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Author: Alex Daily

The Locksmith

Posted on by Alex Daily

This anecdote originally appeared as my Letterboxd review of Wes Anderson’s The Rat Catcher.

My neighbour had locked himself out, no phone, no keys, so he knocked on my door to ask to use my phone to call his friend who, one, had his spare key, and two, was apparently in the Phantom Zone, seen recently by half the city and yet totally unreachable.

So we called a locksmith, just the top result in the search engine of your choice, who was here as fast as he could have been, and instantly jimmied his way in with some WD-40, a sheet of plastic, a rope, and my door as a cheat sheet.

Which we both found incredibly impressive — I applauded without prompting, which I never do — and also, our human doors might as well not be there for this man, nay, ghost.

Anyway, the rat catcher here looks like an English version of the locksmith, which is why I’m sharing that story here in this review in lieu of struggling to find something to say about this one. It’s good, it’s like the other Wes Anderson Roald Dahl shorts.

The locksmith was a lot nicer than this rat catcher, though. There was a fistbump.

The Bowl of Petunias (IV)

Posted on by Alex Daily

Thirty seconds after the age of magic came to an abrupt end, the City of the Golden King hit the ground. No, that was inaccurate. What it hit was the New Bureau of Access, the tiny little office that operated the flying chair used to send people up to the City of the Golden King one at a time.

The thing about this mode of entry into the City of the Golden King was, it made it pretty hard to invade it from the ground. The other thing was, it made it pretty hard to leave. Which meant that, for the most part, people increasingly didn’t. A visiting family member here, a member of law enforcement there. Ten people made a busy week. And so, the job of Director of the New Bureau of Access had, over time, become pretty lonely. So when Fred Patricide, on the occasion of her fifteenth anniversary on the job, took her first ever off-site break, she felt pretty much just… fine about it. There were no flights scheduled until well into the afternoon, the office could do without her for 45 minutes.

And so it did, for every single one of those minutes until the 41st, at which point the glass bottom of the City of the Golden King tore through every single plank, every single little window, every single shred, of the New Bureau of Access. And when the glass bottom was done, the brick foundation came in to smash what was left to a pulp that the… smears would never even reach.

People would go on to call Fred, inaccurately, the “sole survivor.”

So You Want To Watch The “Ring” Movies (Part One, 1995-2000)

Posted on by Alex Daily

I watch a lot of movies. On average, about 400 a year. That makes it very easy to just say, okay, I’ll watch all 20 movies in this franchise. I am, of course, aware of two things. One, most people are simply not like this. And two, I have a tactical advantage over those people which they can benefit from.

Whether you go in chronological or release order — maybe you do Machete Order, you do you — everyone knows about the various ways in which to watch Star Wars. We all understand that if you really wanna keep up with the MCU you should probably just watch it all, but if you just wanna watch what you need for the next movie, you’re probably good with three movies and three Disney+ shows, all of which have their own prerequisites and– Okay, yeah, cripes, that’s a mess. But most movie franchises are not that complicated.

Which brings me to the Ring movies. At 26 movies — including Ju-On, which I don’t even get into here yet, and the various international versions, but not even counting the short films or the weird Chinese crossovers, unofficial sequels, Bunshinsaba… — I can imagine “most people” who might want to watch these will want to know what chaff to cut.

This is part one, covering the six Ring films released in the 1995-2000 period. Ju-On also starts in 2000, but I think this is a clean enough block to write up on its own. Part two, when I get there.

Here are the six films I’ll be covering below the fold:

  • The 1995 Ring TV movie, also known by its home video title Ring: Kanzenban (or, Ring: The Complete Edition.)
  • The 1998 Ring film, its original sequel Spiral (or, Rasen,) its replacement sequel Ring 2, and the prequel film Ring 0: Birthday.
  • The 1999 South Korean film The Ring Virus.

Continue reading “So You Want To Watch The “Ring” Movies (Part One, 1995-2000)”

Sunday #4: Stress Edition

Posted on by Alex Daily

Another destructively long Monday. I can’t keep Sundaying about how long my Mondays are, yeesh.

