*blasting the Twisters soundtrack*
Twisters rocks! Plus a small British film I adored.
Hi friends, we’re back! Last week I was on vacation with my family, sweating our a**es off and celebrating life together in the great swoop of land that birthed me, the bayous and beaches off the Gulf of Mexico. It was the first “normal” vacation we’ve had in two years, since the onset of my mom’s debilitating auto-immune disease and cancer recurrence. I’ve written about that journey a few times, here and here and here. But this year, what once felt like an impossibility I can say with my chest: Things are looking up. 💜
As we basked in each other’s health and wellness, I also persuaded beat everyone down with my over-enthusiasm and clangy voice until they agreed to watch the original Twister with me in preparation for Twisters this week!
What a fantastically silly and spectacular movie the original Twister is, with its 1990s special effects, Mark Mancina score, benign chauvinism of outside-dog-handsome Bill Paxton, Helen Hunt doing top-notch Dr. Ellie Sattler cosplay, etc. When Ben dies before me, all I aspire to be is Aunt Meg with her kooky wind chimes and golden retriever and steak for breakfast. Did you remember that Philip Seymour Hoffman is in this? At age 29?? Now that’s what I call cinema!
For a good time and nothing more, I highly recommend rewatching Twister (1996) before you watch the new one. Oh, you can also do it out of respect for cinéma historÿ yada yada.
This week, my question for you, dear reader is: What was your experience with the original Twister? Did you watch it when it first hit theaters in 1996? Did you love it? Hate it? Didn’t care? I didn’t watch it at the time because I was eight, but my cousin Garrett who was much older and wiser [11] did see it and told us we were for sure going to get eaten by a tornado one day. Love you, GareBear!!!
In the news while I was out
Two astronauts are stranded on the International Space Station because of — shocker — Boeing problems. My favorite part about this story is the press conference from the ISS, which looks like any earth-bound press conference except for the hair and face situation is saying “anti-gravity, babe.”
In other space-related news (my favorite kind), remember that time NASA was taking volunteers to go into a Mars simulator for a whole year?? Well, they came out, a year later! News organizations and documentary crews of the world are failing us right now because that’s the extent of what I know. These people were in an OUTER SPACE simulation for a YEAR. Do we not have questions?? Have you SEEN The Martian?? Dost your imagination fail you? What happened in there?? I know they weren’t just “growing herbs.” I need the pathos of Sandra Bullock landing on that shitty beach in Gravity! I demand a 10-part docuseries!
If I’m being honest, the only news I have been giving mind to over the past week is the Ambani Wedding, aka the richest man in India’s son’s wedding, aka India’s Gilded Age Extravaganza at which Kim Kardashian wore red, which is kind of like wearing white at a Western wedding. Oof. Also: John Cena in his Schmidt from New Girl era.
Katy Perry, on the other hand, is in her hypocrisy era. She dropped her first single in four years, a song called “Woman’s World” that is supposed to be an “empowering anthem that celebrates women.” The problem? Well, other than that it’s just a lame song, she produced it with Dr. Luke, who has famously been accused by other women in the music industry of rape, abuse and assault. Katy committing what in sports is called an unforced error, or as Ben said: “It just seems so easy to NOT do that.”
NYC is now rolling out its first-ever official trash bins, leading New Yorkers to celebrate and the rest of the world reeling in horror and derision that we have not heretofore binned our trash but rather dumped it on the sidewalk in bags like it’s the Middle Ages and we’ve never heard of the Bubonic Plague.
Watching: Wicked Little Letters (A+)
A delightful little film! I watched it on a Delta flight and was shaking with laughter in my middle seat. The movie is loosely based on a true story set in 1920s Sussex, about a religious woman who starts receiving mysterious, profane, insulting letters in the mail and the fallout that sends an entire village into chaos. Premise = 10/10.
The cast is a veritable Who’s Who of British talent and all a joy to watch on screen doing their thing. Olivia Colman and Jessie Buckley in particular are queens of their craft. [They’ve been in the same movie at least once before, The Lost Daughter, where Buckley played a younger version of Colman in a story that was ostensibly about motherhood but not NOT about how hot Dakota Johnson is with butt-length hair.]
