There’s a few quotes out there about how, when you observe evil, you’ll end up shaped by it, if not becoming it. The most famous is Frederich Nietzche’s line, “When you stare into the abyss, be aware that it also stares into you.” I enjoy Michael Herr’s line “You were as responsible for everything you saw as you were for everything you did.” He was specifically referring to American journalists who went to Vietnam in order to witness the conflict; he’s saying that you can’t judge the world for being insane and evil when you specifically went looking for insane and evil things. But my favourite by far is the line from The Untouchables, “I have become what I beheld and I am content that I have done right.”
As I understand it, the relationship between The Untouchables and the actual history of Al Capone’s fall lies somewhere between ‘inaccurate’ and ‘entirely fictional’. Yet weirdly, it contains some uncanny parallels to the real-life story of Joseph Petrosino, an Italian-American immigrant turned police officer who fought against the Italian Mafia in the 1880s and ‘90s; just like Eliot Ness in the movie, Petrosino was an underestimated individual who put together an equally ragtag bunch of misfits to turn the violent, terroristic tactics of criminals against them.
This is a perfect example of how movies – or stories in general – can be True without being literally correct. There’s that classic scene where Sean Connery’s character urgently advises that the only way to defeat Capone is to take his own actions further than he’d ever consider (“You want Capone? Here’s how you get him. He pulls a knife, you pull a gun. He sends one of yours to the hospital, you send one of his to the morgue! That’s the Chicago way! And that’s how you get Capone!”), and that’s how Petrosino both took on the Italian Mafia in New York and created a significant Italian culture within the NYPD.
No matter how people – both creators and audiences – try to use movies as factual history, or ideological weapons, or intellectual exercises, the fact of the matter is that movies are inherently objects of emotion. There’s Truffaut’s famous statement that there are no anti-war movies because they inherently glamorize the act no matter how it’s contextualised, and I find this is true of all things in movies and TV; I’ve always been struck by Peter Capaldi’s comment that fans often say they’d vote for Malcolm Tucker, given a) the character is not a politician, b) the character is specifically shown to be, for all his bluster, vulnerable, and c) he’s holding up the very system they decry. They don’t care about consequence or effective political strategy or even, I suspect, their political ideology; they just like that Malcolm yells swear words at politicians.
This is why I suspect movies ought to be actively treated as Romances. I admit I’m the strange one here – most people seem to treat movies and fiction as historical documents; I’m particularly baffled by people who need superhero movies to contain complete fidelity to their source material, but I also include people who react negatively to any betrayal of their sense of realism. It seems that most people really just want a story to conform to their prejudices.
I personally prefer to look at the emotion of a story and ask if I can relate to it, even in a second-hand kind of way. Part of the reason literal-mindedness confuses me is because being able to point to an emotion and say ‘this is very much like an emotion I have in a different context’ is the simplest thing in the world to me. Ness and his crew might be cops in Chicago circa the Fifties, but I can relate to the story of fighting something, only to turn into it (here we find ourselves sauntering back to my original point).
“It’s not a literal connection, Dude.”
Walter Sobchak, The Big Lebowski
One of the fascinating things about conflict is that it inherently leads to a different kind of empathy. If you fight someone, you’ll likely use their own tactics; sometimes as a simple form of eye-for-an-eye reciprocation, but usually just for the same reason they did: it works. This is potentially a deeply tasteless comparison, but people have drawn comparisons between Neil Gaiman’s horrific actions against women and the abuse and torture he suffered as a child in Scientology, as if he were proving himself victorious over childhood enemies.
There are other points of comparison too; I think of Josef Stalin’s Soviet Union resembling both the Tsar he ostensibly fought against and the Bolshevik conspiracies that he used to get to power, his mind and muscle memory and bureaucracy shaped by the needs of conspiracy and a secret police hounding him. There’s atheists raised in Christian environments who leave faith behind but maintain the self-righteous attitude that drove them away, simply swapping out one set of beliefs for another.
I’m not judging here – I mean, I’m judging the rape and mass murder, that’s pretty awful, but I get being shaped by antagonistic forces. There are multiple times in my life where I’ve found myself repeating patterns that were used against me; manipulation and bullying, amongst other things. On the one hand, I’ve become much more careful about which forces I fight against, avoiding conflict with those I don’t want to resemble. I don’t argue with complete bigoted dumbasses on the internet because damn, do I not want to resemble them.
