somniloquence

Hey, if you are going to theatres to see movies these days, I can highly recommend Sinners, with Michael B. Jordan, Wunmi Mosaku, and Hailee Steinfeld. It's about twin brothers (played by Jordan) who return to their town in Mississippi in 1932 to open a juke joint, and run up against vampires. I'm not much of a vampire person at all, but I think this would probably satisfy both the vampire loving crowd as well as the crowd like me, because the whole first hour is mostly a slow build of who the twins are and who the people in their lives are, and what's happened to them to make them what they are (not the least of which is of course generational trauma from racism), and also background for the character who becomes central to both their story and to the vampires' story.

The music is fucking off the charts amazing (Ludwig Göransson does the soundtrack and a lot of the music stuff) and worth it alone. There are two music sequences that left me kind of gobsmacked. I've never seen anything like it.

There's definitely gore and jump scares, but overall I didn't find it too horror-y, more like a modern monster movie in terms of the violence and such. It was definitely R-rated, with some very sexual scenes. Anyways, if you were considering it, I loved it. (It was directed by Ryan Coogler of Black Panther fame.)

I just got back from seeing The Suicide Squad. It wasn't a movie that was even on my radar but minim_calibre invited me and I'm a sucker for an invitation to go to movies with min. It's deeply, deeply weird. This isn't casting shade on it necessarily, I think we both sort of spontaneously mentioned that on our own. It's also something that we agreed was maybe the best performance Idris Elba's given in years, which in itself is deeply deeply weird when you think about it.

But for anyone contemplating seeing it, I wanted to give you a heads up: ( slightly spoilery warnings about animal harm, general harm, and a few other extreme warnings )

So if those aren't super deal breakers for you, go with God, you know. I'm still figuring out what I thought--a lot of it really bugged me, and like all superpowered action movies it's 30 minutes too long and really noisy, but then they pulled out the team feels or the found family type shenanigans and I was like, well, crap. Also, Viola Davis, you know what I mean?

Did I hate it or like it? I don't know! So I would definitely be interested to hear what other people thought. Comments welcome, so spoiler warnings for them that hates 'em.

Also to add: rather hilariously, when the movie started the Disney logo came up and I was like wait what? And after a few seconds this narration began and I was like this is definitely not the right movie, and it seemed a few other people were murmuring about being confused about what movie they were in. And it became very clear that it was Jungle Cruise. It looked like a bunch of different people went out to tell them that they were showing the wrong movie, but there were a ton of people including us, who were looking at their phones going wait are we in the right auditorium? And it took them a good five minutes at least to stop the movie and then a few more minutes to put the right one in, and it was actually toward the end of the movie so a bunch of people were booing. I suppose it was sort of apropos and matched the tone of the experience.

I keep meaning to post about all the stuff I've been watching or seeing in theatres, but then I start to forget stuff or get lazy. This is by no means an exhaustive list, because I can't recall everything, but I'm trying to get back in the habit of posting.

Movies:
I never ended up posting anything much about Avengers: Infinity War because honestly, it was a disappointment and just like Civil War, the more I thought about it, the more upset I got. I've seen it three times, and I keep meaning to go again, because there's a lot visually happening that I miss each time, but it just depresses me so much. It's not the deaths that will be undone, although I hate them, I hate this Marvel-tries-to-out-edgelord-DCU brodude bullshit, it's more the length of time we spend on grape Joss Whedon and his scrotum chin and his stupid bullshit fascist rhetoric that goes completely unchallenged in the film, and the needless deaths of characters like Heimdall, Gamora, and yeah, even Loki. The fact that they gave Peter Parker a five-minute Snapture death scene but Sam had to get dusted alone, shit like that. There are still parts I like (especially Strange dragging Tony) and there are some great lines and Bucky has goats and cows (!!!), but even though I expected a tire fire, I at least wanted a fun tire fire. I took a friend the third time and he was utterly devastated, he's still depressed from it, especially because he loves Spider-Man, and I'm sure a little of that colored my feelings and growing dissatisfaction about it. Oh well. At least there's ten seconds of more vidding material.

