WTF?

Two things made me go WTF this past weekend. One was a book and the other was a movie. Let's explore!

The WTF book I read was Find Me by Andre Aciman, the supposed sequel to Call Me By Your Name (CMBYN) except that it wasn't. (NOTE: Spoilers ahead so don't keep reading if you don't want to know!) I had to read more than 100 pages of some old guy (Elio's father) having a fling with a much younger woman he meets on a train. What does this have to do with Elio and Oliver? Nothing. And when we do finally get to Part 2 when Elio's point of view is presented, he's being wooed by a guy twice his age and he's in his early 30's. So he's doing a sixty-something-year-old? Really? Okay. Then Part 3 brings us to Oliver who's in his 40's now and depressed as he thinks about people he'd like to sleep with who are attending a dinner party with him. Then, finally, in Part 4 we get Elio and Oliver back together. I can't figure out what Aciman was thinking when he wrote this. Did he really think the audience for CMBYN wanted to read about the kid's father for more than 100 pages?? WTF was that? What a way to lose an audience. I didn't love CMBYN (the book) because Elio annoyed me, but I did like the movie mainly because Timothee Chalamet made Elio so sympathetic and he and Armie worked well together. I really wish the sequel had been better and I hope they don't make a movie version of it. I think this franchise is done. (Thanks, Skokie Library!)

My second WTF came after viewing the movie Midsommar (aka The Wicker Man, Take Three). What a hot mess this was. Swedish cults, weird sex, animal slaughters, and the ritual burning. (Hi, Wicker Man!) I couldn't figure out why the lone black guy was there. Wouldn't his Spidey sense tell him not to get involved in this kind of scene or, after he'd become involved, wouldn't it advise him to GTFO of there? Come on, man! When this movie came out at the theater, I avoided it because I found it was from the same guy who'd given us the awful horror movie Hereditary, that I did see at the theater. Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me and that shame wasn't happening the second time around. Not with this guy. Alas, I watched the film via Netflix. Two hours wasted. It was beautifully shot apparently in Hungary, not Sweden.