#(or a pal. or a hero/adventurer like there's EMOTIONAL STAKES)

[spiinsparks]

         ||. it’s 3am and all i can freakin think about is that any person who wants to romance this idiot is gonna have to deal with whatever the equivalent of an emotional one-night-stand is (we’re not here for the actual thing in this house) bc he’s a dumb teenager who’s too independent to consider yknow maybe a proper commitment to someone doesn’t actually mean ... getting shackled down

[iplacedajar]

2019

It seems impossible that I was offered a job eight months ago, that I moved in with Eddy four months ago, that the end of 2019 is already here. Post-college years continue to speed by at an alarming pace.

It was a good year, though, and I was especially grateful for all the unique opportunities I had to travel--to Switzerland and Italy, Saratoga Springs,  Provincetown. I went up to New York for the last weekend in June, and spent two magical autumn weekends in the woods--Vermont in October, New Hampshire in November.

I made friends with a sweet fluffy homebody, and I took still more steps toward building a satisfying, adult life for myself. I was in Houston last week, and felt more peace there than I’ve been able to find in a long time. I think part of it is that I finally feel secure and stable in my life in Boston--I finished school, found a permanent job that I love--and so I’m able to “visit”  without any underlying anxiety about my precarious position in life.

Books

It was a really good year for books--no pictures because many of them were library books but here’s the list of favorites:

Caroline by Sarah Miller

This is a retelling of Little House on the Prairie from the perspective of Laura’s Ma. The author was inspired to write it after realizing that, although Laura changes the timeline in her fictional retellings, Ma had actually been pregnant with Baby Carrie during their journey from Wisconsin to Kansas. It’s the kind of historical fiction I have always wanted, covering the unique hardships of pioneer life for women and including details like the oilcloth rags Caroline prepared to line her underwear after Carrie’s birth, and her swollen breasts bouncing painfully in the wagon after she leaves the top two hooks of her corset open.

An Absolutely Remarkable Thing by Hank Green

I’ve watched Hank’s videos for years, and I loved his debut novel about navigating unexpected fame and the responsibilities of having an audience through the perspective of a young woman in her 20s. Also, it’s really, really funny.

The Signature of All Things by Liz Gilbert

I . . . adored this book. And I’ve definitely recommended it the absolute most of any book I’ve read this year. It has the voice and the humor and the warmth and the wisdom I’d expect from Liz Gilbert, as well as an exhaustively researched and utterly immersive period setting (19th century Philadelphia). It truly feels epic in scope, and if I try to describe it for too long I sound like a lunatic but it’s about botany and about sexual longing and I think about it every single day.

City of Girls by Liz Gilbert

I was fortunate enough hear Liz talk about this book in person when she went on tour! See the above--this book is amazingly funny and wise and smart and just so fun to read. It’s about showgirls in New York in the 1940s. (On tour, Liz talked about interviewing a bunch of nonagenarian former showgirls for research and wondering beforehand, “Oh God, how am I going to get these grandmotherly old ladies to talk about sex?” and then wondering after, “Oh god, how am I going to get these ladies to talk about anything other than sex?”)

Circe by Madeline Miller

This book is so precious to me. Madeline Miller’s take on Circe is the best rendering of a divine/immortal character as narrator that I’ve ever read. And she does it in first-person. Also, if you ever have an opportunity to hear this author speak publicly, you should take it. She is so smart and well-read, and so steeped in this mythology, and strikes an amazing and refreshing balance between reverence and irreverence for the source material (when writing for the character of Medea, for example, she explained that she was having difficulty understanding her, “until I realized what a bozo Jason was”).

Dune by Frank Herbert

Haha. I read the first four books of this classic sci-fi series this year alongside Eddy. The weirdness chart for this series is an exponential curve and I found the fourth book so deeply weird as to be borderline unreadable, but all of them are special and the first one, in particular, sticks in your brain.

