Books:
Everything Here Is Beautiful by Mira T. Lee
This is a contemporary fiction novel about living with mental illness that intercuts between the POVs of a woman, her mentally ill sister, and the sister's baby-daddy. I ultimately DNF'ed not because it was badly written but because I found it to be really boring. I freely admit this could just be a personal taste thing (well some would argue everything in Media Report is a personal taste thing though clearly those people would be totally wrong since I can objectively say I basically invented objectivity) in that there's zero plot really as the book is designed around conveying the experience of mental illness - schizophrenia in this case - and its impact on the sufferer and their family. So if you are someone who's either suffered from or been affected by mental illness in some way, you might find this book to be totally engrossing in how it captures your experience and the experiences of the others involved. Absent that connection, though, I really found the book to be slow and kept waiting for the story to pick up. It was well-enough written that I made it to 50% before stopping so I'm not saying this is a bad book by any means just that it's a deep dive into something specific and I think that specific something needs to have impacted your life for you to be immersed in this book. If mental illness has in some way been part of your life, I imagine this would be a moving read.
The Naturalist by Andrew Mayne
This is a painfully atrociously written thriller about an on-the-spectrum scientist who gets involved in a police investigation, initially as an is-he-or-isn't-he suspect, and, based on having no investigative or police skills whatsoever, manages to crack the case. It's at another level of stupid. To be clear: I'm okay with a certain amount of stupid especially in a genre book, but this thing was way outside my stupidity-tolerances, which was irritating because when I started it, I was kind of in the mood for a dumb screen-tapper. As an example of the level of dumb we’re talking about, we're asked to swallow that (a) for absolutely no reason whatsoever, the police have glommed onto our lead as a suspect and refuse to let go despite clear evidence to the contrary, (b) our lead, despite knowing that the police have glommed onto him as a suspect and refuse to let go despite clear evidence to the contrary, insists on shoving his face into every part of the investigation not because he can do anything helpful but just ‘cause, (c) people can willy nilly wander into police meetings and give their thoughts at said meetings, and (d) people can be arrested and thrown in prison for wandering into police meetings and giving thoughts at said meetings. Do I need to keep going? I DO NOT! Atrocious, skip if it's on your list.
TV/Streaming:
Seaside Hotel (Seasons 1-2):
This show is set at a, you'll never guess, seaside hotel in 1920s Denmark. It's kind of like Downton Abbey via a Georges Feydeau French bedroom farce only shot on what looks like VHS and could've easily aired on PBS in the '70s, i.e. upstairs/downstairs drama, maids with pinched bottoms, etc. Though I know this review so far sounds like a pan, the reality is... I liked it. It doesn't find its footing until around the fourth episode (things are pretty episodic until then) but then it really takes off though in the way a Model T takes off, i.e. roaring away at 10 mph. Each season is a single summer at the hotel starting in 1928 and the same characters, with some variation, stay there each season though with new plotlines or plotlines picking up from the end of prior seasons. Each season is only 6 or 7 episodes, and while I wouldn't call it binegworthy per se, it's certainly soothingly enjoyably pleasant to settle in for a snack of those 6/7 before going to watch something else for a while. You can guess every plot beat as it arrives but it really makes no difference - you'll either enjoy the nice gentle tone with some romance and people getting outraged over things that now seem delightfully quaint or you'll want to rip out your eyes out in boredom. If you're on the fence, give it until the fourth episode or so and see if it starts picking up for you like it did for me; alternatively, if you hate episode 1 you will hate every episode so cease watching immediately.
Alice in Borderland (Season 1):
This is (apparently) an adaptation of a Japanese graphic novel about the bulk of the population disappearing and the remainder being forced to play a series of games, the losers of which die. Unlike with Hunger/Squid Game(s) where you know why everyone's playing and more or less what the rules are, with this one that's not the case, which is sort of what makes it interesting (and, potentially, what will make it totally suck if, once the uber-plot is revealed a few seasons from now, it turns out to be dumb which is always a possibility with these things). This season is 8 45ish minute episodes and I thought it was pretty fun. Let me be clear: it ain't genius; the character behavior makes little sense, though that often doesn't matter since so many characters die, and the backstories are pretty simplistic and shoved in seemingly at random and without purpose. However, the games are kind of entertaining. They're variants on logic puzzles to an extent and have a CSI-like thing where, just when it’s all getting dire and time is running out, you can see whomever's solving a particular game piece all the logic together and stop people from dying just in time. Leaving the mystery of why it's all happening and what the purpose of the games are gave drive to show since you essentially have two plots going in each episode - whatever game is being played with whatever character relationships (betrayal, new friendships, something more obtuse, etc.) combined with trying to unpack the larger mystery of why this is happening at all and if there’s any way to escape it. It's entertaining enough but, as with many adaptations, parts of it, especially in the latter half, feel as if it was hewing too closely to the original I guess to please fans of the graphic novel but really: frames on a page just isn't the same as a filmed series and it felt as if the writers just lifted stuff and stuck it into the series (being vague to avoid spoilering here) rather than looking at how those things functioned in the graphic novel then changing the details and execution to have the same function but for the different medium they were working in. While it remains entertaining enough to watch, it gets kind of wobbly at the end and I'm hoping they rethink some things for season 2 (assuming there is a season 2). That's not a diss; I liked it, watched the whole thing and not as background noise but actually paid attention, and will watch season 2, i.e. fun enough entertainment with flaws that were apparent but not view-stopping.