Incredibles 2 was a lot of fun, but man, you can sure see how the intervening 14 years and the rise of superhero culture have changed movies. This is absolutely frenetic to the point of being almost irritating, there were times when I just really, really longed for a little breathing room, but it doesn't give you much of that, not the way the first film did. The culture today wants that, and then there's the goddamn script formula that all incipient blockbusters have to adhere to. I will definitely get this on dvd, but that will at least allow me to pause it and take that breath. It's hilarious, though, and god I love that midcentury modern look, and there were absolutely stellar jokes. Incidentally, I don't even have photosensitivity or seizure disorders, and I could barely watch that scene with the flashing light--I'd heard that after an uproar, theatres were posting notices about the scene, but there were none at my theatre and it was absolutely packed, and I some people having to leave. Pixar really dropped the ball on that one.

Bombshell, The Story of Hedy Lamarr has made its way to Netflix and I highly recommend it if you're at all interested in her. I was really bummed that this didn't come out when I needed it most last year while I was writing her and Steve Rogers having a fling, because it's actually pretty hard to get information on her that isn't solely focused on her looks or on her invention of frequency hopping. They did exhaustive research, and of course there's the obligatory interview with the old white man who claims she just stole it from her husband, the arms dealer to Nazis. The really interesting thing is the interview she did with a journalist from Forbes before her death, one of the only surviving interviews with her (by phone, because she'd become a recluse due to years of bad plastic surgery), and interviews with her kids.

Justice League: Wow, what a piece of crap. I mean, that's not really a surprise, but still. The CGI is abysmal, the story is so absurd and boring, and that whole thing with erasing Henry Cavill's mustache just makes his scenes painful to watch. They should all be fired for the whole thing but especially the mustache. (It's weird--I thought he was hot in The Tudors, but since then I find him incredibly unhot, and here all you can do is stare at his uncanny valley upper lip.) And fucking Joss, man, just…die in a fire already and give us a rest from your intolerable need to use women as boob trampolines for male characters, especially your goddamn self-inserts. I don't even like Jason Momoa, but he and Ezra Miller (and of course Gal Gadot) were the only really tolerable things in this. I'm still infuriated by the Amazons' bare-belly costumes.

The Mountain Between Us was something I'd wanted to get out and see in the theatre but it vanished, like, instantly. I've been waiting for it to show up somewhere so was excited when I saw it on HBO, but my god what an awful waste of Idris Elba and Kate Winslet (and an adorable yellow lab). I'd had the mistaken impression it was based on a true story, but it was actually just a novel but I could tell immediately it wasn't true, anyway, by the implausibilities piling on and on within the first couple minutes. I wondered if the author had done any research at all--there are mountain lions way the fuck up past the treelines in January, where there'd be no food for them, bear traps during the season when bears, you know, hibernate (though I suppose they could have just been forgotten when the season changed), Idris is conveniently a doctor so that all the terrible injuries Kate gets can be treated, small-plane pilots who don't file flight plans because it's just a short trip and they're not going high even though there's a goddamn storm, and it just…man, it was bad. I really wanted to enjoy him being a romantic lead, but I could not roll my eyes hard enough. Still, if you're looking for a ridiculous snowy survival movie with sexy Idris (or Kate!), you can watch it secure in the knowledge that the dog does not die, in fact, he's probably the most sensible creature in this.

I've seen a few other smaller things, but I need to get out and see Ocean's 8 and Ant-Man and the Wasp.I'm actually not all that interested in Ocean's, all of the trailers left me totally cold, but I want to support women-centric projects.

Television

The new season of GLOW just dropped but I'm saving it to watch with someone. I'm hoping it won't take too long for The Expanse to show up streaming. I hate SyFY's app, since it won't keep an entire season of a show.

