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prettyboysdontlookatexplosions · 5 months ago

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medialog august-december 2k24

i was like, should i just abandon this and start fresh in 2025... but no. also i'm putting this behind a cut bc it is long but it's shorter than it sounds bc LOL working 7 days a week is not conducive towards having the brain space to interact with a bunch of new art!!

watched

ponyo - THIS IS THE CUTEST MOVIE IN THE WORLD!!! miyazaki/ghibli is a big blind spot for me bc as a kid i was like "but i want anime to be pretty, like sailor moon..." so i never got into kiki or totoro (very stupid but again i was: A Child) and then as an adult, this is embarrassing, i tried to watch spirited away and just literally didn't get it. i was like, i am so confused about what is happening and what emotions i am supposed to be feelings. and i know that spirited away is a movie for children and this makes me stupid. but i have never pretended not to be stupid. anyway i would die for just about every character in this movie and when i watched it a second time to make nick watch it i was so full of tenderness for how lovingly it captures what it's like to be a small child who has a small creature to take care of that i felt like i could explode!

deadpool & wolverine - i think if i had been in a better mood when i saw this movie i would have disliked it more but as it was i was in a HORRENDOUS mood and, basically, had a good time. funny to watch this, the Superhero Movies Isabel Has Never Watched Cameo Show (literally i had never watched an x-men other than first class, in which wolverine only appears to say fuck off, or either of the two deadpools), and still get to experience the same OMG IT'S HIM rush as everyone else did, but for matthew mcfadyen. the guy next to me was like "i love channing tatum" when channing tatum showed up and like, same.

trap - great movie to see with a group of like 10 people with whom to giggle the whole time. josh hartnett understood the assignment and his dad-vibe era is soooo much hotter to me than his twink years ever were (not always the case for me! but between this and how hot he was in oppenheimer i've really warmed to him...). i think it's nice that m. night shyamalan loves his daughter so much. ladyraven has a ballad with the line "faustian trade-offs" which caused me and no one else in the theater to laugh real loud. her music is pretty bad but tbh in an era when people want to put chappell roan on the A-list i'm not even mad. it was funny trying to figure out her niche though because like the vibes are obviously supposed to be taylorish (the cabin onstage... lmao) but the music was giving... idk, ariana? also it's just inherently funny to make a movie premised on the fact that it would be really easy to narrow down who the serial killer is by identifying the adult men at a pop girl concert + this movie REALLY captures the vibe during the opening act no one gaf about a pop event concert, like i saw 5SOS open for 1D and that's exactly what it felt like

popstar: never stop never stopping - rewatch, duh. is this the funniest movie of all time? it's gotta be up there, right?

josie and the pussycats - also a rewatch, duh. love everything about this but most of all the soundtrack, the songs are legit incredible, no fictional band has ever had better music (rip adam schlesinger who contributed some songwriting!!!). first time rewatching this movie since figuring out some Stuff and understand now that rachel leigh cook needs to be on the Oh Those Were Gay Feelings. That's What That Was list. (rosario dawson too, but i already got there with her.)

vice - really incredible to think it would be possible to fuck up a movie about how dick cheney is basically satan but somehow mckay managed. christian bale is a professional though, i feel like we don't appreciate enough that no matter how bad the movie or how stupid the writing he's out there giving an absolute top tier performance every single time.

aliens - sorta half-watched this one but idk i feel like me and james cameron just don't vibe. not as incredible-looking or cool as the first one.

godzilla minus one - really really cute!!!!!!

jurassic park - rewatch on the big screen, still slaps the hardest of almost any movie ever

twentieth century - this is i guess nominally a screwball comedy (howard hawks, 1934, for those of you for whom that means something) but it's about these two toxic theater people who are horrible for and obsessed with each other and it's... darker... than my experience of that genre has usually been. in a way that sort of works in its favor partly because it just gives it a certain interest and partly because the gender politics of screwballs can be so dark themselves so it's kind of a relief that this one lacks the cognitive dissonance of pretending this all isn't horrible? idk. it's a weird one. but i liked it, on balance. there's a (pretty funny tbh) running gag about suicide threats and a really bananas third act plot that comes out of nowhere... great performances across the board and some real bangers dropped into the screenplay!

