Wildwood So Old So Young

Leave a reply

Into the Depths These Feelings

What could it take
for someone to make
your life an ashen valley
of dead trees,
wildlife forced into factions,
sometimes trusting the raptors
but never the corvids
or believing in the local government seat
to do anything worthwhile?

What is there to say or to refute
when the kindred spirits 
of your legal youth trek down trails
of ill-repute and wonder why
they don’t expect more from you?

Richie, here, the drunk
Mia, there, the central figure
Adam, dear, the secret trouble-shooter
Marco, to be fair, still in love with another
Sasha, to be clear, just wants not to bother
being the perfect mother,
friend, confidant, lover.

Into the depths these feelings
of grief or greed make a byronic witch
strike deals, buy more goldfish, trade Miami
for Washington DC
because why exactly?

— yiqi 29 October 2026 10:50 pm

This poem was inspired by the spectacularly beautiful Wildwood (Travis Knight, 2026) and touchingly relatable novel So Old, So Young by Grant Ginder.

Brian Tallerico has put so many of my thoughts into words in his review, so you should read it and learn what I did about the film, such as, it took “15 years and required 136 sets, 231 puppets, and thousands of shots” to make.  The most substantial lesson I took from the film is that it’s not a good idea to arrest and exile an alleged witch.  I highly, highly recommend watching this film in a theatre.  If you’ve liked even two of Laika Studios‘ previous films, you need to see Wildwood and stay through the start of the ending credits for a few snippets of the behind-the-scenes footage.  Here’s more if you’re interested in how they did the stop-motion.

So Old, So Young isn’t necessarily the kind of novel I’d have found on my own because it’s general fiction, and I’ve been more preoccupied with horror, fantasy, nonfiction, and military history in recent years.  Even the non-fantasy fiction books I’ve loved (Darius the Great Is Not Okay, As Long As the Lemon Trees Grow, The Stationery Shop, Stoner, and Train Dreams) aren’t quite the same general fiction as Grant Ginder’s book.  The owner of Prelude Bookstore in Funwoody suggested So Old, So Young to me as I had a very particular premise request, and it delivered not only as a reading experience but also as a cinematic one in my mind’s eye, recalling the mise-en-scene of Whit Stillman, Noah Baumbach, and Richard Linklater films.

The book follows a group of friends from college (Mia, Marco, Richie, Adam, and Sasha) through their forties.  It’s divided into six occasions from 2007 through 2024.

I. London Spring of 2024
II. NYC NYE 2007
III. Cancun summer 2014
IV. Upstate NY Labor Day 2018
V. Halloween NJ 2022
VI. NYC Spring 2024

Although each of the characters get their own chapters through most of the sections via a third-person omniscient narrator, Mia has the most time with the reader.  I’m not sure I know her better than her friends, though, because she’s assessing them more than they are her.

Pic creds: IMDB, Goodreads

 

Black Hole Sun, Come Out and Play

3 Replies

I remember Jean-Claude Van Damme, Raul Julia, and Ming-Na Wen being in the 1994 Street Fighter film (Steven E. de Souza), but I don’t recall if I’d ever seen it in its entirety.  I probably never did, otherwise, I’d have gone into the 2026 version (Kitao Sakurai) with more sentimentality (or lack thereof depending on whether or not I’d liked its predecessor).  Of the action/fantasy franchise films I’ve seen this year (Mortal Kombat II, The Mandalorian and Grogu, and He-Man), the new Street Fighter is my favorite.

Grogu was the reason I even watched Jon Favreau‘s film and got it on home video as soon as I saw it was out, and though on some levels, it’s more well-crafted than another film adaptation of a video game, space adventures cannot hold a candle to this feast of fists, feet, and qi.  The soundtrack alone has me seriously considering watching it again.  And that’s just the score.  What really, really got me all giddy during the screening was when Soundgarden’s “Black Hole Sun” and The Offspring’s “Come Out and Play” started playing.  There are more song gems too.

Random Thoughts:
~ Noah Centineo is proving to be a versatile actor.  He was great opposite William Poulter in Union County and adorable in Charlie’s Angels (Elizabeth Banks, 2019).
~ Product Placement that caught my eye: MTV, Duracell, Bugles.
~ The film opens with an animated sequence that establishes the relationship between Ryu (Andrew Koji) and Ken (Centineo).  Subsequent animated scenes are flashbacks or thematically relevant character revelations.
~ I can’t be the only one who’s about to go down a YT wormhole of Vidyut Jammwal videos; he plays Dhalsim.
~ The one grievance I have with this movie is an editing choice that occurs when Ken and his manager Dan (Andrew Schulz) are walking down a hotel hallway.  It’s a medium shot, their backs are facing the camera, and as they walk forward (aka towards the back of the frame), a hotel employee wheels a cart of food towards them.  The shot composition led me to believe that there would be a confrontation of some sort, but no.  The film cuts to a medium long-shot of Centineo checking out his abs in a mirror.  James Thomas and Delaney Del Vecchio are the editors; the former has a much longer filmography.  

