Look, hatred for The Big Bang Theory is so hacky and cliche at this point that the backlash against the show had its own backlash, which has mostly died down into a contempt that has become – and this feels pretentious to say, but it’s accurate – vestigial. At best, people vaguely remember that they’re supposed to think the show fucking sucks, probably dropping the word ‘bazinga’ to mock it. I think the show actually managed to outlive its hatedom considerably; if it had ended in season five, maybe, there’d practically be dancing in the streets, but I think the only reason anyone noticed it ended in 2019 was because its spinoff Young Sheldon picked up the slack (as in “Oh, this shit isn’t over?!”).
Some of the backlash was straight-up embarrassing, with the phrase “nerd blackface” in particular picking up traction, a phrase which highlights how the criticism could often be as shallow and inane as the show itself. A big fundamental aspect of the backlash was insecurity; nerds, as a rule, are sensitive little babies who take even the mildest criticism as personal attack, and the show’s implied insult in its shallow humour grated people the wrong way.
At the same time… I fucking hate Sheldon Cooper and I fucking hate The Big Bang Theory. I’m in a good place in my life right now, I have accepted the decisions I’ve made in life – constructive, destructive, and things that seemed at the time like one but were actually the other – and I’ve forgiven people who hurt me, knowing we were all doing what seemed like the right thing at the time, and this forgiveness has unfortunately given me a more clear-eyed understanding of fault that is now mostly useless.
I will be the first to admit that ‘being compared to Sheldon Cooper’ ranks pretty low on the crimes committed against me, but I feel better able to articulate why it bothered me so much. Even at the time, I was annoyed because the show never really ‘punished’ Sheldon for any of his behaviour. Nowadays, I can express this as the show being irritatingly underplotted; most episodes of TBBT are Sheldon doing something outrageous, then he keeps doing it, then the episode ends.
From a comedic standpoint, this created a flat energy; there is no escalation of tension that you’d find in a classic farce, just variations on a concept. Sheldon does something silly and then he does the same thing in a different way, and the characters might futilely mock him for it, but they’ll never escalate back. This also always bothered me on a moral level too, though. When you get right down to it, the thing that always bothered me about Sheldon and his popularity with neurotypicals is that, yeah, when I was young, I was very much like Sheldon; pedantic, stubborn, and often feeling entitled to my preferences.
The difference is that when I was like that, everyone got mad at me! It doesn’t seem plausible to me that the characters would just stand back and let Sheldon do whatever he wanted without a fight, because nobody ever did that for me. The famous “that’s my spot” scene played out many times in my childhood, and it ended one of two ways: violence, or some out-arguing me. I knew many people like Penny growing up, and I always thought the more plausible response would have been her hearing all the details of Sheldon’s explanation for the quality of that spot, thinking it over, and deciding he was right and then claiming the spot for herself.
(For maximum comedy, Sheldon would respond by getting a water gun. As he pumps the gun, Penny dismisses the idea that water would upset her, and he explains that it’s not filled with water, but with cat urine, and opens fire. This is not exactly what I would have done as a kid, but it’s the comedic expression of something I would have at least considered.)
What really gets under my skin isn’t this, but that neurotypical audiences love it. The fact that people could berate me for my behaviour and embrace Sheldon for doing the exact same thing drove me nuts, especially because I was seventeen by then. I was becoming humbled by the world, recognizing that my behavior could be hurtful, and taking genuine steps to change. It felt like they were insulting my attempts to compromise.
The nuance I feel now is less to do with that being wrong and more with Sheldon’s place in the larger world. One thing I came to realize bothers me about Sheldon is that this is how neurotypical people see us; the true viewpoint character of the show isn’t Sheldon or even Leonard, it’s Penny, who finds these people endearingly weird and enjoys acting as a kind of surrogate parent for someone failing to explore the world.
I assume it’s obvious that I find this horribly insulting and infantilizing. I consider myself one of those people who are drawn to empathy because I so rarely seemed to receive it; whatever things my mother did to me, I’m grateful that she took the time to understand how I think and appealing to it, giving me a basic understanding of what it’s like to be understood and knowing what it looks like when that’s not happening.
(Useful Sheldon-like anecdote: when I was in kindergarten, my teacher got frustrated that I wouldn’t write my thought process for solving problems. When my mother confronted me about this, I told her that I knew how I did it. My mother explained that my teacher couldn’t read my mind, and, more specifically, that being able to explain my thoughts would be a necessary step to passing the class and thus one step on the road to becoming an astronaut.)
