On Sunday, I wasted twelve dollars and two hours of my life to see Sony’s “Madame Web”, the latest entry in the Venomverse. An acquaintance said it was bad. I concur with his assessment of the matter. Madame Web’s bad in several big ways: the narrative’s poorly structured, as if the writers just fed a synopsis into ChatGPT and took whatever slop it extruded; the characters are unbelievable even by capeshit standards, and they just kind of do things and stuff without any real motivation or depth beyond “needed for the plot to continue”. This isn’t helped by the acting from the leads. Dakota Johnson could not give less of a crap apparently in her performance as Cassie Webb (it’s still better than her appearance in the Fifty Shades films), and Tahar Rahim’s performance as the film’s antagonist Ezekiel Sims is bad on multiple levels, combining a lackluster physical presence with bad dubbing that doesn’t even match his lips. The three teenagers Cassie saves/kidnaps give performances marginally better than Johnson’s, but you still don’t care about them and they still make dumb decisions solely to advance the plot. All in all, my favorite scene was when Cassie said “it’s webbin’ time” and I hope this true kino makes over a madamillion (no, a webbillion) dollars at the box office.
On Monday, I met with Dr. Lempa for my weekly meeting about my thesis. I presented him with eleven pages of notes on Goldberg, and the following banger of a meme:
One of the primary sources he suggested I read (since I am not fluent in German, although I can sing it well- better than my singing in French anyway) are the works of Theodor Fontane, a realist novelist from the 19th century. So I plan on reading 1882’s Schach von Wuthenow and I hope I can also get to 1885’s Effi Briest. Expect reviews of those soon.
Today, I had my internship, and shortly afterward I had therapy. I opened up to Tatyana about what happened. It was a productive session. I’m mostly excited for 80s Night tonight, although it won’t be in the HUB since the HUB mostly no longer exists as the mud on my loafers can attest. Instead it’ll be in Collier. I want to win the Atari, since I already have a record player and a karaoke machine.
Sierpinski Tetrahedron 