Horses are good company -- The Witcher

Stress, family, health stuff under the cut.
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I did a great puzzle that is all book cover art of American novels. Really an ideal puzzle because a) not actually difficult, b) good subject matter, and c) 1000 pieces means it takes a few days to finish. It would be fun to make more puzzles like this of book covers; you could make ones for various genres.

Yesterday I had a modicum of energy and went into books to prisoners for a few minutes, mostly to talk to a local journalist. That was really fun, I miss going to sessions. I love thinking and talking about activism, queerness, ideas, books.

Watched:
After Midnight, really good one today with Patton Oswalt, Terry Crews, Joe Manganiello, all just having a blast together.
A Court of Fey and Flowers - my first experience watching an 'Actual Play' of table-top roleplaying. I don't always understand what is going on, which is frustrating at times and makes me feel like I'm working too hard cognitively. The solution here is to try and just enjoy it without following every little thing. The actors are amazing and I especially love Aabria, the DM.
Dropout TV is really good, they center respect and kindness in their humor. I'm caught up on Smartypants and Thousandaires, two new shows.

It's difficult to describe what is happening in my body and brain right now, and it's mostly not great so why dwell upon it. Suffice to say, there is a lot of pain and anxiety.

However! Edibles have been very helpful. For example today I found on TV, live coverage of the LA Pride parade. I got such a kick out of it. I can be cynical a lot of the time but I was able to kind of put that aside and enjoy it, and even enjoy the complexities and nuances of the politics involved. Like, it's cool that we talk about those things and it's cool that I know so much about these issues. I watched part of this parade with my roommate and every so often I was like, "oh another hot topic!" Hot topics encountered: Corporate pride and ads, police at pride, "love is love", Palestine demonstrators, the TV people's decisions about what parts of the parade to show.

But the whole thing was kind of schlocky, kind of awkward, endearing. The news casters made a big effort to be cheerful. One of them talked about being HIV positive for 18 years. The teamsters were there, and the mayor, and George Takei with his husband. There were multiple groups of musicians and dancers. Many people waved trans flags. I liked that I could sit on my couch and watch it, the way we do the Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade, beamed into my living room. It's heartwarming to think about all of us that now get to see the parade.

The TV adaptation of Fallout is a rollicking good time, which is perhaps a weird thing to say when the source material is a post-apocalyptic, violent video game. And indeed this is very OTT violent and gory at times. But there is a lot of humor all the way through. The art direction is great and I liked the way the story unfolded. I loved the cameos from veteran comic actors like Dale Dickey, Matt Berry, and others. The cast is fairly diverse, with one non-binary trans person, several people of color.

In trivia news, the actor Johnny Pemberton, who plays Thaddeus in Fallout, is someone I went to 1st and 2nd grade with. This means nothing really but makes me smile!

Ahead of the Curve is a documentary on Netflix, about Franco Stevens, the founder of Curve lesbian magazine (fka Deneuve). It was just so NICE to see so many lesbians on my TV screen, talking about stuff that matters to our community (including various opinions on the word 'lesbian'). Franco is also disabled and talks about that some. Watching this makes me realize how rare it is to see people like me and mine on TV.

Kingpin Katie, an action comedy on the DropOut service. very fun and features some wonderful actors.

A couple more documentaries about disasters on Netflix, one about the Camp Fire in California in 2018, called Fire in Paradise. The fire wiped out the entire town of Paradise and killed 80-some people because it traveled very very fast.

Aftershock, about a huge earthquake in Nepal in 2015. The doc focuses on 3 stories: some mountaineers attempting Everest, some tourist hikers in another area, and a hotel owner in Kathmandu. This is the rare disaster documentary that shows some of the survivors behaving badly: the tourist hikers were young men from Israel, and they got into conflict with some villagers. There is also one of the Everest mountaineers who comes off as a real asshole-- no surprise there because that's a pursuit that attracts some very rich egotistical people.

