#25: September Round-Up
A late one, a big one. You should go see A Different Man!
The fund I’ve been linking to is currently closed, so today please consider helping Hassan and his family of 13 who are currently struggling to meet basic needs (food, medicine, water, tents) amidst the genocide in Gaza.
As I often am, I’m sorry for my delay here but also this is my free newsletter and I was BUSY attending my first ever wedding (!!!!), visiting friends (and Top Dog <3) in the Bay, celebrating 11 years with Adam, and learning a lot about shower diverters because ours broke and it took a while to get a new one. I’ve also been sad/angry/panicked as our country commemorates a year of funding slaughter by marching us straight into a pointless, bloodthirsty regional war while the South drowns from predictable climate disaster. You can also give to families struggling in the aftermath of Hurricane Helene here.1
The wedding was everything I dreamed a wedding would be—I wore fancy outfits (bought a pair of orthopedic gold heels that held up great), ate until I could burst at a series of delicious Indian buffets (highlights include: rose lassi, fried paneer cubes, lamb shanks, goat curry, a potato croquette thing), cried during the ceremony and danced until 2am. Congratulations to my friends!
I haven’t been back in the Bay since I moved to New York and it was lovely and strange. It was quieter and harder to get around then I remembered—like I used to simply walk 45 minutes home from the bus sometimes? Up all those hills? Everything that was “right by me” used to be a 15-30 minute walk away and here in New York everything right by me is precisely 3 minutes away.
The food in the Bay held up—classic vanilla with cookie dough at Yogurt Park, our post-trivia taco truck, Cheeseboard peach pizza, a Senor Sisig California burrito. I still think Oakland is my favorite city in the world for bars2 because they’re the perfect amount of lively while still having lots of available seating. My favorite is The Alley, a divey piano bar with a “wooden shack from the intro bayou portion of the Pirates of the Caribbean ride” vibe and flattering red lighting. Everyone who does karaoke at The Alley is pretty bad at singing, which is extremely charming (on this latest trip someone was singing “Razzle Dazzle” softly and off key). You can eat a steak there—it’s not good, but it’s funny to do. The drinks? I guess they’re bad, or at best inoffensive, but it doesn’t matter because The Alley is one of the best places in the world.
Movies
New Releases
Boy Substance/Girl Substance
I wouldn’t say spoilers but I’m gonna speak freely about the premises of both these movies.
The Substance and A Different Man are both movies about people who hate themselves so much they decide to undergo painful and experimental procedures to become beautiful and in my opinion one is very smart and one is very stupid.
I’ll go positive first: Aaron Schimberg’s A Different Man broke my long spell of just-okay movies. I feel like the townspeople when it finally rains in Lagaan (or in the musical 110 in the Shade, pick your preferred drought media!). A Different Man is about an actor named Edward (Sebastian Stan) who has a facial disfigurement caused by neurofibromatosis. Because of this (or so he thinks), he lives alone in a shitty apartment with an ominous stain/hole in the ceiling, has no friends, takes shitty diversity training video gigs and pines after his neighbor Ingrid (Renate Reinsve). Edward decides to undergo an experimental treatment that makes him Handsome Sebastian Stan (after a long, wet, squelchy sequence where chunks of his face fall off). Equipped with this new face, Edward begins a whole new life as a wealthy realtor who is plastered on cardboard cutouts and lives in a beautiful, light-filled, leak-free apartment and this all seems to be going pretty well until one day he finds out that Ingrid has written a play about a disfigured man that is obviously him. He becomes obsessed with playing his old self, only to find himself competing with Oswald, a charismatic and confident British actor who also has neurofibromatosis but lacks any of Edward’s slumping self-hatred.