I haven't finished Killing Eve yet but will soon. I don't really know what I think about it. I love a lot of it, especially Sandra Oh as Eve, she's just flamazing and I love her to death, and her husband, and the kid she works with. I especially adore Fiona Shaw's character--I mean, it's a great character, period, but Shaw is one of my fave actors anyway, and she's knocking it out of the park here. I'm more troubled by Villanelle--I don't like killers, especially psychopaths, and I also have this fundamental issue with human characters who have a superhuman ability to kill and get away from threats and always survive things they shouldn't. It was one of the things that ruined the Baldwin character in Counterpart for me, and it started to grate on my nerves here by the third episode. I just don't respond well to how utterly cruel and psycho she is, it's not my thing at all, so it starts to wear on me. ( there's also this spoiler/warning for animal suffering ) But the rest of it is amazing, except the part where as soon as a character announced he was gay I knew he'd be killed. There's a lot of queerness in the show, so I don't know if it's a kill your gays thing, but it's marring what is otherwise an absolutely amazing show.

I caught the first episode of Sharp Objects on HBO as well. I've never read the book, but I love Amy Adams and even if I'm tired of the damaged, dark woman with secrets genre, it's very well done (it's by the same director who did Big Little Lies and shares some of the stylistic touches). I'm intrigued and disturbed enough to keep watching the rest of it, see how it unfolds, but I'm mostly here for Adams, Patricia Clarkson, and that guy who was in that thing and I can't recall his name now but he's playing the detective. Chris Messina--Damages! I don't know why I can never recall his name. I think he was on the Mindy Project, but I didn't watch that.

I've now watched all of Queer Eye. I didn't think I'd like it--I was super invested in the original series, had icons and everything! And I just didn't get why they were updating it. But now that I've seen it, I get it. It's just so positive and heartwarming and I can see why so many people cry over it. I think one of the things I like most, that distinguishes it so much from the original, is it's as much about the guys learning things and opening themselves up and sharing themselves as it is helping people whose lives are a little messy. I don't know why but I was really touched by the episode with the tech guy who had isolated himself so much with his dog, didn't really go out, lived like a slobby hermit, had just pushed people away and given up. They're all touching, but that one really hit home with me, seeing him come out of his depression.

I've been watching the Saturday night lineup on Animal Planet and getting very emotional. It all started when I stumbled on Dr. Jeff, Rocky Mountain Vet a while ago, and then I thought I'd give the Dodo Heroes show a try, even though I don't normally watch animal shows because I'm too soft a heart and I can't stand any suffering of any kind, and most animal shows have lots of that. And it's true, it does have some suffering, but the focus is on the stories of these amazing people, one story per episode, who are making a difference around the world in the lives of animals. And it's followed by Vet Gone Wild, with a handsomely photogenic Aussie vet called Dr. Chris, who travels the world to treat exotic wildlife and bring to light issues with endangered animals. So basically every Saturday night I end up in tears over these stories and wish to hell I had money so I could donate to all these incredible wildlife rescues and sanctuaries. And yeah, I get sad, but more than anything I'm uplifted by what these amazing people are willing to do in the name of changing how animals are treated.

It's one of the things that's made it hard to watch Anthony Bourdain's Parts Unknown now that it's on Netflix. I wanted to catch up with it, especially to take comfort after his death, but every episode will have some brutal horrible torurous animal death for food and it's hard to work around. Some of them have been so horribly upsetting, and you never really know when it's going to happen. I love the show, but when you put that together with his death, it's been really challenging to watch.

Whew! You'd think from this all I do is watch TV and go to movies. No

I just got back from seeing I, Tonya, and I am blown away. Just…fucking blown away. I kind of face-palmed when I heard that Sebastian Stan was taking the role of Jeff Gillooly, and that this movie was even being made, and kind of afraid of it (especially since he often takes really…weird roles). I had been into figure skating for a long time but was kind of getting out of it around the time of what they refer to in the movie as "the incident," and I had never been a fan of Harding's, athough I admired her strength and skills. I confess I liked watching Nancy Kerrigan skate, I'd seen her before many times and I liked her style--but most of all I was a fan of Surya Bonaly at the time (another athlete who was really fucked over by the skating establishment, the racist asshats). And I remember being appalled by the whole thing, and the way it played out, and when the story began to leak out one piece at a time, I was disgusted enough by everything to really break off with watching skating. That mindset that pushed Tonya into the background--whether I was a fan or not--because she didn't present that upperclass, refined, wholesome image and the corruption of the judging just shoved me out.