“I see a mirror, Harvey.”
Batman, The Dark Knight Returns
On the other hand… there’s worse things than being a little evil. “The abyss will stare back into you” is flawed in that it’s a warning against action, at least out of context; whenever it’s crossed my mind, it’s been a warning not to engage in behaviour that is otherwise tempting. “You’re as responsible for everything you saw” isn’t actively warning against action, but it does feel threatening, yet passive.
“I have become what I beheld and I am content that I have done right,” on the other hand, is a potent argument for choosing to live in the world. Life’s not so much about having no enemies as it is about worthy enemies – ones that you are content becoming. To walk away at the end of a conflict believing you have chosen a glorious opponent. I look at the conflicts of my life, and most of my favourite ones – the ones that were the most rewarding, that shaped me into a happier person – were with my friends, where I have taken on their traits I previously rejected because we just kept arguing about them.
What time I have left has become dedicated to ‘taking down’ the idols I previously held dear. I tried writing a story essentially ripping off Stargate: SG-1 to specifically tear into why I think it doesn’t work dramatically, and I found it a cathartic experience that let me find pleasure in the original series again. I’ve written a crime story and found I had to turn to my dramatic nemesis, The Sopranos, because it had much to teach me about the genre. I eagerly anticipate the next worthy opponent.
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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Dave’s not here, man.
What did we watch?
Lost Highway
This wasn’t as uneven as I remembered – I remembered there being more and draggier stuff between Pullman leaving the movie and Loggia entering it – but this is definitely secondary Lynch. But secondary Lynch is still a lot of fun; there are parts of this up there with his best, and the basic conceit of the movie is still a lot of fun. What I’ve been mulling over lately is how Lynch’s dialogue is weirdly both incredibly naive to the point of being childish and yet incredibly insightful. A bit part of it is that his performances are intensely, almost bafflingly realistic and motivated by real human desires, it’s just the words themselves are banal and awkward. The actors talk like this is just how people talk.
Lynch’s meaninglessness is something he is both attacked for and voraciously defended against; his critics complain that it’s meaningless imagery designed to look weird, and his defenders claim there is an intended meaning behind it, even if they make one up, even if they know they’re making it up. But I was thinking watching this that I enjoy his meaninglessness, and that this is what’s cool about him and his movies.
I like that you can have Bill Pullman looking completely tortured as he says banalities to the police with that weird eerie wind-like sound and that my brain registers that there’s a connection between all these things even though I know there probably isn’t. Lynch’s movies, more than any other, are driven by intuition, and I enjoy following him down his rabbit holes. I enjoy giving myself up to the Lynch of it all. In a way, he’s the master of the ‘wouldn’t it be fucked if THIS happened’ approach to storytelling – the reductio ad absurdism of the Saw school of filmmaking.
In a lot of ways, Lynch is a great example of the kind of thing I love whilst also being the kind of thing I cannot and should not be doing. I would love to churn out what he does, but it never feels appropriate when I do it.
This is also maybe the ultimate argument for genre allowing someone to express a unique worldview. Actually, I’ll take that back – Twin Peaks is the superior example, but this is still pretty good at using genre cliches as a center of gravity for a weird bunch of thoughts, right down to the awkward dialogue riffing on cliche characters and situations. The vague approximations of how genre characters talk – definitely not how people talk but definitely not something you’ve seen a million times either.
Also, I’d forgotten precisely how this ended.
Interesting — I’ve never heard Lynch accused of meaninglessness before, and I think that’s because most critics/fans seem to intuitively understand his imagery is so full of meaning it becomes impossible to put into words. Roger Ebert’s First and Second Laws of Symbolism: “If you have to ask what something symbolizes, it doesn’t. Or it symbolizes itself.”
I feel like when many people are looking for “meaning” they really mean “representation” (in the symbology sense), in which case sure, Lynch does a lot of “meaningless” imagery because it can’t all be mapped 1:1 on concrete objects or situations. But I think he’s always putting up an image or sound or line of dialog that he grasps as meaningful and trusts that if he finds it so, other people will too, even if it doesn’t have a representational “meaning” to it. It’s also why I think he works so well with old pop music* – what is the meaning of “The Locomotion” other than the delight you experience hearing it?