the substance - i didn't, like, love this, and i think a lot of common criticisms of it are right, but some are also very silly (guys i think the director knows nothing about the morning exercise show makes sense... i don't think she was going for a realistic depiction of 21st century celebrity...), and i did have a good time for the most part (the last 30 minutes is gross in a way that doesn't do it for me... but i know it does it for some people and those people deserve movies too...) and respected its commitment to its own bit, as well as the fact that it's basically a fairy tale (a woman who lives in a tower makes a bargain with a force she doesn't really understand to regain her beauty...). oh also i liked that the thing that drives the back half of the plot is essentially the idea that you simply cannot have a 22 year old's body without also having to contend with a 22 year old's dumb dumb stupid ass piece of shit idiot brain. haven't seen a lot of people comment on that aspect of it but it was like my favorite part!

female trouble - people throw out the word iconic a lot but like what else is there to say? rude, disgusting, occasionally genuinely offensive, mostly (for me) delightfully so... really great to watch with a crowd that would whoop and cheer for I'M SO GLAD I HAD AN ABORTION and THE WORLD OF THE HETEROSEXUAL IS A SICK AND BORING LIFE... also like it's really key for the way this movie functions that divine is a fat drag queen that most people do not consider the pinnacle of beauty but it's incredibly clear that john waters and this movie does... like divine's constant proclamations of her own gorgeousness are in a kind of inherent tension with the average american's disagreement with that sentiment but in a way where it's like, if you disagree you are an idiot and this movie is not yours. she's so hot in this it's crazy!!

michael clayton - i wanted to watch a talky thriller-ish movie and the men of the ringer podcast network literally never shut up about this one so i gave it a shot and it delivered! clooney predictably great but i had no idea tilda swinton & tom wilkinson were in it and they are both also awesome, as is merrit weaver in a small but very well cast role

venom - you can sort of glimpse the movie this movie would be if it weren't shackled to What A Superhero Movie Is Now / loosely to the MCU even though it pretends it's not, and i bet that movie would be a lot of fun!

black christmas (1974) - perfectly done urban legend horror with an interesting little pro choice streak, great cast, camera work so perfectly spooky and tense even i noticed how well it was done, makes good use of the cinematic potential of christmas lights. i really liked that this movie is short and a slasher but all the characters in it feel very well drawn even though we don't spend much time with almost any of them... reminded me that this is actually possible to do and i should be harder on movies that don't do it!

black christmas (2006) - nowhere near as good as the first one, but it is, uh, absolutely bugfuck crazyass bananapants start to end. my favorite of many deranged writing choices in this movie is that the sorority mother makes them all open their secret santa every year with a gift for the murderer who killed his family years ago in this house and then when one of the girls' townie boyfriend is like "this is the house that used to freak us out when we were kids" the sorority mother is like, "why?" ?????????? ok!!!!!

heretic - hugh grant is a fucking movie star. i love sophie turner and the other girl was good too. sort of loses steam once the "actually" scary stuff happens because horror movie shenanigans are hard to make as scary as the situation of two young and not very experienced girls slowly realizing they are trapped in a house with a man who just keeps pushing the boundaries of the social contract a little further, but i had fun

the apprentice - not a good movie but a great viewing experience for those of us who have reblogged in our lifetimes approx. 1 million combined gifsets of sebstan and jerbear... like yeah those are my guys and my guys did great :) i think my favorite thing about it as a movie (other than the way the "look" of it updates with technology, which is a cooler idea i wish had been used for a... better movie?) is that it really beats home the aspect of trmp wherein he has no social skills at all and has never felt authentically comfortable in a group of people in his entire life, which is something i think we should culturally be meaner to him about