And what I loved among many things about the movie is how freaking well they deal with that, about what social class and poverty and education and money all mean in America and how toxic it all is. And the patriarchy, and misogyny, and toxic masculinity…it's incredible in the midst of a dramedy. It couldn't have come out in a more appropriate year.

( The spoilery parts, I guess )

I will also say that it's taken forever for Seattle to get theatres with recliney seats in them, and I specifically went to the one in Bellevue, which is quite a ways away, to see this, because I've wanted to try it out. I didn't realize it was in an enitrely other building and wow, that was quite a hike from the theatre's main location to the recliner location, but man can I see why people are willing to pay $$ for those. I don't have that kind of money to throw around, so I won't be going over there often, but that was so comfy! And no one can kick your seat or hit you in the back of the head with their bag or tear your hair out when they put their feet on your seatback! (All things that have happened.) I definitely want to at least see Black Panther there once when that comes out.

I'm super late with the second entry; trying to bust a move on my book edit and had to put everything aside (other than running off to see Rogue One, augh, I hate this, I want to vid something so bad and NO SOURCE).

Day 2

In your own space, share a book/song/movie/tv show/fanwork/etc that changed your life. Something that impacted on your consciousness in a way that left its mark on your soul. Leave a comment in this post saying you did it. Include a link to your post if you feel comfortable doing so.

Okay, so, speaking of Star Wars. My answer to this is that, but it's also something many people have tried to get me to put down in print for a long time, because it's a fannish history not a lot of people had (I know a couple other fans who were at a theatre opening night, now, but for a long time it was something I rarely heard about).

In 1977, there wasn't a lot of decent SF in theatres--it was a really crappy genre to be in love with if you were a fan and wanted to see things on a big screen. It was very much a literature fandom, and cons, what few there were, were fan-run experiences whose main focus was on lit, not film and definitely not TV. Star Trek had a modicum of respect, but that was it. For every 2001 or Silent Running, there was a Logan's Run or Saturn 5 or whatever. Most of it was schlock, is what I'm saying, and even the decent things were often quite flawed. I hung out with a lot of guys who were fans of the genre, some who were just plain movie buffs like me, and we'd been hearing about this movie being made by the guy who'd made American Graffiti and THX-1138. Starlog was THE movie magazine for SF and horror and fantasy fans, and that was where you got information--there was no Internet, nothing. You read newspapers and magazines and watched shows on TV that might tell you about new films.

I was a junior in high school in '77. My friends were telling me they planned to go see the movie when it opened, which, for a teen, was kind of a big thing; most of my friends were older than me by a year to three years, so it wasn't a big deal for them to schedule around as it was for me. I ended up ditching my last classes of the day (it was a Wednesday), the first time in my life I ever skipped class. I was one with the Rebels, and I didn't even know there were rebels in the movie! No one knew anything about the movie--there was just so little information. There'd been a few pics in Starlog, some discussions, speculation, and hilarious bits of news with incorrect names and stuff, but overall, we just didn't know what we were getting into.

Which was also part of the fun--it could have been just another schlocky piece of crap, which was honestly what we expected, or it could be cool, who knew--THX had been somewhat interesting, and American Graffiti was pretty good, but a lot of the excitement was simply that sense of going into something blind. A lot of people don't know that Star Wars only opened on 32 screens (but it opened up an additional dozen or so by that Friday because buzz was so high), so we had to go downtown to the UA150 here, which was this amazing round moviehouse that had a full, curved 70mm screen and that I still miss like hell to this day--I saw all my favorite movies of the '70s-'80s there and they were stunning. Since I and one other guy were ditching class, we waited to go stand in line for the second showing, in late afternoon.

