The single funniest line in The Young Ones shows up in series two, episode two, “Cash” when Mike, one of the main four housemates, cries out “I’ve just nailed my legs to the table!” Part of the reason it makes me laugh so hard is that it requires so much explanation as to why it’s funny at all, because it’s a punchline that technically has eight things setting it up that all come together at once. Mike explains his injury because the characters think he’s been possessed by a ghost after Vyvyan sawed the legs off his chair, leaving him inexplicably floating. Vyvyan sawed the legs off to demonstrate what he’d been doing to the table. He’d been cutting the legs off the table because a) he’s like that and b) to collect fuel for the fire.
Mike nailed his legs to the table when he nailed the house plates to it; he’d done this after watching Neil fail to do the same thing without breaking all the plates (with Mike succeeding where Neil failed because the former is cool and the latter is an unlucky idiot). Neil tried to nail the plates to the table because things have been disappearing around him, and things have been disappearing around him because Vyvyan has been burning everything in an attempt to heat the house. It’s one thing to watch dominoes fall in a pleasing pattern; it’s quite another to only realise in retrospect that dominoes were falling at all, and Mike crying out “I’ve just nailed my legs to the table!” is like a moment of snap realisation in a mystery movie.
The nice thing about comedy is that you can do whatever you want, so long as it’s funny. I strongly suspect that the punchline was something the writers – Ben Elton, Rik Mayall, and Lise Mayer – came to organically after setting all that other stuff up through straightforward jokes. What ends up happening is the other, structurally superfluous jokes inbetween those load-bearing jokes end up drawing our attention away from them – that is to say, the load-bearing jokes make the punchline logical, while the ‘superfluous’ ones make it surprising.
I often compare comedy to music (and I’m hardly unique in that), but this makes me wonder if comedy really is specifically best to think of in musical terms as opposed to the cold logic of drama. This is one of my favourite Simpsons moments, because Homer’s “Or crapweeds” should unbalance the scene by virtue of being simple repetition of Bart’s line, and “Not if they were called scumdrops!” rebalances it. This is a visual expression of that same sense of music; brilliantly staged so that there’s space for Homer to walk in from behind without us anticipating it.
This is that root connection between comedy and music: anticipation. I’m told that music is, fundamentally, the choice to either repeat yourself, change something, or change something and then change it back, and the magic of it is finding that sweet balance between predictability and surprise. Comedy clearly runs under that same idea – a mutating sense of when to surprise the audience and when to let them know what’s about to happen.
About the writer
Tristan J. Nankervis
Tristan J Nankervis (aka Drunk Napoleon) has been a writer, pop culture critic, dishwasher, standup comedian, waiter, potato cake factory worker, gamer, TV worker, and various other things. You can find him in Hobart, Tasmania.
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Escape From The Planet Of The Apes
This is a weird fucking franchise. The first half of this movie struggles to articulate a reason to exist beyond just being a goofy comedy – it borders on Weekend At Bernie’s II in its lack of necessity – only to suddenly and sharply turn into an incredibly dark thriller. I saw the ending coming from a mile off, but that doesn’t lessen how despairing this movie is.
The opening titles are incredible, and end up selling the tone of the first half of the movie perfectly.
X-Men: The Animated Series
Finished this up this weekend. My scepticism of children’s television continues unabated. I admit to being surprised how often they brought up religion – I’m so used to children’s shows either not bringing up religion at all outside of a few very secularised holidays, or presenting Bible stories like fairy tales for their characters (and in very rare cases proud presentation of Jewish practices in shows like Rugrats), so not only having characters believe in God, nor even only characters motivated by their belief in God (like Kurt), but straight up differentiating between characters’ specific beliefs and practices (like Kurt’s Catholicism vs the fundamentalism of the bad guys vs the Cajun characters we meet).
In a lot of ways, this show is like The X-Files in its fascination with the nooks and crannies of America; one of the main appeals is the soap-opera-like number of characters with intricate life stories from across the country and occasionally the globe. On top of their occasional need to go home and sort out old wounds, they frequently have to go visit and save mutants around the country who have nobody else to help them.
There’s a fascinating kind-of problem where the show’s intentions and morality collide with its impulses; Xavier is played as the wisest character on the show, preaching tolerance, empathy, and peace, and his values are both naive – most of the villains are violent bullying dumbasses – and weirdly necessary – so are most of the heroes. Xavier is one of the few people who can let an insult go either unspoken or unanswered; both Wolverine and Cyclops particularly are prone to paranoia and violence, and neither are able to take it nearly as well as they dish it out.
Admittedly, the sheer scope of ideas the show plays with makes it fascinating and fun to watch; its conclusions are often simplistic and childish, but the curiosity in the first place is very attractive, and at least points to a much less kitschy version of this show (I often suspect enthusiasm for shows like this is rooted in fans with greater imagination and sophistication than the writers enjoying the version of the show in their head, no negative connotations intended).
Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga
Originally, I was going to open this post with “Intoxicatingly cinematic and intoxicatingly Australian”. Even people not waist-deep in dramatic structure were wondering how exactly George Miller would make this kind of prequel – where we know exactly what’s going to happen and which characters will live or die – dramatically interesting. For the first 99% of the film, I interpreted his solution as being two-fold: one, to always have cool things happening onscreen. Lots of people, fire in the background, incredible sets and costumes, etc.
Two, Miller always has things to say. The movie’s whole existence may be to explain a fairly straightforward and simple character, but it dedicates itself to that fully, and it uses every cinematic technique to do that, not just dialogue and simple action. We meet Jack and instantly see, oh, this is where she got the forehead thing and a lot of her persona, just from the way he carries himself. A simple tilt of the camera, and we get an entire source of emotion. We see the relationships between background characters and get her morality entirely.
