Streaming Shuffle
It's still satirical corporate horror, but this version doesn't feature Adam Scott.
At this point, when you bring up Severance, you have to say, “No, not that one.”
But in 2006, Severance was a satirical horror-comedy directed by Christopher Smith (who also made the haunting but underseen Triangle). Truthfully, if you can only watch one corporate nightmare called Severance, you should indeed make it the superb 2022 TV series. But why limit yourself like that? This film, though a bit too laddish and rarely in full control of its tone, is an interesting dead end in the landscape of 2000s horror movies.
Severance came out during an era when horror cinema was circling around wider anxieties about torture and imperialism. Sometimes films deliberately engaged with those cultural fears and guilts; sometimes they used them to create a sheen of borrowed significance. An eyeball dangling down on someone’s cheek is just an eyeball, but this eyeball says something about America!
Severance is definitely doing what it does on purpose. It has meaning amidst its muddle, and its directness was so rare for the time that it still feels fresh.
The movie follows the Hungarian countryside corporate retreat of a sales team from Palisade Defence—an international arms manufacturer whose rah-rah recruitment adds boast, “We’re hitting a home run for freedom and a time-out for terror.” No one on the tour bus cares about their substance of their work, not even flop-sweaty middle-manager Richard (Tim McInnerny), who tries to rouse a sense of company pride by pointing out a rave review of their landmines. Stick him at Dunder Mifflin, and he’d talk about paper. His nightmares are about personal humiliation, not severed limbs. And his subordinates are a typical work outing assortment: the complainer, the nebbish, the slacker-stoner, the dry wit, the shy geek, and the competent malcontent.
Even before things go wrong, they’re not going well. Most of these people don’t get along very well, and almost everyone has an open contempt for Richard, who is too insecure to let anyone correct him. When their road is blocked by a fallen tree and their driver—with a storm of curses—abandons them rather than drive down the turn-off, Richard decides they should all walk. After all, on the map, it’s only an inch from this fork to the lodge their boss has reserved. Yes, earnest Billy (Babou Ceesay) tries to point out, but there’s no scale on the map, so they have no idea how long an inch represents. “Well, an inch is usually a mile, isn’t it?” Richard says. Not really, no, and—“Well, we’ll assume that is.”
It isn’t, and Richard’s plan leads them not to their actual luxury lodge but to an empty, decaying house. Either it’s the wrong place, they conclude, or their boss has oversold the “luxury” angle, and honestly, the latter seems just as likely as the former. This trip is going to be hell anyway, so they settle in—until they discover musty files implying Palisade was far more active in Hungary than they realized. Their company’s sins were supposed to be out of sight and out of mind, but now they’re surrounded by them.
This is the most formally ambitious part of Severance, with the different “campfire tales” of Palisade’s past, real or fictional, filmed like different genres, from a silent movie treatment to disturbingly contemporary leaked footage to porn. It gives you a sense of director Christopher Smith’s imagination and ambitions—and his possible shortcomings, because you could find the transition from tongue-in-cheek silent movie spookiness to “intentionally aping footage of actual war crimes” to cheeky softcore jarring in a telling, interesting way … or just in a “what were you thinking?” way. I lean more towards the second, frankly, but I think it’s plausible that Smith was trying for something more.
But the stories can’t be true, Richard says. “We’re a public company! Members of both our governments are on the board! They’re not going to do anything immoral!”
Then someone finds a tooth in a pie, and someone else sees a man outside her window, and we’re off to the races. The corporate and political satire folds into the slasher comedy, because it provides the crime people are seeking to redress with machetes. And bear-traps. And flamethrowers. From here, the ride gets bumpier, but it never stops giving you the occasional excellent moment, especially in the underrated field of severed leg comedy. It’s hit-or-miss on working out how to write its characters as protagonists while still keeping them somewhat on their company’s sordid past and present, but it does get the balance right at least once. And it features someone rolling with their own beheading, which I find charming.
