My October Challenge 2022

I'd actually be more interested in hearing your thoughts on Blonde, assuming you've watched it by now.  I thought it was well-directed and acted, with pretty lush cinematography, but that it could accurately be described as "misery porn".  I'm inclined to believe Norma Jeane had a little more light in her life than was conveyed in this picture.

Haha, I didn't even realize that Marvel had released two horror-themed productions this year. (Three if you count Morbius, but please don't count Morbius.)

I will actually take the not-particularly-bold stance and say that I found Werewolf by Night to be the best MCU product of 2022, not that the competition has been particularly strong. Interesting that Michael Giacchino, so long known as the go-to music man for big-budget Hollywood, knows how to frame a shot and stage an action scene better than a lot of MCU directors. But it seems like you weren't impressed?

Disney use practical effects? In 2022? Next thing you're gonna expect the Rescue Rangers movie to render their 2D-animated lead character with actual 2D animation.

Very fond, as it emerges. It's a real sort of deep-dive film, something of a refresher in comparison to a lot of films that have only dealt with Marilyn in a very off-hand and spectatorish way, proving nothing immersive and rewarding to folks who have really done their homework on her (personally I was really pleased with moments like being able to identify an in media res shot from Don't Bother to Knock long before the film clarifies what it's recreating).

Given that Monroe is almost now a touchstone for the 'status' of actresses in Hollywood, I felt it evokes the Marlowe quote later tattooed on Angelina Jolie's stomach: "That Which Nourishes Me Also Destroys Me", because Blonde's kaleidoscopic editing style crashes together scenes of Marilyn getting touched up on the casting couch with a similar moment in All About Eve to screaming her guts out at Method school, contrasting her personal demons with her characters (masks, if you will) and the sort of roles she wouldn't really get to play until her swansong in The Misfits. This suspension if disbelief is key to scenes like her finding the tiger teddy in the street; a filmic cliché but given vitality given how her 'real' life became indistinguishable from her roles, such was the necessity to 'be' Marilyn whenever she wasn't alone and reading a book, for example.

Interestingly I felt like Dominik was perhaps contemptuous of most of Marilyn's filmography (or at least her roles within them), which is an interesting slant on most biopics which seek to exemplify their subject's talents. It's true that this makes the film somewhat relentless in its sequencing of disappointment and trauma, but it does so by arresting cinematic means; Marilyn's new hairdo is revealed to the audience via a reflection in Arthur Miller's glasses, her imagined father's voice overlays her beating at the hands of "Daddy" DiMaggio, the blossoms of blood that express her miscarriage and the subsequent confusion that carries over on the set of Some Like It Hot and the ugly, braying faces of the lustful paparazzi.

I do feel it makes some forceful missteps, like having her vomit directly into camera and correlating JFK's orgasm with a shot from Invasion of the Flying Saucers, but for the most part I felt this was a tour-de-force, with that one shot of the elephant door almost filling the frame one of the best images of the year. I'm reminded of Anthony Summers' quote that pretty much sums it up on an experiential level: "In fantasy, Marilyn was now wedded to all America. In the real world, she was a shipwreck in the arms of many, with a baseball champion for sheet anchor".

The [●REC] series aside, I've maintained since Blair Witch that found footage is really just an excuse for bad cinematography. Even Bernard Rose couldn't make anything but an atrocity from the format.

Oh, I was just trying to link to another Turn of the Screw adaptation from 1999 called Presence of Mind, which was equally insipid.