When I say this movie is intoxicatingly Australian, I don’t just mean there’s a lot of Australian accents or even Australian slang – I mean the very construction of the movie. Two things define Australian pop culture long after they stopped having a practical basis: community, and an alien and hostile environment. You look up any classic paintings by white Australians, the environment is always made to look really weird, sometimes borderline Lovecraftian. Meanwhile, fairness is one of the main driving elements of Australian culture, or at least the main myth we tell ourselves (as much a convenient rationalisation as an American telling himself he’s creating jobs). On the one hand, the society of the Wasteland is a parody of that kind of thing, with characters enthusiastically embracing roles in a terrible, disgusting, violent society.
On the other hand, the movie itself is a product of that kind of thinking. I think of the black man (whose name I haven’t bothered looking up) who plays the guy who gets disguised as a War Boy, slathered in paint and dirt; he’s in the movie all of two minutes, and he gets to look insanely cool, and he gets to be funny; it’s his turn to be That Guy in the movie. All the characters and sets and whatnot have this kind of energy, where we’re all excited to get to make a Mad Max movie. The movie itself is fair to everyone who passes through.
(From this perspective, we have the very funny reveal that Furiosa’s skillz mainly came to her in that, uh, someone taught her at a young age, which is always the way with these prequels)
And then we get to that last scene. Chris Hemsworth is as amazing as everyone says; like a lot of super-attractive guys, he loves playing the dumbass clown, and he embraces that here, like he’s been unleashed. He’s incredibly funny in the final act of the movie, when Furiosa is hunting him down and he recognises someone wildly outclassing him is hellbent on killing him – cheerfully acknowledging he’s lost to his allies and telling them to run, hiding and fleeing.
And then she’s standing over him holding a gun to his head, and… they have a moment of empathy for each other. Hemsworth is extraordinary in this moment, explaining how he did essentially what she’s doing now, and looking at her with awed, even joyful recognition. And she looks back and recognises herself, and Ana Taylor-Joy not only does the classic single-tear-falling cliche, she suddenly fully embodies Charlize Theron’s version of the character, not just the toughness but the sadness.
This doesn’t just explain Furiosa – it completely recontextualises her. Theron did carry Furiosa like she knew she was a monster, but this really makes you feel it, and it adds so much weight. She chases the Green Place and, later, the seizing of the Citadel because she’s no longer concerned at all with what she deserves; she’s externalised her goals because there’s nothing left in her to destroy or build. From her perspective, if she dies there’s no great loss, and if she succeeds she improves the world. It’s simultaneously dark as hell and weirdly inspiring.
I haven’t seen Furiosa, but I had the same reaction to Mad Max, that every character, even the guys who were there for two minutes, got their moment in the sun.
Escape from the Planet of the Apes is maybe the weirdest entry in a truly bizarre franchise and I can’t help kinda love it. The comedy stuff is endlessly fun to me and then that pivot to bleakness is super effective. Maybe my favourite outside of the first film?
Fantastic Furiosa write-up, also!
I like this analysis of Furiosa — the dude who works for the Octoboss is my favorite one-off guy but then the Octoboss himself gets arguably the best setpiece in the movie. The Octoboss rules! And he’s given that space to rule, at least for a bit.
That writeup has my hand reaching out of its own accord to grab the remote and watch Furiosa right now (at 8 in the morning).
Executive Suite – The president of a furniture manufacturer dies suddenly, and the board scrambles to pick a replacement. Odd duck of a movie, part soap opera and part boardroom shenanigans that coasts along on the strength of its cast (William Holden. Walter Pidgeon, Shelley Winters, Barbara Stanwyck, Frederic March, Nina Foch in her only Oscar-nominated role) and the skill of director Robert Wise. And then turns into a lecture about how corporate America should be about the pride of craftsmanship and not just making money for shareholders. A literal six minute speech by Holden, who is so obviously going to be the new president because he’s William Holden. Not a good movie, not a bad movie, just really a good snapshot of how Hollywood treated Big Business. Though interesting to see that the debate about the obligation to shareholders is not new. Also, no score at all. How often is a movie utterly devoid of music?
Kojak, “Secret Snow, Deadly Snow” – A wanted drug dealer seems to kill a plastic surgeon, but it turns out that someone else already gave him a drug that interacts badly with cocaine. So Team Kojak has to figure out why the drug tied to kill the doctor and who else wanted him. Naturally, the two cases are two and there are some interesting twists. None more gripping that the wife of the killer (Elizabeth MacRae) thinking her husband killed the victim because of an affair, only the killer (another doctor, played by Robert Mandan) had no idea about the affair. Mandan used to play this sort of role all the time before Soap. He was good at it.
Frasier, “Breaking the Ice” – While pondering just why Martin has never said “I love you” to him, Frasier agrees to go on an ice fishing trip, even as Niles has his own reasons for going. A contender for second funniest episode of the season, since the gags are organic and come from believable emotional places. Not enough episodes like this in season 2.
The Vintage Space, “Wehrner Von Braun” – This is a YouTube channel that is not exclusively about the history of NASA and the space program, but host Amy Shira Teitel is an expert on the subject and sometimes pulls out all the stops. This one is a very solid hour long exploration of Von Braun’s life with the stated goal of exploring the hard questions about how much of a Nazi he really was. Teitel lets the facts speak for themselves and does not insist that viewers either look the other way or retroactively try him for war crimes. But she also makes it clear that she does not excuse him for his role in using slave labor, even if she has a clear headed view of how he went from enemy to American celebrity. There wasn’t much here I didn’t know since I read the book she used as one primary source, but if people want to know about Von Braun without reading the book, this is a good place to go.
NBA on ESPN, first half of Lakers-Celtics – The half of the game before LeBron got injured, but it was already clear the Celts would pull away.
