#movieclub is a lot like suffering club

[vermiculated]

i have three screencaps

here are some words about COLOSSAL.

so this movie! we were talking about it as a kaiju romdram threeway and that is still the best, that's the best for everything forever even if the giant monsters are metaphorical. I mean, isn't most of fiction: person a/person b/person a's problems which are not usually actually monsters yet on reflection are they not? Are they ever not? Ben/Matthew/Ben's past; Thomas/Edward/garbage ideas about who Thomas gets to love fuck you Fellowes; Edith/Lavinia/the constant fear of death even in a good war; platonically Priya/Daniel/Timothy; furthermore May Archer/Newland Archer/Countess Olenska because Michelle Pfeiffer is the living embodiment of a man's fear about a woman.

that went a little bit off on the shoulder there.

anyway: you love somebody, you fuck their problems.

That is not what happens in their movie either! why is this so impossible. SO THE PREMISE is that Anne Hathaway, executive producer of this film, also acting in it, is an alcoholic who likes a good time and Dan Stevens is her long-suffering boyfriend. Their scene together is actually VERY WELL DONE, and worth the price of admission for this film (uh, free, because I got it from the county library, the movie wasn't in theaters here not even the eight dollar ticket theater where I go to see US-made art house gems such as SILENCE, or Starving in Taiwan while Scorsese obsesses over a shot, or Beach Rats, a film that made the mass deletion of dick pics a searing moment of character development. anyway, not even there.) It's well-acted and convincing. Bar the material world it takes place in: is long-suffering boyfriend Dan Stevens a hedge-fund manager? this apartment is the correct combination of soulless and extravagant in its exposed brickwork and white kitchen to be the sort of place outfitted by an interior decorator and never elaborated upon by the inhabitant because he works eighty-hour weeks and drinks Stella Artois when he means to get wild. furthermore. I mean I have no idea why Anne is wearing Talbots separates to a party? maybe it was an after work function and long-suffering boyfriend Dan Stevens is justly outraged because it's Tuesday. Anne is woozy and disoriented in this bland 2.4m USD apartment, as anyone might be. Long-suffering boyfriend Dan Stevens (LSBDS) kicks Anne out by packing her bags for her, it is deeply tragic.

THE PREMISE IS: twenty-five years ago a monster stalked Seoul. Anne, having fled a breakup with a finance bro, moves back to her empty childhood home, which is actually a splendid piece of architecture, it has a wraparound porch and a lovely staircase, it's a pretty beautiful Queen Anne, and Anne is very sad, so much so that even this house does not lift her spirits. Anne, by the way, now that she is no longer in dating-money clothes, is slightly run-down: she wears untucked shirts and low-heeled booties. ( @mimaveil​ just got shivers down her spine.) Anne has a blonde-to-orange dye job that's growing out unattractively, and I have to say, it's a great wig. It tells you what you need to know about Anne and Anne’s problems.(Last week I saw Le Cercle Rouge, which is a good movie for a number of reasons among them Alain Delon's absolutely terrible wig and fake moustache.) Anne has a number of nervous tics, among them picking at the part on her crown, and smoothing hanks of hair at her shoulders. it's enticingly realistic.

okay, FINALLY. the plot begins about ten minutes into the film, when Anne is walking home from the general store and a truck passes her. the screencap below illustrates an important quality of movie-making: a gifted and radiant actress may wear a bad wig, she remains gifted and radiant.

fig. 1: gifted and radiant, even when hauling a sack. she was gifted and radiant even in Tom Hooper's The Miserables, wasn't she.

realism's for fucking suckers.

the dude in the movie (I could tell because he is on the cover of the dvd) is driving the truck and Anne starts fidgeting with her hair, and you can see her remembering that this is a tell of flirtation, and she could stop, but she carries on. this indicates that she has A Problem. a series of problems, really, shortly to become worse.

