Matt Zoller Seitz Reviews “Love & Friendship” (Another of Self’s Favorite Movies of 2016)

Really nice review. Read it in http://www.rogerebert.com.

Kudos to Director Whit Stillman, lead Kate Beckinsale, and Xavier Samuel, who plays the man Beckinsale’s character sets her sights on.

• “Love & Friendship feels like it was inevitable. The director Whit Stillman adapting Jane Austen is one of those ideas that sounds like it’s made up because it’s so perfect, like Wes Anderson announcing that he’s going to make an animated film about foxes based on a book by Roald Dahl.”
• “Stillman’s films are comedies of manners . . .  the more brazen or ambitious characters run roughshod over people who have, well, manners.”
• The main character, Susan, “is distinguished by her audacity, not just in her wants and desires but in the way she talks to other people, turning subtext into text in a way most people would not do unless the person they were talking about was in another room, or another state. But they’re standing right there! And they can’t get their minds around how staggeringly rude and entitled Susan is — most of all Reginald, who’s played with great precision by Samuel as a decent man who is so stunned by Susan’s nerve that he can barely bring himself to reprimand her: he’s too busy marveling at her existence.”

In addition, self is looking forward to seeing the following films, hopefully in the next few weeks:

• Jim Jarmusch’s Paterson
• Paul Verhoeven’s Elle
• Denzel Washington’s adaptation of August Wilson’s Fences
• Kenneth Lonergan’s Manchester by the Sea
• Disney’s Moana

Stay tuned, dear blog readers. Stay tuned.

2016: Books That Rocked Self’s World

• March 2016 (read in Mendocino & Fort Bragg): The Forever War, by Dexter Filkins
• May 2016 (read in London): Watch Me, by Anjelica Huston
• June 2016 (read in California, various stops on the central coast): The Girl On the Train, by Paula Hawkins
• August 2016 (read in San Francisco): The Narrow Road to the Deep North, by Matsuo Basho
• December 2016 (read in San Francisco): In Cold Blood, by Truman Capote

In Which Sunny and Self Discuss/De-Construct “Passengers”

Of course, because this is the future and we write fan fiction, watching “Passengers” leads to some interesting gender flipping in our de-construction of said movie.

The idea of having Jennifer Lawrence doing the choosing was entirely Sunny’s. Self thought: Go for it!

Exhibit A

Stay tuned.

Still More Names: San Francisco Cab Ride in Rain

All shots: 3rd Street, South of Market, San Francisco

Iconic Hearst Building, Market and 3rd

CPK: Self looked it up, stands for California Pizza Kitchen (She liked it better before she knew what the initials stood for)

Stay tuned, dear blog readers. Stay tuned.

Route to Power: Keep It Vague

from Robert Greene’s The 48 Laws of Power, p. 217:

To create a cult you must first attract attention. This you should not do through actions, which are too clear and readable, but through words, which are hazy and deceptive.

(See: BIGLY. Also: YUUUGE. Also: SAD. SO SAD. Also: Anything that can be said in 140 characters)

Your initial speeches, conversations, and interviews must include two elements: on the one hand, the promise of something great and transformative, and on the other a total vagueness.

(See: MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN)

This combination will stimulate all kinds of hazy dreams in your listeners, who will make their own connections and see what they want to see.

(At the risk of repeating herself: MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN)

To make your vaguness attractive, use words of great resonance but cloudy meaning, words full of heat and enthusiasm.

(See: I AM GOING TO APPOINT THE GREATEST CABINET IN THE HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES)

Stay tuned, dear blog readers. Stay tuned.

More Names

Self’s second post on this week’s Daily Post Photo Challenge: NAMES

Dragon Papa: Grant St., San Francisco

What Self Read, Summer 2016

Iconic Chinatown: San Francisco, Fall 2016

Quote of the Day: The Hunter

The hunter does not lay the same trap for a wolf as for a fox.

