Shang-Chi, End Times, & What to Think About Donda

What I'm Reading, Watching, & Listening To This Week

Hello and welcome to the end times.

[Was that too melodramatic? Let me start over.]

A miracle has occurred! [See, I’m giving it a positive spin now!] Leftist Twitter and the Far-Right Religious Conspiracy Theorists are finally aligned on one shared idea — it is in fact the End Times!

Personally I don’t actually think it’s the end times, but what do I know other than 20 years of intense training in Biblical Eschatology. But damn if this week hasn’t been a DOOZY for those of us who continue to stubbornly insist the world isn’t collapsing for good. [Just slowly from climate change.]

It’s possible I’m feeling more End-Timesy myself because Ida poked holes in my roof. And you can turn up your nose at cosmic death and judgment all you want but it gets a tiny bit harder when you’re standing under a leak in your kitchen wondering about your insurance policy and how fast mold grows.

In the meantime, as we prepare for the apocalypse, here’s how you can help your neighbors:

• Cajun Navy Relief

• HandsOn New Orleans

• Second Harvest Food Bank of New Orleans

• Bless Your Heart Louisiana (supports the smaller communities that were hit hardest in South Louisiana—Lafourche, Terrebonne, and Jefferson Parishes)

• City Relief for NYC and New Jersey areas

• The Bowery Mission for NYC

Okay! Here’s what I’m consuming this week.

In the [Less Doomscroll-y] News

• The Blue Dress: Remember how I asked if anyone could find a cheaper version of Zoe Kravitz’s incredible blue dress she wore while cavorting around NYC with her new BF Channing Tatum? Well, one of you delivered!! Thanks, Asa!!!

• Mindy Kaling did a cooking video where she made a curry sauce from apples, celery, and other healthy stuff and I tried the recipe and it’s official, I’m a gourmet now! The recipe is from NYT Cooking and is one of their “easy” rated ones, which are the only ones Yours Truly will attempt. Also goddess Padma Lakshmi said to substitute curry powder with sambar powder and yes we of course did as she told us. Highly recommend.

• ABBA [yes, THAT ABBA !], Lady Gaga, and Charli XCX all released new music within hours of each other this week and gay Twitter and TikTok are openly weeping.

Watching — Movies in Movie Theaters!

First of all: I LOVE BEING BACK IN MOVIE THEATERS!!!!!

If you live in NYC and you haven’t been to the Cinépolis Chelsea, are you even living? This place has EVERYTHING—reclining leather seats with little arm tables! AC! canned wine! mini bottles of Prosecco! beer on tap! nachos! clean bathrooms! no crowds! mostly working escalators! Is this what the movies are like everywhere else in America??? Other NYC movie theaters feel like bedbug-ridden radioactive fallout zones where screaming children throw iPads and empty popcorn containers blow around like tumbleweeds. [It’s great here, we love it, we’re all fine here.]

Here are the movies I’ve watched this week:

Free Guy:

Don’t @me but my favorite movie in theaters so far in 2021 has been Free Guy, during which I smiled for 1 hour and 55 minutes straight. [Even for me, that’s a long time to smile.] If you like any of these things you will love this movie — Ryan Reynolds, Jodie Comer, Ready Player One, Taika Waititi, laughing, having a nice time, enjoying yourself, Channing Tatum cameos, sexy hair guy from Stranger Things, “Fantasy” by Mariah Carey, “Make Your Own Kind of Music,” or rom coms with great sidekicks.

Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings:

[Is it just me or does it feel like there’s one too many “the”s in the title?? Also hard to remember the number of rings?? I blame JRR Tolkien for the latter.]

WOW! It wasn’t a perfect movie, but some parts of it really transcended for me.

First, it matters because Shang-Chi [“shong chee”] is the first Asian superhero in the MCU and the movie features an almost all Asian cast. Representation matters! It also felt like less of a superhero movie and more like a cultural myth spanning generations of family trauma and loss. The flashbacks worked so well for me. I liked that it felt so DIFFERENT from other Marvel enterprises, much like Black Panther did. And, as a person with an extremely short attention span for fight scenes who also gets all the Captain Vanilla America movies mixed up, that freshness is WELCOME.

