Missy

HA! I was so tempted to suggest this, but I had a feeling there would be a hard pass. I'm giving it a lot of thought. Revisiting Smith's movies could make for some interesting content. I flip-flop on her in this movie all the time. The last time I watched Chasing Amy, I very much came away hating her acting here. This time it was the opposite. Not sure why it changes with each viewing.

The thing with Chasing Amy, which I watched last night almost as a dare after seeing the question posed, is unlike Clerks II where Smith is taking the piss for 75% of the movie, he's trying really hard to be SERIOUS~! in Chasing Amy. Despite working in the same universe as Clerks and Mallrats, Smith is attempting to mature as a filmmaker -- and maybe bring his audience with him. Yet everything about it is wrong. From top to bottom it is not the story he should have been telling, not in the way he told it at least. Smith is trying here, and he's touching on topics that we're still struggling with over two decades later. Male sexual fragility and ego are the central theme, liberal politics filtered through the eyes of a 25-year-old sexually conservative man dominate the back half of the movie, toxic masculinity is called to task throughout, the unspoken love that platonic male friends share and how that can easily be shattered when someone new enters the equation, and the way in which men struggle to be in platonic relationships with people they're sexually attracted to is on the table. And Smith does an admirable job attempting to address these topics. I say "admirable" because Smith never paints Holden as anything but wrong from start to finish. The second Holden lays eyes on Alyssa he activates Douche Mode, acting like he's guaranteed to be her next lover. Worse, like she's his next conquest. Then when he discovers that she's a lesbian, Holden cannot get away from her fast enough. Had she not showed up at his door the next morning, one suspect that would have been the end of it; he was done with her. His "I love you" speech is something some might find romantic -- especially because they do wind up together -- but it is grossly cruel to Alyssa. She has made it painfully clear who she is. Yet he sprints over that line with what he thinks is a romantic confession. Worse, he knows from the jump spilling his heart out could kill the friendship. He says as much. But he does it anyway because he needs to clear his soul, never mind her feelings. And his "I know you feel this too" is worthy of a punch to the teeth because it's outright questioning her identity and sexuality, something she's clearly had to struggle with over the years. Then when he learns he wasn't the first man to have had sex with her, and in fact that she's been in sexual situations he's only seen in adult movies, Holden goes fucking nuclear and slut-shames to her front of a crowd. When Alyssa passionately pleads with him to accept her for her, he's downright sick to her touch. He's a disgusting human being. Can it get worse? Oh yes! Holden potentially outs Banky, and makes the ill-advised suggestion that he, Alyssa, and Banky have a three-way to get their sexual frustrations out of the way. One year later, instead of learning from the massive cluster fuck he made of three peoples' lives and careers, he drops a bombshell on Alyssa. Again, publicly. When he gives her his "Chasing Amy" comic book, which offers Alyssa an apology at the end, he's emotionally manipulating her. He's trying to lay the groundwork for them to get back together. He's awful. And though Smith writes Holden that way, Ben Affleck's charm masks some of these toxic traits and actions. So it isn't hard to see why some miss all of this and see Holden as a good, but maybe misguided person. Banky is reprehensible. Smith uses him (and other characters like him) to casually drop F-Bombs like Tarantino uses his characters to drop N-Bombs. It horrible. While I get that Banky is trying to save Holden from the inevitable tsunami of hurt that's coming his way, his way of doing it is abusive and manipulative. Digging up high school dirt on a grown women? Fuck off. That's no better than the way Holden treats Alyssa. So, Alyssa. Joey Lauren Adams holds this movie together. She is an absolute powerhouse throughout. Her range as Alyssa is something to behold. The way she goes from pure joy to absolutely justifiable rage with the snap of a finger breathes so much life into Alyssa. This is a lived-in character, as the movie suggest. From her teenage years until the then-now, Alyssa has explored her own identity through sex, drugs, and artistic expression -- including music, illustration, and writing. She knows exactly who she is; she's lived this life, Alyssa has. Her shocked-yet-quiet seething rage in the car when Holden unburdens himself of his secret pain to her whispered "please don't" moment in the penultimate scene are both quiet moments for her, but both are ones in which she is absolutely pissed off. The difference is, in the first she didn't see the emotional betrayal coming and cannot believe Holden would hurt her this way, and the second she absolutely saw it coming but had distanced herself enough from him emotionally that she was able to finally cut ties with Holden. There's so much going on with Alyssa, I wish the character and actor had been given a better script, stronger actors, and the right director to work with. Speaking of which, I just scrubbed to the scene with Holden and Alyssa in Jay and Silent Bob Reboot, and Smith actively calls himself out for not being the right person to make Chasing Amy. Alyssa is adapting Holden's "Chasing Amy" comic into a Netflix series, and notes: "It's always a story that should have been told from a queer perspective, or a woman's perspective, or any perspective other than a cis white man's." If Netflix did indeed remake Chasing Amy from a woman's perspective and / or a queer perspective, I would be so willing to give that a shot. Alyssa deserves so much more. When it comes to the core story of a cis man and a lesbian engaging in a sexual relationship? I am far from the right person to address the endless problems this movie has. What I will say is this: it might be interesting to watch Chasing Amy as a double feature with The Kids Are All Right (2010). The latter was directed and co-written by Lisa Cholodenko, a lesbian filmmaker. And her movie touches on similar themes of a cis man and an lesbian having an affair. From what I recall it does a much better job than Chasing Amy in this department, but it's been eight-ish years since I last saw it so please forgive me for suggesting it if it too has issues similar to Chasing Amy. Should you see Chasing Amy? Maybe? If you've seen it before, it would be an interesting viewing experiment to watch it now and compare this viewing to your initial thoughts. If you've never seen it before, it might be very challenging to sit through this wrongheaded, misguided 1997 drama / romcom. To the question of which holds up the worst, Clerks II or Chasing Amy. I'd put them on equal footing, but for entirely different reasons. What I will say is this: back in 1997, every single LGBTQ+ person I knew was deeply offended by Chasing Amy. And I cannot imagine those feelings have gotten any better with time.