*The music selection is one of the reasons Lost Highway is low on my Lynch list, though I can see it being exciting if you rock harder than I do.
Yeah, Lynch’s symbolism maps more like 1:1000 on concrete objects
The uncharitable argument is meaninglessness as vapidity, that Lynch is throwing up purposefully unconsidered and empty signifiers as a con. I don’t have time for this and think it’s pretty ridiculous to level at Lynch. The more sympathetic argument is meaninglessness as incomprehensibility, e.g. Homer Simpson’s reaction to Twin Peaks — if there is a meaning I can’t understand it.
This is brilliant because I have no idea what’s going on!
Yeah, especially with recent rewatches, everything feels DENSE with purpose and meaning.
Yeah, I always think of Lynch as having a density, or even an over-saturation, of meaning: there’s so much feeling and dreaming behind any one image or moment that it’s overloaded, and the intensity and conviction spills out and seeps in everywhere else, too.
The police dialogue in particular, especially during the detectives’ first scene, is hilarious. It’s so flat and blunt and yet not a straight Joe Friday pastiche the way The Naked Gun is, “the actors talk like this is just how people talk” gets at it very well. This helps create the atmosphere of lost or dissolving meaning, something that is there but elusive — essentially, when you try to describe the dream after waking up. You know something was there but can’t really explain it, I feel like I know what Lost Highway is about but good luck getting something coherent out of me, and Lynch’s refusal to respect that kind of coherence can be confusing but also incredibly powerful.
I think what sets Lynch apart in the ‘wouldn’t it be fucked if THIS happened’ approach to storytelling is the way he can manage crossing the real and mundane with the surreal better than anyone else. The ‘wouldn’t it be fucked if THIS happened’ feels like a cheap gear shift, where as Lynch deliberately orchestrates all the contradictions as a piece, if that makes sense.
That Man from Rio – A French airman on leave arrives at his girlfriend’s apartment just in time to see her get kidnapped. Soon enough, he’s followed her to Rio and is involved in a scheme to find a secret hidden in three Amazonian figures. There is not quite enough plot here to fill out two hours, and you have to overlook a lot of improbable twists and turns, but this is generally a gorgeous and fun movie that both drew its inspiration from Tintin and inspired Raiders of the Lost Ark (and that at times felt like a live action Lupin the Third movie). Phillipe de Broca is not a name I am familiar with, but apparently he is much an influence on later directors as the more serious New Wave filmmakers were on him. I am familiar with Jean-Paul Belmondo, but he really seems quite well suited to this sort of thing, bringing everyman energy to widescreen action. And Brazil is incredibly photogenic. Rio, of course, but also unfinished Brasilia, under-inhabited and a bit eerie and a good backdrop for one of the film’s best set pieces.
Kojak, “The Betrayal” – It’s Christmas in the city, but an eager detective who makes a bad bargain with his snitch is not in for a happy holiday. More noirish storytelling, with Richard Romanus as the ill fated cop and Paul Anka much better than I would have expected as the snitch.
M*A*S*H, “Check-Up” – Everyone needs a check-up under new army regulations, which means Trapper’s secret ulcer is discovered. For a while, it seems like that ulcer is his ticket home, but not just yet. Some really funny bits and some heartfelt bits, especially Hawkeye’s farewell to Trapper, but given that Wayne Rogers was sticking around the rest of the season, what is up with this one? My best guess is that with both Rogers and McLean Stevenson leaving, they decided to have the season finale focus on Blake and did this one now to at least have a farewell address even if things don’t play out that way in season four. Fun fact: they used to recommend milk for ulcers, which was entirely wrong headed.
Frasier, “A Midwinter Night’s Dream”/”And the Whimper Is…” – In the former, Frasier finally calls out Niles’s infatuation with Daphne, and Niles admits that yes, there is trouble between him and Maris. But an attempt to create a romantic night with Maris turns into Niles and Daphne all alone. This being season one, nothing happens and Niles affirms his love for Maris, but in retrospect this one feels a bit weird. We do, however, get the priceless scene of Niles dressed like a very fey pirate. The latter has Frasier and Roz nominated for a SeaBee, the local prize for radio excellence. This will become an annual tradition, and Mary Tyler Moore fans will smile at the salute to that show’s Teddy Awards.
