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Here are the pictures mentioned in the latest episode!

#rewatch rewind #princess bride #office art

Hi! I just wanted to tell you how thankful I am that you made the Rewatch Rewind (you know, in addition to already being a wonderful person), because I've started tracking the movies that I've watched as of two weeks ago, and it's something I'd always thought about doing but never had motivation to do. Thanks to you I've started something that'll hopefully last me quite a while, and now I dream of being able to look back at this in 10 years (or 20 like you! I'm impressed that you could track it that long) and being able to do the same thing as you. As a young person who's only been able to recall memories from 10 years ago in the last few years, seeing you do this is really inspiring. So. Thank you. I hope you have a great day!

This makes me so happy! I hope that when you look back at the movies you've watched, you'll find the process as illuminating as I'm finding my rewatch rewind.

#rewatch rewind #ask #none-ofthisnonsense

My friend Christina joins me to discuss a few of our favorite things (and a couple things that are not our favorites) about this classic.

First guest appearance! Transcript below the break

#rewatch rewind #sound of music #friends chatting

How to tell a love story without being amatonormative.Transcript on Tumblr

New episode! Script below the break

If you’ve listened to my previous episodes, you may be wondering how on earth I’m going to argue that The Princess Bride is not a romantic film, and the answer is…I’m not. Though there is a lot of non-romantic stuff going on throughout the movie, I think we can all agree that the extremely romantic love between Westley and Buttercup is the main driving force of the story. And that’s okay, I’m not anti-romance simply because I’m aromantic; I’m anti-amatonormativity, the idea that every human wants and needs a long-term romantic partner. And while The Princess Bride is a love story, it is not amatonormative. None of the other characters besides Westley and Buttercup seem to be looking for romance, even though they are extremely well developed and do have clear objectives. Iñigo (Mandy Patinkin) wants to avenge the death of his father; Vizzini (Wallace Shawn) wants power; Fezzik (Andre the Giant) wants to be useful; Count Rugen (Christopher Guest) wants to torture people; and even Prince Humperdinck (Chris Sarandon) only wants to get married so he can start a war over the death of his bride. Granted, not all of these are presented as good objectives, but at no point is it suggested that any of these characters should abandon their quests and instead search for romance. A significant amount of screen time is devoted to loving but platonic friendship, especially the one between Iñigo and Fezzik, which is fun and beautiful. The camaraderie between them and Westley when the three join forces is a major highlight of the film. Of course, it’s all in pursuit of romance (and vengeance), but that doesn’t diminish the strength of their friendship. Obviously no one can deny that a major recurring theme of the film is that true love (which is generally implied to be inherently romantic) is the greatest thing in the world, besides a nice MLT – a mutton, lettuce, and tomato sandwich – which I assume is that world’s version of cake or garlic bread and Miracle Max is an ace icon, but anyway. My point is that the movie emphasizes that the kind of love between Westley and Buttercup is rare. If you find it, you should hold onto it, but not everybody is going to find it, so don’t sit and wallow in self-pity or despair if you don’t. And this is kind of how I always thought of romance for myself, before I knew that being aromantic was a thing. It would be great if I happened to find it, but if not, there are other things to focus on. So amatonormativity and its consequences – people desperately trying to find a partner, any partner, just to have one; expressions of pity toward single people; etc – really confused me. As did the knowledge, once I figured it out, that most people enjoy romantic movies because of the romance, and not despite it, as I eventually realized I was almost subconsciously doing. Like the kid hearing this story, I tolerate the kissing parts if the rest of the story draws me in enough, which Princess Bride absolutely does. The grandpa telling him “someday you might not mind so much” about kissing rather than something like “someday you will like kissing” was almost certainly not intended to fight amatonormativity, but we can choose to see it that way. The fact that the kid wants to hear about the kissing at the end could be interpreted as “he’s finally growing up and accepting that romance is part of life”; but, it can also be interpreted as, “he’s so into the story that he’ll put up with the kissing at the end so it doesn’t go unfinished,” and that I relate to. I also appreciate that the movie ends with the grandpa saying “As you wish” to his grandson. By echoing the way Westley said “I love you” to Buttercup, the grandfather is implying that those two different kinds of love are equal, refusing to play along with the amatonormative idea that romantic love is far superior to any other form of love.