Aww! I was looking forward to watching John Cena comically dying.

Having not watched a full season of The Flash since the first, how much longer life does it have? Will it go past its forthcoming seventh?

The original Clerks is cynical in that "we're 20-something and know everything," jaded, mid-90s, GenX way. Making it somewhat relatable, even now. Clerks II, however, is mean as fuck. Holy hell I did not remember how completely terrible Randal is in the sequel. From the moment he first interacts with Elias, he's a brutish bully of mammoth proportions. When he was 22 and fucking with customers, his workplace behavior could -- not should, but could -- be written off by an audience of the same age as "sticking it to the man." Here, though, he's 33 and straight-up attempting to destroy everything the 19-year-old Elias believes in. Halfway through the movie he tells Elias that they'll be best friends once "Mr. Dante" leaves for Florida. There's no equal footing with their relationship. When Randal calls Dante on his shit, he's usually right and it's something Dante needs to hear. When Randal talks to -- never with -- Elias, he's never not punching down. It's beyond abusive. His sexual harassment of Becky and Emma is fucked up, making it clearly understandable why both women barely tolerate him. There's no doubt in my mind that the moment Dante drove off to Florida, Becky would have fired Randal's ass. And, in the car, Emma would have finally admitted she hated the shithead. Further, Randal admits he's had sex with (and will continue to do so) 17-year-olds. I don't know or care what the law was in New Jersey at the time, even if it was legal, a 33-year-old sexually interacting with high school-age girls is beyond reprehensible. And then, what the holy fucking shit was the whole racial slur portion of the film? Where the ever-loving fuck did that come from, and how -- HOW?! -- did Kevin Smith think that was anywhere near approaching acceptable? If one wants to argue that it's meant to display how purposely insensitive Randal is at his core, was bullying Elias not enough? Was gleefully flaming a wheelchair-user not enough? Were the homophobic slurs and tendencies not clear enough? Was his demeaning sexual treatment of women not enough? What the holy hell was anybody thinking? This is beyond gross, and probably only made it through because Clerks II was distributed by The Weinstein Company. And speaking of that... Knowing what we know now, I'm of the mind that Becky's dance scene on the roof -- the one set to "ABC" by The Jackson 5 -- was requested by executive producer Harvey Weinstein. Why? Well, the focus of the shot is squarely on Rosario Dawson's breasts bopping up and down as Becky dances for Dante. The only other time I can recall Kevin Smith filming a sequence that mildly sexual before Clerks II would be Salma Hayek's dance sequence in Dogma -- which was set to "Candy Girl," another Jackson 5 song. While Weinstein didn't technically produce Dogma, he and Bob did personally purchase it from Disney for distribution through Lions Gate. So make of that what you will. And then there's Dante. Fuck this guy. In Clerks he was insufferable by the end. In Clerks II he's still not grown by the end. After Randal's, admittedly, very well-acted and believable "I love you" breakdown, he tries so hard to get his best friend to make a damn decision for himself. Just one. One single thing. And what does Dante do? He asks Randal what he thinks he should do. So after all of Clerks, the 11 years in between, losing his fiancée to his inability to be satisfied with the woman he's with, after being sent to jail for the night, after being told he needs to start thinking for himself by his best friend and his about-to-be new fiancée, after being told by his former fiancée that men can't make decisions for themselves, he still needs to be told what to do. There's never any growth with Dante. And I get it. I did not grow much between 22 and 33. So in that sense Dante is an exceptionally believable character. But for a movie, a sequel no less, to continue to display this character trait -- and, worse, to even end on it without any decision-making by the character in question -- that's some