This Blog is Dead and Has Been for Years

6 Jan

The only reason why I’m posting this is to update any followers or people who may stumble across this old blog is to provide links to my current social media and let you know what I’m up to.

Well, since the pandemic is still happening, I am not up to much and some shows I was going to do are going to be rescheduled. In the interim, please follow me on my social media accounts:

Twitter: https://twitter.com/FixedAirHeather

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/fixedairheather/

I also have a podcast. Please subscribe and give a five star rating here:

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/unruly-a-podcast-with-heather-marulli/id1314651648

90th Annual Academy Awards – My Predictions

4 Mar

Wow, I have not been on this blog in a LONG TIME.  But, I’m here to do something I’ve always loved to do – predict the winners of the Academy Awards.  Airing tonight (March 4th) on ABC, the list of nominees has a lot of good films, but also some bad ones (Ahem, Three Billboards).  I think we will see a bit of an upset tonight that will not align with the Golden Globe winners, and this will be true with the winner of Best Picture.  Three Billboards won at the Globes, but I do believe that Get Out will eke out the win this year.  My predictions are shown below in BOLD.

Best Picture:

“Call Me by Your Name”
“Darkest Hour”
“Dunkirk”
“Get Out”
“Lady Bird”
“Phantom Thread”
“The Post”
“The Shape of Water”
“Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri”

Lead Actor:

Timothée Chalamet, “Call Me by Your Name”
Daniel Day-Lewis, “Phantom Thread”
Daniel Kaluuya, “Get Out”
Gary Oldman, “Darkest Hour”
Denzel Washington, “Roman J. Israel, Esq.”

Lead Actress:

Sally Hawkins, “The Shape of Water”
Frances McDormand, “Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri”
Margot Robbie, “I, Tonya”
Saoirse Ronan, “Lady Bird”
Meryl Streep, “The Post”

Supporting Actor:

Willem Dafoe, “The Florida Project”
Woody Harrelson, “Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri”
Richard Jenkins, “The Shape of Water”
Christopher Plummer, “All the Money in the World”
Sam Rockwell, “Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri”

Supporting Actress:

Mary J. Blige, “Mudbound”
Allison Janney, “I, Tonya”
Lesley Manville, “Phantom Thread”
Laurie Metcalf, “Lady Bird”
Octavia Spencer, “The Shape of Water”

Director:

“Dunkirk,” Christopher Nolan
“Get Out,” Jordan Peele
“Lady Bird,” Greta Gerwig
“Phantom Thread,” Paul Thomas Anderson
“The Shape of Water,” Guillermo del Toro

Animated Feature:

“The Boss Baby,” Tom McGrath, Ramsey Ann Naito
“The Breadwinner,” Nora Twomey, Anthony Leo
“Coco,” Lee Unkrich, Darla K. Anderson
“Ferdinand,” Carlos Saldanha
“Loving Vincent,” Dorota Kobiela, Hugh Welchman, Sean Bobbitt, Ivan Mactaggart, Hugh Welchman

Animated Short:

“Dear Basketball,” Glen Keane, Kobe Bryant
“Garden Party,” Victor Caire, Gabriel Grapperon
“Lou,” Dave Mullins, Dana Murray
“Negative Space,” Max Porter, Ru Kuwahata
“Revolting Rhymes,” Jakob Schuh, Jan Lachauer

Adapted Screenplay:

“Call Me by Your Name,” James Ivory
“The Disaster Artist,” Scott Neustadter & Michael H. Weber
“Logan,” Scott Frank & James Mangold and Michael Green
“Molly’s Game,” Aaron Sorkin
“Mudbound,” Virgil Williams and Dee Rees

Original Screenplay:

“The Big Sick,” Emily V. Gordon & Kumail Nanjiani
“Get Out,” Jordan Peele
“Lady Bird,” Greta Gerwig
“The Shape of Water,” Guillermo del Toro, Vanessa Taylor
“Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri,” Martin McDonagh

Cinematography:

“Blade Runner 2049,” Roger Deakins
“Darkest Hour,” Bruno Delbonnel
“Dunkirk,” Hoyte van Hoytema
“Mudbound,” Rachel Morrison
“The Shape of Water,” Dan Laustsen

Best Documentary Feature:

Best Documentary Short Subject:

“Edith+Eddie,” Laura Checkoway, Thomas Lee Wright
“Heaven is a Traffic Jam on the 405,” Frank Stiefel
“Heroin(e),” Elaine McMillion Sheldon, Kerrin Sheldon
“Knife Skills,” Thomas Lennon
“Traffic Stop,” Kate Davis, David Heilbroner

Best Live Action Short Film:

“DeKalb Elementary,” Reed Van Dyk
“The Eleven O’Clock,” Derin Seale, Josh Lawson
“My Nephew Emmett,” Kevin Wilson, Jr.
“The Silent Child,” Chris Overton, Rachel Shenton
“Watu Wote/All of Us,” Katja Benrath, Tobias Rosen