While I’m sure that a lot of people do watch The Princess Bride at least partly for the romance, I think that unlike many romantic films, the reasons I enjoy it are also the main reasons most other people enjoy it. The script is clever, quotable, and fun; the characters are eclectic and fascinating and perfectly brought to life by fabulous actors; and the tone is unique. Apart from the scenes in the kid’s bedroom, what we’re seeing is not the actual story; we’re seeing what the kid pictures as he’s hearing the story, which is such a cool way to tell it. Everything feels larger-than-life, but in an honest, pure way that makes it feel realistic even in its absurdity. The Princess Bride is a delightful blend of a child’s imagination and an experienced storyteller’s writing skills, and I think that is a major contributor to its enduring popularity, even if most of its fans wouldn’t necessarily articulate it that way. It lives in that elusive space between childhood and adulthood where both children and adults feel at home, and therefore love to revisit. I read the book the movie is adapted from once as a teenager, and I remember being struck by how, even though many of the plot points had changed, the humor and tone were perfectly consistent between the novel and the film, which made it, in my opinion, an extremely faithful adaptation. Of course this makes sense because William Goldman wrote both, and Rob Reiner, the film’s director, was a big fan of the book. But often novel-to-feature-film adaptations get so focused on figuring out how to shorten the story without omitting important plot points that they lose sight of the heart of the original story. That absolutely did not happen here, and that’s a big part of why so many people love this movie. Sure, the plot points are interesting, but we’re really here for the unique comedic tone that was taken directly from the book. Changing the sharks to eels and eliminating the Zoo of Death were no big deal, but trying to tell the story without witty jokes simply would not have worked.

#rewatch rewind #princess bride

In which I attempt to explain the purpose of this project

Script below the break

In each episode, after this one, I will be talking about one of my most frequently re-watched movies – about the film itself, and also about my own personal experience with it: how I first discovered it (if I remember), what makes me keep returning to it, etc. Most of the time it will just be me, but sometimes I’ll bring in a guest who also loves the movie so we can talk about it together. Before I dive in, I do want to make it clear that I am not saying these are the 40 best movies. I’m not even saying that they’re my 40 favorite movies, although I do love them all. Sometimes excellent films are hard to watch more than once, and sometimes films that are objectively bad are fun entertainment. This isn’t meant to be a list of the Greatest Films Ever Made, so please don’t expect that or you’ll be disappointed. Bear in mind that I was 12 years old when I started this. While many of my favorite movies when I was 12 are still among my favorites today, most of them would be lower on the list if I’d started ten years later. Part of that is because the way I watch movies has changed significantly in the last 20 years. In 2003, Netflix was still a DVD rental company, so streaming wasn’t really a thing. At the time, I barely owned any movies, so most of what I watched was what happened to be on TV or what my family borrowed from the library. Over the years, the accumulation of more and more VHS tapes and DVDs and streaming subscriptions has led to almost limitless possibilities when I want to watch something, which has led to a decrease in rewatches and an increase in new discoveries. So partly because of that, and partly because of the way time works, movies that were released before 2003 have an advantage over those that were released later, both because I had the full 20 years to watch those, and because the ones I had access to then were more likely to be rewatched, since I had fewer overall possibilities. Also, in 2002, I had started getting into Old Hollywood, which led me to watch a lot of films from well before my time. So the oldest movie I will be talking about was released in 1935, and the most recent is from 2017.

#rewatch rewind #podcast intro

For the first time in forever, a movie appeared with a character I could truly relate to, and a message I was desperate to hear.

New episode! Script below the break.