Still kinda stressing about having to actually teach an art history class, but I think– no, I know that’s just New Situation Stress, not I Can’t Do This Stress. My Tuesdays have expanded, too — lots of cycling all over town. Good for my thigh muscles, but my knees are protesting. Really running into my own limits at Music class.

I’ve generally turned my disdain of kids around pretty well, I think kids are funny, I can work with kids just fine. But you hate to see a kid hold up a picture of a normatively attractive lady on their phone and ask another kid “smash or pass.” That’s truly just– That’s no good, y’all.

Broke my blogging streak this week, because school, but also because the writing I did do isn’t finished yet or requires additional research — I feel like I rushed the Rogers: The Musical piece, and, look, streaks, yes, but quality over quantity, more yes.

I’ve called this one “Stress Edition” in the hopes that next week won’t be “Stress Edition.”

Below the fold: Small website notes, some media bits and bobs.

Continue reading “Sunday #4: Stress Edition”

“Then… we go… and kick its arse!”

Posted on by Alex Daily

I thought maybe I’d write something about the new Doctor Who trailer, but it appears I am as of yet still not capable of Being Normal about Doctor Who Being Good again,1Christ, it better be. so I’ll just leave it at the following sincerely held belief I didn’t know I felt this strongly about four hours ago:

They should let Donna drop an F-bomb.

EDIT: Okay, this is low effort microblogging even by my standards. Here’s some thoughts.

  • The line about kicking its ass really is the bit that just made me cry, but in that specific way the Matrix Resurrections trailer scored with White Rabbit made me cry? It just activated me, like the part of me that’s incapable of Being Normal about Doctor Who was somewhere inside as a sleeper agent, waiting for Donna to go kick an ass.
  • So does Kate just get things picked up by chopper all the time, or is that a service she reserves just for Dr Who.
  • In an era where the show very frequently gets ahead of leaks by just dropping a press release, it took them so long to confirm who Neil Patrick Harris is playing that I’d assumed it wasn’t the obvious character, but okay, there we go.
    • And part of why I’d assumed he was playing somebody else is that RTD has occasionally mentioned wanting the BBC to show relevant stories from ’69-’89 when they, say, bring old characters back, and this is the one story that somebody says the N-word in, so, you know, I’d assumed it wasn’t high on the list. (And also it’s mostly missing.)
  • All of this really feels like the 2008 series, Part Deux, and I continue to hope that’s the stunt to draw us all back in and not how the next full series feels.
  • I remember when UNIT’s HQs were secret offices instead of Avengers Tower.
  • Lotta people clamouring for an airdate — we never know this until about two weeks ahead of time.
  • 1
    Christ, it better be.

The Bowl of Petunias (III)

Posted on by Alex Daily

They1Who? say it’s best to parody yourself before somebody else can.2Oh, me.

Johnny Nightmailman3You know, of the Upper Noxalia Nightmailmans. is not Mondo Goodbody in many of the ways a person could not be Mondo Goodbody. Johnny Nightmailman4The Nightmailman family is both widely known and well respected, though Johnny, as far as he knows, is the only member of his family to live in the City of the Golden King since his aunt, Rowena Nightmailwoman moved away to take care of her own auncle, Patr Nightmaildeliveryemployee. is not a carpenter. Johnny Nightmailman5Johnny Nightmailman’s father, John Nightmailman, once called it the City of the Golden King the Flying King’s Folly. After today, he will never call it anything else. does not carve wooden ducks, or even know about birds, really.6Fuck, do you know how hard it is not to know about birds when you live in a flying city? Johnny Nightmailman7The Nightmailman family made its significant fortune several hundred years ago when its then-patriarch, Ronny Daymailman, decided on a whim to lie about why he’d overslept. wasn’t even awake8He was the opposite: Asleep. when the City of the Golden King fell. This was the case because Johnny Nightmailman9You know, Johnny Nightmailman. was a man of the night. And not for the reasons his family name might suggest.10A member of the Nightmailman family was no longer expected to work as a nightmailman, and Johnny Nightmailman was ill-suited to the executive offices.