Spaced and Hot Fuzz — the always-wonderful rave episode of the first led to wanting more of good Wright/Pegg and thus the second. This time around, with more knowledge of British TV mysteries, I could see how the story is not just incredibly well-constructed but essentially that of a TV show’s six-episode season, just ruthlessly boiled down — I’m as guilty as anyone of the (true!) criticism that a lot of TV should be a movie but this really shows how much discipline is required to make that happen. Still great of course, once again I’m impressed by how well Pegg plays off-type and how Wright brutally casts absolutely gormless children for the sake of mocking them. And action-wise, the big blow-out at the end is a joy and all the more remarkable for how little death it entails, somehow this works while 99 percent of action comedies are frauds in this department.
Live music — out at the great dive bar that is apparently going to be maintained if altered by a new development that will also restore another old venue? We shall see. In the meantime, lots of local rock, only caught a few from Ghosts & Shadows but they were scrappy fun, Bad//Verb was LOUD heaviness, I had to move to the back of the room after a bit. Black Helicopter killed it as always, a new record is coming and the songs off it sound great but they also dusted off an old fave I haven’t heard in a while and it owned. The headliner was Sandy Clams out of Connecticut, three dudes in their 30s on guitar/bass/drums and a guy in at least his 60s on saxophone, the sax mic wasn’t as loud as it should’ve been but they had a Stooges/Cows-y sound that lent itself to longer jams, good stuff. A very cold night to go out, warmth from the songs and the people inside, hell yeah.
Woooooo hot music and live fuzz!!
Love the one kid in the pub who just stammers, “uhhhhh…” Classic.
Harry Potter ass dweeb! Extrajudicial murder is too good for him.
Grammys – I guess he really was what the Culture was feeling.
But seriously, imagine what Drake must feel like right now. He gets completely washed in the biggest rap beef in decades, and he doesn’t just lose, but becomes a laughing stock. Then the biggest song by his rival wins as many Grammys by itself as he has in his entire career. And when his rival’s accepting it, he can hear the whole audience yell A-MINORRRRR. Then next weekend, he’ll watch his rival perform at the biggest annual sporting event in the world. And all in the midst of this, he’s bleeding support because of a frivolous lawsuit against his own record company, blaming them for the loss.
Drake is still going to tour, and he’ll still make an ungodly amount of money. But it’s the Citizen Kane thing, where all the material wealth can’t fill whatever emptiness he feels deep down. You see the same thing with Musk, Trump, Bezos, Zuck, Tate, and all their ilk. The raging insecurity on display. Meanwhile, Kendrick is a little hermit who seems perfectly fine doing his own thing. A sentiment I’ve seen floated around is that Drake moves the charts, but Kendrick moves the culture. Yep.
Turns out the most prophetic words from the beef were from the very beginning: “The money, power, respect/The last one is better.”
Also, am I the only one who thinks Beyonce’s country album was just plain bad? And that much of its success is because it’s a Beyonce album?
I can agree that Beyonce’s album is getting its due because she’s Beyonce, but I also find it fascinating in a lot of ways. She’s pulling apart the relationship between black artists and country music in a way that is, at the very least, interesting on a metatextual level. Whether you enjoy the album as music is almost secondary to whether you enjoy the album as a piece of media history and commentary.
I think about her version of “Jolene” a lot, because it feels on the surface so antithetical to Parton’s original. Beyonce is not capable of missing the point of “Jolene,” so is it an attempt at saying how much powerful she is than even the most respected female country artist in history? Or is it an attempt to put forth her threats as a defensive mechanism with the same goal as Parton’s pleading but a different attitude?
It feels like everything Beyonce did on the album has that same level of ambiguity and commentary, which makes it more fun to talk about than to listen to.
I didn’t listen to the whole album, but I was pretty unimpressed with “Texas Hold ‘Em.” (I’m not particularly grabbed by Not David Lynch’s argument here, either, as I think enjoying the album as music comes first and foremost, and there’s also nothing excluding it from being both a piece of media history and commentary and also, you know, good.)