There are probably lots of stories like this because people are so stressed in emergency situations, but I can only speculate. One thing I liked was a "professional rescuer" who was interviewed and said that he uses a "very very powerful tool" which is hope.

My roommate and I are watching Taskmaster New Zealand and are in series 2.

Since I posted last I've watched all the available episodes of Make Some Noise, an improv show on DropOut network, and enjoyed them a lot. Really hitting the spot for me right now, I need some soft things and silly humor.

As a contrast I watched "True Detective" season 4; this is an anthology show where the seasons are vaguely interconnected but mostly independent of each other, and the 4th season has Jodie Foster and a wonderful indigenous actress, Kali Reis. Absolutely captivating. It's a cop show and horror, neither of which are usually my thing. What worked for me was the actors, the arctic setting, and good writing that focuses on women. It's so great to see indigenous actors in more things lately. There are at least 2 queer women in this, plus great chemistry between Foster's and Reis' characters that I hope ignites many fanworks. Streaming on HBO Max.

"Full Circle" is a documentary on Netflix about an adaptive skier Trevor Kennison, a risk-taking athlete with a spinal cord injury. The film attempts to draw parallels between him and activist Barry Corbet, who had been a skier; the film doesn't quite succeed at this attempt. There were some good parts to this, such as beautiful footage of mountain landscapes, amazing skiing feats, and honesty about spinal cord injury. But it was too long, and I wanted more information about Corbet. I know this is my usual complaint but it would be great for stories to focus on community and interdependence rather than individualism. Kennison, and the film, seem to be leaning into "be an inspiration" because that's how to get respect and money and a means to avoid pity.

My new show I'm watching is "Resident Alien," a comedy-drama with Alan Tudyk, I like it and will continue. What a good role for Tudyk!! He's an alien pretending to be human in a small town in (I think) Colorado. Again, great to see indigenous actors in this.

My roommate watched a couple episodes of a show called "Wolf Like Me" and I half-watched it but largely disliked it. Josh Gad stars as a widowed father who starts dating a woman who is a werewolf. For some reason this is set in Australia despite both leads being North American. The tone was weird, very serious; the characters are freaking out a lot over things like car accidents, grief, a teenager's suicide attempt, and also being/dating a werewolf. It just was way too grim for me right now and also, no queer people, no people of color.

I have been watching a lot of low-stakes comedy of the "structured improv" variety, including TaskMaster, After Midnight, Game Changer, other shows on the DropOut streaming service-- "Dirty Laundry" and "um actually". Very silly and cheering. These are hitting the spot lately. I listened to an interview with Sam Reich (who is the boss at DropOut) and was very impressed with him.
https://www.npr.org/2024/02/06/1197954697/game-changer-sam-reich-dropout
(audio and text available).

I watched the first two episodes of "Wheel of Time," and i like it, but the violence / gore level is a little higher than what I am wanting right now, for instance dead animals. I'll probably keep watching anyways.

My roommate and I watched the first 3 episodes of "Mr. and Mrs. Smith", a series starring Donald Glover and Maya Erskine. This show is a delightful spy / romance / action mashup, very well-made. The actors have great chemistry. The violence and gore level is again a little high for me but tolerable.

We also watched "Ava," a film I'd never heard of, starring Jessica Chastain and John Malkovich. I have a feeling very few people watched this movie, and it got negative reviews, but I enjoyed it. Ava is an assassin who has problems galore and I liked seeing her solve them with determination and violence. Even though this is about an assassin, the gore level is lower? It felt more stylized and the camera didn't linger on gross things. Also kind of movie/comic book fake, where Ava gets in these hugely physical fights and walks away with nary a scratch. Fun.

