Photo: James Pardon/BBC Studios
Our weekly thought-starter asks you (and
us) a simple question each week: What pop culture did you consume this
weekend, and what did you think of it? If you have suggestions for
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Disney+’s Togo has Willem Dafoe & so many handsome puppers! It made me weep!
For a show with such high stakes, everything in Each “part” has grown exponentially worse. This show feels like it written with Mad Libs but not in a fun way. I still demand just for Salem Saberhagen!
That’s worrying. I plan on watching just to see how the eldritch stuff pays off, but my god if there was ever a show that would be much improved without most of its characters it’s this one.
When I first heard of Togo I thought it was named Torgo and was a Manos: The Hands of Fate remake.
I finished reading To Sleep in a Sea of Stars. It’s a long spacefaring sci-fi book about first contact with aliens that turns into an interstellar war. The villain is a Lovecraftian monster, but much of the book takes place on a spaceship with the heroine learning to live with an alien lifeform that bonded with her. There are some cool sci-fi concepts here, such as an alien language that works through smell rather than sound. It’s long (over 800 pages) but worth it if you are a science fiction person. The side characters are a real highlight.I watched Tangled. Somebody told me this was an atypical Disney film. It is and it isn’t. Mother Gothel isn’t a witch, she’s just an insecure woman who kidnaps a child with magical powers so that she can stay young forever. Loathsome. The best part of the movie is watching Rapunzel overcome her own insecurities and trust her gut. I’m not a Disney person, so I could really take or leave the animal sidekicks. This film observes the convention of having the villain in animated films die by falling so that the hero will not have to kill anyone. It’s good, not great.I’ve been watching YouTube videos about the languages of the world and have a strong desire to learn Russian. It’s apparently very difficult for English speakers to understand, but fucking beautiful. Oh yeah, I finished Cowboy Bebop. Great show, will begin my rewatch of The Legend of Korra soon.
I’m restricting myself to one episode a day of His Dark Materials season 2, and five episodes in, I’m loving it. There’s much less wheel-spinning with Will than in the first season, and it’s been long enough since I read the books that I’m not constantly comparing the plot specifics of the adaptation.Since moving house, I’ve been unpacking my movies one at a time to watch – last night’s feature presentation was The Straight Story. The least David-Lynch David Lynch movie ever (but still recognisably his in places), the tale of an old man riding a lawnmower is (appropriately) slow enough that I’ve had trouble getting people to watch it, but by God, it hits you right in the feelings.Games-wise, I’m working my way through Fallout 76 on the Game Pass – just as a single-player game, so I’m probably not getting half the benefit. The inability to save outside of progressing a story mission, and the limits on storage at your camp, are annoying the shit out of me as a Fallout 4 devotee, but it’s still Fallout, so it’s still pretty good.
His Dark Materials Season 2 feels more focused this time around. It’s improving.
Frank Miller’s Dark Knight had not one but two sequels. Yes, it was also a surprise to me, so, I’ve read that third iteration, named Master Race. It’s about some master race.It was more pleasant than the second Dark Knight. It’s drawn by Frank Miller so it’s full of Frank Miller art. Which is always interestingly good and bad. Great sense of movement. Horrible female faces. Wait, why did I use a plural there. It’s like Manara. He has one female face (and body, goes without saying, faces being an afterthought). Okay, you’ll tell me “that’s how US comics work, male or female, we use colored costumes to differentiate characters who all have the copy-pasted one perfect ideal face according to us, how is that worse than mangas recognizing their characters by the hairsets”. I’m not saying it’s worse, I’m saying I come from the french-belgian school of comics and you should be all ashamed of yourselves. Go hide.Anyway, the story was basic, light, cheap and readable. The characters were more bland than insufferable, which, in the case of Miller, is progress. Also, most striking feature, Donald Trump was presented as dumb and opportunistic. And I had the prejudice of assuming Miller to be 100% full maga. Prejudice fueled by, like, having read a Frank Miller comic. So, this was a shock. What happened to the holy terror detail, the 300 spartiates, the zero tolerance dark knight ? Betrayal, that’s what happened. Frank Miller grew weak. WEAK.Anyway, I’ve read this. And also been playing a bit of Skyrim. Because Morrowind had not one but two sequels. Yes it was also a surprise to me.
That sounds like an interesting read, especially given by the sounds of it Miller isn’t quite so far off the deep end as I thought. It’s always pretty fun trying to pin down a writer’s politics by their work.US and Japanese comics are a hell of a mood for me, because I’m bad with faces and tell people apart by outfits/hair irl 😛
Just to note, Miller is only really involved in a producer role outside of the art. The main writing is done by other people who I forget at the moment.