Sheldon is a neurodivergent person presented through the eyes of a neurotypical, for other neurotypicals. He’s a clownish, bombastic figure who ruins the stability of the status quo; it’s easy to see how a real neurodivergent person would find this a familiar, exasperating, and insulting narrative. I’ve heard fair criticism of Sheldon’s contemporary, Abed Nadir, from Community; that he’s an indulgent fantasy figure allowed to act destructive and childish. I, for one, appreciate an explicitly autistic character who is cool for the exact qualities I like in myself, and who I am asked to identify with and whose story is mine.
The flipside of this is that neurotypical people do actually love us. They love Sheldon and they love us, and they see the connection between the two, as exasperating as that is. They were drawn to the show because Sheldon reminded them of us, and indeed it’s impossible to ignore that the show was at the height of its popularity as understanding of autism and other neurodivergent traits became more widespread. Sheldon became part of their way of processing us; of accepting our more destructive behaviours with good humour.
Unfortunately, our narrative is ours, and theirs is theirs. I have become resigned to the fact that people still look at me and see Sheldon, that this is an expression of affection on their part, and that I don’t have to take it on as part of my self-image. There are much worse problems to have than to be loved incorrectly.
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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Department of
Conversation
I hadn’t thought about the “that’s my spot” scene in years, but when you said this, I instantly experienced a flashback to my mom talking at length about how it, and Sheldon, reminded her of me. Clearly this was my Vietnam War. (I rarely remind people of cool characters, but someone did once say I was like Lester Freamon from The Wire, which I’ll hold on to until the day I die.)
That said, I love how this essay experiences and processes through that annoyance and frustration to come to the exasperated transcendence of that last line.
That last line seemed to just appear at the end of the essay. Sometimes these things are handed down to me.
I cannot imagine a cooler comparison than Lester “Cool” Freamon.
What did we watch?
Kojak, “An Unfair Trade” – Two undercover cops in an “anti-crime unit” have a run-in with two Puerto Rican teens who committed petty theft, and before it’s over one of the kids grabs a cop’s gun and is shot by the other. Naturally, the community is upset, the brass are upset, and Kojak is left to find a path forward. Certainly viewed in our century of cops willfully shooting men of color, this one is problematic in trying to guide our sympathies to the cop, but I suspect even at the time it aired, having a Puerto Rican community activist (albeit one with a line to the mayor) trying to make political hay didn’t sit well with some viewers (especially those in the Latino world). Still some credit to the writers for having Kojak call out racism from other cops, question the wisdom of undercover cops chasing car battery thieves, and admit that the Puerto Rican community has no reason to trust the cops or the DA. And certainly next to more recent shows, the copaganda is measured, if still unhealthy.
Frasier, “The Two Mrs. Cranes” – Daphne’s ex-fiance comes to ask her back, and afraid to break his heart again she tells him she’s married. To Niles. A cascade of lies follows, made worse by Daphne discovering that she just blew it since he took her advice and made something of himself after all. Some of this is a bit cringeworthy, but most of it is out and out hysterical, a very funny start to the fourth season. It helps that for once, Frasier is innocent of the lies and watching Daphne squirm is not as painful as watching Frasier lose it. But the high point is Martin leaning into the farce, saying he is a retired astronaut, and after hearing Daphne’s “married name” remembering the first time he used a moon crane. I wonder if the only reason they did this plot is so Martin could talk about a moon crane.
Watched this recently and Martin’s retired astronaut bit, especially with the punchline at the end, absolutely kills.
Conquest of the Planet of the Apes
Amazing how each movie is a little more devoid of ideas than the last. This movie isn’t quite on the level of Weekend At Bernie’s II, but it’s pretty close; most of this is just going through the obvious motions – all the things we would pretty much expect from the final shot of Escape (or, hell, the plot of Planet Of The Apes). The closest we get are a few cool cinematic moves, like the shots of Ceasar watching his fellow apes learn to fight back, or the intense closeup on Cesar when he confronts the most evil human towards the end. Otherwise, it even looks cheap and pointless.
