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August 2024 Media
Welcome to the blog! this is the first post i'm writing, so i’ll just say this here: i’ve decided to open up this whole nerd out project a lil bit more, beyond the zine and the book archive and just have a place where i can talk casually about the media i’ve consumed recently, make some recommendations, be a hater, and yeah, basically just yap. also maybe no one even care n no one will even read this but im also just doin it for the archive of it all u know... anyway, this is extremely informal and im pretty much just writing this as it comes out of my brain, the way i would text a friend type shit. the goal is to be unpretentious and friendly vibes! i'm not an expert i'm just a fan of media crap ok!
also even tho music is media, i’m not talkin bout music in these general media posts. i think ima make playlists and share music separately. also fave youtube videos will be shared separately.
Movies:
in early August i had covid and was sick for a week. btw u can once again order free covid test kits all you have to do is enter ur address. literally every single person should do this. the pandemic never ended. when it comes to covid precautions i’m not perfect but i definitely do more than the average person these days and i still got sick. anyway, the only bright side to being sick is that i let myself do all the “non-productive” stuff i want. which basically means i’m allowed to lay in bed all day playing video games and watching movies. of course, i could (and i do) rationalize that these things are in fact productive, especially for me as someone who makes art and wants to make video games one day, but it's just that if i did that all the time, i would never get important stuff like drawing pictures and writing blog posts done.august is when halloween season starts. also when i’m sick i love to watch my comfort movies. so let’s speed run my must watch for Fall list:
Coraline (2009): it’s just simply a classic. it’s just right. pls give henry selick his freaking flowers. it’s visually stunning and the perfect amount of creepy to still be cozy. exquisite stop motion from laika. i’ve also watched hours of lore and easter egg videos about coraline on youtube at this point. there’s so many lil details. like the double loop in the ‘O’ in ‘home’ on the cake the other mother made for coraline... also need a i <3 mulch mug asap. someone on etsy must make one right? right.
Over the Garden Wall (2014): if you haven’t seen this show ur simply missing out like real real bad. it’s so short and sweet and perfect. The whole thing is on the beautiful gorgeous internet archive so if ur reading this post right now, you could just be watchin otgw. it is also on hulu but we are boycotting hulu because hulu is owned by disney. anyway there’s 10 episodes and theyre each 11 min long so u could watch the whole thing in a cute lil evening if u wanted. i’m not even gonna tell you what it’s about. please just trust. also if u enjoy a sweet lil song, a quick lil banger, in a show, à la bob’s burgers, u will love otgw.
Jennifer’s Body (2009):one of my favorite movies ever. i watched it on dvd but it’s free on tubi right now. should we get into the deeper analysis or just leave it there...
pls enjoy the jennifer’s body menu page.
Zombieland (2009) ok 2009 aka year of bangers:just another classic imo. super fun zombie movie, not much else to say.
the rest of these aren’t traditionally on my fall watch list but tbh they still fit with the theme and maybe i’ll watch again idk what the future holds.
Juno (2007):
i was in 5th grade when juno came out but i didn't watch it till a few years later. i feel like there were a lot of other kinda scandalous teen pregnancy media coming out at the time. there was secret life of the american teenager, 16 and pregnant and teen mom on mtv, jamie lynn spears got pregnant and then my dad wouldn't let me watch zoey 101 anymore lmao. he's not even a conservative guy or anything. glee was also huge and had a teen pregnancy storyline. media was usually very cruel toward people experiencing pregnancy and parenthood as teenagers; they were almost always portrayed in a negative light, without much empathy. and it's like maybe just give people better resources then??? but i digress. anyway when that happens, when someone is viewed as lesser than, their humanity is also overlooked.
even to me, as a middle schooler, Juno felt so refreshing. i think it can be summed up in those couple lines of dialogue after juno tells her parents she's pregnant for the first time. they're ultimately supportive but juno's dad says, "I thought you were the kind of girl who knew when to say when." Juno replies, "I don't know what kind of girl I am." u can watch the clip here if you want. also shout out allison janney. i love her in this movie and also other movies and i would like to see her in more movies and/or tv; whatever she wants idk. also shout out Valerie Tian because she's in both juno and jennifer's body. and obvi shout out diablo cody, u freakin legend.