(my discussions of films may lead the careful reader to believe that I am powerfully interested in hairstyling. I am not, I guess I'm like Ernest Hemingway in that I just like hair? and whiskey, zing. Although I do enjoy scrolling through Pinterest and seeing the 'easy chignons' which require a minimum of five hands and two types of bobby pins to construct. I imagine it's the same kind of interest that leads other people to look at speedboats in catalogues. I don't want it and I can never have it, but it's an interesting sphere of human endeavor.)

Anne and the dude in the movie, hereafter called Beanface because he has a fat jaw and a protruding forehead that make his head seem slimmer in the middle and flatter on the ends, like a broad bean, go to the dude's bar, and holy smokes, yes this is 'Gone Girl.' the bar is partly boarded off because suburban Maine is economically depressed, and also it's a metaphor for feelings. Everything's a metaphor for feelings, cf comments above about monsters. Anne and Beanface and Beanface's friends, Tim Blake Nelson and a dude who looks like Eli Manning, get drunk together. I believe that we are meant to draw the conclusion that Anne is careless of her safety and fixated on alcohol and good times, such that she does not mind being the only woman in company. Ersatz Eli Manning asks her about her work, which is for an "online magazine," and he asks for the address, so that he can read her articles. He seems okay! They all drink together, hail and good fellowship.

Anne stumbles home drunk, and awakens NINE HOURS LATER (this is significant for the plot, even though she doesn't have a clock.) Anne is supposed to be selfish, it is hard for me to discern that based on her immediate and practical response to the next crisis? like so fucking what she didn’t care about a dude’s dead mom? I don’t care about that either, give Anne some real emotional depth. Someone calls her and it is horrible news: Seoul's been attacked by a monster. She follows up on the story, because she's a heroine in a movie, rather than a poor human who can hardly cope with her own life and shivers under the blankets before reaching out a hand like a wary cuttlefish and grabbing her phone to check it under the covers. Anne has substantial psychological resilience, so much so that she is able to recover from more than the mere work of existing continuously. Impressive!

PERHAPS THIS IS BECAUSE SHE IS A MONSTER? real time, we have gone about half an hour since I settled in with a scone and a glass of the finest four dollar sauvignon blanc, and Anne notices on the disaster coverage that the monster scratches her head just the same way that Anne herself does. Anne realizes, admirably quickly, that she is the monster. SHE IS THE MONSTER.

She makes a murderboard up, and the next morning, practices. She does this by stepping in a sandbox and doing semaphore.

Anne gathers up Beanface and his pals for another night of drinking and then she takes them to -- this movie is so wonderfully specific in this observation -- the playground near the woods, and she asks them to watch her on their phones. This is a nice element that grounds the film in 2017: Anne has a rose gold iPhone, and the guys have less-clearly branded screens. They see her on the screen, and they believe her in the flesh.

(this is the most outlandish part of the filme, that men would believe a woman. but they do.)

meanwhile, Anne is working at Beanface's bar, and she and the gang get wasted every night. Slowly, Beanface gives her various items of furniture, about which I got fretful. What if there are bedbugs Anne? Aren't futons terrible for your posture Anne? Anne? She's still drunk one morning when she trips into the sandbox in the playground near the woods, and Anne howling with laughter is intercut with the people of Seoul being terrified by the monster smashing around. And the monster can definitely take down a building. Anne crashes a helicopter, and she's sobered up enough to start freaking out so Beanface steps into the sandbox.

and lo, a giant robot appears!

Anne trips and kills hundreds of people. This is when I got profoundly displeased with this movie. I understand that it is a scifi black comedy, and should have a high body count. I do not like that Anne kills masses of people, and I do not like that the movie shrugs this off for much of its running time. Anne's grief about this is played as hysteria, and when Beanface brings it up, it's only to needle Anne. The movie doesn't really deal with it? which is not the fault of this movie: movies are always destroying large cities, and it's probably not racist to destroy Seoul specifically, but the face is that Anne makes inroads into destroying a city of anonymous South Koreans and this is not discussed? there's no urgent conversation between pokey traffic wardens, and little kids cooing, or any of the leavening that typically accompanies scifi violence. It's just a lot of people no one knows (sayeth the movie, we know there’s more) and they're dead?