Hacks, Season Four, Episode Three, “What Happens In Vegas”
Ava taking on a leadership position is such a great story. This is her chance to walk the walk, and she’s actually mostly doing it; I’ve never been in a writer’s room, but I would find her attempts to soothe the writers mildly annoying, if understandable, and clearly miles ahead of Deb’s irritable nitpicking (I have worked for women like Deb). The dynamic between Ava and Deb as leaders is obviously off-kilter and difficult to be around, not just because they’re nitpicking the work, or even because they’re uncomfortable to be around, but because they don’t have a united front of what they want. The one place where they seem to come together is when they’re defending their actions; I love how they look simultaneously crazy and at their most stable. The HR Rep coming in is the perfect new dynamic to bring into this fucked up friendship.
I love that Kiki is consistently the moral compass of this show – her simplicity, her almost black-and-white sense of right and wrong, and her genuine and boundless love for everyone make her so good at cutting through the bullshit.
I laughed slightly too loudly at “Who thinks that I can make you do that?”
Kiki’s sincerity as she reacted to Ava’s blackmail scheme as being pretty dark and sad is terrific, especially with Ava obviously finding it disconcerting: she wanted some cheerleading of her ownage, not a sympathetic-but-bummed moral appraisal!
I love that she says it seems out of character for Ava, because my read is that it’s exactly something Ava would do and Deb simply brought it out of her. Ava’s reaction is open to interpretation, but I think she’s thinking the same thing.
Yeah, I definitely think Ava knows it’s exactly the sort of thing she would do: she’s been coming up against evidence of her own harder, sharper edges since S1, and we’ve seen her take all that in. Kiki–by virtue of never having anything Ava wants and genuinely not minding selfish people–just hasn’t seen that side of her.
I like Conquest but it’s still not as good as the previous films. But there is a ferocity in Thompson’s direction that the other original films lack. I think that tone was more of an influence on the recent reboots than anything in the other original run of films.
Hacks, “What Happens in Vegas”
Best use of Lauren Weedman’s Mayor to date.
The curveball at the end of this episode–that Deborah and Ava will now have a constant HR monitor at work–has a lot of potential; it thwarts any too-overt explosions of hostility, which ostensibly gives them more time to heal their relationship, but it’s also going to keep them from a lot of honest conversations that could really help on that front. Also, it’ll be funny.
I do want to see more of Ava trying to manage a writer’s room, because we haven’t had much of a chance to see her in charge of other people before, and while she puts in some decent effort here, there’s no way the Ava we’ve followed all this time can immediately pull off the complex people skills needed to supervise this many people in this high-stakes of a task. Having Deb in the scene makes it instantly more about the Deb-Ava tension, so I’m hoping we get some scenes with just Ava and the writers, too.
Inside Man
This movie rules. If it came out now, it would be a twelve-episode limited series, and I’d still happily watch it, but one of the best things about it is how dense it is with stories and vividly realized characters. Really gives you that New York City feel of a ton of busy, ongoing lives from a ton of ongoing cultures in active, constant collision with each other. (This could be a great episode of Keith Frazier series, or a Madeleine White series, and it’d be equally plausible either way.) I am a sucker for a heist, and this is one of the best there is. And everyone’s killing it, especially Washington, Foster, and Plummer.
Companion
This will be Wednesday’s Streaming Shuffle, so I’ll just say that I really liked it. I was worried it was going to fall into the category of well-intentioned-but-narrow works that (thanks to Hbomberguy’s Deus Ex: Human Revolution video) I always think of as being the “oh, ho, ho! Gender!” genre, but this is actually a lively, funny crime movie invested in schemes, improvisation, and unexpected consequences.
Parasite
Starts incredibly strong and only gets better as it goes along. I can’t decide if the best bit is the long, devastating flooding scene–Ki-jung wearily sitting down on the sewage-spouting toilet to have a smoke because it’s all so bleakly overwhelming, and what else is she going do?–or the violent, gloriously escalating chaos of the party scene. Lot of great moments here, especially towards the end, where people are so fully committed that they can act without any hesitation, so you just get actions going off like a cataclysmic chain reaction.
I think this might be only my third favorite Bong Joon Ho film, and it’s still a masterpiece I wouldn’t change a detail of. Admittedly, my ranking falls off a bit after that–still haven’t seen Okja, Mickey 17, or Barking Dogs Never Bite, but I was actually pretty lukewarm on both Snowpiercer and The Host–but this, Memories of Murder, and Mother are all excellent.