gladiator - dumb (affectionate) movie magic. russell crowe has so much movie star charisma while looking so much like Just Some Guy it's literally crazy. when he kisses the little dolly of his wife who's about to die ;_;

raising arizona - miracle movie, can't believe i'd never watched this before. the coens' control of their tone is so incredible to see so early in their work (still gotta watch barton fink one of these day). incredible cast, gorgeous colors, so funny, so weirdly sweet, when it finished i felt like i'd watched a magic trick

erin brokovich - watched this for the first time since high school and like what else is there to say but Queen Icon Legend Slay? i am speaking of course about steven soderbergh but julia is pretty fucking incredible too.

conclave - i'm gonna be real i feel like the hype got to me a lil with this one because it's not as bitchy and fun as i feel like i was led to believe... also requires more buy-in re: the moral direction of the catholic church than i anticipated. however it does have its moments and it's nice to see some of our best actors being good at their jobs and it looks great!

the philadelphia story - i found this movie so delightful to watch that for a moment i really thought she might run off with jimmy stewart at the end and not get back tamed with her abusive ex..... but such was the power of the hepburn/stewart chemistry in that one drunk garden scene that i found myself totally incapable of actually integrating the gender politics of this one into my feelings towards it... like i just couldn't be mad at a movie that gave me a scene that made me want to scream JUST KISS!!!! the most anything has since the first time i watched "cooler"... do you know what that is? for me to bust out "cooler" as a comp? my god... i understand why my friend has been like that about hepburn our whole lives and am also now fully baby jimmy stewart pilled

gladiator ii - the consensus is right on this one: not as good as the first, paul mescal is no russell crowe, but denzel really ate. my friends and i laughed out loud at almost every single denzel scene. we're so lucky to have him.

wicked - bad movie of a bad musical, fundamentally misunderstands the function of songs in a musical and thus shoots every single musical number abominably, as ugly as you've heard, we are not advanced enough technologically for me to emotionally invest in CGI Goat Voiced By Peter Dinklage, but ariana deserves an oscar. the prettyboy was pretty good too. orivo can really sing but her acting was kinda giving Distressed Pixar Mom for me although i'm happy to add this to john m chu's many crimes.

out of sight - the romantic premise of this movie is CRAZY but george clooney kinds of sells it actually because and not in spite of the fact that he's one of those curious Incredibly Handsome But Not Very Sexy actors... like you believe that she wouldn't really hold a grudge against him locking her in a trunk with him, because, what, clooney's gonna act untoward? no... not him... j. lo joins andie macdowell as an actress out of whom soderbergh somehow coaxes a much better performance than experience would lead you to believe she is capable of. shockingly stacked cast of pros doing great, INCREDIBLE production design - banner movie for characters costumed to match or complement their interiors!!!

burlesque - dr. sam from new girl fucks stanley tucci in this movie... i literally can't stop thinking about that. xtina maybe has the all time highest ratio of vocal chops to charisma, she has the screen presence of a recurring character on a cancelled WB drama and then she opens her mouth and you're like, damn. i would watch an 8 season HBO sitcom of cher and stanley tucci running a failing burlesque club. at one point i said out loud "chekhov's air rights." great time

logan lucky - "what if steven soderbergh made a heist movie but decided to put his coen brothers hat on and, also, cast channing tatum as a divorced dad who wants to support his daughter's dreams but is seriously wigged out by pageant culture?" yes please. absolutely. adam driver almost never acts in movies i actually want to see but he really is one of the real ones.

babygirl - one of those movies where i can understand lots of things that didn't work for people but i, personally, was completely rapturous the entire time because i wanted a movie where i could walk out saying "nicole kidman did that" and i got that AND ALSO (a) a story about a perfectionist who hates herself and (b) sex scenes that are funny and weird and awkward and warm and human. that's so many things i love happening at once, i will happily forgive and overlook any flaws. i really just loved how much the two of them are actively figuring this thing out as they go and how that's embarrassing and goofy and also sweet and fun. plus nicole kidman really did do that, i mean, like, my god... my god....

