{"id":193257,"date":"2024-09-15T09:30:18","date_gmt":"2024-09-15T13:30:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/?p=193257"},"modified":"2024-09-15T11:01:32","modified_gmt":"2024-09-15T15:01:32","slug":"august-2024-viewing-diary","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/?p=193257","title":{"rendered":"August 2024 Viewing Diary"},"content":{"rendered":"

Tumbledown<\/em><\/strong> (2015; d. Sean Mewshaw)
\nAllison and I re-watched this. I reviewed for Ebert<\/a> when it came out in 2016. I really like it. Gosh, August feels like a long time ago. I was in New York for half of August, and then I went to Scotland, and now I’m back and I have bronchitis. The two biggest things in my life right now are not “on social media”. Not a trace. You’d never guess. I started “leaving stuff out” early on in the years of my blog, a decade before social media arrived. I remember some nosy commenter saying “I am getting sick of all these red herrings”, like I was being coy or whatever. As though I’m “known” for baring all in my writing. Believe me. I don’t. I have almost no time right now – due to the two big things – hence, the low number of movies watched. This movie was so much fun to re-visit! It came out in 2015 and it feels like it comes from a simpler time. I mean, I guess it does. <\/p>\n

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Good One<\/strong><\/em> (2024; d. India Donaldson)
\nI reviewed for Ebert<\/a>. This was really fun. I went to the press screening in New York at Soho House – the plush-est most comfortable screening room in New York. I took Allison with me as a plus one (sometimes “they” don’t allow plus-ones). It is SUCH a good movie, one of my favorites of the year. And it was just so fun to see it with Allison. We walked back to her apartment – it was a hot steamy night – and we talked about the movie for hours. It was fantastic and so much a part of the experience that I included it in my review. <\/p>\n

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Wicked Little Letters<\/strong><\/em> (2024; d. Thea Sharrock)
\nI reviewed this eccentric little true-life caper for Ebert<\/a>. Allison hadn’t heard of it, so I sang its praises and then we watched and had a blast. <\/p>\n

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The Fall Guy<\/strong><\/em> (2024; d. David Leitch)
\nAllison and I watched this. I saw in the movie theatre with my niece who basically INSISTED that I take her. She had seen it the day before and NEEDED to see it again. I love this so much! It’s just what I was doing at age 15. And it did not disappoint. I loved it so much and I knew Allison would love it too. We had a blast. <\/p>\n

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The Bachelerotte Australia<\/strong><\/em>, season 1
\nAllison and I fell into this one. We love watching this series together. We have in-depth discussions about male-female relationships, and interpersonal dynamics, and dating, and hierarchies and etc. Yes, the whole thing is fake, but the issues on display – the things that come up – are real. So it’s fun. And stuff like this is a necessary distraction from all the other shit I’ve got going on. <\/p>\n

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Hitler and the Nazis: Evil on Trial<\/strong><\/em> (2024; d. Joe Berlinger)
\nNothing new here in this Netflix series, but it’s Joe Berlinger so I decided to watch. William Shirer’s experiences in Berlin are utilized throughout, which is an interesting perspective, and the Nuremberg Trials are also an organizing motif. They colorized all the extant footage which – to me – is a sketchy choice, but … I know they’re going for a younger audience whose mush-brains turn off when they see black and white footage? or something like that? Berlinger has said he made the series to try to reach millennials\/Gen-Z, many of whom seem to not know about the Holocaust, or who somehow think the Jews somehow started it. I wasn’t crazy about using an AI re-creation of Shirer’s voice. It’s unnecessary manipulation. Nobody knows what William Shirer sounds like. Nobody alive, anyway. Just get an actor with an old-timey radio-announcer voice, and avoid the fakery! Some of the re-enactments are harrowing, particularly the Babyn-Yar sequence. But you hear just one fact about Babyn-Yar and your brain fills with horrifying images. The fact that anyone survived it to tell the tale is a fucking miracle. <\/p>\n

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The Apartment<\/strong><\/em> (1960; d. Billy Wilder)
\nIn August, I hosted the audience discussion on The Apartment<\/i> at the Jacob Burns Theatre, which was so much fun. There’s so much going on in my life (see first comment in this post) I considered canceling this, but I decided to just stretch myself and go for it. It was a lot: I had to drive down in the morning, work my day job, go to the theatre, sleep over at my sister’s, get up at 4 am, and drive home – in time to sign on and work my remote day job. But it ended up being a magical experience. I got to see some old friends: Keith, Monica – my friend Jen came, I got to discuss the film onstage with Ian – and Cashel took the train up!! We all went out for a beer afterwards at the bar down the street. Life felt normal. Life hasn’t felt normal since the pandemic, to be honest. I got offstage to the news that Gena Rowlands had died. So I also had to write the Gena tribute for Ebert the following day<\/a>. Along with everything else. A 3-hour drive. An 8-hour work day. I don’t know how I did all this. No wonder I have bronchitis for the third time this year. <\/p>\n

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Dog Day Afternoon<\/strong><\/em> (1975; d. Sidney Lumet)
\nI was a guest on an Al Pacino podcast, where every guest picks a Pacino movie to discuss. Amazingly, Dog Day Afternoon hadn’t been chosen. I have such personal associations with this film I have barely re-watched it. I don’t need to. It got to me, and it got to me EARLY<\/a>. But I figured what the hell. So I re-watched. It’s a masterpiece.<\/p>\n

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The Wasp<\/strong><\/em> (2024; d. Guillem Morales)
\nThis was good. A fun watch with a bunch of twists. It’s hard to “fool” me but I was fooled. Really good performances. I tried not to give anything away in my review for Ebert<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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Janet Planet<\/strong><\/em> (2024; d. Annie Baker)
\nOne of my favorites of the year. Annie Baker wrote The Flick<\/i>, one of the most astonishing plays I have ever seen – no lie – and I’ve seen a lot. And I saw it when it was at the Barrow Street, and still kind of an underground off-Broadway phenomenon. It’s 3 hours long. A little over, actually. She is a BOLD artist. I love it. This is her directorial debut and it’s a stunner. <\/p>\n

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Tumbledown (2015; d. Sean Mewshaw) Allison and I re-watched this. I reviewed for Ebert when it came out in 2016. I really like it. Gosh, August feels like a long time ago. I was in New York for half of … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[2627,4,31],"tags":[2576,1446,2462,2209,2544,2555,2546,2208,2215,386,1287,2673,442,268,2559,2637],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/193257"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=193257"}],"version-history":[{"count":26,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/193257\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":194305,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/193257\/revisions\/194305"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=193257"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=193257"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=193257"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}