Highlights:

• Tony Leung made the movie for me. He’s a superstar in Hong Kong film, though less familiar to Westerners. He played Shang-Chi’s father and the film’s antagonist, who is apparently reduced to a racist charicature in the comics. Not so in the film! He delivered the most nuanced, weighty, AND unhinged performance of the movie or maybe of any Marvel villain. He was the gravitational center of the movie, playing “Big Bad” with a different kind of motive — desperate, clawing loss. Welcome to the pantheon of great literary antagonists, King!

• The dragon. Sorry. — SPOILER ALERT — The dragon. In our post-Game of Thrones world, I honestly thought we had reached dragon saturation! You’ve seen a dozen dragons you’ve seen them all, right?? WRONG!! This dragon was visually ENTHRALLING. So much of this movie was like a choreographed dance. I learned that in Chinese myth, dragons are associated with water, not fire, and the movie played with movement and imagery so beautifully.

• The fight scene on the bus. I like SOME fight scenes, guys! I’m a cool girl!

• The disgusting monsters at the end. [We’ve discussed how much I like gross monsters.]

Overall, it was a spectacle that missed some beats for me, but left me in the end with emotional resonance and two credit scenes which is exactly what we paid for.

Listening - Donda (kind of)

This section is subtitled: “I Have Mixed Feelings and You’re Gonna Hear About Them!!!”

Kanye’s 10th studio album, Donda, came out this past Sunday and, Reader, I listened to all two hours of it and I am still confused!!

The real story behind Donda is the complete chaos and controversy around its release. It got delayed multiple times, includes some pretty controversial featured artists, and finally dropped unexpectedly on the morning of the 16th anniversary of Hurricane Katrina on the day Hurricane Ida hit, and did I mentioned it has a track called “Hurricane”!? What the hell is going on!??? Oh, and all this only a few days prior to Drake’s planned release of HIS new album. So that’s a drama in the making.

The Good: “Donda” is named after Kanye’s mother who passed away in 2007 and it includes reflections on loss, activism, and grace. I liked “Jail,” “Believe What I Say,” “Moon,” “Jesus Lord,” and “Come to Life.”

The Bad: When he did a release party in Chicago, he invited Da Baby and Marilyn Manson on stage with him. Both are embroiled in their own separate controversies, but for Manson it’s a criminal controversy involving serious abuse allegations from multiple women. And turns out they’re both featured in the album credits, as is Chris Brown who has a troubling history of assault. [For whatever reason, it’s the Manson thing that I can’t get past.]

After listening to the nearly two-hour run of Donda, I felt like Kanye was using those guest artists to try to say something about personal failure, self-searching and repentance, and forgiveness. But in my opinion the album ultimately fails because it missed that idea in the middle — self-searching and repentance. If you want those themes done better, try literally any of Kanye’s other albums.

A music critic for The Atlantic wrote my favorite review of the album and sums it up like this: “On Donda, the rapper conveys all the imagery of surrender, but little of the weight.”

Looking At - Fashion in Venice

In the past few weeks, the elite of Hollywood and the fashion industry have descended upon the barely-floating city of Venice and the outfits are ~*~*~dazzling~*~*~.

• One of the events was the Dolce & Gabbana Fashion Show. We’ve talked about being on the outs with D&G before. But I admit I clicked a LOT of links to see what people were wearing, but the main one you can’t miss is Ms Jennifer Lopez.

• But let’s move on! The next big event was the Venice Film Festival! Red carpets abound!! Zendaya looked completely drenched in water and obviously that was very sexy! Maggie Gyllenhaal continued to be our fashion icon for comfy clothes that don’t totally work!

Enjoy this full roundup of the Venice Film Festival Red Carpet .

Reading - Eating Crawfish in Breaux Bridge, Louisiana, The New Yorker

The most recent issue of The New Yorker reprinted the best food-related stories from their history. This one from 1972 had me ROLLING, and it was such a perfect encapsulation of the place where I’m from. I highly recommend the read if you have time for a long article!

“The Cajun parishes of Louisiana constitute just about the only section of the United States in which good food is taken as the norm in any kitchen; I once asked a serious New Orleans eater who was familiar with the area where I should eat while staying in Iberia Parish, and he said, ‘Anywhere.’”

Celebrate Louisiana’s spirit and read it here.

As always, please share your thoughts, recommendations, disagreements with everything I say, and feelings from the week!