Best Foreign Language Film:

“A Fantastic Woman” (Chile)
“The Insult” (Lebanon)
“Loveless” (Russia)
“On Body and Soul (Hungary)
“The Square” (Sweden)

Film Editing:

“Baby Driver,” Jonathan Amos, Paul Machliss
“Dunkirk,” Lee Smith
“I, Tonya,” Tatiana S. Riegel
“The Shape of Water,” Sidney Wolinsky
“Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri,” Jon Gregory

Sound Editing:

“Baby Driver,” Julian Slater
“Blade Runner 2049,” Mark Mangini, Theo Green
“Dunkirk,” Alex Gibson, Richard King
“The Shape of Water,” Nathan Robitaille, Nelson Ferreira
“Star Wars: The Last Jedi,” Ren Klyce, Matthew Wood

Sound Mixing:

“Baby Driver,” Mary H. Ellis, Julian Slater, Tim Cavagin
“Blade Runner 2049,” Mac Ruth, Ron Bartlett, Doug Hephill
“Dunkirk,” Mark Weingarten, Gregg Landaker, Gary A. Rizzo
“The Shape of Water,” Glen Gauthier, Christian Cooke, Brad Zoern
“Star Wars: The Last Jedi,” Stuart Wilson, Ren Klyce, David Parker, Michael Semanick

Production Design:

“Beauty and the Beast,” Sarah Greenwood; Katie Spencer
“Blade Runner 2049,” Dennis Gassner, Alessandra Querzola
“Darkest Hour,” Sarah Greenwood, Katie Spencer
“Dunkirk,” Nathan Crowley, Gary Fettis
“The Shape of Water,” Paul D. Austerberry, Jeffrey A. Melvin, Shane Vieau

Original Score:

“Dunkirk,” Hans Zimmer
“Phantom Thread,” Jonny Greenwood
“The Shape of Water,” Alexandre Desplat
“Star Wars: The Last Jedi,” John Williams
“Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri,” Carter Burwell

Original Song:

“Mighty River” from “Mudbound,” Mary J. Blige
“Mystery of Love” from “Call Me by Your Name,” Sufjan Stevens
“Remember Me” from “Coco,” Kristen Anderson-Lopez, Robert Lopez
“Stand Up for Something” from “Marshall,” Diane Warren, Common
“This Is Me” from “The Greatest Showman,” Benj Pasek, Justin Paul

Makeup and Hair:

“Darkest Hour,” Kazuhiro Tsuji, David Malinowski, Lucy Sibbick
“Victoria and Abdul,” Daniel Phillips and Lou Sheppard
“Wonder,” Arjen Tuiten

Costume Design:

“Beauty and the Beast,” Jacqueline Durran
“Darkest Hour,” Jacqueline Durran
“Phantom Thread,” Mark Bridges
“The Shape of Water,” Luis Sequeira
“Victoria and Abdul,” Consolata Boyle

Visual Effects:

Catch Me at the 208 Comedy Festival in September!!

24 Jun

208 Comedy Festival

From September 7-9, 2017, i will be making my return to Boise, Idaho for the first ever 208 Comedy Festival.  Some of my favorite LA heavy hitters will be there with me, including Danielle Perez (Twitter: @divadelux), Marcella Arguello (@marcellacomedy), and other comics I’ve met over the years, like Becky Braunstein from Portland (@BeckyfromAlaska).  Boise is an amazing comedy town.  Check out their comedy club, Liquid Laughs!

Cape Fear Comedy Festival This May!!!

15 Apr

I will be performing stand up at the Cape Fear Comedy Festival from May 17th through May 20th, in Wilmington, North Carolina.  Apparently this is where Dawson’s Creek used to be filmed, but I was too young to really care about James Van Der Beek, so that’s not what I will be thinking about while there.  Instead, I will be focused on brings some hot minutes to the south!  You can find more information about the festival here.

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I’m Making My Stand Up Comedy Debut in Portland Next Week

11 Feb

I’m going on a mini-tour of Portland next week.  Full information and dates can be found on my website at unrulymarulli.com.  Should I wear a wig on this tour?  I just might.  Who knows.

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Thoughts on the End of 2016

31 Dec

Last night I saw the new Mike Mills film 20th Century Women, starring Annette Bening, Greta Gerwig, and Elle Fanning.  At one point in the film, Fanning’s character remarks that she believes the best quality a person can possess is strength.  Looking back on the last few years of my life, I can easily say that strength is what has brought me to the present day.  A few years ago, I moved to LA after the death of my boyfriend Dave.  I was thoroughly depressed and lost.  I was unsure of what the future held.  Things got even worse for me when I entered an abusive relationship, the worst details of which I have never shared with another soul.  Fast forward to the end of 2015, after breaking free of those horrifying bonds.  It look me a few more months to completely rid my mind of the negative thinking associated with being in such an insidious situation, complete with emotional and verbal abuse.

