January is a very long month
...and February is a flash in the pan.
Lately, I’ve been oscillating between loving the slowness of the season and spiraling into the winter blues. And when I feel the blues, I really feel it (“it” being cabin fever, seasonal depression, loneliness, discontent… the usual mid-winter cocktail).
Despite all this, I’m trying to give myself grace. That’s what this time of year is all about, right? I’ve been going to the gym every day to move my body as much as I can. I’ve been putting on all my layers and meeting my friends for pizza or at the movies. I’ve been drinking warm beverages, reading thrillers, admiring the snowfall, and watching Schitt’s Creek.
Here’s a little recap of the books, movies, music, and other things that made up my very, very long January. Let me know what’s getting you through this time of year.
Books
Wintering by Katherine May
Of the nine total books that I blew through in January, the only one that wasn’t a mystery or thriller was Katherine May’s Wintering. I bought this book while suffering under the weight of burnout at my old job last winter and couldn’t read it till this winter. The body does keep the damn score because May’s reflections on depression and work-related exhaustion really activated my nervous system. Yet, I loved this book—it was a careful, introspective, and inquisitive exploration of life’s darkest seasons. I’d recommend it to anyone who wants to feel more optimistic about winter (the season and the feeling).
Vera Wong’s Unsolicited Advice for Murderers by Jesse Q. Sutanto
I love a mystery! I love a story about found family! This book was both! Despite the titular Vera Wong triggering every memory of an overbearing aunty with no boundaries, I thought this was a sweet and cozy read with an ending I actually didn’t see coming. I’m excited for the second Vera Wong mystery, which is slated for a spring 2025 release.
Never Saw Me Coming by Vera Kurian
This book leaned more YA than anything I’ve read in years, which I didn’t expect to enjoy but really did. Never Saw Me Coming is a great cat-and-mouse thriller with some well-fleshed-out characters who are pretty bad people but still easy to root for. I found the ending to be a little disappointing and rushed (especially because everything that came before was so interesting). This book is begging to be adapted for television as a dark comedy/drama. I’d cast Sophie Thatcher as Chloe.
Music
Eusexua — FKA twigs
This album grew on me with every listen. I admire FKA twigs as an artist because of how much she experiments with her sound and look. I didn’t like the song with the North West feature (wild that it even exists), but I can’t fault twigs for trying it. My favourites from this album right now are Girl Feels Good, Sticky, and Striptease. I have no doubt Sticky will make an appearance in my Spotify Wrapped at the end of the year. I love the lyrics and the beautiful way the song builds, mirroring Twigs’ growing frustration with what she feels: a carnal need for touch, yet an inability to be vulnerable with people. (“But it hurts so bad / To shed my skin with you watching / You know, you know, you know / It makes me shy.”)
DeBÍ TiRAR MáS FOToS — Bad Bunny
📣 NuevaYOLLLL! 📣
I love this album, its Spotify visualizers, and the frequent beat switches. From what I’ve read, despite the album being critically acclaimed, a lot of its significance and storytelling was lost on white, non-Spanish-speaking music critics who could only assess it sonically. I admit that I also need to do better at seeking out translations and understanding the background of the album. In the meantime, whatever Benito put into the first 60 seconds of EoO needs to be distilled and bottled so I can drink it everyday for breakfast. I actually can’t listen to that song in public for fear of acting up and shaking my ass on the sidewalk.
Honourable mentions, or loose tracks
Loving - Land of Talk; Miss You (feat. Jadakiss) - Mariah Carey; I Love You For Sentimental Reasons - Linda Ronstadt; MMS - Asake and Wizkid; heart pt. 6 - Kendrick Lamar; Kitchen - SZA; Tyrant - Beyonce and Dolly Parton; Better (unplugged) - Kelela
Movies
The Brutalist (2024)
Every now and then, I watch a movie that is critically acclaimed on all accounts but leaves me wondering if I live on another plane of existence because I don’t see what everyone else seems to see. The Brutalist is one of those movies.
Everyone acted their asses off in The Brutalist, except maybe Joe Alwyn, who I simply can’t take seriously because he has a serious case of “adult man with a baby face.” I think this disease affects many blond men. Anyway, the cinematography was cool, and the scenes in the marble quarries and the shot of the train accident were particularly memorable. However, holy shit, I hated the second half of this movie. From the shitty writing to the graphic rape scene (which caught me completely off guard), this felt like a muddled, needlessly traumatic, and often pretentious story put together around some nice camerawork.