Sadly, it’s all downhill from Morrowind. I mean, Skyrim is fine, but it’s no Morrowind. And Oblivion, the nicest thing I can think to say about Oblivion is that it’s better than sucking on a dead rat. Not a lot better. But better.I enjoyed Frank Miller most back when he was writing Daredevil. He was great by the standards of a comic book world that didn’t have people like Alan Moore and Grant Morrison and Peter Milligan and Neil Gaiman in it, but then once the British invaded comics, his work seemed pretty pointless to me.
Morrowind is one of my favorite RPGs. The only real problem with it is the fucking cliff racers. I think it’s one of the most fully realized fantasy settings in any game. I spent so much time doing side quests that by the time I fought Dagoth Ur I took him down in like ten seconds. That’s an inevitable consequence of giving players nearly infinite room to explore.
This is more of a hypothesis than a claim, but I’m wondering if there’s a correlation between some of Miller’s more questionable work and his health. I’ve never seen anything in which he’s publicly addressed his health, but photos from the 2014 SDCC and the 2018 SXSW show a significant improvement (2014 on the top; 2018 below). He looked thin, pale, and unhealthy in 2014.I wonder if he was going through some medical issues in the ~2010-2015 period that influenced his mood, and that showed up in his work (Holy Terror, comments about the Occupy movement, etc.). He’s always had the tendency towards glamorizing brutality, but some of that work feels angrier and lashes out in ways that earlier work doesn’t.
Yeah, younger people who only know later Frank Miller as a rightwinger would be surprised to hear that Ronald Reagan was the ultimate Big Bad in Miller’s The Dark Knight.
My oldest is on a minecraft phase, so I’ve seen a bunch of thd Netflix interactive mindcrafy story. Decent voice cast, but a miserable script and (shocker) I hate the graphics.My wife finally logged my phone into HBO max or whatever it’s called. I watched three episodes of Harley Quinn (my kids won’t go to bed early enough for more) and some Lucy, Daughter of the Devil. Harley Quinn is pretty great. Lucy is less funny but more absurd than I remember from a decade ago. I definitely didn’t remember Eugene Mirman.I also watched DragonBall: Evolution (which my phone autocorrected that way) because one of my bad-movie podcasts did an episode about it forever ago and I mostly don’t listen if I haven’t seen the movie. It was not good. Jamie Chung deserves better. It also reminded me that I still have an episode of Lovecraft Country to finish.I listened to Vaudeville Villain for the first time in a few years, because RIP MF Doom.
I binged all of the Danish show Equinox on Netflix. I liked it a fair bit, though it was weird & slow and possibly not everyone’s cup of tea. But if you liked Dark, I suspect you’ll at least like this a little.Watched Birds of Prey, etc. on New Year’s Day. That was a lot of fun! I’ll be honest, I wasn’t expecting to like much of it outside of Margot Robbie as Harley, but the whole thing was just a blast. Ewan McGregor was a whole-ass ham in this and MEW’s Huntress was cracking me up with her anger issues and disdain for the name “Crossbow Killer”. The only negative for me was Chris Messina as Zsasz, and it may not even be his fault – I’m just extremely biased toward Anthony Carrigan in Gotham as the One True Zsasz because he was so utterly fantastic.I also watched Ad Astra. I feel like I remember people not liking this movie, but slow, quiet, meditative space movies are right up my alley. It’s depressing for sure, but I’m also someone who’s read The Road dozens of times, so I think I’m either immune or so depressed already that I can’t be dragged down further!
Watched the first couple of eps of Cobra Kai Season 3. I’d forgotten how much i liked this show! Ep 2 was particularly a blast as Johnny and Danny team up “tango and cash” style to try and track down Robby…. its gold, jerry!Watched Ready or Not, which was fun. Also Ocean’s 8, which had its moments but was largely tension-free for a heist movie, but whatever.My wife wanted to watch WW ‘84 so i gave it a second shot. still didn’t care for it much. my wife thought it was “the corniest superhero movie” she’s ever seen, although that is perhaps a tad hyperbolic.
Finished Cobrai Kai Season 3 last night and it was enjoyable. That said – DOES NO ONE EVER CALL THE POLICE? DO NONE OF THE OTHER KIDS HAVE PARENTS WHO WILL CALL THE POLICE??