In the year that has followed, it has been my strength that has truly emerged as my most valuable quality.  It was strength that allowed me to move forward when I lost my best friend to death; it was strength that pushed me to find freedom from someone who had broken me; it was strength that allowed me to forge a new life in Los Angeles.  Strength is what propels me forward; we can all be more strong.  In the upcoming year, we will have to be.

2016 was a great year for me.  I accomplished many things in stand up, including performing in my first major festival and making my debut on Roast Battle, which lead to other amazing opportunities.  I feel my growth not only as a comic, but as a woman.  At the age of 27, I think I really began to feel like a real woman.  I became someone who had seen things, felt pain, known heartbreak, felt despair.  Throughout my life (beginnging in childhood I’ve been pushed down by others, insulted for things outside of my control, and hurt.  But I can say that I always get up again.  I will keep doing the same thing in the future.  Strength is the most important quality of all.

As I head into 2017 and my 30th year, I have a great life.  I have family and friends who love me. a great job that provides for me, a blossoming career in stand up, and I’m dating someone who treats me with total respect.  A lot can change in a year.  Have faith that it will if you are in a low place.  Get back up and keep moving.  Be strong.  Blessings in 2017 and beyond.

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La La Land Was Bad

31 Dec

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Ryan Gosling and Emma Stone looking very bored in La La Land.

Wow, people really seem to love La La Land.  People love this movie so much that it was actually difficult to find a decent seat in a theater in LA the last few weekends to see it.  What’s going on here?  Why do people love La La Land? What am I missing?

Here’s the thing with me – I often find myself unable to find the suspension of disbelief necessary to properly enjoy a musical.  I am a bit of a misanthrope and I simply find it difficult to believe that humans would jump into song and dance at any moment.  This is for good reason, as I have never seen anyone jump into song and dance in my entire short life.  I have never seen song and dance routines taking place in the post office, restaurants, or on the freeway in traffic.  However, if a song and dance routine played out upon a Los Angeles freeway sounds intriguing, La La Land is the film for you.

Damien Chazelle’s brightly colored film centers on the story of Mia Dolan (Emma Stone), an aspiring actress who works as a barista in a Warner Brothers lot cafe, and Sebastian (Ryan Gosling), a brooding aspiring jazz musician who pays the bills by playing corny piano tunes in restaurants.  The opening scene of the movie is a song and dance routine enacted  by the bored motorists of Los Angeles.  Not only was the song forgettable and useless, but the scene bothered me for another reason.  Apparently the only freeway that Chazelle was able to shut down was the 105, which runs east to west and is located several miles south of Pico Boulevard, running west toward LAX.  Pico Boulevard is relevant here because the people in the film most likely would balk at the idea of traveling south of that street.  They are that lame and self-protective.  To see a collection of people singing and dancing atop the 105 freeway, which runs atop one of the most dangerous and deadly neighborhoods in all of Los Angeles (Westmont), is truly disturbing.  The routine ends when Mia fails to realize that traffic is moving ahead, and Sebastian, perhaps in the only realistic moment of the film, cuts her off and unwittingly gives his future lover a dirty look.

One of the themes of this film is of course love, but I think what is most important about the twist in La La Land is that it does have some cynicism within it.  If anything, this movie would have been better with even more cynicism.  There was something so boring about both Mia and Sebastian, and when you put them together, it’s like watching two pieces of toast fall in love with each other just because the other one is there.  Mia wants to be an actress (duh) and Sebastian wants to be a jazz musician (okay so why isn’t he in New York), but they both are boring and flat characters with no real motivations for doing anything.

Perhaps the most pointless scene in the film comes when Mia gets angry with Sebastian for having to tour with a band nearly nonstop.  She asks him if he likes the music that he’s playing.  Sebastian isn’t sure.  The scene then escalates over this nothingness of a conflict.  Mia is mad that Sebastian will have to keep going out of town while making a living playing music.  Who cares if he doesn’t love what he’s playing?  Who is paying the bills in this relationship?  Is Mia’s job as a barista supporting them?  It makes no sense as to why this scene would serve as the rising action of the film.  Mia is mad at Sebastian for being a responsible adult.  Horrifying.  It then gets even worse, but I will leave the rest of the details a mystery.

There are some redeeming, enjoyable scenes.  The dance scene that took place in Griffith Observatory is perhaps the most memorable.  Most others are forgettable and lacking imagination.  Throughout the film, Chazelle appears to be paying homage to the film musicals of the past, but never quite as strongly as the actual musicals originally did it.

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Emma Stone and Ryan Gosling look very bored here.  Appropriate!!!