I watched about half of the most recent "Mission Impossible" movie, and I liked parts of it but overall it felt endless and exhausting so I turned it off. The car chase in Rome was fun, zany, well done, with good comic moments between Tom Cruise and Hayley Altwell. But there are these huge info-dump sections in between the action, where the characters are trying to explain the plot, perhaps to themselves because the plot makes no sense. To be clear, the plot needn't make sense in this kind of movie, people want action and gadgets, so when they kept on trying to explore an all-powerful AI and a secret key, that was exhausting. Being a vidder has changed my brain, I have a better understanding of editing and visual story telling, and the editing of this movie sucked. They kept showing the same still image while doing voice over of the mission instructions-- folks, you need to keep motion going and you can put a voice over track over literally anything. Give us some visual interest and cut the length of your film down. LITERALLY cut to the chase please.

For movie night with friends, we watched Linda Ronstadt: The Sound of my Voice, an enjoyable documentary that focuses on her career and incredible voice.

I bounced off of:
Daisy Jones and the Six, a limited series that is fictional, but made to be like a documentary about a 1960s/70s band. I lasted 2 episodes and found it dull.
The Rig, another limited series that is a horror/thriller set on an off-shore oil rig, which is a really interesting setting. Unfortunately I didn't care about any of the characters.

Polite Society is a "martial arts action comedy" about two sisters, Ria and Lena, who are part of a Pakistani-British community. Ria wants to be a stunt performer; Lena is an art-school drop out. A very eligible bachelor shows interest in Lena, and Ria believes she needs to intervene and save her sister from impending doom (marriage). The tone of this is OTT, comedy violence, leaning into a love of spy movie/ martial arts movie tropes. Ria and her friends are delightfully weird and her parents have this tolerant, long-suffering quality. I'm a fan of Ritu Arya, who plays Lena here and has also been in the Umbrella Academy. This is an energetic, fresh, fun movie with great young stars who really felt like sisters, both delighted and exasperated by each other. My one criticism is minor, it felt like the plot went too serious/ violent towards the end, which was a bit jarring given the otherwise light tone; please ask me if you need/want content notes. The magical realism was fun, the costumes colorful, and it was great to see a story about a girl who wants to be a stunt woman, a girl whose most important goal is looking out for her sister. Recommended.

Some things I watched!

The Innocence Files, Netflix, documentary series of 10 episodes about 8 people whom the Innocence Project helped get out of prison. Along the way they do take-downs of "bite mark anaylsis," which it turns out is a completely fake thing, no basis in reality, yet still admissible as court evidence in all 50 states. They also talk about how powerful and theatrical eye-witness testimony is, while being riddled with mis-identifications and hugely subject to manipulation.

This was kind of slow, and included a lot of details about brutal crimes. Some of the people they interview are deeply creepy and, well, evil. But, it's well made and I learned things. It functions as anti-copaganda.

All the people in this series were "railroaded" meaning, basically set up by police and prosecutors. Many spent decades in prison and one was on death row.

Weird: the Al Yankovic Story

I like Daniel Radcliffe who plays Al, and this was some fun 80s nostalgia. It's a satirical pastiche (of course) and as such, doesn't really say much. I had a good time watching it but found it very forgettable.

Harriet, Netflix, Biopic about Harriet Tubman.

As I was watching this I thought, wow this feels weirdly familiar, have I seen this before? I had, but forgot the whole thing. My friend asked me, is that from the concussion or is the film just really forgettable? I think the answer is "both."

This film leans into Tubman being literally god-touched, which is a fantasy trope that I am not necessarily against but seems odd for a biographical film. The film fell flat for me, partly because I like "Underground" (the TV show) so much more. Aisha Hinds' performance of Harriet Tubman on that show was stunning.

Two Spielberg + Tom Hanks movies from the early 2000s.

Catch Me if You Can has such a fun premise: Leo DiCaprio plays a young con man named Frank who gets jobs as an airline pilot, a doctor, and a lawyer. Tom Hanks plays the FBI agent who chases him down. Unfortunately this is played for Serious Drama and Daddy Issues, and was not for me, though overall I think it's an OK movie. The beginning and ending were too long and slow. An editor needed to cut a bunch of stuff out including a very cringey scene with Jennifer Garner as a high-end sex worker. Frank uses his forging skills to cheat her out of 1400 dollars and it's played like some kind of gross male fantasy.

