Lists lists lists! This is a few days late, which was bound to happen eventually. I have been having a time of it, a lot of running around and doing things. These months really were a bit of a blur and now the year is nearly over and what a year. But right now the passing of time mostly means me revisiting what I have been reading and watching and listening to.
listening
As always . . . top artists for the past ninety days, allegedly. I actually listed this a day or two before the end of September and now it is 3 Oct so I don’t want to update, so we will just take these as accurate for the July–Sept time span.
Carly Rae Jepsen
Taylor Swift
Phoebe Bridgers
Florence + the Machine
The National
Mitski
Olivia Rodrigo
Julien Baker
Samia
The Japanese House
Pretty classic blend of artists that released new music and me going through it. Listened to GUTS near-constantly the week it was released, whilst Samia and The Japanese House have had two of my favourite albums for the year. And a new Carly Rae Jepsen album is always good. I was actually surprised that Taylor Swift still ranked so highly but then remembered that I did listen to Speak Now (Taylor’s Version) and various other songs have had a grip on me including ‘Back to December’ and ‘The Archer’ and ‘Cornelia Street’.
Top songs
Cool About It - boygenius
all-american bitch - Olivia Rodrigo
The Archer - Taylor Swift
She’s the Prettiest Girl at the Party, And She Can Prove It with a Solid Right Hook - Frank Iero
I Need My Girl - Aly & AJ
Francis Forever - Mitski
Are You Awake? - Lauren Mayberry
ICU - Phoebe Bridgers
Not Strong Enough - boygenius
Do It Again - Benee and Mallrat
Lauren Mayberry solo era!!! Women’s World Cup theme song!!! That was a tournament that happened and for a while literally the whole country got behind the Matildas, nationalism is literally fine when it is sports and specifically lesbians playing sports. Sam Kerr you will always be famous <3 This isn’t a missive about the WWC but I don’t want to say anything about the rest of these. Except ‘all-american bitch’, brilliant song.
reading
I have been so busy not doing much (honestly a lie, I have been doing things) and not reading :( But there were many bangers that I was simply savouring :) We shall simply have to see how the last three months of the year fare otherwise this might be the worst year since I was literally fighting for my life finishing high school. But still better than that one. Anyhow.
Nona the Ninth by Tamsyn Muir. I love you Nona!! I think that this might be my favourite book of the series, which is saying something. Nona is quite ambitious in stepping away from both parts of the narrative so far and then barely featuring the two protagonists, because this is Gideon and Harrow’s series in that they are the centre of it (though trust that I adored Kiriona and treasured every Harrow mention. I miss Gideon and Harrow so much). Instead, Nona shows us another part of the universe, shaped by a third very distinct narrative voice/style and interspersed with flashbacks that overall go far in fleshing out the Muir’s explorations of empire. Mostly, Nona as a character special to me, as are the driving ideas of being shaped by love and our connections to people even on the edge of the universe. I love you Nona…
Normal People by Sally Rooney (reread). I enjoy this book <3 Rooney came up in a conversation (with Joel at a houseparty back in July, hello to Joel if you read this) and I decided to revisit + finally watch the television adaptation. I had a fantastic time with both; I do find Connell and Marianne and their relationship quite striking. “I’m not a religious person but I do sometimes think God made you for me”. . . ! Did make me feel insane, it really is what it is.
Postcolonial Love Poem by Natalie Diaz. Quite a fantastic poetry collection I think. I do see Diaz’s work excerpted a lot and the book comes together tender and (this feels like a cliché for poets of colour, but true) defiant with some brilliant imagery. Favourite pieces were the titular ‘Postcolonial Love Poem’; ‘From the Desire Field’, ‘excerpts from The American Museum of Water’; ‘Isn’t the Air Also a Body, Moving?’; ‘They Don’t Love You Like I Love You’.
The Uninvited Guest by Tamsyn Muir. Bonus short story included in a Nona rerelease which I will include as its own entry because I have things to say! This is quite fantastic. Well written as a text and as a metatheatrical play, which for some reason it was, don’t even worry about it. Palamedes finding himself trapped in a play and doing and saying things he can’t specifically explain and calling out Ianthe for similarly saying things she wouldn’t otherwise and this all tying back to the inevitability of souls merging through the lyctoral process!!
