Quarantine Movie and TV Round Up

 I'm sure that I am not alone in the fact that there have been a lot of movies and tv watched while quarantine has happened. I'm a devout fan of going to the movies, but that obviously hasn't happened since....late February. So at home entertainment it is!

Movies

This might be a good time to reiterate that I am such a wuss and I hate being scared but I watch a ridiculous amount of horror movies. I can't explain it. But it has to be a particular type of horror movie. I don't generally do slasher/murder ones and I try to stay away from demon-y ones because homie don't play with that shit. Bye Exorcist, see you never!

Werewolf movies: There was a stretch of like a week and a half pretty early in quarantine where all I watched was werewolf movies on Shudder. Of course the OG, best werewolf movie of all time is "American Werewolf in London". Goes without saying. "Howl" was actually pretty entertaining, would recommend.

"Tigers Are Not Afraid": This was the actual reason I got a Shudder subscription for like a month. It's a movie about a group of orphaned children caught up in the Mexican drug war. It's a bit fairytale, a bit magical realism, and more than a bit of heartbreak. I thought it was really well done, and I think about it a lot. Also, female director.

"The Ritual": A friend group who is growing apart take a memorial camping trip in the Swedish wilderness. Things are already tense because of the circumstances but quickly come off the rails when a mysterious presence makes itself known, threw weird noises in the wilderness and even scarier homages found in an abandoned cabin. The reason I like this movie is the tension through the group of friends feels very real and pretty familiar. Also the design on the mysterious presence makes me really happy. 

"JoJo Rabbit": We laugh, we cry, we yell "Do you even speak German?!" across the house whenever we watch this Hoffmann family favorite. God, I love this movie soooo much.

"Bone Tomahawk": The first hour and half of this movie I'm like okay, this is a good western and I'm enjoying it but I don't know if I'd call it a "horror western" like people have said. Last 45 minutes of this movie OH MY GOD OH MY GOD THE GORE THE HORROR SHIT SHIT SHIT. Still, a pretty good movie. Great writing.

TV Shows

The Boys: If you watch the Marvel/DC movies but have questions about whether or not these superheroes are ACTUALLY a good idea...this show might be for you. I know that's why this show is for me. I am the Frenchie of my friend group. Without the cocaine habit. 

Fort Salem: Motherland: I need to make this clear - this show is TRASH. The idea is kind of interesting but it was obviously dumbed down to appeal to teenage girls at their lowest level. Like, maybe if you didn't write trash for teenage girls you'd be surprised that they would like it! Like, give them some credit. So, the basic idea of the show is that way way back in the pilgrim days there was an agreement between the early US government and witches that the government would stop persecuting them if the witches agreed to fight in the armed services. And basically draft their children. Forever. Premise is good, some fun world building, but poorly sketched out characters, some good diversity, and some very handsome but very dull boy characters. I binged a season in two days. I don't know what's wrong with me. 

Away: We are a very pro space program household so I wasn't surprised when Josh turned on this Netflix show. He's way more into it than I am. I do appreciate the mental toll that space travel takes. It's not a walk in the park up there. It actually sounds pretty unpleasant as a whole. I've also watched the Challenger documentary twice now.

Book review: "Hood Feminism: Notes From the Women That A Movement Forgot" by Mikki Kendall

 We selected this book for our department's Feminist Book Club at work, and I'm so glad that we did!

The rub is (as my friend Maggie and I have discussed a few times) the more you learn about all of the injustices in the world the more that it feels like there's just an endless pile of societal shit and all we have to make a difference is a shovel the size of a toothpick. If anyone has any good tips on how to try to make a difference when you feel like you are drowning in the shit pile I will gladly take them!

In this book, Mikki says that the feminist movement has left behind poor women and women of color.

When white women are striving for CEO positions and that corner office, women of color are trying to not be discriminated against because of their hair or having a "weird" name, two things that could prevent them from getting jobs or even callbacks for interviews. 

Black children and teens are more than 4 times more likely to be killed with guns than white children. There are efforts to reduce gun violence, but they are oddly leaving out women. You might be thinking, how is gun violence a feminist issue? Well, black women experience the highest rate of gun homicide than any other group of women. Black women are also far more likely than black men to be killed by a spouse, family member, or an intimate acquaintance than by a stranger. The book also led me to the story of Rekia Boyd, a woman who was shot, doing nothing, by a police officer who was off duty and fired his gun over his shoulder as he was driving away. Don't worry he went to prison for a long time OH WAIT NO HE DIDN'T.

There's a whole section about childhood obesity and how there's lots of of pushes against that (which, like great) but if we dig a little deeper to the roots of the problem we might be able to make more change. (Some people don't have access to clean drinking water, but a bottle of Sprite doesn't need to be refrigerated - good if you don't have a kitchen, takes a long time to expire - which is good if you are trying to stretch your dollar, and costs....probably less than a dollar). Speaking of food - 40% of SNAP recipients are already working. 

Between 40 and 60 percent of black girls are sexually abused before the age of 18. I don't know the statistics on white women but I bet it's considerably less.One in three Indigenous women will be victims of sexual assault. Trans women are also much more likely to be victims of sexual crimes. 40% have trans folks have attempted suicide.

This was a quote that I thought was beautifully written: "Poverty is an apocalypse in slow motion, inexorable and generational". 

This was not always and easy book to read, but I learned a lot and am excited to discuss it with the women in my book club!

Book review: "The White Man's Guide to White Male Writer's of the Western Canon" by Dana Schwartz

 This book was written by Dana Schwartz, I know her from being the voice on one of my favorite podcasts, Noble Blood. Others might know her as @GuyinYourMFA from twitter, where Dana pretends to be that dude that so many advanced English classes have - the chain smoking, coffee guzzling, self righteous, arrogant, pain in the ass who thinks he knows better than everyone including the teacher. 

The book was written in the style of the Guy in Your MFA, which got a little old at times, but there was some legit good information in there!

• Maybe you have heard that when John Milton went blind he had his daughters read to him in Greek and Latin. That's true. What people don't know is that they didn't understand Greek or Latin. He just taught them how to read it. Which means they spent hours reading things outloud they didn't understand. Because Milton thought it was kinda a waste of time to educate them.
• Charles Dicken's family members gave him the nickname "Boz"
• On his wedding night Tolstoy gave his brand new wife a written accounting of every sexual encounter he'd had. Including impregnating a family serf with a child he never saw or supported
• A TON of Faulkner's titles came from Shakespeare (To Die, To Sleep - Hamlet, The Wild and Wasteful & Crispin Crispian - Henry V, Kill the Envious Moon - Romeo and Juliet
• Nabokov's rich Russian emigre father was killed by an English monarchist, kind of on accident 
• JD Salinger met and became friends with Hemingway during WWII. JD also fought in D-Day AND the Battle of the Bulge.