Journaling project, Day 23

You can’t control how other people receive your energy. Whatever someone interprets or projects onto you is at least partially an issue or problem that they themselves are dealing with, which has nothing to do with you. Just keep doing your thing with as much love and integrity as possible.

What’s one good, recent example of someone with a negative attitude completely misjudging you?

For some value of "good". This person is known to many because all circles overlap so I'm going to oblique a bit. I work a couple volunteer gigs. At one of them there's a person who appears to be persistently mad at me. Person doesn't want to talk to me so there's no chance of discussing and resolving the mad. Person takes everything I say in the worst, most negative possible way and then responds publicly as if that was obviously what I intended, thus putting out a negative interpretation for others to build on.

It's super-stressful and impacts a lot of things I'd like to do with this organization because this person is quite active and well-connected within the organization. I avoid, as much as possible, interacting with or speaking to the negative person but sometimes I make statements in public or group settings and this person appears unable to let anything I say simply pass.

I do try to keep doing my thing but interacting with this person is challenging and frankly triggery for me. That's my shit and I own it, in part by not responding to or trying to negate/correct this person's negative remarks. I stew a lot, sometimes I complain to Pygment, and try to remember that this person has had some shitty things happen. Life tragedy and trauma isn't an excuse for taking it out on someone else, nor a license to behave badly, but it is definitely part of this picture.

The challenging part for me is that because this person is so unrelentingly negative about everything, and so closed to discussion, there's no way for me to contextualize, nor understand what I did wrong or might do better.

I'm not sure what the lesson of this prompt is, but that's my story.

We Finally Saw Ocean's 8 and It was a mediocre Heist Flick

Pygment and I tend to like heist flicks. We enjoyed Ocean's 11 and even the sequels though they weren't as good. The idea of an all-female team for this one seemed interesting - lots of plots (from Shakespeare to Star Trek) become fresher and more interesting if you gender-swap things. Sadly, Ocean's 8 doesn't really rise to the opportunity. It's clever, and Sandra Bullock turns in one of the best performances of her career, but it lacks either the depth or the hooks that make a heist film truly excellent. 2.5/5 stars and you really should be a fan of this kind of film.

I blame the writers (Gary Ross and Olivia Milch) mostly. Writing ensemble films is hard and this really isn't an ensemble film, though it should be. It's a Bullock film, with the rest of the crew there to play their parts. We get Bullock in prison, faking her way onto parole. We get Bullock pulling a quick shoplifting scam, then hotel fraud. We get Bullock recruiting people, Bullock explaining the plan, organizing things, and so on and so on. We even get scenes of her talking to a memorial stone behind which might or might not be the body of Danny Ocean, who remains a motivating force even while dead.

For example, when queried by Cate Blanchette's Lou about why she's doing this, Bullock/Ocean replies that it's because this is what she does. Except she also seems to be doing it to prove a point to Danny. Make up your mind? The supporting 7 all are potentially interesting characters but the film doesn't develop them past one note. Amita (not even a last name) is a jeweler who dislikes/argues with her mother. And... ? That's it. Amita's mother doesn't even have a name, just "Amita's mother". I get the feeling that the scriptwriters didn't even bother to think about these characters, who are only there to deliver their few lines. The film suffers for it.

The plot is also almost entirely lacking in tension as well. There's one scene where the guards are closing in on a location and get easily distracted. There's one scene where a mechanical challenge is posed that is almost immediately resolved by a deus ex machina. Part of a good heist film is the sense that the heist team might actually fail. This film ignores that tension in favor of predictability.

The actors are good enough that if they got a better writer I'd still go see a sequel, but with this creative team I'd pass and wait for it to show up on Netflix or similar.