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They Shoot Horses, Don't They? (1969)
They Shoot Horses, Don't They? (1969)
1969 | Drama
(0 Ratings)
Movie Favorite

"Once again, we see sex and death wed like chocolate and peanut butter. Jane Fonda looks like the angel of bitter, angry suicide girls before such girls were ever born. Bruce Dern plays the psycho hillbilly we loved him playing in ‘The Big Valley’ on television. Gig Young claws his way to the bottom of the bottom-feeders, winning the Oscar just before his own real-life suicide. Here’s my favorite “date movie” of all time."

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Awix (3310 KP) rated Vertigo (1958) in Movies

Feb 23, 2018  
Vertigo (1958)
Vertigo (1958)
1958 | Drama, Mystery
Mesmerising, deeply unconventional thriller about obsession and identity; confused people back in 1958 but is now regularly cited as one of the best movies ever made (possibly with good reason). Cop (Stewart) is obliged to retire due to fear of heights; gets another gig as guardian angel over a troubled young woman (Novak), finds himself falling for her.

The thing about Vertigo is that not very much seems to be happening the first time you watch it, certainly compared to a movie like North by Northwest. But in terms of the structure of the script, which is constantly looping back, foreshadowing, and echoing itself, everything is going on. Great, brave performances from the leads; not afraid to go into some very dark places; technically brilliant (of course).
  
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Jennifer Weiner recommended The Farm in Books (curated)

 
The Farm
The Farm
Joanne Ramos | 2019 | Contemporary, Fiction & Poetry
7.7 (3 Ratings)
Book Favorite

"A dystopian novel that feels like it could be happening today, where women who either can’t or won’t carry their own pregnancies rent the wombs of a hand-picked cohort of gestational surrogates, who spend their nine months being closely monitored in a posh resort that’s like Canyon Ranch meets the panopticon. The story follows Jane, a poor surrogate from the Philippines, desperate to obtain a better life for her daughter, and the women around her, from the older nanny who hooks her up with the gig to the wealthy young striver who dreamed up the business to a fellow surrogate who has reasons of her own for participating in the project. Nobody’s motives are pure and, when one of the surrogates threatens to expose the Farm, it turns out that the business of surrogacy is as complicated as motherhood itself."

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Gaz Coombes recommended World Music by Goat in Music (curated)

 
World Music by Goat
World Music by Goat
2012 | Alternative, Psychedelic
6.0 (2 Ratings)
Album Favorite

"I got into this a few years back when I was really getting going with the solo thing. I thought, “This is unusual.” It reminds me a bit of ESG. I really love that delivery – those female vocals that have a drive, power and confidence but are punk and not flying around everywhere. It’s edgy and cuts through in a really cool way. It’s so refreshing in these days of immediacy to hear something like this. I hear some debut EPs that sound like really expensive records and you think, “Where’s the growth coming from here?” When we first started out it was always about playing together ’cos there was no other option – I was too young to get a gig and I wasn’t allowed in venues – so you play, write, mess around and watch movies. There were no distractions, we were just a gang in a living room in front of an open fire, messing around. We did some quick bashed-out B-sides and ropey gigs but it was about the attitude. I wish I saw more uncertainty and vulnerability in young artists."

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Greatest Hits by Sly & The Family Stone
Greatest Hits by Sly & The Family Stone
1995 | Pop
8.0 (1 Ratings)
Album Favorite

"I’d just say Greatest Hits, if we’re making a list of albums to turn people on, a greatest hits will do fine. Some of that music I listened to when I was nine to thirteen did not stand the test of time, but Sly and the Family Stone is kind of ridiculous in how good it is. Songs, musicianship, just fucking weirdness, sound and ‘how the fuck’; again - as I was saying about 1999 – you’re just scratching your head, like, ""how did this happen?"" If you play in a band and you’re young and you haven’t listened to Sly and the Family Stone, then your band is gonna fucking suck [laughs]. Probably not a true statement, but to me it is. I grew up in the seventies so I’d hear these stories, like he didn’t turn up to his gig, he was four hours late to the gig... I mean they were huge but it was just willy nilly live. I would say the influences on my bass playing was a really wide thing, I didn’t really decide I was going to be a bass player until I was 19, 20. I was playing drums, I was playing guitar, I was playing bass and when I finally took that big step and said, ""okay, I’m going to be a bass player"" and I kind of melded a load of things together. The band Magazine, that bass sound with the chorus on the bass... it took me some years to work out that effect, 'cos I didn’t know much about effects in the eighties, but the sound you hear with Guns is really derived from listening to that first Magazine record, combined with first Sly and the Family Stone and Prince, with a real punk rock ethic underlining the whole thing."

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The More you Ignore me
Jo Brand | 2022
8
8.0 (1 Ratings)
Book Rating
31 of 230
Book
The more you ignore me
By Jo Brand
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Celebrity obsession, coming of age and cow shit - an hilarious, poignant and darkly comic novel by the Queen of Comedy.