La La Land also appears to have been slapped together in a short amount of time.  The choreography is very basic and both Gosling and Stone seem stiff.  The ending of the film is perhaps the only redeeming sequence and the only part that gave me some inkling of emotion.  However, I do not think many people will be satisfied with the ending.  In fact, the woman next to me let out a big shrug and exhaled deeply, like she was glad to be done with something taxing.

It did not feel as anyone in the audience was moved throughout this film.  There is a very strange disconnect between the audience and the characters of Mia and Sebastian.  Let’s face it – Mia and Sebastian are carbon copies of stereotypes of stereotypes of what women and men in LA are like.  They are self-absorbed, boring, vapid, and singularly focused on their alleged careers.  This stereotype is true for the most part – people in LA are self-obsessed.  And the ending to this film, in a way, confirms this.  This is perhaps the only redeeming moment of the film – the ending.

Overall, I give La La Land a 4.5 out of 10.  Would not watch again unless it was on TBS ten years from now and nothing else was on.

Last Shows of 2016!!!

18 Dec

Wow, what a year it’s been.  I know that most people are over 2016, but I am cocky enough to say that I had a great year!  It’s still 2016, and I still have more shows.  Come out and support live comedy!

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Thoughts on the Eve of the Election and Why I’m With Her

8 Nov

I am genuinely frightened at the prospect of a Trump presidency.  The very thought that a racist, misogynistic, narcissistic demagogue could possibly be elected President of this country should frighten us all.  However, we still do not live in a world where every person can see the clear error in Donald Trump’s ways. Today, on November 8, 2016, I will cast my vote for Hillary Clinton.

When the election first got underway, I was pro Bernie.  I voted for Bernie in the primaries, and proudly.  I found his brash, honest way of speaking to be refreshing.  But then, the reality set in.  Bernie was not electable by many segments of the American population.  As his defeat in the primaries was clear, I at first was angry at the prospect of voting for Hillary Clinton.  I am still unsure why this is, but I do have to attribute part of it to internalized misogyny.

As a young woman, I have been very lucky.  I was always told I could do whatever I wanted if I put my mind to it.  Even my father, with whom I do not have the best relationship, told me that I could do anything.  He said that the quality he admired most about me is that no matter what, I get back up and try again.  He admired my persistence and drive.  I took this to heart.  I went to college and double-majored.  I interned at NBC.  I started this blog to express my unapologetic feminist thinking.  I am a stand up comedian and a pretty good one at that – in a world where stand up is seen as a man’s game.  I am living a life that women in many other countries are not privileged enough to lead.  I know that without the sacrifice and bravery of many women before me, this would not have been possible.  Hillary Clinton is one of those women I should thank.

young-hillary

However, I was still angry about voting for Hillary until very recently.  People who I consider my friends (women at that) urged me to watch anti-Clinton propaganda in tee form of a “documentary” called Clinton Cash.  This film, produced by employees of Breitbart, did nothing but attempt to smear the critical life’s work of Hillary Clinton.  Hillary has served the public many times over – as a public defense attorney, as First Lady of Arkansas and the U.S., as a Senator of New York, as Secretary of State.  And yet, it all comes down to one thing for some people – she’s a woman and therefore she’s a shrew, a bitch, evil, cunty, a witch, a whore, etc.  These are the words that people use to describe women in positions of power.  Why?  Because women in power are threats.  Women in power must be silenced.  Women in power are not deemed fit for public consumption.  I’ve been fed this lie and shamefully believed it myself.  As I get older, I see how our society attempts to shape women into obedient little girls.  None of us should stand by idly.  Today, I see no other more responsible option as a citizen than voting for Hillary Clinton.

I vividly remember a moment in my third grade class at Skyway Elementary School in 1996.  My teacher at the time, Miss Burke, is leading a discussion on the election, which at the time is taking place between President Clinton and Bob Dole.  Miss Burke says that she wants to see a black man become President in her lifetime.  She then says it would be even more amazing to see a woman become President.  This memory is so vivid in my mind – only twelve years later, we had our first black President.  I proudly attended the 2008 Inauguration, braving the coldest, most bitter winter of my memory in order to see Barack Obama sworn in at the Capitol.

I was raised by a proud Democrat mother. I was taught from a young age to recognize the values that form the fabric of our country – equality, justice, aid for the sick and poor, and the championing of women and minorities.  I am unapologetically liberal.  I am unapologetically feminist.  I am strong, I am independent, and I am fierce. I’m with her.

#ImWithHer

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Special Announcement: Idaho Laugh Fest 2017

25 Sep

I have a fun announcement – I will be performing at the 4th Annual Idaho Laugh Fest from January 12th through January 15th, 2017!!!  The festival will take place in Boise and will feature a range of comedians from across the country.  A few friends I know from Los Angeles will also be there!  Show dates and further information is pending!

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