Solar Recommends 🎬🍿🎧 [January 2024]

Hello, hello, hellooo! 💖

Even though it seems like February is not planning on giving me a break any time soon, I still want to keep my promise to you and be consistent with sharing my personal finds every month. Here's the list of things that inspired me or simply made my brain relax (or explode... you'll see what I mean by that) in January. I hope that you find it useful and maybe even pick up something for yourself to enjoy 😌✨

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✨💭 Quote:

"How do you combat the philosophy of evil? With truth, with love, with beauty. You have to start to embody that." - Dr. Jordan B. Peterson

This is such a beautiful and powerful quote, something so simple yet so profound. I heard it during that one podcast with him that I've already recommended for you last month. 

✨🎧 Music:

Here's what I was listening to this month (literally can't believe I'm sharing these 🙈):

60s 🎶 Simon & Garfunkel - The Sounds of Silence

70s 🎶 Paul McCartney and Wings - Live and Let Die (least favorite Bond, most favorite theme song hehe)

80s 🎶 The Romantics - Talking In Your Sleep

90s 🎶 Shivaree - Goodnight Moon

00s 🎶 The Postal Service - Such Great Heights

10s 🎶 P!nk ft. Nate Ruess - Just Give Me a Reason (music video for this one is really beautiful btw)

20s 🎶  Rauw Alejandro ft. Selena Gomez - Baila Conmigo (and music video for this one is gorgeous as well haha)

✨🎞 Movie:

Sooo this month I was watching a bunch of weird "auteur-movies-turned-mainstream", and found them all... quite pretentious and shallow, to be honest 👀 Can't really say I'd recommend them, but just in case there are people who are curious enough to give something like that a try (and then debate me on whether these are really that bad haha), here are some of them:

"Saltburn" (2023) - thriller, comedy.

"Distraught by his classmate Oliver's unfortunate living situation, Felix, a rich student, invites him over to his estate. Soon, a series of horrifying events engulf Felix's family."

Absolutely stunning visuals in this one, but the story falls flat for me personally. Shocking scenes aren't shocking enough since you can clearly see the one and only point of their existence in the movie - pure shock-value without having much to do with the story or character development. But the visuals (and maybe even actors) are stunning. For more substance with the same premise, I'd recommend watching "The Talented Mr. Ripley" (1999) instead.

"Babylon" (2022) - comedy, drama.

"Decadence, depravity and outrageous excess lead to the rise and fall of several ambitious dreamers in 1920s Hollywood as the industry begins to transition from silent pictures to the world of sound films."

I think this one can be recommended to those of you who have a genuine interest in history of film. Because you absolutely have to love the industry and maybe romanticise it even to be able to 1) watch the full thing and 2) enjoy it even slightly. Again, excessive use of nudity and violence (I mean, it's 20s-30s Hollywood, what else can we expect?), and some straight up nasty scenes. Told you, I've watched some weird stuff this month haha 🙈 Brad Pitt is always incredible though, can't deny that. 

"Cat Person" (2023) - horror, mystery.

"A college student who works at a movie theatre goes on an awkward date with an older man who may be a murderer."

"Solar, wait... but you're not watching horrors?"... Exactly! My TV said it was a comedy, romance and thriller 🤯 Gosh, I was blindsided like never before haha. But looking back at these movies now, surprisingly, this is probably the most sane and watchable one. As a woman, I could relate to quite a few moments in it which I found funny, though the story still went quite bonkers by the end of it. But again, maybe it's a good thing? It's one of those movies you finish watching and then sit in silence trying to understand what the heck you just saw. You're welcome, I guess 😅

✨👂 ASMR:

ASMR 6 Keyboards Typing for Sleep, Study and Relaxation 수면, 공부, 휴식을 위한 6가지 키보드 타이핑 소리 

I am this close 🤏 to spending a fortune on different keyboards and starting a brand new ASMR channel of my own, I swear haha. These videos are just too relaxing 🤤 By the way, have you ever listened to keyboard typing ASMR before? Do you enjoy this trigger, or not so much? 

✨🎬 TV series:

"The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power" (2022)

Actually, I watched this series two times already... please don't throw anything at me 🙏 Yes, I enjoyed it and I recommend it. No, I don't think it's written well enough to justify its billion-dollar budget. But visually it's stunning, as expected. I really enjoyed all of the movies before this series came out, and now I'm in the middle of this whole new experience of watching the stories in chronological order, from this series to "The Hobbit" trilogy to "The Lord of the Rings" one. I get that there are very different opinions on the series vs movies, but since I'm that non-judgemental type, I usually tend to just watch anyway and be grateful for the fact that we can dive into this world once again (even though they're really trying so sooo hard to make it somehow relevant to our problems and social/political agendas, but oh well... it's everywhere now, I guess?)

✨🤪 Fun:

Didn't have much time for fun this month, but I stumbled upon this great video recently - The Marvelization of Cinema - mostly because yes, I was in the middle of "The Rings of Power" series, but I stayed for the overall analysis of the state of modern cinema. Thought you'd find it interesting as well 😌 And yes, I feel so validated for my choice of "Avengers" as one of my favorite movies now, because the author basically put into words exactly why I think it's one of the greatest movies of its time. Okay, I'm done rambling now haha. 

Want me to drop some SNL skits here again? I'm lowkey still using these as my personal antidepressant, so there you go:

Rome Song - SNL 

Protective Mom - SNL 

Crown Your Short King - SNL 

GE Big Boys - SNL 

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Obviously, these are just things that I like, and if for some reason you don’t like them too... that’s absolutely okay. We're all different and it's beautiful 💖 If you feel like checking any of those out and talking to me about it, I'd love that, really. But you don't even have to discuss those with me or anyone else at all. Even the fact that you can find something here that might interest you is more than enough for me to make it worth sharing 🫂

If you feel like recommending something you've recently found/watched/listened to, please feel free to do that in the comments below. I'd love to check it out if you do!

Love,

Solar ✨💫