Looking back on my other thoughts as I watched Frozen unfold for the first time shows me just how much amatonormativity – the idea that everyone wants and needs a long-term monogamous romantic partner – had affected me. I still thought I was straight, although my standard justification of “I’m not into dating yet but I’m sure I will be when I’m older” was feeling less and less valid, as I was then 23 years old. Anyway, I distinctly remember, during Love Is an Open Door, which is the song that Hans and Anna sing to each other soon after they meet, that my sister and I turned to each other and whispered, “I ship it.” And then Kristoff got thrown into the story, and I was conflicted, because I really liked Anna with him, too. I started thinking maybe Elsa would end up with Hans. And then Elsa wounded Anna’s heart with her ice, which only an act of true love could heal, and it did not even occur to me that that could be anything other than a romantic kiss. I thought Kristoff would bring her back to Hans, she would kiss him but it wouldn’t do anything, and that’s when she’d realize her true love was actually Kristoff. But while I was expecting things to not work out between Anna and Hans, I was NOT expecting Hans to be cruel, so his “Oh Anna, if only there was someone out there who loved you” was shocking and devastating. I thought the scene when Olaf rescues her and explains that “some people are worth melting for” was beautiful – the snowman was far less obnoxious than I’d been anticipating – but even then it never occurred to me that Anna would be cured by anything other than kissing Kristoff. And then. Fighting the blizzard and the ice spreading through her body, almost reunited with her romantic true love, Anna sees Hans draw a sword against Elsa. I’m sure if I’d been able to think clearly in that moment, I would have finally figured out what was coming, but all I could do was gape at the screen as Anna changed course and saved her sister instead. And with hindsight, duh, that was the act of true love, but for a second or two I legitimately thought she was now permanently frozen. And, like, here’s the thing. I’ve loved Disney movies as long as I can remember, so I’m not trying to insult them. But the studio that made Snow White and Sleeping Beauty and The Little Mermaid and Beauty and the Beast and Enchanted had so thoroughly convinced me that when you need love to break a spell, it must be romantic and almost always involves a kiss, that I couldn’t even imagine that a Disney film would ever treat saving a family member’s life as powerful enough for that. But Frozen did. Frozen went there. While I was sitting next to my wonderful sister, one of the most important people to me, this movie showed me that it’s okay for sisterly love to be the most powerful thing in your life. So at that point I definitely cried.

I think a big reason why I let myself get temporarily talked out of loving Frozen is because I couldn’t articulate what I really loved about it at the time, so I thought that meant I didn’t actually love it. But now that I know I’m aroace, it makes perfect sense. As I mentioned before, even at the time, I knew that seeing a character choose familial love over romantic love in a matter of life and death meant a lot to me, though I didn’t know the extent of it. And I related to Elsa and Let It Go spoke to me, but it took me a long time to recognize the extent of that too. As someone who has struggled with depression, I initially saw Elsa’s self-imposed isolation to try to protect people that ended up hurting them as an allegory for that disease, which I still think it is to a certain extent. Depression dulls all emotions and tricks one’s brain into thinking others would be better off without them, and that describes some of what Elsa is going through. But there’s also the aspect of hiding a part of herself that she knew she wouldn’t be accepted for, and finally breaking away from that to live as her true self, that a lot of LGBTQIA+ people relate to, which I didn’t recognize in myself at the time – and now I wonder if another reason I stepped away from the movie for a while was a subconscious fear of facing my own queerness. I know a lot of people see Elsa as a lesbian, which seemed to be confirmed by a couple of brief moments in Frozen II. While I would argue that it’s not quite canon yet, I wouldn’t mind if Frozen III makes it so – provided the story of Frozen III actually makes sense, unlike whatever the heck Frozen II is supposed to be about. What I’m trying to say is I don’t want to dismiss the Elsa is a lesbian theory, but to me she feels very aroace. She doesn’t seem at all interested in finding a partner, she just wants to hang out in her mountain ice palace by herself, which sounds pretty awesome even though I still don’t understand how she was going to be able to feed herself up there. Also, at the end of the first movie, she seems very surprised to learn that she has the capacity to thaw what she’s frozen by allowing herself to feel love. Elsa has been suppressing all of her emotions because she knows that her ice powers are harder to control when she feels things, which is again similar to depression. But seeing this through an aroace lens of constantly feeling like you’re incapable of the “correct” kind of love, I could see an aroace Elsa being aware of love as a thawing force, but thinking it had to be romantic love and that she was therefore doomed. So seeing Anna using their sisterly love to heal her frozen heart showed Elsa that the type of love she could feel was powerful enough, and that was all she needed to bring back summer. Like most of my aroace headcanons, I’m pretty sure this wasn’t quite what the filmmakers actually intended, but it works and it’s beautiful.