I’ll leave the synopsis off there, but I loved this movie. I was surprised by every turn, its shift from alienated, urban misery (think Beau is Afraid, but also don’t think that if you hated that movie) meets body horror to a sharp dark comedy about the self righteous pretensions of off-Broadway theater to a series of escalations in which Edward has a cosmically bad time (think A Serious Man). I think this might be one of the great New York Movies. The cast is so good: Reinsve is insanely well cast as a woman charming and gorgeous enough to override the fact that she’s emotionally careless and obnoxiously self satisfied. Adam Pearson as Oswald is totally magnetic. Stan, an actor I never quite got until now, gives a remarkable physical performance, never losing the way Edward makes his body small and hunched as if to escape himself, an idea Schimberg insists is impossible. You are always stuck with yourself.
In The Substance, Demi Moore’s Elisabeth Sparkle (great celeb name) escapes herself more literally (allows an other-self with an impossible doll body to crawl out of her spine). This is a really dumb shiny hammer of a movie about a 50-year old Oscar-winner-turned-TV-fitness-instructor who gets fired for being 50 by Gross Dennis Quaid and immediately decides to take The Substance on the advice of a yassified male nurse.
The Substance is a big needle full of Brat-colored juice that creates a better, younger you (in Elisabeth’s case, this is Margaret Qualley’s cheerful, perky butted Sue)—each version is out for 7 days and unconscious for the next 7 days, but they are repeatedly told by The Substance HQ: “REMEMBER YOU ARE ONE.”
Are they though??
The thing with a Faustian bargain is it doesn’t really make sense if you don’t have at least SOME fun at the start. The entire middle section of this movie is Sue climbing the ranks at Elisabeth’s old fitness show host job and 5,000 close-ups of her butt and boobs and then back to Elisabeth, who spends her week hiding in her apartment, binge eating (eating food in the world of this film is Bad and Disgusting) and generally hating herself even though she is beautiful Demi Moore. Elisabeth wakes up every 7 days with seemingly no memory of what Sue has been up to—she staggers around her apartment picking up clues like a blackout drunk. As far as I can tell, they are NOT one consciousness. My friend (hi Lena!) interpreted this more as the aforementioned blackout scenario. I have always been horrified by any kind of clone situation where somebody is me but not me because I am me!!! I am the one with my consciousness!! I also find sleep very scary, because I don’t know what’s going on. So that’s a me problem, but I still think it’s crazy that Elisabeth doesn’t cancel The Substance immediately (which you can cancel!!3) if she doesn’t get to have fun and in fact begins to experience major physical detriments. This is the shittiest possible Dorian Gray scenario where Elisabeth only ever gets to be the portrait.
All of this is conveyed via Kubrick knockoff production design, FLASHES OF ALL CAPS TEXT, and editing that provides 5-10 visual reinforcements to remind you who is talking and what they’re talking about. Thanks, movie! I’ve been very mean, so I would like to say that Demi Moore is very good (heartbreaking and committed!) and the last 40 minutes of funny, gross-out, practical effects heavy bloodbath is a blast.
Burton’s Back :)
Beetlejuice Beetlejuice is also an exceptionally stupid film, but it’s stupid in service of a good time. Burton isn’t brave enough to dispense with plot mechanics, so we have to power through a whole hour of exposition (the Maitlands are gone because of a loophole; Lydia has lost her mojo—I liked her dumb ghost show a lot, her new cowering, bewildered personality less so; Jenna Ortega is an activist who doesn’t believe in ghosts and has a beloved dead dad; Charles Deetz is dead—the claymation sequence where they dispense with Jeffrey Jones via violent shark attack is pretty funny) to get to the stuff Burton is ACTUALLY interested in (his beautiful girlfriend Monica Bellucci in Bride of Frankenstein make-up swishing down hallways; various one-off afterlife gags). The story is a mess and I found Keaton rather subdued, but there’s an irreverence here that I love. This movie kills people off (beloved old-timers and new villains alike) with casual glee. A bit about a Soul Train in the afterlife made me laugh… so hard… maybe the most I’ve laughed all year. Burton’s operating at 15-35% of his truest capacity and it’s frankly a total treat.
Etc.
