unsilence

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As the waves of The Unfuckening have leveled off to calmer waters of promising I appear – if this morning is more than the exception – to have regained my ability to listen to music while working (Radigue's L'ILLE RESONANTE and Colin Stetson's score to THE MENU FTW) and, while I'm not discounting the potential that it will all fall apart again, I will gladly accept the tiny victory – no matter how fleeting.

Also: my main social/fedi posting app, Linky, has updated to allow crossposting to both Mastodon and Bluesky so now I can take an even more hands-off approach to the latter more in line with its current value.

The day ahead: food, weights, boxing, more words, yoga, more food, hospital/visit, potential annoyance, more or less in that order.

THE MENU (Mark Mylod, 2022)

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(Directed by Mark Mylod from a script by Seth Rice and Will Tracy; starring Anya Taylor-Joy, Ralph Fiennes, Hong Chau, Nicholas Holt, John Leguizamo, Judith Light, Janet McTeer, Reed Birney, Paul Adelstein, and Aimee Carrero. Released 18 November 2022; watched 2023w35 via Max)

A deliciously horrific (dark, dark dark) comedy-of-manners (think Renoir's RULES OF THE GAME if Octave went all Count Zarnoff ) meets excoriation of a CHEF'S TABLE culture that takes the love out of that most primal of arts – though it could be applied to any art, really – and in whose gut, as Ralph Fiennes's executive-chef-cum-cult-leader Julian so aptly puts it, that art becomes shit.

With the exception of the (apparent? I'm not discounting that I may have misread the final scene and relish the chance to revisit at some point) turn in the remaining diners' attitudes at the final course – I couldn't tell if it was acceptance or resignation or conversion or all (or none) of the above – feeling more than a bit like a switch flipped (had it been seeded throughout, perhaps that would have worked better; as it was, the totality of "The Menu" and its attendant punishments didn't feel as complete as it could have had total conversion to Julian's perspective been achieved – in my eyes, it didn't go far enough (which probably says more about me than the film itself)), THE MENU ranks among my favorite recent releases – so much so that It's now the second film (the first being PARASITE) that I purchased on Blu-Ray midway through my first viewing.

Indeed: as PARASITE did for peaches, THE MENU does for s'mores.

jumbled

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Being the state of my brain at present: wires have a tendency to cross and short when I know I have to be somewhere later in the day – no matter how far off the anointed time – and they are, indeed, crossed and shorted: MainThing suffering or at least I'm feeling MainThing's unwillingness to budge with more acuity.

Mutually assured destruction via staring contest(?)

Not that I'm not looking forward to the appointment – it's the interaction, even with people that are dear to me, that I'm not looking forward to. Need to recharge with no potential for that in sight. Tired of everything, tired of everyone.

(AKA Tuesday.)

Fortunately, Colin Stetson's score to THE MENU (PostScript on that bit of filmic brilliance coming soon) is playing so at least there's that.