#83: When did they delete the Avatar ponytail sex scene?!
Death By Consumption
12/23/25 - 1/5/26
Well, I truly thought this day would never come. Opening my laptop after the break felt like an attack, and I walked into the office yesterday like Maduro — disoriented, hair askew, random water bottle clutched in my hands, wondering how I had gone from my warm bed to a badly lit prison in what felt like seconds. Anyway, this is all to say: we're back, and I could not be more upset. I'm hoping by about Q2, Zohran will have canceled all work, and I can spend my days enjoying the socialist paradise of New York. To quote Marx: the proletariat have nothing to lose but their Microsoft 365 accounts.
We have two weeks of consumption to cover here, so we're going to run through a quick-ish overview of the seven movies I watched and six books (!) I read while I was blissfully enjoying what life could be like if I had married rich.
Marty Supreme (2025) — at Marcus Oshkosh Cinemas
Marty Supreme feels like the last moment for everyone to decide if they want on or off the Timmy train. If you aren’t charmed by him here, then I think it’s safe to say you will remain immune to his powers forever. But if you’re anyone else — from Club Chalamet down to the merely Timmy-curious — I’m willing to bet he’ll win you over. The magic of Marty Supreme is how it mirrors and plays with Timothée’s public persona: he’s a carefree scamp who gets away with things no one else gets away with (for Marty: stealing; for Timmy: dating a Kardashian without getting any of their stink on him), who has chosen one specific thing to excel at, and that’s the only thing he cares about. Marty is determined to be the best ping-pong player in the world, mostly through the sheer power of caring about it more than anyone else, and Timmy has always had the same attitude and commitment to acting; and now, I think it’s safe to say, he is the movie star of his generation. Maybe the only one, in fact!
I didn’t find Marty Supreme nearly as stressful an experience as Uncut Gems — sure, it's life-or-death at times, but it never felt as dire for Marty as it did for Adam Sandler’s character. Which is maybe an asset and a flaw to the film; I was less tense throughout, but I also didn’t feel the stakes as strongly. While Uncut Gems kept me engaged via pure, white-knuckled anxiety, Marty Supreme kept me watching simply to see what the fuck would happen next. At no time did I know where the story would go, and I thought the strongest part of the film was its ability to spin off into an absurd little side story that may or may not connect to the larger plot. The Holocaust honey scene, in particular, was probably the boldest choice any movie made all year, and watching that scene gave me what I think must be a completely unique feeling, one I’ve never experienced before, nor could I even give it a name. Something between shock, horror, laughter, disgust, and awe. I can’t get it out of my head — even moreso when I read that it was based on a true story. This was a deeply Jewish movie (I never got tired of every character ending their knock-out screaming matches with a “love you!” that always felt just as sincere as the insults that preceded it), and I’m so thrilled they didn’t chicken out and cut that Holocaust moment.
But, really — and is it any surprise? — I’m mostly here for the grand cinematic return of Gwyneth Paltrow. Many have tried, but no one does gorgeous, luxurious sadness quite like Gwyneth, and I absolutely delighted in every second she was on the screen. Her wrinkles! She looks spectacular, and I was honestly so happy to see her acting again that I got a little teary-eyed (I had done a light edible, it should be noted). True, she doesn’t have much to do, but there is literally no one on the planet better at wearing glamorous outfits and lounging in luxurious settings while having the saddest eyes. I hope this marks a shift for her, back to acting and away from being the hotter RFK Jr.
Blue Moon (2025) — on Apple
This might be the best ugly movie I’ve ever seen. This film is ugly ugly, terribly lit and shot, but it’s a testament to how magnetic and talented Ethan Hawke is (who spends the entire movie seemingly shuffling around the set on his knees, to simulate being short???) that I was engrossed the entire time.
There’s so much about this movie I should hate: it’s essentially a one-man, one-set, one-act play; Margaret Qualley is in full “I’m an acTRESS” mode; it’s kind of about Oklahoma!; and I truly cannot overstate how deeply ugly and Netflix-coded this movie's visual style is. And yet! I found it genuinely delightful. Ethan Hawke is so charming and so talented, I watched the whole thing beaming like a proud parent.