[disclaimer: idk anything bout these people outside of movies/media, so if anyone i ever talk about in a positive light on this blog is actually a wack person irl, aka abuser/zionist, etc., i am definitely unaware, and feel free to message me.]
i had wanted to rewatch juno for a while because i had a feeling it would really hit different now that i'm older (aka, i saw people talking bout it on tiktok) and indeed, it did. all the scenes with jason bateman's character (i love him as an actor i love ozark & arrested development & the outsider) were hard to watch like ah so icky!!!! there's a scene where juno is tryna tell her stepmom how it's no big deal that she's spending time with him and her stepmom brenda is like uh no you seriously don't understand how not-cool that is. and i remember when i was younger feeling like ugh brenda take a chill pill. but no. brenda is so right. stay far away from that weird man, Juno!!
if you're interested in more analysis on juno and teen pregnancy media during that time, i just found mila tequila's video after writing my juno thoughts^. one thing i learned from her video was that tho all the teen pregnancy media at the time make us think otherwise, teen pregnancies were not *on the rise.* also found this video about the writing of juno that i think is worth a watch as well.
also juno’s menu page is so perfect. i wrote more about it in this post. the soundtrack is so sweet and also perfect. thank you kimya we love you kimya<3<3
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004):another movie i had technically seen before. but i was in high school when i watched it so not only was my young mind less capable of grasping the full depth of this film, but also that means the last and only time i watched this was at least 10 years ago (ooph). anyway, yeah it’s a beautiful movie, i think everyone is pretty much in agreement about that. it's lowkey heartwrenching but hopeful, i think. i don’t have much else to say. if you haven’t seen it or if it's been 10 years you should watch it. also good soundtrack. and i love clem’s hair (duh) i think blue is my fave. remember when everyone was obsessed with calling characters manic pixie dream girls to the point that even the dude who coined the phrase was like ok enough. hahaha. clem is not manic pixie i just mentioned that bc she gets thrown into the conversation a lot. there's a lot of video essays on this but here's one u could start with.
also this is free on youtube rn! i have youtube premium (i will never go back to youtube with ads i use youtube too much i dont have spotify or apple music) but if you dont the movies are free with ads.
The Descent 2 (2009) i guess ‘09 had some flops too: i try to walk 10k steps everyday. and sometimes my efforts are rewarded (im kidding. my efforts are always rewarded in that walking is good for your body and mind.) on one of my walks earlier this summer i came across a big box of dvds left out for the taking on someone’s stoop. the descent 2 was one of the dvds i walked away with. i saw the first descent movie (2005) a few years ago and didn’t even know there was a second one. the descent 2 is very bad, but i would say it’s fun bad.
if you’re interested i wrote a lil summary. im gonna spoil the whole thing rn but it’s ok because you don’t need to watch it. the final girl from the first movie, sarah, is in the hospital, obviously, lol, and everyone's like what about all the other missing girls? so a couple cops forcefully remove sarah from the hospital even tho she is clearly traumatized and barely able to communicate (i could be misremembering but i feel like they even unhook her from the IV or something like that) and they make her to go back in the freaking cave with them to help them find the other girls!!!! lol wtf. obviously this plan is doomed from the start and all the freaky creatures start comin after them. eventually sarah snaps out of her daze and simply locks tf in to getting out of the cave again... OK. eventually it’s revealed that Juno is some how still alive but hasn’t been able to escape. (juno is the girlypop from the last movie who got them into this mess.) anywho, at one point the group falls into a big pool of gunk and they're covered in it and spitting it out and ur like ew just as the camera cuts to one of the creatures taking a shit into the pool and ur like OH. ok ewww. anyway sarah and juno and one of the cops (the less experienced rookie lady cop, who we like more than the big old school macho cop whose dumb idea this was in the first place) are the last three alive (girl power) and they can literally see the light at the end of the tunnel it’s just past a big group of the cave monsters. juno and sarah sacrifice themselves. lady cop makes it outside, though she is in a forest, which is a bad sign of course, if you’re a horror movie watcher you understand. she thinks shes home free and then an old man (im sorry i don’t remember if he has any prior significance but honestly it doesn’t matter to me) hits her in the head with a shovel or something and throws her back into the cave. the end.