Clearly this movie appeals to people who are not aroace, but I don’t think it’s a coincidence that the most popular children’s movie of the decade is so focused on platonic love. A lot more kids can relate to familial love than to romantic love. And Frozen proves that you don’t have to eliminate romance from a story entirely to emphasize other types of love. When Anna falls in love with Kristoff, that doesn’t make her relationship with him the only one that matters, or even the one that matters the most, and that’s a message that we don’t get from nearly enough stories. A big fear that many aromantic people share is that all of our friends will eventually abandon us for romantic partners, due to the prevalence of the message that one’s romantic partner should be one’s number one focus at all times. Personally I’ve been fortunate enough to find people who value friendship as much as I do, and therefore want to maintain close platonic relationships whether they’re in romantic relationships or not, and I’m very grateful for all of them. But I know not all aros are as fortunate in that respect. So that’s why I keep emphasizing how awesome it is that in Frozen not only is one of the main characters potentially aroace, but the other main character who is not still chooses to save herself with platonic love instead of romantic love. Encouraging people to cultivate non-romantic relationships benefits everyone, not just aros, because putting too much pressure on one relationship to fulfill all or even most of one’s social needs is unsustainable, and often dangerous. When Hans meets Anna, he correctly observes that she’s lonely and desperate for love, and he hopes to manipulate her by filling that entire void himself. But he ultimately fails because, while Anna does desire romance, she wants to reconnect with her sister even more. Even though Elsa has shut her out for years, as soon as she reveals her powers Anna understands that her sister has been in just as much pain as she has. Instead of festering resentment, Anna is filled with empathy and compassion, which allows her to save herself, her sister, and the kingdom. We need more heroes like Anna. And while it may be overrated, overhyped, and a little underdeveloped, in terms of emphasizing the power of non-romantic love, we need more stories like Frozen.

#rewatch rewind #frozen #tw depression

On leaning into plot holes, coming of age without romance, true stories, and potato salad.

New episode! Script below the break

Another thing that sets this movie apart for me is that it has no romance – well, almost. Pacha and his wife – who is voiced by Wendie Malick and whose name is apparently Chicha although they never say it in the movie – clearly love each other very romantically, and I’m actually glad their relationship is portrayed this way. It’s a refreshing departure from the tired trope of married couples who are sick of each other. This is promoting a healthy marriage and we love to see it. But the main storyline has nothing to do with falling in love. Most of the characters in this movie can easily be interpreted as aroace, which maybe isn’t the best representation because most of the characters are also objectively horrible people, especially at the beginning. Nevertheless I think this story successfully avoids perpetuating negative aroace stereotypes. Towards the beginning of the movie, there’s a brief scene where Kuzco is supposed to choose a bride from a line of women, and he’s not interested in any of them. In any other Disney movie, finding someone for Kuzco to marry would have then become an important part of the story – think about Aladdin or Cinderella – but in Emperor’s New Groove it is never mentioned again, and Kuzco goes through the entire rest of the movie without anyone even implying that he should be looking for love. So often in movies, when a jerk is against marriage at the beginning, part of their transformation into a better person is finding a spouse, indicating that not wanting to get married was part of what was wrong with them. Emperor’s New Groove allows Kuzco to become a better, more caring human being without forcing him into a romance. At the end of the movie, Kuzco has become friends with Pacha and his family, but he doesn’t have a partner, and there’s no hint that anyone thinks he needs one, which leads to the conclusion that his aversion to marriage was not part of what needed to change. I’m sure I didn’t consciously notice this as a child, but I think it was important for me to see. Most children’s films end with the protagonist getting married, or about to get married. The fact that this goofy talking llama movie almost feels revolutionary simply for allowing its main character to remain happily single speaks to just how pervasive the assumption that everyone wants and needs a long-term monogamous romantic relationship, an assumption known as amatonormativity, has become in our society. For people like me whose brains are not wired to experience that kind of attraction or to seek that kind of relationship, it’s incredibly confusing and alienating to see that portrayed not just as the default, but as the universal human experience. So every story that portrays not ending up in a romantic relationship as something other than a punishment is noteworthy. Even for people who do want that kind of relationship, it’s important to emphasize that becoming a good person is not synonymous with gaining a partner, despite what so many other films indicate. Don’t be a nice guy just so someone will date you; be a nice guy because that will make you and everyone around you happier.

