Projects #021 - “Sigourney Weaver’s gonna tell us where we are!”
Ellen's rise and fall, plus several books!
Project Updates 6/2-6/7/25
Happy Tuesday everyone! My friend James visited this weekend from Philly and we went on a lovely hike and had a crazy dinner at Sarma. Plus, I got the Switch 2!
Watching
2025 Films
TURNSTILE: NEVER ENOUGH
An ‘albumovie” from hardcore band Turnstile that understand the beauty of the jetski and a drummer’s muscular back. Really fun seeing in the theater, probably wouldn’t hit as hard on YouTube. Good album, too!
Predator: Killer of Killers
Frankly assumed this would be a giant piece of crap from the trailer, but I was compelled to check it out by some rumblings of quality. And it turned out to be true! Each story is violence forward and filled with brutal kills, just as the Predator or whatever his species is called would want. The lack of “okay, that just happened” dialogue is a relief, though it gets perilously close during the WWII segment. Worth watching before Badlands comes out, when you’ve got 80 minutes to spare.
52 Films by 52 Women
In the Spirit (1990) dir. Sandra Seacat
Sleeping Beauty (2011) dir. Julia Leigh
Two films by women who stepped outside of their usual careers - Seacat a celebrated acting teacher and Leigh an acclaimed novelist - to direct once and never again. Spirit is like a long-form improv set with Marlo Thomas and Elaine May, so I am predisposed to enjoy, even if it’s shockingly slack for a film barely 90 minutes. Characters disappear never to be seen again, but hey, you’re laughin! Beauty was not quite for me, though it is well-acted.
Anime
Vampire Hunter D: Bloodlust (2000)
Now THIS is a movie! Did an incredible job capturing the gothic romantic tone of Yoshitaka Amano’s art for the original novels. Makes the ‘80s one look like NOTHING! Scarecrow Video rental.
We also went and saw the first three episodes of season two of Dandadan at a theatrical preview, which made $3.1 million this weekend. Isn’t that wild? Anime is so far from niche these days but I still pretend to be the only person reading One Piece.
TV
ER Season 12 (2005-2006)
The first Carter-less season (though he does show up multiple times with a fresh buzzcut in Darfur) definitely has some stumbles, but there are still some very strong episodes that make it all worthwhile. Kristen Johnston has a fun run as a tough nurse manager, John Leguizamo has a psychotic plotline as the new attending, Neela gets to be a fun type of crazy, and Luka sends Pratt to Africa to teach him a lesson. When is the last time I watched season TWELVE of a show? The Simpsons? Always Sunny?
Reading
Books
Aggregated Discontent by Harron Walker & Authority by Andrea Long Chu
Not to lump two books of essays by trans women together, but also they have some significant overlaps in their acknowledgments (Torrey Peters seems busy!!). Like any essay collection, there are sections good and bad in Walker’s debut, but always easy to read. Chu’s collection is just a bound edition of the past decade of her work, most of which I read at the time. Cultural essays resist aging well, but essays like those on Transparent and The Last of Us still resonate. One thing is certain: every writer needs to be on the internet less.
Graphic Novels
Spent by Alison Bechdel
Bechdel’s latest feels like a blend of Dykes and her autobiographical works. Not a home run like Superhuman Strength, but very fun and cathartic. It feels like Bechdel is bursting with ideas, but unlike many writers she has morals and beliefs to help her work through them. Lovely to see Dykes characters transposed to an idyllic Vermont town, where the real world and the death of America slowly encroach. Bechdel is one of my favorite artists of all time, and I was thrilled to see her speak at the Brattle for this book tour. She’s asking a lot of questions about modern life, but she’s not just throwing up her hands and admitting defeat. Plus, she’s over 60 and pro-Gaza, I trust her.
Manga
They Were Eleven!!
Been waiting for this book to drop for ages, finally managed to snag it at Anime Boston. One of the earliest defining works of the shojo genre, this sci-fi miniseries traffics in paranoia and proper spaceship procedure. I had no idea this collection included a sequel manga where a couple of the characters get involved in an interplanetary civil war. Not exactly what comes to mind when you think of shojo, but manga can truly be anything. Notably, this series features a non-binary protagonist in the form of Frol, a cadet from a genderless species that is given hormones to become male or female when they come of age. It’s a bit whackadoo, but there’s something charming about it all. I also watched the anime film adaptation which I found quite sedate and dry. I wonder if there are any remake plans in the future…
Videos Game
Promise Mascot Agency
Downloaded for Switch. I’m not playing a ton of indie games these days, but something about this little world where mascots are real and have yakuza ties really tickled me. It’s a little buggy, but in a charming way. I get so much satisfaction out of games where you can automate tasks and just have the rewards roll in while you explore. Dance, mascots, dance!