Movies:
The Avengers (Marvel Universe #6) - This movie, in which the one Black guy begs a group of White people to band together and help save the planet from a different White guy whose sole plan for world domination - allowing a bunch of interplanetary metallic lizards to invade Earth which will somehow mysteriously result in his lifelong dream of being the object of mortal worship - hinges on thwarting the Black guy by turning one of the White guys into a Green guy, is not, in fact, the idle daydream of a socially-conscious eco-friendly nursery schooler killing time while staring out of the car window on the way to a playdate but is, rather, a script by Joss Whedon which is neither misogynistic nor woman-hating nor je-deteste-la-femme nor anything else that says the exact same thing with different words in any way shape or form and certainly not at all with the ending.
So basically this White god, Loki, whom we previously saw getting the crap - or whatever emerges from Gods post ambrosia consumption - kicked out of him by his half-brother Thor is back only this time with an army of lizard people with whom he made some kind of complex deal for world domination which was never entirely clear - the lizard people are taking over Earth and then somehow he'll be king or something? And why is mortal worship an end goal for non-mortals? I mean, sure, I love my mortal worshipers and everything, and, yeah I guess I could imagine making a dark bargain with some aliens in order to invade another planet and get more more MORE of them, but once I had them, what would I do them exactly? Start another Substack? Also, I mean, not to diss the planet or anything, but what's so great about Earth as in why are the lizard people and Loki interested in it at all? Maybe they just want the 30% off their first order of the alcoholic kombucha that keeps showing up in my Insta feed. Well perhaps that doesn't really matter: they are, and the only people who can save us are the four White men from the prior movies - Iron Man, Hulk, Captain MAGA, and Thor - plus a hot White chick played by ScarJo whose superpower beyond kickboxing in strappy gladiator boots and a vinyl pantsuit remains as unclear Loki’s motivation.
So Loki, after touching a few people including Stellen Skaarsgard and Jeremy Renner with his enormous scepter - and make what you will of Jeremy Renner’s shining blue eyes after said scepter touch - they lose interest in whatever it was they were doing before and only want to do whatever the large scepter wielder wants, a totally understandable response in general and, in this case since the scepter involves a kind of slave brainwashing, specifically as well. Eventually, after as usual in these movies destroying multiple buildings and murdering hundreds, the Avengers trap Loki in some kind of glass cage where, as it turns out, none of the people who couldn't wait to kick his ass earlier in the movie seem to have any interest in doing so in this one, though eventually Sam Jackson convinces them to, to which the Avengers respond with their Earth-saving superpowers of (a) wandering around for a while, (b) doing nothing, and (c) complaining before eventually being forced into begrudgingly saving the planet when the scepter mysteriously comes to life once again and attacks them.
At some point in this process, Ed Norton transforms into Mark Ruffalo who at some later point becomes the Hulk, and this transformation (from Ruffalo to Hulk though perhaps the Norton to Ruffalo one would've been more effective) is Loki's goal as in some hazy way, the Hulk will destroy all the other White superpeople so Loki can go do something that lets the alien lizards onto Earth which will, again, somehow allow for the worship he's always craved. An unbelievable amount of destruction ensues and somehow, even though Loki's plan relies on the Hulk being a mindless killer who will wipe out anyone in his path including the rest of the Avengers, when that's not convenient for the script anymore, that stops happening and Hulk becomes an Avengers team player though I really have no idea how or why or how any of this plan - more “plan” really - was supposed to work at all.