Alice is a young girl growing up in a dysfunctional family in Herefordshire in the 1980s. Her mother is suffering a mental illness - she is on medication, is put away in an institution, but constantly escapes - while her father, Keith, very sweetly, tries to keep everything together. His in-laws, the Wildgooses, are a bunch of reckless, lawless country bumpkins and can offer very little help or sensible advice, preferring instead to remain in the pub or to use a shotgun to solve life's little problems. The only thing that gives meaning and hope to Alice as she makes her way through childhood, school and teenage trauma is her obsession with the singer Morrissey of The Smiths. She is desperate to see The Smiths at a live gig, but somehow her family always manages to derail her plans. Gradually her mother begins to share her fascination with the rock god and his presence in their lives goes someway to healing her and repairing her relationship with her long-suffering daughter.

This was really good! It was funny and darkly so. It follows the life of a young girl dealing with the effects her mothers mental illness has on her and her father. It’s has a dark underlay that as someone who struggles mentally I can relate too. So much better than I was expecting.
  
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Duff McKagan recommended Clash by The Clash in Music (curated)

 
Clash by The Clash
Clash by The Clash
1977 | Rock
8.6 (5 Ratings)
Album Favorite

"I got that record from my brother-in-law for Christmas - we have this huge family and so we were picking names from a hat and whoever you got the name of you bought a present for. My brother-in-law was this cool fucking dude who listened to college radio and he got me that first Clash record and I got to see them later that year so I guess it was Christmas 1978. We had the US version, it was just called The Clash with the green cover – you knew that if you were American, 'cos we were like, ""we cant get the real fucking English version"" - I mean they had it on import, but it was so expensive. I don’t know what my musical life would have been like if I didn’t get to see that gig. It was really exotic for that band to come and play Seattle. The whole Seattle community was there and it was probably only 200 people but it felt like everybody in the world was there. I remember there was this wooden barrier and this security guy in front of the pit who didn’t know how to deal with a punk rock audience, and he just decked this kid and broke his nose and The Clash just stopped the gig. And Paul Simonon or someone grabbed an axe and broke down the barrier! And I remember Joe Strummer saying, ""there’s no difference between us and you guys, these barriers and shit are separating us"", and it suddenly dawned on me. They were totally against the whole rock star thing, like there’s not us and there’s you, it was like we were all in this together. I guess I’d be lying if I said in the nineties I didn’t have… not ‘punk rock guilt’ exactly, but there would be a lot of bands that came up, like Soundgarden and Pearl Jam, there were guys who were in the punk rock scene and this was what was next, and as a young dude you feel a little guilty when you’re suddenly selling millions of records. But no-one sold their soul or changed their fucking tune, this was what evolved out of punk rock. Looking back it was a natural progression. Guns was a mix of a lot of different input, punk rock, seventies rock, and it was about doing something different and maybe that’s what punk rock sounded like at that point, I don’t know (laughs). I mean Guns was as DIY as it got, we would hitchhike 1,200 miles to get to a gig but we just went to the next level in getting a major label deal, that was the big change. But I took that ethic with me that Strummer had said. I don’t know any different, I’m honoured to be playing gigs and I’ve always paid tribute to that way of thinking."

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Playing with Matches
Playing with Matches
Hannah Orenstein | 2018 | Fiction & Poetry
7
6.5 (2 Ratings)
Book Rating
Good read, especially for those young & dating
Sasha Goldberg's plans as a writer are quickly derailed when her boss tells her he doesn't have the funds to hire her on after her graduation. She's stuck--in New York City--without a Plan B. When she sees a job listing for a matchmaker, she's intrigued. Sasha's secret is that her parents met through a kind of matchmaker: her father chose her mom through a catalog and paid for her to come to the United States from Russia. Of course, it didn't exactly work out (they're divorced), but Sasha uses the story to get hired on at Bliss, an exclusive NYC matchmaking service. She's hopeful the job will tide her over while she waits for a writing gig. And, she thinks, she has to know something about love, since she's successfully with her boyfriend, Jonathan, who works around-the-clock in his Wall Street gig. But matchmaking isn't as easy as it looks--it's a lot of stressful Tinder swiping and tracking down potential mates in random ways--and it becomes even more complicated when Sasha develops a crush on one of her client's matches. One of the firm's rules is that matches are off-limits. Sasha's struggling: can she keep it all together?

This is one of those books where I find myself going into it warily, because you just know things are going to come crashing down, and you (me) are not 100% sure you want to be there for all of it. It's not a secret (it's in the book description) that Sasha and Jonathan break up and that she gets into a relationship with Adam, one of her client's matches. For some reason, I often have an issue with these sorts of books where the character just makes bad choices: Sasha makes no attempt to avoid what will be an inevitable downfall with Adam, so I found myself cringing as she made a string of poor decisions.