(This is where I should mention/brag that twice I have had the pleasure of directing Ethan Hawke during a voiceover recording session, and he was everything you want him to be. We shared a loveseat when he wasn’t in the booth, my thighs tingling with the intimacy of being mere inches from Ethan Hawke's thighs, and he showed us how he can make himself sneeze if he combs a specific spot on his head. It was also the day of the Kavanaugh confirmation hearings, and I will never forget hearing the sound of Brett Kavanaugh screaming like a drunk freak at senators, which we listened to through the tinny speakers of Ethan Hawke’s iPhone, frequently punctuated by Ethan declaring, “They can’t seriously confirm this guy, can they?!” At the end of the session, he invited us to come see him in True West on Broadway, and I said, “I’d love that!!” assuming that meant he was personally inviting us and about to extend us free VIP tickets, since he had spent the whole session making us feel like we were his best friends — only for him to say, “Great! Thanks so much, everyone!” and leaving the room. Because of course Ethan Hawke wasn't personally inviting me to his Broadway show.) (I never bought tickets to True West — too expensive!)
I know the Best Actor conversation is all about Timmy vs. Leo, but I wouldn’t count Ethan out as a dark horse. This is easily one of the best and most charming performances of the year, and, as a lifelong hater of Oklahoma! (and especially a hater of that stupid exclamation mark), this movie spoke to me. This was such an unexpected delight!
Avatar (2009) — on Disney+
With two weeks off, I figured it was time to maybe, finally, watch the Avatar trilogy. I love James Cameron — even and especially when he’s at his craziest — but Avatar always felt like a bridge too far, either too weird or not weird enough. I never understood what the hell was going on with those long-limbed tiny-headed blue people, and it always felt vaguely furry-adjacent to me. Like, congrats if you’re into this and no judgment, but please leave me out of it.
The funny thing is, I actually had already seen the original Avatar, way back when it first came out. My friend Ali and I went to see it — I think in 3D? Is that right, Ali?? — and we walked out completely bewildered, feeling as if we had just survived our first acid trip. I barely remember the movie itself, but I viscerally remember how it felt walking out of the theater: we were confused, more than a little scared, and we struggled to reorient ourselves into the real world outside. Ali immediately smashed her phone inside the car door, which felt like a just punishment for having endured whatever the fuck Avatar was. All I remember from the actual movie is the scene where they have sex by linking their ponytails together.
Which is why I regret to inform you, upon viewing Avatar some 15 years later, that they appear to have DELETED the ponytail sex scene!!!! Is this some Disney+ corporate censorship under our new Christian Nationalist regime, or did I fully make up the scene in my own fantasies?! Upon some quick research I conducted right now, it appears that the ponytail sex scene was in the original theatrical release, and was then deleted from all future versions. (If you’re furry-curious, you can still watch the scene here.) I find this absolutely disgusting, disappointing, and cowardly — if you're going to spend all those months, if not years, animating two blue freaks having sex via ponytail, I just think you should stand by your work, you know?
Anyway, we tried to start the 2nd Avatar film and within 30 minutes found it so bewildering and kind of annoying that we had to turn it off. I might try to continue it, but I might not. I just can’t get down with these blue people and their papyrus-font subtitles!!! I still love James Cameron, but it’s insane that this series is what he will seemingly spend the rest of his life working on. We deserve seven The Abyss sequels, not more of these!
Eternity (2025) — on Apple
A totally passable, better-than-it-should-be movie. This could have become a Defending Your Life reboot, which would have been unbearable, but it wisely stays in its lane, which is being a late 90s/early 2000s romcom. I didn’t buy any of the chemistry between any members of the love triangle, but John Early and Da’Vine Joy Randolph have more than enough charm and chemistry with everyone to make up for any shortcomings. Really, Da’Vine steals the entire film, and I honestly think they should give her a second Oscar just for showing this much range after her character in The Holdovers. I don’t know if I see Elizabeth Olsen in many more romcoms after this, but Da’Vine has proven she can literally do anything.
Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery (2025) — on Netflix
Better than the second Knives Out, maybe even better than the first, but do I care? The answer, unfortunately, is no. These movies just don’t do it for me, and I think it’s safe to say that if Josh O’Connor and Daniel Craig having adorable chemistry hasn’t won me over to the franchise, then it’s probably not for me. They seem to know what they’re doing, at least, releasing this exactly when you most need a non-offensive film to watch with your family at the holidays, but if they really want to succeed they can’t make these things 2 and a half hours. Nobody’s parents want to watch movies that long!!!
