Fran, you ate with this one. Issue #104 may be an all-time classic. Tea was spilled, books were not published, and boys did kiss (often) in the minds of heterosexual women on the internet. May God herself reward you with a publishing contract the size of Wattpad to bestseller money. I salute you, Captain Fran!
somebody needs to write something great about fujoshis… i feel like they're the invisible engine that runs the world… once you notice them you can't stop
NBC Hannibal rewatch has been on the horizon for so long I fear I am close to walking into the sun itself.
The book is (basically? probably?) dead at this point but I will keep in archive in case someone reads this in 1-5 years and changes their mind :( Otherwise I am working on new stuff that is unfortunately NOT as erotic but at least fun.
I watched the first few eps of Servant, the Shyamalan-produced Apple show, last week while sick and it kinda scratches the Hannibal itch. Overcranked formalism with thriller trappings and occasional food porn (Tony Kebbell is some kind of chef but he just broods at home spying on his nanny and making lobster ice cream (??))
I sorta stan Toby Kebbell... all I know about this show is that it got Rupert Grint into Phillies sports teams which feels like as good an endorsement as any
Kebbell always reminds me unpleasantly of the Black Mirror he did, the worst thing Jesse Armstrong has ever written
Servant also stars 6FU’s Lauren Ambrose and The First Omen’s Nell Tiger Free (waiting to find out if she’s a better actress than I thought ... so far ... no!)
hi Fran longtime reader longer time fan first time commenter. just clarifying: first Mervyn May post on Wednesday the 8th, not Monday the 6th, correct? have been loving it + just making sure i'm timing it all out correctly. also, thank you for your support/amplification of student protestors.
Fran, did you watch Josh O’Connor play Keeley Hawes’ flighty wanna-be-writer son in The Durrells in 2015? I just know some crazy fanfic came out of that lovely family-friendly BBC show
no lol but I keep seeing references to it on Twitter.. I love a random af BBC show as much as the next person and I keep laughing at people being like "Challengers has me googling Durells in Corfu" or w/e it's called... maybe I will watch if/when I have a free week
my Josh journey goes...
Gods Own Country (saw upon release and thought yay) --> Peaky Blinders (made no impression) --> Emma. (decided it is time to learn the name "Josh O'Connor" and not call him "Gods Own Country") --> seeing La Chimera (& Maestro??? on the same day) --> Challengers (Going insane)
I totally skipped The Crown years though I hear he's good on there. That show is like dog food to me, I refuse to engage but happy for all of the various actors involved.
It’s a show for letting your brains warmly and comfortably melt down to goo, but he was great it in (though I think I thought Callum Woodhouse would be the breakout)
Is there a chapter title we should stop at for Mervyn May if, for instance, we thought the three book compendium was too good a deal to pass up and therefore might have a different edition of the book?
yes! it’s called “Titus is Christened” — I heard from a few folks that at least one edition of the trilogy does have corresponding page numbers, but I’ll be sure to mentioned chapter title next time
“she clarified that part of what she meant was maybe more of a “reverse Cukor” situation: whereas old movie stars would go to Cukor to revive or zhuzh up their career, new stars seek out Guadagnino to learn the type of “old dog” tricks that movies used to really run on.” Damn she’s right…
Would also agree with my husband and occasional Fran Mag commenter Geoffrey that as much as Challengers is a melodrama it is very much also a sports anime (an observation that made me forgive a lot of the formal choices in the final act).
I have a lot of things to say about this movie but one is that despite having three(!) characters it succeeds in being a Movie About America in a way, like, Bones and All does not. Sally Country-club, the storm blowing down the poster, the Tinder joke, all very confident and subtle details about the "world" these characters live in, even if that world consists of two other people.
I wish I had found a place to discuss the fanfiction class I took in grad school, which was less about all the aforementioned stuff (though certainly adjacent) and more so the ways in which writers all across time have taken and poached and twisted and expanded the ideas of people before them (taught by the great Alice Elliott Dark, whose novel Fellowship Point riffed, in part, on my beloved EM Forster canon).
I turned off the B&A screener after 10 min and have zero motivation to go back...
Would happily hear all/any of your thoughts you feel like sharing either here or written. I'm finding lots to read and write about (and watch!) with this film... a really great feeling.