By the way. Are you the sort of person who considers Goldeneye to be a near perfect James Bond but still can’t comprehend how they decided to ruin its soundtrack by hiring Eric Serra instead of some John Barry or David Arnold ?And are you vaguely suspecting that (or wondering whether) Eric Serra could be a bit of a twat ?Because, in both cases, you might find a Goldeneye rewatch with Martin Camp quite soothing.
Promising Young Woman.This righteous revenge tale was probably my most anticipated movie of 2020, so I’m glad I finally got to see it. Carey Mulligan feigns drunkeness to lure predatory ‘nice guys’ which makes her something of a predator herself and it’s easy to understand why the trailers chose to sell this as a thriller. She’s cunning, maybe a little psycho, but there’s more to it than that and I appreciate that the film doesn’t go where I expect. For better or worse, at least it’s refreshing. But I’m still trying to decide if I like how it ends.Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon.This film is cinematic poetry. As a Western viewer introduced to Wuxia through this movie, I’ll never forget how weird it was to see people just bust out and defy gravity without explanation. But it quickly becomes beautiful to watch, and I couldn’t help thinking how clumsy all this looked when the Mulan Remake tried to do it (complete with dumb explanation). As usual, less is more. The cinematography, the music, the fighting. All masterful. Debating if I should watch that sequel I heard about. Ted Lasso.I get two treats in one because I love soccer, and I love a good laugh at British culture, lol. I don’t know if I’ve liked a sports sitcom since Craig T. Nielsen’s “Coach” but this was a lot of fun. A little bit of Major League in here, a little bit of Bad News Bears, and buoyed by the same kind of goofily optimistic lead character that made Amy Poehler work on Parks and Recreation. You just gotta believe! Jason Sudeikis heads a great cast, right down to the mates at the pub, and I truly hope his boss Rebecca becomes a breakout star.
I remember seeing Crouching Tiger at TIFF and after the first ‘fight’ with Michelle Yeoh, the audience applauded for a good few minutes. It was thrilling.
Ted Lasso is great! That’s probably my most anticipated next season, as of this moment. I just love that show.
A friend just started playing Minecraft, so the usual Civ group pivoted and whipped up a server. It’s a fun game to teach someone else, it brings back some of the feeling of discovering it myself. Also a little weird returning to vanilla after years of modpacks.Been watching The Expanse, I love that show but it’s exhaustingly bleak. I guess because it’s more grounded and political, but it gets to me far more than more grimdark fare like Altered Carbon.Finally, watched the Doctor Who special. Maybe it’s just the Chibnall era’s horrible writing, but I’m feeling like I’ve outgrown that show pretty hard. Which is a shame, because at it’s best it’s full of fun high-concept ideas; but it hasn’t been at its best for a while now.
My kids love Minecraft, and my son installed Minecraft Java edition on his laptop because he wanted to be able to download mods. Now I don’t know if he downloaded a bad mod or if it’s something else, but he can’t get Minecraft to even open now, and he’s bugging me to fix it like I have a clue how to do that.
Yeah, modding can be pretty fiddly. The launcher manages parallel installs though, so the un-modded profile should still be there.If all else fails and you have to reinstall the game, he’ll at least have learned a valuable lesson about backing up files 😛
When he first installed it he couldn’t get it to work and the activation code or whatever wouldn’t work and I thought I was going to have to call Mojang Studios’ help line but then it just started working by itself and now it’s stopped again. I wish he had just installed regular Minecraft, but NO, he had to have mods.
Are you saying even the launcher won’t start?
I got some kind of intro screen to open, but he couldn’t get the game to play. I may just do an uninstall/reinstall
ok so that sounds like the launcher. The launcher has a dropdown of “profiles”: these are essentially separate, parallel installs of the game. One should just be vanilla Minecraft, and there should be another that was created in the modding process.If vanilla doesn’t work, you’ll need to reinstall the whole thing. If it does, then it should just be the non-functioning profiles that need reinstalling.Mind you, this is largely guesswork on my part, as it’s been a while since I’ve set up a modpack. The easy way to play modded is with an alternate launcher like Curseforge, though that limits you to what other people have cobbled together.Hope some of this rambling helps 😛
Thanks for the tips, I’ll try them when I get the chance.
“When he first installed it he couldn’t get it to work and the activation code or whatever wouldn’t work”I thought at first you were following up on the comment on Chibnall and Doctor Who.At any rate, I feel like the last few years of the Doctor Who have been about as interesting as watching someone trying to get a console-exclusive game to work on Windows. Chibnall’s run is definitely a case of someone who can’t see his most basic misunderstanding who then spends endless, maddening amounts of time fiddling around his blunder.
Weird parallels there.