The Starless Sea by Erin Morgenstern

I’ve been waiting for the author of The Night Circus to publish a new book for a long time, and this one was worth the wait. I love love love Erin Morgenstern’s eye for details and aesthetics, and the way she builds story around setting.

Television

I watched and enjoyed more TV shows in 2019 than any year in recent memory, but I think it's partly just the alignment of streaming service releases and my taste than any other factor. Eddy and I finished watching FullMetal Alchemist: Brotherhood at the beginning of this year. There was one weekend in May where all I did was watch Good Omens and bake a rhubarb cake (both very good). I binged all of Fleabag in two days and then I made Eddy watch it, and we're both completely captivated by it. July 5 was officially "Stranger Things Day", and Danielle, Eddy, and I woke up at 9 am, ate donuts, and watched the entire new season in one day (and then went to Veggie Galaxy for emotional recovery). The third season of The Crown dropped a few weeks ago and I spiraled even further into my Olivia Colman obsession, and Eddy and I finished the first season of The Good Place right before we left town for the holidays.

Movies

My movie-watching has declined significantly since I graduated and left behind my Film Boy pals, but I managed a short list of favorites: I adored BOOKSMART, and it immediately jumped to the special place in my heart where coming-of-age stories about smart young women live. I watched THE FAVORITE on a plane and it was fantastic. And then a few nights ago Danielle and I went to see the new Greta Gerwig-directed LITTLE WOMEN and predictably adored it, and it was basically the highlight of my trip home. But I didn't see much in theaters, and I don't feel like I missed out.

Games

Another surprise for me this year was how many games I played and enjoyed. I grew up playing video games and watching my siblings play, but when I moved to Boston for college all I had was a 3DS, and my consumption of games, with the noticeable exceptions of Stardew Valley and Pokémon Go, went into hibernation. That all changed this year, when Eddy bought me a Nintendo Switch for my birthday, and I spent January playing many blissful hours of Let’s Go Pikachu. Other favorites include:

OXENFREE - Branching storylines! Choose-your-own-adventure sans cutscenes so that it all feels totally immersive and high-stakes! And a creepy, existential, Arrival-esque mystery to boot.

THE FLAME IN THE FLOOD - All of my favorite books growing up were about kids who run away to live in the woods à la My Side of the Mountain, so this post-apocalypse survival adventure story featuring our hero, Scout, brewing dandelion tea to cure her snakebites, making snares out of saplings, and using cattail tubers to make braided cord was right in my wheelhouse.

UNTITLED GOOSE GAME - needs no introduction

In Conclusion

Happy new year, all--I hope 2020 brings us all joy and truth.

[tumblunni]

Ok just... just... GIVE ME A SECOND to talk about the spoilery monster rancher stuffs, okay? Why THAT ENDING hurt so much but also fit so well with the rest of it, and why the third season kinda sucked so much despite being the continuation we all desperately craved. And why its still gonna have a place in everyone’s hearts, even the haters, JUST because it gave a conclusion to THAT FUCKING ENDING! I dont care if people say it would be more deep or whatever to leave on the downer cliffhanger, I still think it SHOULD have had a third season, just that it should have been better. Or I mean... maybe it would have worked better as a movie or a short ten episode season or something. Just there should have been SOME sequel to that ending, but a very very lighthearted season about a goofy tournement kinda wasnt what it should have been.

OKAY THE ENDING THE SEASON 2 ENDING the giant and damn awesome subversion of everything about the genre, which fit so well with everything else the show ever did, GAHHH Like.. there were SO MANY subversions and just interesting detailed twists on common ‘mon show’ tropes. One of the earliest episodes begins with an asshole trainer treating his Worm monster the same way a lot of people honestly might do while min-maxing in one of these videogames. He’s disgustingly abusive and feels like he’s justified because he’s making his monster stronger, and that’s all that it’s good for. And the show establishes its tearjerker tone early on by having this guy only repent after his horribly abused monster sacrifices itself to save him from the baddies, even after how badly he’d treated it. And he’s begging apologies to its dead disc stone, while it’s too late to do anything about it. But the show STILL gives him a chance at redemption, because our heroes trust him to raise a new newborn Worm, and to do it right. That’s just... what the show is. It went really REALLY dark, but it did this with this kind of determined optimism! And even the funnier episodes could have high stakes, and there was always the reminder that we were living in this dystopia and just trying to keep our smiles during it, because otherwise how can we change it?

