I wasn’t really sure what was going on with this window display near my work.
But then I got closer and discovered it was made from…
…many, many envelopes that hold parking tickets. And then the message was clear. The cat was a reference to Parking Kitty which lets people pay for parking from their phone.
I don’t drive to work, so I don’t have to pay for parking, but ever since Parking Kitty has appeared, the days of my coworkers running up and down the stairs to feed the meter have ended.
I’d seen a preview for Brady Corbet’s Vox Lux and I thought I knew what it was about, so I was utterly confused when the movie opened with a brutal school shooting* and the main character was not Natalie Portman, but Raffey Cassidy. It’s a story told in two parts, the first as 13-year-old Celeste is on the precipice of fame, the second as 31-year-old Celeste is preparing for an important hometown concert. I can see Natalie Portman giving it her all,** but it comes off as scenery-chewing, plus the pacing is off and the movie ends with an endless concert performance that adds nothing.***
Skip unless you are super into Natalie Portman, or are looking for reasons you don’t want to be famous.
Cost: $5.99 (a lot for a not-good movie) via Google Play
Where watched: at home
*And also, some end credits that ran backwards. They were very confusingly art-y and subtracted more than they added to the film.
**Raffy Cassidy is also quite good. Plus Willem Dafoe was the narrator and that worked.
***It’s great those backup dancers got some work, I guess, but after about five minutes, it’s like “I get it, I get it, move on.” Unfortunately, there is no resolution. Those end credits return. But rolling in the normal direction.
Though I remembered a lot about this movie, I thought it best to do a quick re-watch* before the sequel appears. It was still very, very good, and as we were watching it at home we could pause for bathroom breaks.**
My original review is here.
Cost: Netflix monthly fee ($8.99)
Where watched: at home with Matt
*Although with a 149-minute movie, there’s no quick re-watch.
**Inadvertently, we paused 10 seconds from halfway through the movie. For those curious, it comes during the scene where Thor, Rocket and Groot visit Eitri.
It’s a dispatch from the frontline of dissertation land. As she wrote this postcard, she was two weeks away from her deadline.
She says “I want to be done” twice in the space of this postcard and ends, “Ah well, to the last push!”
For people willing to read subtitles, Daniel Ribeiro’s The Way He Looks is a teen romance treat.* Leonardo and Giovana are best friends and somewhat outcasts whose friendship is interrupted by Gabriel, an attractive new student. There’s great stuff in the shifting friendship department, the first love department, and the department of Other Teenagers Can be Really Mean.**
Cost: Free via Kanopy, the Multnomah County Library’s streaming service
Where watched: at home
*It’s one of those movies I spent a lot of time smiling through
**I did not smile through these parts.
A few years ago, I re-watched She’s All That and found that a movie that I had enjoyed on first viewing was not very good.* The Perfect Date is about at the level of She’s All That, but minus an awesome mid-movie dance scene and an enjoyable first time viewing experience. Noah Centineo isn’t very good at his craft right now,** and there wasn’t much else to recommend.
Skip, unless you have a thing for this guy. In which case you should also watch To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before and Sierra Burgess is a Big Fat Loser.
Cost: Netflix Monthly Fee ($8.99)
Where watched: at home
*Acting: not very good. Funny parts: not as many as I remembered. Character development: uneven
**For some reason he was fine in To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before, and bugged the crap out of me in this movie.
As a person in a long-term relationship who does not want to be married, I was interested in Sasha Gordon’s It Had to Be You, a romantic comedy about a woman who freaks out when her boyfriend proposes. Cristin Miloti is laugh-out-loud funny in parts of this film and there’s a lot of sadness, what with all the trying to figure out what to do with a relationship where two people want different things. I could feel the movie hitting its beats* and I still found that watching it was a good way to spend my Sunday evening time.
Cost: free via Kanopy, the Multnomah County Library‘s streaming service
Where watched: at home
*Which isn’t great, but is much better than the movie not hitting its beats and me wondering when this endless film will be over.
The orange sign was hanging on the gate outside the door of the church near my house. Because that church is within 300 yards of a demolition, it got a warning.
I felt very sad, because I thought this beautiful house had escaped the demolition fate. So I took a bunch of pictures.
And then I eventually figured out that the address said Kilpatrick street, not Interstate. Somehow, this house has survived! You can see the temporary chain link fence where they are cutting off the backyard.
Unfortunately, the smaller house around the corner is the one that will be demoed, along with the building on the corner. You can see a picture of these buildings by going to this post. And I suppose that means the lilac tree will also be on it’s way out. I hate to lose a good lilac tree.
You can see what might be coming by reading this post.
Unicorn Store is Brie Larson’s directorial debut, and much like Chris Evans’ directorial debut, it’s fine way to pass the time. Larson walks the line between steely and fantastical and Samuel L. Jackson looks like he is having a lot of fun. It’s also required viewing for people who are fans of whimsical costuming as it is packed full of candy-colored couture.
Cost: Netflix monthly rental fee ($8.99)
Where watched: at home
*Note that I can only vouch for the film I’ve watched. Report back to me if you have something to stay about the others.
**That would make a fun bar trivia question. Which of the Avengers have directed movies? Of course, you would have to define who the Avengers are.
One of the things that always bugged me about the standard two-page planners I used from ages 20–35 was that Saturday and Sunday had to share a space that was the same size as every other day of the week got.
I’ve always had much more to do on the weekends, and I hated trying to cram everything into the smaller space.
The plus of the bullet journal is that you get to make you own size of pages for the day, and on this one both Saturday and Sunday each got their own page.
I’ve taken to doing a little journaling in a cheap composition book to determine my priorities. I have four categories (rest, chores, work, rituals) and I find that doing some free-form writing shakes out all the things and helps me put them in some sort of priority order.
The phone is where my calendar lives, so I needed that to remind me of official appointments. Once I have those down in the cheap composition book, I can start listing all the other things.
This was a weekend with more things at set times than I like. So I set this up in more of a time format. On other weekends I list my time-based appointments at the top, and then made two other lists: things that need to be done; things that would be nice to get done.
It’s been working well.