I suspect it’s like Pacino’s Oscar or Denzel’s for Training Day – they’re *really* for something else, but this is what was available to award.
Also, I find Beyonce’s music *boring as shit*. But I’m a 37y white dude from the suburbs – it isn’t music *for* me.
Hmm, well, I guess it’s not “for me” either, but then, I like a lot of music that’s not “for me.” (There’s not much hip-hop that is, I suppose. I think Chappell Roan is a great pop singer-songwriter. And even specific to Beyoncé, I do like a lot of R&B, and I quite liked Destiny’s Child and a lot of her earlier solo stuff.)
But I did find “Texas Hold ‘Em” kinda boring, and even the title just seemed gimmicky. I’m certainly all for artists experimenting outside of their comfort zone, but that track just kinda feels… I dunno, slight to me? Shallow? Surface-level? More like it throws a couple of country signifiers on top of the kind of thing she usually does as opposed to a real engagement with a new style of music, maybe.
Othello (1951) – The Welles version which as one critic points out removes the racial subtext (while featuring it’s director/lead in blackface) and heightens the psychological paranoia and violence. A butchering of the original play at only 93 minutes but a black-and-white visual and emotional triumph even though the seams are obvious (filmed over three years, they kept running out of money) – make of that what you will. Welles’ movies always feel vital and years ahead of their time to me, warts and all.
It would be really weird if Welles’s voice just started coming out of everyone on the street.
Alice’s Restaurant – Did I stumble onto a pervert’s cut of A History of Violence? Because this thing is all ’69!
That is to say it’s coated in counterculture, please don’t watch it expecting it’s anything like AHoV. Arlo Guthrie plays… “Arlo Guthrie,” a young man trying to make it big in music (or maybe has already made it big, the movie’s a little slippery in its details), who visits his ailing father “Woodie Guthrie,” helps his friend Alice and her boyfriend set up a restaurant in an old church, gets in trouble for dumping trash in a ravine, and whatever else Arthur Penn and his crew have the resources to shoot on a particular day. Surprising this comes after the seismic Bonnie and Clyde, this meanders toward a predetermined point like an earlier work. Its loose style (and characterizations and pacing and compositional approach) feel of a piece with the free love era it portrays/documents, even though this is ultimately yet another elegy for the missed opportunity of the movement. Apparently this came out a week after Woodstock and the same year as Easy Rider, so my suspicion that “The 60s” lasted about a week followed by ongoing decades of nostalgia for that week is getting stronger.
But Alice’s Restaurant is a nice time capsule from the inside of that movement, feeling less filtered than even Easy Rider. Guthrie, having never given up the game over half a century later, is a good guide in this respect, and Penn’s easy-going approach makes this work as a document of a time and place even in the moments when it doesn’t entirely function as a movie.
Also had the chance to discuss it in a group with our own Lauren James which was a treat!
Patrice: The Movie – Two adults living on their own with disabilities want to get married but can’t, lest they lose their much-needed health benefits. The quest to get this changed makes up a portion of this movie – as does a quest to replace a broken vehicle – but the highlight is getting to know Patrice herself, a firecracker personality with unguarded quirks. Her backstory which has plenty of tragic elements, is presented in a series of brightly colored stage shows with Patrice playing her young self and everyone in her life (her mother, the doctors, etc) played by children. This shows off her facility with children and her own theatrical proclivities. I’m happy to have gotten to know her and kudos to director Ted Passon for telling the sad parts of her story in a way that emphasizes the happy and thriving woman who grew from it.
Given what I know about Arlo now, I am not sure he hasn’t given up the game. But the nostalgia train keeps running. (I love the song and would like to see the movie, albeit with low expectations. And by Jove, it’s 60 years this Thanksgiving since the actual event took place.)
He was also the only cast member shuttled to and from set in a limo, so maybe it depends on how broadly you define the game.
(Only place I know of to find it right now is YouTube, but it’s a pretty good transfer)
Saw about half an hour of it somewhat recently, and it is very different than the song.