fantasmas - you have to watch fantasmas... why haven't you watched fantasmas yet... i really struggle to imagine the person who would follow My Dumb Blog but not be into fantasmas... "the gay ones don't draw dicks, they draw eyes"... julio torres is the voice of a generation

the franchise - not quite as much of a banger as i wanted to be but likable enough, & i'm a sucker for showbiz jokes (jokes about insecure actors, etc.), although i think chris ryan had a point on the watch pod when he was like, the thing about the satire elements of this show are that if you know anything about the actual production stuff on superhero/franchise movies it's hard to satirize because like, the real stuff is actually just that crazy... there's a running thread about the overworked VFX guy and it's kinda funny but also like, well this lines up more or less with what those teams have actually said... anyway. i want to say i'm a lil bummed it didn't get renewed nonetheless but also i forgot until i was typing up the list of things to document here that i had never gotten around to the season finale, so i guess i can't really honestly claim to be that bummed lol. (watched it while washing dishes - pretty good!) did love daniel bruhl as a sensitive artiste director being soul-crushed by the studio machine though! that guy's great.

read

r. o. kwon, exhibit - this one's tough. ultimately, there were actually a lot of things i liked about this book. it had some moments that felt really human and well observed (when the protagonist says something about how usually orgasms aren't worth the guilt and then says she knows she's letting us down and her paramour says who's us and the protagonist says all women... that's funny and real and not unrelateable to me for different reasons!). the bones of it were i think ultimately solid - like yeah she's terrible at communicating but ultimately the book is about her running away from the hard fact that her husband wants a baby and she doesn't and the psychology holds water throughout, i think. (also a funny paragraph about how she knows how to cook but mostly subsists on like handfuls of nuts and bread dipped into olive oil or whatever and then she's like "and you thought i could raise a child?"... also relateable...) i REALLY related to the idea of being a person who simultaneously has the memory of experiencing the loss of faith in god as genuinely, actually traumatic and also being like "btw my family might be cursed by vengeful spirit, it's a whole thing, but i gotta try to talk to her before i do this because she kind of gave me the idea," and i really liked that the book didn't spend any effort on reconciling these two things because... i mean iykyk, like i really can't explain beyond "sometimes that's what it's like" - AND i also liked the ultimate reveal of that storyline and how it tied into the core character work of the main plot. plus the whole thing is like the "trying stuff out sexually as a vehicle/metaphor for owning your whole self" thing that i (a) have enjoyed writing in fanfiction and (b) really loved watching in babygirl lmao. unfortunately the writing was the most annoying tryhard I Get It You Have An MFA ass prose i have ever encountered... i complained about this at the time but it's craaazyyyy to use the word "mirific" three times in a ~200 page novel lmao. deranged. calm yourself. i also felt like the dialogue was really bad although i guess i can't totally rule out that this is a book about artists and artists actually are that annoying? idk though... it didn't feel stylized it just felt weird... who says "tippled"... so, ultimately i couldn't say that i "liked" this even though it had elements i admired or enjoyed.

naomi klein, the shock doctrine: the rise of disaster capitalism - as i mentioned at the time, very enamored of its framing device in a very popular nonfiction/thomas friedman lite kinda way, but when it's not doing that (which luckily is most of the time), this is an informative and well explicated accounting of the horrors milton friedman has unleashed upon the world. i liked her fundamental argument that you can't politicize along economic grounds horrors committed under communism but not do that for capitalism, which has sort of seeped into general internet leftist thought (a testament to the success of this book) but which i appreciate more having seen how she builds her case.

