in 1998, so it was a postish Melrose Place show (including Darren Star), it leaned on relatability over soapy drama, but it was also supposed to be comedic. Dragging it into this era is an obvious mistake, it’s being slammed for how out of touch it is, the lack of diversity has to be overcompensated for, so they created a detestable non binary character then blamed the hatred from the audience on homophobia. The original show was transphobic, biphobic and racist, it was the victim of the late 90s, but to drag it into this era and act like the characters never evolved with its audience is absurd. There’s also a fierce sense of technophobia and neo-luddite behaviour that people in their 50s shouldn’t be exhibiting. I also don’t believe an entire podcast would be shut down from one person refusing to do one ad read. Was it imperative Carrie do it? Give it to someone else. You should only lose the sponsorship, not the entire show. I didn’t like the movies existed, that they’ve dragged Aidan through the whole thing once Big’s dead, that Samantha’s just a parody of herself by the second movie. Kim Cattrall’s unfair treatment considering she’s the best part of the show and arguably the best actress of the four is so over the top for how much of a fan favourite she is. I don’t hate Sarah Jessica Parker, but I dislike her and her attitude to the entire thing. I felt bad for Kristin Davis trying to promote her humanitarian efforts on a morning show and getting goaded into discussing the show and be involved in being a dumb skit, so her coming back seemed weird, she’s not the greatest, she was kinda fun in Melrose. Cynthia Nixon’s also a good actress, I thought she’d have shied from more of this considering she turns into an insufferable simp for the non-binary character. She’s supposed to be the most mature and the voice of reason, she devolves into a lovesick teenager and I refuse to believe this totally mirrored Nixon’s own late-stage homosexual awakening.

There were too many cringe moments for me to ever want to watch this in full, I can watch these recaps coming from younger audiences who can call out the problematic shit with no qualms about the obscene backlash people in my generation give for them being that offended, I am so defending their stance and I support their reactions, they’ve not been cursed with our weird sense of stupid propriety over being “polite” and “unaffected” by offensive statements. So when you have 50/60 somethings trying to appeal to the 20/30 something crowd now, it misses all the marks. Stuff that’s a clear violation of bodily agency, or clear sexual harassment, gets treated with slapstick humour rather than alarm. Again, I’ve noticed older women who had to put up with that shit when they were navigating the corporate world in the 70s and 80s expected us to put up with that same bullshit from men when it was an obvious HR violation. I hate being stuck where I am generationally because I don’t have the younger generation’s conviction calling that shit out.

It’s the vibe of the thing…

Sometimes I put on Martha Marcy May Marlene to get sucked into the scenery of the film. I like the grainy, natural, dank atmosphere, the mood of the locations, they’re contrasting a lot of the tension in the film itself, in the chaos going on internally in Martha’s head, the order Lucy tries in instil. Even the chaos and conformity she deals with in the cult become seductive for how beautiful the location is. It’s ended up one of those comfort movies I need to turn off certain parts of my brain despite the themes.

Lost in Translation is another “vibe” movie. Cultural insensitivities aside, the mood set within the hotel and even the nighttime streets of Tokyo is so ethereal and even liminal. I have a weird need to feel burnt out with jet lag in hotels late at night, unable to sleep. Everything feels hermetically sealed and encapsulates you, the gentle lighting and reflections in the windows create such an atmosphere you get sucked into. I’m not descriptive enough but I can easily describe this sensation I get simply viewing a film outside of engaging in the plot.

I can’t think of many other things I go back to based entirely on mood over story. Maybe That Thing You Do gives me a vibe, or Empire Records, but they tend to tap into the teen you were when you originally watched it. Say Anything… has beautiful scenes but it’s less consistent. I’ve avoided films I know upset me, I’ve diverted attention from “depressing” shit to avoid having extreme emotions, even good ones, I’ve been having hyper moments I hate triggering with something I find uplifting.

I’m also fucking pissed I’m growing a list of films I legit want to see and still can’t stream. I’m actually wishing video stores were a thing again, I could’ve rented the fucking DVD by now. YouTube has free movies but they’re largely crap, I won’t rent off YouTube considering what I pay, I feel like they should include a month of free rentals with every subscription, you can rent whatever the fuck you want for no extra cost, fuckin’ Audible allows for monthly credits, one movie or show a month doesn’t seem that fucking unreasonable. Maybe you’d keep subscribers longer. My willingness to go to a movie theatre was resurrected based on the 28 Years Later trailer, and the new Nosferatu. I still want to see fuckin’ Challengers and Poor Things, I despise they’re not on Netflix and I have to wait to see if they maybe show up one day. Same time, I don’t want the pressure of watching a film about to “leave” the platform and I’m nowhere near in the mood to see it but you’re forcing me to make time for it or it’ll disappear. So then I don’t do it out of spite. I know shit comes back but there’s no guarantee it will. I could chance buying these and hope they’re good, I’m so averse to renting off a platforms I already throw money at.

