Dreaming of Sentinels

 Doing  dreamersdare 's Stuff I Love Challenge!

#1 - One Shots.

Make a Top Ten list for your favourite standalone media and tell people exactly why you love it. This can be in any format - movies, one shot dramas, novels, short stories, plays, something else not mentioned here. Whatever you like!

Let's see.

1. Nightcrawler 

I've only seen this movie once, but it had a deep impact on me. It's about a rogue photographer who grows frustrated with his poor job prospects (IIRC), and takes matters into his own hands by taking crime scene footage in very unethical ways. I don't want to spoil too much, but let me just say it wasn't so much the turns it took as it was the turns it didn't. I thought the chickens would come to roost, and they really didn't. It's amazing and makes you think about what you see on TV and even social media. 

2. The Importance of Being Earnest 

I'll be honest, when we were assigned this play in high school, I had a visceral reaction because the name Ernest made me think of the Ernest films in the 90's. Obviously, it is not that.  I've read it and scene it several times since, though it has been quite some time. It's a master satire with fun twists that, thinking about it, really shouldn't have worked, but works very well. "A handbag?" indeed. 

Interestingly, I read a few of Cecily's part out loud for fun once, to test my acting skills. I actually got a very different impression of her doing so, playing her as less ditzy than she let on.

3. Kindred

The bare-bones description is that it's about a black woman in the seventies who ends up going back in time and unknowingly saves the life of her ancestor's enslaver's son. The son continues to call her into the past. It's very much about black trauma, and also a critique on how time travel would be different for black characters versus white characters.  (No apologies are made for any of the enslavers.)

I first heard of it when it was on Hulu. I decided to read the book before watching the show. From what I've heard, the show does a disservice to the novel, so I'm glad I made that decision.

4. The Lizzie Bennet Diaries

While marred by learning that the creator, Bernie Su, was terrible and continues to be terrible to the cast, I love the webseries itself. It's a modern retelling of Pride and Prejudice, wherein Lizzie Bennet is a grad student vlogging for her thesis. I unfortunately missed the show while it was being released, so I didn't get to enjoy this part, but it was very interactive. You could follow the characters on what was then twitter and tumblr, along with other social media pages. You could ask questions in Q&A's. All that aside, I think the story itself was adapted well. Lydia's character is actually far more sympathetic (even if Lizzie is scathing at first), and she's allowed to rise from a bad situation. Charlotte's modernized storyline is actually very clever. All in all, it's clever and a lot of fun. I just wish Bernie Su wasn't a terrible person.

5. Funny in Farsi

Funny in Farsi is a memoir I wish everyone would read, that I may re-read myself. It's Firoozeh Dumas's account of growing up in the United States as an immigrant from Iran. While the story does touch on sad subjects, it's mostly fun (hence "funny"), focusing on friends, family, and culture. 

6. I'm Thinking of Ending Things

This is a movie I shouldn't love so much, as it's very grim and pessimistic. But it's such an amazing mindfuck that gets me every time I watch. The supposed premise is that it's a woman traveling home with her boyfriend to meet his parents, all the while thinking of breaking up with him. As the movie goes on, however, you realize there's a lot more to the story than that. All I'm going to say.

7. North By Northwest

I love that it starts out as a comedy of errors, then becomes so much more than that. It's also fun to recognize so many tropes in the film.

8. Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Christ's Childhood Pal

Lamb walks us through not only Joshua's childhood (and later adulthood), but what are known as the "missing years". Biff and Joshua spend those years globetrotting, and their trek includes a study of Buddhism. The book also has very interesting depictions of various Biblical figures, including Maggie - AKA "Mary Magdalene".

The author has said that he is "Buddhist with Christian tendencies".

9. Persepolis

A graphic novel and memoir about a girl growing up during the Iranian revolution. It's a story of how fast your world can fall apart, but also of resilience. You watch Marjan see everything through very innocent eyes initially, though she isn't so naive as not to notice contradictions between her parents' wealth and their claims of being socialist. We grow up with her as her world becomes scarier and she better understands the darkness, but there's still a lot of love in the pages.

The second volume is also very good, though she's older completely void of that innocent optimism. (Or as Satrapi once put it, "in the first book, I am cute. In the second, I am not cute.")

10. Jane Eyre

(I know some of you really don't like Jane Eyre. Sorry.)

Jane Eyre was a quarantine read; I somehow managed to get through high school and college without reading it. One of my friends and I wanted something to do while quarantining, so we started a two person book club, She'd already read Jane Eyre, I never had.

I'll grant you, Jane Eyre didn't age particularly well, and parts of the novel lost me entirely. But I was still enthralled with it; the main character isn't wealthy (unlike many contemporary female heroines), although she does live among the wealthy for much of the novel. While her abusive childhood is heartbreaking, it rang true, including the part where she feels she has to reconcile with her abusive stepparent - only to learn the stepparent only ever wanted to gloat. In that way, it actually felt quite modern. The mystery is worked in quite well, and not at all how I was expecting. And while Jane had some problematic views (again, it didn't age well in a lot of ways), I still enjoyed following her story.

Oh, and Helen Burns would definitely sell CBD oil today..