This month, we finally start answering the
questions you've been sending in for us. Keep those questions coming by e-mailing [email protected].
This
week's question, courtesy of Timothy Horna (a.k.a. "Lincolns Revenge"): Do
you have a well-known film/album/show that you've specifically resisted from
viewing, etc. for whatever reason? For example, a friend of mine has refuses to
watch any of the remade Mummy films, since as he puts it, "There can't
possibly be anything in there for me."
Tasha
Robinson
We're all busy enough and so buried under new
releases and a gigantic back catalog of canon that we could probably each go on
about this all day; the reason there's a Better Late Than Never column is
because we're constantly playing catch-up, and with so much to read, watch, and
listen to, we have to be selective. But with that in mind, a few things just
off the top of my head: A lot of my friends have sworn, up one side and down
the other, that no matter how much Adam Sandler's wacky man-child antics normally
irritate or bore me, that he's still made a few films that would utterly win me
over: Happy Gilmore and Billy Madison. Both, I'm told, are
hilarious movies that use him well and that transcend his goofy-ass
lowest-common-denominator genre. I'm not buying it. Life is short, and even
though both these movies have come recommended by sophisticated adults whose
taste and humor I normally respect, I just can't bring myself to voluntarily
watch more Adam Sandler comedies. Going in a completely different direction,
virtually every science-fiction fan I know has taken time to sing the praises
of Babylon 5 at me. I spent half the '90s listening to people say it was
the best thing on television and that I was really missing out. In this case, I
didn't get started at the right time, and now I look at the completed
series—all 110 episodes—and see a mountain I just don't have time
to climb. Especially since even the biggest fans admit that the first year or
two is some rough trekking. As my boyfriend says whenever fans wistfully bring
it up, "We'll watch it when we retire, at which point it'll probably be
available in pill form."
Josh Modell
First
off, Tasha, you should really see Billy Madison. I'll bring it in for
you. I can't think of a great answer myself, so maybe I should beg off this
completely, but here goes… I've always refused to watch Terms Of
Endearment because it violates one of
my two fundamental movie no-nos: I don't like movies about terminal illness,
and I don't like movies about dancing. It's probably awesome, I'm sure I'll
love it someday. I have studiously avoided watching Buffy The Vampire
Slayer,
even though people with exactly the same taste in TV tell me that I'll love it.
This embargo may end soon, though, since Tasha loaned me the first season on
DVD. (But then I have people telling me that I'll have to suffer through the
first season to get to the good stuff—why would I want to do that?) But
I'll pretty much watch anything if the right people tell me it's good. And it's
not a rom-com.
Kyle Ryan
In
my Better
Late Than Never for Alien, I mentioned my general aversion to
science fiction, superceded only by my distaste for anything with wizards and
shit. So it will come as no surprise to anyone that I've never seen a single
episode of Star Trek (any iteration), nor any of the films it spawned. (I did enjoy
the documentary Trekkies, though.) The
closest I came was seeing parts of The Voyage Home while working on my
sophomore history project at my friend's house in high school. I just have next
to no interest in sci-fi, and I'm not entirely sure why. Is it the cheesy
futurist sets that somehow manage to look dated? The goofy aliens? The clumsy
symbolism? The confusing plots and characters? It's all of that and more. The
exception, of course, is Star Wars, but that stems more from growing up in the '80s
than anything else. And no matter how many people tell me how great it is, I have
zero interest in Battlestar Galactica. I don't know what a
Cylon is, and I don't care who the last one is.
David Wolinsky
I'll
probably go the rest of my life without seeing Crash or its recent televised
iteration, and I'm completely fine with that. Really. I wasn't particularly
interested when it hit theaters a few years back, and nothing I've heard about
it exactly inspires me to put forth the effort of adding it to a Netflix queue
or giving into peer pressure from family and friends to sit down and watch it.
I've been told it'll change my life, make me a different person, blah blah
blah, but I've also pieced together what I understand the movie basically is:
scene after scene of a racist of one ethnicity who's put in a disastrous,
life-changing situation with a racist of another ethnicity, whereupon one of
them makes a sudden, humanitarian-oriented decision—only to turn around
in their next interaction to being the world's biggest asshole-ish bigot. Also,
apparently Tony Danza is in it for about two seconds, and I just can't bear the
sight of seeing The Boss hating another of God's creatures. Count me out. Also,
until very recently (due to Decider.com, actually), I've resisted the horror
that is Facebook and
all other social-networking sites (Friendster, Twitter, MySpace, you name it).
I'm not a Luddite, but the fact that these well-meaning but creepy,
habit-forming sites pervade many day-to-day interactions not only on the
Internet but also off it—like a recent party I attended wherein all the guests did nothing
but talk about their Facebook accounts—makes them even less appealing.
