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Go On
I wasn't sure that I'd enjoy this, but I actually ended up being pleasantly surprised by it! I don't think it's going to ever be a show I get passionate about or anything, but it was just very likable. I was really worried that the show would make too much fun of the people in the group from the promos, and there was a little of that, but overall I actually didn't feel like there was too much of, like, "Look at Matthew Perry's character surrounded by all these whackjobs! Isn't it hilarious!" I mean, there's some of that (and some of the stuff with the ~crazy cat lady got annoying), but not as much as I feared. Also, Chris from Everybody Hates Chris ended up super fine.
So yeah, I mean, I don't have a lot to say about this show, but I wasn't actually sure that I would check it out or check out more than just the pilot, but I ended up being pleasantly surprised by it!
The New Normal
ugh I'm already kicking myself for watching this. I mean, ugh, there's just… there's a lot I cringe at, and the thing about Andrew Rannell's character (Bryan, maybe???) breaking up his 2 lead characters to start a Twitter riot and "Feelings of teenage tears" or whatever made me want to punch Ryan Murphy in the face for being a dick. But then Bryan and David's first meeting was so cute!!!!!!!!!!!! They're just adorable together. And "My imagination will not be held hostage to my lazy body" or whatever that line was kind of made me laugh a ridiculous amount. ugh, idk. I will probably end up dropping it when all the shows start airing on Tuesdays because there are too many shows on Tuesdays, but then again, I am still sticking with Glee for no good reason, so who knows, maybe I just have an insanely high tolerance for Ryan Murphy shows, idk.
I finally got to see Moonrise Kingdom on Sunday! And then spent the rest of the day watching 3 other films: Head-On/Gegen die Wand (2004), Castaway to the Moon (2009), and The Hunger Games (2012), all of which were at least good if not great:
Moonrise Kingdom (2012): This was very cute and charming! I've actually never seen a Wes Anderson film before, but I just loved the whole style and tone of the film. All the camp stuff with Edward Norton at the beginning had me cracking up, and the relationship between the 2 kids was sweet, and idk, it was just a delightful film. Although I didn't really appreciate [Spoiler (click to open)]them killing off the dog. WHY WAS THAT NECESSARY??? I hate needless animal death. :(((( Just, considering the tone of the rest of the film, it felt weirdly dark and unnecessary But overall, it was really enjoyable! I don't think I enjoyed it as much as Beasts of the Southern Wild because it didn't make me feel nearly as much, but I did like it quite a bit.
Head-On/Gegen die Wand (2004): I had seen Auf der anderen Seite/The Edge of Heaven (2007) (also directed by Fatih Akin) for a German class in college which is supposed to be the 2nd film in a very loose trilogy with this film being the 1st film of that trilogy, and I had liked that movie well enough, and this one seemed even better reviewed and critically acclaimed, and I try to seek out German films from time to time to practice my German (which is very poor at this point), so I decided it was time to check this out, what with it expiring on Netflix in a couple days.
I didn't really know what it was actually about until I started it, but it is basically about a guy and a girl who try to commit suicide and meet when they're at like a clinic or whatever recovering from their suicide attempts. And the girl (who, as it turns out, was played by Sibel Kekilli, who plays Shae on Game of Thrones, who I definitely wasn't expecting to pop up here, so that was a great surprise!) is Turkish and lives with her conservative family, and immediately after meeting this guy at this clinic, she suggests that they get married so she can be free of her family, and she promises him they won't be truly married, she'll sleep with who she wants and he'll do whatever he wants, they'll just live together and pretend to be married for her family. And at first he thinks she's crazy, but he ends up agreeing, and you can kind of guess how it goes from there, that while they're pretending to be married and living together, real feelings develop. And I should mention that marriage of convenience turning into real feelings is one of my absolute favorite romantic tropes/cliches, so the fact that I stumbled into this plot without expecting it was totally awesome, and the first half of the film was one of my absolute favorite things. And then something about halfway through the film happens, and like… the 2nd half of the film is still great, but that twist in the middle really prevented the film from becoming one of my absolute favorites. [Spoilers!]