Inside Man is the 21st century version of The Taking of Pelham One Two Three, only there are no ugly people. It captures the zeitgest of NYC after 9/11 and in the Bloomberg years the way that its predecessor captured viscerally and financially broke but not quite broken NYC of the 70s. (We will of course continue to ignore that the same Denzel who is perfect here was in a remake of the Pelham One Two Three that by all accounts is not that good at all.)
I like the remake – and Washington is amazing in it as a very boring man in a very high-stakes situation – but it’s also dumb as hell.
My favourite little ‘clue’ in Parasite is that the monster the son was dreaming and drawing about was actually his witnessing the guy in the basement coming up. It’s an example of this movie being a complex puzzlebox that’s still very emotionally affecting, like an Edgar Wright film with a sense of social consciousness.
Yes! Was going to post this exact same thing, it is such an amazing reveal. Not to be a dick to a child but I was certainly amused at the kid’s drawing and I think I was supposed to be, in a movie full of “actual” problems this one appears to be, ahem, so metaphorical. But it is not! Just an incredible moment that hits all the harder for the humor before, the comparison to Wright is a good one.
Wright really is the perfect comparison. I was thinking when I was watching this that while that kind of detail makes it all even better on repeat viewings, it’s not at all distracting the first time in the way puzzle-box storytelling (which I usually loathe) can be. It doesn’t feel like it has a dozen glowing question marks hanging over it inviting you to speculate, in part because, as Dave says, there’s so much else going on. It moves like train, and then the intricacy and completeness of it only becomes apparent afterwards.
Yeah, it’s the kind of detail your eyes slide over – it fits the slightly-but-not-completely exaggerated tone of everything else.
Barking Dogs is great (and is the only film I know that opens with a disclaimer that no animals were harmed while making the movie, the need for this becomes apparent immediately) and in many ways a rougher if not leaner Parasite — similar literal structural inequality and what that does to the people in the structure.
And I see Barking Dogs Never Bite is on the People’s Streamer…
“Do I seem calm?” “…Yes. Yes, you do.” This is probably my favorite Owen role. (That or The Knick ofc.)
Thank you for reminding me to someday watch The Knick.
(That Monsieur Spade show has a fair number of the failings of prestige TV, but Owen makes such an incredible Sam Spade that I’m happy to recommend it just for his performance.)
Black Bag – Aka the good Soderbergh/Koepp team-up of the Spring. This is, as reported, a solid spy thriller with a gentle domestic twist. “Do you trust your spouse the spy” has been covered as a silly action-comedy (Mr. & Mrs. Smith) and historical drama (Allied – wait, why does Brad Pitt keep finding himself in this situation?). Here it’s twisted into a mystery plot with a strong cast of actors with sordid and mysterious connections. An early dinner party scene laced with truth-telling serum drops precious few clues, but sets the table for deception and violence. More reliant on psychology than technology, the movie is also gentle with its secrets make a marriage metaphor, as George tries to figure out his wife Kathryn’s game and who might be in on it. Soderbergh’s always-efficient methods are in “streamline” mode (as opposed to the “ramshackle” setting used for Prescence). This is your grown-up movie for the month, please don’t ignore.
The Seven-Ups – Well, nobody was kidding around about that car chase, that was around 20 minutes of all-time great action. Outside of that, I really enjoyed another go-round of grimy New York cop corruption, but I had a tough time shaking the impression of this as the little brother to other totemic 70s noirs. Scheider is both poison and antidote in this regard – he’s wonderful as always, even as he’s a reminder of better versions of all of it. The bleakness it runs into is palpable, but also par for the course, and the movie’s specific criminal plot felt off to me – seemed like information was getting leveraged to get oneself into a dangerous position with both sides of the law, maybe it will pay out, but how long can you live to spend it? A worthy entry in the annals of 70s crime pictures but not much more than that for me (except the car chase, five stars for that).
“Scheider is both poison and antidote in this regard – he’s wonderful as always, even as he’s a reminder of better versions of all of it” — bingo. I’m pretty much in your boat here. And while I’m with you on the pleasures of Black Bag, the muddy look of it was so fucking distracting — it’s hard to unreservedly recommend something that looks so shitty.
This weekend was a wild ride, including three rep screenings, one of which is unavailable on physical media or digitally, as well as one stone cold classic at home.