The film is far too shaggy for its length—after a certain point, you’re mostly watching a bunch of people run around, and that makes it all feel generic rather than specific. Its villains are woefully underdeveloped (and while that doesn’t always matter in horror, it matters here). And I don’t think this horror-comedy that plays half its deaths and maimings for laughs really needs a semi-gritty, face-licking scene of near-rape. Starting the movie off with two scantily clad escorts who discover that, oh no, they must strip down even further to escape the pit trap they’re in is less of a tonal problem, but it’s an eye-roller, and I guarantee you someone has turned the movie off because of it. Like I said, the movie definitely has a laddish streak, and that’s not the kind of humor it does best.
But this is interesting. It could only have been made in the ‘00s, but it doesn’t feel much like what the genre was doing at the time. It was Smith’s second feature, and it has an engaging, “Sure, why not?” sense to it of an energetic artist going all-in on an idea. If you’re interested in offbeat horror-comedies and genre roads not taken, give this a try sometime. You can fold some laundry when people start running around … as long as you put it down when the rocket launcher comes out.
Severance is streaming on Prime, Roku, Tubi, and Pluto.
About the writer
Lauren James
Lauren James is a writer who wears many different hats (and pen names). She lives in Connecticut with her wife and two cats.
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Anthologized
Dan Duryea gets a shave and a second chance.
Anthologized
A little slice of American folklore that feels like it's been here all along.
Streaming Shuffle
You make your royal bed, and you lie in it.
Anthologized
Alone in vast space and timeless infinity: one man in a ghost town.
Department of
Conversation
This is the only one of Christopher Smith’s first six films that I haven’t seen, but I’ve been meaning to get around to it for ages because he’s an interesting director and it’s a solid premise. And also because Danny Dyer is an entertaining idiot.
Very fond of McInnerny of course thanks to his multiple roles on Black Adder.
Dyer gets probably my favorite line of the film, and I regret that it was slightly too spoilery for me to put it in the main article.
It certainly seems timely, too.
What Did We Watch?
Not a lot! Came down with a nasty winter cold with plenty of sore throat and gross coughs. Hoping to be over it today. We have been continuing through Modern Family, we’re now into season 10. Not much to say, they’ve maintained their groove and deliver remarkable comfort comedy despite the many years of material they’ve used. If I had to guess the source of their success, it’s having enough players that it can find fresh combinations without reinventing the wheel, and it doesn’t shy away from physical comedy.
Like I said, Ty Burrell is quietly one of the best TV sitcom dads in sheer laugh volume.
He’s great both in what he does and how he blends with the rest of the cast. He strikes me as a very generous performer – no wonder they have Fred Willard playing his dad, their styles seem cut from the same cloth.
Kojak, “Cop in a Cage”/”Marker for a Dead Bookie” – In the former, an ex-con seeks revenge on Kojak by threatening our hero’s family on the day of his niece’s wedding. In the latter, an undercover cop’s cover being blown becomes an opportunity to bring down a heroin kingpin. To a large degree, we’re following a formula. Kojak bends, if not breaks, rules, butts heads with his superior but gets his way, has a battle of wits with the bad guy of the week. But there are just enough twists to keep things interesting and the pacing is usually quite solid. Plus the regulars and guests do good work, if not quite up to Columbo standards. But the latter had a huge bit of plot left dangling, and I wonder why they just let it be. Guests include character actor John P. Ryan as the vengeful ex-c0n, and Lorraine Gary as Kojak’s date a year before she was married to an ex-NYC cop in Jaws.
Pulpy titles!
More to come!
Hey, been in job training so I’ve been absent, but good to be here (more)! I watched Spirited Away on the non-psychedelic mushrooms, and though I just got mild euphoria, the movie itself IS euphoria, just a fantastic, magical film, and I have nothing new to say about it that hasn’t already been said. Never fails to make me laugh, even though the ghost train is so beautiful and literally haunting, when Chihero tells Noface, “You sit down, and you be good now!”
Oh man, I haven’t done psychedelics, but I don’t imagine I would do great with this movie on them. Reminds me of a friend in college who would do shrooms and watch Moulin Rouge!, and I wondered if it would feel like overkill or redundant.
Yep, in hindsight, I’m good with the mild euphoria in regards to the giant baby and Noface vomiting up people.
Planning to drop this one on the nephews soon, although without the shrooms.
Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom – looooong time since I’ve seen this one, but as I mentioned when I talked about Raiders, this was the one that was on such heavy rotation in my youth that it’s basically burned into my memory. That nostalgia probably helps overcome the numerous flaws – the racism and Willie’s character in general are rightly criticised but I can’t help love the gross-out food sequence in a horror-b-movie kinda way even if it’s propagating unfair stereotypes. Beyond the flaws, it’s great, mean fun with heart-ripping action and a ton of knockout set pieces, and it looks amazing. I remain a fan.
Live Music – played a Palestine benefit concert with a couple of friends, technically the first time I’ve played live with other musicians in a decade which is wild! It went pretty well, although most of the other acts were young (or even Very Young) and they’d largely brought friends who watched their set only and then left. As crusty old people, most of our friends were busy raising children or whatever so we played to one of the sparser crowds of the evening (as did the headliners, the only other act who had an average age over 30). Still, we got some nice comments from the people who did watch, and had a good time. The other acts were eclectic and mostly pretty good, everything from kinda grunge noise to neo-soul to electro-pop represented. And we raised a good amount of money, hooray.
Woooo, playing live music! Really glad the benefit concert went well, and you have the moral high ground when it comes to the sparser crowd: “At least we didn’t pack the crowd with sycophants! The people who stayed genuinely liked our music!”
Cheers! The compliments we got afterwards were nicely specific rather than the generic “good set!” so yeah I feel like we made a few people smile with our odd Christmas songs (I forgot to mention that we played six Christmas songs, three that I’d written and three by the other guy). A member of the band who played after us said that one of my songs is now their “favourite Christmas song of all time” which is perhaps a little over the top but I’ll take it!
I mentioned it recently when I did a rewatch, but it wasn’t until this time that I clocked that Indiana Jones was visiting the capital and sitting government of India, not some obscure off-the-map province, which makes all the exoticism even weirder. This is the seat of government in a modern country! Still, I held with it until the British colonial troops come to the rescue at the end, much like the chilled monkey brains, tough to swallow that one.
Don’t they abandon their plans to go to the big city when they hear about the palace? The guy they meet there describes himself as the prime minister of something or other but I got the impression that he was basically just the official on behalf of that specific child maharajah.
There’s an interesting bit of info on Wikipedia about the exotic banquet, I’m not sure I entirely buy it though:
Roshan Seth, who played Chattar Lal, mentioned that the banquet scene was a joke that went wrong, saying, “Steven intended it as a joke, the joke being that Indians were so smart that they knew all Westerners think that Indians eat cockroaches, so they served them what they expected. The joke was too subtle for that film.”
Also I forgot to mention that it was written by the writer-directors of my beloved Messiah of Evil, which is fun.
I know they mention heading for “Calcutta,” if they changed their course, I missed that part (one thing wrong with the movie is pretty much everything said and done for a big chunk in the middle just goes in one ear and out the other).
That joke makes no sense since Indiana’s whole deal is being an expert on other cultures and he doesn’t bat an eye (not even one floating in soup). This sounds like an attempted retcon to me.
They’re planning to go to Delhi, then Willie is horrified to hear they’ve changed their plans and are heading to “Pankot” (which appears to be fictional) to visit the palace.
I’m just poking around in the version of the script that is available online and it does include some Indy dialogue about the bizarre menu that isn’t in the finished film – but whatever they were trying for doesn’t really work. But the gross-out FX still do, haha.
I just learned about Messiah of Evil the other day. It’s crazy that you brought it up. I have to track it down under one of its many titles.
It’s such an excellently odd film, and a great entry into one of my favourite horror sub-subgenres, “coastal towns with weird secrets”.
Have you ever seen a movie called Off Season (2021) ? It doesn’t totally work, but if coastal towns with secrets are your jam, you might want to check it out.
I think the opening twenty minutes and the mine cart chase are some of the best action sequences in the franchise. But it also continues Lucas’s dumbing down or infantilizing of his franchises that began with the Ewoks the year before and which he carried on to the Prequels. The blockbuster becomes juvenile aimed at 13 year old boys here. But seeing this in the theater at 14, I still crack-up at the banquet, as wrong as it is.