Just, WHY COULDN'T THEY JUST END UP HAPPY TOGETHER??????? SHE SAID SHE'D WAIT FOR HIM. UGHHHHHH. I really was not expecting him to accidentally kill a guy in the middle of the film, like, when the guy first went down and Sibel sees him and is staring in fear and shock and all that, I was like "What, why is she so upset? Does she think Cahit did that out of jealousy and is mad because she didn't want to be tied down???" And then they reveal that the guy was actually killed, and it was like, wait, WHAT?????????? UGHHH AND SHE TOLD HIM SHE'D WAIT FOR HIM, AND LIKE. I mean, I can't hold her to that, I get that she had to move on with her life, and it was good she was able to get out of that dark period and have a kid and be relatively happy, but then she didn't seem TRULY happy. I JUST WANTED A HAPPY ENDING. I mean, it's not like I need happy endings for everything I watch, there are plenty of movies and books I love that are absolutely devastating. But I think I just wasn't prepared for it, and I just got SO invested in the two of them that the ending really just hurt so much.
And the thing that was the worst is that they never even really got a chance to be happy together for more than a minute!!! They spent most of their time together as friends pretending to be married, and then they almost sleep together (or did the sleep together???? I got kind of confused at that part, because she tells him to stop because they can't have sex or the marriage will be real, but then it looks like he keeps going, but then the scene changes? I can't remember now, it was several days ago that I watched it, but I remember being confused by that, if they really did stop), and then he kills a guy and is in jail for several years and she's in Turkey and gets raped and attacked, and then he shows up after getting out of jail (super hot, btw, I mean, I found him attractive in the first half of the film, but he was more grungy and disheveled. But after he gets out of jail and steps out in the suit with those sunglasses, at first I was like, "ooh, who's that?" before realizing it was him. That time in jail definitely worked for him) and they have like a day or two of sleeping together, but ugh they just looked so sad the entire time!!!! I mean, they both must have known it couldn't work, he didn't seem shocked that she didn't show up at the end to go with him. But ughhhh I just wanted a happy ending, like I knew it wasn't going to be typical romcom hijinks from beginning to end, but still. sigh. I mean, really, I did love it, I'd still give it like a 9/10, but the ending just hurt too much for me to give it a 10/10.
Castaway to the Moon (2009): I mostly wanted to watch this because Netflix rated it really highly for me, and from the reviews it looked like a lighter, happier, romance, and I really needed something like that after Gegen die Wand. And it was really enjoyable! It's a Korean film about this guy who tries to commit suicide by jumping off a bridge and ends up on this deserted island in the middle of this river in a major metropolis, but he can't swim and is terrified of the water and he can't escape it, and he ends up making a life for himself on the island. And then there's a girl who lives in the city who… I couldn't get exactly what was going on with her or if there was like an actual diagnosis or anything, but she's basically terrified of in-person interaction, so she stays in her room all day and avoids even seeing her parents and never leaves the apartment and takes pictures of the moon at night. And she ends up spying the guy on the island with her camera, and they start communicating with each other (which I had read in another review, and I couldn't really figure out how that would work, but the way they did it was really clever and cute). And I don't want to really spoil anything after that, but it was just incredibly enjoyable and delightful. It reminded me a lot of Chungking Express (the 2nd storyline, not the 1st) and Amelie in a lot of ways. And the ending was just really sweet and perfect. Although, I mean, while I feel like the ending was great, i also kind of wish there was a sequel or something, because I'm not really sure where they would go from there, and I'd really like to see both [Spoilers!]how he adjusts to life off the island back in the real world, and how both of them work in an actual relationship. idk, it was pretty recently made, maybe someone will explore a 2nd story with them in the future at some point? That would be pretty great.
The Hunger Games (2012): I know, I'm one of the last people to see this. I've just been really behind on 2012 releases! I haven't even seen The Avengers yet. But anyways, this was pretty good! I mean, it's not going to make my top 10 of the year (or if it does, that says more about 2012 being a bad year for films than THG being an excellent film), but it was enjoyable, and I think it was a decent adaptation of the book considering how in the head of Katniss the book is and how difficult something like that is to adapt to screen. I mean, I did get kind of annoyed at the shots to Gale during all the Katniss/Peeta moments, because, like, ok, I get that Katniss/Gale needs to be built up at some point, and without her internal monologue, you really don't get to see any of Katniss's thoughts about Gale during the Games, and considering his importance later on, you can't just ignore him for the whole film, but at the same time… I just want to enjoy my happy, shippy moments between Katniss and Peeta without being reminded about Gale, ok??? Also, I feel like I remember more makeouts from the first book than we saw on screen, although it has been several years since I read the book, so I could be wrong about that. But yeah, overall, it was pretty decent! Jennifer Lawrence was excellent, which wasn't surprising, and the other parts were pretty well-cast, and… yeah. It was enjoyable.