WHICH does bring to mind the fact that by this time next month, some people (not me, I will be trapped on a dingus airplane, drinking and trying not to pick fights, travelling to New York) will have seen the next STAR WARS, or "lots of fun stuff happens, also half of the ship that I have helped obsessively curate for the last two years is back to his manipulative crazy lying and war crimes" and how do I feel about that? Not that it really matters; it's happening. It's indefensible, I have no good reasons to offer. It started out as a black comedy and now I am terribly worried that the division we have maintained (an alternative universe! unless we're getting bleak there's no need to discuss canon!) will dissolve and what an individual is doesn't matter so much, the wellspring of the popularly-named Benlouise Organa will choke me like a firehose.

On the other hand, I have still not seen the ACTUAL most important canon for enspacement, which is the comedy clip introducing Matt the Radar Technician, sorry @getlouder as I do generally try to approach everything I do with the profoundest and most glib (where these words mean "several kay of jokes and fucking") ignorance.

the screen goes black and Anne gets depressed. rightly so. (okay, I will cool it.)

Anne and Beanface inquire at the local Korean grocery and there's a very good shot across the dash of Beanface's truck, while Beanface talks about how he got free food, of Anne looking right past him and at the proprietors of the store. ignore Beanface. go on and do it! I am easily manipulated! do it! Anne discusses her plan with the gang, where they mostly make light of what she has done, which is to have a Korean translation of her apology. She goes out the next morning and after clearing the way, writes her apology in the sand.

it's actually nice, and makes me almost take back my earlier thoughts about turning Seoul into a white monster playground. almost.

we are, I notice with apprehension, only halfway through the movie. what is going to happen?

what's going to happen is that is movie is about rage, and futility, alcoholism, and power. Anne has given up drinking, but Beanface has not, and Beanface behaves in increasingly ugly ways.

a. bossing Anne around unduly b. drinking heavily and telling his friends to 'shut up.' c. yelling at his friends d. yelling at Anne e. driving his truck at Anne

Beanface and Anne go to the playground and Anne slaps Beanface, the monster slaps the giant robot, and there is much rejoicing. Beanface, to apologize, dispatches the gang with a truck full of furniture which, if a person had never seen a single schema of the cycle of abuse, might be charming. However, we are all old enough not to trust this. emotionally distant legumeheads are not going to win us over! he has a picture of his ex-girlfriend with the face scratched out, it is time to fuckin' run girl!! Anne confronts Beanface, who is pathetically hung over, and reveals much information about his sad life. buddy, nothing's so sad that you need to frighten the people of Seoul over it. nothing's so sad that I care about it.

meanwhile, Ersatz Eli Manning has decorated Anne's home. somewhere in here the two of them have sex, and it seems okay. The movie somehow resists making a reference to gendered activities here, since Anne has been living in an under-furnished depression-anger-breakup hovel, and the dude decorates with a truly amazing Victorian velvet settee. One of my greatest regrets is not buying a mustard love-seat of the same style. it was four hundred dollars! what else was I going to do with that money that was so important? Once when I had dental surgery under anesthesia, I told the dentist all about my feelings re: Real Eli Manning. He was a Jets fan. (the dentist, not Eli Manning. although maybe! explains a lot.) Real Eli Manning would, I am sure, support me in my passion for furniture. that’s a FACT. a bunch of plot happens next. I'm not going to describe it all, it doesn't really hold together in or out of context. what we need to know is that Beanface is a jerk. He continues to be mean to Anne, and when LSBDS shows up, Beanface tries to intimidate him. (It's actually a fun treat for those of us who have seen THE GUEST, because LSBDS stands in a country-western bar and looks like he wants to start a fight, and I think it might even be the same shot, it's chilling.) They metaphorically compare dicks, so Anne utters the famous line "can you guys stop talking about me like I'm not here?" They do, however, not stop talking about her like she's not there. Beanface blows the bar up with a firework, and then claims that Anne will never leave him. what the fuck! what the fuck!

