Anora, Somebody Somewhere, and Hot Frosty.
Week 213.
Hello hello! Crawling on my hands and knees to the holiday break. Here’s a recap of my week:
Things I Read
Books
If you’re looking for a book to read, try this list of contemporary romance recs, this list of other fiction recs, or this list of non-fiction recs. I also track everything I read on Goodreads.
Cue the Sun by Emily Nussbaum: I LOVED this book about the history of reality TV. She starts with The Real World and goes all the way up to present day, with big sections on Survivor and The Bachelor and many other shows that I have watched and loved (or loved to hate). I learned so much from this and it was fascinating. I listened to the audiobook and really liked it! I also read her other book a few years ago, which is a collection of essays about tv, and would recommend that, too.
Articles
The influencer lawsuit that could change the industry: I was fascinated by this article about two influencers, one of which is suing the other for copying her and in doing so trying to assert a copyright claim to her content. The problem is…her content is just selling beige stuff on Amazon. It is the most basic, most plain, very easily achievable vibe. So, to me, the fact that she is trying to argue that this other girl is copying her when what she’s doing is also being done by thousands of other women on the internet is…bold! How are you gonna copyright the color beige??? It’s so interesting to watch the influencer industry create regulations for itself in real time. I’m curious to see what happens with this.
Things I Watched
TV
If you’re looking for a show to watch, try this list.
Somebody Somewhere (Max): This is the loveliest, warmest, purest show. The third and final season just ended, and I waited for all the episodes to be out before watching all of them this week. This is just the best show. It stars Bridget Everett (who I LOVE) as Sam, a woman who moved back to her small hometown to care for her sick sister, who has since passed away. Despite this sad premise, this show is a ray of light. It is earnest, but not cheesy, and heartfelt, but not depressing. It makes me laugh and it makes me cry, but because it’s so lovely and nice, not because it’s too sad. It is tender and kind and funny and full of joy. It was just the BEST. I loved all the characters so much. I really wish they were going to make more of this. A must watch, if you haven’t seen it yet!
Movies
Anora (theaters): I’ve been dying to see this because it’s getting a ton of awards buzz and really good reviews. I really liked it! I don’t want to say too much about the plot because I think it’s more fun if you go in not knowing what’s going on, but the general vibe here is that this is about a sex worker who meets a really rich Russian guy and they become involved. The first half of this is so electric, buzzy and vibrant and frantic and fun. Then it comes crashing down so effectively in the second half, it really builds so much tension over the course of two hours. This made me LAUGH, despite some darker moments it is really very funny. This is likely to rack up a bunch of Oscar noms, including one for Mikey Madison who stars as Anora. She is so amazing in this movie, I thought her performance was so good. Liked this movie a lot!
Fly Me to the Moon (AppleTV+): I continue to be baffled about the way Apple does absolutely no marketing for their original content, because this is a rom com starring Channing Tatum and Scarlett Johansson that I did not hear one single thing about until in appeared at my movie theater for five minutes over the summer. If I didn’t hear about a Channing Tatum rom com, no one did!!! It’s now streaming so I watched it over the weekend. I don’t know how to explain what this means but this feels like a fake movie. He is a scientist at NASA working on the moon landing and she is a marketing expert who gets brought in to get the public/congress on board with spending money on space stuff. They hate each other until they don’t. Scarlett carries this movie on her back, Channing is hot but he has a horrible hair cut. This has a very stylistic look that was fun, I guess, but this is just not a very memorable movie to me. It’s also over two hours which is too long for something like this!! This is just…fine? Whatever.
Interstellar (Paramount+): This got rereleased in theaters for the 10 year anniversary and I saw a lot of people talking about it, so I felt left out and decided to watch it at home. I saw this in the theater when it came out and never again, so I didn’t remember a lot. The basic plot here is that the Earth is dying, so Matthew McConaughey and Anne Hathaway go to space to try to find another habitable planet. There is a lot of blah blah science talk in this that I genuinely cannot follow even a little bit, but the emotional arc of the story still works for me. I am famously a bit of a Christopher Nolan hater (sorry to this man but his movies are Not For Me) but this is a good movie. Way better than Oppenheimer (VERY boring and I stand by that take). It is so massive, insane visuals. The score has been in my listening rotation for the past decade, it’s so amazing. The cast is so so good. I think this is the first time I ever saw Timothee Chalamet in anything! It’s astonishing that Matthew McConaughey did this, Wolf of Wall Street, Dallas Buyers Club, and True Detective in less than a year. An all timer of a run. This is absolutely worth watching if you’ve never seen it, or if you haven’t seen it since it came out. It’s too long, but what’s new. Holds up.
Things I Bought
You can read about my full skincare routine and favorite products here. If you need a sunscreen recommendation, try this list.
This section is going on hold until after the holidays. In the meantime, here’s my gift guide:
Holiday Content
Full list of holiday recs here.
The Merry Gentlemen (Netflix): If you’ve been here for a while then you know about my undying love for the Magic Mike franchise, and so it should be no surprise that I watched this one first. This is about a girl (Britt Robertson) who goes home for Christmas and learns that her family’s bar is about to go out of business, so she organizes a show where hot men dance around on stage in order to draw in more customers (lol). Chad Michael Murray is here and very hot. Now. It must be said that Magic Mike is good because the men are actually very good dancers. The men in this movie….are not! The actual performance part of this is funny for the first time and then gets progressively cringier as the movie goes on. But this made me laugh and because I was an alive girl in 2004 I have a lot of Chad Michael Murray nostalgia, so this was not a terrible time. I give it four trash cans.
Hot Frosty (Netflix): what a stupid movie!!! This is about a woman who sees a hot snowman, puts a magic scarf on him, and then he comes to life. LOL. Truly the dumbest premise but this was really not terrible, it had some pretty funny moments. My favorite part of this is that the main cop in this town is too aggressively about solving “crimes” and no one in the town cares or takes him seriously. I love to see it. I give this three trashcans, I think it has it’s moments but the plot is truly stupid.
One Last Thing…
It’s Actors on Actors season!! This one is good.
That’s it for me! I hope you all have a good week.
TTYL,
Emily