I've also been eagerly devouring all the reviews I can for everything that's been showing at Toronto (and Telluride and Venice before it) and ugh there are so many films I want to watch right now but it feels like forever before I'm going to be able to see them!!! I have a super long list of everything with their release dates for the rest of the year: [List of Upcoming Movies]
Movies I'm most excited for: Imogene (Darren Criss on the big screen!!!!!!! Also Kristen Wiig, and it's supposed to be pretty good, so there's that. But I read an interview that stated it wouldn't be out until 2013, which NOOOOOO, I was so hoping for a limited release at the very end of this year!!! ughhhh I feel like I've been waiting for this movie forever!!!), Silver Linings Playbook (I wasn't super excited for this before, but the reviews coming out of Toronto were so great, and I do love Jennifer Lawrence. I'm a little nervous about how the movie is going to treat mental illness because I am usually pretty picky about portrayals of mental illness in the media, but I'm pretty hopeful and optimistic!), The Master, Pitch Perfect (okay this has nothing to do with film festivals or Oscar potential, it just looks very entertaining and relevant to my interests), Amour, Rust and Bone.
Movies I'm moderately excited for: Smashed (Aaron Paul!!!!!!!!!!!!!), Looper, Seven Psychopaths (I loved In Bruges, but I've read more mixed reviews about this one), Cloud Atlas (this is either going to be awesome or a trainwreck), The Sessions, Lincoln (I don't care much for biopics or Spielberg tbh, but I do love DDL, and it has a good cast), Anna Karenina (I do like Joe Wright and Keira Knightley and period stuff, but this looks like it could be iffy? I've never read Anna Karenina, either, so I don't know how that'll affect my enjoyment of the film one way or the other), Life of Pi (this is also kind of like Cloud Atlas, in that I think I'm either going to love it or hate it), Les Miserables, Zero Dark Thirty, Django Unchained, This is 40, Promised Land, Barbara.
Movies I don't think I'll care for but will have to watch anyways: Argo (I mean, the reviews have been amazing, and I normally would be interested in this kind of film, but I can't get over my rage at the fact that Ben Affleck cast himself as the main character who happens to be Hispanic considering Ben Affleck cannot seriously be hurting for work, and how many leading man roles are there for Hispanic actors right now? ugh), The Impossible (same kind of issue here as with Argo: out of every possible family they could have chosen to focus on who was affected by the tsunami in Southeast Asia, they choose a white family. Of course. Also it looks possibly too melodramatic and emotionally manipulative for my tastes. Though I do like Ewan McGregor).
I am quite possibly missing stuff, and there's pretty much no chance that I will end up seeing every single film listed here, and I'm sure I'll add stuff and take stuff away after more reviews come in for various things.
I've also been reading quite a bit! (I'm usually awful at balancing watching movies, TV, and reading; I tend to get very focused on just one thing, like watching movies, and won't watch TV or read a book for like a month, and vice versa.) And there's one book in particular I just read that I wanted to talk about (non-spoilery reaction except for spoilery stuff under spoiler cuts):
Unspoken by Sarah Rees Brennan: I just heard about this book like a week ago, and I was in a bit of a slump in terms of what I felt like reading next (I have actually been doing quite a bit of rereads over the past few weeks, which I don't normally do a lot of, but I was in a mood for very specific types of stories, and all that I could find that fit those specifics was stuff I had already read), but the description looked pretty close to the sort of thing I was looking for, and I saw some really good reviews for it, so it went right on my to read list, and after it finally came out on Tuesday, I ended up reading it, and that turned out to be a great choice. It's about this girl who has had this imaginary friend she's always talked to in her head, and one day this family returns to town, and one of the guys in this family turns out to be the guy she was talking to in her head.
And the thing about this book is that it could've gone really terribly really easily. That kind of set up for a paranormal romance (which this is labeled as, though it REALLY doesn't feel like any paranormal romance I've ever read) seems so… idk, cliche and predictable? But Sarah Rees Brennan handled the set-up so artfully that I was just blown away. She really deals with the implications of a guy who's been in your head since you were a kid and knows everything about you, including all the embarrassing things, suddenly being real and in front of you. And there's no insta-love (which is one of my least favorite things and why I can't take the vast majority of paranormal romance), and like… ugh, I don't even know how to describe it! Just, the way she handles their relationship and how it develops was so perfect to me.