The Stolen Heir by Holly Black. The first in a companion duology(?) to The Folk of the Air, which I read back in January. This was fun! I had a good time! Wren is everything to me; I found it a little difficult to invest in the actual plot beyond characters and character dynamics, but then I think I had the same issues with the original trilogy.
Do Not Say We Have Nothing by Madeleine Thien. I could feel this rewiring my brain chemistry as I read it and then I had to put it down for a while at about 80% to process in depth. A generational saga set across China and Canada throughout the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, a novel about music and history, with chapters counting upwards and then back down again. The polyphonic narrative did mean that I often found myself losing track of people and their relations to one another but everybody was alive with fears and ambitions and reactions to the world. And the prose is exquisite. Very much recommend to enjoyers of literary fiction.
I Kissed Shara Wheeler by Casey McQuiston. Yay gay people. The main pairing is kind of like Faith Lehane/Buffy Summers x Rachel Berry/Quinn Fabray—and by that I mean that there is a blonde golden girl and a brunette who resents her, and the two are locked in homoerotic rivalry. And the blonde girl 1) has a symbolically meaningful cross necklace (Buffy) and cuts off her hair and dyes it pink (Quinn). This hooked me with a fun/campy little premise and then ended up being an earnest reflection on the power of community as well as the fact that high school sucks. Wish the prose did not have quirks that deeply irritated me <3
He Who Drowned the World by Shelley Parker-Chan. Actually stunning. So well done — absolutely unafraid to unpick the entire spectrum of emotion when it comes to gender and sexuality, from hope and joy to fear and repression to spite to a simple desire to be loved. This often makes HWDTW a painful read, but always enjoyable. The idea of these characters getting it right in a future life made me weep and I think did do a lot to maintain a glow of hope; it also strengthened that cord between these stories set in the past and contemporary society, where the novel has been written and will be read. Zhu you will always be famous for real. What a special series!
I am at the moment reading Arrangements in Blue by Amy Kay (this is alright), Non-Essential Work (this is an interesting collection) by Omar Sakr and for fiction my friend’s secret book (this is exciting) c:
watching
This section became so unwieldy I am so sorry
Like last year, I have a ranking of films that I watched at the Melbourne International Film Festival via volunteer perks. I started off with a strange sense of anxiety around not watching enough films — an awareness that I was not plagued by last year — but think I did alright in the end. Here is the ranking:
Monster (2023) dir. Hirakazu Kore-eda. Brilliant stunning incredible. I thought this was gorgeous I am not immune to light-drenched scenes depicting youth and innocence. Braids together a story by telling events in full through one perspective before jumping to another, in a way that is a little confusing + dizzying but really paid off for me. Now I want to watch it again.
The Breaking Ice (2023) dir. Anthony Chen. Quietly affecting . . . idk this really worked for me! Many shots of snow, as a backdrop to reflecting on feeling lost/adrift and finding connection amongst that. The pseudo-love triangle that would and could have been solved by polyamory, but to be honest romantic tension never felt like the centre of the movie; it was more about these people growing together over a few days. It is about the emotions . . .
Scrapper (2023) dir. Charlotte Regan. A very charming, very English little movie about a sullen 12-year-old girl in a West Ham shirt who lives alone, stealing bicycles and grieving her mother, until a man shows up claiming to be the father and owner of her shirt. I really was incredibly endeared, and the colours were very pretty and ‘17’ by Youth Lagoon played at the end.
Millennium Mambo (2001) dir. Hou Hsiao-Hsien. Lush and dreamlike. Maybe a little bit overlong, and the ending comes abruptly, but absolutely gorgeous to look at in restored form on a big screen so who cares. Sometimes it IS enough to have vibes. And Shu Qi is absolutely transfixing in her role.