I wrote some shitty gestures towards an essay on my wordpress https://greenpigsinheaven.wordpress.com/2024/04/29/brief-notes-on-challengers/. I also am delighted to find so much good writing about this, today's issue and the pieces you linked included...I agree with B. Empey's judgment that the editing is repetitive and stupid but would respectfully suggest that sex in this movie is also repetitive and stupid, so in that sense it is thematically consistent...
"These are the stakes of the movie—not love, because nobody loves each other in this movie, but sex. The rush of wind, the strain in your knees, the sense of something that is both unimaginably bigger than you and exactly the size of your own body speaking through your every glance and movement." yes!!!!!!!
I agree with Ben's overall take on the editing but I more balk at random, bizarre shots where the camera drifts too long or the frame doesn't cut quickly enough. most of the quicker edits phase me much less
Niall Horan mention! I did get into soccer as a pretty immediate consequence of the One Direction hiatus, so I would say that I will return to Four about Challengers, but I've also never left Four.
My general take is that, like, each 1D album is better than the one before it... I know there's a lot of hate(?) for Midnight Memories but that album rocks, imo.
I think so! Night Changes, No Control, Fireproof is as good as three pop song run in the middle of an album as anybody has ever done! My big ear bug this week is the Kraftwerk song from La Chimera, causing me to walk around saying "y'all know about Kraftwerk?" apparently everyone already knows about Kraftwerk.
my manchurian candidate activation phrase is wattpad fujoshi hannibal gifset
im jbol
Fran, you ate with this one. Issue #104 may be an all-time classic. Tea was spilled, books were not published, and boys did kiss (often) in the minds of heterosexual women on the internet. May God herself reward you with a publishing contract the size of Wattpad to bestseller money. I salute you, Captain Fran!
somebody needs to write something great about fujoshis… i feel like they're the invisible engine that runs the world… once you notice them you can't stop
agree... I would love to read... or even take a whole class on it
feel like a little life is surely a key text here (have not read)
i’m an elder millennial filmmaker (non practicing) as well but i don’t consider emerald fennell my contemporary you know
well she is
Ezra Koenig coined the phrase "silverback millennial" on Time Crisis and you should probably just steal that.
Yes, that's probably the most tasteful option when referring to the people who were seniors when I was a freshman!
1) My only true goal in life is to be "the perhaps now-highest paid minds of a generation [who] were posting NBC Hannibal gifsets or whatever".
2) @publishing houses PLEASE buy Fran's slightly erotic male co-workers novel?!?
NBC Hannibal rewatch has been on the horizon for so long I fear I am close to walking into the sun itself.
The book is (basically? probably?) dead at this point but I will keep in archive in case someone reads this in 1-5 years and changes their mind :( Otherwise I am working on new stuff that is unfortunately NOT as erotic but at least fun.
I watched the first few eps of Servant, the Shyamalan-produced Apple show, last week while sick and it kinda scratches the Hannibal itch. Overcranked formalism with thriller trappings and occasional food porn (Tony Kebbell is some kind of chef but he just broods at home spying on his nanny and making lobster ice cream (??))
I sorta stan Toby Kebbell... all I know about this show is that it got Rupert Grint into Phillies sports teams which feels like as good an endorsement as any
Kebbell always reminds me unpleasantly of the Black Mirror he did, the worst thing Jesse Armstrong has ever written
Servant also stars 6FU’s Lauren Ambrose and The First Omen’s Nell Tiger Free (waiting to find out if she’s a better actress than I thought ... so far ... no!)
Rewatch Hannibal, go watch Black Sails now that it's on Netflix, and call me afterward xo
🫡🫡🫡
hi Fran longtime reader longer time fan first time commenter. just clarifying: first Mervyn May post on Wednesday the 8th, not Monday the 6th, correct? have been loving it + just making sure i'm timing it all out correctly. also, thank you for your support/amplification of student protestors.
no it’s Mondays for Mervyn May! additional posts for the month to facilitate discussions in comments and then still regular (unrelated) issues on Weds
Fran, did you watch Josh O’Connor play Keeley Hawes’ flighty wanna-be-writer son in The Durrells in 2015? I just know some crazy fanfic came out of that lovely family-friendly BBC show
no lol but I keep seeing references to it on Twitter.. I love a random af BBC show as much as the next person and I keep laughing at people being like "Challengers has me googling Durells in Corfu" or w/e it's called... maybe I will watch if/when I have a free week
my Josh journey goes...
