Netflix's "Blonde" is Just Pain Porn

Also, SNL is Back, Andor is Good, & It's Bread Week on Bake Off!

When Elton John sang, “pain was the price you paid,” he was talking about this godforsaken movie!

Happy October!! It’s time to plan your Halloween costume! It’s time to play sad girl music! It’s time to put apples in everything! It’s time to make stews! It’s time to ditch your Aperol Spritz and shift into red wine and Old Fashioned mode!

This week, we’re flipping our usual order and starting with a quick blitz through some fantastic things I’m reading, listening to, and watching.

Then we’ll get to my tirade against the travesty that is the new Marilyn Monroe movie, and we’ll end with highlights from this week’s Saturday Night Live premiere and a roundup of Bread Week on The Great British Baking Show! As always, scroll to the section you’re interested in!

I’d love to hear your thoughts on ANY of these things if you’re watching — or just what’s making you happy this cold and rainy October week. 🍂 And here are a few ways to help Puerto Rico and Florida after the devastating hurricanes.

Reading about: The Woman King

This movie is A+++!

• The truth behind ‘The Woman King’: Crew responds to claims of historical revisionism - Los Angeles Times

First of all, if you haven’t seen The Woman King yet, GET THEE TO A THEATER!! Viola Davis is a GENERATIONAL TALENT, which we already knew, but damn is she incredible in this. Also, she is 57 years old. HOW!??

Second of all, my friend Leya sent me this article, and it’s very good. Exploring the meaning of the stories we tell — and how much it matters who gets to tell them.

Listening to: Pastor’s Stories

• The Pastors Being Driven Out by Trumpism - The Daily

• The Great Pastor Resignation - First Person

I cried!! To be fair, with a dad and brother-in-law in the biz, these hit close to home—but I highly highly recommend them to anyone.

I know a lot of people have been hurt by their pastors, and we talk about it a lot, and we should. But so rarely do we get to hear about how we have hurt our pastors — the ones who are kind and human and gentle.

Watching: All the Nerd Things

Star Wars is sexy now!

Looking at my TV show intake this month is like reading the lineup for ComicCon, and I don’t hate it! It’s a great time to be a nerd, or at least Nerd Adjacent!

• House of the Dragon: As you’ll know if you keep up with my #HOTD rankings, this show is Succession but with dragons, and I am into it.

• Rings of Power: Not “good,” but not bad! Gorgeous! I’m enjoying it thoroughly, even though Galadriel is more annoying than Paris from Gilmore Girls and Gil-galad looks like a Dickensian schoolmaster. Also, I have a strong theory about who Sauron is — Who wants to talk about it!?!

• Andor: Ben and I started Andor this week and it’s the best Star Wars thing since…The Last Jedi?? [Them’s fighting words, I know.] It’s Star Wars with good dialogue and characters, Star Wars a little sexed up, Star Wars with a red light district. Also, I’m obsessed with Deputy Inspector Javert Syril Karn. [“Not the employees!”]

And now that we’ve listed the GOOD things I’m watching, it’s time to descend into the Most Cursed: My review of the new Marilyn Monroe movie on Netflix, Blonde…

My One-Sentence Review of Blonde: “Do not under any circumstances watch this film.”

*Content Warning for Everything*

This is the real Marilyn Monroe, and I’m glad she’ll never see the travesty that is Blonde.

Blonde bravely asks the question, “What if we could tell Marilyn Monroe’s story but make it about men?” Blonde says, “Ew, look how gross and horny men are,” and then takes off Marilyn’s top and does a lustful slow-mo as she moans and sobs on the floor. Blonde’s idea of a woman’s emotional life is “daddy issues.” Blonde is expensive pain p**n.

The first red flag is that this movie isn’t based on Marilyn’s actual life. It’s based on a completely fictional book about Marilyn by Joyce. Carol. Oates. [Ben, after watching Blonde: “Wow, Joyce Carol Oates must really hate Marilyn Monroe.”]

The second red flag for me was when the movie’s director, Andrew Dominik, said in response to its NC-17 rating: “It’s kind of what you want, right? I want to go and see the NC-17 version of the Marilyn Monroe story.” And YOU’RE the person we’re entrusting to tell Marilyn’s story from her perspective?!?