Wild at Heart (1990) – This is one of those films that will never have a good screening with an audience. The emotions are too big and the film swings too wildly. I don’t know that it’s possible for an audience to approach it without the irony we all have built into our systems by this point. There was a decent amount of laughter at moments of over the top emotion, which didn’t quite feel right. The film is obsessed with heavy metal and Elvis crooning, with sandwiches and silver dollars. I was 100% on the film’s wavelength throughout, so it played like a goddamn masterpiece. Jack Nance’s tiny monologue about his dog has that wonderful Lynch habit of pulling at the images that occur in our brains. I love this shit.
Charulata (1964) – The wordless opening scene is the single greatest moment I’ve seen from Satyajit Ray in my admittedly limited experience (I’ve seen the Apu Trilogy, this, and the film I discuss next). Ray’s technical skill truly grew in the decade since Pather Panchali, and this film is absolutely beautiful. The emotions here are rich, complex, and nuanced. Ray is so good at this stuff. How can you show love when the recipient only has eyes for a printing press? He gets everything he wants politically, but at what cost? The fact that this story plays out in the background to Charu’s loneliness is a wonderful twist on these things.
The Adversary (1970) – I’m now actively wondering why Criterion doesn’t have the rights to Satyajit Ray’s Calcutta trilogy. I would have expected that if they did, then this would at least be on Criterion Channel, even if it doesn’t get a physical release. But anyway, if early Ray is the natural descendant of Italian neorealism, then this is the natural descendant of the French New Wave. Ray is eager to play with format here, inverting his images and making seemingly bizarre cuts in a way that highlight his main character’s growing alienation with the unfairness of city life. In a way, I see this as a precursor to All We Imagine As Light, another film about how oppressive the city is and how getting to a more rural setting can finally let you go free.
Star Wars (1977) – It’s wild to come back to this after absorbing the past 50 years of its descendants. It’s easy to see its fingerprints everywhere in modern cinema, but it’s also a film of a different era. It’s so much slower. Luke really is just a farmboy here, not a Chosen One. His Hero’s Journey ends in a military victory, not a grand opera of emotions. But at the same time, the past 50 years of fleshing out this galaxy make tossed off refences to different plants feel like foreshadowing the film couldn’t have possibly have anticipated. It’s all so weird.
Charulata is so beautiful, and a big thumbs-up to what you say about that opening scene. The freeze-frame at the end, painful and hopeful at the same time, is likewise great. (Highly recommend The Big City, if you’re in the mood for more Ray.)
Jealous of all the rep screenings, but particularly Wild at Heart which I imagine is an even wilder time when it commands your unbroken attention for two hours.
Angelo Badalamenti’s score really hits on the big screen. The charging metal riffs in particular have an incredible power coming from theater speakers instead of TV speakers.
Mission Impossible: Dead Reckoning — a loooooot of throatclearing at the start of this (I was waiting for the reveal that Tom Cruise had launched himself inside a torpedo, because where the fuck is he by this point) but then it gets going and doesn’t slow down, particularly in the delightfully loopy mismatched car chase. Christopher McQuarrie is not going to be more than a B+ director here but it is a strong B+ and he knows how to fucking balance things — the stunts, yes, but these movies give time and space to the actors in them. Good-looking people doing cool shit, this is a fucking movie! Wigham and Atwell in particular are just so pleasurable to watch, we know folks like Pegg and Rhames will do their thing and do it well but Wigham and Atwell fit in immediately. Vanessa Kirby is also excellent in her double work and Pom Klemontieff is a lot of fun too, are the M:I movies the best films for female roles out there? What makes this franchise weird, though, is how it has become more and more Cruise-focused in its story, Ethan Hunt has history and (fast and furious voice) FAMILY and this is all so very far from the IMF nightmare at the end of the original movie. Oh well, Cruise still wants to beat up AI and that is enough for me.
The Simpsons, Who Shot Mr. Burns Part 1 — I don’t know why but “Man alive! There are … men alive in here!” is an all-timer of a line for me. Although in terms of deployment, I have dropped Skinner’s wonderful “Oh, mercy” more times than I can count.
I think the scene where Ethan is agonizing over the choice between saving Ilsa, the woman he’s known and trusted for years at this point and whose endless resourcefulness he respects and [name forgotten], the new woman who two scenes before handcuffed Ethan to a steering wheel so he would die maybe indicates the series isn’t quite the best showcase for women. But yes, McQuarrie has not-so-secretly become the most consistent action director of our times. Interesting to consider what he might have turned in during the era of The Seven-Ups, but he pulls off some really cool stuff in the medium of modern blockbuster.