#rewatch rewind #emperor's new groove

Thoughts on this wacky old movie that makes fun of society and its expectations in a surprisingly ace-affirming way

Three Cary Grant movies in a row!

Script below the break

As I’ve said several times in previous episodes, Cary Grant was a brilliant comedic actor, and once again, he is very funny in this movie. Just watching his morning routine in the apartment at the beginning is hilarious. Jim Blandings is very sure of himself, even and especially when he shouldn’t be, and Cary plays that very convincingly and humorously. Myrna Loy is probably best known for playing Nora Charles in the comedy-mystery Thin Man movies, so it should come as no surprise that she is also very funny here. Muriel occasionally tries to rein in some of Jim’s recklessness, but also gets caught up in the dream of the house, and Loy portrays that flawlessly. Apparently critics thought these stars were too old for these roles (they were both in their mid-40s at the time), and that it would have made more sense to show a naïve young couple not knowing how to build a house, but personally I think it works better to show a middle aged couple who have every reason to believe they know what they’re doing find out that they have no clue. The movie also makes it clear that it’s only because Jim is older and more established in his career that he’s able to do this. At one point when he’s venting about how everything’s costing way more than they were anticipating, Jim points out that if he can barely afford it, there’s no way a young couple ever could. And looking at this movie from a modern lens is kind of surreal because like, imagine a single-income family of four being able to afford a house! To put things in perspective, Jim Blandings was making $15,000 a year in 1948, which is the equivalent of approximately $190,000 in 2023, and the final cost of his dream house was $38,000, or approximately $480,000 now. It certainly costs a lot more than he initially thinks it will, but it’s still doable for him – although he does nearly lose his job at one point – whereas it would not have been for a young couple just starting out. And again, Cary Grant and Myrna Loy are so delightful to watch that I cannot comprehend wanting to replace them.

While a lot of what I love about this movie comes from Grant and Loy, I also love Melvyn Douglas’s performance, and his character, Bill Cole, is probably my favorite. Bill narrates portions of the movie, and introduces himself to the audience as “Jim’s lawyer and quote best friend unquote.” He’s kind of the voice of doom regarding the dream house project, pointing out all the ways Jim gets taken advantage of along the way and repeatedly advising him to give up, but far from being a stick in the mud, he has an excellent sense of humor, and goes along for the ride only slightly reluctantly. There’s a trope that’s especially common in movies from this era of a married couple having a male “friend of the family” who is interested in the wife and kind of waiting for her to either leave her husband for him, or at least have an affair with him. The character of Hank Entwistle in Monkey Business is like this, and there’s a character in the movie I’m going to talk about next week like this. Bill Cole is almost like this, and Jim certainly sees him like this for a good chunk of the movie, but the way I see him, he’s not actually interested in Muriel that way, and is, in fact, if not canonically queer, certainly queer-coded. We do know that he dated Muriel in college. At one point when Jim asks Muriel why Bill’s always hanging around them instead of getting married, Muriel says it’s because he could never find another girl like her, but this doesn’t seem like it’s meant to be particularly serious. When Jim objects to the fact that Bill always takes his leave by shaking Jim’s hand and kissing Muriel on the cheek, Muriel dryly inquires if Jim would prefer it the other way around. There is also a running joke about Jim and Bill getting stuck in a closet, so modern audiences might interpret that to mean that they’re secretly gay, although I’m pretty sure the closet metaphor wasn’t commonly used in 1948. Bill doesn’t seem to really show any attraction toward either Jim or Muriel, so of course I’m inclined to headcanon him as aroace. We do find out that Muriel somehow ended up with both Bill’s and Jim’s fraternity pins – which the Blandings daughters find along with her old diary in the process of moving into the new house. When Jim then confronts Muriel about her having been in love with Bill, she laughs and responds with, “Of course I was in love with Bill! In those days I was in love with a new man every week!” She considers her time dating Bill to be relatively meaningless, and currently sees him as a good friend. Most of Jim’s bouts of jealousy in the movie seem to be misplaced frustration with the way things are going with the house and/or his job, rather than in response to any of Muriel or Bill’s behavior, which is part of the film’s effective commentary on how gender roles leave men feeling like they can’t express their emotions honestly.