It’s a fair point but Return of the Jedi is my favourite Star Wars movie and I love basically everything about Short Round and his cute elephant in this movie, so maybe I’m still 13 at heart.
You can criticize huge chunks of Temple of Doom around me, but not Short Round.
God damn right. Short Round rules! Quan drops in like 1. he’s always been around and 2. he is the person who knows what’s up far more than Indy, 1 is covered by his confidence and 2 is straight up fact.
Wooo live music! Boooo KIDS TODAY, you gotta stick around for at least one other band!
Woooo live music for a cause!! Congratulations!!
Red Rooms: Damn, this is intense. I have a weakness for stories about buttoned-down, hyper-controlled characters who pursue their goal to the point of (self-)destruction, and this certainly fits the bill. Kelly-Anne is a Montreal fashion model who–for reasons the film leaves tantalizingly ambiguous–is obsessed with a dark, hard-to-watch murder trial currently playing out in her city. (It involves the livestreamed torture and murder of three young girls, and the movie smartly takes the Grizzly Man approach when it comes to the actual footage–and even then, it’s skin-crawling.) She befriends the suspect’s groupie, a naive young woman named Clementine, but they never seem to be quite on the same page. The nature–and object–of Kelly-Anne’s devotion is more obscure, and it leads her to stranger places, including one of the most viscerally chilling moments of physical transformation I’ve ever seen in a movie. Lots of room for interpretation here, but this is my favorite kind of ambiguity: we know what happens, but what it means, and where it was coming from, are up to us.
BLACK GRAVEL– A very interesting, but extremely grim, mixture of kitchen sink melodrama and film noir fatalism from 1961 West Germany. Te accidental death of a dalmation brings back together former lovers involved in black marketeering in the immediate post war years. The man is still in the trade, procuring ill gotten materials from an army base, while the woman has married a U.S army captain and is trying to go straight (as if, in this world of bleak coincidences, that’s gonna happen). While overlong it captures life in a small town whose primary purpose is to serve American servicemen, which is pretty depressing.
Hell, Johnny Cash was stationed in West Germany pre-stardom and seemed to loathe the experience.
NYPD Blue — Simone starts getting primo dirt from an old snitch, a hip knowing streetwise charming motormouthed junkie who is up on all the crimes around town. He is also an extremely badass stickup artist! And whaddya know, this character and episode was written by a young fellow named David Simon and it is absolutely hilarious to see him shooting his wad entire here, Bubbles and Omar in one dude (and to be fair that dude is played by Giancarlo Esposito so he’s pretty great). He’s killed off via the negligence of asshole cop Daniel Von Bargen, TV worlds colliding. Later, Lesniack is a jealous psycho bitch, this is not a judgment but literally what they have made of her already lame character, where are the police to call on a bad writer’s room.
The Lady Vanishes — something I have become a huge mark for over the years is a good facial non-reaction, not quite a deadpan but someone attempting to disassociate in the face of an inescapable situation and the cut to Caldicott and Charters (the latter in particular) listening to the Lady’s Alpine reminisces destroyed me. A comfort rewatch, it’s weird how casual the shootout at the end is, it feels like Hitchcock can’t even be bothered with fun train action let alone gunplay, but that’s not why we’re here. Somehow both light and heavy-handed (the embodiment of appeasement being shot dead like a dog is a hoot) and Redgrave’s insouciant charm doesn’t undermine his innate trust in Lockwood, and her sass has steel underneath. British pluck given a good name!
My favorite of the early Hitchcocks I’ve seen, though The Lodger is on my list still. The two working class guys who got spun off into a comedy franchise of their own are a hoot.
I love those two, and I’m always excited whenever they turn up in anything: “Oh, the cricket guys are in this!”
It’s great how they too are sort of a metaphor, for blinkered British indifference, but they’re too much fun to get deep in on that aspect.
I can’t hear The Lady Vanishes without thinking of Norm Macdonald’s “a lady has vanished” routine.
Heh, funny to me not just because I watched “The Strike” last night, but because Von Bargen plays an asshole cop in both O Brother, Where Art Thou? (personification of Satan edition) and Super Troopers (non-mythological, corrupt, cousin-fucking edition).