And thats why season 3 fumbled by like.. not introducing its stakes early enough. Or.. at all. it was good that they finally introduced some good comic relief villains and generally villains with more motivations and backstory, but it combined badly with the no-intial-high-stakes thing to give a season that just felt way too happy. In a show that certainly had happiness in it before, but I mean it never felt hollow?? It kinda felt disrespectful to follow up a super depressing cliffhanger with such a badly explained and rushed flip back to the status quo, and then such a sparse plot with so few incentives to keep watching. Its only initial good point was that it resolved the cliffhanger AT ALL, but it could have done it WELL, and also established a new reason to wanna watch the show now the one big huge main plot has been resolved. Following up after the bad guy is defeated is always a hard thing, you cant just put no effort into it... Tho I feel bad even saying that, cos seriously season 3′s villains were the best part. They just might have fit better in season 1, or just if the plot kept up the slack surrounding them...

BUT YEAH JUST THE SUBVERSIONS!! I could fuckin ramble forever about how great they were! Seriously it was just THE BEST ‘ending’ to a ‘stuck in another world’ story, ever! Having the main kid finally get back home, but at the ABSOLUTE WORST MOMENT, after all his friends have sacrificed themself to save that world and he’s the only one left alive. And he doesnt even get enough time to process the shock, he barely even sees the rescued world before he just wakes up home as if nothing happened. And he’s stuck feeling like he can’t adjust to being part of this world anymore, and he’s mourning people he can’t even talk to anyone about. Imagine how worried his parents must have been when he became depressed seemingly overnight and refuses to tell them why! And then it just ends on him crying in the rain and the ghosts of his friends trying to motivate him to get back up and find a reason to live again. That was ONE HELL of a cliffhanger, yo! So yeah OF COURSE people were cheering for a new season, but also OF COURSE that new season would fail if it insufficiently followed up on the emotional impact of the cliffhanger and then had a bazillion episodes of barely anything emotional ever happening again, when the first series had you crying your eyes out as early as episode 4...

oh and like DEAR GOD all the OTHER really good subversiony episode plots aaaaa like even down to little stuff like how genki actually fights alongside his monster pals. And he’s a total badass who does succeed in doing more than most humans could do, but still he’s just a human going against monsters. he knows what he’s doing is rash, but he does it anyway because he cares about his monsters and couldnt just let them die without throwing himself in front of the bullet. And every battle in this show is life or death rebellion against an oppressive regime like that! Random low risk tournement episodes used to be.. like.. FILLER in this series. It was a terrible idea for the entire third season’s plot... And I also loved how the team actually did help people along the way as they journeyed to defeat the baddies, and it wasn’t JUST fighting. They had a whole tearful episode about everyone struggling to hold back a dam that the baddies had sabotaged to wipe a village off the map, and it was INFINATELY MORE INTENSE than half of the things Pokemon has ever done, lol! (not that I dislike pokemon, just the anime in particular is a bit naff) God, how they were all strangers to this village and how they actually had bickering between the team members on whether they should really do this, and all the different ways they tried to save the dam and how they made it way too clear that they were gonna die from friggin holding this thing back with their bare hands. And how they organized the whole town to work themselves to the bone trying to divert the dam, and how a bunch of their attempts failed and they came so close to not having enough time! You had me weeping for the potential deaths of a hundred nameless faceless npcs just from putting me in the shoes of our heroes reacting to it! You made a little kid understand the complexity of civilian casualties in war! And OH MAN, Golem’s backstory! How he was a former war soldier who just shattered mentally after being forced to kill so many other monsters. And he was so gentle at heart, and he sat there guarding this church full of disc stones for god knows how many decades, blaming himself for what happened. Like.. it showed that even when you’re fighting villains, killing still breaks you. Dear GOD, his face when he came back down from his friggin ptsd flashback anger episode saving the heroes from the baddies, and he saw all the dead baddies, and just... you could not talk to that man and tell him that killing was justified just because they were BADDIES. Even if its in self defense, he still has to look at his hands that just murdered people. I’m so damn glad the heroes managed to befriend him and take him away from that place, cos that moment came so close to sending him back to his guilt spiral! If anything, I think that the dub calling them ‘baddies’ actually made all these moments way more effective. The childish terminology makes you think this is gonna be a paint by numbers story, so it hurts more when its anything but! Even in a world with a concept like ‘the bad guy magically turns people into his bad minions’, they still managed to deal with complex grey morality, and that’s one hell of a crowning achievement!