Bones And All (2022) — on Netflix
Started the new year off with the Timmy/Luca film I had somehow missed when it came out, and though I couldn’t really take him seriously in this I did enjoy it more than all the reviews led me to believe I would. It's wonderfully disgusting and yet sweet, and Timmy is decent in it, though going from Marty Supreme to this made it clear how far he's come in just a few years. Our boy is growing up!
Lost In America (1985) — on Criterion
Just a great classic Albert Brooks comedy, about a couple who "drop out of society," buy an RV, and travel the country. There are so many genuinely hysterical moments in here, and a lot of the social commentary is somehow, tragically, still accurate 40 years later. The highlight of the movie is a scene in which Albert tries to convince a casino manager played by Garry Marshall (of all people!) to give back all the money his wife lost, via a convoluted ad campaign. It's an unbelievably hilarious scene in a very funny movie, and the perfect way to remind myself, at the end of a lovely long holiday break, that I probably shouldn't quit my job and drop out of society.
Katabasis, by R. F. Kuang (2025) — hardcover
I enjoyed how simple the plot is, especially compared with her earlier book Babel, which I did love but which took ages to get through: in Katabasis, two postgrad magicians (this is a world where magick — yes, it's spelled with a cringy k — is just another semi-useless thing you can go to school for) travel through Hell to try to bring back their recently deceased academic advisor. The Hell of Katabasis is beautifully nondenominational and well thought-through, an amalgamation of nearly every religious and philosophical depiction throughout history — we've got Dante's Hell, the underworlds of Ancient Greece and Egypt, the Confucian afterlife, all working together to torment anyone who dies.
This is, essentially, a classic journey tale, like The Odyssey or The Hobbit, which are both classics for a reason. It's a simple structure to follow, and makes for easy reading, although Katabasis loves to get frequently distracted by rather long and dense philosophical discussions about the nature of life, death, and morality. This is a heavily academic book, surprising for a bestseller (though I suppose, at this point, if you're one of the last 100 people in America still buying and reading books, you probably don't mind a denser story — anyone who would be overly turned off by this has probably self-selected out of the reading population years earlier). I enjoyed the world of Hell and found it a fairly strong page-turner, but I did struggle with the extreme focus on grad school. This felt like a book that will kill in MFA programs, but, as someone who left formal schooling behind almost 20 years ago, I struggled to relate to anyone. What do you mean you're scared of your professor? He's a weird little dweeb! Just bully him back! Don't get an MFA, kids.
Our Share of Night, by Mariana Enriquez (2019) — library ebook
This was the best book I read all break, and I'm only upset I hadn't read it sooner. Like Bones and All, it's a twisted, grotesque story, mostly following teenagers, but in the world of Satanism rather than cannibalism. The book is set in Argentina, in the decades around the dictatorship, and follows a father and son trying to escape a Satanic cult of witches and psychos. It's the first book to genuinely creep me out at times, with viscerally descriptive scenes of gore and horror, but held together by beautifully written and authentic characters. I usually hate reading books told through a kid's perspective — I always find it pretty embarrassing when an old person tries to mimic young people — but the son, Gaspar, is an "old soul" in the most literal sense, so I didn't mind seeing the world through his eyes for most of it. The book is definitely too long (I think it's over 700 pages), and surprisingly aimless for large sections, but I didn't mind it the way I've rolled my eyes at other overly long books — this is a disgusting, eerie, horrific world I loved luxuriating in.
Blob: A Love Story, by Maggie Su (2025) — library ebook
Blob is The Substance for single girls. A quick little book with a simple plot: a woman dealing with heartbreak finds a strange blob by a dumpster, takes it home, and makes the blob into her new boyfriend. It's sad and silly and stupid, a bubblegum book that I read in practically one sitting. It's small enough to fly through at the last minute if your book club meeting is the next day, and the kind of book where you spend less time analyzing the book itself and more focused on the characters, which I suppose is a compliment to Maggie Su: the main character feels very real, so real that I spent most of the book deeply annoyed by her. I don't need "likable" characters, and I think it's always worthy to try to capture the feeling of depression on the page, but this woman got on my nerves. She needs to get a hold of herself!!!! I wanted to scream at her to get a fucking grip, and by the end I was reading it practically peeking through one hand, not wanting to live in this woman's brain anymore but unable to escape. The overall message is pat and trite, but did you expect anything else from a book called Blob?
