I want to be relieved
Media recs today!
Today I watched two movies - a documentary and an action film. They're both on netflix!
The documentary was (A) Sexual, which is about asexuality in general and David Jay in general. I saw it with a friend of mine and honestly I didn't see that much of the film because we were talking about our own experiences (me as an asexual person, her as a queer person who's not fond of labels) and heckling Dan Savage. But it seemed like a good movie? I would rec it to someone who's not familiar with asexuality at all, there was way too much 101 in there for me - I'd already read all of the scholarly research they discussed, and the misconceptions and experiences they discuss are things I've dealt with personally. But next time someone tells me I should watch this documentary, I can say I have :)
The action movie was The Warriors. It was really weird! The conclusion and plot made very little sense! The action was fine, but the pacing was incredibly terrible! But the costume design, OH MY GOD. If you have ever wanted to watch shirtless guys in leather vests fight a gang of baseball clowns, this is the movie for you.
I've just been getting into manga again - I used to read a lot of shounen, but I started to fall out of it as the manga I liked either ended or just dragged on too long (I'm looking at you, One Piece). But I do really like comics, and there's a lot of scanlated manga on the internet, so it's been taking up a lot of my free time lately. So here's a seinen rec, a yaoi rec, and a yuri rec!
Gokusen is a manga about a highschool teacher just out of college who also happens to have a yakuza family. It's amazing. Really funny stuff, great action, and I love the art style. Everyone acts very human, and the tension between the yakuza and the 'normal' world is kind of fascinating - I don't have the background to get all of the implications, but there's at least a lot of explicit classism in the way most of the (working-class or affluent-but-criminal) people in the manga are looked down on by the rest of society. And Yankumi (the main character) isn't trying to get everyone to be a huge middle-class success, she's just trying to get everyone a basic education and then they can go do whatever they think will make them happy or get them enough money to live (which will def make them happier than the alternative). I'm not articulating this well, idk. It's just a refreshingly realistic take on the opportunities that high school education actually affords for most people, in a comic where everyone is constantly beating up goons and has interludes with a talking dog. AND it has a student/teacher romance that even I could read, which deserves an award or something.
(Warning, tho, there is some gross stuff going on with a gay or bisexual teacher in a couple of chapters, which isn't really redeemed by the Very Special Episode about accepting people's sexuality later on. So it's not perfect, but I still liked it a lot.)
Sasameki Koto is SUPER ADORABLE. There's a girl who does karate and is super tall and in love with her best friend. Her best friend is an out lesbian and takes a lot of flak for it, but she's only into cute girls! Karate girl is bad at being cute! But best friend is actually in love with her all along! It's not fully scanlated yet, but it's pretty close, and right now there are talks about the future and people coming out to their parents/grandparents and everything is adorable. Everything. This is why I don't do recs, I am so terrible at articulating what I like about things.
Est Em is a genius. She writes yaoi manga, except it is more like she writes BRILLIANT THINGS with also guys kissing. Her stuff can be kind of dark, but the plot lines are about deciding what you want, and taking the chance to go from something comfortable to something you love, and sometimes guys who support opposite football teams but also make out. And school teachers with mohawks! And pretty much everything is clearly consensual, this is why I'm not reading yaoi without recs anymore, guys, but with Est Em I am basically safe. And I really really love her art style, it's so unique. Ultras and Orokamono wa Aka wo Kirau are two of my favorites, but it's all good.
(If you have recs for (short!) manga please give them to me, I have run through my reading list and looking for more.)
Finally, music! This is not a rec per se, but SXSW is a thing and to help music peeps everywhere NPR has put together a 100 best songs list that is available for download on their website! And most of last year's 100 list is also still up for download. Hurrah for Stephen Thompson!
This entry was originally posted at http://neveralarch.dreamwidth.org/60123.html. Comment wherever you want.
Today I watched two movies - a documentary and an action film. They're both on netflix!
The documentary was (A) Sexual, which is about asexuality in general and David Jay in general. I saw it with a friend of mine and honestly I didn't see that much of the film because we were talking about our own experiences (me as an asexual person, her as a queer person who's not fond of labels) and heckling Dan Savage. But it seemed like a good movie? I would rec it to someone who's not familiar with asexuality at all, there was way too much 101 in there for me - I'd already read all of the scholarly research they discussed, and the misconceptions and experiences they discuss are things I've dealt with personally. But next time someone tells me I should watch this documentary, I can say I have :)
The action movie was The Warriors. It was really weird! The conclusion and plot made very little sense! The action was fine, but the pacing was incredibly terrible! But the costume design, OH MY GOD. If you have ever wanted to watch shirtless guys in leather vests fight a gang of baseball clowns, this is the movie for you.
I've just been getting into manga again - I used to read a lot of shounen, but I started to fall out of it as the manga I liked either ended or just dragged on too long (I'm looking at you, One Piece). But I do really like comics, and there's a lot of scanlated manga on the internet, so it's been taking up a lot of my free time lately. So here's a seinen rec, a yaoi rec, and a yuri rec!
Gokusen is a manga about a highschool teacher just out of college who also happens to have a yakuza family. It's amazing. Really funny stuff, great action, and I love the art style. Everyone acts very human, and the tension between the yakuza and the 'normal' world is kind of fascinating - I don't have the background to get all of the implications, but there's at least a lot of explicit classism in the way most of the (working-class or affluent-but-criminal) people in the manga are looked down on by the rest of society. And Yankumi (the main character) isn't trying to get everyone to be a huge middle-class success, she's just trying to get everyone a basic education and then they can go do whatever they think will make them happy or get them enough money to live (which will def make them happier than the alternative). I'm not articulating this well, idk. It's just a refreshingly realistic take on the opportunities that high school education actually affords for most people, in a comic where everyone is constantly beating up goons and has interludes with a talking dog. AND it has a student/teacher romance that even I could read, which deserves an award or something.
(Warning, tho, there is some gross stuff going on with a gay or bisexual teacher in a couple of chapters, which isn't really redeemed by the Very Special Episode about accepting people's sexuality later on. So it's not perfect, but I still liked it a lot.)
Sasameki Koto is SUPER ADORABLE. There's a girl who does karate and is super tall and in love with her best friend. Her best friend is an out lesbian and takes a lot of flak for it, but she's only into cute girls! Karate girl is bad at being cute! But best friend is actually in love with her all along! It's not fully scanlated yet, but it's pretty close, and right now there are talks about the future and people coming out to their parents/grandparents and everything is adorable. Everything. This is why I don't do recs, I am so terrible at articulating what I like about things.
Est Em is a genius. She writes yaoi manga, except it is more like she writes BRILLIANT THINGS with also guys kissing. Her stuff can be kind of dark, but the plot lines are about deciding what you want, and taking the chance to go from something comfortable to something you love, and sometimes guys who support opposite football teams but also make out. And school teachers with mohawks! And pretty much everything is clearly consensual, this is why I'm not reading yaoi without recs anymore, guys, but with Est Em I am basically safe. And I really really love her art style, it's so unique. Ultras and Orokamono wa Aka wo Kirau are two of my favorites, but it's all good.
(If you have recs for (short!) manga please give them to me, I have run through my reading list and looking for more.)
Finally, music! This is not a rec per se, but SXSW is a thing and to help music peeps everywhere NPR has put together a 100 best songs list that is available for download on their website! And most of last year's 100 list is also still up for download. Hurrah for Stephen Thompson!
This entry was originally posted at http://neveralarch.dreamwidth.org/60123.html. Comment wherever you want.