Between the Temples was one of my most anticipated releases of the year (My crush on Jason Schwartzman! I adore Carol Kane!) so I was pretty crushed when this movie was just okay and shot as obnoxiously as possible.
I caught up with two 2024 horror releases on streaming: the Sydney Sweeney nun movie Immaculate and the ballerina-vampire movie Abigail. Sorry to my dad who reads this & is Immaculate’s #1 fan, but I was less taken with it—I seriously respect Sweeney’s passion for sacrilegious gore and reproductive rights, but the movie follows the usual beats with little style (fun last minute though!) and I still find Sweeney to be a charisma vacuum. I liked Abigail more—the ballet stuff feels “random” in a juvenile way but this is a very fun cast meeting nasty ends in a gothic haunted house. Dan Stevens in full weirdo mode is a star, but Melissa Barrera, who seems like a good person but was pretty terrible in In the Heights, is believably intense and winning here.
Rapid Fire At Home(s)
The best new movie I watched this month was John Sayles’ Matewan, a movie I’ve been lightly obsessed with watching for years but is widely unavailable (I finally caved and watched it on my laptop on Internet Archive—it looked good!). It’s a dramatization of events leading up to the 1920 Battle of Matewan between union coal miners and the private detective goons the company sent to snuff them out. My favorite movie ever is Warren Beatty’s Reds, about American socialists in the 10s/20s, so this is deeply in my wheelhouse. Matewan is a matter of fact picture but lived in with hazy, grimy, gorgeous cinematography and I always like when a movie feels like the past.
For Film Fest, I watched the Sarah Michelle Gellar magic crab romcom Simply Irresistible—you’ll have to wait for the pod for more!
Finishing School, from the Criterion Channel’s collection on 1930s female screenwriters, is “Uptown Girl” meets The Holdovers—a girl at a fancy boarding school falls in love with a working class boy. Also her best friend is a supportive and badly behaved Ginger Rogers.
Rewatched Beetlejuice, the best and funniest of all movies.
Rewatched Deja Vu, a great movie. Tony Scott is a humanist and Denzel is hot.
Rewatched Witness for the Prosecution, ostensibly about a murder case but really about Charles Laughton playing a lovable grump who tortures his nurse (his real life wife Elsa Lanchester) with his health-unconscious antics. I would watch like, 17 movies with Sir Wilfrid Robarts, Poirot-style.
Anatomy of a Murder is such a cool Jimmy Stewart role. What if a folksy, charming country lawyer used his appealing nature to free a violent, jealous murderer?
Watched Running on Empty before Sarah’s play (which you can watch here!), a movie brimming with wonderful performances, particularly a soulful, sensitive River Phoenix and a devastating Christine Lahti as a loving, regretful mother who has to let go.
I sort of found 25th Hour dull and maybe sexist until the “I hate” monologue and the Last Temptation ending, both testaments to how brilliant a director Spike Lee is for eking that out of this David Benioff script.
/On Planes
I watched M. Night Shyamalan’s The Visit on my phone. I already knew the twist and I sort of fundamentally don’t enjoy “we’re stuck in a house with someone who is Not Quite Right” but this is an effective, nasty little thriller and I like that the kids have charmingly specific goals (documentarian and white rapper).
I also watched Abigail on a plane. See above.
I’ve wanted to watch Drop Dead Gorgeous, the one where Kirsten Dunst competes in a cutthroat Midwestern beauty pageant, for ages and this movie is also SO unavailable so I was thrilled to find it on my Delta flight. I didn’t realize this was a mockumentary which gives it a real Waiting for Guffman vibe. As is often the case for comedies from 1999, not every joke ages particularly well but when this works it is so caustic and funny with a lot of all-timer costuming. Also, a climactic tap dance!