SATURDAY
Pretty Good
Episode 15. “That’s not entirely accurate”. First time.
Really fun look into the annoying Secretary of Defense in Independence Day. One of my pet peeves with Hollywood filmmaking is precisely how often one character exists just to be shat on and be slightly less human than the main characters for no reason (shoutout to the White House Chief of Staff in The Rock) so this is right up my alley. Jon Bois makes this as engaging ever, balancing between taking the piss, genuine affection for actor James Rebhorn and committment to the bit. Pretty good.
SUNDAY
Secret Level
Season 1, Episode 6. “PAC-MAN: Circle”. First time.
I had this animated short on the list for this week but pushed it ahead after Bandai Namco released a trailer for their new, dark, bizarre Pac-Man Metroidvania title and I kept hearing from people that this was tied to that. This is a cynical piece of dark sci-fi, where a man comes out of a tube with no memory in a future wasteland maze and is commanded by a flying robotic yellow ball into finding his way out of the maze, killing mosters to eat and avoiding ghost-like creatures to survive. It’s bloody with a gruesome ending, a gallows humor appearance of the proper Pac-Man look and a bleak take on the concept of lives in videogames. The whole thing would feel a bit like a troll if I’d seen it before the game announcement; now it feels like an extended teaser/proof of concept, but not one without merit.
Lioness
Season 2, Episode 6. “2381”. First time.
Shit goes down and the team finally executes the trap on the helicopter pilot’s narco lawyer dad, Zoe Saldana gets on a plane without realizing she has a bullet in her bully and suffers the consequences, and the CIA team gets reason to suspect their DEA guy is a plant and kicks the shit out of him. For what it’s worth, his rationale makes a lot of sense to me once they finally let him get a word in. Good action here, though after 49 minutes of Sheridan Talk one wonders how much more punch it would have if trimmed tack back to, say, 35.
TUESDAY
The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power
Season 2, Episode 8. “Shadow and Flame”. First time.
What do you know, this actually finished strong. Wisely, they get straight to it with the weaker storylines, specially the Teen Gandalf plot. He saves his friends, finally learns who he’s up against, bids farewell to the Harfoots and takes his name and his staff. We last see him singing a song with Tom Bombadil, changing nothing about my status as The Last Tolkien Reader With No Real Opinion on Tom Bombadil. Teen Gandalf and the Harfoots was good on paper but saddled with detours and distractions like shitty witches and anonymous nomads for two seasons, so good on them for cutting it loose and going somewhere different with him next season.
Over with the dwarves, King Durin and Prince Durin finally come to blows (sort of) in the opening scene and, again, things are much better in this show when they just let action play out and follow things to its end. The king is dead, a Balrog did it, long live the king. Very good opening. And I have to say, the decision to make the Balrog virtually identical to the one in the Peter Jackson movies, which this series is nominally not tied to in any other way, really works for whatever reason.
Not much happens in Númenor, other than the start of a religious war and the most venal leaders in the world pushing their advantage and turning into despots and good folks being forced to retreat. Good stuff, but mostly a setup for future shit.
Still, the core of this episode, like the previous one, is the siege in Eregion which concludes just as ruthlessly as it started. Lots of important characters die and everyone who’s left lose big, except for Teen Sauron who gets his army and his rings, though Charlie Vickers convincingly plays his inner turmoil at killing Celebrimbor and his exertion in his impressive fight with Galadriel. Galadriel and the Elves also retreat and leave the ruined Eregion, and we see them dramatically pick the spot for the future Rivendell, like the Mexicans finding an eagle eating a snake.
It seems like this show has really pruned itself of some of the chaff holding it back, though it runs into a different problem in the last minutes, echoing the Jackson films as it moves relatively closer to them (they’re still thousands of years away). For instance, one particular speech by one of the Harfoots over a montage of different characters is straining hard to echo Sam’s speech at the end of The Two Towers and it falls flat for me. The last two episodes take a big swing and cut away plenty of characters and weaker story elements, turning them into proper dramatic fodder. (Again, they learned some good lessons from Game of Thrones.) Overall a solid season of television and the show comes out stronger at the end of it.