This movie made Marilyn stupid. [“People make spaghetti?” she gasps. “I mean, not just in a store?”] This movie openly gawks at her body, puts her in pain, and turns her pain into pornographic entertainment. She’s breathy, she’s fragile, she’s unable to articulate herself. [“Am I your good girl, Daddy?” she says to her new husband with no pants on while stirring a bowl of soup. This is a sexual predator’s idea of a new wife.] She says, “That thing up on the screen, it isn’t me,” but the movie gives us no other version of Norma Jeane than what was up on that screen. We never see anything from her point of view—not really. The scene of the famous subway grate photo feels unending as the camera ogles her first in black and white, then in color, then in black and white again, then in color again! They reduce all the mental, emotional, and intellectual complexity of who Marilyn Monroe was into the crude oversimplification: “Marilyn had daddy issues.” And don’t get me started on how they handled the abortion and miscarriage scenes.

I cannot say this more emphatically: F**K. THAT.

This movie was an assault, and on top of all that, it wasn’t even well made??? It currently has a 44% critics’ score and a 32% audience score on Rotten Tomatoes, and honestly, those are both generous. It was confusing, poorly edited, horribly acted by several actors, and nearly unintelligible at points. Ana de Armas was impossibly beautiful and probably gave it her best, but truly it is not worth it.

Don’t see this movie. Marilyn, rest in peace.

Saturday Night Live Highlights

So many beloved faces are out, and so many new faces are in. I’ll get in trouble for observing how each new featured player fits into an exact profile SNL tends to hire lately, so I won’t. Except to say the new “skinny white nerd boy who does standup” looks exactly like if Seth Cohen and Chuck Bass had a baby!

Miles Teller hosted, and Kendrick Lamar was the musical guest.👏🏼 Kendrick performed Rich Spirit, N95, and Father Time, and, wow, Pulitzer-winning Kendrick really lends himself to an intimate stage like this! I saw him in concert this year, and it was incredible — but there’s something about closeness/subtlety that shows his power.

• Highlights:

  • Miles Teller’s intro: I hear Miles is a real a**hole in real life, but I love him as an actor, so this was fun.

  • “Send Something Normal” Game Show: Adam Levine and Armie Hammer.

  • BeReal!

  • Nicole Kidman AMC Ad: I don’t know if this was funny, but I LOVED IT.

  • Bowen as the Spotted Lanternfly on Weekend Update.

• Lowlights: After Weekend Update, all my laughs were pity laughs. [Let’s not excavate the fact that I’m so codependent with making people feel OK that I pity laugh even when the performers can’t hear me. We’ll leave that for therapy!]

Bake Off Corner - “It’s squeaky-bum time!”

These Showstoppers truly made me 🤢

Carole started Bread Week with a memorable declaration: “I’ve got me lucky big pants on now! Me apple-catchers!” Reader, I investigated this statement:

• apple-catchers (noun, slang) large, spacious underwear

Get it, Carole! Also, she pronounces gruyère “goo-ree-yay!” Carole can’t be stopped! In the Lifetime series about Carole, she should be played by Jennifer Coolidge!

Other Random Observations:

• Were these challenges even bread!??

• Rebs continues to Fail Upwards by calling in sick this week. Can’t lose if you’re not in the game! At least we got a break from her asking for help on every challenge as if service and obeisance are her natural right! I don’t love Rebs, but again, I am calling that she will inexplicably make it to the final five.

• I googled “Paul Hollywood kneading pizza” after he criticized their kneading techniques. I wish I hadn’t! If you wanna watch five horrific seconds of Paul’s oiled-up hands slowly “massaging” bread dough, be my guest!

• Putting raisins in a perfectly good pastry is a CRIME AGAINST HUMANITY. Change my mind!

• Swedish Smörgåstårta: Another crime against humanity! Mercury was in retrograde this week! “Must look like a cake and taste like a sandwich”?? Was this invented by a first-grader?

Episode 3 Leaderboard

We’ve still got our initial favorites at the top of the pack: Janusz, Sandro, and Syabira.

• Janusz: “I don’t know why they trusted me with a deep fat fryer.” lol! I still have Janusz winning my bracket, though tbh I thought Syabira should’ve won this week. Syabira was robbed.

• Sandro: This man and his meats! [Double entendre, OBVIOUSLY!] The way he was just cleaning his table for the final minute of the Showstopper … what a flex! [Pun enthusiastically intended!] There’s some controversy over Sandro’s participation as an “amateur baker” since, in the past, he apparently sold a cake to Maya Jama and Stormzy, aka Britain’s Jay-Z and Beyoncé. But, like, whatever.

• Syabira: Sticking to her Malaysian flavors and nailing it every time, Syabira should’ve won Star Baker! Her disgusting sandwich cake was ingenious!! Justice for Syabira!!!

Whew, that was a lot! Thanks for reading and engaging! It makes it so much fun for me to hear your thoughts — drop a comment if you wanna share!