I Used to be Funny (2023) dir. Ally Pankiw. I was mostly interested in this because the director has Feel Good production credits, and Rachel Sennott is in it. Thought it was incredible at the time — certainly the emotional beats hit for me, and I found the ending incredibly cathartic. I have since decided I was in part swept up by the immersion of it all as well as the soundtrack; was it good or did it just have heavy focus by Adrianne Lenker and I Know the End by Phoebe Bridgers? Couldn’t tell you.
Invisible Beauty (2023) dir. Frédéric Tcheng, Bethann Hardison. A documentary about Bethann Hardison, a Black model, advocate and fashion icon who I knew nothing about before walking in and am awed by now. Invisble Beauty takes us through Bethann’s early career as a model in the 1970s up to her involvement in the 2020 BLM protests. I was particularly impressed by the range of people willing to feature or be interviewed for this film — it seems to speak to the impact that Behtann has had on the people around her and in her life, and many of these people shared quite candi reflections. All made for a fantastic documentary. Realising that MIFF is the only time that I watch documentaries and this is fun.
It’s Only Life After All (2023) dir. Alexandra Bombach. Another documentary, this one about the Indigo Girls. Yay lesbians! Target audience for this was very much ‘fans of the Indigo Girls who would love to hear more from the Indigo Girls interspesed with essentially a Wikipedia article plus archival footage’. Luckily I do enjoy the Indigo Girls and music/lesbians/lesbians singing little songs so that works.
Deep Sea (2023) dir. Tian Xiao Peng. An animated film about a girl who goes on a sea journey to return to her mother, which really is a visual treat. The comparison that springs to mind is that the art had a similar effect to a Yayoi Kasuma obliteration room with the sheer overwhelm of colour, only here there were all sorts of shapes constantly moving on screen and demanding attention. The ending ‘twist’ was maybe it was played a little bit too much as a shock reveal, but the affective impact was high. It all made for a very overstimulating early afternoon experience; that said, watch this if you can.
Medusa Deluxe (2022) dir. Thomas Hardiman. Stylistically fantastic, the fact that it was all filmed as a single shot had a bit of a “look at this impressive thing” vibe — like doing it just to say that you did — but it did add to the tension and sense of disorientation, with constant panning and following characters through corridors like tunnels. The substance itself felt a bit muddled, especially in the middle there, but I was constantly entertained. Loved the shapes and colours.
Cobweb (2023) dir. Kim Jee-woon. A comedy about a director trying to fulfil his vision of a thriller, willing to film in secret and change his script with little notice. I think that the plot — of both this film and the in-film film, also titled Cobweb — lost me at times, but it was fun to have some campy, played-up comedy.
Casa Susanna (2022) dir. Sébastien Lifshitz. Enjoyable watch, almost entirely driven by personal anecdotes from trans women and gender-non conforming men coming together in mid-century America; more grounding in the broader historical/social context might have helped this come together more effectively, but it was nevertheless quite moving. I did kinda want to hear more from the actual subjects and less from voyeurs/people in their lives, but that’s okay.
The Hidden Spring (2023) dir. Jason di Rosso. Short personal video essay where I was like ‘sure I’ll stay to watch that’. Not much to say but thoroughness is important to me. There was some nice cinematic and editing stuff.
Femme (2023) dir. Sam H. Freeman, Ng Choon Ping. This did not work for me :( Billed as an ‘erotic queer revenge thriller’ or something along similar lines, when in fact there was some quite violent homophobia with very few moments that felt erotic or thrilling. There was a scene nearing the end where I was genuinely scared and don’t think this was the intended effect. Opens with a drag performance to ‘Cleo’ by Shygirl — the theme of this year seems to be fun needle drops — but unfortunately this was my favourite part.
Stonewalling (2022) dir. Ryuji Otsuka, Huang Ji. Another that I really wanted to be good but fell through. On one hand, this was a very realistic depiction of capital and poverty in contemporay China, aided by the fact that I could understand most of the dialogue (Stonewalling was mostly in Mandarin with some dialect, and the subtitle translation was poor); the main actress was . On the other hand, it was too long by far and incredibly bleak, and I was so sleepy on this day which would not help.
