My January Wrapup: Job Hunts, Podcasts, and Queer Cinema

 Hey Whores, I'm finally back on my blog and I would apoligize for being so long in typing but you know what I'm not doing that this year.

So since this is a diary type thing I guess I should tell you about my month. So beginning of it I was working at this job I absolutely fucking hated. I'm talking ugly uniforms, I'm talking bitch condescending boss. I'm talking my soul being sucked out of my body with one of those crazy straws. Then oh calloo calah I got my ass Canned. I'm talking laid off without warning. Just some straight up bye felicia bullcrap. 

Which on one hand I was absolutely not at all hesitant about leaving. I literally was like bye the co-workers that I like and I got the fuck out of there. Unfortuntly I haven't, (as time of writing), managed to secure further employment so theres that. BTW I do have a Ko-Fi so um feel free to tip the dev so to speak. (I'm figure out how to add a tip jar to my page). 

So thats the bad news, The Good News is that I have been just massively consuming media. Just gobbling it up. Its less then a month into the year and letterboxd say I already have watched like at least 36 films. so thats cool. hmm I guess I should probably tell you about the projects I've been working on media consumption wise. 

My Reference Watchlist. 

So heres the thing I totally probably watched something that was on our watchlist but that would require me finding the original list and figuring what I've already talked about on this blog. Which is something that I am way to lazy to go about with after this long ass month. So um that will be a seperate blog post at some point in my life. 

Finding the First Gay Kiss

So I realized I haven't caught up my sluts and slanterns with the new hype. Basically I was having insomnia one night and I was like huh I wonder what the first gay kiss was and your probably like oh its Wings(1927) and that is wrong. 

via GIPHY

I've already talked about it a lot on other platforms but basically I don't bye the damn dirty propaganda that the first gay kiss was in the 1927 world war 1 propaganda oscar winner pic WINGS and that rejection of the easy answer has lead me down a rabbit hole of early queer cinema. According to the letterboxd list that I have made for this exact reason I have watched 81 films already and I'm planning on watching at least 60 more I would love for it to be and even 150 but we don't already get what we want. So because I have already been aggresively blogging the process on my tumblr.

which yeah I kinda like Tumblr more as a blogging platform just because they have an easier editing software and there is gif intergration and also people actually with like the blogs and stuff so thats cool

Anyway here is a list of the movies I watched that are relevant to that discussion. 

📽️ Glen or Glenda (1953) 📽️ The Detective (1968) 📽️Rope (1948) 📽️Michael (1924)

📽️City Lights (1931) 📽️Some Like It Hot (1959) 📽️Suddenly, Last Summer (1959) 

📽️Vampyr (1932) 📽️The Blood of a Poet (1932) 📽️The Isle of Love (1920)

📽️Madame Behave (1925) 📽️The Haunting (1963) 📽️Portrait of Jason (1967)

📽️ The Legend of Lylah Claire (1968)  📽️ Muchachas De Uniforme (1951)  

📽️ Madchen in Uniform (1958)

So lets get into everything else I watched/consumed this month. 

Podcasts

So I'm starting to realize that I need to listen to more podcast I've been bad about that lately. That being said I did listen to the first 4 seasons of The White Vault. The White Vault is an audio drama by Fool and Scholar. Log Line is epistomological isolation horror with a hard sci-fi background and lovecraftian leanings. It definetly follows in the docuseries horror footsteps that predominated the 2010s but I will be the first to say that it has a fresh twist on things. If you wish lovecraft wrote about a team of scientists snowed in in an artic research post who discover an ancient village that definetly shouldn't be there then your in for a treat. 

I will say that I found the third season to be dry compared to the first two but the forth season is definetly picking up steam. Definet recommend. 

I also picked up Diary of a Space Archivist which I quickly put it down. Its giving me Wolf 359 but without the immidiate charm of Doug Eiffle, (also is he a Tom Paris parody... that would explain a lot actually). Also not to be a bitch but the sound design is a bit muddled and thats not great for a limited cast siturational audio drama. Folley work is important god dammit. 

Movies

You probably think that I didn't have anytime to watch any other movies with that giant list that I gave you earlier but thats where you would be wrong. I managed to see a few short films on Le Cinema Club. Which is great by the way, my best friend was like OMG it sounds so pretentios but like thats part of the joke your just not cool enought to get it. I also finished the Sadian Trilogy, which refers to three fucked up movies by everyones favorite british production company. Anglo-Amalgamated. Oh you haven't heard of them sorry I thought you were cultured. Guess I was wrong. 

