Recent reading
Apr. 25th, 2025 08:54 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
troisoiseauxRead Extra Salty by Frederick Blichert, a novella-length retrospective on cinematic masterpiece Jennifer's Body, part of a series of pop culture commentaries published as cute little pamphlet-sized books by ECW Press. Thoughtful recap of the movie's themes and the horror tropes it embraces and subverts, how the studio's mismarketing (and general societal misogyny) contributed to it being critically panned on its release in 2009, and its afterlife as a cult classic and then as a movie for the #MeToo moment that came out a decade too early to be appreciated.
Followed this up with Right, Down + Circle by Cole Nowicki, a love letter to Tony Hawk's Pro Skater from the same Pop Classics series. More personal than Blichert's, it's as much a memoir about what skateboarding, video games, and this particular video game about skateboarding have meant to the author as it is the story of how Pro Skater came to be and its pop culture impact. (This was actually my favorite of the two, although - or maybe because? - I was less familiar with Pro Skater as a piece of media.)
Followed this up with Right, Down + Circle by Cole Nowicki, a love letter to Tony Hawk's Pro Skater from the same Pop Classics series. More personal than Blichert's, it's as much a memoir about what skateboarding, video games, and this particular video game about skateboarding have meant to the author as it is the story of how Pro Skater came to be and its pop culture impact. (This was actually my favorite of the two, although - or maybe because? - I was less familiar with Pro Skater as a piece of media.)
