16-20, 2016

   I haven't been reading much! I have been watching several movies! Can you guess them all?

Burn for Burn / Jenny Han & Siobhan Vivian

   Sometimes when you are tired of listening to a very long audiobook ostensibly about the Black Death but so far it's only been about the Medieval Warm Period (I get it, it's set up, history is normally my jam, omgosh so boring) you just need a short detour and so you look around for a not-too-long, not-set-in-1200s-Europe book and you see the cover for Burn for Burn and think "didn't someone say this was good?" And that's how I ended up reading it. And it was good!

   Lillia, Kat, and Mary are in highschool and they are Out For Revenge and their plans quickly escalate from mostly harmless to quite harmful. Things get out of hand! Their parents don't seem very involved in their lives! They don't consider the long-term consequences of their actions! They are teenagers. At one point one of them says she's going to miss their 2:00 am revenge planning meetings and I was like "gurl you are not getting enough sleep" but then one of the other characters said essentially the same thing SO, at least one of them is at least somewhat reasonable in this one area of her life but not many others, namely: drugging people.

   There are some moments where it seems mega obvious that this book had two authors. Like one of them had an idea and the other was like "sure" and then there's this dissonant thing and the reader is like "what? okay." But it's still good. The ending is pretty abrupt.

   This book was enjoyable, but I don't think I'll be continuing with the trilogy because a) I heard a spoiler and I don't so much care that a major plot point is spoiled so much that it is THE WORST PLOT POINT OF ALL TIME, and b) I got the second book out from the library and it is a brick. It's like 600 pages. I already read The Count of Monte Christo thanks that's enough revenge for me.

"Two men enter! One man leaves!"

   FOLKS, I sometimes forget how much I like movies and then I watch a bunch of good ones in a row and I'm like "movies are the best" and I am just constantly enamored with STORIES and how people TELL THEM and I've been learning a little bit about film theory and it is making me like movies EVEN MORE.

   ANYWAYS. Here are the movies from the previous screencap post:

• Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome (85)
• Matchstick Men (03)
• Princess Bride (87)
• Room (15)
• Zoolander (01)

   If you're wondering how soon Max gets beyond the Thunderdome in Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome, it is pretty much right away. As in Road Warrior and Fury Road, Max isn't a character in these movies so much as a catalyst; things are already happening when he comes on the scene, and would have happened without him, he just sort of trips into playing a part. An accidental, reluctant savior, of sorts. George Miller assigns some messianic imagery to Max, either directly through paintings on walls or indirectly though the structure of the story - where Max arrives, helps a group through violent change, and then leaves the group to build their own lives in his absence and pass their story down. There are believers and doubters in the groups he encounters in the three subtitled movies, along with a Big Bad on the other side. Anyways. Beyond Thunderdome is good! Tina Turner is fabulous! This movie has the least sexual violence out of the series!

   You know how there are some phrases that are weirdly hard to say? Think "rural juror". "Long con" is one such phrase for me, which makes talking about Matchstick Men somewhat difficult. Don't worry though, it's still a good flick. When you watch it you can play a fun game where every time Frank comes onscreen in increasingly ridiculous garb you can say to your movie-watching companion (in my case, boyfriend) "wow, you should get a shirt/hat/outfit like that." It's hilarious, I promise. Also, the first movie I saw Sam Rockwell in was Moon and you NEED to watch Moon asap.

   Highly recommend going to see Princess Bride in a theater full of other people who love Princess Bride. Mega joyful.

   Room is amazing and I cried throughout the whole thing. I wish I had something more intelligent to say than "this movie is important and painful and beautiful, please go see it." Brie Larson won best actress and she deserved it. I haven't read the book yet, but when I got home from seeing the movie I put a hold on all three formats that my library has of it, and whichever one comes in first is going to be consumed.

   I've finally seen Zoolander and so many of the jokes from my youth suddenly make sense. Blue steel.

February's Reading

   I feel much better about February's reading, even though I didn't finish any more books than I did in January. But! I am mid-way through a handful of others, and feel more excited about reading in general. I'm counting February as a good reading month. Thank goodness for comics to put an end to reading-disinterest. 

   The books:

• Treasure Island!!! / Sara Levine - I wrote a review of this book, it was an excellent read.
• Rat Queens, vol. 2 / Kurtis J. Wiebe, Roc Upchurch - more shenanigans, more hijinks, more backstory, a little more of a jumble than volume 1.
• Giant Days, vol. 1, issues 5-10 / John Allison, Lissa Treman/Max Sarin, et al. - are you reading John Allison yet? ARE YOU? He writes web comics, and Giant Days is the continuation of a story he started on his site. His writing is excellent and heartfelt and his comics are great, READ THEM. (He does the art for the web comics, someone else does the art for Giant Days)
• Y: The Last Man, vol. 4 / Brian K. Vaughan - I didn't really like this volume the first time I read it and I didn't really like it upon reading it again. Onward and upward, I guess. 

    I'm not sure if you went and immediately started reading Bad Machinery and Mordawwa: Queen of Hell and Bobbins by John Allison but if you didn't you should read this thing he said about the next issue of Giant Days: "It’s not as out there as issue 11 was, but it does feature the constant threat of wolf attack, and the most gloves ever to appear on panel in a direct market comic book." Constant threat of wolf attack. ARE YOU CONVINCED YET? Just read his comics! You will be doing yourself a favour.

   Okay, there's a lot on his website to try to sort through right away, so HERE is a link to the beginning of one of the early Bad Machinery cases (please read it and grow to love Charlotte Grote as much as I do)(did I mention that Bad Machinery is about friendship and mystery-solving and sometimes aliens?). Maybe start there, or with one of the other cases, an archive of which you can find HERE, if that link decides to work properly.

11-15, 2016

So far this year has been movie-heavy, but I'm alright with it. Can you guess them all?!?!