the red nation, the red deal: indigenous action to save our earth - read this for a mutual aid book club that never happened lol. at the end of this book they're like "well probably none of this is new in the climate justice conversation but we don't think things have to be new to be valuable" and like... on the one hand true... on the other hand if you're even vaguely aware of climate justice discourse... not a lot here is new. i also, perhaps unpopularly, have become kind of a... idk... i mean when people are like "we can't solve climate collapse without dismantling capitalism" these days my reaction is basically "well one of those things might happen in the next two hundred years and it's not dismantling capitalism." i'm not like a tech-zealot but a... tech-realist? idk. this is not what i want to be true but it is my honest accounting of the situation. so, any argument that's like "step one: dismantle capitalism" is... it's just not where i'm at these days.

patrick radden keefe, say nothing: a true story of murder and memory in northern ireland - there are no doubt quibbles or political issues to be had with this book, a story of the troubles focused largely on a particular group of IRA members operating in west belfast in the early 70s - as an idiot coming into this subject basically cold, i would have appreciated slightly more grounding in the political situation leading up to the swelling of violence in this period - but, damn, this book is fucking mesmerizing. keefe really brings the people involved to life, particularly the young IRA members at the heart of his chronicle, and while it's clear he doesn't condone all their actions, my own sense was that he was more interested in truly understanding and making clear their own understandings of their motivations & understanding of themselves & ethical framework than he was in passing judgment (and i also definitely felt like he had a certain admiration for the integrity of someone like brandon hughes or dolours price, who were always willing to own what they did and why they did it, and a genuine disdain for how fucking crazy it is for gerry adams to rebrand as a peacenik when literally everybody knows he spent the early 70s telling people to plant bombs lmao). (also having read empire of pain... he definitely holds the sacklers in lower esteem than the IRA, lol.) the final chapters of the book also touch on the really fascinating difficult question of how you morally reckon with the revolutionary violence you did if the revolution you did it for never came to pass - this is the heart of why his fellow ex-IRA comrades feel so betrayed by adams, who has left them to shoulder the burden of that guilt alone while pivoting to the compromise they once agreed would not suffice which was part of the reason for all the violence, and it is something i think about a lot as someone who would not self identify as a pacifist and thinks the historical record leaves no doubt that sometimes violence is necessary for change but nonetheless feels very reluctant to endorse specific acts of revolutionary violence in theory. thrilling and thorny, ultimately i would say deserving of all the accolades i learned after reading it has apparently received lol.

patrick radden keefe, the snakehead: an epic tale of the chinatown underworld and the american dream - not quite as tremendous-feeling as say nothing, but that's mostly because that's a crazy high bar; this is a really fascinating look at the human smuggling trade (& other organized-ish crime) in NYC's chinatown in the 80s/90s, including the middle aged woman who was at the heart of much of it. contains: some totally deranged gang warfare stories; a really fascinating look at the weirdness of chinese immigration policy in the 90s, when china's one-child policy pushed normally anti-immigration republicans to switch on this issue for pro-life reasons (the one child policy... maybe the one thing every american politician shares the same view on, for different reasons?); interesting background on fujian, the high-outmigration region of china from whence many of the principles in this story came; an accounting of an insane boat journey gone so wrong that at one point after the would-be migrants have been trapped in a harbor off the coast of africa (i forget which country), when they finally leave, two of them decide to stay because the chinese restaurant they've opened is doing so well. i keep thinking about the fact keefe highlights that of the hundreds of doomed migrants on this hugely traumatic journey who wound up deported after crash-landing, nearly all of them eventually made their way back to the US.

kazuo ishiguro, nocturnes - my first ishiguro since my teen ishiguro phase (a concept that should really be regarded the way that teens getting into heavy metal and grunge is in pop culture e.g. a sign to check in on their mental health lmao). didn't love these but i can't tell if that's because i prefer ishiguro as a novelist or because i'm just bad at reading short stories... also to be fair there were at least 2 ishiguro novels i read back then and was like "the fuck was that" lol. some very funny moments and a lot of like, amusing portraits of unlikable people, and i do love his style, which is like, a pathologically conversational first person that years of reading since has taught me is much more technically difficult than it looks, but ultimately it felt pretty slight.

