#ketterle

Here is my work for Wonderful x Strange 2022 for @ketterle! Diane and Diane, at Horne’s Hair Salon...

It’s here! Happy anniversary everyone! The AO3 collection is revealed if anyone wants to use it!

hello!!! i am extremely honored to receive this ask, because it means i've cemented my reputation as the divorce gal on the internet. i am working on a comprehensive list of divorce and divorce-adjacent films/tv episodes, but i'll give you a little taste of some of my personal favorites, in no particular order:

- alan alda and jane fonda's storyline in california suite (1978). my firm stance on neil simon is that he should only be allowed to write biting, nasty divorce banter, and this checks that box perfectly! the aesthetics are gorgeous too, so you get a good heap of divorce with some beautiful cinematography, and the scenes between the two of them are really a bisexual's (my) dream

-pete n' tillie (1972) - while this film is pretty obscure, and doesn't contain outright divorce, i think it contains some really excellent depictions of marital struggles, and the whole idea of 'marrying before you get too old.' there are a couple blow-ups and talk of divorce, but the movie does end happily, so if you're a fan of messy endings, this may not be the one for you. i personally consider this movie one of my all-time faves, for sentimental reasons, but also because i like to see resentful, messy relationships with a sappy ending

-gilda (1946) - alright. so this one contains the exact opposite of divorce, but the reason i include this film is because the marriage in the film is used as a reason to stay separated. without spoiling the plot, i just feel that light switch on in my eyes throughout the movie, with its themes of infidelity, marital struggles, and of course, the reverse marriage and its entrapment. it's really quite brilliant that they use marriage as the source of pain, rather than divorce!

-who's afraid of virginia woolf? (1966) - this is another film that doesn't contain outright divorce, but the marriage in it is so sickening, so messy, and so downright horrible, it deserves to be on this list. this is an intense watch, so be prepared to watch relationships get destroyed. it contains my favorite themes of infidelity and corruption as well, and is an excellent divorce-adjacent watch, as well as a must-watch for any film buff, in my humble opinion

-the four seasons (1981) - this is my current blog header, so it makes sense i'd have to include it. while the movie is not centered around divorce, one of the main characters gets divorced and finds a new girlfriend, which causes tension within the friend group and strains the other couples' relationships. this is a really beautifully executed movie, focusing more on how the relationships between the characters fluctuate, but it's fair to say that divorce is also a large topic in this movie, and i think the way alan alda handled the topic was really absolute bliss (i stole that line from donald sutherland)

as for some other divorce movies i can't add to my personal favorite list, due to the fact that they are really not good™, i would say divorce hers (1973), i will, i will... for now (1976), robert altman's HEALTH (1980) and a wedding (1978), and blume in love (1973) are all movies worth checking out, if only for the star power of the casts (carol burnett, elliott gould, george segal, and elizabeth taylor to name some), and that good, old-fashioned 'new hollywood marital struggle' theme. i will definitely be trying to get my divorce list out as fast as possible, especially because i want to add some tv episodes into this mix, but i would consider this a pretty solid starter pack!

Heyyy justie <3

5. Telepatía - Kali Uchis

20. Drive Away - The Brummies ft. Kacey Musgraves

answering these for luce since they are on my mind :')

1. what kind of clothing does your character like to wear? do they have a style? anything they avoid wearing?

luce is my character for a oneshot set in the pjo (percy jackson and the olympians) universe, so they normally wear their chb (camp half-blood) t-shirt with black jeans and combat boots! they rip the sleeves off their tops for style but also to let the wings of their sick vulture tattoo peek out. ripped clothing is definitely a central part of their wardrobe. so is the color black. they tend to not like wearing anything too feminine but do know how to dress up. since their mother is filipino, they love pulling out traditional attire whenever they can. the last time i played luce, they attended a formal party and wore a barong passed down from their lolo!

19. do they see patterns in the world around them? do they point them out to people?

as a daughter of ares, luce is naturally good at picking apart how people fight. strengths, weaknesses, advantages, disadvantages, the whole thing. they can piece together what sort of tactics opponents depend on the most and how to use that against them. luce is all about strategy, how to win the war, which makes sense!

ooooh, this was hard.

3. the china syndrome

i don’t think a lot of people know about this movie, but i saw it a year ago and it knocked me onto my ass. it’s like silkwood, but better (sorry!) 

to talk about this movie we need to talk about jack lemmon. when i say the name jack lemmon, i am sure a wide variety of you thought about different performances - the apartment, some like it hot, days of wine and roses, the great race, etc. i wish we talked about this movie more. i think he should have won an oscar for it.

here is a man who knows something awful is happening, and to speak out would be to kill himself, but to do nothing would be to kill many. how do you reconcile this? how do you live with yourself? look at his face. look at all the pain. i’ve never seen jack like this in any other film.

2. the in-laws

i have talked about this movie a lot in other posts, but god, this is one of the funniest movies ever. peter falk inventing physical comedy. 

1. all that jazz

i watched this movie last year on fourth of july weekend. i was exhausted and severely depressed. the ending of this film, which is my pick for the greatest ending sequence in a film, knocked me onto my ass. the thing no one tells you about being alive is that it is sometimes very hard to stay alive. it requires a lot of effort and work. i might just be projecting a lot into this movie, but i think it’s very ballsy for a man to almost die and then conceptualize his own death in this way. i think it’s gambit that paid off. like, you can love bob fosse or hate bob fosse or not care one iota about bob fosse, but this movie is extremely ambitious and i just can’t believe that any of it works. but it does. 

if i could tenderly kiss the person who was in charge of the music on the show, i would. it’s so good! (apart from a few oddly anachronistic choices, but hey, the rest is nothing short of iconic & showstopping. also including the character playlists 💕)

I would absolutely love to shake the hand of music supervisor Thomas Golubić, of SuperMusicVision! I looked up the rest of his credits just now, and according to SuperMusicVision’s tunefind page, he also did the music for Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul (which I haven’t seen but stand up, combined Halt-The Americans-Leftovers-Breaking Bad/Better Call Saul nation, I KNOW YOU EXIST!), and also -- wait for it -- he was the music supervisor for Six Feet Under. !!!

Which maybe sounds like me name-dropping peak tv just to be smug but I swear I’m not, I’m fangirling because the work is consistent?! He works mostly on character dramas and dramedies that are known for their acting, writing, and for being ‘sad’ anti-hero type shows, he apparently makes playlists for a lot of his characters as part of his process, and it’s just so clear that understands what this type of show and its characters need?