Speaking of the 1994 Street Fighter, do you know know about “Straight To My Feet” featuring Jean-Claude Van Damme, Deion Sanders, and MC Hammer?

~!~

I got a car wash after watching the movie and made it a point to take a picture of my sun roof during the precise moment that one of the liquids was being applied.  The light was blue and so pretty.  If I hadn’t said these photos were from a car wash, what would you think I was capturing?

Pic cred: IMDB

Watching a Miracle Walk Out the Door

Leave a reply

Ta mère, Ta mère, Ta mère et enfin Ton père

If anyone had asked you,
before your mother died,
what does your father
do for a living,
how would you have answered?

Was he a traveling salesman,
a transcriber of ancient texts,
a blacksmith or something
more ambiguous that left
you unsure who was
making sure you,
your little brother, and baby sister
had a roof and food?

You don’t have the luxury
of the audience’s POV,
so you don’t know
what your daddy does to make money,
the dishonest money.

You can only know as you go
through the handful of days
after your mother died
what your father’s capable of
when he’s caught between
varying shades of evil
all the while
on an ostensibly unremarkable
search for more breast milk
for your baby sister.

And with those awakened eyes
and the details you can’t ignore,
would you tell your little brother?
Or would you feel a complicated comfort
in the knowledge that your dad
knows how to keep you safe,
scrapes and cuts and bullet holes
no matter.

— yiqi 15 October 2026 10:57 pm

The first stanza came to me when I was drying my feet and thinking about Your Mother, Your Mother, Your Mother (Bassam Tariq, 2026), and the rest surfaced when I was listening to Playgrounded’s album In Time With Gravity.  This goal-oriented action drama has been in limited release in the US for a couple of weeks and is getting a wide release this weekend.  I’ve wanted to see this film from the moment I read about it in the movies subreddit and saw a trailer.  Even though it played in two theatres near me earlier in the month, I waited deliberately for a wider release so I’d have more cinema options.  I saw it tonight with maybe ten other people in a small-medium-sized auditorium in the metro-Atlantan burbs.  It’s my third favorite movie of this year so far (the other two are Union County and The Marching Band).  

The “you” in the poem refers to the older daughter in the film.  I don’t want to say more about the movie because to do so would be to spoil too much of the pleasures of the story and themes.  I will leave you with these ponderings:
~ When was the last time you watched an Orion Pictures film?
~ It’s like Monkey Man minus the training montages.
~ Speaking of training, Adam Hart is the stunt coordinator, Anthony Oh the assistant stunt coordinator, and Doniel Yehudah Mahershala Ali’s stunt double.
~ On the subject of montages, there are no montages in this film that depict the passage of time.  There are flashbacks and memories intercut with a tense present, but the events in the film take place over ten days at most.  Might I watch this film again to be sure?  C’est possible.
~ Your Mother, Your Mother, Your Mother exemplifies how a film’s various unsavory characters can have moments of sense to match their malevolence; or that they can see a miracle and let it walk out the door.  There’s one character that I thought had to be worse than the proper “bad guy,” and then the film gave me a different perspective by the time it ended.
~ There’s a degree of verbal humor that I wasn’t anticipating but liked immensely.  I was probably the first person to laugh aloud at one of the earlier examples (when father sees what’s on the oldest daughter’s laptop, asks what wifi she used to access it, and she replies that it’s the Mormon’s wifi).
~ John Cho is the consequential antagonist in this film…and my goodness is he unsettling especially in that scene in that room where for a few seconds, you could believe Mahershala Ali imagined him.  
~ When this movie comes out on home video, I’m going to get it so I can watch it with subtitles.

According to this conversation with the writer-director and some of the cast, the film narratively was inspired by the Bassam Tariq’s wife getting an infection after she gave birth, his needing to find breast milk, and Jim Jarmusch‘s film Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai (1999).

If you’re so inclined and want a sample of the film’s action, here’s the opening scene.