I thought this was gonna be a fun threeway monster flick! Beanface then BREAKS INTO Anne's house, and we have another flashback to THE GUEST, as he and Anne fight, as people this time, and he jumps out a second-story window into the leaf-clogged pool and she brandishes a stake at him. it's actually pretty great. It's a truly good scary scene. Beanface is behaving erratically, because, as Anne figures, he hates himself, and so she makes a forbidden phone call (he's told her that she must not call LSBDS, or Beanface will create mayhem in Seoul. notwithstanding hating himself, Beanface is a little underdetermined.) to LSBDS that she will leave with him. this makes Beanface very angry. this is, of course, the point. Anne has a flashback to when they were kids (twenty-five years ago!) when she and Beanface climbed into the forest, and Beanface pretended to be retrieving Anne's foamcore model of Seoul, but IN FACT, stomped on it. 

fig. 2: Anne does her best enspacement light body horror look. I haven't seen MIDNIGHT SPECIAL or STRANGER THINGS or LOGAN, I think this is meant to be about that. ("I haven't seen a thing, here are my thoughts about it" is the only emotional register I have.) She gets to be angry, and then the lightning knocks her out, where it is revealed that she has a monster doll in her bag. a monster doll! I like the monster doll, and I like all the anger. I guess that's supposed to explain what's up. Who knows? Beanface is a jerk, LSBDS is a jerk, Anne is wearing dark sunglasses when we next see her. fuck! THE CLIMAX OF THE MOVIE IS: Anne goes to Seoul.

briefly, but enjoyably: Anne is wearing a long black coat, an oversized shirt, and boots. Her looks have been mostly unremarkable during this film, which is nice, she's sleeping on the floor after all and there are threatening men everywhere, but this? the coat looks cool as heck. it begins to rain Thematic Rain, and Anne looks around grimly. 

fig. 3: sorry to sound like I'm trying to describe the Cool Girl in a ya book. she is the Cool Girl though, she has realized that she is more than the fucking nonsense that men put on her, and she's smart enough to figure out that there is no way out if she plays their games. so she becomes a giant monster to fight them and save the world. She talks to LSBDS about how she's really fucked up, more fucked up than ever before, and hangs up on him. (she actually hangs up on him a lot in this movie. it's nice.) She then walks like a hero to the riverside where the robot has appeared. Beanface is still in Maine, and steps into the sandbox, but Anne shadowboxes with him, and the monster appears in the sandbox! The connection works both ways! unforeseen! Ersatz Eli Manning has gone to a non-arsoned bar and cheers for Anne. Anne is among the screaming crowd in Seoul and she realizes what she must do. There's some very nice cutting between Anne and the robot in Seoul, and the monster and Beanface in Maine. really first-rate. and then Anne kills the robot and the monster kills Beanface and Anne meets a cute lady and all is well. I can't believe this movie only made four million dollars u.s.

[vermiculated]

movieclub tuesday: only a little terrible!

"Trainwreck" behind the cut. literally & figuratively. 

unfortch, the beers (#beets) had worn off by the time I watched this. really unfortch, I don't have any interest in fictional dads, the premise of this movie sounds gross. I am watching this because I want to see what “Ezra Miller ezramillering” is like.

00:00 i like the lies about sex potion of this film! I don't recognise any of these people. I suspect that I am meant to, but I only read the "Arts & Leisure" section of the New York Times. This and nothing else feeds my tender bougie heart. 