unsatisfactory storytelling. Randal grows more in this movie than Dante, and that's saying something. And while we're on the topic of Dante, oh my god can this guy not fuck around? Can he not be satisfied? When Veronica discovers Dante's would-be infidelity, she says fuck it and moves on with her life. She's rightly pissed off that she's spent seven months with a guy who's been plotting to sneak behind her back, but she's young and she'll move on. Here, Dante downright ruins Emma's life. Besides being a touch condescending to Dante (RE: decision-making), Emma is actively supportive of him. She sees and believes in his potential. She wants him to succeed. She wants them to succeed. Yet Dante can't get down with that. She's emotionally and physically loving, pops by to show her glee over their invitations, does the same again to give him a going away cake, and has her silly little Mrs. Hicks shirt. Yet Dante's gonna Dante. His dissatisfaction with Emma is deeper than his one-night-stand with Becky. That was only a month prior. It's clear whatever's going on in Dante's head has been there for a good long while. So when she sees Dante and Becky making out, then Jay accidentally revealing Becky is pregnant via an affair with Dante, she's broken. While the movie (somewhat) establishes they've only been together for a year-ish, they had their future together set in stone; the big move, the home, the car wash ownership for Dante, wedding, and children were all a few hours away from beginning. The poor woman was over the moon for Dante, and he tossed it and her all away. That pain is going to sit with that character for a long time, and the fact that Dante never even attempts to atone for it is an issue with the story and character. All he offers is a weak "I'm sorry" before she runs off. And the worst part of all of this? Clerks II is actively better-made than Clerks. While the characters are horrible caricatures of their 1994 counterparts, the movie flows so much more seamlessly than the strung-together chapters of the original. Between Clerks and Clerks II, Smith had directed Mallrats, Chasing Amy, Dogma, Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back, and Jersey Girl. This time and these films gave him the room he needed to grow as a storyteller and filmmaker. Yet the writing is so fan-serving. "You liked Randal when he rattled off porn titles in front of a toddler? Well, here's him using a litany of racial slurs in front of Wanda Sykes!" While the central performances by Brian O'Halloran and Jeff Anderson are meant to be the heart of the film, tying Clerks to its sequel, Rosario Dawson elevates this movie from a Clerks sequel to something that can stand on its own. And considering all that's come out about her, this isn't easy to say. Clerks II is one of those movies which I cannot actively recommend, yet it's such a character-assassinating debacle it's almost worth the 100 minutes if you've seen the original. EDIT: OH! I neglected to mention the entire Star Wars / Lord of the Rings debate, tangentially related to the Transformers bashing. There's a massive streak of "our geeky thing is cool, and yours is lame" throughout that comes off as super petty and gatekeeping. It's also massively sexist; Randal specifically puts down women who like to dress as elves as unworthy of love. So toss that onto the pile of wrongness here.

According to Melissa Benoist's Instagram, the next season of Supergirl will be its last. Thanks to Donovan for posting this on Twitter. I wonder if she'll make cameos in the Superman & Lois.

Clerks hit home media in 1995, and I saw it right away thanks to a friend. We were both 17 at the time. He was Randal and I was Dante in so many ways. He worked odd jobs to make money, never caring if he got fired. I had been at Arby's for about a year at that point, and had frequent on-again / off-again relationships with two women in particular. Both of whom were awful for me, and me for them. So Clerks felt so real. So honest. Even though the characters were five years older than me at the time, living lives I had yet to get to, I could see future reflections of them in us. In that way, Smith was absolutely nailed his initial look into the View Askewniverse.