Pic creds: YT screengrabs

Blacktail Gothic Digger and some Football

2 Replies

It is autumn at long last; the nights are finally cool again.

I finished reading Blacktail by Scott Hawkins recently; I watched a special 35 mm screening of Gothic (Ken Russell, 1986) and Digger (Alejandro G. Inarritu, 2026) in the last week.  

I loved The Library at Mount Char and was very excited to read Blacktail, but I’m not sure I like it.  When I had just thirty or so pages left to read, I was already wondering if I’d rehome it.  I wanted to know what happened next, the writing itself was fine, but it didn’t speak to the heart.  When I got to the last couple of pages of the book, I realized I liked the beginning and the ending in terms of reading enjoyment more than the middle.  (Possible poilers ahead: highlight text at your own descretion: The last chunk of the book made me think of Christopher Buehlman’s Between Two Fires, which I loved).  

The book consists of a Prologue and nine chapters.  Each chapter consists of numbered sections. Each chapter plays a narrative purpose, so there are no wasted words or events. It’s written in third-person omniscient but feels like first-person.  I think it would be a really good audiobook experience for spooky season…sitting around a fire at 11 pm (or in bed trying to fall asleep).

I repurposed my comments from this video by Mrs.PizzaReads.

I went through a Julian Sands adoration phase in junior high and high school and rented just about everything he was in that I could find at local Blockbusters, including Gothic.  My younger self was bored and disturbed.  My present-day self was less bored and still disturbed but also amused.

Once again, Jordan and Eddie’s review of Digger motivated me to watch it at theatre.  I laughed, I went “ewww,” and I was pleased with the viewing experience and seeing the Warner Brothers logo for the last time on a film.  Riz Ahmed was excellent; Jesse Plemmons was a most effective jump scare; and Tom Cruise‘s energetic monologues recalled “Show me the money!” from Jerry Maguire. 

My favorite part might have been Maggie the cat — an obviously robotic cat.  Nothing about the way it moved or was handled would make the viewer think there was ever a real cat on set.  It got me pondering why there hasn’t been more R&D on robotic pets.  Would they be too easy to be used for villainous reasons?  (I like the Portuguese poster).

~!~

I watched the televised game on Saturday of the UGA Bulldogs beating the Alabama Crimson Tide.  Final score 20 to 17.  I didn’t catch the Georgia Tech Yellow Jackets winning against the Duke Blue Devils.  Final score 28 to 25.  I did tune in to the Atlanta Falcons almost but not overcoming the Baltimore Ravens on Sunday Night Football.  Mon dieu, si près et pourtant si loin.  On account of one touchdown not made, the Falcons arguably lost their offensive momentum psychologically.  That Ravens’ defense did what it was supposed to do, and in the end their offense was able to tie the game (23 to 23) with a two-point conversion, and then win in overtime.  Final score 30 to 23.

By the way, do you know the Forest Forgets?

Original pic creds: Yours truly, IMDB

For the Sake of Clarity

1 Reply

I will not get back those twenty-one dollars nor the three hours I spent today watching a movie I said I would watch at the end of this post.  There is no buyer’s remorse mainly because it was an incidental private screening.  I got to laugh heartily at dialogue and story details without fear that another audience member would disapprove.  I’ve not read any of the the source material’s author’s books, I have no desire to (not even out of masoschistic curiosity), and not even thirty minutes after the film was over, I forgot I’d just seen it.  I’m not joking….it was that forgettable.

So why would I pay to see it?  Because I said I would.  Plus, I like Anne Hathaway and Josh Hartnett, Dakota Johnson is a bit of a guilty pleasure, and I wanted motivation to keep my hair long.  Hathaway’s acting recalled her performances in Eileen and Mother’s Instinct; Johnson made me want to rewatch some of her Architectural Digest and SNL skits featuring limes and roasting (oh look, she’s hosting SNL this Saturday); and Hartnett was rocking some crazy eyes reminiscent of Trap and Fight or Flight.  The best part of the entire movie is how little mouth-breathing there was — in fact, I don’t think there was any. 

I can’t bear to post a picture from the film, so here’s a picture of a couple of small dogs I saw in a truck a couple of months ago.  It was very much a pix-or-it-didn’t-happen moment.  They looked like Ewoks at first.  

The movie I saw today is not good… it’s pretty in terms of set design and aerial shots, but it’s silly, boring, and unnecessary.  Oddly, though, it didn’t fill me with as strong of an “I don’t like this movie” the way that Hamnet and Disclosure Day did, both of which are much more competently made.

Pic cred: yours truly