Here is everything else I watched! Also quite a lot of these by my standard. Maybe this is my watching things era okay I don’t even want to say that that doesn’t even sound right.
Barbie (2023) dir. Greta Gerwig. I saw this twice, it was very pretty. Too much screen time for Ken and not enough for Sasha and Gloria.
Goodfellas (1990) dir. Martin Scorsese. With Shad! Me when movies are good. Does anybody else know about this. Genuinely thought this was a brilliant movie and of course the use of sound + music is kind of inspired.
Suzume (2020) dir. Makoto Shinkai. I absolutely loved this . . . kind of like Nona actually in that it hit upon many things I love from narratives and thus I was bound to hold it close to my heart. Grief and trauma and growing up and people helping one another and remembrances of times past at abandoned sites that once held joy and also a cat! Visually stunning too, extremely pleased to have caught this in cinema thank you Cinema Nova.
Normal People (2022). Like I said above — I enjoyed this. Really, I just hadn’t gotten around to watching the show until now. It stays incredibly faithful to the book, simply placing scenes in chronological order and adding lingering sweeping scenic shots and a stunning soundtrack, whilst retaining much of the dialogue and dynamics of the novel. So basically I was always going to like it quite a lot.
The Devil Wears Prada (2006) dir. David Frankel. Simply a classic and Anne Hathaway looks so good in it. Bless. I’m fond of this movie what can I say.
Ocean’s Eight (2018) dir. Gary Ross. Women <3 Anne Hathway looks so good in this <3
The Spy Who Loved Me (1977) dir. Lewis Gilbert + Moonraker (1979) dir. Lewis Gilbert + Diamonds Are Forever (1971) dir. Guy Hamilton. Grouping these together because I don’t have too many individual thoughts but my friend Claudia loves to show me James Bond movies and I love to watch things with my friends. This happens. These were all a good time! I found The Spy Who Loved Me was the most solid, whilst the latter two get deeply ridiculous in plot points as well as dastardedly schemes. Why are you stealing all those diamonds just to build a giant space laser to threaten people on Earth for money when you could sell the diamonds.
High School Musical trilogy (2006-2008) dir. Kenny Oretga. Another great time! You may notice that I love to have a good time. Incidentally fun to pair with James Bond movies. The first is a neat little Disney channel original movie with a banger soundtrack, whilst HSM2 remains the best of the three and contains even more hits. I actually enjoyed HSM3 less than when I last watched, which I think might have been the last year of high school; it gets a little long and lacks the strong driving emotional conflict of the first two, but it has its moments. ‘Can I Have This Dance?’ is one of them btw.
The Crossing (2018) dir. Bai Xue. Rewatched with Jordan and Kie. Perfect movie! Watch it! Not much more to say!
Scott Pilgrim vs. the World (2010) dir. Edgar Wright. Also with Shad <3 This is one that I had been meaning to watch for ages when Shad suggested it, and I do
Crazy Rich Asians (2018) dir. Jon Chu. I simply could not stop thinking about Jordan calling the Barbie moving Crazy Rich Asians for women. What a thing to say. I haven’t seen this movie since 2018 but remembered it being entertaining and it lived up to this.
Buffy the Vampire Slayer (1997-2003). Still watching Buffy!!! Jordan and I started season 4 and are still there, mostly because there has been a lot going on and season 3 was truly full of highs and lows. Also watching episodes regularly my friend Grace, this has been good.
Please Like Me (2013-2016). Jordan and I embarked on a rewatch of this show mostly as a refreshing break from seeing insane rich people (Succession) and our best friends in anguish (Buffy). PLM on the quarterly update likely place for it to be. The next one of these will probably also say that I rewatched The Social Network, don’t worry about it.
What I am watching now is still Buffy :) It has almost been an entire year since I watched the show for the first time, which is a true Time Flies moment.
Hm. Not proofreading that. Hope everybody has been well <3
Much love, and cheers to the final stretch of another year.
Joanne
a mention in the jo substack... truly a moment for me
normal people and cool about it !! me too