Rewatched Clerks for the first time in a long while. Man is this an artifact of mid-90s GenX life. Whiners, slackers, sexual experimentation, and a shocking amount of "casual" homophobia. Despite the clunky dialogue and early days Kevin Smith directing, it holds up as a tale of a young man who can't get his shit together. My takeaway, though, is who's the real protagonist? Dante is trying to rekindle an old relationship while slut-shaming his current girlfriend, Randal is an asshole, and Caitlin is stringing two men along. Veronica is the only one who comes close to being the real protagonist -- in that she wants her life, as well as Dante's, to grow -- but she gets physically violent with her boyfriend after he admits he's slept with 11 women before her.

I keep meaning to grab that. The pages that have been posted on Twitter look and read wonderfully.

At the moment, I'm reading Grant Morrison's New X-Men run. If I finish it, it will be the first time I've read it all the way through. That doesn't matter, though. What does, is that I cannot stand Morrison's writing. Not his plotting or storytelling, mind. That's fine. It's his dialog. It's clunky and always seems like panels are missing. For example, from X-Men #114: Panel 2: Wolverine: Couldn't wait to get out of that bald head, could you, Slim? Cyclops: What? Are you insinuating something? Wolverine: I don't insinuate; I call it like I see it. Panel 3: Cyclops: And exactly how do you see it, Logan? Wolverine: With Binocular vision, "Cyclops." You've been AWOL for too long. Things change. Sometimes it's hard. I just want you to know you got a shoulder to cry on if you need it. Panel 4: Cyclops: >TT< We have work in Ecuador... Wolverine: Which is more than most people in Ecuador have. Panel 5: Cyclops: Jean and I are perfectly Happy, Logan. No one mentioned Jean. There wasn't even any subtext to insinuate this conversation was about her. Granted, this is Morrison laying the groundwork for what he had planned with Scott, Jean, and Emma. But it's so poorly executed. The jump between panels four and five is so jarring it makes one wonder if a panel -- if not a whole page -- was cut between them. This is why I never finished his Batman run. There were times it felt like entire pages were cut between one word balloon and another.

Bringing Kang into Ant-Man 3 risks making him the butt of jokes, thus kneecapping him before he can get out of the gate, but I trust they can pull it off. My hope is that he somehow rids The Avengers of the ability to time travel. So that from now on their actions have consequences that cannot be undone with a trip through time. If anything, Kang will just have a minor cameo a la Thanos in The Avengers. Making him the (or a) main villain in an Ant-Man movie seems too small a role for him.

The dojo being banned makes sense if The Karate Kid Part III is considered to be part of continuity. In that movie, the owner of the Cobra Kai franchise was legit trying to murder Daniel, and his students threatened to rape his female friend. If news of that reached the governing body, a perma-ban makes sense. The grudge against Johnny, however, not so much. At the end of the first movie, Johnny seemingly makes up with Daniel. So Daniel needs to get over himself.

Rigg was so powerful in GOT, and her performance in OHMSS makes the ending that much more of a kick to the gut. RIP

Isn't it?! Have you made it all the way through?

Season three of Discovery will introduce two new characters: Adira (Blu del Barrio) and Gray (Ian Alexander), a non-binary character and a transgender character, respectively. Even better, del Barrio is non-binary and Alexander is transgender. Bravo to the creative team and casting!

Guardians of the Galaxy #6: Read the issue because I saw a spoiler on Twitter that intrigued me. (More in a moment on that.) The creative team does an excellent job demonstrating the PTSD the cosmic characters -- Richard Rider's Nova in this case -- suffer. With war after war after war, and more deaths than anyone can count, Rider is spent. He's done. But he cannot stop. The entire creative team comes together to truly sell the idea that Richard is shattered inside but is compelled to keep going. Now, for the spoiler:

Oh god, I forgot about the moon as an egg episode.