I could talk about being nearly finished with Dune (finally broke down and watch some videos online about how to read it. It’s like, do I read the appendixes first, last, what?). I could talk about, at the urging of my musician friends, seeing what the big deal is about Cream’s Disraeli Gears (I’m about halfway there). I could even talk about how, after reading the new book on Goodfellas, I have a quixotic desire to attempt Italian cooking (been watching videos on that, too). However, for the last week I’ve kind of been walking around in a daze. I don’t know why—maybe it’s the inherent weirdness of that week between Christmas and New Year’s—but it really hit me how messed up this year has been. Like, just the overwhelming sadness of it. My family made it through the year with our health, jobs and finances mostly intact, but I know many people who didn’t. And for most of the year I took all the changes in stride (basically “Well, we live in interesting times,” and “Yeah, weird shit, huh?”), but I guess the looking-back attitude of the year ending really got to me. Things have happened to society, culture and people’s lives that I’m now realizing are irreversible. It’s like, are we ever going back to the pre-pandemic world? It depends on how you define that, but if it’s even possible, I’d say it won’t be for years. Well, sorry for the existential dread. On the plus side, I was also saying: can you imagine how much worse most Americans would feel if Trump had won the election? At least 2020 had THAT bright spot.
My wife and I introduced the kids to Monty Python and the Holy Grail. My 12-year-old thought it was the funniest thing he’d ever seen since Spaceballs. I think he laughed the hardest when the bridge keeper was cast into the Gorge of Eternal Peril, and this was coming soon after nearly wetting himself watching the rabbit of Caerbannog. My 14-year-old didn’t laugh as hard, but he enjoyed it, having recently discovered Monty Python via memes of “NO ONE EXPECTS THE SPANISH INQUISITION!”My 8-year-old daughter just had a lot of questions; fortunately, none were about the Castle Anthrax, which mostly seemed to go over her head. Also, Netflix has a weird edit that included a fourth-wall breaking segment during the Castle Anthrax scene that isn’t in other versions I’ve seen, and also isn’t very good.
I think above all the Pythons should be praised for their editing. They knew what to keep and what to cut. Every deleted scenes sketch I ever saw (especially the painfully unfunny Hitler caricature of Otto in Life of Brian) has been of markedly inferior quality than what stayed on the big screen.
The first Wonder Woman was pretty good,
but it’s main flaws were director-based imo. Check my comment history. I never wanted Patty Jenkins to return for the sequel. Now its too late and WW84 is a mess. (As if the cringy trailers weren’t obvious.) I knew this would happen. The first one was
enough for a good foundation, but Wonder Woman as a character deserves
to let some other directors get a crack at it. Imagine if Harry Potter was only Christopher Columbus the whole
way. Think about how improved Captain America was when the Russos helmed
The Winter Soldier over Joe Johnson. The Hunger Games, Thor, I think
it’s important that franchises like this are able to switch gears and not be handcuffed to one
person’s cheesy style. Everybody wants their own freaking trilogy, but as WW goes into her 3rd film, I’ll be on
record *wishing* it gets a fresh perspective. On a positive note, the music was good, I liked the cameo at the end, and I think they had a clever interpretation on the Invisible Jet.
Mafia: Definitive Edition has a good 1930s city, but the game is too linear to explore it (unless I just dick around in Free Ride, but where is the fun in that?). Not that handling these clunky vehicles isn’t the worst driving I’ve experienced in an open world game. How old was this game design? Thankfully the great story and atmosphere nearly make up for everything.
“Rhapsody in Blue” remains Fantasia 2000’s best segment
Is the driving bad because they accurately simulate what it was like to drive a circa 1930 vehicle or because they didn’t? I watch a lot of old movies and seeing those beasts take a corner makes me wince every time.
Oh, the weight of the vehicles feels just right, given the time period. Mileage varies on how fun that actually is during a high speed chase, tho, lol (and there are many chases)
Mafia: Definitive Edition has a good 1930s city, but the game is too linear to explore it (unless I just dick around in Free Ride, but where is the fun in that?). Not that handling these clunky vehicles isn’t the worst driving I’ve experienced in an open world game. How old was this game design? Thankfully the great story and atmosphere nearly make up for everything.How’s the soundtrack ? I’ve played and adored that game in its first version (and I actually liked aimlessly driving these things around, in particular I liked how it encouraged you to drive lawfully as opposed to the GTA/SaintsRow/WatchDog games where I just shatter realism by always plowing impatiently through the whole environment at full speed). But the music was a big part of it, and when the game was re-released on gog, it was stripped of most of it due to copyright issues (although it could be manually replaced if you had the songs somewhere).Does this definitive edition feature the original tunes, and if not, isn’t it too impacted by that ?