Anyway, one evening, when Jim is working late because a slogan he’s been struggling to come up with for months is due the following morning, Bill stops by the new house to visit Muriel, and there’s a major rainstorm. A neighbor informs Muriel that her phone isn’t working and a nearby bridge is out, so her children can’t get home from school, but they’re staying with a different neighbor on the other side of the bridge. This also means that Bill can’t get home, so he’ll have to spend the night in the house alone with Muriel. When he half-jokingly gasps, “Think of my reputation!” Muriel responds with, “Don’t worry, Snow White, you’ll be just as pure and unsullied in the morning as you were the night before,” and he says, “That’s the story of my life.” Now, I feel like there are a couple different ways to interpret this. One way – the allo-heteronormative way – is that they would like to sleep together, but she’s happily married, and he respects that, so they resist. I’m not saying that’s an invalid interpretation, but something about the way they deliver those lines, and the way they interact in the rest of the movie, doesn’t quite feel like that to me. Another interpretation is that they don’t want to sleep together, and they just want to make sure they’re on the same page about that. Think about how much better it makes the scene if Bill is asexual, and his “Think of my reputation!” is his way of making a joke out of not feeling comfortable with the situation, and her response is reassuring him that she understands and doesn’t see him that way either, and his “That’s the story of my life” is him trying to pretend to be disappointed because an allonormative world tells him he should be, but he’s actually relieved. This could also be because Bill is gay, or straight or bi and just not attracted to Muriel, but even then, the point about defying social expectations still stands. Since long before I knew the terms “aromantic” or “asexual,” I have been drawn to stories about people who are expected to fall in love and/or sleep together and then don’t. It has always felt so encouraging to see adults maintaining close platonic relationships, even when society tells them they shouldn’t be platonic. So I love that Bill and Muriel are friends who can spend the night in the same house without becoming overwhelmed by passion or whatever seems to usually happen in situations like that.

I’ve mentioned before that part of why there are so many Cary Grant movies in my top 40 is because I have a multi-day marathon around his birthday every year, and Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House is almost always part of that. I tend to watch this one on his actual birthday because the only specifically Cary Grant-related item of clothing I own is a long-sleeved t-shirt I got for Christmas in 2007 with a quote from this movie on it, which I will probably wear every January 18 for the rest of my life, even though I kind of have mixed feelings about the context of the quote in the movie. The slogan that Jim gives up on during that fateful stormy night is for a product called Wham, which is a brand of ham. He spends all night trying to come up with an acceptable slogan, but they’re all terrible. I would like to point out that he’s working on this with his female secretary, which means he has even less reason to be jealous of Muriel spending all night with Bill, but that’s not really important. I also feel the need to tell you about my favorite bad slogan he comes up with: “This little piggy went to market, as meek and as mild as a lamb. He smiled in his tracks when they slipped him the axe; he KNEW he’d turn out to be Wham!” The extremely concerned look on his secretary (played by Lurene Tuttle)’s face when she hears that is so perfect. But anyway, he finally gives up and goes home, and after all the drama of finding Bill there and owing more money but also getting a refund, the maid Gussie (played by Louise Beavers) is serving breakfast, and when the girls ask if there’s ham, she replies with, “Not just ham; Wham! If you ain’t eatin’ Wham, then you ain’t eatin’ ham!” And Jim does a double take and then exclaims, “Give Gussie a $10 raise!” and then we see a magazine ad featuring Gussie’s face and this slogan, and I have some questions. What exactly did he mean by a $10 raise? Ten dollars per hour? Per week? Per year? Also did he actually give her credit for coming up with the slogan, or did they just use her words and likeness without her really getting anything out of it, apart from this ambiguous raise? Part of me likes to think that she got hired by Jim’s advertising agency after this, but I feel like the more likely explanation is that a white man took credit for a black woman’s work. So again, I have some mixed feelings about my shirt that has a picture of a ham on it with the words “If you ain’t eatin’ Wham, then you ain’t eatin’ ham!” But despite its weirdness and its flaws, I mostly have positive feelings toward this movie. And I will never forget the joy I felt the one and only time someone who hadn’t watched this movie with me recognized the quote from that shirt, so shout out to my 12th grade history teacher.

#mr blandings #mr blandings builds his dream house #cary grant #myrna loy #melvyn douglas #aroace headcanons #rewatch rewind