Now that I've joined Facebook, I'm 99 percent sure it's 75 percent
evil—but at least I've got more friends. Also, to this day, I've never
seen an episode of MADtv; do I really need a reason why?
Genevieve Koski
There
are dozens of so-called essential horror films I'll cop to resolutely avoiding,
due to the fact that I'm a big ol' baby, and several others I won't see because
of my aversion to gore, no matter how cinematic or stylized it may be. Grindhouse springs immediately to
mind as one I get a lot of flak for missing, but if blood and guts are
prominently featured, chances are good I haven't seen it. Most people can
accept that I don't watch those types of movies, but the holdout film I get the
most shit
for not seeing is one that I don't even have that great of a reason for
avoiding: The Goonies. It seems that pretty much everyone near my age
considers The Goonies to be the pinnacle of their childhood movie-viewing
experience, yet I somehow missed it both during its heyday on VHS and later
when it reran constantly on cable, despite the fact that I pretty much never
turn off the TV. As I said, there is no good reason for this omission, but at
this point I've gotten the "You haven't seen Goonies? My God, what is wrong with you?" rant so many
times that now I avoid it just to be a contrary brat. I can't say I won't ever
see it—I long held the same attitude toward the Indiana Jones movies, yet
I ended up watching those this year for a Better Late Than Never
feature—but I kind of want to see how long I can keep this streak going.
Steven Hyden
For some reason, I've never gotten around to
giving a serious listen to TV On The Radio. I've heard some songs here and there and
thought they were pretty good, but I don't feel any desire to do more
investigating. And I honestly have no idea why. This seems to happen a lot with
me lately when it comes to scarf-and-sweater-donning indie-rock bands from New
York City. (The Vampire Weekend record also sits unplayed in my iTunes
library.) It's not like I'm taking some stand against one of the decade's
biggest critical darlings. TV On The Radio is probably a great band. If I ever
get around to listening to a TV On The Radio album, I'm sure I'd like it more
than actually listening to my television on my radio. But for now, I'm too busy
playing Sun Kil Moon and Grateful Dead records to find time for them.
Jessica Jardine
In
this era of hope and change and never-ending optimism, there's a good chance my
dislike for all things Bob Marley might not fit the bill. I've avoided becoming a
fan of the almighty reggae icon for so many years now that I do feel a strange
sense of pride about it, even though reggae has never been my music of choice.
I probably consider it noteworthy because, like so many college towns, mine
absolutely cherished Marley—particularly in wall-size poster form. The
record store I worked at made most of its money at the beginning of each school
quarter, when students flocked in to buy the same three posters, year after
year: Pink Floyd's "Back Catalogue," Biggie & Tupac flashing
"West Side," and the king of them all, Bob Marley's "Photomosaic."
We sold so many of the giant Marley posters that the store's owner charged $5
more for it, just because he could. In my mind, it and his music became
eternally entrenched in the faux-hippie culture of college students from Orange
County, living by the beach and getting in touch with their jah-ness by way of
bong-ness. And though his songs aren't exactly tough to listen to, they just
remind me of unshowered 19-year-olds wearing hemp necklaces, attempting to talk
politics and shit that, you know, really matters. I've grown to appreciate a good
bit of reggae in the years since school, but can't quite forgive the
white-people-with-dreds syndrome that Marley inspires among so many young
people across this great land. It's probably pretty unfair, too, because I sort
of know that if he wasn't the King of Stonerdom in my mind, I might like at
least some of his music. As long as he's so closely tethered to the patchouli
and puka-shell set, though, I'm steering clear.
[pagebreak]
Nathan Rabin
This
is a tough one for me, because there is a seemingly endless list of films,
books, television shows, and albums I'd love to check out, but have never found
the time to explore. I work slavishly day and night to find a cure for cancer,
you see. So finally catching up with Buffy The Vampire Slayer, The Wire, and all sorts of other
next-level shit that people whose taste and judgment I respect assure me are
all kinds of awesome takes a back seat to my achingly important scientific
endeavors. Yes, I somehow find time to read all of Karrine "Superhead"
Steffans' books—even the ones that haven't won Pulitzers—yet I keep
dragging my feet on Netflixing The Wire, a show I'm sure I'd love, which is often
bandied about as the supreme achievement of Western civilization, if not
mankind as a whole. If I had to single out a big pop-culture touchstone from
the past 20 years I've consciously avoided, it would be Mel Gibson's Braveheart. I'm not a big fan of
testosterone-poisoned period epics in general, and even before Mel Gibson
drunkenly slurred to the world that he was not, in fact, a friend of the Jews,
I hated him with the passion of the proverbial thousand white-hot burning suns.