The rest of season 5 of The Shield
Typically scattershot, out-of-order, and SPOILERY notes, with no attempt to be comprehensive:
– One of the great early details of Captain Claudette Wyms is how she handles Billings, instantly treating the Barn’s now-deposed clown leader with kindness and respect and even offering him a salve for his ego by telling him the brass set him up for failure. She’s been in charge for only hours, and she’s already healing the place and leading people towards a sense of purpose and dignity. (Also, as a person with absolutely no innate sense of direction, Billings saying he doesn’t want to put in for a transfer because he already has this commute figured out is extremely relatable.)
– My wife had to literally cover her eyes when Dutch was trying out pimpology on Tina. It was only about an episode ago that she was stopping by your desk after her shift to flirt with you, Dutch! JUST MAKE AN ACTUAL MOVE. You’re smart, kind, and funny! You’re tall and you have great hair! Just get out of your own way here!
– Great precise character beat with Shane saying he talked with Mara about it, and she felt very strongly that they needed to support Lem: it’s the phrasing of someone who knows none of his friends like his wife (indeed, before Lem knows the team’s assets are all frozen so that they can’t bail him out, he’s wearily asking if Mara specifically backed out of using the house as collateral) and is trying to talk her up in her absence. You can also instantly imagine the entire Shane-Mara conversation that led to this.
– One really gorgeous, painful detail when the team is waiting for Lem to show up to the meet: as the time slips on and it becomes more and more likely that Lem’s talking, Ronnie wants to get out of there. He eventually talks Vic into giving him the all-clear–go home, clear out anything incriminating–and is on the verge of driving away, when he’s stopped by Shane, who calmly says, “No. We wait.” It’s a beautiful, almost uncanny moment of both Ronnie’s natural pragmatism and the natural structure of the team being briefly overturned, because suddenly Shane has, for reasons no one else can parse, the only natural authority here, because he’s the only one who can be absolutely sure they’re not in danger. And Ronnie responds to the certainty, even if he doesn’t completely understand why, even if it’s coming from the friend whose judgment he wouldn’t ordinarily trust over his own (or over Vic’s).
– This has been a terrific season for Kenny Johnson, and he gets two of my absolute favorite Lem moments in these last few episodes. #1 is when he watches Kavanaugh and Sadie together, and he knows he’s watching a visceral tragedy–his reaction is all pity and terror–and then registers Vic’s, ah, very different response: “At least now we know his weak spot.” And for just the barest second, you can see Lem be genuinely shocked and horrified by that. It’s as close as he ever gets to wondering why he’s breaking his body and soul covering for this guy. #2 is his agonized cry to Becca: “Open your goddamn eyes to who we are!”, rejecting any pretense that the team’s corruption ever truly had a larger, more selfless purpose, and including himself in all that even though he doesn’t really have to. It’s tortured, but it’s also pure acceptance, with him accepting that this is who they all are and accepting he loves them anyway.
– Lots of Strike Team hugs in these last few episodes, which is fine and not emotionally devastating at all. But two great hug details: Ronnie usually goes for the bro hug, affectionate but not as intimate, either coming in from the side or leading into it with the hand clasp, but not in the last few hugs with Lem, where he goes all in with no reserve. Also, the way Lem says, “It’s okay, it’s okay,” to Shane when he hugs him right after he takes the the first deal: it’s like he can see that Shane’s upset, relieved, and upset at being relieved, and wants to comfort him for that, prioritizing it even though he’s the one taking the blow. (And I love the head-cradling you get in both the Lem-Shane and Lem-Vic hugs.)
– It honestly feels like my heart gets torn in two when Shane kills Lem. It’s a phenomenal scene with phenomenal lead-up–one of the best, most heartbreaking details is how desperate Shane is to not be in this situation, how you can see him almost flattened by the realization that he doesn’t have a tail, that he’ll be the first one to get there; it’s what’s in his voice when he says he doesn’t even understand why Lem had to come at all, because if Lem hadn’t, or if he’d had a tail he really couldn’t shake, then he wouldn’t be (in his mind) failing his family by not killing Lem. If only it would be impossible for him to be in this situation–but it’s not. They’re both here, and Lem won’t run, and so we watch Shane simultaneously fall apart and steady himself as he commits to killing someone he loves. And of course Lem doesn’t know any of this–the most he can process is that Shane’s acting really weird, and it’s almost a laugh-line in the middle of all the agony when Lem sort of helplessly asks if he can maybe just talk to Vic instead–and is almost transcendently innocent, above guilt and above suspicion, happy to be with his friend, happy to have a sandwich (his favorite!), and only confused about why Shane is now walking away.
– Wonderful mercilessness in both “Of Mice and Lem” and “Postpartum,” where Kern and Lem’s deaths aren’t clean and instantaneous. The Strike Team doesn’t just get the shock of Kern and the cop being executed in front of them, they get the moral weight of having to leave Kern behind as he chokes on his own blood, because anything else is too risky for them; Shane has to see Lem blink, has to hear Lem say his name, but doesn’t get more than that, has to have all his sobbing appeals for forgiveness and understanding go unanswered. Lem lives just long enough to make it hurt more, not less.
– Claudette getting Kleavon’s confession, wiping away her blood and fighting through her own illness to do it, grim-faced and absolutely triumphant, is one of the show’s most stellar examples of ownage-and like Dutch’s back in “Dragonchasers,” it comes with an immediate cost. Pounder and Campbell squaring off in the interrogation room is magnetic–of course Kleavon realizes she’s sick, and of course Claudette won’t let that shake her–especially when we finally hit the confession and Claudette just drops into her chair and you feel the dead weight of relief, of no longer needing to animate yourself in a time when that’s killing you.