Wicked Little Letters isn’t brilliant or groundbreaking, but that’s not an insult. It’s just a silly, sly British romp about women’s rage and women’s relationships. A jolly bit of fun that never drags and will make you chuckle and leave you feeling light.
Content warning: As you can imagine from the premise and if you know anything about British swearing, don’t watch this if you can’t handle the c-word. lol
Seen it? Drop a comment!
Watching: Twisters (A+)
What do I require from a summer blockbuster? Honestly, not much: Throw in some jokes, look good in IMAX, don’t be boring. But a good summer blockbuster? It should have all that but then also have a cast of interesting characters, pretty actors glowing with on-screen charisma, emotional stakes, an engaging plot, great action sequences that are creative and not mind-numbing, and good pacing. Ideally, it should not be much longer than two hours.
Twisters did it all!
Twisters is instant movie canon; file it in the blockbuster lore. Bombastic, spectacular, rocks hard. Was the plot a little on the nose sometimes? Sure. Did the science seem pretty absurd? Totally.1 Did I need the bad guy who obviously didn’t care about people to say with his actual voice, “I don’t care about people”? Not really. But if you’ve found yourself thinking, “I just want a fun time at the movies again,” get thee to a Twisters. [That’s with an S for Super fun time.]
Honestly, I went in a little nervous. But I should’ve known it would have compelling stakes and characters I wanted to root for because the director is Lee Isaac Chung, who received a nomination for the exquisite Oscar-nominated film Minari. He knows how to do the human side, which is the part I was most unsure about going in, but totally delivered.
Glen Powell is stupendous here, of course, but can we also raise a glass to Daisy Edgar-Jones!? She’s tremendous. She did the emotional lifting of the movie, carried the heart of it and took it to a place that made it one that will, I think, last.
[Unfortunately the same can’t be said of her inconsistent hair in this film. Maybe I’m just a girl who has never dyed her hair — it’s hanging on by a thread as-is! — but one second she’s a platinum blonde, the next her roots have grown out halfway down, then she’s basically Targaryen again!? Is this how it works? Legitimately asking!]
I loved it and will probably watch it again. It’s what summer is for.
Reading
👉🏼 This awesome profile of Reed Timmer, a meteorologist and tornado chaser who Glen Powell’s character is loosely based on. You can check out his YouTube channel here.
👉🏼 This profile of Glen Powell in the Hollywood Reporter really gripped me a couple of months ago, and I refreshed myself this week: I love the details of his being discovered by Denzel and getting personal advice from the likes of Tom Cruise [but, Glen, please don’t go all Scientology on us!] and Matthew McConaughey [“Hollywood is the Matrix, man. You plug in and it’s all fake world.”] to living in a garage in a seedy part of LA, to how his mom is an extra in most of his films, to the failures and setbacks that almost knocked him totally off course. A fascinating story of stick-to-it-ive-ness.
👉🏼 This profile of Scarlett Johansson, which annoyed me by using the most predictable of female-celebrity-profile tropes, “she curled up on her couch with her bare feet tucked under her” [Is she a cat?? Are we feet fetish people???] but also delighted me by revealing she dated Jack Antonoff in high school [a producer for Taylor Swift and Lorde who looks like if Harry Potter was in math club] and that she goes to the supermarket in a ballcap all the time. Love her.
That’s all for this week, folks! Hope you get to spend time this week with something that delights you! Maybe family, maybe Wicked Little Letters, maybe Twister. I’d love to hear your thoughts and opinions, as always!
[Although they apparently really did their research and stuck to some good science where they could.]
I 100% googled "can astronauts have sex in space" after this newsletter. Both becuase I'm curious about those stuck at the space station, and also what those in the Mars simulator were up to. What I found most interseting about my search is that the auto-populated search actually was "Can astronauts DO sex in space...."
I went to see Twister in the theater when it came out. My friend's pitch, "You will believe that cows can fly." The film was a blast. I've seen it since and it was still fun. We probably need to see "Twisters" on a big screen.