Oh also I watched some porn but like it was classy porn on letterboxd so actually I am ummm a cultered. ummmmmm a sophicate. ummmmm a erudite wit. ummmm. Better then you because I've seen Le menege moderne de Madame Butterfly.

anyway enought joshing heres my top must-sees

1. MEG3N (2022): Yassssssss qweeen slayyyyyyyy. Ok joking aside M3GAN was just a really great movie it was written by Akela Cooper who also did Hellfest and Malignant so you know this shit was gonza AF and also just a really lovely popcorn flick. Cooper really popped her pussy up on this one because it got themes, it got layers, it got the ability for film anaylsis. and there is a lot of great stuff to work with here. I'm just gonna link my LB review so that you can catch the vibe. 

2. Peeping Tom (1960): so not only is this a proto-slasher that has Giallo energy it also has hitchcock energy even thought this came out several months before Psycho. Basically you have this guy who how should I explain this is giving us Creep (2014) energy. Its a lot of snuff films and cameras and like just THE MALE GAZE being all over the place. Its honestly just a fantastic 60 thriller and um you need to watch this if you enjoy horror movies. 

3. Drone (2022): So I watched this on Le Cinema Club and it made me sob like a little bitch. Also this shit is animated! Elevator Pitch: what if a killer drone was literally more ethical then the United States Military. Thats Right, Step Right Up Folks. we have Robots with Feelings, We have humans being Bros, we have faith in humanity, we have the military industrail complex valueing profit over life, we have capitalist pressures commodinizing counter-culture, we have honestly the urge to commit damage. This shit will make you feel things, perhaps sedation. Honestly fuck the US. Military. That drone deserves better. 

Video Games

So I only finished off two games this month. Slime Rancher and Jenny LeClue Detectivue. 

Slime Rancher is a 2017 indie game that is as it sounds like a video game where you ranch slimes, like the Fantasy Race thing, you ranch a fuck ton of blorbos and its the very definition of a cute farming sim. Well It turned out that after sitting on my desktop for at least a year the last thing I needed to do was fully explore the end biome and that was it. Slime Rancher is a very enjoyable game I just never got that into the grind farming aspect of it. If I really wanted to vibe I could have put on some lofi beats to study and relax to and collected those fancy speed plots for that rich bitch but I just don't have the energy to be playing more video games then I need to. I'm not a video games binger. 

Jenny LeClue Detectivue is a mystery game, that follows a self aware nancy drew type by a milque toast pulp writer. Its honestly just a really enjoyable vibe if you grew up reading nancy drew and the hardy boys ok for me it was.... Encyclopedia Brown and The Invisible Inc, (man 2000s kids had it different). Point being we all grew up with intripid kid detectives getting into highjinks. 

From a plot persepective we have this fun twin peaks esque mystery with a tween aestetic and brechtian overtones. Theres a lot going on with it but it manages to balance it well. 

Theres a lot of collectable in this but the story has very little replayability as the "choosiness" provided is purely cosmetic and while the New Game+ allows you to hop around the chapters without loosing your collectables theres no actually counter for the secrets, gallery images, or stickers that you can find within the game. The gameplay is also very linear, which while it provides a good mystery leads to the fact that this is a one and down thing. 

Definetly a fun time and worth the money but not something that I would try to 100% unless you like rereading the same dialogue over and over again. 

Also I like that Jenny LeClue is lowkey a bitch to begin with. Its giving the more modern deadpan snarkiness of Velma Dinkly but just making it a lot more sarcastic.

TV Shows 

So here's the thing I don't really watch a lot of television I know sad. 

I've tried getting into The Staircase which is decent but also incredible long. I also watched halfway through The Devil in Ohio. Its fairly mid but theres enough meat there that I will eventually finish it. 

The only thing I managed to finish was on Tubi and that was Hammer House of Horror! which was 13 hour long anthology episodes. Anthology are easier for me to watch just because I can pick it up and put it down with out having to worry about continuality. I also got to add each episode to my LB diary so there was a little bit of Skinner Box Seratonin going on there as well. 

As most anthologys this film was a mixed bag there were some episodes that were just really great, (Rude Awakening, The Silent Scream, and the Carpathian Eagle come to mind) and some where incredible bland (Children of the Full Moon, (guess what happens in this one) and Growing Pains). That being said if you need some pop corn horror to decompress after a long week. I would recommend vibing to this very cheesy 80s horror perfable with a cold beer.