Sia Part II. It was worse than I realised.

I appreciate Evasive’s series on “This group watches this offensive film” but sometimes audiences think they know what they want, so they demanded “Autistics Watch Sia’s Music” and somehow this was the most offensive film you could present any group of people.

I already talked about the autism shit, I know she was diagnosed, I think she’s left the internet at the right time. But I also didn’t know she’d ended up in the weirdest, most isolated social bubble. Because she inserted herself into the film as herself, who was purchasing oxy and other pain meds illegally from Music’s sister to ship to Haiti on the basis other charities couldn’t even get on the ground to do it. So somehow, on top of insulting autistic people, she managed to be a White Saviour character, all while convincing Ben Schwartz he’d look good in cornrows (and a slight tan as well). There were a lot of people involved in this who were scammed into something really inappropriate, surely while reading the script someone should’ve said, “Hang on, Sia. This is racist/ableist maybe don’t put it in.” That way, it probably would’ve cut itself into nonexistence given there was nothing salvageable. Kate Hudson can’t just drunkenly blurt out she doesn’t care another character from Africa has AIDS while hitting on them. You can’t just “crush autistic kids with love “ it’s actually illegal in many states. It was Autism Speaks propaganda, but the character of Music has no development, she’s only a catalyst for everyone else to revolve around while Kate Hudson goes through a cliched drug addict storyline. Then she decides not to dump Music in a care home. All we know is she loves dogs so another “love interest” with autism buys her one despite never interacting with her and being killed off right after. Music is exactly how Autism Speaks wants us to see these kids, as needlessly troublesome, deadweight stress-inducing burdens that need to be either fixed or isolated from society, or at worse, exterminated. I don’t think Kate Hudson’s character is supposed to look good when she’s demanding Music “behave and get all her shit out of her system”. If anything, you could argue she’s autistic but had to mask her meltdowns and she turned to drugs and booze. I know Sia went through all this herself with incorrect diagnoses like Bipolar, her music reflected her own spiral, if she wanted to make a movie about her experiences, she did a better job of that while tacking on a whole other pointless character to maybe generate interest in the film. It feels highjacked by her ego.

I feel awful for Maddie now seeing she really was going full R-word for no good reason, and clearly knew she was doing an insulting performance and had Sia talk her through this and trick her into thinking it was an honest portrayal of ONE human with developmental disorders which barely looked like actual autism. In the 90s and early 2000s, you had your Gilbert Grapes and I am Sams and Rain Mans, that were supposed to be honest but were exploitative even by standards back then. This was made in 2020 where anyone with any sense would know this was wrong. And she had three years of editing while clearly isolating herself where she could’ve just given up and saved herself the public humiliation, but pushed through and wound up putting herself back in rehab. It didn’t serve her, the public or autism. The best it did was really, finally demonise Autism Speaks and expose their shitty agenda. They’ve “given up” finding a cure but they’re still misrepresenting shit and blaming externalities which have nothing to do with anything.

And that overshadows the racism in the film. If she wanted to make her dumb music videos with their simplistic, Play School BS production values, she could have. If Maddie hasn’t distanced herself from Sia by now, she needs to. It’s bizarre Sia asserted Maddie was on the verge of being exploited then exploited her anyway. Sia’s gone back to making music, I think she was better off writing for other people when she was in her pre-Guetta days making reasonably solid albums and memorable songs that were overused in TV shows and commercials. We didn’t need this movie, all good intentions aside, what a way to pave a road to the hell that is being cancelled on Twitter. And being cancelled as much more to do with how big you are and not what you did. It’s about how badly people want you to fail more than the crime itself, otherwise other unknowns would’ve suffered backlash for doing exactly what a hugely popular person did. And everyone bounces back, nobody’s ever cancelled. But if you can see yourself being subjected to this amount of hatred before you even do the thing, or release it, maybe don’t. She hoped the sincerity would outweigh the offensiveness. Sorry.