THE GREAT MASTER LIST OF 2013

Or rather an all-encompassing list of movies seen. And other stuff.

Bernie (2011)
Brick (2005)
Through a Glass Darkly (1961)
(A)sexual (2011)
The Queen of Versailles (2012)
Winter Light (1962)
The Artist (2011)
In the Mood for Love (2001)
Diary of a Lost Girl (1929)
Picnic at Hanging Rock (1975)
The Evil Dead (1981)
Jeff, Who Lives at Home (2011)
Moonrise Kingdom (2012)
Mean Girls (2004)
Heckler (2007)
The Woodmans (2011)
Beasts of the Southern Wild (2012)
Bill Cunningham New York (2011)
The Silence (1963)
I Married a Witch (1942)

Finished watching all of: 30 Rock, Slings and Arrows
Started watching: Frasier

Books in progress: Lords of the Harvest (Daniel Charles, 2001)
North for the Harvest (Jim Norris, 2009)

All books I read this year must have the word “Harvest” in the title.

Might be recipes in this space to come, too. Things I have tried:
innumerable Indian gravies (more like three or four)
Chana masala
A couple bread recipes

Project Runway: “Fix My Friend”

So this is the episode where Ven stepped in and let us know that Elena was not going to be handed the title of season villain simply on the force of her bug-eyed profanity and confrontational nature. With his own understated flair, Ven managed to be really, really awful in a way that positively dwarfed Elena in the last episode and what now, in retrospect, looks like overexcited, overly ambitious efforts from Gunnar at being the quintessential “I’m not here to make friends” reality show contestant adversary early on in the season.

Like similar challenges in seasons past, this one offered up some tears, but only one case of this was due to contentious designer-client relations. (I believe it was Gunnar’s client who also cried early on in the episode, but over her own insecurities or the fact that her style didn’t reflect her awesome personality or something; Gunnar even comforted and hugged her in yet another display that suggests he might in fact be a human being.) But as soon as Ven was paired with a heavier client, his mouth ran afoul the entire episode. Some of the other designers were “lucky” with the clients they got paired with. He was saddled with a “real” woman (“real” in the parlance of fans usually meaning something more like “not from the fashion world,” whereas Ven’s insistence on it suggested that he really just meant “fat” — a little depressing if you expect someone more on the “real” side as Ven is to perhaps be more considerate about this). And he would not shut the hell up about the belt. Ven wanted to include a belt in his design, but the accessories they were provided seemed only to come in one size. Ven mentioned this to his client three times throughout the episode, and every time insisted on mentioning that the belt was too small. The other designers looked on, visibly uncomfortable, as the relations between Ven and his client became more contentious. At one point, Ven tried to smooth things over with an awkwardly-worded compliment: he was really surprised at how beautiful his client looked when she came back into the workroom, post-makeover. “Thanks,” the client said flatly.

The thing is, Ven seemed pretty clueless as to why his comments were hurting his client’s feelings. He’s quite flat and affectless in the way he presents himself; a lot of reaction I’ve seen online has used the “robotic” descriptor. I wondered a little even before this episode if he might have Asperger’s or something (as a TV viewer, I think I am well-qualified to speculate on possible developmental disorders displayed in people on the TV). And if this is the case, it certainly doesn’t excuse the incredibly rude things he said in this episode, but at the same time you can’t judge him using neurotpyical standards either. So much of the reaction I’ve seen has been incredulous as to how he could behave that way. Well, maybe it’s tougher for him to pick up on certain kinds of cues.

Or maybe he’s just a run-of-the-mill jerk. Who knows.

Whatever the case, this aspect of the episode was profoundly unpleasant, and thanks now to the magic of the digital age, Ven and his client were able to continue their “discourse” over the medium of Twitter where otherwise the barbs would have had to be swallowed, the clients never to interact again. Thank god for technology.

It’s at this point I should mention that I actually thought Ven’s client looked good in her post-makeover outfit. Also better than some of the clients of safe designers did in theirs. Perhaps I’m just tasteless.