Because Johnny Nightmailman11Who was very happily employed by a legal firm as an interpreter of several lesser-known languages and dialects, including Second English, Mmm, Endee, Dendagon Coverup, and and whatever the hell it is they speak over on Snork. liked to walk. Hundreds of years of nightly mail delivery, and then another hundred of executive walk-and-talks, Johnny Nightmailman12Whose great-great-great grandfather once walked for six months to deliver a package to a man who died two months after he left. liked to joke, did that to your genetics. He couldn’t help himself. At least once a day, Johnny Nightmailman13An only child if ever there was one. walked the total circumference of the City of the Golden King. Now, the City of the Golden King was not that big. It was no Old Needle,14Old Needle used to be called just The Needle, and was called that for having been built in the long, long stretch of liveable land between an active volcano and the Ice Flats of Bun. But with the volcano extinguished and the Ice Flats shaved too thin, The Needle got the chance to expand into something nobody reasonable still wanted to call The Needle. But what else to call it? You know how it goes. it was no Chiro,15Nobody remembered why it was called that. no City in the Flaw,16Everyone knew exactly why it was called that. no Apotheosity.17Apotheocity? But a city was a city, and Johnny Nightmailman had seen every floating cobblestone of this one. Johnny Nightmailman’s friends sometimes joked that if he could fly, he’d use that ability to see some of the cobblestones he’d missed and then go back to walking. That he wouldn’t know what the point was, what to do with it. Straight back to the ground. But a self-imposed mandatory daily two-hour walk did things to your schedule, to your rhythm, so the walking shifted to the night, and so Johnny Nightmailman, interpreter, nightly mail delivery heir, and walker was asleep when the City of the Golden King fell.

Twenty seconds after the birds noticed, Johnny Nightmailman18Whose family would, they would come to realise, not particularly miss him. was awake as quickly as he’d ever been. And in the one way in which Johnny Nightmailman was like Mondo Goodbody, he did think he was flying. And so all he could think when he realised he wasn’t was, “Well, that makes sense.”

  • 1
    Who?
  • 2
    Oh, me.
  • 3
    You know, of the Upper Noxalia Nightmailmans.
  • 4
    The Nightmailman family is both widely known and well respected, though Johnny, as far as he knows, is the only member of his family to live in the City of the Golden King since his aunt, Rowena Nightmailwoman moved away to take care of her own auncle, Patr Nightmaildeliveryemployee.
  • 5
    Johnny Nightmailman’s father, John Nightmailman, once called it the City of the Golden King the Flying King’s Folly. After today, he will never call it anything else.
  • 6
    Fuck, do you know how hard it is not to know about birds when you live in a flying city?
  • 7
    The Nightmailman family made its significant fortune several hundred years ago when its then-patriarch, Ronny Daymailman, decided on a whim to lie about why he’d overslept.
  • 8
    He was the opposite: Asleep.
  • 9
    You know, Johnny Nightmailman.
  • 10
    A member of the Nightmailman family was no longer expected to work as a nightmailman, and Johnny Nightmailman was ill-suited to the executive offices.
  • 11
    Who was very happily employed by a legal firm as an interpreter of several lesser-known languages and dialects, including Second English, Mmm, Endee, Dendagon Coverup, and and whatever the hell it is they speak over on Snork.
  • 12
    Whose great-great-great grandfather once walked for six months to deliver a package to a man who died two months after he left.
  • 13
    An only child if ever there was one.
  • 14
    Old Needle used to be called just The Needle, and was called that for having been built in the long, long stretch of liveable land between an active volcano and the Ice Flats of Bun. But with the volcano extinguished and the Ice Flats shaved too thin, The Needle got the chance to expand into something nobody reasonable still wanted to call The Needle. But what else to call it? You know how it goes.
  • 15
    Nobody remembered why it was called that.
  • 16
    Everyone knew exactly why it was called that.
  • 17
    Apotheocity?
  • 18
    Whose family would, they would come to realise, not particularly miss him.

“Rogers: The Musical”: I have some questions

Posted on by Alex Daily

I was recently reminded that the Disney park in California actually put on a 45-minute version of the Rogers: The Musical scenes from Hawkeye, so I watched first the first performance, and then the last performance of it. Turns out that if it happens in a Disney park you can probably find a high-quality recording of it on YouTube.