Atwell handcuffs Cruise to the steering wheel, but then drops the paper clip in his lap! She gives him the out! And yes, Cruise is the sun that everyone orbits around and his gravity affects them story-wise but on a scene by scene basis, the ladies get a lot to do here.
Ah, I’d forgotten (or maybe missed) that part. Still, I remain quite chuffed at the treatment of the gorgeous Rebecca Ferguson, I mean, the capable Ilsa Faust.
In retrospect, Ferguson should not have used her mercenary proceeds to buy a boat called the Liv-4-Ever. But I was thinking about her in a larger sense through these movies — is there a better introduction* of an actor in the past ten years than her in Rogue Nation? Movies can do that! Movies used to do that to people!
*yes she had plenty of roles beforehand but even good TV is not a blockbuster
We”ve discussed before that Ferguson never did much for me in the role (I was pleasantly surprised how compelling I found her in Dune), but even this decision is rooted in Ilsa’s agency! Ethan is protecting the one who needs protecting, nit because Atwell is a woman but because she’s a neophyte.
I think what I am learning here is I need to revisit Dead Reckoning. I may have had a rage blackout at being denied further Faust. When I regained consciousness three hours later there was only 30 minutes left in the movie.
McQuarries feature debut, THE WAY OF THE GUN, gives you a hint of what his hypothetical 70s vibe might have been like. It’s basically an updated serio-comic buddy Western that doesn’t shirk when it comes to grim fatalism
Haven’t seen that since catching it at the student union in college, i.e. a quarter of a century ago, got it on the rewatch list.
The “man alive” line reveals how necessary the voice actors were to make the lines work – Hank Azaria plays him as startled by the appropriateness of his own declaration. As a line, as well, I think it’s an example of the writers really beating the hell out of their scripts.
Class Action Park
A documentary on Action Park, aka Traction Park, aka Class Action Park, the waterpark / amusement park built in Vernon Township, NJ in the late 1970s by Gene Mulvhill, with no regard for safety standards, insurance, hiring employees of proper age, etc. Pretty much everything he could do to cut corners, he did. The flipside is, anything he thought would make a ride more awesome, and damn the safety standards, he also did.
Of course, we’re introduced to him with stories of his life before Action Park, which is pretty much him working in finance and committing fraud (with penny-stock pump-and-dump schemes). So, in a certain sense, this is exactly the kind of park you’d expect him to build.
The documentary moves quickly, which isn’t surprising with the amount of footage of the rides, and the breakdowns of how they were constructed and why they were stupidly unsafe, along with testimonials from ex-employees and even notable comedian types like Chris Gethard and Alison Becker (Shauna Malwae-Tweep on Parks and Recreation). So it moves pretty quickly and is mostly fun, until the last segment when the reality of the destructiveness of Action Park and Gene Mulvhill is laid out clearly. But even with that dose of reality, the movie is still overall a fun, um, ride.
I think the most insightful observation on the fond memories people have there was made by I think Gethard– no one is nostalgic for the injuries and death; they’re nostalgic for having a place as a youth where you could go have a blast and break some rules. If you didn’t get hurt, it could be an awesome time. But you’d probably get hurt.
The funniest part of the movie… well, I’ll put it this way. We get a segment on one extremely dangerous and poorly constructed ride, with footage of the ride and testimony on it, why it’s unsafe, why it was so badly made, etc. And then after we wrap that, we get someone saying “Yeah, that ride was pretty crazy, but the real most dangerous ride was…” and then we start it all over again with another ride. The funniest part of the movie is that this happens like five times.
Also: Don’t forget to check out our Sunday week in TV recaps! I’m not doing them for myself!
“No one should ever be the second person to die in a wave pool.”
This is a lot of fun, and it even makes good occasional use of cartoons, like when they’re talking about the comically painful spray they used to treat cuts and scrapes. The escalating wildness of it all keeps everything really entertaining.
Have a couple friends here in PA who remember this place, sounds like a good movie.
