the groundhog day project

Todd VanDerWerff, Vox [W]hen you consider that Love, Simon is a major studio release--a teen romance, no less--explicitly about a gay protagonist who's grappling with the best way to come out to his family and friends, the very fact that it's so blandly competent seems all the more remarkable. We're living in a time when gay kids can have their own sweetly mediocre studio movies with all the best intentions. Isn't that something? K Austin Collins, The Ringer : Watching queer go mainstream in the 21st century entails weighing and reweighing how it feels when the rest of the world keeps reminding you that it's still playing catch-up--in slow motion, no less. Meanwhile, you're out and about living your life, or trying to, while having to make the best of that fact. That's the bargain. Every day I get to wake up and ask myself, Shall I be a bitch about representation today? I typically choose not to be, but it's never an easy choice. I happen to ha...

I've mentioned before in this blog the sound effect I call Wilhelm's Car Horn. I'm watching This Is Us right now (the episode after the Super Bowl one--I got a little behind on tv with classes starting and then olympics stuff to watch) and they just had a Wilhelm's Car Horn. Randall is learning to drive, almost runs a STOP sign and a delivery truck swerves out of the way while honking. Try that some time. Swerve your car abruptly while honking. Even if you could manage to do both at the same time, you wouldn't. Not in the moment. This sound effect was already on my mind because I was thinking about writing about the movie I saw this morning-- Game Night --and their use of Wilhelm's Car Horn was just one of the little details that annoyed me. That movie isn't bad. The plot moves along nicely, and there are a few good laughs. But... And, here is where an interesting thought struck me. I wrote last week about Black Panther , and I said the movie "is...

Sometimes, I see a new movie and I wish I dealt in something more like reviews. Less of this unstructured discussion. This afternoon I saw Black Panther and I wanted to come home and fashion a brilliant review that celebrated the statement the film makes for Africans and African-Americans, and indicted white folks for, well, all of the shit they've done and do, and for their paranoia regarding Black Panther itself. I saw a post this morning--on Twitter I think... Nevermind the vagueness; I looked it up to check. It was the Twitter handle The Trump Train . They posted this: It's very fitting that the same people who claim to support equality and diversity also glorify a movie that idolizes black supremacy and establishing a black-only ethnostate. There was also a line about liberals and hypocrisy but it's that bit about Black Panther that gets me. Even before I saw the movie, and before I saw replies on Twitter confirming it, I knew that Black Panther is quite explici...

So, for future readers, the Winter Olympics are going on this week and next. Among the competitors is Adam Rippon, a male figure skater from the US who is openly gay. On a post (which I cannot find the specific one I saw yesterday) on Facebook by some conservative page I follow, maybe Fox News, maybe the page that used to be called People Against Obama's Liberal Adgenda [sic], about Rippon, some immediate (and expected) comments were all about how his sexuality is irrelevant, just do your sport and leave politics out of it... Which 1) of course they don't care when it's not about them, or doesn't agree with them. Like they--and I will lump them all together under one "they" for the moment, because fuck them--tell celebrities not to talk about politics, just do their acting job, dance like the trained monkeys they are and shut up about anything else, because actors, as we all know, are not people, are not voters with the same rights as everyone else, and of cou...