#the actor who plays the captain was in top gun maverick too but i don't remember his name

[allpromarlo]

what in the kentucky fried fuck was that

[prettyboysdontlookatexplosions]

reading/watching/listening jan/feb 2k23

books

little weirds, jenny slate - if i'm being totally honest i think if you're not already in love with jenny slate this book might come across as cloying or twee. but luckily i am so i found it delightful

watchmen, alan moore - so good it's stupid. it's funny because i decided to reread this after having reread sandman in the fall and falling in love with it all over again, and while sandman is for grown-ups and that's part of why it's good (unlike the netflix show which is for babies which is why it's not), reading that one i was like, god, i was so profoundly lucky to discover this exactly at the age of fourteen, the perfect age to encounter it. with watchmen, i admired and am glad i read it in high school (if nothing else it informed and gave context for my understandings of... a lot of cultural discussions over the years lol), but i enjoyed it much, much more as an adult - the emotional landscape of it is just entirely textures unknown to the very young. like most things that have gotten insanely famous, the boiled-down cultural osmosis blurb on it is not quite inaccurate but it leaves out much of the appeal: its inventiveness, the intricacy of its construction, the way it feels expansive while being incredibly taut. and its compassion - its worldview is dark but very humane; rorsharch is pathetic and monstrous but there's a sadness in his story, too. i don't ever want to know what alan moore thinks about sally but revisiting her as an adult i found her believable, even familiar, her scenes with laurie a surprisingly real snapshot of a generational divide between women with different relationships to patriarchy.

language at the speed of sight, mark seidenberg - a (readable and accessible, though i glossed over a bit in the parts about their neural network experiments) book about reading, recommended to anyone interested in the literacy pedagogy stuff i babble about here sometimes. there was a chapter on the history of writing that perversely made me love the english language even more, but obviously my favorite part was the bit near the end where he talks about how ed schools suck because they are antiscientific institutions whose goal is not the transmission of knowledge but the socialization of young teachers into a particular ideology and identity role, which is 10000% true.

movies

the river (1938) - love a WPA doc

top gun - cult spokesperson and human trafficking apologist tom cruise is in fact one of the great jaw-clench actors of our time. no one before or since has put on a pair of sunglasses so well. at one point during this filmé - i think it might have been during the silhouetted kissing scene, which has such bizarre lip choreography it's an ingenious way to get around tom cruise's inability to convincingly portray sexual attraction for a human woman - i turned to @onihcinimkcin and said, "who is this movie FOR?" because i had always assumed it was very much a boy movie but it turned out to be filled with girl stuff like a sex scene with billowing curtains out of an eighties music video and tender homoeroticism. then i remembered about boys and planes and was like, well ok. (he said it was a shounen anime, which also tracks.) great to see a movie from when movies knew how to light scenes that took place at night. a fun fact about the plot of this film is that at the beginning of the story the captain or whatever states that the top gun program lasts five weeks, which means that maverick develops a rivalry with iceman, seduces his professor, falls in love, gets investigated and cleared for his best friend's death, goes through all five stages of grief, rediscovers himself as a pilot and a man, and befriends his former nemesis, all in the span of five weeks. this movie contains two separate scenes with the joyful terrible singing of BFFs. baby meg ryan's HAIR? my favorite part was when the shirtless volleyball scene happened where all the boys were playing with all the other boys and the soundtrack was playing "playing with the boys" because they were playing with the boys.

top gun: maverick - the title of this movie is so funny because it sounds like a standard sequel concept where it's like "top gun but now top gun guy is Going Rogue" but then i watched top gun and that's just literally his name. top gun: tom cruises. not as bonkers as its predecessor but tom cruise, an evil human being, has gotten better at the acting part of being a movie star in the past quarter-century, and that sound design/editing in the canyon sequence, when it's the big climax but there's no music, just howling wind? good shit! get those technical oscars babe! it is also funny that the mission is to destroy an enemy base and we literally never learn who the enemy is. they have to go to "the border" the border of WHERE? the movie will not tell you. the border of narnia for all it cares. THE border. "we want a war movie without the actual war, even more than the first time." sure. it has been a long time since i laughed at a movie as hard as i laughed when tom cruise and babygoose were fighting in the snow-covered forest and tom cruise said "no I was supposed to save YOU! what were you THINKING!" and babygoose said "YOU TOLD ME NOT TO THINK!" and tom cruise just stared at him dumbfounded and furious because he's right. his improvements in his craft, i should mention, do not extend to romantic scenes; he and jennifer connelly (i never notice this shit but DAMN, i swear she looks younger than she did in a beautiful mind and not in a good way) literally lie in bed ostensibly post-coitally together and it's like, aw, how cute. they're friends in a culture where they have platonic naked sleepovers.

werewolf by night - i've been watching a lot of marvel content over the past several months because it's good dumb background noise for mindless-ish work stuff. i don't know that this was the worst thing i watched? but it was definitely the most pointless. i can't believe they dragged gael garcia bernal into this.