And apparently the real Alice, Alice Brock (who died only last November) was not a fan of it and the way she was portrayed. Seeing how her real life turned out – apparently she cashed in on the notoriety and at one point became the wealthy proprietor of a version of the restaurant that included a disco and a pool – I think a more straightforward biopic would actually be more interesting.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alice_Brock
A ramshackle movie based on a popular song about a reluctant hero getting in trouble with the government, directed by a purveyor of bloody violence yet ultimately warmhearted in nature — is this Convoy?
I hope you know I’m imagining this as a “is this a pigeon?” meme
Uhhh that’s the anime butterfly guy, right?
The Alice’s Restaurant discussion was great!
I was unsurprised to learn that the film had such a mishmash of views behind it–I think different approaches, interests, and lenses can be fantastic for any kind of collaboration, and sometimes the different people behind a work of art being on very different pages can add to the art’s richness and realism, but also sometimes you get “this feels like a chopped salad of several completely different movies.” This kind of winds up in both camps, with Arlo’s greater optimism occasionally working in the film’s favor, creating the sense that his character, at least, is going to find a way to hold onto what’s good and move on from what’s not working … but also with the anarchic comedy of, say, the draft sequence not feeling like it belongs anywhere near that long, melancholy shot of Alice at the end.
On a completely different note, I am always a sucker for a “party turns sour” scene, and the wedding here at the end is a stellar example of the genre.
The Testament of Dr. Mabuse – getting back on my hundred-years quest, since I was too ill to go to any of the live music I had planned over the weekend. I’m looking forward to getting through the early 30s because I find the muddy audio so hard to engage with for some reason (talkies were a mistake!), but watching a foreign film with subtitles helps and this was a really fun, pulpy follow-up to Fritz Lang’s epic original Mabuse saga. This time around Mabuse is confined to an asylum, catatonic but with one hand twitching in the air until somebody thinks to put a pencil in it and he starts blasting out page after page of Crimes that – gasp! – somebody outside the asylum gets hold of and begins to execute. Fun concept, lots of excellemt weirdness along the way. Not all of it worked for me but I like the mix of high production values and goofy characters / plot in these things and I’m curious to see the final Lang / Mabuse effort from the very end of his career. Although it’ll take me a little while to get there if I’m throwing it into this project.
The Man Who Knew Too Much (1934) – I’m not a huge fan of the remake so I was hoping that the punchy running time and presence of Peter Lorre would lead me to prefer this original take on the material (loosely speaking). I found it a bit dull though, and while Lorre has a compelling screen presence it’s not one of my favourite performances from him (he was apparently still learning his lines phonetically at this point, so I guess it’s a pretty impressive performance by those standards). The next year’s 39 Steps is a huge step up from this in my eyes, and the real start of Hitchcock as a force to be reckoned with.
Matlock, “Friends”
Are Matty and Olympia actually becoming friends? And is that interfering with her primary mission, or biasing her to overlook Olympia? That’s what Edwin is concerned about this episode, while Matty is becoming more of a confidant to Olympia about what’s going with her personal life, particularly as regards Julian… and this while they’re representing Elijah’s cousin in a wrongful-termination case. The case is interesting enough, with a couple of unexpected twists, but it remains to be seen how and if Matty’s judgment is being clouded here. Anyway, after a good seven weeks off (six in Elsbeth’s case), our procedural lineup is finally all the way back.
Elsbeth, “Unalive and Well”
Eric McCormack guests as the head of a Japanese-themed wellness retreat center / possible cult leader, who almost certainly kills someone who’s there primarily to expose… something he’s up to. Elsbeth is on the case, and even takes a vacation to the spa to not only investigate but to get herself some relief from all the pressure she’s been under, especially as the Van Ness case from Chicago is seeing more details leaked to the media (almost certainly thanks to Judge Crawford). So, the case itself is okay, but the real purpose of the episode may be in prodding Elsbeth to not have to put up a sunny demeanor all the time and to ask for help when she needs it. Welcome back.