Gods Own Country (saw upon release and thought yay) --> Peaky Blinders (made no impression) --> Emma. (decided it is time to learn the name "Josh O'Connor" and not call him "Gods Own Country") --> seeing La Chimera (& Maestro??? on the same day) --> Challengers (Going insane)
I totally skipped The Crown years though I hear he's good on there. That show is like dog food to me, I refuse to engage but happy for all of the various actors involved.
It’s a show for letting your brains warmly and comfortably melt down to goo, but he was great it in (though I think I thought Callum Woodhouse would be the breakout)
Is there a chapter title we should stop at for Mervyn May if, for instance, we thought the three book compendium was too good a deal to pass up and therefore might have a different edition of the book?
yes! it’s called “Titus is Christened” — I heard from a few folks that at least one edition of the trilogy does have corresponding page numbers, but I’ll be sure to mentioned chapter title next time
Thanks!
i’d run the fuckyeahpatrickzweig tumblr
and I would reblog
“she clarified that part of what she meant was maybe more of a “reverse Cukor” situation: whereas old movie stars would go to Cukor to revive or zhuzh up their career, new stars seek out Guadagnino to learn the type of “old dog” tricks that movies used to really run on.” Damn she’s right…
Would also agree with my husband and occasional Fran Mag commenter Geoffrey that as much as Challengers is a melodrama it is very much also a sports anime (an observation that made me forgive a lot of the formal choices in the final act).
wow yes
this is the year's most important piece of nonfiction writing
not me learning what "AO3" stands for after all these years from a fran mag footnote 🫠
I always thought it was "Age Of Empires" and the E was... 3??? probably until like, 2019 when I started teaching
I have a lot of things to say about this movie but one is that despite having three(!) characters it succeeds in being a Movie About America in a way, like, Bones and All does not. Sally Country-club, the storm blowing down the poster, the Tinder joke, all very confident and subtle details about the "world" these characters live in, even if that world consists of two other people.
lovely review incidentally! the fandom dynamic with one's own art is really fascinating
I wish I had found a place to discuss the fanfiction class I took in grad school, which was less about all the aforementioned stuff (though certainly adjacent) and more so the ways in which writers all across time have taken and poached and twisted and expanded the ideas of people before them (taught by the great Alice Elliott Dark, whose novel Fellowship Point riffed, in part, on my beloved EM Forster canon).
I turned off the B&A screener after 10 min and have zero motivation to go back...
Would happily hear all/any of your thoughts you feel like sharing either here or written. I'm finding lots to read and write about (and watch!) with this film... a really great feeling.
Fellowship Point...going to the top of my list...
I wrote some shitty gestures towards an essay on my wordpress https://greenpigsinheaven.wordpress.com/2024/04/29/brief-notes-on-challengers/. I also am delighted to find so much good writing about this, today's issue and the pieces you linked included...I agree with B. Empey's judgment that the editing is repetitive and stupid but would respectfully suggest that sex in this movie is also repetitive and stupid, so in that sense it is thematically consistent...
"These are the stakes of the movie—not love, because nobody loves each other in this movie, but sex. The rush of wind, the strain in your knees, the sense of something that is both unimaginably bigger than you and exactly the size of your own body speaking through your every glance and movement." yes!!!!!!!
I agree with Ben's overall take on the editing but I more balk at random, bizarre shots where the camera drifts too long or the frame doesn't cut quickly enough. most of the quicker edits phase me much less
Niall Horan mention! I did get into soccer as a pretty immediate consequence of the One Direction hiatus, so I would say that I will return to Four about Challengers, but I've also never left Four.
Four is probably the best, right?
My general take is that, like, each 1D album is better than the one before it... I know there's a lot of hate(?) for Midnight Memories but that album rocks, imo.
I think so! Night Changes, No Control, Fireproof is as good as three pop song run in the middle of an album as anybody has ever done! My big ear bug this week is the Kraftwerk song from La Chimera, causing me to walk around saying "y'all know about Kraftwerk?" apparently everyone already knows about Kraftwerk.
Will I see La Chimera again this weekend...? Time will tell...