In fact, I thought it was a fairly lackluster challenge on the design side of things (the side that would presumably be given more weight, given that this is a design show; but clearly the human drama element can never fully be overlooked on a reality show). It was quite nice to actually see happy relations among all the other clients and designers. But it was clear that some of the designers were at a loss as to how to interpret their clients’ requests. Nathan, for his part, had a woman who wanted to be a performer of some kind, and wanted an outfit that somehow managed to be sophisticated while also bearing her midriff. (Yeah.) Nathan compromised by glomming some sheer black arms made of a small meshed, fishnet-y material onto his boilerplate teenage-girl-mall dress. Sonjia’s dress was similarly humdrum, I thought. Not only did the dress look indistinguishable from mall fare, it was poorly proportioned and too short. Alicia’s pink lace dress was also oddly short and — I’m gonna say it — home-sewn-looking, but she ended up being safe. Melissa’s piece also looked pretty lackluster this week. It was a black dress that didn’t seem to have anything going on for it except for a little fold sticking up at the neckline, and the whole works was mostly hidden by a voluminous shawl/scarf contraption which, while kind of neat, wasn’t exactly design-y. Christopher made a really nice, simple gray wrap dress that I thought stood out for its nice draping. He also did a sharp little blazer, which the client immediately took off upon appearing at the runway, to Christopher’s (and my) chagrin. If this were a competition based solely on productivity and execution, he would have won this week, but as it was he was safe.

Meanwhile, Dmitri continued his reign with the polished, simple, sophisticated dresses he so favors. But Fabio won this week with a really casual but still chic dress which stood out for its interlocking, angular patches in different shades of grey (but not 50 of them), which was especially noteworthy as he made it for a decidedly un-girly girl who rarely wore dresses but loved this one cause it made her feel powerful and meshed with her edgy style. It was a well-deserved win. Rounding out the top three was Gunnar, who made a kind of gauzy black dress with an interesting sort of woven treatment as an overlay on the skirt, but it looked a bit like a negligée. I think he ended up in the top three because his client, of all the others, was the most demonstrably thrilled about her outfit. She more or less strutted down the runway.

Oh, and a coda: who got kicked off this week. Once the bottom three were announced, it was obvious it was going to be Nathan. First off, Sonjia’s dress seemed to be an aberration from her previous (really nice) designs, and Ven has to be kept on for dramatic purposes. (Not to mention he normally executes well, although as Dmitri pointed out last week, he is becoming a bit of a one-way monkey.) Nathan simply hadn’t distinguished himself enough. Before the commercial break, however, Heidi trotted out the empty threat that one — or more — designers were about to be kicked off. It turned out that Ven was left alone on the runway after Nathan was sent home and Sonjia was given her reprieve. Before they told him he was still in, the judges took this opportunity to chastise Ven for his poor handling of his client. A beautifully telling moment came when the other designers asked Ven if the judges had said anything to him out there, and he said no. Oh, Ven.

Next week: Elena cries a lot. Elena has won me back a little this week after she complisulted Gunnar’s dress by being pleasantly surprised by it. She was not shy about the fact that she normally doesn’t like his work, but she liked his. I guess Elena is merely brutally honest. Then she said, “I don’t mean to be mean.” That’s more than you can say for some people.

This and that.

“Futurists R. Buckminster Fuller and Athelstan Spilhaus, then the dean of the University of Minnesota’s Institute of Technology, went much further, proposing an entire experimental city near Minneapolis knit together by skyways, monorails, and other geekery. Surprisingly, that came close to happening — the Legislature was on board — but we got Blaine instead.”
- excerpt from mini article “Skyway to Hell,” about the history of Minneapolis’ skyways, by Tim Gihring and appearing in this month’s Minnesota Monthly

Ooooh, burn, Blaine.