The tone of the book was also really interesting to me, because like… this sort of story could get really angsty and melodramatic really fast, but she has such a humorous and like… sassy style of writing, and I never felt like the book was taking itself too seriously, but it also wasn't so light and humorous that it felt like fluff or like the stakes weren't high or important, you know? The way she managed to balance the humor with the more serious and dramatic elements was really amazing to me. And there was also just this really wonderful gothic mood as well. The setting was so vibrant, it was wonderful. And all the secondary characters!!! I mean, I loved the main girl and guy a lot, but the secondary characters are also incredibly fun and distinct and well-developed, and [Spoilers!]I loved the reveal that Angela was into Holly!!!!!! I'm really hoping that Holly was just kind of surprised/shocked at first when Angela tried to kiss her, but that she'll realize she's into Angela, too, and them holding hands while running at the end at one point gives me hope, although I'm not sure if the author will go there. But either way, it was still an awesome development!!!
The book wasn't perfect, I think the last 3rd was maybe the weakest, and [Major Spoilers!]the end was really painful with them severing the connection!!! Like, I thought that might happen later in the trilogy, since this is going to be a trilogy, but I really didn't see it happening so soon, and it just felt like such a major loss, which is how Kami felt, so I suppose that's apt. And the end was a bit abrupt, but it was fine, and I don't really see it as cliffhanger-y as a lot of people seemed to? I mean, there's clearly more story to be told, but idk, it just… wasn't really a major cliffhanger to me? I've seen worse. And that last interaction between her and Jared was tough to take, although I'm sure he was just saving face for whatever reason, like he thinks that because she severed the connection that she doesn't feel the same way as he does, but later on they'll realize how the other feels. But just… idk, the way this book really defied my expectations and dealt with the storyline in a way I would have never thought a YA paranormal romance would was enough for me to really fall in love with it.
Work has been… fine. idk, nothing terrible has happened, I'm just so tired of it and the idea of spending more than 1 more year working there is horribly depressing, but I also have made absolutely no progress in figuring out what the hell I want to do next and what grad schools I need to apply to, so that's not great, but I think I'll save that stuff for a later post because I don't feel like thinking about that right now. But there is some other work stuff I wanted to talk about:
So I mentioned at some point that we had someone new starting last week, and… she's been okay, I guess? She's not incompetent and she's nice and all, but… she's also kind of driving me crazy? idk how to describe exactly the issue I have with her. She's just… she is very loud? It's a small office, we're all on top of each other, and sometimes when she's on the phone I have trouble thinking. But it's also more than just her volume level, I just feel like she's… everywhere? Like, she is constantly talking kind of to herself and kind of to everyone about what she's doing, and like… she'll start asking a question without saying your name or checking to see if you're on the phone or involved in something else, so it makes me feel like she thinks whatever she's doing is more important than what you're doing. Or like, I'll be discussing an issue with someone else, and she'll pipe up and be like "Oh is this about [insert order she's been dealing with]" and it's like… no, actually, I didn't mention your name or anything to do with the file you're dealing with and nothing I'm talking about should make you think it has anything you have to deal with. And something like… idk, confusing or weird will come up, and she'll try to come up with an explanation, and you'll be like, "No, it's more likely due to this," but she'll stick with her explanation, and… okay that's super vague, but just. It makes me feel like she thinks she knows everything or knows what she's talking about when she's been here for only 2 weeks and still doesn't know a lot and doesn't know how things work really, and so it bugs me when it feels like she thinks she knows as much or more than me and the other people who have been here a year (oh god I can't believe I've been working here a year). Also, she calls Firefox, "Fox Fire," always, without fail, even when she's reading something aloud that actually says "Firefox," and I just. Don't understand.
I mean, she's not terrible, we've had far worse, and she'll probably be better when she actually does know what she's been talking about and has been around longer and knows how things work, but for now she's just bugging me a lot. But she is really nice in general, and we can't really afford to lose anyone who isn't grossly incompetent at this point considering we've been crazy busy and probably need at least 1-2 additional people more, so losing someone wouldn't be great.
I also think I mentioned that I was covering both the duties of the guy who quit a few weeks ago who had been around for awhile and my own duties, and that's still going on. Thankfully the normal responsibilities I would have have been super light, so I've been able to cover everything decently. End of the month is going to be a lot crazier and busier, though, so we'll see if I managed to survive that. At least it's Friday (and since I spent all of Wednesday convinced it was Thursday and had to remind myself multiple times through the day that it was actually Wednesday, and then Thursday ended up feeling a lot like Friday, thank god it's actually finally Friday and almost the weekend!) and I don't have to work tomorrow, so there's that.