Miscellaneous Movie Moments XCIII (May & June 2023)

I love summer movie season. I love living ten minutes away from a movie theatre. What a time to be alive!

The Hating Game | Big George Foreman | Love Again | The Green Knight | Five Easy Pieces | Fast X | Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse | You Hurt My Feelings | The Flash | Transformers: Rise of the Beasts | The Little Mermaid (2023) | Elemental | Asteroid City | No Hard Feelings | Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny

Miscellaneous Movie Moments XCI (April 2023)

We've reached the time of year--long days and mild weather--when I will go see pretty much any film that's not a horror movie. I am largely omnivorous.



Although I've got to confess: I did not diligently take notes on the miscellaneous films I watched this month, so it's mostly bullet-ish points to go along with the usual GIFs.

Dungeons and Dragons: Honor Among Thieves | A Thousand and One | Suzume | Air | Renfield | The Super Mario Bros. Movie | Chevalier | L'Avventura | Star Wars: Episode VI--Return of the Jedi | Are You There, God? It's Me, Margaret.

Miscellaneous Movie Moments LXXXIX (February + Partial March 2023)

I didn't quite watch all of the Oscar films, but I made a decent dent! Plus the latest in MCU, of course.

Tár | Causeway | Aftersun | Marcel the Shell with Shoes On | Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania | Close | Empire of Light | Babylon | The Fabelmans | Puss in Boots: The Last Wish | Triangle of Sadness | The Sea Beast | Mrs. Harris Goes to Paris

Miscellaneous Movie Moments LXXXVII (November & December 2022)

Black Panther: Wakanda Forever | Rise of the Guardians | Slumberland | Avatar | Avatar: The Way of Water | Ratatouille | Christmas with a Prince

Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, 11 November 2022, Century Olympia 

I went to a 9 AM showing of the film, forgetting it would inevitably start with a funeral. Guys, I wept watching the friggin' Marvel Studios logo.

Four specific things I really, really love about #WakandaForever:

Could You Repeat That? CXCIII

In anticipation of my upcoming move, I've been burning through my hardcovers so I can donate/give away some books beforehand. I have...I have read a lot recently.

Outlawed, Anna North
And so I began my criminal career there in the house of God, with a leaky pen instead of a pistol and books instead of silver for my reward.

When He Was Wicked, Julia Quinn, x2
Michael wondered what the legal ramifications were for strangling a knight of the realm. Surely nothing he couldn't live with.

Legendborn, Tracy Deonn
I gaze hopefully down the hall as if someone might appear and rescue me from the Schrodinger's Cat of Conscious Boys scenario I find myself in, but it's empty and unhelpful.



These Violent Delights, Chloe Gong
There was a direct correlation between her willingness to be civil and the distance between them. With him several strides away, she wanted to commit homicide a little less.

Our Violent Ends, Chloe Gong
"Less than an hour ago, you wanted me dead."
"I said I wanted you dead," Roma confirmed. "I never said I didn't love you."

Miscellaneous (Oscar) Movie Moments LXXXIV (March 2022)

It's OSCAR SEASON, baby. I spent my entire Spring Break watching all the films I hadn't already seen and it was so worth it.

I'll probably post a full Oscars index post tomorrow or Sunday. Anyway. Onward!

Drive My Car | Summer of Soul | West Side Story | Licorice Pizza | Nightmare Alley | The Hand of God | The Mitchells vs. the Machines | CODA | Attica | The Tragedy of Macbeth | Coming 2 America | Parallel Mothers | Lunana: A Yak in the Classroom | Four Good Days | Writing With Fire | Cyrano

Miscellaneous Movie Moments LXXXI (January 2022)

It's Oscars season, y'all!

Venom: Let There Be Carnage | No Time to Die | Respect | | The Incredibly True Adventure of Two Girls in Love | Flee | The Worst Person in the World | Encanto | The Power of the Dog | Passing | Simple as Water | The Eyes of Tammy Faye | The Lost Daughter | Procession | Don't Look Up | Faya Dayi | Being the Ricardos | tick, tick...BOOM! | Swan Song | 892 AKA Breaking

Miscellaneous Movie Moments LXXX (December 2021)

Marie Antoinette, 05 December 2021, DVD via university library
When, close the beginning of the movie, the titular protagonist crosses over from her native Austria and into her new home, France, then hugs the mistress of her household, bids goodbye to all her friends, is stripped of her clothing, and is robbed of her Austrian puppy (You can have as many FRENCH dogs as you want, they tell her), you sort of see how everything is already going to go wrong for her.

Movie Moments LXXVIII: Tim Burton Edition

Happy Christmas, Dani! You are the only person for whom I would watch these festivals of cheery macabre.

Previously, from the Oeuvre
Seen:
Batman, Edward Scissorhands, Batman Returns, Sleepy Hollow, Planet of the Apes, Big Fish

Not Seen:
Pee-wee's Big Adventure, Beetlejuice, Ed Wood, Mars Attacks!, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Corpse Bride, Sweeney Todd, Alice in Wonderland, Dark Shadows, Frankenweenie, Big Eyes, Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children, Dumbo

What's the Deal
I've just never been a fan of creepy, you know? Say "Tim Burton," and my brain conjures up a Johnny Depp in white pancake makeup stabbing people and I think we're all past that stage in our lives. Then again, I've enjoyed the Burton films I have seen (except Edward Scissorhands, obvs).

Movie Moments LXXVII: Wes Anderson Edition

Happy Christmas, Jeff and Stacey! I hope you enjoy my enduring resentment reluctant admiration! Or whatever.