That's not to say Sasha isn't an engaging character. This book is very readable, and I certainly liked Sasha and reading about her life. However, I can't lie:I probably am a little older than the target audience for this novel. It offers a fun and engaging look at the dating scene in New York, but there wasn't a lot I could relate to. I felt protective of Sasha, not empathetic to her, if that makes any sense. Honestly, the book just made me feel relieved I no longer have to date or deal with basically anything Sasha had to endure during the course of this novel.

Still, Orenstein does a good job at capturing Sasha's voice and what it's like to be a young twenty-something trying to survive in the city. Sasha's relationship with her best friend Caroline and her mom are well-done. I didn't think there was as much overall about matchmaking as a job as I'd hoped--it seemed to be a lot of Tinder swiping and chatting--so that was a little bit of a bummer, but there was enough to know it's a job I'd never want!

Overall, if you're young and still dating, you'll probably really enjoy this book--especially if you live in a city. If not, some of its essence may be a bit lost of you, but you'll still like Orenstein's witty writing and the arc of Sasha's struggles.

I received a copy of this novel from the publisher and Netgalley in return for an unbiased review (thank you!).
  
The Hacienda Classics by  Various Artists
The Hacienda Classics by Various Artists
2006 | Compilation, House
(0 Ratings)
Album Favorite

"When Oasis first started, very early on we used to cover ‘Feel The Groove’ by Cartouche. There’s a tape of that live gig knocking about somewhere. I was the dance music head in the group. I was into indie music like everyone else, New Order, The Smiths and then one night in 1987 someone took me to the Hacienda because I’d been reading about this music and I just stood there, drinking Colt 45, thinking 'Well, this is shit…' But then someone else took me the week after and said, 'Have one of these.' And put a little pill in my hand. And within an hour I thought that this music was the greatest thing that I’d ever heard in my entire fucking life. It was a life changing experience. The thing about the Hacienda was it was a superclub before superclubs existed. Acid house only lasted two years and that was it at its best. If you go to a club now you might as well be listening to the same song all night. Back then they played everything, hip hop, electro, acid house, techno and it was all mashed up. It was on your doorstep and full of people who were skint. It was only two quid to get in, they sold Rizla behind the bar so you could skin up and acid and Es were just entering the cultural stream. They were the best years of my life and probably every other day since I’ve thought, 'I wonder what those tunes were called?' Then I heard this album was coming out, I put it on at home and I was instantly transported back into that nightclub. And I thank the people who put this album out. It reminds me of great days when I was young and enjoying life to the full."

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Such a Fun Age
Such a Fun Age
Kiley Reid | 2019 | Fiction & Poetry
9
7.2 (5 Ratings)
Book Rating
Emira Tucker is a somewhat aimless twenty-five-year-old. While all her other friends have steady jobs, she's still on her parents' health insurance. Her main gig is working as a babysitter for Alix Chamberlain and her two young daughters. When Alix asks Emira to take two-year-old Briar to the grocery store one night, a security guard confronts Emira, accusing the black woman of kidnapping the young toddler. A group of shoppers gathers, someone films the incident, and Emira is angry and embarrassed. Alix feels like she has to make the incident right. Through the video, someone from Alix's past turns up, propelling Alix and Emira on a crazy collision course that will make them question each other and everything they know.

This was a fascinating book that was completely easy-to-read. Reid is a great writer, and I flew through this novel. It's a little difficult to review, but it's an incredibly thought-provoking book that focuses on so much: relationships, racial dynamics, social class, parenting, and more.

Reid's characters come to life before your eyes. I fell quickly for Emira, who seems to be floundering in her life. Everyone claims to know what is best for Emira, but once we get to know her, I found her to be an interesting character, who actually knows much more than anyone gives her credit for. Her love for Briar comes across loud and clear, too. Reid also does such a good job capturing Briar, an unique kid, and it's easy to see why Emira loves her so much.

This book is deep, even if the story flies by quickly. There's so much to unpack, especially with Alix, who thinks she so progressive, yet, well, isn't. Her obsession with Emira is completely baffling and once the second character comes in, post grocery store incident, we are constantly thrown back between Alix and them. Who do we trust? Why are these two vying for Emira? What I loved about this novel is that usually, one character ultimately proves to be good and another evil. That may not necessarily be the case here. As mentioned, there's so much nuance in Reid's writing.

I flew through this book, and I found myself completely caught up in Emira, Alix, and even Briar's world. I may not have entirely grasped everything I should have, but I found it moving, timely, and beautifully written. Honestly, I would have loved to see more of Emira's life (and Briar's). This is a different sort of novel, but I found it worth a read. Reid is a wonderful writer, and I'm excited to see what she comes up with next. 4.5 stars