And yes, as I said at the start, I did get the Switch 2, but I’ll address that when I’ve made more progress in Mario Kart World.
Hank Happenings
The face of a young man who got too upset at the vet and was unable to be sedated for his dental procedure… unrepentant! Unremorseful!
Pixar Project #017 - FINDING DORY (2016) dir. Andrew Stanton
Thirteen years after the astounding success of Finding Nemo, still one of Pixar’s finest accomplishments, a sequel splashed into theaters. Ellen had a long running gag on her talk show that Finding Dory’s release was imminent, though it didn’t manifest until Pixar took a look at the coffers and decided they could use a cool billion dollars. During this interim, Andrew Stanton’s attempt at live action failed horribly at the box office, with John Carter becoming one of the biggest bombs of all time. He needed to clear his head, thus he returned to his Pixar home and finally got Finding Dory off the ground. And it’s pretty good!
Finding Dory could only have come out at the tail (or fin?) end of the Obama era. Any later and Ellen’s secret cruelty exposed on the world stage1 would have overshadowed Dory’s solo adventure, scuttling the production. This is Ellen’s last feature film, probably ever, unless Pixar ends up doing Finding Marlin. She seems really, truly, done! I can’t help but feel bad for Ellen, someone whose soul was so eroded by fame and wealth it’s easy to forget how hard she fought for acceptance in the ‘90s as a lesbian. That doesn’t justify how awful she was to every single one of her employees, but it just makes me sad. She is genuinely great as Dory. But many evil people are amazing actors - just look at James Woods!
The film also faced a couple of pointless controversies, foreshadowing how deranged humanity’s relationship to popular culture would become in the Trump era. Conservatives got mad that the trailer featured two women assumed to be lesbians, even though they are only on screen for five seconds. Liberals got mad that those women were NOT lesbians, and no one was happy. Unfortunately, lack of gay representation in Pixar is a topic we’ll be returning to basically every other movie from here on out. After the film’s release, there was also hand-wringing about the sea lion character Gerald, who some people thought was being bullied for being mentally handicapped. Never mind that the film is *about* having a disability!
The film opens like so many Disney movies do these days, with a baby version of our lead. Fortunately, baby Dory is very cute and her childhood is a key aspect of the story. We meet her parents, Jenny (Diane Keaton) and Charlie (Eugene Levy)2, who are trying to help their daughter understand her short-term memory loss and how to deal with any challenges she may face. Unfortunately, she ends up separated from her parents, wandering the ocean slowly forgetting them until the day she meets Marlin (Albert Brooks), chasing after a boat. One year later, Dory is Marlin and Nemo’s next door neighbor, happily living her new life until she suddenly remembers the face that she has parents and they live in California. Seizing this memory with everything she’s got, Dory convinces Marlin and Nemo they must travel to California and find her parents.
There’s a lot of talk about the events of the first film, and to be fair, if I were a fish that traveled across the ocean and nearly died multiple times, I’d probably bring it up a bunch too. Dory, Marlin, and Nemo end up in California very quickly thanks to the help of the sea turtles. No time to waste! Get to the aquarium! After an encounter with a squid3, the group arrives at the Marine Life Institute, where Dory starts awakening some dormant memories.
So much of this film is about fish finding ways to navigate dry land. Marlin and Nemo end up in a plastic bucket carried by a silly bird named Becky, while Dory meets an octopus (Ed O’Neill) who carries her around in a coffee pot. One wrong move and these fish are toast! The animation for Hank (oh hey!) the octopus is nothing short of glorious. He is so goopy and floppy and sticky and camouflage-y and just amazing to look at. The character is a pretty basic grump who wants to be left alone, but decides to help Dory so she can get him to Cleveland where no one will bother him again.
Dory’s short-term memory loss is not magically fixed. Dory meets figures from her past like Destiny the nearsighted whale shark (Kaitlin Olson) and hears the voice of Sigourney Weaver (playing herself as the voice of God at the Institute), triggering lost memories, but she’s not suddenly a supercomputer. The film, somewhat surprisingly, is about living with a disability, how parents help their differently abled child, and how Marlin needs to be less ableist. It’s a far better attempt at the “be yourself” lesson from Cars 2, because Dory is not a culturally insensitive tow truck. She can be a little frustrating, yes, but her sense of determination never falters.
