Fruit, Rewriting The Real Housewives, Megalopolis 🌈

Knock know who is there it's another SWEETIE Weekly

Hellooooo,

Another round, SWEETIE pie? Ponderings, musings, and other descriptors annoying people would say await you below. 

Come on, let's go!!!

💋 SWEETIE RATES 💋

Megalopolis

I watched Francis Ford Coppola’s long-awaited Megalopolis on Thursday night. I had seen the largely negative reviews from both critics and sharp-tongued netizens, and it only made me want to watch the film more. In a way, I’m glad I did. 

The general consensus is right. Megalopolis is… something else. It’s preposterous. It’s surreal. Watching it is an exercise in restraint — physically— because I wanted to get up and flee the cinema at about four different points in the film. My gut reaction was to consider it simply bad — bad in a way I’ve never seen before — but now I realise that to write it off so easily would be reductive. ‘Bad’ doesn’t quite capture the film in its totality. It’s a whole other beast entirely, one that I don’t yet have a name for. 

Megalopolis’ flimsy premise sees a mad man with a mystical building material grapple with grief, betrayal, legacies, corruption and attempting to create a mushroom-based utopia. The narrative that contains all this plot, unsurprisingly ,is not only dense, it’s flummoxing as hell. It’s all so heavy-handed that a viewer’s mind simply can’t hold the weight of it all. At no time did I know what had just happened, what was currently happening, or what was about to happen. 

This wasn’t helped by the fact that the sound mixing was awful, and the dialogue was so rich in allegory that it was unfollowable. Every actor played their part as though they were in a different movie, none of which belong to this particular astral plane. 

Interestingly, or perhaps actually not even a little bit, at all, there are three ‘cancelled-adjacent’ actors present — Dustin Hoffman, Shia LeBeouf, Jon Voight — and they each ache to make their presence known. Partnered with a strange and brief side story about halfway through the film, the choice to include them is clearly pointed, especially given Francis Ford Coppola’s history with troubling figures. I also think what they were doing to Jon Voight might have just plain constituted elder abuse. 

Days later, I am still thinking about Megalopolis. “Why is it Rate and not Hate if you keep yammering about how awful it was?” You say. Well, here’s the thing, it was an EXPERIENCE. Much like people go to a sensory deprivation tank, or do a tough mudder, or read The Atlantic’s coverage of Israel, sometimes things that aren’t enjoyable need to be seen to be believed. You can read my spiel and think you get the gist of Megalopolis, but you really, really don’t. This is something else entirely. 

Plus, in the desolate, cynical film landscape, it’s gratifying to see that someone is making something ambitious and gratuitous, as autonomously as possible, and just getting weird with it. Megalopolis is cinema without borders. It’s completely unique. And it needs to be seen in the cinema. 

Yapping

Guy Ritchie’s ex wife Madonna’s new boyfriend’s ex girlfriend has been handed a People exclusive about her experience of finding out said boyfriend was dating Madonna… It’s grim! You couldn’t waterboard this out of me personally, but I do like to be kept in the loop with such fascinating quotes as:

"We're hitting our one year [since our breakup]. I held out hope for a long, long time," she says, "but it wasn't until seeing the proof and the picture of them on the 4th of July... that was the final nail in the coffin."

Pulitzer NOW. 

Good for Madonna. Anyone who has watched the Blond Ambition Tour knows that Madonna could steal your man, and you, in a heartbeat — age be damned. 

A League of Ordinary Gentlemen

I stayed in on Friday night, making pancakes and watching A League of Ordinary Gentlemen, a documentary about professional bowling. I can only assume that this is the kind of lifestyle that will await me in heaven. 

This is an incredible movie, even just for the fact that someone blames the death of bowling as a sport to the women’s liberation movement, and it’s as funny as it is heartbreaking. It’s even better when followed immediately by the Documentary Now! episode which features Tim Robinson essentially playing king Peter Weber as-is. I watched it for free on YouTube. G’orn.

🥀 SWEETIE HATES 🥀

Tag ur it 

Praise be to Joseph Smith himself, The Real Housewives of Salt Lake City is finally back for the fifth season! Contrary to the regular Housewives custom, RHOSLC debuted the wives’ new opening credit taglines in the first episode, as opposed to the second episode. While I, of course, got shivers hearing them for the first time, the taglines unfortunately rubbed the copywriter side of me the wrong way. So, as a gift to Bravo, you, and me, I have taken it upon myself to rewrite them. 

Here they are as seen on ze TV. 

Heather Gay ranks first in the opening credits out of all the housewives because she had a truly iconic moment at the end of last season, and boy, she won’t let you forget it! 