9:42 you know, I don't think I've ever seen Ezra Miller in a movie before. He seems like a nice boy. The real truth is that I have spent the last couple of days wondering if he and Tilda Swinton are friends. They seem like they would be friends! They both have nice arms and elegant necks, and I bet that when they see people wearing mock turtlenecks, they probably raise their eyebrows collectively at such a slight against nature. She is, during this, probably wearing a linen tunic which is open to her sternum; he is wearing a light grey pressed shirt without a pattern on it.

16:09 the fact is that clearing out a house SUCKS and I'd rather talk about SWINTON and Ezra Miller having fancy cocktails and talking about Rainer Maria Rilke.

21:40 heroine's got a sweet way with a curling tongs.

21:41 SWINTON and Miller probably don't read poetry. They probably read 1) old issues of Vogue with Swinton in the Highland Prada ads, 2) Europa editions of novels in translation, 3) the H-J volume of the Encyclopedia Britannia because the Swinton offspring are reading the E-G volume and Tilda has to stay one volume ahead, to answer any questions and set up the right comprehension frameworks if there's anything weird.

"anything weird?" Ezra adopts an attractive moue.

"yes. racist stuff." Tilda rolls her eyes behind her Chanel ombre sunglasses. They came in a gift bag. They make her look drunk. It is nine thirty in the morning. They are ideal. "we need to be prepared when they encounter the I word."

Ezra does not respond. He appears to have forgotten the expression on his face: the simpering softness may be permanently stuck there.

Tilda reminds him. "Imperialism."

He sits up a bit more neatly, and smooths the hem of his shirt. "yeah, yeah, the I-word. sorry."

24:30 DOWNTON ABBEY. truly, we are living in gifted times.

27:40 So they go to the movies and the heroine’s pigfarmer date picks a fight, but before then, they are watching "The Dogwalker" which is a fake movie with actual Daniel Radcliffe. fake movies are always a delight.  they're made up! that's why I am watching this, I guess, because I enjoy making things up. I really wish I were not. Still not sure what Planet Holomovie is gonna be called. INDECISIVE today, are we.

29:27 ~feelings~ which are kinda sad.

35:35 dude, this conversation about blended families is killer. "You were the worst father ever." if nothing else, this movie has granted Brie Larson the right to get SO ANGRY and that's quality. 

43:09 where is this movie meant to happen? Like in New York, but does she live in Brooklyn? I feel like she might, no one who makes less than 300k a year can possibly live in even imaginary Midtown. or would want to! sick burn, t u v.

46:51 I feel that we are supposed to believe that the heroine has shortcomings in the way she relates to men, but like, demanding that men do things seems to be a not bad way to navigate heterosexuality. If she doesn't want to listen to some dude with weird eyebrows breathe, why should she? At least she didn't put the pillow over his face! (ha ha, who doesn’t love jokes about facial obstruction!) She does however seem kinda bad at her job, which is crazy. I feel that writers should be able to convincingly write about the actual job of writing. It's not like she works for NASA and there's a bunch of facts a writer would have learn about space, but the main character's job is writing. It's something a writer should know intimately and not struggle to make convincing.

47:27 Ezra Miller, this time in a handsome button down, is back on the screen. This is nice. I bet it won't last.

47:42 it's lasting! Ezra Miller has a really nice jaw. I suspect he knows this. That seems good for him to know. I can feel nothing but vague confidence that he should know his best features.

50:04 the professional athletes in this do seem to be having the best time. It's a shame that this movie is not an actual sports movie, because it seems to be strongest when it's TALL DUDES ACTING REAL WEIRD.

51:30 as a former Ohioan, LeBron's work for the Greater Cleveland Tourist Bureau is a delight. oh ho ho syntactic ambiguity.

56:11 METS TRIVIA. I wish I could draw a star emoji here. __ CONSIDER IT DRAWN.

1:00:52 Look, LeBron, I've read enough fanfiction that I know this speech about "what do you intend to do to my friend" is cliched, but sometimes the cliches are delightful. I need a drink.

