just a distraction

The dog gets my favorite line in Beginners. The full subtitle (because, of course, the dog doesn't actually speak) is: "Tell her the darkness is about to drown us unless something drastic happens now."

I've been there. Felt that drowning sensation, the darkness, and had drastic things happen.

(By the way, I'm not actually watching Beginners tonight. My Netflix was having some issues, so I moved on. #FirstWorldProblems)

I've been diagnosed with depression, been offered prescriptions for medication to deal with it. Mostly, I've learned to deal with it on my own. I've gotten good at compartmentalizing different parts of my life, and I've learned to take time to do fun things. For example, today I went to the Renaissance Faire with friends with whom I play D&D.

I also (in case some future reader hasn't noticed the jump in dates or some past reader is confused) restarted this blog, ostensibly as if nothing had changed. I picked up the "next" day with the same film and went ahead as if 365 days had not passed. In the interim, I passed my thesis defense (close to a year ago), thus earning my Master's degree, I've tried my hand at YouTube--did 31 reviews, a couple "flashback" reviews, a commentary video (on the Ghostbusters remake), a scene breakdown (somewhat related to one of my entries here about Ex Machina), and a top five (slasher films)--and briefly put together a new movie blog that didn't last long because a) I didn't put it on a strict schedule and b) politics and life have been rather distracting. For the record, I need a schedule. I've also started teaching outside of grad school, started DMing D&D as well as playing regularly, and it's been a good mix.

(I am watching Mike Mills' earlier Thumbsucker by the way. It's been a while since I've watched it, and I feel like I had other things planned to say today that got left behind, forgotten... Plans change, trains derail. Life goes on. For good or bad)

Still saw lots of movies, and some of them--notably Free Fire, because of the filmmaking complexity involved in something so simple; Your Name. and Before I Fall because of time loops (and Your Name. was awesome); Logan because it was perfect; Get Out because it was oddly profound and satisfying for a horror film; Paterson because it was cinematic poetry--needed to be written about. And, there were Oscar contenders who needed some discussion, too--notably A Man Called Ove, Land of Mine and Watani: My Homeland. Since I wrote about The Ring (and it's sequel) in this blog (366 367 368 369 370 371 372) I certainly should have talked about Rings. And, Shymalan's Split would have been amusing to pick apart because, while many who saw it clearly enjoyed it, I found it rather offensively bad.

And, there were many others. Maybe I'll bring them into the blog going forward. As I've said many times, I do not review movies here. So, the timing of my commentary needn't coincide with the release of the films. Thumbsucker for example is from 2005. I didn't even see it in the theater. I rented it from Blockbuster back when Blockbuster still existed. Before I opted for Blockbuster's by-mail DVDs, before I switched to Netflix's by-mail DVDs, long before I moved on to streaming services like Netflix (that wasn't working tonight), like Hulu, like Amazon Fire.

 

 

 

 

 

Two problems:

1. I don't really have much to say about Thumbsucker tonight. Well maybe that I don't think Mike Mills actually debated in high school. The debate format here, as in many a film, is both weirdly simple and unusually unstructured.

2. I wonder how this blog will go now. I don't seem to have a format in mind, something like Phase Three but with more lingering, I suppose. With the requisite returns to Groundhog Day of course because what is life without echoes? I wonder if there's an endpoint, of it there needs to be. I mean, can I do this indefinitely? Can I stop whenever or am I too obsession-prone to be unable to resist milestones?