Animal Control, “Hot Dogs and Lobsters”
It’s the station’s annual trivia night. Victoria’s sister is in town, which innately causes some friction as, you know, Victoria is a party girl who left for the States and her sister stayed back home and is raising a family. Shred decides to partner with Isabelle instead of Frank at trivia night, which leads to a heavy level of competitiveness that brings out Shred’s darker side (he was an Olympic athlete, after all, so you know he gets competitive). And Patel, who’s been banned from trivia night (“I thought we were using lifelines”) ends up taking over behind the bar and actually proving to be pretty good at that job. Solid episode.
American Dad!, “The Girl Who Cried Space Jam”
“Hayley, you’re embarrassing yourself. You don’t speak Aramaic, you don’t own a grimoire, and you’ve never severed a wolf’s penis under a waning moon.”
Hayley is fired from SubHub for being a poser of a hippie, and the family intervenes on her poser-ness. In trying not to be a poser, she realizes she may not even be a hippie anymore, and looks for a new identity. She settles on… devil worshiper, and after summoning the wrong demon challenges him to a Space Jam.
A Disney lawyer shows up to protect their IP, though, so Hayley’s “Space Jam” team has to be filled out with public-domain characters, like “Castor Oyl, Olive Oyl’s brother,” and “Boob McNutt” (apparently a real character from a comic strip created by Rube Goldberg).
Certainly one of the show’s odder concepts, but still funny enough.
Shoresy, season 3 episodes 4-6
Finishing up the rewatch to prepare for season 4. Still good, especially in that finale.
Going Dutch, “Nazi Hunters”
Like all Boomers, and probably moreso being a military man, Patrick is obsessed with WW2. And probably like most of them, he misses the moral clarity of having a clear and defined enemy now that he lives in a world that’s much more complex than that. So in the latest “war games” (which of course for this base more involve the delivery of cheese), he starts inserting scenarios involving enemy attacks and sabotage. Then he becomes convinced this kid who likes to fly drones and communicate with the base is a spy. Does Patrick actually get to fight a Nazi? How would that even work? Watch and find out!
Mythic Quest, “Boundaries” and “1000%”
After more than two years away, the show is back! A lot’s going on here after a season 3 the consensus seems to think was a bit disjointed. Everyone’s back under one roof, business-wise. Ian and Poppy are still figuring out their partnership, and Ian is frustrated that MQ is now taking a back seat to Dana’s Playpen… which is making the company a ton of money, except Dana’s contract means she’s seeing very little of that profit. So she’s got to figure out how to get hers… and with Rachel as head of monetization, you’d think that’d be easier, but as the two are on opposite sites professionally despite their personal relationship, they need some boundaries to be able to function, and this is one of them.
Also, Poppy is dating someone and trying to keep it a secret, but making so many annoying double entendres that everyone has figured it out pretty quickly. This is part of Ian’s struggle with their partnership, although he continues to insist he’s not romantically interested in Poppy– and I do believe him, actually, because it is clear that it’s taking something away from her commitment to work.
Still, pretty strong start– season 3 kinda felt like a blur to me, and I’m now realizing most of the recent stuff I thought was great was actually season 2. Anyway, happy to have the show back.
Shoresy, “Summer in Sudvegas”
Well, it’s not out in America yet, but I’m not gonna let that stop me. Nat doesn’t want the team to lose focus, but it’s the summer, and everyone’s celebrating the National cup win. Shoresy is still trying to figure out what to do with the next phase of his life, and while he’s got a few options in front of him, right now he’s trying a commentary show, but figuring out how to bring out the Shoresy everyone tunes in for is proving difficult. (Sean Avery, the perfect smug-asshole hockey heel, does a pretty good job of bringing that out of him.) Good kickoff to the new season; I just don’t want to spoil much here.
The Shield, “Pilot,” “Our Gang,” “The Spread,” and “Dawg Days”
A random, disorganized assortment of SOMEWHAT SPOILERY thoughts:
– The scene with Van Bro has the easy, eccentric naturalism of, say, early season Starsky & Hutch. (I mean that entirely as a compliment: I’m extremely fond of that era of S&H and should review it sometime. You even get some Michael Mann episodes!) I love him insisting the Strike Team buy a painting in exchange for info, and I love Ronnie taking an apparently genuine interest in “the one with the clouds.” I fully believe he goes home and hangs that up, possibly above an Oriental rug.