Standing in line, outside of large cities, was still pretty unusual, too. It was for primarily the biggest of the big event movies and not something you tended to see in smaller cities or rural areas, and it was still common practice, too, for double features, and for an event movie to only play in a downtown theatre if it played a city at all. Single-screen houses were the norm for films; the UA was a really unusual theatre in that it had two large screens, but the 150 was the half of the theatre that had that glorious huge wraparound screen. But we dutifully drove downtown and got in line, somewhat close to the front, though where we were standing was outside the exit door at the rear of the auditorium.

People were filing out after the first matinee, and they all had this dazed look on their faces. We started asking them "what was it like?" "was it good?" and they were all speechless, just kept saying "you'll like it so much" or "you're gonna have suuuuch a good time." By the time they let us in, we were crazy psyched about it. In the lobby they had cardboard boxes with buttons that said May the Force Be With You. We had no idea what it meant, but a few of us picked them up; after the first screening, we ran back out to the lobby and gathered up as many as we could.

It's hard now, with it being part of the zeitgeist, to imagine what it felt like when the curtains parted, and parted, and parted to the entire width of that enormous screen, and then to hear those first notes and see the crawl begin. The crawl seems…normal, now. Enough that when I saw Rogue One I was heartsick that there was no effing crawl and I muttered darkly at my companion. But on May 25, 1977, it was mind-blowing. We just hadn't seen anything like it, not in modern-day cinema, certainly, and not on such a beautiful, majestic scale. And then the battle cruisers come into view and we gasped. We all, including my cynical, jaded, I've seen everything friends, dead-ass gasped when those ships came on screen, I swear to you. And when Darth Vader strode through the hall and spoke in James Earl Jones's voice, I thought I would faint from excitement.

I felt like no time had passed when we got to the end, and the music started up. I suffer from an inability to suspend my disbelief, I guess I've just been writing too long or something, but it is so vanishingly rare for me, even back then, to get completely immersed in a film or book, enough so that I don't notice time passing. And people cheered through at least a minute of the closing credits, people literally stood up in the theatre. My friends and I all looked at each other down the row, and I said, "I want to go again." And they all said hell yeah, so we stayed for the, like, early evening showing.

That was another thing that was so different, and that Star Wars changed completely--up to that time, you could not only often go to double, even triple features of first-run movies, but that also meant you could stay in the theatre without buying another ticket. The ushers came through to clean, but they didn't shoo us away; the friends who saw it two days later told me that they were clearing the theatres after the showing. After Star Wars, I never saw first run double features again, either.

While people were filing in for the next showing, my best friend was throwing handfuls of May the Force Be With You buttons out into the seats; people were mingling and talking, someone would catch a button and ask, "What's this for?" and we'd shout "JUST YOU WAIT" or they'd ask, "What was it like?" and he'd yell, "Prepare to get your mind fucked!" We were just silly and giddy and so so happy to have gotten a good, well made, interesting space fantasy that we didn't feel like we had to cringe in horror about having seen, the whole place felt like a big party. It was almost as exciting when the crawl came on screen the second time as it had been the first time. And then, because we had some kind of happiness high, we stayed for the last showing, too. I confess, during the really quiet times, it started to drag a little but I'd also been up since about six a.m. with nerves over skipping classes, so I was pretty ragged, plus, I knew I had to be at school the next day. My parents were used to me staying out really late, though, thank god, and I'd called them before the early evening show to tell them I might be home really late, but I had never expected we'd sit through all three showings.

The next day I wore my button to school, and everyone asked me what it meant. No one knew anything about it, had heard of it, but between my evangelizing and the news media, they quickly learned about it. I was so enthusiastic about it that, without knowing anything about conventions or fan groups, I hunted around till I found out about a group of local fans who wanted to put on a Star Wars convention, and started going to meetings. And I would like to point out, for anyone who identifies as female and gets shit about women not belonging in SF or insisting it's a new thing that they care? The makeup of that group was 70-30, in favor of women. I didn't stick with them long enough to see it come to fruition because of a lot of emotional issues that had come up around that time and family trauma, but it was the first experience I would have with organized fandom like that, which I would learn more about in a few years when I got invited to be a panelist at the big SF con in Seattle.