I like Rogers: The Musical as the goofy thing it is, which is a supposedly in-universe Hamilton-ising of Steve Rogers’ story. It starts off fairly faithful to the movies, and then as it goes on gets, as seen in Hawkeye, increasingly inaccurately silly. (It’s pretty clear the whole thing is engineered around the song we saw in Hawkeye.) And then it starts raising questions it doesn’t have answers to. Because where Alexander Hamilton is long dead, just another dead guy in history, Steve Rogers and his coworkers are… not.

A short note on chronology

Both versions I’ve watched present what you’re about to see, in the grand tradition of place-based theme park chronology, as the world premiere of Rogers: The Musical, which means, in theory, you’re watching the exact 19 December 2024 premiere performance Clint attends in Hawkeye.1Hawkeye 1×01: “Never Meet Your Heroes” (2021)

Let’s just get into it: What exactly is this based on?

Steven Grant Rogers was enough of a public figure and then, with the SSR, surrounded by enough historically notable people, that the WW2 section of the story is easy enough to source from what we can easily imagine are several history books and biographies that broadly speaking agree with each other. This is what he was like as a youth, how he came to join Abraham Erskine’s Project Rebirth, how he saved the Howling Commandoes. Rogers was a living legend before he went into the ice, and it’s easy to imagine something akin to the Chernow Hamilton coming out between 2011, when Fury pulls him back out,2Captain America: The First Avenger (2011) and 2016, when Rogers, together with his co-conspirators Wanda Maximoff, Natasha Romanoff, and Sam Wilson go into hiding after falling out of favour with the United States government.3Captain America: Civil War (2016)

It’s the rest of the story that’s harder to justify a source for. Sure, the SHIELD leak and its presumably extremely public dissemination through journalism and government hearings4Captain America: The Winter Soldier (2014) covers the Battle of New York,5The Avengers (2012) and a lot of other stuff that’s skipped over in the Save the City montage, which is presumably how the musical knows about Steve’s list, though I think that’s weirdly personally specific, and about Fury being there when he woke up. Fury is a known figure in the world by 2024, but his notorious shadowyness will be why they don’t have much to work with for his actual personality and go for “sassy” instead. There’s probably another book out there in the world that you can get this from.

But then it gets really messy. Obviously Ant-Man was not at the Battle of New York. But Fury also rambles off, in 2011, years before most of these people join or even get their powers, but okay, whatever, a whole Avengers roster. Let’s go through them one by one.

  • “A Panther in Wakanda.” Sure, T’Challa’s association with the Avengers is presumably just a known fact.
  • “A Sokovian named Wanda.” As far as the public is concerned, the way she dealt with Crossbones’ attack in Lagos is the reason for the Sokovia Accords6Captain America: Civil War (2016) and after that she breaks out of the Raft and becomes an international fugitive. Footage probably exists of her fighting alongside the Avengers at Novi Grad and at the Battle of Earth. I’ll accept it, but it’s a little weird.
  • “A Star who is a planet’s son.” There’s genuinely no way Peter Quill is a known entity on Earth or that anyone knows he’s Ego’s son. The same is true for the rest of the Guardians — at most I’m willing to accept people know about “the tree and the raccoon who were there at the Battle of Earth.”
  • I can’t quite make out the line, “An AI who ran his own” something, but Vision. About as believable as Wanda, sure.
  • Spider-Man. Sure, the world’s knowledge of Peter Parker was erased ~10 days before this,7Spider-Man: No Way Home (2021) but we know about Spider-Man.
  • “A lawyer who can’t really see.” Matt’s identity is not public knowledge as far as I know.
  • “A raccoon and a talking tree.” Like I said.
  • War Machine. Doctor Strange. Sure, these are probably public enough figures.

This all works just fine in our universe, but not really in theirs. To the Alex Daily of Earth-199999, these would be ridiculous allegations or revelations. People who know Matt make jokes, right, but there’s not that many blind lawyers associated with the Avengers8Spider-Man: No Way Home (2021), and people make jokes about Matt, sure, but we just don’t know some of this stuff. I can’t possibly justify a source for biographical details about Star-Lord.