Who’ll Stop the Rain? (1978): Every time I watch this film, based on Robert Stone’s Dog Soldiers, I have a similar conclusion: it’s awfully hard to visually represent the novel’s endgame – the high American weirdness of the shootout at a rundown hippie commune. Apart from that, the film conveys how an American journalist in Vietnam fucks up by getting talked into smuggling heroin into the U.S. by a shady lady, whose bragging about her government “connections” makes her as a femme fatale. She fades from view, and is replaced by a second poisonous character, the smack itself. Meanwhile, the counterculture is in self-destruct mode, unable to process the opposing ideals of “if it feels good, do it” and “turn on, tune in, and drop out.”
SUNDAY
It’s Complicated
Rewatch(?). We should have a name for those movies you never see in one sitting but instead watch on assorted bits and pieces, sometimes over multiple days, never sure if those bits add up to the full movie or not. This is a fine example of exactly this kind of movie.
Sinners
First time. A thrilling movie, expansive but never overstuffed, gritty and ruthless but with a big, bloody heart. Michael B. Jordan excels in his dual role, Coogler does career-best work as writer and director, going seamlessly from gangster picture to Jim Crow drama to raucous musical to sex dramedy to pure vampire grindhouse, often intercutting betweem them all. Incredible music work here, and along with its malicious take on vampire sociopathy it really feels ready-made for my taste. Watch this in the theater and stay through the credits for a bit for one hell of a surprise.
From the buzz I’m hearing, I’m pretty stoked for Sinners.
Goransson deserves an Oscar for this – incredible stuff. Didn’t know Coogler, talented as he obviously was, could do scary. There’s a hard cut here that’s truly a jolt.
Sinners – Is “ecstatic” a good description of this movie? I’m gonna use it. Verbal and physical ownage throughout in tandem (literally, one montage is downright Scorsese-esque, the physical blows matching the pounding of the band), with the ecstasy not just of playing music but finding expression of oppression and pain and sin, and if this means you’re a sinner, well here you are, a fucking sinner. Willing to forgive some flaws here, especially in the last act, because it’s so ambitious and a huge celebration/interogation of appropriation and diaspora culture in America at a point where the people in charge are baffled by coming from somewhere and owning that and knowing you are not home and also home. Jack O’Connell is a great vampire. Michael B. Jordan is a great gangster. The most pivotal scene, future and past colliding through music, brought me to joyous tears. Good, ambitious movie and the audience, largely Black, clapped at the end spontaneously.
Small correction, Micahel B. Jordan is two great gangsters.
And I forgot to mention this above, but Miles Caton is great in what seems to be his movie debut, and he’s really the heart of the show. What a movie.
Correct! Yeah, me and my friend were remarking how good he was – pretty sure he got an “Introducing” credit.
What did we play?
The Easter Bunny continued his annual tradition of bringing the family a game. This year he found a very small (and inexpensive) one called Barbecubes, where everyone takes turns using tweezers to pick up tiny wooden steaks, burgers, fish, drumsticks, and slabs of bacon and placing them on the slats of a tiny grill. Drop any food into the grill or knock previous morsels off of the grill and you have to keep the card that told you which item to place. Keep two cards and yer out! A fun, quick diversion in the traditions of Jenga and Operation (for those appalled at the meat content, there is an all-veggie version that paints the steak as an eggplant, the sausage as a carrot, etc).
We also tried Flash Point: Fire Rescue, a cooperative game where you’re all firefighters trying to rescue people (and sometimes a dog and/or a kitty) from a burning house before they or the house go up in blazes. We stunk at it, or maybe had some bad luck, making it a very grim experience if you thought about it without the abstraction of the tokens. Still, this is kind of the ideal of a board game to some part of my mind – roll dice, be a firefighter! – and it has a lot more complications and rules that you can add bit by bit when you’re more used to the format. I’m guessing these things will also maybe make the luck factor lesser so you aren’t just racing against unfortunate dice rolls – or possibly we haven’t figured out how to guard against bad rolls yet. Either way, apologies to the dapper gentleman in a suit who burned up in my arms as an explosion caused a chain reaction.
I generally don’t care for cooperative games of the Flash Point style (although I haven’t tried that one specifically), but this leads me to mention that *last week* my Pandemic Legacy group finished our campaign, successfully! And an excellent time was had by all.