The story goes something like, Frank really wants to please his father (Christopher Walken), and this leads him down a wrong path. The right path is finding a positive father figure in the Tom Hanks character.

If you like con artist stories, Leverage is just so much better. "The Pretender" is another example of a story where someone uses his genius skills to help people and is much more warm and fun.

The Terminal also has an interesting premise but it fails to deliver. An Eastern European man, Viktor (Tom Hanks) becomes temporarily stateless and gets stuck living in a airport. This was SUCH a frustrating movie, because it had a bunch of things going for it-- good actors, some comedy, a familiar setting that gets re-contextualized, and the potential to say something interesting. But the story structure was bad. You'd think that before someone spent all that money making a movie, they would make sure the story and script are good. That is the FIRST thing one should do, the foundation.

Stanley Tucci plays the antagonist, a guy in charge of the airport, and his character is all over the place, no clear motivation or development, does not act in any kind of consistent way. There was a great moment where I thought this story might be about resisting a police state (airport as metaphor/tiny police state), or finding ways to resist and de-escalate the conflict of policing, but of course it didn't hold up.

Catherine Zeta-Jones, similar. She spends the movie getting to know Viktor and breaking away from her bad boyfriend. But then in the end she goes back to the boyfriend for no reason.

Zoe Saldana and Diego Luna were both super cute, but their romance was not well developed and ended up making no sense at all.

So, anti-rec for this film.

What my family and I absolutely love watching is The Incredible Dr. Pol, a reality-based show about farm veterinarians in Michigan. Dr. Pol is an old man with a ton of energy, a ton of experience, humor, warmth, a great love for animals. It's streaming on Hulu and we watched 3 or 4 episodes before the technology gave up on me. We used to watch it on cable but my parents gave up cable; maybe I'll see if I can borrow some DVDs or something. There are several various vet shows with a lot of episodes and this could keep us happily entertained in the evenings. (nota bene, I made a festivid about vet shows.)

We all find Dr. Pol and his colleagues super engaging and my dad even shared a story I hadn't heard him tell before, about his dad pulling a calf. He said his dad put the pulling rope around his shoulders, put his feet up on the back of the cow, and put his whole weight into it. On the show they have a chain-and-ratchet method for pulling calves that are stuck.

My dad said, "We're farm people, but I wonder what non-farm people think of this show?" It's true that they show a lot of the down and dirty of small farms and I love this. Unlike some other vet shows, Dr. Pol does not over-treat or over-test. The vets also see all kinds of animals: lizards, turkeys, camels, reindeer, parrots, chickens, etc.

Long Shot - Hulu, movie.

Charlize Theron and Seth Rogen, silly romcom. They play childhood friends who run into each other again. He's a recently-fired journalist, she's secretary of state who needs to inject some humor into her speeches. This was ridiculous and I loved it.

I used to dislike Seth Rogen but I've completely changed my mind about him. He's funny and nice. Charlize Theron gets to be so funny in this. They have good chemistry as the work-focused, serious woman and the guy who respects her and makes her laugh. The kind of het couple I can root for.

The politics were light and unrealistic and best not looked at too closely.

Vida - Hulu, series.

I found this too stressful, so quit after a few episodes, but others on here may like it. It's a family drama that features an all-Latiné cast and many queer characters. 2 sisters return home for their mother's funeral, and it appears they will stay to manage her bar and building. There is a fair amount of graphic sex and nudity. One of the sisters gives big Miss Parker vibes (from the 90s show the Pretender, intensely private, high-powered dominatrix type). Family dramas like this (think Fleabag) are not my genre, because all the characters seem so utterly miserable. But I think others view them differently; IDIC and YMMV.