Previously, from the Oeuvre
Seen:
The Royal Tenenbaums, The Grand Budapest Hotel

Not Seen:
Bottle Rocket, Rushmore, The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou, The Darjeeling Limited, Fantastic Mr Fox, Moonrise Kingdom, Isle of Dogs, The French Dispatch

What's the Deal
Look, I recognize Anderson's a wizard at framing a tableau, but there's only so much twee that I can take, ESPECIALLY if it's all White people, all the time. There's enough out there for me to watch, obvs, that it's easy enough to rule out a whole pool of films that I know are Not For Me.

That said, knowing this antipathy, Jeff gave me all of Anderson's films on DVD for my birthday once. I trust he enjoyed the entirety of the Fast and Furious movies I gave him in response. So yeah, I have all these movies already, so I GUESS I will watch. (Though I confess I have streamed them here, for ease of use--I pause more readily when I stream, and I don't when I watch on discs. Go fig.)

TV Tellings IX: My So-Called Life

Happy Christmas, Ro! I hope you're in the mood for some teenage shenanigans!

My So-Called Life falls squarely into my 90s kid purview AND YET I never watched it and even further, never really wanted to watch it. Like, what do I care about teenage angst when I could be, like, memorizing the scripts of X-Men: The Animated Series? (Yeah, it's coming.) But I guess IT IS TIME.



This is a lot of flannel, y'all. A LOT.

Logline
Teenagers. Have. So. Many. Feelings.

Miscellaneous Movie Moments LXXIII (November 2021)

Free Guy, 02 November 2021, Blu-ray via Redbox
I wonder what it would have been like to watch this movie without knowing its central conceit: That is, Ryan Reynolds plays an NPC in an FPS named Free City and, one day, he becomes aware.

TV Tellings IV: The Chair

"Villains!" I shrieked, "dissemble no more!"

Sandra Oh playing the chair of an English department at a small liberal arts college? I had read nothing about this--I hadn't even watched a trailer--but even sight unseen, I could almost guarantee, pre-watch, three things:

1. I'm going to spend most of the watch screaming at the screen WRT academic politics and processes
2. They are going to get English, as a field, almost completely wrong
3. At least one professor is going to seem to be having an illicit and gross affair with a student

But Sandra Oh, y'know? Plus, as all my English colleagues know, this is pretty much all non-English academic people will ask about come the winter holidays.

Anyway, this is a first watch reactions sort of post. Spoilers for The Chair may abound. Also, I cuss a lot.

Logline:
Sandra Oh plays the chair of an English department at a small liberal arts college.

Movie Moments LXIV: Little Women (June 2021)

Prepare for me raging out FOUR TIMES about frickin' Friedrich Bhaer.

TV Tellings I: The Queen's Gambit

Here we go: Queen’s Gambit. This is my first watch, but it seemed like this show completely took over the pop cultural conversation for, like, a full eight days or something.

Fandoms I Have Loved, Part 5: Jane the Virgin

There are not a lot of shows that I would say that 95% of its episodes were well done, but here we are. (I really, really, really hated one storyline in the last season, but more on that later. Jane the Virgin consistently hit things out of the park. The cast is uniformly excellent, the music is lovely, and sometimes things get absolutely bonkers.

I love it.

Logliney Stuff:
A young woman is accidentally impregnated and decides to have the baby. The owner of the, um, stuff turns out to be a guy she had a crush on! But she is in a serious relationship! Also telenovel shenanigans! Also Gilmore Girls except these protags are Latina and lower middle class!

Movie Moments XLIX: October 2020 (Emma Edition)

While it seems like I should have strong opinions about Emma, according to my book log, I read it it 2009. TWO THOUSAND AND NINE, friends. I remember zero thoughts I originally had about this text. What I CAN tell you for certain is I just am very not down with any of the dudes Jane Austen paints as romantic leads. (Darcy? Ugh. Knightley? UGH.) Anyway, how much more quickly would this story move if everybody was very clear about who they were talking about in every conversation?

But also: Emma (2020) has my favorite proposal scene ever. And I HATE proposal scenes.

Fandoms I Have Loved, Part 1: The West Wing

After doing so many dozens of movie posts over the past few months, I started feeling weird that I haven’t really talked with many folks about the TV shows I’ve been tirelessly binging in the background. I’ve also been dipping once in a while into the fics I used to write, and WOW I have consumed a lot of media.

Anyway, I thought it might be neat to do these once in a while--particularly the ones I’ve recently binged. If they’ve eaten my brain for weeks at a time, I should probably give them some sort of tangible due diligence. So I’ll start off with the shows I’ve watched in their entirety in 2020 thus far: #TheWestWing, #Justified, #TheCrown, #CriminalMinds, #MissFishersMurderMysteries, #AvatarTheLastAirbender, #TheLegendOfKorra. Once I’ve moved from that, I’ll probably go back and forth with old fandoms and shows I’ve recently been digging. We’ll see how this goes. (I also want to vaguely note there are book series, comics, and games that I could babble about, but we’ll see if I want to expand into those other media. Plus the movie fandoms, if I want to double up on the review posts. I only have so much time, after all.)

Movie Moments XLI: August 2020 (Pride & Prejudice/Bridget Jones Edition)

Darcy is the worst and the Bennet sisters have questionable taste in men.

ANYWAY. Back to the classics.

Movie Moments XXXVII: July 2020 (Romeo & Juliet Edition)

Seven adaptations of Romeo and Juliet! I should also note that I find nothing in the original text romantic or even sweet. How many hours this week will I spend yelling at the TV because teenagers are being teenagery? WE SHALL SEE.