naomi klein, doppleganger: a trip into the mirror world - klein takes on, like, "the wellness to alt right pipeline" is an oversimplification but topics in that neck of the woods, inspired by the wack ass shit constantly being tweeted by Other Naomi (wolf), with whom klein is frequently confused on twitter. this is an inherently very funny premise for a book and a lot of what klein says is in my view pretty accurate, and some of her literary/theoretical musings on dopplegangers as a Thing are interesting to read, plus the whole thing is on topics of interest to me, aka Alt Right Derangement And Weird Shit People Are Up To Online. however..... so klein says that she herself was very offline until covid happened, basically, and so if you have been online longer, and especially if you have been actively reading stuff about Weird Shit People Are Up To Online, then this book is basically a smart person catching up with topics you yourself already know a lot about. so in a funny way i found this a more enjoyable read than the shock doctrine, because it's less of an unrelenting fucking bummer about human evil and suffering, but it was also less enriching, because she didn't really bring any new insight to topics that, again, are probably in the top 5 of Post Headlines I'm Most Likely To Click On. like yeah, deranged alt right types are using the language of social justice and inequality and bodily autonomy to further their various causes... tru... i mean it is tru... i also think the fact that her default is a Not Online person who only changed her vibe after covid makes her a bit more of an internet doomer bc she doesn't viscerally get the nontoxic value possible to find in Online through diligent curation lol. but i do think it was a solid accounting of the subcultures and and ideologies she explores so like i said i basically liked it and if you're less tuned into weird internet radicalization currents than i am you will probably find it informative!

suzanna clarke, piranesi - i don't even know what to say about this one, probably tied with tender as my favorite book i read last year (strong fantasy year for me i guess). it's so crazy that suzanna clarke wrote jonathan strange & mr. norrell, the most perfect book of all time, and then did this, which is also the most perfect book of all time, in a completely different way. her gift for atmosphere and voice is second to none and in this one she uses it to draw us into caring so deeply for a narrator who can't even remember his own past - the book in some ways is a mystery and the doling out of information is perfectly paced but the reason it works is because we just love this guy because of how much he loves the universe. the final chapter expresses something about survival & upheaval & change (&, sure, trauma, if you want) that, as i said before & will come as no surprise, is so so so precisely keyed into an idea so deeply important to me... ahh! just sublime!

v. c. andrews, flowers in the attic - book club!! this book is CRAZY but there's only two real things i want to say about it: (1) a lot of what's totally deranged about it is that on the one hand, it has the most gothic novel ass set-up ever - horrible incest house of dark secrets and shame, children literally living in an attic, physical decay, etc. etc. - and on the other hand in all other respects its sensibilities are the most american 70s suburban ass thing, so that it's like, a gothic novel where the evil mother goes to secretary school and the kids watch sitcoms and cut construction paper in the secret attic... like, the tonal clash is soooo crazy, it's incredible; and (2) ok so like by the time it happens you 100% want those siblings to fuck. like. you just do.

suzanna clarke, jonathan strange and mr. norrell - counting this as last year even though i read the second half in january lol. ummm best book in the world. third time through and i genuinely think it gets better every time. most purely pleasurable reading experience of all time.

stephanie mccurry, confederate reckoning: power and politics in the civil war south - ditto re timing (technically i have like a couple pages of this one left and a few more quotes to post lol). i picked this back up as a comfort reread after the election and it slaps so hard it's crazy. love to read about how a bunch of war-losing loser traitors lost in no small part because it's hard to wage war as a modern state committed to resisting the tides of modernity!!!! sucks 2 suck!!!!!

listened

maude latour, sugar water - i'm kind of obsessed with maude latour not in terms of being obsessively in love with her music, although i think she's very good, but because she's my go-to example of someone out here doing girlpop toiling away in the spotify minds unremuneratively who i would easily and even gladly swap fame-wise with basically any of the pop girls in our current rising class (thinking of olivia/chappell/sabrina... none of whom are like terrible - well ok i have yet to hear a chappell roan song i think is actually good lol but i guess she can sing and it's nice that she's gay - but also alleged newcomers like tate mcrae? addison whoever? madison beer? these are not real people stop trying to act like they're real people! ladyraven ass pop girls...). she just makes really solid, well written, inventive but still catchy pop. i returned to this short album a lot more than i expected to, often thinking i wanted to hear just the first song (a standout) and then realizing i was happy to let the rest play through. also gay stuff, if you care about that.