– It always kills me when Dutch and Claudette are at odds, and Claudette thinking he told someone about her lupus–and Dutch’s sincere, open hurt at that (willing to forgive her for it, not willing to pretend it doesn’t matter or that he can blow it off: his precise identification of his pain, that “you made a deliberate decision to think the worst of me,” is both so great and so Dutch)–is a real stab to the heart.
– Since I’ve been talking almost non-stop about pain, I’ll single out the superb comedy of “Pretty loopy, huh? Maybe that’s why they call it lupus” (and Phillips’s absolute non-reaction) and “You’ve now crossed the line into wholesale character assassination!”
– Stray bits of previously unmentioned ownage: Julien harnessing his nascent, unwanted affinity for the gay community and his self-loathing in order to brutally coerce a confession out of the rat trap attacker; Shane impulsively kicking Moses in the face when Moses talks about Lem being assaulted and murdered in prison; SWEET BUTTER; Sadie’s confirmation of said SWEET BUTTER action. (I’m sorry I’m running out of time now typing this up. If I’d planned this better, I could have done several paragraphs on sweet butter alone, but the consequence of poor structuring is that instead you get a paragraph on hugs. But at least we’ve all talked about sweet butter before! I have more original insight on the hugs!) “No, I think it’s pretty black and white.” “I need my best detective on this.” Kavanaugh parlaying the “who knocked up Danny?” board into actual psychological warfare against Corrine–not nice, obviously, but so smart. Claudette dressing down the current state of the Barn and securing herself a promotion in the process.
“Open your goddamn eyes to who we are!”
That also gets me every watch. This is a rare moment of complete certainty at a time when Lem is constantly torn between two instincts (self-preservation and protecting the team, with the latter ultimately winning out).
The Heartbreak Kid (the good one) on 16mm! A real flawed print for a very good picture that deserves a better restoration (Planning to try to write a report on who actually owns the movie because when I called the giant pharma company, they claimed they did not as of 2024. So who does?) Glad I went with some non-gentile friends who could explain the subtext of assimilation and cultural alienation here (only kind of apparent even to me, a gentile who grew up with Jewish culture and humor) which Elaine May makes even more apparent by, uh, inventing the cringe comedy. A New Leaf felt more absurdist, which is more my wheelhouse personally, but I dunno if something this lacerating and uncomfortable had been on screen in an American comedy like this before. The result also makes everyone feel human, even Grodin’s selfish, hilarious bullshitter, especially in the devastating final shot. The second half loses a little steam compared to the propulsion of the first, but still pretty great and in retrospect, it keeps getting funnier in my head.
Ed Wood – First rewatch in years! I don’t feel empathy for the current day Johnny Depp but I do kinda mourn the loss of the passionate, weirdo actor we once had. Talked a lot about everything great about this movie on Ruck’s Discord, especially it’s depiction of the affectionate/lovely side of fandom – loving art and artists, really – but also this is so Landau’s movie. He deserved the Oscar just for his humility as Lugosi admits to a bewildered crew, at 4 in the morning in a freezing “trickle”, that he turned down Frankenstein.
I can’t think of another movie that runs headlong into the tension that existed between the desire to assimilate and the desire to retain one’s self – and into the difficulties of being assimilated into a culture that extended one hand and pushed back with the other – than The Heartbreak Kid. But it’s of a very specific time since modes of assimilation are drastically different now. It’s also just really weird how May cast her own daughter as such an unfeminine woman.
I want to hear more about the results of your research. I love telling other film buffs not in the know about this, but I would like to get it right.
Oh me too, kinda feels like a scoop? I need more confirmation though.
Justified, the rest of season 4 – hell yeah, this just kept on delivering. And I mean that in terms of the compelling, twisty plot but also things like “Patton Oswalt with a machine gun”. The reveal for the Drew Thompson plot was surprising and satisfying, and Raylan’s revenge on Nick Augustine was one of the most badass scenes the show has given me so far. A pretty amazing comeback from the slightly directionless vibe of season 3, and the finale leaves the main characters in an interesting situation, especially Boyd and Ava. I’m assuming I need to lower my expectations a little for season 5 though?
Always – filling a Spielberg blind-spot. I thought this was pretty great up until the third act when it gets a little ridiculous, I haven’t seen the film Spielberg was remaking so I’m not sure how much of that comes from the original, but even after setting up plenty of reasons for Holly Hunter’s character to be impulsive and irrational, her actions that set up the finale felt a bit too ridiculous to believe. On the other hand, the cast are great and the plane / fire stuff all looks fantastic so it’s an enjoyable watch even if I agree with the consensus that it’s lower-tier work from Spielberg.
Vivacious Lady – really need to get back to this 100-years-of-unseen-movies thing or I’ll find myself with 50 still to watch come December. This is a 1938 romantic comedy – not sure it’s quite zany enough to call screwball, but it’s right on the edge – with a young Jimmy Stewart and Ginger Rogers as mismatched lovers who get married basically as soon as they meet but then have to explain things to his conservative family. Some good laughs and performances but kinda tapped out at charming for me, felt like the script needed a few more killer lines.
Season 5 has never quite worked for me (it probably doesn’t help that it’s coming off the high of S4), but it definitely has its champions, including wallflower/Grant, so I’ll be curious what you think. But S4 is just such a blast, with the show’s charms and forward momentum both at maximum, and with so many characters getting standout moments.
Cool, good to hear it has defenders! Mostly I’m just hoping to enjoy it more than S3 which I really did find to be a bit of a slog. Not yet sure if I’ll take a break to check something else out or plough straight in.
It’s not my favorite season, but I think a lot of the criticism focuses on Michael Rapaport as miscast, and I don’t think he is. People think his accent is bad or silly or whatever, but he’s playing an inveterate bullshitter, and I think the performance works well in that context.