Meant to say Mexicas in the penultimate paragraph, not Mexicans.
“Grand-Elf”? I just can’t get behind that. As close as this series resembles PJ’s films visually it also changes some of the “canon” established in them. But this is definitely the best episode of the series so far. Vicker’s Sauron-Elf has his best moments in the role. Robert Aramayo’s Elrond finally breaks out of his blandness. Morfydd Clark continues to be the best part of the show whenever she is on screen.
I forgot about that name thing, LOL. It’s funny, I think they can only sort of get away with that because Tolkien never cared much where Gandalf got his name from, and this despite going to the lengths of naming the character at least twice. But should we care about something that Tolkien himself didn’t? I don’t.
Agree with you on all points. Elrond in particular gets the shit kicked out of him in the latter part of the season, physically and spiritually, leading him to a rude awakening that Aramayo underplays well. Dig that bit in this episode where the show lets slip that Elrond might have cared less about the lives lost than about Cele’s old books and stuff. I expect a much changed elf in Season 3 after this.
Monday night’s watches:
Monday Night Football
You know the old saying “If you have two quarterbacks, you don’t have any?” If you have two crummy Monday Night Football games, they do not add up to one good game.
Matlock, “No, No Monsters”
Not quite as strong as the last one, but it involves Matty having to try to juggle a few responsibilities. She’s put on a case Olympia takes up of a nanny being falsely accused of endangering kids, while also trying to figure out how to get the missing file out of Senior’s email, and having to keep her lies about her personal backstory straight while dealing with Olympia’s latest anger at Julian. And she’s got to make it to watch Alfie’s mock trial. And she’s got to maintain both Olympia and Julian’s trust… and keep her resolve as in particular she becomes closer to Olympia. It’s a lot!
The case is relatively flimsy– relatively, mind you– but the bigger focus of the episode is on both Matty’s growing relationship with Olympia, and the continued compromises she’s having to make to pursue her mission and what they’re doing to her. On those grounds it’s pretty solid.
Also, I believe this is the first time we get Senior’s full name– H.L. “Senior” Markston. (I think we got the “Markston” part from Julian last episode, but that’s still a pretty long while for a show to go before even giving us such significant characters’ last names.)
Elsbeth, “One Angry Woman”
Slight twist on the usual formula. Elsbeth’s son Teddy is still in town, but that’s not what I mean– Elsbeth is not investigating a murder, but she’s been summoned for jury duty and named an alternate juror for a murder trial! She quickly figures out something is weird with the trial proceedings– the judge seems to be heavily favoring the prosecution and railroading the accused– which is, of course, because we know from the opening scene that he’s the actual murderer. (Also, he’s played by Michael Emerson, Carrie Preston’s husband of 26 years.)
The defense attorney is hilariously incompetent– delightfully played by Scott Adsit with Pete Hornberger levels of incompetence and marital problems (and “Pete Hornberger after faking his death” levels of having a second family)– and getting no breaks from the judge, so Elsbeth has to figure out a way to not only get out of the alternate box and into the real twelve, but to also convince the others to vote not guilty.
The murder isn’t actually solved by the end of the episode– the first time that’s happened– but Elsbeth’s jury work is a success, and the judge inadvertently lets something slip that is the kind of detail Elsbeth typically can’t let go. So presumably she will get to work on solving the murder at some point. Good episode, this show is a bit fluffier than something like Matlock, but that also makes it a fun and breezy watch, a nice palate-cleanser after the higher dramatic stakes of all the lies Madeline Matlock is juggling.
The Shield, “Postpartum”
I think those crazy kids are gonna be allllll right.
And Tuesday night’s watches:
How the Grinch Stole Christmas
The original, of course– which is only a half-hour, which further suggests the un-necessity of the remakes. Just the right thing to start off with a week before Christmas. I don’t have a lot to say about it, but also I’ve been pretty sick since I got back from vacation so my attention span and critical thinking are not the best.
