WATCHING
Louis Theroux – Porn’s Me Too
The Humans – The opening sequence nearly put me off… But I liked it. Based on writer-director Stephen Karam's own Tony Award-winning play, it still very much felt like a play. Nice to see Amy Schumer play a very different role.
Comedy awards – Sex Education cleaned up… and my fave lady Katherine Ryan.
Pieces of Her – Tony Collette.
Gosford Park
Killing Eve series 4 … Do the writers have any idea who the 12 are? Do I care? ugh… shame
Dopesick (Disney+) This was excellent. Great performances from everyone, Michael Keaton especially. So sad and really shows you the vast web of opioid addiction, making the Sackler’s evil horribly emotive.
Worth – on a Michael Keaton flex
Turning Red (Pixar) cute
Red Rocket, Sean Baker’s new film - Reallllllly liked it. Mikey (Simon Rex), the washed-up porn star protagonist, is great – a terrible person that you can’t help liking. All-round great characters…We all know a Mikey (not in the Porno way but in the charming, walking disaster way). Dragged a bit at points (I would have gone with the naked run as the end scene but I didn’t make it did I)
Nightmare Alley
The Worst Person in the World LOVED. I cried I laughed, I pondered… and I’m still thinking about it. Great performances, and cinematography. Everything felt very real; the dialogue, the way it was captured – and there were some nice surreal moments to break things up a bit, like the freezing of time and the mushroom trip. I liked how the film was told in chapters, a story unfolding about the choices we’re faced with, living with decisions made, and how our choices are sometimes made for us.
Mollys Game. A very unnecessarily long game.
READING
The Master and Margarita
Why We Use “lol” So Much – I am TERRIBLE for this.
REMEMBERING JAMAL EDWARDS 1990-2022 very sad.
Parenting the Shit out of Life – Mother Pukka. Necessary and easy read.
Lil Simz photographs the women in the new Top Boy - The Face
Nice quote found on Russel Davies blog about presenting: Get to the chorus – "Favreau, a self-taught pianist who studied classical music in college, delights in the comparison of his work to pop songwriting. “A good line in a speech is like a good piece of music,” he said. “If you take a small thing and repeat it throughout the speech, like a chorus in a song, it becomes memorable. People don’t remember songs for the verses. They remember songs for the chorus. If you want to make something memorable, you have to repeat it.” Hit Makers - Derek Thompson
Ewan Spencer has a new book coming out ‘While you were sleeping’ (want) Interviewed by The Face. Love how he got the title.
The Staggering Ecological Impacts of Computation and the Cloud – As depressing/alarming as it sounds.
LOOKING
Landscape photographer of the year – Love how a lot of them look like abstract paintings
Surrealist exhibition at the Tate
Loving Agathe Singer’s funky cats
LISTENING
Foo Fighters - such sad news of Taylor Hawkins death. What a legend
Smashing Pumpkins
Nirvana
Pascal, Ronnie Size…Drummond & Jungle for the sunshiiiiine
OTHER STUFF
These ads for SAXX underwear are fun.
Vice article on the excellent Gender Pay Gap Bot that took down disingenuous brands and companies tweeting about IWD, but lacked the data to back up their ‘celebration of women’. Great call out and hopefully will make companies put their money where their mouth is.
https://www.heardle.app/ - musical wordle – https://framed.wtf/ Film wordle (sort of)
https://brainstream.nfb.ca/ – This is odd, but I really liked it – Written and directed by Caroline Robert ‘Brainstream is an interactive animated film that explores, with sensitivity and humour, the mysteries of brain activity and the unpredictable trajectory of our thoughts’. You’re inside the head of D., a young girl who’s lives-streaming her brain activity during a new kind of treatment session. Online, along with other participants, you massage her brain, experiencing the free flow of her thoughts, emotions, and obsessions.