To misquote Homer: Crime crime crime crime, crime crime crime crime
The Seven-Ups — Streaming Shuffle gets results! I had forgotten Richard Lynch was in this, that weird scarred face and hooded eyes make him a great heavy. Such an odd movie structurally, there are three groups of people and none of them are entirely aware of what the others are up to so the big setpiece is set up entirely by mistakes. The French Connection is not exactly full of stellar policing either but Hackman’s mania is a throughline, here Scheider is legit confused (although he should figure things out sooner) rather than thwarted. The car chase rules.
Shockproof — speaking of Streaming Shuffle, this is a ripe candidate: Douglas Sirk films Sam Fuller. Patricia Knight is out on incredibly restrictive parole (shades of Fritz Lang’s You And Me) for murder after she killed a guy for her old boyfriend, paternalistic parole office Cornell Wilde has the hots for her but that old boyfriend is still in the picture. And maybe Knight also is developing feelings for Wilde? Melodrama and noir mix, the former in Wilde’s gonzo house that he sets Knight up in (to take care of his blind mother), it is a hell of a set allowing for all sorts of blocking on its wacky staircase. But Fuller is the guy who wrote The Naked Kiss, his sympathies are with wronged women and what makes this really interesting is how Wilde shifts even harder than Knight, to the point of the last act veering into Jim Thompson territory. And then it veers extremely hard back! Apparently Fuller got rewrote hard at the end and boy is it noticeable, but what is still there has a lot of bite. The system is built to fuck you when you’re down, not to rehabilitate you, and if the movie walks that back it’s what lingers.
A Touch Of Sin — Jia Zhangke’s loosely interconnected set of four stories, all based on true crime in aughts China. Jia films people moving through space with an eye to environment as much as actor, but without that environment taking precedence. And while in other films of his I’ve seen the environment is being shaped by people/the state, here the environment is also the emotional/social atmosphere that is leading to death and despair. The opening story has a would-be rabble-rouser shown up by the corrupt officials running his town, until he shows them. It fucking owns, but then it ends — no real victory to be had. The second follows a grim assassin cut off from his family and humanity, not that humanity has a lot to offer, the last is an anti-Horatio Alger story of a young man with big dreams who tries to escape a terrible factory job and winds up learning that dreams are for other people. The penultimate one follows the great Zhao Tao, who is in a relationship with a married man and gets cut loose, and then has to deal with even worse men. This story is based very much on fact and Zhangke only shows an action and not the disturbing state-controlled fallout, I had to look it up but I’m guessing Chinese audiences knew what he was referencing (and I assume he wouldn’t have been able to put it onscreen anyway, or at least not in an accurate way). Zhao shows up in the epilogue, another woman under parole and defined by a sin, and the final image is one that prefigures a nearly identical one in a Martin Scorsese flick from a few years later, and with a similar biting message. Excellent stuff.
Hickey and Boggs — Bill Hickman double feature! The legendary stunt driver from The Seven-Ups (and Bullitt and The French Connection) is a heavy here, always great to see him. Less great to see Bill Cosby as a private eye with partner Robert Culp (who also directed), although Cosby is largely grim and serious so that whiplash of loveable jokester/piece of shit rapist is not there. Walter Hill wrote this and it’s an odd mix of strength and weakness, the male friendship bonding is there if rather grim and nasty but it’s part of a much more convoluted mystery than Hill normally writes, tons of moving parts and most of them are operating without a lot of clarity. Apparently Culp did some rewriting and confused things a lot, and the main actor of the actual story is not the main character so things are very unbalanced. There is a dark moment at the end that feels like the climax of their story, but we’ve been watching Hickey and Boggs’ story. Anyway, some great LA stuff (a shootout at the Coliseum! Another one at Chavez Ravine!) and a very grim 70s vibe in tune with Point Blank and Machine Gun Kelly, the Man is going to get you one way or another (and a very young Michael Moriarty is a great yuppie scum mobster in this regard), even if you survive no one wins and no one cares. Worth a watch for crime heads but it is not exactly a good time at the movies.
Definitely checking out Shockproof.
Lynch is such a great addition to The Seven-Ups, one of those “the face is the backstory” cases where it’s also “the face is the billing”–you can keep track of him, and therefore notice how dangerous he is, in part because of he looks so distinctive.
Shockproof was pretty heavily re-written after Fuller finished his final draft, and neither he or the director were happy with the final result. Working with Sirk seems odd, but both shared a penchant for hothouse melodrama (as you infer with the THE NAKED KISS reference), and while I can’t speak for Sirk, I know that Fuller admired his films.
1948’s TOMORROW IS ANOTHER DAY is pretty much of a gender reversed version of the same story, particularly the back half that plays almost like a carbon copy. While less interesting in terms of its central protagonist I think it’s an overall better movie.
Walter Hill resented Culp’s re-writes and excisions until the latters final days and refused to participate in a Q&A at the American Cinematheque in 2002
Shockproof’s rewrites are extremely blatant — I assume that awful, awful kid brother was jacked in and the ending is laugh-out-loud dopey, it’s like the Abraham Lincoln bit in Kiss Kiss Bang Bang played straight — but that makes them easier to dismiss. Hickey & Boggs is a lot messier, I saw a quote from Hill at the time that seemed fairly measured about the changes but I was wondering if the new guy in town was being circumspect — it really is a hard to follow movie and that is not Hill’s bag at all. One of the oddest scenes is the aftermath of Culp getting laid by a sex worker, Culp the director shoots it very artily and distinctively with off-kilter angles that keep the worker’s face out of view but their clothes (notably Converse street shoes) in focus, this would be an interesting bit of mood on its own but it comes after Cosby’s ex dismissively refers to Culp as a rather harsh and seemingly sincere gay slur, and the result of Culp’s staging made me wonder if the sex worker’s identity fit this identification. Reading up on this, I wasn’t the only one, and this does not seem to be the case as the movie goes on (that strip club scene, yikes) but it’s another bit of confusion that is very un-Hillian.