...plus it allowed for a happy ending after all. God, i cried for all those poor minor mooks getting brought back to normal in the end. Honestly, even though it hurt, I would have accepted it ending on all of the hero monsters being dead forever for the sake of bringing back all the dead civilians and brainwashed baddies. Sacrificing yourselves to save so many others! God, this show’s characters are too goddamn pure. AND COMPLEX TOO! man I loved how grumpy and selfish half of the hero cast is, yet they’re still heroes despite it, and god just HOW THEY ALL DIED TOGETHER AND OUR PROTAGONIST IS THE ONLY ONE FORCED TO KEEP ON LIVING that was such a fucking cliffhanger thank you terrible season 3 for fixing it man i can forgive anything you do because you did that baby mocchi lived and ate some mochi cakes and tiger and hare lived to bicker with each other once more and golem could find some peace knowing all the people he saved, even if he might never be free of the guilt of those he failed to save and suezo and holly didnt have to be apart again, he didnt have to end his life finally proving his ‘usefulness’ at the cost of everything else (SERIOUSLY SUEZO LOW SELF CONFIDENCE EPISODES KILL MY HEART) and genki didnt have to have his childhood completely destroyed by his ‘magical adventure’ plot ending on so much of a trope subversion even if still it was good that it happened it was a really fuckin good plot all that suffering just made the happy ending that much happier! GOD I miss this show very much...

[nightmareonfilmstreet]

[Review] THE MEG is just Chum in the Water

We here at Nightmare on Film Street have been ramping up to shark summer since there was still snow outside, and the sun was but only a memory. Extended Shark Week, The Last Sharknado (sure), and the pièce de résistance – The Meg.

Adapted from Steve Alten’s novel Meg: A Novel of Deep Terror, The Meg promised to be the shark movie to end all shark movies (woo, Sharks!). I will add that the project was originally titled just Meg, without the ‘the‘. I get that hashtags and googlability are important, but just – Meg – sounds way cooler.

Audiences have been reeled in for The Meg before the first trailer had even dropped. Distributors used cheeky marketing – posters blazoned with the wee, itty bitty shadow of Jaws paling in comparison to the gargantuan that is Meg. Producers cast Millennial fan-favorites Ruby Rose (Orange is the New Black), Rainn Wilson (The Office, but like seriously – House of 1000 Corpses), and the always apathetically charming anti-hero Jason Statham (Crank). We were ready. We were so ready.

But herein lies the problem.  The Meg isn’t a bad movie. And it’s definitely not a good movie. For the film to succeed – other than at the box office (because I’m sure it’ll do fine), it had to be B-Movie camp.. or a well executed and surprisingly heartfelt adventure with an impossibly large shark.  It attempted both.. and failed.

