What's This Bitch Talking About? ep 16

Sestra Playlist: https://open.spotify.com/user/mixtressrae/playlist/1FFc20WMGQKQ5xFBMOnpDH

It's Kevin Smith night! I review my five Kevin Smith-directed movies (Clerks, Mallrats, Chasing Amy, Dogma, and Zack and Miri Make a Porno).

Other pop culture reviewed: Beyonce's "Lemonade", Solange's "A Seat At The Table" and Sarah Knight's "The Life Changing Magic of Not Giving a Fuck" (the ebook is 1.99 right now!).

***What's This Bitch Talking About? is the podcast version of Mixtress Radio (airs every Friday from 7-11pm CST on mixtressrae.com) Most of the songs mentioned are contained in the Sestra Playlist, link above.

Mallrats (1995)

This is one of those movies that I really just like to zone out and not think about. I'm afraid if I overthink it, I won't like it as much. In fact, I'm sure of it. This is not a philosophical movie. I'm almost certain I wouldn't like this movie if I saw it now for the first time. Does this mean I should rate it how I feel about it now or how I felt about it then? The inane conversations of adolescent men used to amuse me to no end, but these conversations no longer exist in my age-group unless those within my age-group are stoned.

Ok, I remember why I like it. Because the dialogue is more intelligent than any adolescent male conversation, even though the subject matter is just as inane. I do, however, feel about the mall the way they feel about the mall. I enjoy the contained commerce of it all. The indoor browsing of meaningless goods. I like the visual stimulus of stuff I won't buy. I do buy meaningless crap at the mall occasionally.  Why not? Because of underpaid overworked overseas workers in factories? Yes. I really should restrict all my shopping to the DAV. And there aren't book, comic, or music stores in the mall anymore except Vintage Stock which is pretty cool, actually.

I've always been drawn to the unplot-plot. Most of my favorite movies are just a group of characters doing nothing. This movie is quotable, for sure. Sometimes movies are better in the constant pop-culture retelling you do with your friends and family out in the real world.

TS and Brandy are completely boring. I don't care about them at all. There's not a shred of quirk in them. borrrrrrrring. The pretzel-poop scene is not my humor. I like my revenge in the form of ass-kickings, myself.

"Understanding is reached only after confrontation."

Mostly, I just play this movie in the background while I'm knitting or something. And I really don't care halfway through the movie when the plot kicks in. It's simply a much-watched highly-quotable movie.

character average: 5.14
replayability: 8
music: 3
dialogue: 8
atmosphere: 7

TOTAL: 31.14

my top 16 movies...

are as follows (in chronological order):

Carrie
The Breakfast Club
Real Genius
The Crow
Clueless
Empire Records
Mallrats
Velvet Goldmine
The Matrix
High Fidelity
Best in Show
Moulin Rouge
Napoleon Dynamite
The Big Lebowski
Juno
Bridesmaids

That's wayy too many movies. I need to narrow it down to a top 10. To do this, I'm going to watch all 16 and rate them on a scale of one to ten on the following five parameters:

1. atmosphere/setting/cinematography
2. characters: this will be achieved by rating each of the main characters on the one to ten scale and then averaging their scores.
3. dialogue
4. music
5. replayability

Each movie has the potential of achieving 50 points. If there's a tie for 10th place, the two movies in question will have to be rewatched/rescored to break the tie. I will blog about each one as I watch it (or take notes and post the blog later, either way). Hopefully, hilarity will ensue and I will be reminded of why these are my favorite movies. If anyone would like to join me, I'll be watching them in the order above. I'm watching "Carrie" tonight, but text/msg/email me if you want to come over for popcorn and join in the movie analysis for any of the films below "Carrie" on the list.