1:04:21 "no penetration without representation." I need several drinks. Luckily the dvd has begun skipping, so who knows what's actually happening, it is certainly not tender-heated t u v.

1:12:22 I like the main actress' constant expression of hung-over and wrung-out. Especially at a baby shower, it seems really relateable. That cannot possibly be how that word is spelled. Relatable? Babies, though, dude. Babies are rough. Babies are rough and baby showers should always have hard alcohol.

time: passes: yet does not exist

1:19:15 I really hope that Swinton of the Geese and Ezra of the Millers are friends. While people are being cruel to one another, I think now is the time to contemplate the fact that they probs hung out and talked about the craft of acting. the c r a f t.  in that precise pacing and imagined tone. c r a f t. and then I guess they worked in that awful "someone else's dream house" on "We Need to Talk About Kevin." I hope it didn’t make anyone too sad. I saw the twist coming in that book and I still found it pretty sad, but I read it on an evening when I was already sad.

1:30:28 we've all had fights with doctors like this. "I AM TALKING ABOUT MY FEELINGS." "have you been? i've been asleep." is it perhaps spelled ‘relatble?’ 

1:36:26 have I been watching this movie for this long? Longer, since I had to go have several drinks (#jokes) and pause to consider if Tilda Swinton is more a goose or a mongoose. Anyway, here we are, an hour and a half into this film, there's terrible dancing faces and boozy joy.

1:36:36 This isn't bad! these people are realistic drunk heterosexuals. we've all ... there is not a satisfactory way to end this sentence. we've all enjoyed watching the odd drunk heterosexual. as we do now.

1:40:25 THIS IS THE PART OF THE MOVIE I AM WATCHING THE MOVIE FOR, I AM COVERING MY FACE WITH MY HANDS AND YELPING IN MY HEART. I'M HITTING YOU DO IT FOR HIM BITCH I THOUGHT YOU LOVED ME WHAT DID WE DO TO HIS FACE.

WHAT DID WE DO TO HIS FACE. EZRA OF THE MILLERS, NONE OF US DESERVE OUR MISTAKES, I FEEL LIKE ON THIS NIGHT I PARTICULARLY DO NOT. NEITHER DO YOU, YOU DON'T DESERVE MY MISTAKES. YOU DON'T DESERVE TO HAVE SADNESSES ABOUT SOME OTHER DUDE INSCRIBED ON YOUR BODY, NO ONE DOES, THAT'S WHAT THAT DUDE'S OWN BODY IS FOR. I AM SORRY THAT I WROTE CONSTRUCTED RPF WHERE YOU WORE OLD FASHIONED BASKETBALL SHORTS WITH WHITE PIPING AND DROPPED A BOTTLE OF PERRIER ON YOUR FOOT WHEN YOUR NOT-ACTUALLY-A-COLLEAGUE-AT-ALL SHOWED UP AT YOUR HOME AND YOU FAINTLY AND FRANKLY ASKED HOW HE HAD GOT THERE AND HE SAID, 'BY LANDSPEEDER' AND YOU HAD TO DRAG HIM INSIDE AND EXPLAIN TO HIM THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN VODKA AND WATER AND ALSO CALL HIS FRANCHISE (WHICH IS NOT YOURS, AND THEY HAVE DIFFERENT RULES ABOUT NDA'S AND WHAT THE CANARIES CAN SAY, AND HE KEEPS SORT OF HEAVING SIGHS AND MOANING PITIFULLY ABOUT BIRDS? YOU DON'T KNOW, YOU ONCE ASKED HENRY CAVILL ABOUT HIS WEEKEND AND HEARD ABOUT HOW HE HAD CRADLED A SPARROW IN HIS MASSIVE PAWS, WHICH HE AND AN ESTONIAN SUPERMODEL NURSED BACK TO HEALTH. YOU DON'T KNOW A LOT ABOUT BIRDS. 'ARE CANARIES THE ONES WHO CAN TALK' YOU ASK LIKE THE SOUL OF REASON THAT YOU ARE. HE JUST CURLS UP ON YOUR DECK. LIKE AN INJURED BIRD.) AND EXPLAIN WHY 'UM THE TALLEST GUY IN YOUR MOVIE? HE'S WHITE IF THAT HELPS, HA HA OF COURSE IT DOESN'T. THIS ISN'T A FAST AND FURIOUS MOVIE. ANYWAY, YOU SHOULDN'T NEED HIM FOR ANYTHING BEFORE ABOUT NOON. UH. BYE!’ AND THEN HE CLUTCHED YOUR ANKLES AND TRIED TO DRUNK DIAL OSCAR ISAAC ON YOUR HOME PHONE. WHICH WAS ON THE COUNTER AND HE ALMOST PULLED IT OUT OF THE WALL AND ONTO HIS FACE. OF COURSE YOU HAVE A HOME PHONE. DC COMICS WILL ONLY COMMUNICATE BY LANDLINE.