The Save the City montage then rambles through a bunch of the big fights. These are all public knowledge. But is Steve’s use of the Time Stone to go back first to Peggy and then to make sure he does that a thing the public knows about? Nobody’s even really there to witness this conversation. Jim Barnes and Sam Wilson are aware of the broad facts of it, but why would they ever go on the record about this anywhere? As far as the Alex Daily of Earth-199999 would be concerned, Captain America simply hasn’t been seen since shortly after the Battle of Earth. Not that weird, he’s still legally an international fugitive.

Some of these details are on the level of, everyone involved must’ve been keeping detailed journals, but when would those even have been released? It’s December of 2024, it hasn’t even been that long since the Battle of Earth.

Conclusion

The idea of a Hamilton-analogous Rogers: The Musical is fun. These are public figures in this fictional world, they’d have certain cultural positions. But Steve Rogers was an international fugitive like ten months before this moment. If that position has changed, we don’t know about it. It’s weird to make a pretty hagiographic musical about this dude at this moment in time, right? It’s weird.

So here’s the only reasonable conclusion I can come to. From statues of mass murderer Confederates to a recent President currently out on bail, America has always had an element of, let’s call it, a willingness or even a desire to admire or worship the worst of itself. On Earth-19999, in December of 2024, based on Rogers: The Musical‘s relationship to the reality of Earth-199999, I posit to you that Steve Rogers might be who that admiration is currently predominantly aimed at. There might be Rogers Republicans, a CapAnon movement. HYDRA-emblazoned “SHIELD Lives Matter” stickers on pick-up trucks.

Which means the reason Clint is the only Avenger attending opening night is he’s the Republican Avenger. Oof, yikes. Couldn’t be me, Clint. Fix your heart, man.

  • 1
    Hawkeye 1×01: “Never Meet Your Heroes” (2021)
  • 2
    Captain America: The First Avenger (2011)
  • 3
    Captain America: Civil War (2016)
  • 4
    Captain America: The Winter Soldier (2014)
  • 5
    The Avengers (2012)
  • 6
    Captain America: Civil War (2016)
  • 7
    Spider-Man: No Way Home (2021)
  • 8
    Spider-Man: No Way Home (2021)

Review: “Dogman” (2023)

Posted on by Alex Daily

Cross-posted from Letterboxd and Mastodon.

See, this is why you go to Sneak Preview. Most of the time it’s Bank of Dave or The Courier, but then every now and then it’s something you didn’t know existed and that hits you just right.

Sneak Preview was 2023’s Dogman.

After a brief worry that the picture would be Super Transphobic — you never know with these things, you gotta be careful — it instead turns into a glorious portrait of a beautiful, complex character, the titular Dogman, played by Caleb Landry Jones.

He’s called that, you see, because he has A Lot Of Dogs. And over those dogs he has an amount of easy control that borders on a psychic power. And that gets… a little silly sometimes? But even at its silliest — his beautiful drag performances are just voiced by real tape of the singers he’s dressed at — it manages to land as something very sincere, very beautiful.

If I have any issues with this one, it’s, well, the character uses a wheelchair, and Hollywood is often a little weird about how it depicts that. It might be a little weird here, depending on where your sensibilities lie in that regard.

The same is true for the ways in which this is queer — it might just land differently on you than it did on me, and that’s fine.

It’s also, in the end, unfortunately, forced to conform to the shape of a modern crime film — and as much as I think the climactic Dark “Home Alone”-esque violence is a hoot of a sequence, I think something lower scale might have suited the rest of the film better.

I think when this actually comes out you’re gonna see a VERY wide range of opinions. A lot of them are gonna be bad opinions. Mine might be one of those!

But by Dog, I thought that was terrific. Beautiful. Gorgeous. A masterpiece I’ll think about for a long time.

Dogman did nothing wrong. Long live Dogman. Dogman — forever.

On streaking.

Posted on by Alex Daily

It’s true. I’m a streaker.

There are certain activities I like to do every day. One way or another, I count how many days in a row I’ve done them.

