So I thought, because I can't seem to write full length reviews for any of these works, that I would just write an overall summary of some of the works I’ve read and watched in July. Enjoy. Hopefully.
7/3/2022: You Should See Me in A Crown by Leah Johnson
I don’t expect much from a YA novel, I won’t lie. I generally expect writing that is subpar in places and excellent in others, lack of characterization for characters except the main character, and a storyline that is more inventive than most mainstream “literature.” I wasn’t wrong.
I loved the character of Mack, but all the other characters, especially the antagonists and the minor side characters I found completely two dimensional. I did like how this story tackles the scary thing about coming out. Even when you know you love the person you do, and when the people closest to you accept you, there is still this ambivalence to coming out if you live in a place that isn’t the most welcoming to the LGBTQ+ community. Trust me, I know the feeling well. I live in China. So it was nice to see that represented in a novel.
7/5/2022: The Queen’s Gambit by Walter Tevis
I’d only seen a few episodes of the TV show, but when I saw the book I decided I must read it. So there we go. I did. I liked it. For a person who knows absolutely nothing about chess, reading about chess was surprisingly not as mundane as I had thought it would be. And the characterization of Beth makes her a gray character who has many obvious flaws, which is a writing technique that I think is difficult to do with the main character of any story, so that was executed well.
7/6/2022: Hello, Goodbye, and Everything In Between directed by Michael Lewen
I sympathized with the beginning pact too much to enjoy watching the two main characters go back on their decision to break up. The ending, however, did subvert my expectations, and the film is a beautiful viewing experience. Not something I would watch for intellectual stimulation, but definitely something I would recommend if you just want to take your mind off stuff.
By the way, it was refreshing to have a character who knew what she wanted and knew she wanted to end things instead of pleading with her boyfriend not to leave her. Her story resonated with me, because I have a friend who is literally in the exact same position right now, except her and her boyfriend will, if they choose to continue their relationship, be separated by continents and the ocean instead of a few states. She too thought she could break the relationship off when the time came, but is hesitating because it hurts much more than she had thought it would.
7/14/2022: Call Me By Your Name directed by Luca Guadagnino
I didn’t like this film. I didn’t find the sexual chemistry between the two actors as compelling considering the entire film hinges on that, and I found the final climax of their emotions lacking. I mean, honestly, I don’t understand how you can build up to a sex scene for almost the entirety of the first hour and a half of a 2 hour film and then just fade out before showing the audience anything. The sex scene here doesn’t have to be graphic, but the way they shot it, it was anti-climatic to the Tee. And the peach scene? Didn’t see the point.
The kiss scene in the streets at night was something I did like, and I love the overall aesthetic of the film. However, I found both main characters boring and unimaginative, and the ending was… Unexciting. Timothee Chalamet was good in the film, but I really wanted to like this film, and like Carol I had saved it for a long time, hoping that when I saw it it would live up to its name. Unlike Carol, this film did not.
7/17/2022: The Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan
As a Chinese American, I found this book… Weird. I don’t want to take away from Tan’s experiences, and I understand that times were different for her than they are for me. With that said, I found it difficult to believe some of what happens in the film, and the Chinese character wording in the book was atrocious. Honestly, as a person who is bilingual and can read and write in both languages, I often had to go over the Chinese phrases used in the book multiple times before I could even guess what Chinese characters they were referring to.
I’ve read Tan’s Mother Tongue, and I enjoyed that much more than the book. In fact, I agree with everything in Mother Tongue, but Joy Luck Club seemed too much like an American constructed fantasy of China to my liking. I know that to expect a universal experience as a Chinese American is improbable. Everyone has different experiences. I just expected more resonance with a book deemed the creme de la creme of Asian American literature to be more… Chinese, I suppose.
7/21/2022: Stateless released by ABC
The show itself I found uninspiring, mostly because I felt that the story was spread a little too thin in places. However, I applaud this show for shining light on a subject that I didn’t have any idea about before, the idea of people who are stateless. I’ve never realized exactly how lucky I am to be a person with a legal identity until I watched this show, and I appreciate how the show tries to make everyone human, instead of relying on caricatures of the people they represent.
I will say, however, that because I am a huge fan of Cate Blanchett and this is her producing project (and a show developed based on her idea), that I think we need more shows like this, were actors and directors and producers use their platform to add to the conversation about an actual problem we face in the world. Media, in all its forms, and art are meant to be provocative in terms of ideas, and I think that this show, though it may never win any awards, is very provocative.
7/29/2022: The Crucible by Arthur Miller
This book is amazing, and I don’t just mean because of the various stories that emulate exactly what is happening right now. The story, the plot, the characters, are all beautifully developed over the course of the script, and I can imagine how very life changing it would be to see this in person.
And it’s so relevant to our lives now. Like the witch hunt of Salem, today we hunt down people on the Internet and cancel them, often without thought or consideration of the fact that everyone should be “innocent until proven guilty.”
7/30/2022: The Crucible directed by Nicholas Hytner
Just read the script is my opinion on this film. The dialogue is essentially exactly the same from the book, and with the exception of a few added scenes that I think was really unnecessary considering most of the screenplay came directly from the script, there is nothing new to see in the film. I usually adore Winona Ryder (Heathers? Stranger Things? Beetlejuice?), but in this film she was jarring. Her accent sounded unnatural, her wide-eyed innocence lent itself to a much more sympathetic Abigail, and I kept finding myself thinking that she was too good of a liar. I always imagined Abigail played with a little unsureness that gradually becomes more certain from the beginning and end of the story, but her Abigail seems to have everything planned from the moment she first starts screaming.
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