I was still pretty fannish about it after Empire, in a slightly different way--I collected every picture and article I could about Harrison Ford, and had all the things about Han and Leia in a box or scrapbook, because we didn't have the interwebs and that was really all you could do. By Return of the Jedi I was working as a film critic, and there was so much I didn't like about it that kind of overshadowed what I did like, and that was sort of the beginning of the end for me. By then there was also a lot of SF and other creative genre stuff coming out, and the landscape had changed considerably. I knew that a lot of those things--the scarcity of showings, the dearth of information, the specialness of the theatre--played a part in what made it so magical, and there was no way to replicate that or catch lightning in a bottle again. Then Lucas's endless tinkering with the originals while refusing to let us have them on home video, and the awfulness of the prequels, killed any enthusiasm I'd once had for it.

But those first few years, those were magical. I found a site that says Star Wars (it's always been Star Wars to me, I cannot think of it as A New Hope, it just doesn't compute) played longest in Portland, but I…sort of question that, because after Empire Strikes Back finished its run at the UA150, Lucas gave Seattle a gift for playing the first movie longer than any other city, which was to show the two films back to back for free, as part of our late summer arts festival here. It was the first time anyone had seen Star Wars onscreen since it had left theatres, and the first time it was shown with Empire. We waited in line all day, and I have to say, that was almost better than when we'd seen it the first time, and even more of a fan party. And on New Year's Eve 1977/78, the theatre had timed the Death Star to blow up at midnight, so we waited in bonebreaking cold for hours and hours just for the chance to see that--it was worth it, totally totally worth it.

I haven't even included stuff that isn't related to the movie, of which there were many monumental things that night for me, too. But to say that Star Wars changed my life is putting it very mildly. I literally can't imagine my life now if I hadn't cut class and gone to the theatre on May 25, 1977.

I wrote this little piece of meta on Tumblr (my username is teatotally) about something I noticed in the art book of Cap 2, and thought I'd post it here too, I guess because I'm still kind of astonished that this line would have been in the script.

---

I finally read The Art of Captain America: The Winter Soldier from cover to cover, including reading all the storyboard and pre-viz sequences. I was completely amazed when I saw the storyboards for the fight between the Winter Soldier and Cap on the helicarrier: the shot where Bucky goes after Steve features a caption of him shouting “HAIL HYDRA!” with a feral look on his face as he moves in for the kill.

This suggests that the line was in some early version of the script, and I am so glad that somewhere along the way someone had the good sense to jettison it, because it was so tonally completely wrong and would have drastically changed the character as they developed him in the movie. It would have been jarring and bizarre to have him spout some kind of ideological slogan (one which, for me, was one of the least successful aspects of the movie), particularly after we’ve seen him trying to piece together his memories in the face of Pierce’s empty bullshit rhetoric, which he barely listens to. The only reason he gets refocused on completing his assignment is because they forcibly remove his experiences and memories, not because Pierce sways him with the power of Hydra’s super-sekrit awesome plan for world domination.

The MCU version of Bucky is, to my eyes, far more broken and dehumanized than the comics version (not that Bucky’s not broken and dehumanized in the books, because he is, deeply so), but even this version of him is not without his resources and capabilities. We see him in charge of the team of mercenaries when they attack Steve, Natasha, and Sam on the bridge and he obviously had some hand in planning that attack; we see him waiting at the end of the attack on Nick Fury, a failsafe in case the other squad didn’t accomplish their task; we see him go to Pierce’s on his own; we see him at the end, figuring out what’s happening at SHIELD and what he has to do to stop it; and then we see him in the tag at the end credits, having learned of the Captain America exhibit and going to find out about himself. It’s really tempting to infantalize him, especially after the horrific bank vault mind-wipe scene, but MCU Winter Soldier is still a pretty capable and resourceful weapon in most situations.