Cooperative boardgames (as opposed to tabletop games) are tough in that they’re often hard to scale (I think this one does all right with that because the action of the fire happens at the end of each player’s turn, so it’s the same number of actions between the game’s “turns”) and they’re almost always best played among players with the same level of experience. Pandemic is almost non grata in this house because we came to it later than most everyone else, so it only makes sense that a more experience player – usually my sister-in-law – takes charge and dictates a plan. And, well, my wife doesn’t care to roleplay as someone not in charge, especially around her baby sister, thank you very much.
Weirdly enough, the one thing that falls to the wayside in my weekly routine is playing new video games. I’m actually playing old video games somewhat regularly, but I can’t seem to get new ones in there.
Been playing a lot of Minecraft with the 8 year old. We haven’t built a bed yet, and I hate our spawn location, so everything is constantly tense at night. And then I got us killed by zombies when beginning to explore a cave during the day. And then the next night there was an Enderman right outside the hole in the wall we have been using as a home base. I literally screamed when it teleported next to us. But that’s past and now we’re in rebuilding mode as we try to mine for iron again. Sigh.
Mega Man X3 – Mega Man X Legacy Collection on Nintendo Switch
Got another boss, the second out of eight. By sheer luck, the weapon I got from the first boss worked incredible well against the next one. Hope I keep lucking out.
Tried to use Zero for a while and he’s got cool moves but it seems that if you lose a life with him you lose him for good, which seems like a harsh penalty in a game with so many pits you can’t anticipate. Might end up not using him for most of the game. Also, still haven’t found any upgrades.
And I got a cutscene where the villain summons a “mystery” character but come on, it’s absolutely Vile from the first game, back from the dead. Really not fooling anyone here.
Mario Kart: Bowser’s Challenge at Universal Studios Hollywood
My wife and I went to Universal for the long weekend and we opted to start at Super Nintendo World in the Lower Lot to avoid the midday crowds. And good thing we did because we only spent around 40 minutes in the queue for this ride, which is not good enough to justify a wait of, say, more than an hour. Funny enough, the queue itself is exquisite, with loving, detailed recreations of Yoshi’s Island and Bowser’s Castle, packed with gags, photo ops and easter eggs. The same goes for the area outside the ride, which plenty of moving parts and good old force perspective tricks. My favorite bits are a walking Yoshi animatronic and a few Pikmin that sneaked through.
The problem with the ride as I see it is that it forgoes speed in favor of trying to do too much. It’s a slow ride through physical sets but it’s also an AR game with an emphasis on shooting but it also needs collaborative driving from all the riders. These all clash with each other: the physical sets, for instance, are actually good, but the AR visor doesn’t let you see them all that well. And the best bit where the ride goes to Rainbow Road works just as a classic motion simulator, but it’s just too brief. I think this might work with kids and their parents but I wish they’d just stuck to one idea and make that work. Also, our team lost (not exactly sure why, which is kinda damming) but I did score better than my wife (I actually didn’t see my own score until the end of the ride), so that’s something.
Lol way to stack the deck of an anti-Sheldon essay by finding a header image where poor Jim Parsons is a dead ringer for Elon Musk.
I feel bad for him, because he plays the part perfectly and does exactly what he’s asked to do to the best of his ability, and I have to associate this intense loathing with him.
I am sure he is compensating by sleeping on top of a pile of money, with many beautiful *goes to wikipedia to check* men.
And this was a great essay. I’m one of those people who is down on Abed, more for how he is indulged than who he is, but “I, for one, appreciate an explicitly autistic character who is cool for the exact qualities I like in myself, and who I am asked to identify with and whose story is mine” really hits, the opening up of story for all necessarily excludes some, and that’s how it is.
Yeah, I have similar misgivings about Abed. Great character early on, but the further on the show went, the more it seemed like it couldn’t figure out if he was “autistic and understands human relationships and behavior through movies and TV” or “cannot process reality to an alarming degree that requires professional help.”
And as you said, it was that the show seemed to think the other characters should / have the other characters continually indulge him, even as he went further off the deep end or was being a huge jerk about it.
I think there’s a bit of a needle to thread with sitcoms that exaggerate their world and characters (which is most of them) and creating an over the top character who’s recognizable without becoming a caricature of, say, an autistic person. Early Abed nailed it, and I thought every one of the Big Bang guys was an asshole, so, um. yeah. Not sure there was ever a lot of balance there.
I thought Tristan subconsciously went for the most heroic picture he could find, all that Ayn Rand is finally getting to him.