Okay there’s the gist of the plot setup and now to the real standout element of this film. While there were no women involved in the prior movies other than as love interests, at least those other movies were focused on just one White male superhero so you could kind of say it was his story (followed by another his story then another his story then another then another) but seeing all those guys collected in a group and how the movie seemingly at random grabbed ScarJo - whom last I saw as Iron Man’s assistant after Goop became CEO - and shoved her into the mix as the one whose job it is to convince Ed Norton sorry Mark Ruffalo - and btw was it simply implicit when they recast the role that the new actor needed to be White? or even male? anyway… - to join the team, because, as we all know, woman’s primary superpower is getting men to stop being selfish children, do what’s right, and clean up their rooms. And so while Iron Man has his suit, Captain MAGA his shield, Hulk his invincibility, Thor his Hammer, we now learn that ScarJo’s Black Widow has… the power of Womany Nag. Or later with Loki the power of Emotional Manipulation because we all know women are the emotional ones whereas men are insensitive brutes.
And, yeah I know it’s nitpicking, but in all the nonstop maleness, it’s hard to ignore that her character name isn’t even a name or a reference to her power like the men have but rather a reflection of her spousal status and having a dead presumably male husband, likely one she killed meaning the only woman in this thing is entirely cocooned in a male reference. And while the men get outfits that accentuate their powers - strength primarily - she gets one that accentuates her sexuality for no discernible reason other than that she’s ScarJo and looks amazing in tight leather or whatever that material is which seems perfectly reasonable if you’re Joss Whedon I guess as he piles on the dearth of empowered women with even the lizard people being run by male lizard/robots/whatever-they-are as is Thorland with a man at its head.
Look I’m aware Joss Whedon didn’t create these characters but he - or someone - decided that the main plotline for the first third of this film was having the men be whiny babies with the only woman and only Black person present onscreen solely to convince the White men to overcome their reluctance and, you know, save the planet. At the very least, couldn’t ScarJo also have been reluctant and selfish just like the guys were? Couldn’t ScarJo have an actually defined superpower with an outfit that accentuates that power just like the guys have? Or if her power is the power of kickboxing mind-fuck is there some reason that needs to be done in tight leather? And if she had to have that costume and the name and the ill-defined superpower because that’s what was in the comic books and a departure from that would’ve been too extreme, surely Joss Whedon could’ve written a character who owned it a la, “This outfit? It’s ridiculous, but it works on the idiotic criminal straight men I take down.” Like literally ANYTHING other than the only lead woman wearing sexuality as her sole superpower. I guess it’s just that while the tendency to sideline women was apparent in prior movies - Thor particularly was when I started noticing - seeing all the superheroes to date collected in this one made it hard to see anything else.
And this is where I blame Joss Whedon: even if he was saddled with sexist Marvel characters, I find it difficult to believe someone forced a writer/director at his level to retain that sexism in filmed form meaning he could’ve written anything, and that is the challenge isn’t it if you’re stuck with four guys and one woman - to make them all equally empowered and vital. As far as this movie was concerned, ScarJo was Beauty in Beauty and the Beast, and her role that of man/beast-wrangler, first Mark Ruffalo in convincing him to join the team at all, then Loki to manipulate information out of him, then Hulk to keep him from executing Loki’s [totally fucking lame] plan of killing all the Avengers in his blind rage-y Hulkiness. That’s it; she’s not saving Earth but rather keeping the men - the important gender who will go out and actually do something - in line. Why didn’t she have an Earth-saving role that didn’t involve manipulating a man? Dunno. While Stellen Skaarsgard was a holdover from a prior film, Jeremy Renner’s character was new (to the Marvel film world as I’m presuming his character was in a comic somewhere) and that character, who could’ve been cast as anyone, needed to be (White) male because…? Dunno. And most importantly how come when Mark Ruffalo transforms into Hulk his wavy shag also transforms into an emo textured fringe? Dunno.
In any event, Loki gets to some magic machine at which point all that implicit misogyny is made explicit when Loki flicks a switch which causes the machine to emit a power beam that results in the only female appearance of power in the entire film and the Avengers’ true enemy here: a gigantic fluorescent gaping purple vagina that opens in the sky and spews out a stream of planet and human destroying lizard people who start doing exactly that until Iron Man, like a big red metallic sperm, courageously swims upstream and impregnates the lizard ovary with a bomb which, via what can only be described as an interplanetary hysterectomy, kills the lizard people mother or something like that which also results in all the lizard people dying somehow (because I guess they're all a hive mind and did we know that before that point?) before Iron Man escapes through the dwindling cervix at the last minute.
And thus did Man save Earth.