Category: Broken Girl Media

Film, Television, Radio, and Gaming

Chris Cornell (1964-2017)

Okay, Universe… now you’re just fucking with me.

My favorite Soundgarden memory is of me and Lady Macbedtime playing Road Rash on the original PlayStation for hours on end, and when we were done, just letting the game sit on the title screen while it looped through a soundtrack containing Outshined, Superunknown, and Rusty Cage.

My favorite Audioslave memory is of hearing Cochise for the first time, and excitedly assuring everyone that rock wasn’t dead in the new millennium. Which I suppose is also one of my worst memories, since I turned out to be completely wrong.

RIP, Chris Cornell

Bill Paxton (1955-2017)

Goddamn motherfucking bullshit. I feel like I’m living through the mass extinction of my childhood.

Everyone my age first noticed Bill Paxton as Chet in Weird Science, but Aliens firmly cemented him in our consciousness. To most people today, he’s probably “that guy from Big Love and Apollo 13.”

But his greatest achievement –one that appallingly few people have seen– is his directorial/starring turn in Frailty, which is also notable for being the first time it was possible to take Matthew McConaughey seriously as an actor. If you dig horror movies, murder, mental illness, and religious zealotry, Frailty has you covered.

Bye, Bill. Anyone who confused you with Bill Pullman was a fucking moron.

Recently Watched

  • The Super Bowl: Probably the best SB I’ve watched live; I may not like Brady & Co., but they put on an amazing show. Same thing goes for Gaga, who delivered the best halftime show this side of Prince; subtly political but primarily energetic and fun.
  • The Good Place: Michael Schur is his generation’s Norman Lear, and Kristen Bell is possibly the most likable person on the planet. But my favorite part? Listening to Adam Scott’s character repeatedly refer to Fake Eleanor as “Trashbag”; I thought of you girls every time he said it, and again every time F.E. made that confused, hurt little face in response.
  • The Magicians: How the hell can I be on a nerd-nexus like Tumblr this often without anyone telling me about The Magicians? You’ve let me down again, assholes. But more importantly, how the hell can a show with such a bland title, no-name cast, and mind-bogglingly derivative premise be that good? Its one weakness –the fact that it isn’t about anything in particular, and thus doesn’t feel Important like BSG or Buffy– is the biggest clue to how it manages to work so well. The arm’s-length camera work, the drab color grading, and the actors’ weirdly grounded performances all contribute, but the real star is the story structure; it feels like someone has finally figured out how to evolve beyond The Whedon Method of genre storytelling by stubbornly refusing to linger on melodrama and relentlessly culling or subverting every obligatory story beat it can find. All the big stuff you expect from a “mature viewers” show about gods, witches, and wardrobes clocks is there, but trimmed of all the fluff and irony.
  • The Expanse: Just started it, so all I can say so far is that it’s ambitious, and WHAT IN THE NAME OF ALL THAT IS HOLY IS THAT MESS ON TOM JANE’S HEAD?
  • A Series of Unfortunate Events: As with Harry Potter, I think I’m just too old for this shit. There’s nothing technically wrong with it, but no amount of NPH and Warburton is enough to get me excited about warmed-over Roald Dahl.
  • Victoria/The Crown: So far, The Doctor’s royal drama is much stronger than his erstwhile companion’s, but I can overlook the intense Downton Abbey-ness of Victoria as long as the camera keeps making love to Jenna Coleman’s perfect face.

You’re allowed to dislike The OA. You can call The Movements silly (even though they aren’t), you can call the climax a cheap stunt (and miss the point completely), and you can bitch about the box (because ambiguity makes you uncomfortable, while I eat that shit for breakfast).

But after this and Another Earth, I firmly believe Brit Marling is a genius, and my girl Phyllis Smith deserves to be a star of some kind. Fuck you if you disagree.

“Same Auld Ang Syne” — Dan Fogelberg

It was kind of cool, stumbling across this piece about Same Old Lang Syne. I wonder how many people have stories about how they discovered that particular song?

For me, I found it via an ex, around ‘92. It was winter, and our years-long relationship was almost over; it would have died naturally by the New Year, but as luck would have it, diamond jewelry has a way of dragging things out, and we survived until February.

But we still seemed a tenable couple in mid-November, when she asked me if I could remember that Christmas song about the old lover in the grocery store. She couldn’t remember the title (other than that there was “something weird about it”) or the name of the artist, but she knew it felt like the perfect song for the bleak holidays. (That, I realized later, was foreshadowing.) We wracked our brains, but couldn’t remember anything.

A few weeks later, I was unloading a shipment at work when I heard the truck driver warbling along to himself: “Met my old lover in the grocery store, the snow was fallin’ Christmas Eve…” I immediately dropped the box and asked him what the hell he was singing.

“Fogelberg, I think,” he said. “Same Old Lang Syne.”

I headed to Tower Records that night and dug around for a Greatest Hits CD. I knew the big songs in Fogelberg’s catalog (Longer, Leader Of The Band, Run For The Roses), but I had no clue about this weird Christmas song that everyone but me seemed to half-remember. As I listened to it at home, I found myself wondering how you could forget it once you’d heard it.

I mean, yeah, it’s wussy, soft piano-rock from the Land of Long, Long Ago, and Fogelberg made a career out of beating people to death with lush, sweeping sentiment… but that song?

It’s a perfect portrait of a moment, so vivid that I can smell the frigid night air and feel the snow crunching underfoot. More importantly, it was the first song about adult emotions and behavior that resonated with me as deeply as all the songs about fucking and rebellion always had.

We drank a toast to innocence
We drank a toast to now
We tried to reach beyond the emptiness
But neither one knew how

That’s my idea of Christmas. Happy holidays, fuckers.

(Source: http://www.nytimes.com/)

rapekittn:

funny games (2007)

Naomi Watts is everything. Her intense vulnerability as an actress turns even her most somber, anguished performances into a strange brand of sexual candy; her body of work is a Wonka factory-worth of the stuff, although my favorites are Mulholland Dr. and 21 Grams.

ignore the stupid ape movie and watch everything else she’s ever done.

(Also, she’s stayed hotter, longer, than anyone this side of Kate Beckinsale. I give bonus points for winning the battle with Father Time.)