There’s the movies, obviously. I broke my summer-long daily streak with the first killer Monday this year, and I’m probably just gonna surrender to that Monday going forward, so it’s gonna top out at 6 days in a row for the rest of the year. That’s fine, I still watch way more than one a day on average, and my Letterboxd stats define a streak as once a week, so at 185 and counting, I’m good.1I do also get bummed out if I miss Sneak Preview, but that’s a few Tuesdays a month, not every day.

There’s the phone games. I play all the Flow Free games every day and have for years — 7.8 years specifically, because the app says I’ve played 2852 days, which is approximately since the beginning.2The daily puzzle update dropped at different times in different places and different app stores, and you may not have installed it right away. My actual streak is 2707 days, though, because I missed one day once, about half a year in. If I had a time machine, I assure you. I have a perfect since-the-beginning streak on all the other ones. 3I also play TwoDots, but that streak mechanic came in very late and for a while it was just very hit and miss whether it registered the day or not — they either fixed that or I got better at catching it, I’m currently at about 200 days.

For a while I used to say if I hadn’t tweeted in 24 hours you could safely assume I was dead.4Guess I’ve died. I’m sure there’s other things I could include in this streak mentality. I’m never late for school.

I realised the other day I was on a streak here.5To your right, note the calendar. Unless you’re on your phone, in which case, scroll down. Responsive, baby! And made fun of myself for it. But this is a different kind of streak — it’s not a mindless phone game or a passive6I mean, I toot, but. media consumption habit. Blogging is writing, blogging is productive. People have already told me they enjoy what I’m doing here, and I’m having fun doing it. Even writing this at 22:30 on a Killer Monday just to make sure I don’t break the streak.7Wait, my Flow streak should be one higher if I’m posting this tomorrow– No! Just schedule it! Walk away! Be done!

My workload at school will increase as the year goes on. Maybe tomorrow I just don’t have something that I feel is best served by writing a blog post about it. I’ll break that streak, and it’s gonna be fine. I’ll just post again the day after, or a few days later. I will break that streak.

But not today.

………Wait, what did you think the title meant?

  • 1
    I do also get bummed out if I miss Sneak Preview, but that’s a few Tuesdays a month, not every day.
  • 2
    The daily puzzle update dropped at different times in different places and different app stores, and you may not have installed it right away.
  • 3
    I also play TwoDots, but that streak mechanic came in very late and for a while it was just very hit and miss whether it registered the day or not — they either fixed that or I got better at catching it, I’m currently at about 200 days.
  • 4
    Guess I’ve died.
  • 5
    To your right, note the calendar. Unless you’re on your phone, in which case, scroll down. Responsive, baby!
  • 6
    I mean, I toot, but.
  • 7
    Wait, my Flow streak should be one higher if I’m posting this tomorrow– No! Just schedule it! Walk away! Be done!

The Bowl of Petunias (II)

Posted on by Alex Daily

Let’s see how much I can extract from this premise.

Mondo Goodbody does not expect the City of the Golden King to fall. That is to say in the first place that, to Mondo Goodbody, who has lived in the City of the Golden King their entire relatively short life, the thought simply does not occur that the flying city might cease to fly. To Mondo Goodbody, to ask if it could do that would be like asking if water could cease being wet. Mondo Goodbody, for all their strengths as a carpenter, was not one for frivolous thought experiments like that.

It is to say in the second place that, when the thought stops being experimental, Mondo Goodbody’s own first thought is that they’re flying.1Flying, you see, is a thing birds do, and Mondo Goodbody knows about birds. Mondo Goodbody enjoys the idea of their newfound ability immensely, and it is only when they realise their collection of hand-carved wooden ducks has joined them in lift-off that the sun sets on that enjoyment. When Mondo Goodbody’s emotional night of terror sets in, enjoyment might as well never have been in the room.2Unlike every single one of Mondo Goodbody’s possessions, all of which were far more in the room than, Mondo Goodbody felt, they really should be.

Ten seconds after the birds notice, Mondo Goodbody is as scared as they’ve ever been.

  • 1
    Flying, you see, is a thing birds do, and Mondo Goodbody knows about birds.
  • 2
    Unlike every single one of Mondo Goodbody’s possessions, all of which were far more in the room than, Mondo Goodbody felt, they really should be.
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