sabrina carpenter, short n sweet - like it's all very competent and espresso deserves its flowers but who cares? who could possibly ever care? i've been SUCH an antonoff apologist and please please please is the first song where i felt like i was hearing him as his haters hear him, it sounds like shit. there are better moments and worse moments, some ok lines, she can sing, etc., but where's the vision? where's the personality? nothing to grab on to.

beabadoobee, this is how tomorrow moves - beabadoobee is obviously talented and intelligent and her music sounds enough like a kind of music i like that i always feel like i should like her more... but i think she's a little too stripped down and sophisticated for me. that said "ever seen" was one of my top songs of 2024, total absolute BANGER

charly bliss, forever - doesn't quite live up to the heights of young enough, but given that young enough is a strong contender for my favorite album of the past decade, i'm not really sure it could. this one is pop-punkier and very hooky lots of fun, and i just love eva's taffy-pull voice and wanna listen to her sing anything. also it has a song that sounds so much like a pop punk version of a kesha song it's legit uncanny to me.

pom pom squad, mirror starts moving without me - big step up from their last album, IMO, and i liked that a lot too! ambitious in an interesting way but also lots of fun. this one also has a song that at points sounds so much like a kesha song it's crazy, as does a 2023 album i was recently listening to by underscores... i feel like we're living in a big post-kesha moment and i don't know if anyone is appreciating it enough...

pale waves, smitten - i agree with pale waves that "what if avril lavigne got really into shoegaze and was also gay" is a great idea for an album. really pretty production on this one!

070 shake, petrichor - my friend dave was like "this album might be bad but i'm obsessed with it" and i listened out of solidarity and was like, i don't like this but i can understand why you specifically would. friendship!

charli xcx, brat and it's completely different but it's still brat - i never really listen to enough albums to justify having an album of the year but something about the release of the remix album really opened up the whole project to me and i was completely obsessed with it for a while and still love it. track by track most of the remixes are not quite as good as the original track (although some, like caroline polacheck's gorgeous turn on everything is romantic, are definite upgrades), but something about the spirit of generosity that infuses the project, the way it makes it all feel like a project more than an album, the sense that charli has thrown this party and she's invited up and coming spanish rapper bbtrix alongside ariana grande, the way it's less disciplined than the album proper but more expansive, at some points grimier and clubbier and at other points more emotive and romantic... idk. feels like a whole world. the so i remix alone, like - releasing a sad song about your friend who died, and then releasing a faster song about all the fun shit you used to do, that sounds more like a song your dead friend would have produced, is one of the most loving acts i have ever seen committed through art and it made me cry even though i never connected with SOPHIE's music bc i'm not really cool enough to be into hyperpop. rooting for charli at the grammies even though i know it's not gonna happen lmao.

other

jenny holzer at the guggenheim - there was a jenny holzer installation at the guggenheim!! it was really cool!! i finally understood something @rgr-pop said years ago about how it matters that she is a visual artist and her words (incredible as they often are as words) appear physically in a space. it is in fact Different, to see them in a space. in addition to The Classics (i got so fannishly excited spotting IT IS IN YOUR SELF INTEREST TO FIND A WAY TO BE VERY TENDER lmao), the installation also included a lot of her more recent and more overtly political stuff, some of which engaged specifically with the bush ii administration & iraq/afghanistan, which made for intense viewing given that i happened to go right around the time i read the shock doctrine (as did spotting the one about how mothers who have a reason to cry should do so in public....). jenny holzer is great! so glad i could experience that!

#isabel 2k24 #media 2k24 #OK now those can finally be put to bed lol

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