Her tagline is:

“Don’t play with me, I’ve got the receipts, proof and the screenshots” 

She is, of course, appropriating her quote from the season finale that’s so legendary that it was quoted by a politician at the Hunter Biden Oversight Hearing. However, she’s starting to become the Tom Felton of housewives. Let it go. She also missed one word from the original quote, “Receipts. Proof. Screenshots. Timelines.” Which is just… bothersome, do the whole thing or just pick one part, Heather, Christ! 

Therefore, I have decided to hone in on one part of that quote to give her a new tagline:

“Not only do I keep receipts, I always get my payback.” 

Now, if we want to give her one that’s not so ‘say the line, Bart’ I have also come up with one that plays on her having written two successful books. 

“I’m a bestselling author, so you better believe I’ll read you for filth.”

Done. 

Onto Meredith Marks, who seemingly gurgled this into the microphone in one take and then left the recording studio in a huff:

“I’m known for my tub, and this year, I am bathing in glory.”

Boring!!! Boring, boring, boring. What glory? Your plot line this season is all about being a beautiful curmudgeon who hates Whitney, wanting to hold a 40-years-late bat mitzvah, and having an off-putting husband. You’re better than this, Mer.

If we must do the bath motif, why don’t we try:

“I’m known for my baths, but that doesn’t mean I’ll be bubbly.”

Still boring, but slightly more sensical. 

Now for newbie Bronwyn Newport, whose tagline is: 

“The only muted thing you’d find in my wardrobe? Is my black card.” 

While I am compelled as to how she made this sound like both a statement and a question concurrently, I do not like this tagline and it doesn’t suit how fabulous she is. 

So, I offer these materialism-focused lines that also help introduce her to the franchise:

“Blending in? That’s just not my style.”

OR

“The only thing I can’t afford is to have my time wasted.” 

My sweet Angie K is centre snowflake this season, which is major, yet I’m not sold on her tagline:

“You may have been in a sorority, but I’m Greek for life baby.”

Maybe this tagline will have resonance as the season goes on, but I’m not particularly grabbed by the sorority reference at this juncture. I DO however, love her full-soul embrace of being Greek. 

Let’s play with rumours from the past season, and tie it into her successful hair empire: 

“I may not be in the Greek mafia, but I’m still made for life.” 

My queen. Long live Angie K. 

Ms Whitney Rose, yours is pretty perfect:

“On my healing journey, I always travel first class.”

Especially because you says “hilling” in your delightful Utah accent, but if I HAD to give you another one based more on your personality, it would be:

“Just because I’m a liar, it doesn’t mean I can’t live my truth”

OR, of we want to focus on your business dealings:

“In this pyramid scheme, I’m the Queen of Denial.”

Preacher Mary Cosby is next up, with another biblical reference:

“God is my shepherd, and you all look like sheep.”

So, you’re God’s sheep? That makes everyone on this question, except God, a sheep, and therefore punches serious holes in your diss. To fix it in its current iteration, here’s what I’d suggest instead:

“God might be my shepherd, but you’re the ones who look like sheep.” 

Which… still doesn’t exactly work. So let’s dig into church-leader and mean person Mary’s history for a new tagline. 

“You may not be in my thoughts, but you’ll always be in my prayers.”

OR

“He’s not just my step grandfather, he’s the husband that stepped up.”

OR 

“Some people call me a cult leader, but at least I’m not a follower.”

Last but not least, soda-chugging, tequila-slinging mormon Lisa Barlow ends on a crescendo with:

“Tequila is my livelihood and my lifestyle is always top shelf.”

This bothers me because this can so easily be truncated: 

“My lifestyle is like my tequila — top shelf.”

Done. Easy. You’re welcome, Baby Gorgeous. You’re welcome, everyone!

Sugar nerds

Almost nothing boils my blood faster than some fitness FREAK letting you know that ACTUALLY fruit has SUGAR and you shouldn’t have too much of it. News flash, Yolanda Hadid, I don’t give a rat’s! 

Ohhh there’s too much sugar in fruit juice ooohhhhh there’s sugar in smoothies oh my Goddd dried fruit has too much sucre! Sacrebleu! Should I throw myself into traffic for the crime of ingesting fructose? 

You’re telling me I’m going to get Type 2 diabetes from regularly eating a handful of dried mango or sipping on a green smoothie? You’re saying a fresh squeezed apple juice is as bad for me as a Dr Pepper? I’m no nutritionist, but I don’t think so sweetheart. And the logic I have to back that up? It’s my heart, damaged as it is from sometimes eating plums, mandarins and strawberries, and it knows the truth. Go back to Instagram Reels where you belong. 

Throwing tomatoes

Oh my GOD can’t we do something new?! If Anne Hathaway would like to revisit her past for the sake of cinema, can we please instead make a movie about her Italian conman ex-boyfriend who went to jail? We can call it The Italian Job. Oh wait, that’s taken. OK, we can call it Catch Me If You Can. No, also done. What about… Roman Holiday. Arghhh!! Maybe everything really has already been done…

Thanks, that's all! Kind regards xxxx