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I can't tell you how disappointing it is, after last winter's multi-foot snow extravaganza, to have prioritized a snowblower, tricked my dad into buying one for my birthday, and besides a few weak-sauce flurries, it hasn't, like, SNOWED snowed all season. Is it all going to come in March? Is this climate change writ large? One season on, one season off, deedle deedle dumpling? Anyway, I hate it. I hate it all.
Do you all want updates about the house they've been renovating next door? I'm turning into a real elderly here. All weather updates and neighborhood busybodiness.
Speaking of my house: a national management company bought out the local management company that had the contract last spring. This spring? I still haven't gotten a lease renewal, nor a "get out" notice. My neighbor next door received a renewal offer just after New Year's and after 15 years in the neighboring duplex, she told them to kick rocks and is moving out 3/1. She mentioned they sent the renewal "for both properties," which is baffling, but a few baffling things have happened since the national company took over. I've messaged the management company several time and am getting NO information, so my best guess is that the owners of the property are shopping other management companies or they are hung up in negotiations... and I am hung up in the middle. I did look at City of Minneapolis rules, and they have to give me 30 days to vacate, so I'm relieved knowing that I'm at least here through March. I do not want to move, and my hope is that this one of those contractual situations where I'm caught in the middle. Annoying but eventually remedied. I DO hope the owners, who live in California, are not thinking they'll manage this property themselves. I think that's unrealistic.
Enough real life. Here is my media week in review:
1) Watched Sheng Wang's Sweet & Juicy on Netflix. It was very funny, what the kids call "vibes," but also it was a balanced and engaging mix of conceptual bits and personal or observational stuff. It looks like he's touring again. I don't know that I was so into it that I'm willing to pay the theater prices he's certainly pulling these days (though he is doing dates at the club in Madison, so maybe he's still doing comedy exclusive venues sometimes). Anyway very good.
2) Saw Branded to Kill, that 1960s Japanese neo-noir I mentioned last entry (you're all keeping up, right? All 2 of you?). Here's a thing I'll say about arriving in my late middle 40s: I have very much changed my personal philosophy from my early days of being a wannabe intellectual or somebody more than a dilettante and less than a committed cinephile. In my 20s and into my 30s, I believed in CHALLENGING MYSELF. Watching things that Had Merit that I personally found upsetting or distasteful or, god forbid, boring. That young person is no more. And so as I watched Branded to Kill, which was ostensibly about the suffocating and restrictive nature of Japanese culture, particularly for men, but was, on a surface-level, about several snail-pace car chases, bad bullet sfx, enough misogyny to make me long for a feminist reading to skim during the car chases... I don't know, man. I don't think I need to challenge myself as much anymore. I'm full of rich texture like a Triscuit. Sometimes learning something new by experiencing something old or out of my cultural wheelhouse is just... not fun. And annoying.
Anyway I saw the trailer for Arnold Schwarzenegger's Conan the Barbarian as a part of the upcoming Swords and Sorcery series. So that was a hoot.
3a) Watched a few more S2 People of Earth. It's great. What accent is Peter Serafinowicz doing? Who ever knows? Is it wrong after the many years of excellent work Peter has done, my first thought is always of his guest stint on Parks and Rec when he befriends his American idiot counterpart Andy? Back to People of Earth, gotta make it last. There's only so many episodes left of this bunch. What a great cast and killer writers' room. Then I'll probably pony up for S3 of Ghosts UK.
3b) I am no further in The Sandman. I finished episode 1. What does it share in common with OFMD besides a rabid fandom who likes it when dudes make out? Because it is very, uh, humorless. And mopey. And that guy Dream is very Chalamee-y, which is fine if you like that sort of thing. Anyway probably not gonna keep going. I'll let it sit on the queue a little longer since I just removed Transatlantic (I love Gillian Jacobs, and I love hats, but I'm not in the mood for Sad Serious WWII Business).
3c) A little further along in Moonlighting. Watched the Christmas episode where they literally broke the 4th wall and did a crane shot so you could see the full set and the whole cast and crew sang a Christmas carol and David and Maddie kissed on the lips twice, but not with tongue, so I guess it's not supposed to count. This is the 1980s, when soap opera rules were that you usually had dream kisses or a mistletoe kiss before your first True Love's Kiss. Man, I miss the glory of 1980s soap operas.
4) Ann, I have still not queued up Tar. I'll get there. It's on Prime.
5) I started Mr. and Mrs. Smith on Prime. Almost through ep 1. Odds are higher for this than Sandman.
6) Oh, the whole reason I came here! I saw American Fiction yesterday! So funny and thought-provoking and such a showcase for the tremendous talent of Jeffrey Wright (and the supporting cast, too, of course). I remember being so enamored of Jeffrey Wright in the early seasons of Westworld (or as Amanda called it back then, The Sad Robot Show). He's so great at melancholy, but my very favorite Wright move in American Fiction was how judgmentally exhausted he could seem simply by closing his eyes for a moment and shaking his head. It also really felt like it understood the quiet way you can be a disaster in your middle age while it was also taking apart the literary world and liberal white "enjoyment" of Black cinema and literature. Very glad I saw it in the theater.