I’m not caught up on the AI drama, but I do wonder why the director/writer Brady Corbet felt the need to tell this story.
Also, not to sound like a giant virgin, but every single sex scene in The Brutalist was gratuitous, bordering on disgusting. Somebody, please tell me what I’m missing because this movie will almost certainly win the Oscar for Best Picture next month.
Demi Adejuyigbe put it best on Letterboxd: “It’s like watching an impressive floor routine that ends in the running man. what were you going for.”
A Real Pain (2024)
Where The Brutalist left me wanting more dimension in its story, I felt A Real Pain was thoughtful and loving in its approach to difficult topics.
Jesse Eisenberg wrote a good screenplay in which the conversations feel pulled from real life. There are a couple of stretches of dialog that lean into high school drama club territory. But then there’s a great scene where Eisenberg’s character is left holding about six cell phones, signifying the number of chances he had to join a silly group photo but was ultimately too neurotic to do.
Kieran Culkin’s performance is sometimes identical to Roman Roy, but I don’t mind that. It’s really a testament to Culkin’s screen presence that even though Jesse Eisenberg wrote, directed, produced, and co-stars in this film, I still think of it as a Kieran Culkin movie. Anyway, I never thought I’d be excited to see what Jesse Eisenberg creates next (mostly because I don’t think about him), but I really liked A Real Pain.
I Like Movies (2022)
At first, I thought Kanopy was a made-up app (you can’t tell me that Fubo and Freevee and Tubi and Kanopy are all real), but when I learned you could use it for free with your library card, I downloaded it immediately. It’s getting me to watch movies that I would normally add to my watchlist and immediately forget about forever because it doesn’t have my familiar favourites like other streamers. That’s how I ended up watching I Like Movies (though, ironically, that film is on Netflix, but I’ve never seen it recommended to me).
I Like Movies was so sweet! It’s a coming-of-age, slice-of-life story with some well-written characters, and all these elements make up my favourite kind of movie. The main character, Lawrence, is such a little shit, but I loved him by the end. The movie also felt very familiar because it was set in Burlington, Ontario—the town that borders the town I grew up in, but is in essence the same place. Toronto suburbs are indistinguishable from one another.
I saw someone call this movie “nostalgia bait” somewhere, which I didn’t understand. Is it nostalgia bait just because it’s set in the 2000s and calls back to the cultural touchpoints that are familiar to the writer/director Chandler Levack? I think that title should be reserved for movies that use nostalgia to fill big gaps in a story, which this movie did not do. I Like Movies felt like a conversation between Levack’s high school self and current self. She treated the worst time of many of our lives with a type of care and humour that imbued it with universality.
I can’t believe this movie got me to empathize with a film bro. If Lawrence was real, I think he would hate Netflix but tolerate Kanopy.
The Last Showgirl (2024)
At the end of The Last Showgirl, Maia and I turned to each other and said “beautiful gowns” in near unison. Pamela Anderson did not have much to do in this movie and had to work with a plotless script that gave her only two extremes: whispery ditz or shrieking lunatic. The casting of Billie Lourd as a 21-year-old was also deeply confusing because she looks her age (32) and acted about 15 years old. Brenda Song and Jamie Lee Curtis were there.
I mean this with utter sincerity: some directors should make music videos instead of movies. Gia Coppola’s aesthetic-driven, fuzzy, handheld style of camerawork would make for a gorgeous Addison Rae music video. (After a quick Google, I’ve learned that Gia Coppola does, in fact, make music videos and has done so for Carly Rae Jepsen, Yves Tumor, and Halsey!)
Other
To close off, here are some random little bits and bites of January:
I bought Blume’s Meltdown Oil from a friend’s recommendation after a horrendous breakout over the Christmas holidays. I’m loving this product — it somehow dries up my acne while still feeling light and hydrating. I’ve been using it day and night under my moisturizer.
My work has given me control of our company's social media (which just consists of LinkedIn, for now), and I’ve been going full send. I never thought I could be a Professional Poster, but here we are.
My friends and I have been going to Gracie’s Pizza, a pop-up that operates out of Ted’s Collision. One thing I will always layer up and go outside in the winter for is food, especially when that food is delicious pizza made by the nicest guy in the world.
I started budgeting this year as an offshoot of my goal to stop buying clothes!
A guy I was talking to on Hinge ghosted me, and I think it’s because he found out I’m a vegetarian, which has nothing to do with anything, but I had to share this because it’s so fucking funny.