But he doesn’t come by this of his own free will, and he doesn’t do it because he buys into the ideology — he does it because he’s been tortured, mind-wiped, completely broken of his humanity and stripped of his own personal agency. There’s no Stockholm Syndrome absorption of his captors’ beliefs; he does what he’s told, but he’s not doing it because he follows the party line, even if he was only following it to stay alive.

It doesn’t matter if Hydra’s still just a Nazi cult or you’re viewing it through the prism of modern-day government that’s just a step away from the Big Brother-type new world order, there’s still a political (and control) agenda that the people saying Hail Hydra have bought into at some point. They clearly believe in the message. But the Winter Soldier doesn’t buy into that, he can’t — he’s a loaded gun that gets pointed in a direction and fired. He’s programmed, not motivated.

In the comics, Bucky gets out of cryofreeze for much longer times and even has something resembling a life at one point, training Red Room recruits. He’s still a weapon, though, he’s still there to do a job and complete a mission until Steve forces his memories back (not, like in the movie, through the Power of Love but with the cosmic cube’s mojo), he’s still there to represent someone’s agenda, and he seems aware of it — he knows who he works for, what he’s doing. He questions orders, goes off-mission (which doesn’t work out too well for him), and interacts with his superiors to some degree. MCU Bucky doesn’t appear to have any of that, at least from what we’ve learned so far, until Steve jars it loose and he makes the decision to save Steve. MCU Bucky is even less likely to understand or give the tiniest crap about the rhetoric and ideology of an organization like Hydra than the comics Winter Soldier is.

To buy into a belief system, you have to make a choice, and we’ve seen that Bucky in the MCU doesn’t have even the tiniest particle of free will anymore. If that horrifying chair scene does nothing else, it shows us how completely they’ve destroyed him and taken away any real knowledge of what he’s doing in the grand scheme of things. Pierce pumps up his bullshit with compliments, trying to give Bucky the carrot to get him back on mission, until he realizes that won’t work and he resorts to the stick instead. Because really, why would that crap work on him? He’s a tool, a weapon, and that’s all they’ve allowed him to be.

He’s almost completely undone by his memories of Steve, and they have to basically reboot him in order to get him to perform his mission. All this ideology, all these statements and beliefs, are meaningless to him, so having him shout “Hail Hydra!” before attacking Steve would have made him look like he had absorbed what Hydra stood for, made him more of an active participant in their plans, not a broken, dehumanized, tragic victim. He doesn’t even have enough agency to buy into Hydra’s mission or his part in it the way someone might with Stockholm Syndrome. It would have completely altered that aspect of his character to me, made him seem far less tragic than he is by the time he makes that decision to save Steve, and in doing so save himself.

I’m sure someone could make a good case why having him shout Hail Hydra would have been cool or might have made his mind-wipe even more tragic (if so, go to town!), but myself, I just can’t see it. I always find it fascinating to see what gets changed in the movie-making process as they go along, and it seems to me that someone showed very good sense in eliminating that line, keeping Bucky’s tragic storyline more consistent with what we know of how horribly destroyed he is as a person. He’s a blank slate, a weapon, a victim, not a slogan or a belief system — or even a villain with a plan.

Thanks for the birthday wishes yesterday, everyone who made them. I really appreciate it. It was as good a day as it could be considering all the things going on that remind me of my dad and my sister. It felt really weird this year to not have my dad to go to on Thanksgiving, and then have our usual conversation where he asks me what I want for my birthday and then tells me to get it for myself from him. ;-)

I went to see Skyfall with my friend Michael, and then did a little shopping, then went to dinner at Bai Tong, considered the best Thai restaurant in Seattle, conveniently located near the theatre we saw Skyfall at. Then I came home and hung out with Blues, Olive, and Buffy. The big disappointment of the day was that there was no mangoes and sticky rice at the restaurant for dessert. Yeah, yeah, I know.

I had a really intense dream about sis_r the night before and it left me feeling a little weird during the day. And I'm trying to get the house really tidied up for the party and so I keep coming across all this stuff that I haven't wanted to deal with, stuff like Dad's checkbooks, some hospital bills, etc. It definitely has an impact on your feelings. Plus the past couple days have had a lot of people canceling on the party for Friday, which worries me since I bought this big freakin' cake and now most people seem to be bailing on it. Arg.