ANYWAY, THAT'S WHAT I'M SORRY ABOUT, E OF THE M.

1:40:31 did she hit him for real? thrill to this. thrill to this!!

1:41:10 "we've all been there" no. Swinton. no, we have not. unless we're talking enspacement, in which case: welcome to the small club, we meet mostly on Monday nights when we all go "what fuck will horrify the other players in this game" and yeah, hitting a sixteen-year-old in the face on a daybed in his mom's apartment is a pretty good turn for terrible tuesday, you went hard. speculation: Leia has never encountered this particular situation because Ben has a horror of being observed doing what ... he's doing. He'd never bring anyone home, or anywhere which was at all adequately lit. He likes to hook up on other people's so-dark-it's-just grungy floors and their multicoloured counterpanes. The recording is not the first time his rules have been smashed around; it's when he decides that it's stupid and useless to enforce them. There's no point in insisting on something that matters to no one else. It's not like he looks after himself especially well. The pale streak of his torso in the dark flattens out as one body among many when the light is on, he flinches at first a little, and then a lot. a scab on his elbow works off, and the blood trickles down, intermingled with sweat, to his armpit.

Erika, an intelligence analyst who specialises in defusing kidnapping situations, pauses the holo there. She's met Senator Organa a few times, although prior to this assignment, Erika did not know that the Senator had any children. The fear is that the holo is evidence of a larger conspiracy, and while Erika understands the organizational paranoia of a group who have faced consistent existential threats, she isn't convinced by the notion. It looks like a different story from that: still an unhappy one, but certainly not authored by the same group who took hostages at the rec center on Coruscant two years ago. The signatures are all wrong. The Senator's son hangs his head low between his shoulders and visibly pulls on the ropes at his wrists. No one cuts him down.

His left foot is firmly on the ground, but the rope at his right ankle has been tied too short: he's leaning on the side of his right foot. When they begin again, the soft curve of the outside of his foot scuds across the floor.

Ultimately, Erika's determination that the tape is the work of amateurs will destroy the lives of seven men. If they'd been her political adversaries, Leia would have been fair with them; because they're a bunch of hacks who did what was worst for her son, she feels no such restraint. Ben doesn't know about this for years. He doesn't think about the holo. Who could need to preserve one instance of his dumb drunk-blind decision-making when there are so many, even new ones to choose from? He really, really doesn't think about the holo. He gives up sex for a year and a half, afterward.

fucking: probably: something "pineapple" strikes me as a good safeword. I recently heard someone say "sapiosexual" aloud, isn't that fucking wild? people say crazy stuff about human attraction. It's pronounced like it's spelled.