Speaking of Chalamee-y, saw the new Dune trailer. Boy, that seems very footnotesy. I saw the David Lynch movie. Is that the same thing? JKJKJKJKJK DON'T SEND THE HERBERT BRIGADE AFTER ME.
Do you all want updates about the house they've been renovating next door? I'm turning into a real elderly here. All weather updates and neighborhood busybodiness.
Speaking of my house: a national management company bought out the local management company that had the contract last spring. This spring? I still haven't gotten a lease renewal, nor a "get out" notice. My neighbor next door received a renewal offer just after New Year's and after 15 years in the neighboring duplex, she told them to kick rocks and is moving out 3/1. She mentioned they sent the renewal "for both properties," which is baffling, but a few baffling things have happened since the national company took over. I've messaged the management company several time and am getting NO information, so my best guess is that the owners of the property are shopping other management companies or they are hung up in negotiations... and I am hung up in the middle. I did look at City of Minneapolis rules, and they have to give me 30 days to vacate, so I'm relieved knowing that I'm at least here through March. I do not want to move, and my hope is that this one of those contractual situations where I'm caught in the middle. Annoying but eventually remedied. I DO hope the owners, who live in California, are not thinking they'll manage this property themselves. I think that's unrealistic.
Enough real life. Here is my media week in review:
1) Watched Sheng Wang's Sweet & Juicy on Netflix. It was very funny, what the kids call "vibes," but also it was a balanced and engaging mix of conceptual bits and personal or observational stuff. It looks like he's touring again. I don't know that I was so into it that I'm willing to pay the theater prices he's certainly pulling these days (though he is doing dates at the club in Madison, so maybe he's still doing comedy exclusive venues sometimes). Anyway very good.
2) Saw Branded to Kill, that 1960s Japanese neo-noir I mentioned last entry (you're all keeping up, right? All 2 of you?). Here's a thing I'll say about arriving in my late middle 40s: I have very much changed my personal philosophy from my early days of being a wannabe intellectual or somebody more than a dilettante and less than a committed cinephile. In my 20s and into my 30s, I believed in CHALLENGING MYSELF. Watching things that Had Merit that I personally found upsetting or distasteful or, god forbid, boring. That young person is no more. And so as I watched Branded to Kill, which was ostensibly about the suffocating and restrictive nature of Japanese culture, particularly for men, but was, on a surface-level, about several snail-pace car chases, bad bullet sfx, enough misogyny to make me long for a feminist reading to skim during the car chases... I don't know, man. I don't think I need to challenge myself as much anymore. I'm full of rich texture like a Triscuit. Sometimes learning something new by experiencing something old or out of my cultural wheelhouse is just... not fun. And annoying.
Anyway I saw the trailer for Arnold Schwarzenegger's Conan the Barbarian as a part of the upcoming Swords and Sorcery series. So that was a hoot.
3a) Watched a few more S2 People of Earth. It's great. What accent is Peter Serafinowicz doing? Who ever knows? Is it wrong after the many years of excellent work Peter has done, my first thought is always of his guest stint on Parks and Rec when he befriends his American idiot counterpart Andy? Back to People of Earth, gotta make it last. There's only so many episodes left of this bunch. What a great cast and killer writers' room. Then I'll probably pony up for S3 of Ghosts UK.
3b) I am no further in The Sandman. I finished episode 1. What does it share in common with OFMD besides a rabid fandom who likes it when dudes make out? Because it is very, uh, humorless. And mopey. And that guy Dream is very Chalamee-y, which is fine if you like that sort of thing. Anyway probably not gonna keep going. I'll let it sit on the queue a little longer since I just removed Transatlantic (I love Gillian Jacobs, and I love hats, but I'm not in the mood for Sad Serious WWII Business).
3c) A little further along in Moonlighting. Watched the Christmas episode where they literally broke the 4th wall and did a crane shot so you could see the full set and the whole cast and crew sang a Christmas carol and David and Maddie kissed on the lips twice, but not with tongue, so I guess it's not supposed to count. This is the 1980s, when soap opera rules were that you usually had dream kisses or a mistletoe kiss before your first True Love's Kiss. Man, I miss the glory of 1980s soap operas.
4) Ann, I have still not queued up Tar. I'll get there. It's on Prime.
5) I started Mr. and Mrs. Smith on Prime. Almost through ep 1. Odds are higher for this than Sandman.
6) Oh, the whole reason I came here! I saw American Fiction yesterday! So funny and thought-provoking and such a showcase for the tremendous talent of Jeffrey Wright (and the supporting cast, too, of course). I remember being so enamored of Jeffrey Wright in the early seasons of Westworld (or as Amanda called it back then, The Sad Robot Show). He's so great at melancholy, but my very favorite Wright move in American Fiction was how judgmentally exhausted he could seem simply by closing his eyes for a moment and shaking his head. It also really felt like it understood the quiet way you can be a disaster in your middle age while it was also taking apart the literary world and liberal white "enjoyment" of Black cinema and literature. Very glad I saw it in the theater.
Speaking of Chalamee-y, saw the new Dune trailer. Boy, that seems very footnotesy. I saw the David Lynch movie. Is that the same thing? JKJKJKJKJK DON'T SEND THE HERBERT BRIGADE AFTER ME.