Tokyo Express, by Seicho Matsumoto (1958) — library ebook
I requested this from the library before we went to Japan but got it 2 months later, so I guess this book is either still very popular, 70 years later, or it just means a lot of people in New York were also traveling to Japan this fall and wanted to read it. Anyway, this is a classic mystery novel, and supposedly responsible for a whole mystery craze in Japan. It's a book that feels uniquely Japanese in how obsessed it is with train schedules (a good 30% of the book — and in fact the entire central mystery — hinges on the extremely complicated train schedule), but I just let the details of which train is going to which station at which time wash over me. If a detail is important, I figured, they'd let me know, and they did!
There's a great moment in this book when the detective is like, "Wait, how could he get from one part of Japan to the other so quickly on the trains? ... Oh, I forgot airplanes exist!" which is such classic train guy behavior.
Nothing to Envy: Ordinary Lives in North Korea, by Barbara Demick (2009) — library ebook
A well-reported look at "ordinary lives" in North Korea, told through the stories of a handful of defectors who live in South Korea. What's most interesting about this book is that all the defectors came from outside Pyongyang, so it's a rare glimpse at life outside the cushier lives in the capital. When I traveled to North Korea, we were kept to strict areas, where everything felt stage-managed for our benefit — even when we were allowed free rein to ride the subways and talk to anyone, or to walk a few blocks and go into shops with other people, it was all in Pyongyang, where you only get to live if you've proven loyalty. So as close as we could feel we were getting to meeting real people, we knew it was always through a skewed lens, one where no one would dare say anything remotely critical of the regime, for fear of losing the privileges they were given in the city.
But outside the city, and especially in the famine years when most of the defectors' stories take place, life is much rougher, and much more hidden, which made this book surprisingly fascinating, even for someone who's read a lot about North Korea. What surprised me most is that, in some ways, the people outside Pyongyang have more freedom, outside the scrutiny that comes from being in the capital, so as the economy cratered, black markets and small capitalistic enterprises (everything from reselling electronics to prostitution) flourished, as people had no other options to find ways to survive. But still, life is of course harder on the margins of this world, and the stories in here are absolutely brutal — at times, I wanted to stop reading, after hearing story after story of horrific trauma, which I could only really compare to Holocaust literature. Ultimately, the stories have "happy" endings, in that the main characters all escape, but even that is barely a victory, as they find themselves lost and alone in a totally foreign world, or, even worse, find out that their families were killed as punishment for their defection (in one brutal passage, a woman who's done very well for herself in South Korea now, but whose sisters were sent to a death camp after she left, laments that "her sisters died so she could drive a Hyundai"). This was a brutal read, and when I kept questioning why I was doing this to myself, I tried to tell myself that it's better than turning a blind eye to suffering, but once the book is over, and you realize there's really no immediate way to help the people of North Korea, you're just kind of left with the suffering.
The Burning Heart of the World, by Nancy Kricorian (2025) — library ebook
I don't know why I started the year out with multiple books of death and destruction and suffering, but here we are, fully leaning into seasonal affective disorder. The Burning Heart of the World is a very short, poetic book about an Armenian family living in and escaping from Beirut during the Lebanese Civil War. It's told as a folktale, with family members referred to as "the mother" and "the grandmother," and deals with intergenerational trauma, PTSD, religious and political conflict in the Middle East, the diaspora, and all sorts of death and misery, including 9/11 because why not throw that in as well? It's fun, is what I'm saying!
This is not the type of book I tend to read or enjoy (I'm not ever really clamoring to read a book described as a "lyrical fable," you know?), but by the end it had won me over, with its beautiful epilogue that feels somewhat disconnected to the overall story, and yet completely tied it up with a surprisingly emotional conclusion. I liked it, is what I'm saying, but I think I need to read something cheerier next.