guardians holiday special - WHATEVER, I THOUGHT THIS WAS CUTE. "mantis and drax want to fix christmas for peter so to get him the best present ever they kidnap kevin bacon" is a perfectly delightful concept. this is the kind of dumb shit i wish marvel would use their extended universe and cosmic playground to do more often, instead of boring terribly shot action scenes but now it's got that other guy in it too (the better parts of she hulk also landed here, although that show suffered from the problem of just not being good or well written or interesting at all).

guardians of the galaxy 1 & 2 - rewatched them and was confirmed in my belief that they are really underrated in the typical marvel rankings and that in particular they have more functional screenplays than almost anything else in the universe. 2 in particular was fun to revisit after hatereading the dreamer trilogy because it's a story about how peter turns out to actually by birth be more special than almost anyone and yet he should still kill his shitty dad so he can go off and have adventures with friends; there's also a whole other plotline about how his shitty dad-figure redeems himself but does so by committing a genuinely sacrificial act of love after delivering a sincere apology that acknowledges his wrongdoing. these are not high bars to clear but they work dramatically, they're better at this stuff than e.g. anything that happened in shang-chi, and, again, they made me appreciate that maggie stiefvater is so deranged james gunn seems well adjusted and wise by comparison. grim! "if you kill me you'll be just like anybody else" / "and what's so wrong with that?" is one of the best exchanges in a marvel movie ever and the only compelling moment to come out of a villain battle outside of, like, the killmonger stuff and a special little bonus present to me (a person who hateread the dreamer trilogy).

mikey & nicky - holy shit, what a fucking movie. i mean like a real fucking film. this essay says it all better than i could (and is wonderfully written to boot).

shakespeare in love - no one ever talks about this movie anymore except to complain about how harvey weinstein bought its best picture oscar, stolen away from saving private ryan. i can't weigh in on that because you couldn't fucking pay me to sit through saving private ryan, but i am here to say in the year of our lord 2023 that shakespeare in love absolutely fucks. i don't think i ever knew it was co-written by tom stoppard, but before looking that up i was already thinking how much more deliberately shakespearean the screenplay was than i could appreciate in eighth grade: attuned to the rhythm and musicality of its dialogue, and then also the crossdressing, the clowns, the indifference to historical realism, the bawdiness, the banter. the scene where will extemporizes on his lady love's imagined virtues to an increasingly displeased viola in disguise reminded me of the thing in the romeo and juliet essay i'd read about how romeo enters the play almost a parody of the petrarchian lover, enamored of an impossibly pure woman who can never be his, and finds real love in juliet, who unlike the addressee of a sonnet can talk back. there's a whole riff where shakespeare is on the couch at the apothecary's talking about how he's got writer's block and making a series of phallic double entendres involving his pen. gwyneth is fine. this movie's cast is INSANE btw, we all know judi dench won an oscar for eight minutes of screentime but like, geoffrey rush is in it? colin firth? imelda staunton? BEN AFFLECK? it's a movie that's incredibly fond of its subject without being in love with itself, riffing affectionately on the neuroses and vanities of writers and actors alike (the actor playing the nurse, asked what the play's about: "well, there's this nurse..."), luxuriating in sumptuous period costuming, bringing to life an impossibly sexy affair, letting itself believe in this brief perfect love. also it rightly understands that act 3 scene 5 is THEE scene of all scenes in romeo and juliet despite being less famous than both the balcony scene and their sonnetized meet cute. in conversations about the current blockbuster takeover you hear people complain sometimes about various kinds of movies that no longer get made and it struck me this was a perfect example: a genuinely smart, sexy movie for adults sparing no expense to look gorgeous at all times, but one that's also gleefully silly and horny and fun. it's a beautiful-looking period piece that won an oscar, but it's not what people think of as oscar bait; it's concerned above all with wanting the audience to have a good time. i feel the bard would approve.

tv

criminal minds: evolution - prentiss calls herself "mommy," tara is bisexual now, rossi says "fuckhead." they understood the assignment 100/10

ms. marvel - not amazing in the grand televisual landscape, but the best of the disney plus offerings, and the least ugly, most competently shot thing marvel has ever put out by far. the colors are cute and nice to look at and frequently we get camera decisions with clear purpose! the bar is low but the floor beneath it is littered with every other stupid thing they've done. the lead was adorable, too, looking forward-ish to see her with brie larson this fall and hoping she gets to stretch her wings on something worthy.

theater

a strange loop - so, funny story: i kept seeing ads for a muscal called a strange loop and thinking "oh, like the closing track of liz phair's seminal album exile in guyville, the song which inspired nineteen year old me to get a tattoo - wait, no, no one would name a broadway musical after a liz phair deep cut, they must be talking about the same concept she named the song for from some book i've never read." like, every time i saw this ad i had the exact same conversation in my head. then like a month before it closed @unbornwhiskeyy texted me to tell me that liz phair was playing in the lobby of a musical they were about to see and i was like SAY WHAT NOW? so obviously i had to go. anyway: delightful, rude, funny, sharp, genuinely provocative which is hard to make it to broadway with, fantastic ensemble work, a certain inherent thrill in seeing a broadway musical that won a tony and a pulitzer about being black and queer and broke, like, how did you get away with that? i don't know that it totally lived up to its own ambitions but i liked how hungry it was, how much you could feel it trying - it reminds me a little of reading white teeth in that way, a debut that arrives not quite fully formed but impressive nonetheless, and that you can feel kicking at the door to be let in or die trying. i thought the whole time i was watching it that i admired it and was enjoying it but wasn't exactly emotionally connecting the way it wanted me to, but as soon as the house lights went up i started to cry.