I wish Seven-Ups had been helmed by someone other than Philip D’Antoni. I’m not sure what he knows about directing aside from watching other people do that as a producer. His direction is just kind of there, he doesn’t have the pro’s touch you’d get from a Joseph Sargent or even, you guessed it, Stallone The Director.
D’Antoni is prett middle of the road as a director, but his “let Bill Hickman handle the cars” strategy elevates him past many other shot-callers.
FRIDAY
Good Cop / Bad Cop, “Mr. Popular”
Eden Vale High School’s new starting QB has gotten a death threat, and the department is taking it seriously… so it’s high school reunion time! Some people have more fondness for this than others. But the investigation ends up unraveling a few secrets, and… Shit, I forgot to finish writing this. It was my favorite episode so far, though.
Wayne’s World
Threw on one of the classics on Friday, just was in the mood for an old favorite and the Mrs. picked out this one. I don’t think we’d actually watched it since 2020, and that time was with director’s commentary. I dunno if I’ll ever not enjoy this one.
Funnily enough, Dana Carvey and David Spade talked about the movie this week on their podcast. Carvey still gets asked about it a lot, and why it works, and he mentions that at heart, “the two biggest losers in town are the happiest people in town, because they ritualize every single moment in their life.”
They say when you’re telling a story, “Why now?” is a big part of what you have to ask. But I think the flipside of that is, especially with hangout comedies like this or Super Troopers, creating the sense that things we see the guys doing are basically ritual to them, that they’ve done them many times before, that they do have the community and camaraderie suggested by that, goes a long way to also establishing audience goodwill for them and makes them always fun to rewatch.
SUNDAY
The Righteous Gemstones, “Prelude”
“Behind every great fortune lies a great crime.”
And here is the origin of the Gemstones’.
Other than that I was not expecting this episode at all, I won’t say more than that.
Animal Control, “Retrievers and Fruit Bats”
Frank and Victoria have to find a new donor for Emily’s kennel after screwing things up with Fiona. Shred and Patel are trying to sell a spec house, which leads to a bit of Shred and Isabelle drama. Huh, I feel like I’m overlooking something, but that seems to account for everybody. Fine episode, although I was very tired yesterday.
Abbott Elementary, “Books”
Okay, first of all, “A Milli” came out in 2008, not 2005, so jot that down.
I mostly enjoyed the episode otherwise.
Going Dutch, “Three Exes of Evil”
Three ex-wives? Is Going Dutch stealing plotlines from Tacoma FD? Anyway, they all show up to visit Maggie, which is how Patrick learns they’re all (not just her actual mother) still in Maggie’s life, and starts to prod them why, and why he isn’t, and of course it’s because he’s so self-absorbed and never put any work into their relationships. He does cajole them into letting him and Katja go to dinner, where of course she immediately sees their side of the story and ultimately leads them all through couples counseling so the exes can get closure.
Meanwhile, Maggie and Brad try to solve the base’s rat problem, and Conway and Papadakis compete for the affections of a local hottie. Pretty fun all in all; my wife picked up on this a couple of weeks ago before I did, but it seems clear the the show is heading for some kind of Maggie-Brad romantic entanglement.
The Royal Hunt of the Sun – Robert Shaw is the Spanish explorer Pizarro who, after getting dozens of his men killed in expeditions for gold, gets just one more chance, wearily tolerating a couple of priests on an expedition to Peru. This time he has success and slaughters dozens of Incans and captures their leader Atahualpa played by, uh, Christopher Plummer. Arguably, Plummer is not the right person for the role of Incan god-emperor, but also arguably nobody’s Incan anymore and certainly few in 1969 were concerned (apparently on stage Plummer played Pizarro and Atahualpa was played by David Carradine). Either way, Plummer rescues an alternately talky and clumsy sub-epic with an idiosyncratic performance. He plays Atahualpa not as a noble and tragic figure, but as a guy who has lived his whole insulated life being told he’s a god. His squeaky vocalizations and soft mocking voice is about a step and a half away from an Adam Sandler character. Filmmaking wise this doesn’t have a lot to celebrate – interestingly the throne rooms of each country are framed the same way, suggesting the conquering and conquered empires are maybe not so different – so the movie’s appeal hinges on the Shaw and Plummer characters and their evolving relationship. This aspect is rushed, probably should have sacrificed some unconvincing sword-waving time to spend more with the two men, but it culminates in a big, trembling finale where Pizzaro’s belief and reality collide and the audience is truly in suspense as to which could win out. Not surprising this is a pretty much buried artifact, but not an uninteresting one to dig up.
Sounds intriguing! How is there not a big epic movie either about Cortez and the fall of the Aztecs?
The Ring of the Nibelungen (1980 Cheraux Boulez staging).
Finally reached the ending. It tells the story of the germanic gods and their destruction; how the old gods were too petty, vain, and capricious to preserve their own rule of law, how they led free men and women to their deaths and how those deaths in turn liberated the world from the old gods.
The opera has four parts, a trilogy plus a prologue. Although Siegfried is the hero of the story on the surface, Brunnhilda is arguably the real protagonist. (Wagner was not a feminist, but the opera is certainly open to a feminist critique.) Her defiance of Wotan in the The Valkyrie sets into motion the birth of Siegfried; she’s the one prophesies the “world-redeeming act” of Siegfried. While Siegfried, first with the boundless energy of a child and then with the pouty greed of also a child moves from act to act with little thought, Brunnhilda actively ushers in what happens next.
Siegfried is a fascinating character. He gets moment of sublime beauty and tragedy (both, in fact, involve him talking to birds). He has no fear but he is also easily controlled, first by the dwarf Mime and then by Hagen. He’s pressed into an unspeakable act and it’s left ambiguous how much of that was magic mind control and how much was him. His memory and freedom return moments before his death, and he cries out against for Brunnhilda.