Dory eventually discovers her parents just outside of the Institute, having been waiting for her there since she disappeared. They constructed a path of shells to guide their daughter, just like when Dory was small. The family celebration is short lived, as Dory soon learns she must rescue Marlin and Nemo from the truck heading to Cleveland. This leads to the film’s climax, where a fish must hijack a truck and drive it off a bridge into the ocean. It’s quite over the top compared to the original film, but a lot of fun. I love picturing Big Little Lies just happening down the street.
Dory rescues everyone, and the escapees head back to the reef. Cut to Sia’s cover of Unforgettable and we’re done! Lovely film, better than any sequel to an unsequelable film has a right to be. A sweet goodbye to Ellen before her heart turned to pitch black ink and she disappeared into obscurity and ridicule. May we never see her again.
Finding Dory: Three out of five bouncing lamps!
From the archives
Mary Fran Corner
Finding Dory begins with an adorable baby Dory confirming she has always suffered from short-term memory loss. She’s playing hide-and-seek with her parents, who thank goodness love and support her despite her “flaws” (as a side note I love that Dory’s dad somehow has a receding hairline with no hair). After a close call getting lost, wide-eyed Dory stresses over whether she’ll ever forget her parents, or if her parents would ever forget her. Her parents assure her they’d never forget her, but notably didn’t answer whether she’d ever forget them.
Unfortunately, enough close calls pass, and little Dory finds herself lost and forgetting her parents. Flash forward to one year after meeting her chosen family, Nemo and Marlin, and suddenly she remembers she has parents! And that they live in an aquarium! Marlin and Nemo accompany her on a journey to find them, but quickly get separated.
I like that this follows a similar pattern of the original movie of one fish looking for another and running into issues along the way. Like in the first movie, Dory is underestimated despite consistently solving problems that fish who deem themselves more competent can’t. This includes an octopus named Hank who is afraid of getting sent back into the ocean. Once Dory is separated from Marlin and Nemo, he is Dory’s main side kick. However, my personal favorite sea creature who assists Dory is Destiny, a nearsighted whale shark who used to chat with Dory through the pipes when she was younger.
Dory reaches her childhood home and doesn’t find her parents. But there’s hope! A fish suggests maybe they’re in quarantine. With renewed hope, she finds Marlin and Nemo and makes her way to quarantine. There, much like Marlin getting so close to Nemo only to think he died in the original movie, Dory is led to believe her parents are dead. Chaos ensues— Nemo and Marlin end up on a truck to Cleveland — and Hank tries to help but accidentally flushes Dory down a drain in the process.
This turns out for the best, because Dory comes across a trail of shells, which she follows because that’s what her parents used to use to help her remember how to get home, and is reunited with her parents! They’ve been staying put and waiting for her this whole time. It’s a nice callback to the beginning of the movie when I was worried her parents thought she was capable of forgetting them. Turns out they knew all along that even if Dory forgot them at some point, she’d eventually remember them and find her way back.
Meanwhile, Hank, Marlin, and Nemo are on that truck to Cleveland. Dory somehow boards this truck as well and persuades Hank to get over his fears and return to the sea with her. And then the pair HIJACK THE TRUCK! Like what? So outlandish but it works for this goofy yet heartwarming movie. They crash the truck into the sea, freeing all the sea creatures and allowing themselves, Marlin, Nemo, and her parents to return to the reef. What a happy little ending.
This movie isn’t my favorite of Pixar’s but it’s enjoyable to watch and I’m glad that it exists. My favorite part is that Sigourney Weaver is the voice that greets guests of the aquarium that Dory is from. It’s a running joke throughout the movie and all the aquarium fish seem to feel a friendship with her. Why not.
Links and Recommendations
Great piece about Scarecrow Video, where I get my rarest movies
Congrats to Caroline and Tessa on their imminent film premiere!
Urgent support needed for these families detained by ICE in LA - almost at the goal!
Of course, we all remember Dakota Johnson ruining Ellen’s life, but the stories and rumors about Ellen’s megalomania started long before that.
I love that they found a way to give a fish a receding hairline!
My godson was obsessed with the squid scene when he was little; he kept rewinding the movie to watch it over and over.
It's crazy how Dakota on Ellen never gets old