Television
Speaking of body horror, in Season 8 of Selling Sunset Mary’s boob explodes. Mary is lounging weakly on her outdoor couch, a mysterious recovery having gone well, when Amanza and Chrishell come over with immunity shots and condolences. It’s quickly revealed that what happened is that Mary’s boob implant ruptured. Mary shows the girls a photo and Chrishell says it “looks like the inside of a jelly donut.” God I wish we could see this horrible photo.
There was a lot of discourse about The Substance being sexist/bad at satire/potentially too mean & mocking toward women who get caught up in the rat race of beauty that men instigated in the first place which I haven’t thought through deeply. However I was thinking about this when I was watching Selling Sunset: do I watch this show in a mean way?
Almost every lady on Selling Sunset looks like a scary doll and have, by their own admission, undergone all variety of surgeries and implants and injections to look like Barbies/Bratz, or in Bre’s case, the actress Megan Fox. I like Selling Sunset because I already watch it. I suspect most major reality TV franchises are about as engrossing, this is just the one I’m already invested in/caught up on, and it’s fun to cast judgment on the social dynamics of total strangers. The second, meaner part is that maybe I watch this to feel superior? I always tell people Selling Sunset is fun because it’s a vision of extreme wealth in LA that elicits absolutely zero jealousy from me. I don’t want to look like these women or live in their boring houses in Huntington Beach or live off of crispy rice appetizers and novelty shots at clubby Pan-Asian restaurants. I like and root for a lot of these women (okay, mainly Chrishell) but it has been on my mind that I might not be watching “for the right reasons.”
I also started Interview with the Vampire, because I saw the promo for the 3rd season where Lestat is an 80s pop star and I want to read The Vampire Lestat/watch that. It’s very beautiful and gay and bloody. If you think you’d like it, you’ll like it you know?
Books
I haven’t been reading jack shit so in a panic I put in a request for 7 different books at the library. We’ll see what I get through before the end of the year. Anyway, I’m now reading Conclave (I actually bought this one) because I cannot wait for the movie Conclave.
In Memoriam
The past month has absolutely sucked for celebrity losses: we lost Kris Kristofferson who I adore in Heaven’s Gate and Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore, Maggie Smith who defined my high school years when I was at the height of my simultaneous Downtown Abbey and Harry Potter phases (look..) and most painfully, Gavin Creel who was just 48 and one of Broadway’s best, most exuberant performers. It’s hard to think of many people more full of life, and by all accounts hard to find a nicer person. I saw him a few years ago in Into the Woods, but the first time I saw him on Broadway was as Claude in the 2009 revival of Hair, one of the most personally important works of theater I’ve ever seen. I’ve had that cast album on rotation for 16 years. I can’t watch this clip of “Flesh Failures” without becoming a snotty puddle of tears, but it’s wonderful:
If you’re in NYC, friend of the newsletter Lauren is selling these gorgeous quilt cookies to raise funds for this disaster relief. Also, at my CMS day job I’ve been taught not to link on “here” because it’s really bad for SEO and I was trying to rework this sentence until I remembered this is literally my silly free newsletter??
Other good bars, to my memory: Kona Club (maybe still my favorite tiki bar in the world even though the front room always smelled like vomit; order the Kilauea!), Mad Oak, The Avenue specifically for Halloween, Faction in Alameda, Trader Vic’s (a very 60+ hobby salsa dancers sort of a crowd but sue me, I like a pupu platter and a drink in a blowfish cup in a big, beautiful room). I also love the Tonga Room in San Francisco, which has a big pool of water in the middle and a fake ship deck where I once watched about 50 white people at a corporate party (?) sing “Sweet Caroline” at the top of their lungs.
If you want to cancel The Substance, you just call them (they pick up pretty fast) and say “I want to cancel” and then they send you a cancellation kit. This seems much easier than the time I tried to cancel my subscription to Hubble Contacts which was also by phone only but were highly unresponsive and regularly unavailable.
Genius as always and great food pics, but your denial of the greatness of Immaculate and Ms. Sweeney’s magnificence in that role is, as you surmise, deeply painful.
“I like selling sunset because I already watch it” is exactly right