Anyway, lest I focus on the maudlin, my thoughts about Skyfall ( are as follows )

This week has been devoted to catching up a bit on some of the Oscar nominated films. I still have quite a few to go, and one I don't want to see at all (The Blind Side, don't EVEN get me started on that), but I'm more caught up this year than I have been for well over a decade. A lot of that has to do with the types of films being nominated this year -- I still don't quite get the whole 10 films for best picture, but at least they have finally thrown a bone to the brilliance of Pixar, which they should have done years ago, most especially for Wall-E.

I've watched all of the nominees for best animated. I still seethe over the whole treatment of animation as a separate category, as if it's not a real fucking movie, but seething doesn't change anything. This year, even though you know Up is going to win, all the movies for animation are amazing and fantastic. I loved 9 with all my heart -- if you haven't seen it, please, please rent it. And watch it on a hi-def TV because you will not believe your eyes at how gorgeous it is. I also adored Coraline -- sooo charming with some really genuinely creepy moments.

Today was A Single Man and Inglourious Basterds, which probably sounds like the strangest combination. The latter was a piece of crap which was pretty much only worth watching for Melanie Laurent and Christoph Waltz (I swear if I hear one more person call him Christopher I will blow a gasket), who were both aces. I have no words for A Single Man. Other than brilliant.

And okay, with all due respect to my beloved Jeff Bridges and to Jeremy Renner, I think Colin Firth blows everyone out of the water. He gives a master class in acting throughout the film. I didn't think I could love Tom Ford more, but the guy is just freakishly talented in so many things. I can't wait to see what he does next.

Next I'm steeling myself to watch Precious this weekend. I know it's going to require quite a bit of running from the room and peeking around the corner. But I do want to see that. There's still Up in the Air, too. So little time, so many movies. I went to a theatre I haven't been to before, a newish one up by Northgate Mall. To my extreme surprise, they have a Five Guys hamburger shop in the building right next to the theatre. My heart nearly burst from joy -- I had no idea they had expanded around the country and outside the Washington DC area. That was one of the first things I demanded of Keith during my visit over the holidays -- I said we had to go to Five Guys at least once. I've even written Five Guys into one of the X-Files Mulder/Skinner stories, many years ago. And now they're here in my city! Awesome, truly awesome.

OMG tonight's Mad Men! The most distressing episode ever, y/y? Don, how are you so sexy and lovable and so loathsome at the same time?

Went to see Zombieland with mlyn today. SO MUCH FUN Y'ALL!! I love zombies, especially spoofy zombie stuff and this one had all the great ingredients -- gore, more gore, and too much gore, Hummers and Cadillac Escalades with cow catchers, lots and lots of guns, and carnival rides. Plus Abigail Breslin, who somehow is getting cuter as she gets older, I don't know how. I couldn't stop laughing at the Russell Crowe joke and I think I injured myself.

It comes it at a lean runtime of 80 minutes so it doesn't overstay its welcome, important in a zombie movie. I liked that the zombies move faster than the traditional Night of the Living Dead versions, but a little slower than 28 Days Later ones -- nice variations on their thematic inspirations. Normally I despise Woody Harrelson, but I think this was a role he was designed to play, you know what I mean?

But I think the best thing is the credits and title cards and such -- its interactivity with the action in the movie was delightful. All in all, a good time, well-done, and more laughs than I've had in a really long time at a comedy. This would make a perfect complement to Shaun of the Dead for a sterling double feature.

Finally, finally saw Iron Man -- I know, I'm like the last fangirl in America to go see this. I enjoyed it for the most part. Like all of the blockbuster comics-based movies, the fight scenes tend to bore me at this point, but I give them props for not relying too much on bloated action sequences and sticking to a more emotional storyline.

( More on the movie even though I think everyone's pretty much seen it by now! )

Note to self: Do not stick finger in eye to adjust contact lens when just finished zesting a lemon.