I go out of my way to avoid all of Gibson's films, even the good ones. I would
never have seen The Passion Of The Christ if I wasn't professionally
obligated to do so. Unless someone forces me to watch Braveheart, I'll never find out for
myself whether it merits its Best Picture Oscar or its status as the favorite
film of people whose taste and judgment I most assuredly do not respect.
Andy Battaglia
It's
never been a purposeful dodge, but I've never at any point read comics of any kind. I stared
into a formidable collection of Garfield books as a kid, but beyond that… nothing,
really. I never thought much of it until interviewing for an A.V. Club job long ago, and suddenly
feeling like I was a heretic whose soul was so far beyond saving that everyone
involved would just be better off pretending not to know what was suddenly so
painfully apparent. (I also got mooned during that job interview.) I still
haven't corrected for comics, but I fear I might have become even worse: a
devoted follower who thinks Chris Ware is a genius and can name no more than
two or three others working in the same field. Someday…
Christopher Bahn
I
love crime fiction, stories with main characters who are anti-heroic to the
point of outright villainy, and most of HBO's lineup, and yet I've never had
much interest in watching The Sopranos, because what I've read about Tony
Soprano and his family leaves me feeling faintly disgusted. It's probably
irrational to feel that way, but I've just never found the time to get into the
show instead of watching The Wire all the way through for a
second time.
Keith Phipps
I'm
a sponge. I check out whatever anyone tells me to at least once. I even tried
watching Sex And The City and listening to Mastodon, even though neither
seemed like they'd be to my taste. (They weren't, but I'd listen to Mastodon
again any day before watching Sex And The City again.) That said, I have
a reality-show
block I can't get past. I watched Survivor when it first came out and didn't mind it. I
watched Top Chef last year because it was
filmed in Chicago. That was fine, I guess. I liked Queer Eye For The
Straight Guy when it first came on,
because that actually seemed to be about improving people's lives, and it
featured people living in filth. But mostly, when I watch those shows I see the constructive
editing involved in putting them together. They play like bastardized
documentaries all set to the same terrible dramatic score, and all featuring
variations on the same characters. I trust people when they tell me there are
"good" and "bad" reality shows—I've caught enough of Rock
Of Love to know how bad it can
get—but there's not that big of a difference to my eyes.
Sean O'Neal
I
guess since I no longer work at the video store, I can finally safely admit
this: I have never seen an Akira Kurosawa film. Not one. Not Ran, not Rashomon, and nope, not even Seven
Samurai.
Oh sure, I've taken them home before. I've let them sit on the shelf and mock
me, saying, "You pretend to be a film fan, yet you'd rather watch the
basic-cable edit of Casino for the 50th time than put me in your DVD player.
Pray no one finds out your pathetic little secret." Even right now,
they're currently all hanging out in the middle of my Netflix queue, bumped
time and again for just-released, forgettable blockbusters I know I'll probably
hate, and other films that just seem like so much less of a chore, that don't
come burdened with all the expectations of a "masterpiece." But it
isn't just the fact that watching them now feels like so much homework: Truth
be told, while I'm not as bad as the girl I once briefly dated who took a look
at Ran
and sniffed, "I hate kung-fu movies," I'm, well… I'm honestly
not too crazy about most Japanese cinema. Maybe it's because I'm a fat, lazy, selfish
American who wouldn't know honor if it came wedged between two all-beef
patties, but stuffy notions like the "samurai code" have always bored
me to tears—as has anything involving swords, quests, and the like. (I
guess I'm more of a "wallowing in ennui" guy.) Anyway, I know these
things are just props and motives and McGuffins and so on, and the real triumph
of Kurosawa's films is his way with cinematography (something else I kinda
couldn't care less about) and telling a deeply resonant,
"Shakespearean" story and yadda yadda. Yeah, yeah. So I've been told,
and so I expect to be told again. And okay, maybe someday I'll break down and
discover what I've been missing. At least I'm finally making the effort to
catch up on Dexter,
right?
Noel Murray
I
have a total blind spot when it comes to most manga and anime. I love Hayao Miyazaki and all his Ghibli
cohorts, and I like a few other of the big feature animated films that have
come out of Japan over the past two decades, but when it comes to the vast
archives of Japanese animation that pops up on Adult Swim and in video stores,
I'm largely clueless. I'm even more at sea when it comes to manga, which I've
read only sparingly over the years, despite my lifelong love of comics. I could
argue that I find the look of manga and anime largely unappealing and the
storytelling style confusing, but the truth is that I'm a little cowed by the
enormity of product available. I know that if I took some time to sort out
what's what, I'd start to see the distinctions, and I'd find a lot I'd enjoy.
But I also know that I'd never be able to develop any kind of expertise unless
I totally devoted myself to the project, and there are so many other books,
movies and TV shows that I want to get to first—in genres and styles I
already know I like.