Even “persons so insignificant and so inconsiderable . . .  may, some time or other, have it in their power to be of use to you; which they certainly will not, if you have once shown them contempt. Wrongs are often forgiven, but contempt never is. Our pride remembers it forever.” (Lord Chesterfield, 1694 – 1773)

— p. 144, The 48 Laws of Power, by Robert Greene

Emily Doe: Changing the Conversation

You don’t know me, but you’ve been inside me, and that’s why we’re here today . . .  Future reference, if you are confused about whether a girl can consent, see if she can speak an entire sentence.

— Emily Doe to her rapist, Brock Turner, quoted in Glamour, December 2016

From Emily Doe:

I had forensic evidence, sober unbiased witnesses, a slurred voice mail, police at the scene. I had everything, and I was still told it was not a slam dunk. I thought, if this is what having it good looks like, what other hells are survivors living? I’m barely getting through this but I am being told I’m the lucky one, some sort of VIP. It was like being checked into a hotel room for a year with stained sheets, rancid water, and a bucket with an attendant saying, No, this is great! Most rooms don’t even have a bucket.

After the trial I was relieved, thinking the hardest part was over, and all that was left was the sentencing. I was excited to finally be given a chance to read my statement and declare, I am here. I am not that floppy thing you found behind the garbage, speaking melted words. I am here, I can stand upright, I can speak clearly, I’ve been listening and am painfully aware of all the hurt you’ve been trying to justify.

I yelled half of my statement. So when it was quickly announced that he’d be receiving six months, I was struck silent.

After Turner was convicted of rape last spring, a judge “sentenced him to just six months, saying anything more would have a severe impact on him.” — Cindi Leive, in Glamour magazine

Stay tuned, dear blog readers. Stay tuned.

The Economist Books of the Year 2015

Yes, self is a year behind in her reading of The Economist. So pathetic.

Anyhoo, here are the books self picked to add to her reading list: four histories, three works of fiction, one book on Culture, Society and Travel.

HISTORIES

• Nagasaki: Life After Nuclear War, by Susan Southard — “a searing account of five teenage survivors of the bombing of Nagasaki”
• Waterloo: The History of Four Days, Three Armies and Three Battles, by Bernard Cornwell — “a great and terrible story of a battle . . . fought 200 years ago, told with energy and clarity”
• The Fall of the Ottomans: The Great War in the Middle East — “how a multinational Muslim empire was destroyed by the first World War”
• SPQR: A History of Ancient Rome, by Mary Beard — “about Rome from its myth-shrouded origins to the early third century”

CULTURE, SOCIETY AND TRAVEL

• Plucked: A History of Hair Removal, by Rebecca Herzig — “a curious account of hair-erasing, and why people have tried clamshell razors, lasers, lye depilatories, tweezers, waxes, threading and electrolysis to try and free themselves from hairiness”

FICTION

• Seiobo There Below, by Laszlo Krasznahorkai — Seventeen stories, “a fitting winner of the 2005 Man Booker International Prize”
• Submission, by Michael Houellebecq — “France under Muslim rule,” 2022
• An Account of the Decline of the Great Auk, According to One Who Saw It, by Jessie Greengrass — a “spectacularly accomplished, chilly debut collection of short stories about thwarted lives and opportunities missed”

Stay tuned, dear blog readers. Stay tuned.

Names From Around WordPress

Browsing WordPress for posts on this week’s Daily Post Photo Challenge, NAMES.

Here are some that intrigued:

• Iconic Mickey, from Suebee and Kat’s blog
• “This bottle is the property of Thos Crearer”: found in a dump and posted on letting nature back in
• Names from a Shanghai trip by My Crazy Graced Life
• Dreaming of Having Your Own Brand, in The Sleeping Reading Beauty
• Someone loves Oslo, Norway so much, in Yvette’s photography
• A daughter’s name on a bottle of plum butter, in HK’s Huck Le Berry
• Monument graffiti, circa 1874, in Jedi By Knight
• Name tag, World Biomaterials Conference, in Picture Worthy
• Australian place names in Out an’ About

Enjoy!

Stay tuned.