    Here is where I normally go into the synopsis – but before I do, I have a big bone to pick.  There was no cold open.  This is likely as, for the sake of the story the filmmakers wanted to tell, our scientists/explorers needed to be the ones who unleash Meg. She’s just chilling and eating deep-sea kelp and the weird monstrous fish that live down there until they prod their submarines into her weird ecosystem bubble. So I get it. Teenagers at the beach don’t really fit with deep-sea and submarines. But if you are going to get in the ring with Jaws, especially by bringing up the conversation with every poster, you need to be on the same playing field. Jaws has one of the best (I would say the best but it’s tied with Scream) cold opens of all time.

The Meg has a water-logged title card and Jason Statham opting to kill his buddies over deep-sea peer pressure to save some divers or something. Keep in mind. This is a shark movie. The biggest shark movie.

There are 3 elements every shark movie must have. One of them is your shark. You don’t need lots of shark, but you must have shark. Sunshine. Sharks interrupt perfect summer days. That’s their thing. They’re like metaphors for going back to work when you’re enjoying your day at the beach, or something. The third is murder. Sharks gotta eat, and it better be some dude’s arm. I need all of those 3 in the first 5 minutes. Why? Because shark movie.

    Let’s do this right. Directed by Jon Turteltaub (known for such CGI fests as The Sorcerer’s Apprentice, and the National Treasure films), The Meg follows drunk (but only when its convenient) Jonas Turner (Statham) who’s been hiding in Thailand since his failed rescue dive that resulted in some of his diver pals being sacrificed to Davy Jones. But after the exploration mission into the what-we-thought-was-the-sea-floor-but-isn’t-actually-the-sea-floor goes awry, trapping three divers 10 000+ meters under the sea – he’s the only man for the job. Oh, and one of the trapped divers is also his ex-wife for some reason. Thus sets off the obtusely formulaic plot of The Meg.

Before he hops in his submarine towboat, Turner gets the all-clear from the disdainful Dr. Heller (Robert Teller), and has some lightly flirty banter with Suyin (Li Bingbing), daughter of Dr. Minway (Winston Chao). To be honest I don’t know what any of these people do. Suyin at one point says she dives with sharks. Ruby Rose is the one that shouts out the shark blips on the radar.. sometimes. And Rainn Wilson is playing some sort of evil Elon Musk..?

    The rescue mission goes mostly okay. (I’m not ruining the movie, by the way. This is only the 1st of the 1000 missions they go on in the film.) There’s a giant squid, a giant shark, and one of the three trapped divers sacrifices himself and explodes even though he’s only had about two lines of dialogue and they were all him writing a goodbye to his wife. Yeah buddy, you’re going to die. That’s just how this works.

In doing so, they open up a tiny rift – just big enough to allow the biggest shark in recorded history to skirt through. So now they, these scientists (alarm bells go off here) who’ve discovered not only a plethora of new life, but an animal thought to be THOUSANDS OF YEARS extinct do the only thing they know how. They want to tag it, hunt it, and kill it.  What?

There are a few fleetingly fun moments. The shark finds his way to a densely populated beach and a wedding on a yacht (Hey look, our cold open!). A few characters die in the un-goriest of ways. There’s some CGI shark action. And then there’s the jokes. The terribly unfunny, break for laughter but only one audience member chortles and we all feel bad, jokes.

  “..All in all, if you wanted to see Jason Statham punch a shark this summer, go see The Meg.”

  All in all, if you wanted to see Jason Statham punch a shark this summer, go see The Meg. But know that you’re going to have to sit through an hour-and-a-half of hamfisted emotional moments and stake-raising conflict. And also probably some of the worst dialogue and character development since the Sharknado movies. At least they know where they lie in the foodchain.

1.5/4 eberts

  The Meg is now playing in theatres. Let us know what you thought over on Twitter or in the official discussion thread of our Facebook Group!

  The post [Review] THE MEG is just Chum in the Water appeared first on Nightmare on Film Street - Horror Movie Podcast, News and Reviews.

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