Monday 🌘 Open Thread Again

Remember if it's hot for you, it's hot for them too. Bring them indoors.

Gary Larson, The Persistence of Weiner Dogs, 1990

Hope everyone's enduring the summer. At least the cicadas are singing, right?

Reeeeeeereeeereeeeereeeeereeeereeeeeereeee

Update 4:51 pm, 8/21/23 - Had to take the younger kid to the doctor for a UTI this morning. While waiting for the prescription to be filled at Walgreens, we went to a nearby greasy spoon and got cheese fries and onion rings and a cream soda. The food of our people. "Our people" are probably garbage pandas.

I did watch Skinamarink, Polite Society, and Burning this week and have thoughts but am too diffuse today to think/write anything more than:

Skinamarink was pretty much what I expected. I dozed off after the first half hour of grainy Zillow house photography and hiss-crackle-pop end-of-the-record noises. Startled awake when words were muttered – self-inflicted jump scares. I did like the last half hour but can see why spaced99 didn't bother getting there.

Polite Society is highly entertaining. Tried early on to dive into the ADHD, sugarbuzzy pool of Edgar Wright, spec. Scott Pilgrim. Jumped in the shallow end of an already shallow pool though and bumped its head. The performers are great, almost everything else is a tiny bit flat, turning a fun premise into a mere light entertainment. It touches on a lot of great themes before bailing. Sisterhood, third culture kids, class, sexism, sisters before misters, etc. but never quite went either full throttle or slowed down enough for deeper characters. Solid first effort by Nida Manzoor, whose TV cred shows. $35 million budget. So either upper end of low budget or lower end of a mid. Priya Kansara is wonderful and game for anything.

Burning was one of my favorite movies a few years ago. I could write about it all day. Based on the short story by Murakami, Lee Chang-dong wraps the Faulkner story, which was a reference in Murakami, into the film and transforms the meaning significantly. Scary and so sad. The cast is terrific. Lee is probably my favorite contemporary Korean director. Look for Secret Sunshine and Poetry by him.

That's it. I'm going to go stare at clouds or something. CYA.