music

the one who wanted more, cheese on bread - i was like obsesssssssed with their second album, the search for colonel mustard, back my late teens/early twenties, and was thrilled to discover via spotify that they'd reunited a few years ago for a third outing, one which is as funny and melodic and clever and cool as their last. "party dance" references lil kim and kimya dawson in the same verse; if that appeals to you, i would recommend.

i also spent like nine million hours in january listening to the world/inferno friendship society's red-eyed soul which is still after 16 years a perfect album to me.

podcasts of note (i'm not gonna list like every random self-help interview i listen to or every one-off episode about a fitfluencer lying about creating custom plans turned christian vlogger married to a guy who lost his police job for being too racist and violent but it's the scamfluencers episode on brittany dawn)

behind the bastards - still trying to fill the YWA shaped hole in my podcasting heart. this comes close vibes-wise - conversational explainers of dark topics - but i haven't decided yet if i like it enough to listen to any of the episodes about people i'm not already interested in. the host is funny and clearly a smart dude but he has a new guest every episode to listen to him do the explaining and they are so far mostly dull and unfunny and not particularly insightful or smart (another critical YWA thing that makes it so special despite its many many flaws - michael and sarah are both fun to listen to when they react to things, and my exploration of the podcast universe has taught me this is NOT a common gift).

[kylesvariouslistsandstuff]

Apparently, there is some hubbub going on over a newly announced spin-off of the PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN movie franchise that Disney is planning to go forward with. One of two, actually. There was another project that was set to star Margot Robbie as the lead, but it appears that Disney is more interested in another take on the classic Disney parks ride starring Ayo Edebiri.

And of course, the usual suspects, including the wannabe-edgelord dingus running what was once "Twitter", are complaining. They're big mad that Ayo, a Black American actress, is "replacing" Depp... Never mind that this movie is a FUCKING SPIN-OFF???

Also... All of a sudden, people *love* the PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN sequels now?

I was a teenager when most of the PIRATES sequels came out, and I remember them getting rather duff critical reception. Audiences kinda didn't stick around for them, either. They all opened huge, DEAD MAN'S CHEST with a record-breaking number at the time of its release (2006), but then dropped off and had blah multipliers. The 4th film, ON STRANGER TIDES, came out when I was 18. And I just remember it coming and going, whatever. And then the fifth one, again... Just a sort of "ugh, another one?" reaction. That fifth film, titled DEAD MEN TELL NO TALES in the U.S. (SALAZAR'S REVENGE, elsewhere), just did alright. Like, near-$800m is a great amount for any movie, but it was less than the other POTC sequels.

It wasn't a problem when other big movie franchises got reboots with all-new casts. Spider-Man has been played by like three different actors in live-action over the past three decades.

I guess enough time has passed for there to be this kind of intense nostalgia for these movies. That's cool, I guess. After all, filmtwitter never shuts the fuck up about the CGI on Davy Jones, and how the first three movies are Gore's through-and-through.

As for all this clinging to Depp's iconic Captain Jack Sparrow... As if it isn't PIRATES without him?

Pal... PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN, the original dark ride attraction, opened at Disneyland in 1967. Depp was about FOUR YEARS OLD when it opened. PIRATES existed long before he had a career or had some kind of prominence in the world, m'kay? PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN is more than just one single actor. And hey, why is it just him and not director Gore Verbinski? Writers Ted Elliott and Terry Rossio? Producer Jerry Bruckheimer? They all made that first movie happen, too, ya know.

My MAJOR concern with any new Pirates movie is whether it'll be its own beast or not. I feel a lot of live-action Disney movies as of late are not directed by anyone, they're made for the directors before they get to them. The director is hired, given a template that's already ready-made for them, and then BOOM movie done. Basically the MCU way of doing it. That's kinda how it feels to me. Same studio that won't make a third TRON movie from the previous film's director and the cast (which consists of the guy who directed massive blockbuster TOP GUN: MAVERICK and an actor who lead the massive blockbuster OPPENHEIMER, Disney do you hate money or something???), instead opting for Jared Leto. Like... Make it make sense.

So, if this Ayo-lead PIRATES spin-off goes through, I look forward to it! Pirates are cool, there's still a lot to play with regarding this concept, the ride is iconic. Just... Disney... Get a really good director and let them do their thing, alright? It'll be an all-timer if you do.

My ideal PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN would be animated. With designs based on Marc Davis' exemplary concept art and resembling a 1960s Xerox-era Disney film, like a high seas JUNGLE BOOK or something incorporating the original 1967-era music of the ride. That's what I would make, although I don't know if the public would fly out in droves to watch that, lol.

Anyways, I wanted to rant. People are being silly about a fucking pirate movie franchise.