Anyway, it’s great, I recommend watching it. It’s on youtube.
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other random notes: In What’s Opera Doc, Fudd uses his spear and magic helmet. Yet Siegfried uses a sword and magic helmet. Hagen however does use a spear. This suggests Fudd is the great villain Hagen.
It’s fascinating to me that German nationalists love this so much. Siegfried enters the world of men and is immediately drugged and coerced (?) into helping hand over his wife and soulmate to the Germans for forced marriage. The overarching theme is about freedom trumping over law; Germans love law. It would be easier to read it as allegorically anti-German. The plot is 95% norse from the eddas and volsungsaga and only 5% from the german poem. But nationalists also live building a fantasy aesthetic of an imagined past.
This is contemporary to the Grimms writing down snow white and sleeping beauty; Brunnhilda likewise is placed into an unending sleep until woken by a man. However, here, Brunnhilda is explicitly afraid of the sexual vulnerability that imposes.
more random notes:
– I cannot recommend Kate Wagner’s substack essays on this enough.
On Siegfried (Sigurd, Sivrit, etc):
https://open.substack.com/pub/thelatereview/p/some-thoughts-on-siegfried?r=q2yu2&utm_medium=ios&utm_campaign=post
A series of essays on the Wälsung twins:
https://open.substack.com/pub/thelatereview/p/reclaiming-the-walsungs?r=q2yu2&utm_medium=ios&utm_campaign=post
https://open.substack.com/pub/thelatereview/p/sieglinde-as-heroine?r=q2yu2&utm_medium=ios&utm_campaign=post
https://open.substack.com/pub/thelatereview/p/the-exception-of-siegmund?r=q2yu2&utm_medium=ios&utm_campaign=post
– I mentioned the opera is open to a feminist reading. Here, you can see the opening to die Walküre from the 2006 Copenhagen production, aka “the feminist ring.” I’ve only started it but it immediately looks more like Ibsen than Wagner; Sieglinde is already in a domestic crisis before Soegmund arrives. It looks interesting, but even an intense hyperfixation can’t get me to immediately hop in for another 16 hours, so i’ll wait to watch it in full.
– Shaw saw the ring cycle as crypto-marxist. The copenhagen director sees it as feminist. The main thing is it’s radical and intrinsically anti-reactionary. We have to usher in a new world; Wotan’s attempts to preserve the old and Alberich’s attempts to subjugate the world all lead to destruction.
– Allegedly Tolkien insisted he was just influenced by the same myths as Wagner and that they were both riffing on medieval poetry. This is false. The final renunciation of the ring and the ring of power getting its curse because its maker forged it with hate and a desire to subjugate is Wagner. In the eddas the ring is cursed because the the gods stole it from its rightful owner (Andvari, who often turned into a pike) in order to pay wergild for the murder it Otr (Guess what he turned into). Furthermore, Sam’s explicit comparison to Beren and Luthien makes Frodo Brunnhilda—coded.
– Star Wars also cribs heavily from this, except here the childish and easily manipulated hero whose death overthrows the existing order in a world-redeeming act is the father of the incest twins, not the son. And the twins don’t actually bone. And then the world-redeeming act is undone because jj abrams and disney make star wars about star wars instead of an eclectic hodgepodge of myth and pop culture.
FRIDAY
Mickey 17
An odd movie, with wildly all over the place performances, drastic tone jumps, and unorthodox, sometimes alienating storytelling.
Which is to say, it’s Bong movie in English.
Like his previous non-Korean movies it’s just loose enough that some of its more salient points don’t quite hit, as opposed to the more controlled, precise filmmaking of Parasite or Memories of Murder. Still, the points that do hit paint a bleak picture of the future and present: watch out for assholes with money. To be fair, most of the characters without money slide into assholish-ness here too, though not without reason, specially Pattinson’s characters. I don’t know how he does what he does. There are some incredible expressions and gesticulations he does that only get funnier when his narration goes the opposite way, and when he gets to react to himself in an entirely different register.
And the story does allow Bong to do two things he’s unrivalled at among current directors: action comedy ensemble set pieces (watch out for the dinner scene here, as well as a Mark Ruffalo-as-every-21st century-technoligarc/orange dictator TV show getting interrupted by an improptu assassination attempt) and creature desing (the native creatures here are less immediately captivating than the unforgettable creatures of The Host and Okja but they become more important as the movies goes on, for both the filmmaking and the movie’s larger policital allegory).
My wife walked out of this one a bit at a loss, saying she doesn’t get what the movie’s driving at other than the legitimate psychological growth of Pattinson’s character. I sympathize with her on this one, though I was prepared for it given Bong’s more scattershot success when working in English. I don’t mean on the movie’s themselves as I appreciate all three, more on the moment to moment that often isn’t as compelling as in his Korean film. That said, I had plenty of fun with this one. A weird follow-up to the world-conquering Parasite after five years but it only makes me look forward to his next one with more interest.
What did we play?
Animal Well
Just started this last night. It’s beautiful to behold, with the dark screen lit up by splashes muted neon in a way that feels truly magical, and I love how it takes “background” details that would normally be superficial texture and lets them interact with your little blob of a character instead: you can hit a swinging lamp and mess up your jump, for example, and the dangling streamers of vegetation drag over your face as you travel under them. Distinctly pleasurable exploration and puzzles. The only hang-up, of course, is that I’m very bad at games (I have phrased this to imply that there may be many other non-game things I am good at, which alas is not the case), so I spent way too long assuming I was in a boss fight with an unbeatable ghost dog. I wasn’t. I just shouldn’t have taken its frisbee.