1:47:50 this could have been a quality surreal interlude in a standard sports movie. also in a standard sports movie the plucky writer wouldn't've lost her job and faced up to her emotional shortcomings quite so hard. what this movie needed, I think, was enough surrealism to satisfy Luis Bunuel. which. did you know: directed the Spanish Pavilion at the 1937 International Exposition? am I asking arty questions to fill the hole that this movie had dug? maybe! It's been pretty hollow at the core, and while this may be an elaborate narrative device to demonstrate to us the hollowness in the lives of the characters, it seems more likely that it's just kind of sad, like most movies about people.

1:50:25 Alistair grows up to become Donald, doesn't he. that’s her little nephew who uses the term ‘gluten’ as against the young intern with whom she nearly has sex. they have similar swept-to-the-side haircuts. that's also sad. tastelessly particular young men with non-standard names who struggle to get along with the heroine! I read about Minecraft in the newspaper. i am that of which I speak, or like. part of it. Tastelessly particular the whole day long.  

1:53:30 who gives a fuck about the Knicks. really and honestly. who gives a fuck. they're the cruelest joke in this whole movie which is pretty mean about human desire anyway. I feel like I have met so many dudes who really like the Knicks, but come on. I've also probs met dudes who make yogurt at home. It's still not interesting or worth discussing in polite company.

1:57:00 I take that back. I like the pretty ladies dancing. I can be bought! This movie might hate humans, and the way in which they wrap themselves in the glorious raiment of the fabric of flesh, but I certainly don't.

2:00:01 none of us deserve our mistakes. I didn't really follow the plot of this film, but I did like the dancing scenes (both of them) and the parts where Ezra Miller was in profile. Also I liked Amy Schumer's razzledazzle skirts and enjoyable drunk conversations. I meant to be exactly as mean as I was at 46:51, I guess she's a professional comedy writer, not a features writer, so I feel a tiny bit sorry. Only as sorry as I feel for myself on watching this.

here’s some hilarious imaginary movie rpf:

the hardest drag: in enspacement fandom, the preferred ship becomes Timothy/Matthew.

the still hard, but not so much, drag: in the universe where the movie was made, but also in space, the speculation is that Ezra and Chris are engaging in Chandrilian knee-slap.  Timothy, in universe, is definitely played by a guy named "Chris." (if we'd been persons who like, discussed our ideas and built them in advance, this joke would have been worked in earlier. alas.) It's a fun cameo role, he's on screen for a couple of seconds in one of Rey's visions and his face appears in a newsclipping that Leia shuffles out of the way when the Hiromi ambassadors arrive, rubbing their wings together: she squares up and C-3PO begins to translate. Chris is a wholesome bro who posts pictures of his after-workout space smoothies on space Instagram and space Twitters out links that he shortens through ji.zz, which are often pictures of baby rabbits befriending droids, although one time he linked to a very comprehensive breakdown of B'trand Ruuseell.

(While the eighth movie is filming, Chris shows up to one of their lunches completely smashed. He reaches out to tenderly caress Ezra's face, and ends up roughly cradling his jaw.

"You're a hero," Chris says, head swooning decisively toward the butter plate. since this precedes the development of "Batbeing and Superbeing" Ezra enlists the help of several of the waitstaff to carry Chris out to the car. He waves a little manically to the writers for several holomags who are lunching with their own interview subjects, and then chooses some of the very worst words to memorialize the occasion: "oh, he gets like this sometimes. heroes!" while Chris is sleeping off the drunk, the holonet churns up content about the extent to which they are domestically compatible, and it proves inescapable. Chris is gracefully thankful about it, and deeply apologetic for the first nine months. By the time they are working on different movies, it's background noise.

There is some reason to suspect that the role of Timothy -- naturally substantially expanded in the novelizations -- was not wholly assumed.)

actually, the hardest and most terrible drag in this whole castle made of air and promises: a couple of people are writing an immersive world where Snoke abducts Timothy instead. s c r e a m i n g. no one has even finished the mistress list of all the posts.