Alien: Romulus (2024):i liked it! i know a lot of people didn’t but i did. as someone who hasn’t watched most of the franchise, and who was just lookin for a freaky fun movie, i enjoyed it. that said i do think the magical negro criticisms are pretty valid. that also said, david jonsson’s performance stole the show for me. also please i am begging u to watch another of his films, Rye Lane (2023).
Cuckoo (2024):it was good. more sci-fi than i was expecting? similar to longlegs in that i feel like i wish i knew less/saw less about it before i actually watched. the hype around it kinda tainted my feelings. like longlegs was tryna seem like it was poop-ur-pants scary and it just wasnt. and similarly, cuckoo’s marketing made me think it was gonna be mad scary, and again, it wasn’t. that doesn’t mean these are bad movies, i actually think they were both pretty good. (i have some more criticisms of longlegs but im not gonna get into it rn) I think they just didn’t meet my expectations, and so my initial reaction was disappointment, honestly. it makes me never want to watch a trailer before seeing the movie ever again. i think if i watch this again in a year or two i’ll prob like it a lot more.
TV:
Lost (2004-2010):i rewatched this whole show. it’s a really good show. it must be binged. in college some years ago i had watched up to like season 3 and then stopped for some unknown reason and felt like if i were to go back to it i wouldn’t remember enough and i would feel... lost. (sorry). then a year or 2 ago i saw drew gooden’s lost video and i was convinced that i should go back to it. seriously that video is so good. then last year mike’s mic started posting in-depth recaps of lost and i was like omg this is exactly what i need. so i picked up lost again last summer and it was awesome. and i rewatched it again this summer. still awesome plus i bought the whole series on dvd. its action, it’s sci fi, it’s mystery. it’s heartfelt. the score is insane (watch drew’s video). i love that i don’t really know any of the actors from anywhere else (the exception is charlie being a hobbit but nbd and i recognized daniel dae kim from my parents watching hawaii 5 o) it has mostly aged well. there are some good ol post 9/11 america racism-y vibes sometimes. but it has mostly aged well. im attached to all of the characters. sayid is a baddie and also jin. the ending is fine.The Walking Dead (2010-2022) when one supreme falls another shall rise in her place haha get it bc lost ended the same year twd started:yeah i finally freaking finished the walking dead. literally all of it. somehow. i never watched it while it was airing, just binged it over the past few months. that said, i can only imagine how frustrating being a viewer must’ve been, especially through some of the middle seasons. omg. anyway, the end was a mess and mostly just promo for all the spinoffs. besides michonne, negan was my favorite character, mostly bc i hated him soo bad and somehow ended up being a fan by the end. i think it’s cool when that happens. it reminded me of how i felt about abby while playin the last of us 2. except abby was never really a bad person the way negan was. i have more to say bout all that but i think i’ll save that for another day.
Videogames:
Inside (2016): this game is really cool. same devs as limbo, which i played this spring. i think the devs took everything that made limbo great and just made it even better. the soft world building in these games, but especially in inside is really inspiring to me. i love the simplicity and the spookiness and the puzzles. im dying to know more of the lore but i also appreciate how it’s left mostly a mystery.Neon White (2022):fuckin awesome game. like literally obsessed. like im sweating. elite artstyle, mechanics, score (thank u machine girl omg). i’ve been playing for a while now but i have to mention it bc it’s still relevant to my life and also i want you to play it.
Zelda TOTK (2023):played a bunch of zelda tears of the kingdom while i was sick. i love the game despite it’s many issues and valid criticisms. it’s still fun and relaxing to me. if you feel like watching a 3hr 25 min video about its fatal flaws i like this one.
Subnautica (2014):survival horror sci fi underwater on an alien planet. i actually dont know if it’s generally considered horror but idk i think it is. that shit is mad spooky and unnerving. played this a bunch mostly last november/december. played a bit again in august. for some reason i lost interest in putting work into it, and there’s other stuff i wanna play more.