Ah but wouldn’t that frisbee be useful to have? So many wonderful secrets in this game, I hope you enjoy discovering them! I didn’t find too much of the actual game stuff TOO fiddly / annoying, which is not always a given with retro platform games, but some of the puzzling definitely requires a skewed kind of thinking. Although most of the really out-there puzzles are optional post-game stuff which seems a fair compromise!
I did eventually get to swap out the mock disc for the frisbee, and I’ve had a very good time distracting other dogs with the frisbee, setting off levers, and even surfing around on said frisbee!
Ah nice – didn’t want to make any assumptions about how much you’d already figured out! The disc-surfing is such a cool thing.
Woo Animal Well!
Mad Max – finished this yesterday morning. There are a few fair criticisms that could be (and have been) leveled at it, the various wasteland side-quests are a little repetitive and the actual plot is a little bare-bones, even for a Mad Max story. But I’m glad it has built up enough of a cult following that I gave it a chance because I had a really good time with it, it nails the feeling of desperate survival from the movies and if the plot is lacking, the characters aren’t – some great villains and Max’s mechanic sidekick is great fun. I can’t make a case for it being a highlight of the entire franchise like I could with the recent Indiana Jones game but this is definitely a movie tie-in that has had some real love poured into it, and considering it’s almost a decade old it still looks and plays wonderfully.
Not sure what’s up next. I tried a round of Balatro and I can see why it’s been a bit of a “one more game” sensation but I’m really enjoying games with a bit more narrative lately.
New family boardgame thanks to the annual library game swap: Deep Blue, from Days of Wonder, probably best known for their ever-expanding Ticket to Ride series of games. This is a really fun, pretty fast and tactile game where you all play as treasure hunters exploring deep sea wrecks for sunken treasure. In one of several superb design choices you keep your point chits in a little treasure chests. It has a push your luck element to it – you draw gems out of a bag and get points based on which you draw, but some make you resurface early and cut off your points – so the “skill” of the game is positioning yourself for maximum chances to try your luck. It has one of the better theme-to-gameplay translations I’ve experienced, in that your advantage in hunting for treasure lies in knowing when to press the odds and when to back off and there’s an advantage in putting some distance between you and your rivals. Kids caught on to it very quickly, the 10YO absolutely mopped the floor with us from a combination of canny card drafting and an absolute lack of fear when drafting gems, and the 13YO won another game by a single point. I’m the only one that kind of sucks at it, actually, but I enjoy it quite a bit.
The Revenge of Shinobi – Sega Genesis on Nintendo Switch Online
I’d been hearing the Retronauts podcast on the Shinobi series to I decided to have another go at this one, which I’ve never beat. I picked up a saved stated from last year at the start of the second level, which thankfully put me past the end of the first level which was always the drop off point for me back in the day. The actual play can be stiff but this has a very cool sense of spectacle, specially for an 80’s Genesis title. There’s a very cool waterfall in the second level (though with rather unforgiving jumps) and a great looking nighttime city that ends with a chaotic but fun boss in a nightclub full with flashing lights and great music (it’s a Yuzo Koshiro soundtrack so that last bit comes as no surprise). Made it to the fourth level where I read there’s an exploit where you can farm hundreds of lives if you get an item, die to start over and grab another one over and over. I farmed a few dozens lives, saved the state and will pick up farming during the week, hopefully grabbing enough to make it to the end of the game and its infamos (and unauthorized) pop culture cameos.
Also replayed Shinobi III: Return of the Ninja Master (the best Shinobi title by some margin) F-Zero 99 (some great driving but no new wins, and I think I finally unlocked all the timed challenge rewards), Streets of Rage 4 (still so good), and Super Smash Bros. Ultimate (still pick up some new Spirits every now and then), before trying something of a change for my gaming next week. Stay tuned.
Also, visited a Target on the USA on Sunday, where I played a demo with the first level of Super Mario Bros. Wonder. If you’ve played the first level of any one Mario game you’ve basically played them all and this is no exception, but there’s enough here to let on that the full game might be something quite special, like the wacky drug gimmick, the great visual and style and the weird-ass elephant transformation. I’m not rushing to buy this game soon but it’s certainly something I want to play for myself at some point.
I started Great Ace Attorney Chronicles! Many years late, but it’s Ace Attorney. Can’t wait to get to Jolly Olde England.
I’ve been thinking of this kind of scene as a comedic pile-up, but music is definitely a better comparison, because it’s worth pointing out how much structure and craft goes into this: it’s not just a bunch of funny things all smashing together until it makes a glorious heap. If it were, it would be easier to achieve.
Always love whenever people like you and Nath write about comedy in an illuminating way.
Year of the Month update!
March is going to be Silent Era Month, where you can join these writers in examining your favorite silent movies and anything else from the 1910s and ’20s!
Mar. 11th: Bridgett Taylor: Something Fresh
Mar. 15th: Sam Scott: One Week/The High Sign/The Electric House
Mar. 20th: Cori Domschot: Steamboat Bill, Jr.
Mar. 24th: Tristan J. Nankervis – Birth of a Nation
Mar. 26th: Sam Scott: Peter and Wendy by J.M. Barrie
Mar. 27th: Lauren James: The Well of Loneliness
Mar. 31st: John Anderson: The Lodger: A Story of the London Fog
And in April, we’ll be movin’ on up to 1999, so you can write about any of these movies, albums, books, et al!
Apr. 7th: J. “Rodders” Rodriguez: The Scooby Doo Project
Apr. 8th: Bridgett Taylor: …One More Time
Apr. 16th: Sam Scott: Spongebob Season 1, Wakko’s Wish, Elmo in Grouchland, and/or Bartok the Magnificent
Apr. 28th: Tristan J. Nankervis: The Sixth Sense
Last minute, but I’ll do “Un Chein Andalou” for tomorrow’s Lunch Link.