Longlegs is a comedic drama about an autistic FBI investigator who revisits her childhood trauma.
Nicolas Cage plays a religious schizophrenic dollmaker—an exact description of my own mother.
Does the dollmaker make the dolls? No, he shuffles doll parts around in vague maker motions, pleading with the audience to relieve him of the utter misery of living in a basement.
Not just any basement—a goth vampire basement. With red lighting. And ample space to brood murderously amongst the invisible clouds of radon seeping through the floor. Colorless, odorless, and activated by 5G cellular internet, radon is one of the top five causes of basement-related deaths. Right after flooding, bears, and mother-in-laws.
The FBI investigator’s childhood trauma was her religious extremist mother. That’s the entirety of it. No one event caused the trauma, one person did. This would be a “yeah, duh” moment if therapy was around in 1990s Oregon.
I counted a total of three characters with long legs in the movie: Basement Brooder Nicolas Cage, Highway Hiker Nicolas Cage, and my personal favorite, Deranged Driver Nicolas Cage.
For extra chills, I highly recommend—you simply must—watch the movie if your birthday falls on the 14th day of the month. That’s what we did for our friend’s birthday.
We haven’t seen her since.
Watched Inside Out 2 at Alamo Drafthouse this weekend. It feels weird going to the Texas theater chain in Chicago, but it’s been my favorite for years and I love that I can still watch movies there. At this point it’s tough for me to get excited about watching a movie in a theater without being able to order burgers and beer.
They showed previews for a few upcoming Disney movies. I’ve seen “slop” thrown around as a descriptor for movies lately, and it fits. The previews showed new installments in existing franchises and remakes centered around characters I feel nothing for. Mufasa? Really? I rolled my eyes when I saw the big list of celebrity names.
Inside Out 2 was good. I liked that it showed how different emotions can affect the others, and how destructive it is to shove them down. And yeah, that’s basically the first movie, but they did a great job expanding on that concept. Good puns too.
Here’s some links I enjoyed in the last few weeks and some music to peruse them to.
Up first in music we’ve got a single from London bass thumpers Dog Race, titled “It’s the Squeeze”. Flowery spoken word overlays borderline grunge, and there’s some neat distortion happening with the guitar in the second half.
Insatiable devourer of engineering history Brian Potter asks the question on everyone’s mind: Will we ever get fusion power? (probably maybe yes someday far in the future). I’m hoping there’s a more definitive answer as to why “fission” and “fusion” are so close in phonetic construction yet are violently different processes mechanically. Maybe it’s just me but the ‘splodey one should have a more dangerous-sounding name than the sticky one.
Techno-Fin Aleksi Perälä releases so many tracks that he doesn’t even bother coming up with titles anymore—he labels them with their own International Standard Recording Code. Digging “FI3AC2411602”.
Car dealerships keep getting away with it. But now there’s consultants who will go with you while you battle the strangely relaxed salesmen who lounge in the passenger seat. They’ll call out the finance officer on their well-rehearsed theatrics and help you Escape From the Box.
Faced with the ominously foul and unmistakeable stench of fish rotting on heavy machinery while trapped in a massive facility with a bunch of instruments, Greg Foat, Gigi Masin, and their brave bandmates fight for their sanity by jamming out for as long as they can while awaiting rescue. The Fish Factory Sessions marks their reduced headcount in “Three Piece Suite”.
The most expensive part of the gig economy is owning a vehicle. Not anymore! Like trucking, you can hire drivers and get paid to manage their paperwork, which involves keeping the broker (Uber) in the dark about some light identity theft. That’s what Priscila Barbosa did when she immigrated to Boston from Brazil. She Made $10,000 a Month Defrauding Apps like Uber and Instacart. Meet the Queen of the Rideshare Mafia. It’s hard to find sympathy for the distributed delivery networks built by venture capitalists to make it easier to get food and people delivered to their depression sauna in the desert.