I never played the first one, so I can’t speak to what was originally there, but the jazzy, Big Band tunes that are here I totally love. There’s only a couple of radio stations, which makes sense, but the neatest thing they do are the news interruptions. From the government cracking down on prohibition, to the rise of Hitler overseas, these bulletins creates an amazing sense of the era even though its a fictional city.
Adhering to the law while driving, was actually one of the selling
points for me when I got interested in the game. Helps set it apart from
GTA and its ilk. Out of curiosity, I let a cop pull me over without fighting back, and they go through the whole ticket spiel and everything- this was delightful to discover. My issue with the driving came with the chases (and one mission race…Do I suck or was this insanely difficult?!)
I have relatively few memories of that game, but one is having struggled with a car race indeed.Another is listening to the game music switch when you enter a new neighborhood. Listening to Duke Ellington’s Caravan, Chinatown My Chinatown, etc.Actually this : https://mafiagame.fandom.com/wiki/Mafia_Soundtrack(Ok. Apparently, according to that site, it’s different from your version. But same kind of thing.)
I’ve played Cyberpunk all weekend, mostly. I’m currently ignoring the main story to chase down every icon on the sprawling map, and it’s been fun.
Trying to get in to “The Watch” on BBC. Unfortunately it is 5mins of show, followed by 5 minutes of fucking commercials.
Guess what, if you want to.get people hooked on a new show, this ain’t the way to do it.
Not much pop culture, I opted to get outside more. Some years ago I realized the only way I could make it through Christmas was to stock up on enough groceries to avoid stores for the week before and after the holiday and instead of focusing on the one day, I do a low key twelve days of Christmas thing starting on the 25th. It really makes the season more tolerable. Nature obliged with a nice weekend snowfall so I went for a walk. My neighborhood has so many Victorian houses it could pass for the MGM backlot where they filmed “Meet Me in St. Louis” and all the homes and churches were still decorated so it was quite lovely. Kids were actually sledding in the park across the street and even building snowmen. All that was missing was Judy Garland. Of course a helicopter mom and her brood had to show up and the woman promptly began dictating every single fucking thing her kids did so that sucked a bit of the joy out of it.I did listen to some music:Loveliescrushing- “Jingle Bells” I used to have an unexplainable soft spot for My Bloody Valentine wannabes and this little ditty by my favorite band of the bunch always gets some play this time of the year .Kate Bush- “50 Words for Snow.” A minor record but still far and away the best thing Bush has done since “Hounds of Love.” It benefits greatly from the uncharacteristically low key, relatively non-bombastic approach. Hard to believe it’s a decade old now, a pity she didn’t build on what she did here.Cocteau Twins- “Treasure Hiding.” I picked up this box set of the Twins’ Fontana recordings last Christmas and it has become sort of an ersatz holiday record for me. Admittedly not their best work but I’ve always found their later, candy-flavored pop sound kind of endearing. The set includes a bunch of rarities including their covers of ‘Winter Wonderland’ and ‘Frosty the Snowman’ which felt appropriate.I gave myself a bunch of BMOP recordings for Christmas and started diving into a few of them:Paul Moravec- “The Blizzard Voices.” Oratorio based on the 1888 Children’s Blizzard which struck the Great Plains states just as the rural schools were letting out, swallowing up hundreds of schoolkids and freezing farmers in their tracks like statues. Needless to say it’s pretty harrowing stuff but it ends up being powerfully transcendent at the end. A few years after writing this piece, Moravec turned his talent for snow-bound horror to good use by adapting “The Shining” into an opera.Lukas Foss- “Complete Symphonies.” Great stuff. Four vibrant, richly varied pieces by a composer who was once celebrated as “the American Mozart” only to be resigned to relative obscurity. From what I’ve read, American critics ended up resenting Foss’s seemingly effortless talent.I’ve been cooking a lot more these days and the cold weather has made me really miss some of the more savory dishes I used to make when I still ate meat. I decided to try to concoct a mock Osso Buco with a mix of Impossible Burger and some Beyond Sausage that I let simmer all day in a mushroom and carrot gravy. It turned out surprisingly well. Obviously not like the same thing but a very nice substitute and the gravy ended up tasting as good as anything I’ve ever had made with real meat.
Finished the family (FAMILY!) binge watch of the Fast and the Furious series tonight. I was hoping to start Uncharted 4, which I got for the holidays, today but annoying stuff happened. Gotta work out time to take over the living room over the next week or two to play it.