The Karate Kid (1984): Pure comfort food. I absolutely adore the original Karate Kid. It perfectly justifies Daniel's anger, exposes Mr. Miyagi's hidden pain, builds Johnny and his gang as thugs, and even takes some time to show Mrs. LaRusso's love for her son. It could absolutely do more with Ali, but what they do accomplish is showing Ali does not take anyone's shit. She slugs Johnny, pushes back on Daniel after he makes an ass of himself, and even lets her father have it. So there's something there, but it would have been great to get more of her peer group. They also do a good job making the three "teenage" leads look and act like teenagers; Macchio was 23, Shue was 21, and Zabka was 19. Rocky's fingerprints are all over this, too. Not just because it's a competition movie about an underdog overcoming impossible odds, but because it's directed by the same man who directed Rocky: John G. Avildsen. There are moments where Macchio has clearly been told to channel Stallone, specifically moments when he's talking to himself. The Karate Kid Part II (1986): While I love the first, I adore the second even more. Unlike a lot of sequels in the 1980s, TKKP2 doesn't simply remake the original. Some of the same beats are hit, yes, but it's an entirely different movie. By setting it in Okinawa and making the plot about Mr. Miyagi's past, the creators are able to better flesh out the world and characters. We now know why Mr. Miyagi left for America, and the pain he carried with him. We also get to see Daniel valiantly attempt to assimilate to an unfamiliar culture all while still being the kid from Newark. The stakes being raised adds a lot, as well. Six months prior Daniel was fighting to bush back on bullies. This time around it's quite literally for his life. And he is so ill-prepared. Danny Kamekona as Sato is an amazing screen presence. He's filled with damaged honor, boiling rage, respect for traditions, and then an amazing face turn. Worst part, though? Ali is completely thrown under the bus. So all the time and energy and emotion we invested in the Ali / Daniel relationship is given a thumb to the eye. It's rather petty. The Karate Kid Part III (1989): Set roughly 18 months after the original, TKKP3 is technically set in late 1985. Five years on from the original, though, and you can see how much Macchio, then 28, had aged. This is all kinds of not good. We went from an exceptionally intimidating performance by Martin Kove as Kreese to the aforementioned Danny Kamekona as the terrifying Sato to... this. Thomas Ian Griffith plays Terry Silver, a mega-rich war buddy of Kreese who quite literally cackles with evil glee, tells his staff his focus is set on "revenge," and brazenly dumps toxic waste because being a rich dickhead wasn't enough. Instead of simply killing Daniel and Miyagi -- which is something this asshat would do -- he crafts an elaborate plan to split the two apart, only to have Daniel beaten while defending his title in the karate tournament. It's some Saturday-morning bullshit. Also, Daniel's new female friend is threatened with gang rape. So that's fucking awful. This one also throws another love interest under the bus. When Daniel and Mr. Miyagi return to the states, we learn Kumiko stayed in Okinawa because she got into a dance school. While it's handled better than the piss-poor treatment of Ali, it still feels a bit cynical. The Next Karate Kid (1994): Much better than TKKP3, but it doesn't come close to the heights of the first two. Here, Mr. Miyagi temporarily moves to Boston to mentor a war buddy's granddaughter. Hillary Swank does an admirable job playing a pissed off teenager girl. She's made at the world for taking her grandfather, as well as her parents. She hates everyone, and with good reason. Much like Daniel had to learn to control his anger, as well as his impatience, Swank's Julie is even angrier and impatient. If for nothing else, give this one a watch for her performance. And the monks. They're so cute. Okay, that said, the ending is a mess. Everyone gets in on the action, but it's so unfocused. And the whole reason Julie needs to learn to fight is so she's not dragged off and gang raped by a school-sanctioned posse of karate-loving punks. What is it with Three and Next when it comes to their female leads and rape? The Karate Kid (2010): A very solid remake. While taking many elements from the original, this movie can be viewed as its own experience. Jaden Smith's Dre Parker is absolutely charming. He's clearly his father's son, but Jaden has his own style and acting flourishes that shine through. He too is angry, but it's very much the anger of a child, rather than that of a teenager. That tiny difference very much sets Dre apart from Daniel and Julie. Jackie Chan's Mr. Han is absolutely depressing. From the jump one can clearly see something is deeply broken in his soul. He looks so tired, as if death is late and he's angry about it. When we learn where his pain stems from, it breaks your heart. And Dre's reaction does a wonderful job demonstrating how much he has grown, as well as how much he loves Mr. Han. At two hours twenty, it's longer than it needs to be, but still a movie that's worth a watch.

My god, this is beyond shocking. RIP, sir.

Batman: The Three Jokers #1: A 48-page comic for $6.99 that could have been maybe 30 pages. The first issue sets up a lot but not enough to hook me to read these individually; I'll wait 'til it's collected.

Nope. It means what you think it does. 😎

This is a blindspot for me, when it comes to his movies. It always looked interesting, though. I would also suggest The Dream Team, which costars Christopher Lloyd. However, it's 1989-portrayal of mental illness might be a big hurdle.

Unfortunately no, Bird Man has been his only nomination.

And his disdain for Picard perfectly seeps through: "I'm not Picard."