You know how this blog is called “Sarah Reads Stuff,” and its rare updates are basically never about things I’ve read? You would not be wrong to wonder if I can even read. But you would also be wrong in that supposition, because as a matter of fact, I can and did read something the other day. A magazine. And while I can’t seem to finish a single book or manage to string together a few intelligent sentences about any of the movies or TV shows I’ve taken in these past few months, I can simply post verbatim the excerpt that made me chuckle from this magazine, Tasteful Upper Middle Class Minnesota Monthly. (That’s a little joke about the title. Yet I feel I don’t really belong to this magazine’s target demographic.)

As a matter of fact, I am reading a couple of things. One is “Truck” by Michael Perry, a follow-up memoir to “Population 485,” which I read a couple months back and never posted a reaction to. (I enjoyed it.) I also started reading Levon Helms’ autobiography, spurred by his death and the fact that I’d read most of it years ago but never finished, and had been meaning to go back and give the whole thing a go again. (But then I lost the copy. It’s around somewhere.) Then there’s this book about the Brontë sisters, the title of which I’ve forgotten. Let me tell you, Victorian England does not sound like a fun place for a lady writer.

I’ve also seen two Bergman movies (The Virgin Spring and Wild Strawberries) and Heathers and La Vie en Rose and all of Friday Night Lights in this time and am also currently watching Louie and Breaking Bad and I have so many meaningful thoughts* to share about them.

*Like, two of them

I start out meaning to leave a paragraph’s worth of reaction, maybe one or two others, largely so I can look back later and it will jog my memory of what I’ve actually read. In the fact of writing more, I start to feel it should make sense, have a beginning, middle, and end. And that’s a pain in the ass. So that’s why my beautiful, thoughtful thoughts are jammed into a heat-muddled, overtaxed part of my brain.

So, more on all of these soon. Maybe. Maybe I’ll have to wait until fall.

Master List of Consumed Media

Books

I Am America (And So Can You!) — Stephen Colbert, 2007

Reflections from the North Country — Sigurd Olson, 1976 (IP)

Population 485 — Michael Perry

The Omnivore’s Dilemma — Michael Pollan

Truck, A Love Story — Michael Perry (IP)

This Wheel’s On Fire — Levon Helm (IP)

Movies

8 1/2 — Frederico Fellini, 1963

The Five People You Meet in Heaven — Lloyd Kramer, 2004

Rango — Gore Verbinski, 2011

The Tree of Life — Terence Malick, 2011

Jeux interdits (English title: Forbidden Games) — René Clément, 1952

My Dinner with Andre – Louis Malle, 1981

Synecdoche, New York – Charlie Kaufman, 2008

Jane Eyre – Christy Cabanne, 1934

Mystery Team — Dan Eckman, 2009

Mulholland Drive — David Lynch, 2001

Léon (/The Professional) — Luc Besson, 1994

Rashomon — Akira Kurosawa, 1950

Heathers — Michael Lehmann, 1988

Les Demoiselles de Rochefort (The Young Girls of Rochefort)– Jacques Démy, 1967
Wild Strawberries (Smultonstället) — Ingmar Bergman, 1957

The Virgin Spring (Jungfrukällan) — Ingmar Bergman, 1960

Burn After Reading — Joel and Ethan Coen, 2008

Inland Empire — David Lynch, 2006

TV

Breaking Bad, season 4

Project Runway All Stars

Parks and Recreation, seasons 1 – current (4)

Louie, season 1

The Office (U.K.)

Mad Men, up to the present

Friday Night Lights, seasons 1-3, 4 in progress

Music

Helplessness Blues – Fleet Foxes, 2011

Watch the Throne – Jay-Z and Kanye West, 2011

Who Kill – Tune-Yards, 2011

E&A - Eyedea & Abilities, 2004

Section 80 - Kendrick Lamar, 2011

Slave Ambient - The War on Drugs, 2011

Strange Mercy – St. Vincent, 2011

Fox Confessor Brings the Flood – Neko Case, 2006

Blacklisted – Neko Case, 2002

Andrew Bird and the Misterious Production of Eggs – Andrew Bird, 2005

The Magic Place – Julianna Barwick, 2011

All Hours Cymbals — Yeasayer, 2007