Mr. Mayor, “Mr. Mayor’s Magical L.A. Christmas”
Haven’t watched this since it was canceled, but I remember this episode (which aired between seasons) as a significant turning point for the show. And it turned out to still be quite fun and funny, and sort of appropriately holiday sentimental with the slightly cynical touch that doesn’t undercut the sincerity of the feelings but does make the whole thing funnier. And I just wanted to comment on the Mikaela-Arpi plot, where Mikaela tries to Love Actually Arpi and Scott Adsit’s cameraman, that Arpi is right about Love Actually’s problematic…ism, I guess? Or at least, that Sign Guy is a total wuss and I have no respect for him.
Seinfeld, “The Strike”
I spent too much time this weekend talking about the episode not to put it in our early Christmas watch list. Mostly, I was telling my friends that Jerry Stiller actually forgot his lines in the “…I lost my train of thought” moment, and they decided it was funnier than what he was actually going to say. And one of them told me that from the commentaries apparently Julia Louis-Dreyfus was actually weirded out by, as we’ve previously memorably dubbed him, “Porno Werewolf.” (I only know him from two roles, this and Mr. Show’s “I got a five-inch taint” guy. I should probably learn his name at some point, but Sleaziest Guy Alive is also a pretty good shorthand.)
The Shield, “On the Jones” and “Baptism By Fire”
I still can’t believe “I Hung My Head” is a Johnny Cash cover of a Sting song.
Kids In The Hall, Season Two, Episode Three
– “You know, folks, as a professional journalist, I have to wonder if these two stories are related. :D”
“Good. Introduce us or diiiie.”
– “What they failed to notice are her hips!”
– “TGIP!” / “What’s that?” / “Thank god I’m not a pig!”
– The sketch about Tony getting on Mark McKinney’s character in the subway was funny because I knew guys like that growing up. “You crazy, you know that, Tony?” / “Yeah. Pick it up.”
– “Did you have a cucumber sandwich for lunch?” / “No? I did have a cucumber salad a few days ago.”
– “Geez, Don, you almost got it, then you missed it completely.”
– “Sixty-five rings. What kind of madman is behind that phone?!”
– “Look! The fish won’t go near it!”
– “Unless this is a rerun. In which case, I wonder if I’m dead. D:”
Hacks, Season Two, Episode Eight, “The One, The Only”
– The characters are all in a really good place right now, except Jimmy.
– Both Deb and Ava are loyal to each other, thinking over the punch-up gig.
– Ming-Na gets some amazing work here.
– I’ll be honest, I legitimately hate Kayla. I don’t want to be around her, even in a fictional context. Especially in a fictional context, where I can’t possibly yell at her.
– The little detail of Marcus’s parents (mother’s friend? I’m not clear) spilling popcorn as they try to sit is very funny to me.
– I love the evolution of Deb’s standup. Like, it really has evolved, incorporating Nanette-like introspection into, like, classic jokes.
– Jimmy covering up that guy dying is cold, I love it.
– Deb recognises that she essentially has used standup as therapy after DJ points it out. I always enjoy when artists process things through their work; I know I do.
– In a way, the special can be seen as the inciting incident. This will be the thing that Deb and Ava will have to justify and get away with for the rest of the show. This special will reverberate out into the rest of Ava’s career and Deb knows it. This is the point where the show gets really interesting.
Ahahah, this is a great Kids in the Hall episode. The Sizzler sisters! Pug nose! Tony! Don the executive with the food on his face! All the other stuff you also mentioned!
I don’t have a ton of comments on the Hacks episode, other than it being a strong season finale, and I think the show does legitimately get better every season. (Oh, man, I cannot wait until you finish season 3. The OWNAGE)
The first half of la la land, which is technically a christmas movie.
I have some quibbles. It should be 1.66 instead of cinema scope and some medium shots should be long shots. But hot damn stone and gosling have incredible chemistry. Gosling also is effortlessly hilarious—eg, the early exchange “miles davis peed on this rug” “now that’s just insulting… did he?”, delivered naturalistically, no mugging, perfect timing. Stone’s dramatic mugging for the camera during “i ran,” (which is not in the sound track, which is a crime) is great.
Gonna try to catch the second half tonight. i assume everything works out and they live happily ever after.
Also, remember 2016 awards season? That was wild. Somehow this versus moonlight became a synecdoche for racial justice? And now they don’t let chazelle or jenkins make real movies anymore.