– No one needs the flashbacks in “Our Gang,” but Shane “Eatin’ Ain’t Cheatin’” Vendrell being the one who can immediately define a dental dam is a hilarious detail.
– Is Vic calling Corrine and pretending it’s a call to Aceveda the cutest those two ever get? I feel like it is. It’s one of their only playful moments, and it’s certainly one of the only times she’s even briefly on the inside of a scheme before she absolutely has to be.
– Lem amiably calling out, “See you, Adriana!” as Derrick Tripp’s hookup leaves is an adorable detail.
– Nicely textured reactions to Shane throwing the n-word at Tripp: Lem has a weary “well, that killed the party” look, and pragmatic Ronnie knows to immediately start standing up to intervene in the coming fight. Also, ha, I found two bits of Ronnie characterization in early episodes! I win!
– Terrific Michael Chiklis reaction when Shane turns out to still be torn up about Terry. Even before the famous “get over it, don’t bring it up again” line, his face is very, “How the hell are you still bothered by something that happened two episodes ago???” Get used to it, Vic. I know you want to be in an episodic show, but you’re in a drama now.
– As always, I <3 Dutch and Claudette’s relationship. They have an especially nice run in “The Spread,” where as much as she pushes back against his All Serial Killers, No Waiting approach, she still 1) makes sure to ask their suspect about other victims, revealing he is a serial offender, just not the kind Dutch thought, and 2) gives him a share of the credit when she talks to Vic at the end. (She has both enough loyalty to Dutch to insist on him getting some of the glory, and enough justified pride to not deny that yeah, as Vic says, she’s the one who closed it.) Also, glorious CCH Pounder in the fake-seduction scene—the sudden shift of her energy towards something warm and gently flirtatious is A++.
– Grant has talked before about how well the show uses close-ups, and we get some of the best in Shane’s interrogation scene in “Our Gang,” especially when Dutch and Aceveda make Shane self-conscious about squinting when he lies. Lots of great, lingering close-ups on Shane’s face as he desperately tries to keep his eyes open saucer-wide. Walton Goggins has never looked so much like a Disney Princess, and it’s amazing. Fantastic bit of Vic storming in at the end when he realizes—undoubtedly to his own horror and alarm—that Shane’s been in the box for two hours; you can tell he knows how close Shane was to cracking.
– Love that all Aceveda needs as an entry point into the Vic-Shane relationship is seeing a grieving, guilty Shane twist away from Vic touching his arm. You can just see him instantly clock that that’s different, and he knows right away how to use it.
– Vic’s self-righteous indignation at other people assuming he’ll do corrupt things is always so excellent and so infuriating all at once. You get a muted version of it in “The Spread,” when he’s quietly disturbed by Connie wanting to use him for a retaliatory beatdown, but it’s most on display in “Dawg Days.” How dare Kern assume Vic would help him out with a murder?! Why, the very idea!
– I think “Dawg Days” is my least favorite episode of this set, but it’s almost completely redeemed by 1) introducing Kern, whom I love, and 2) providing one of the show’s top moments of guest star-related ownage: “Ain’t nobody else coming out of there. Told you he was a bitch.” Iconic.
– Vic’s conversation with Danny at the end of “Dawg Days” is both completely believable and completely un-be-fucking-lievable. Of course he sets it up as a weird emotional powerplay, opening with, “Do you trust me with your life?”, and then all he’ll tell her is that “it’s taken care of,” and also, it HASN’T been taken care of, Vic! You broke Rondell’s records and stole his TV, which is a great scene, but otherwise, you just told him that you’d make Danny’s testimony “go away” by the time of the trial. All you’ve done is kick the can down the road! You haven’t taken care of anything!
– Man, Dutch and Claudette’s case in the pilot is bleak and grimly perfect in its layers of awfulness. Incredible guest star performance from the actor playing the girl’s father, too—the commentary track praises him and talks about making absolutely the right decision to hold on a close-up of his face as he crumbles into realizing what he’s done, and I completely agree. “Why did I do that? Why didn’t anyone stop me?” is such a plaintive, agonized howl clawed up from the depths of this guy’s soul, and it gets that one of the fundamental aspects of horror is being too late. (Perfect Dutch and Claudette reactions, too: one cynical and flippant, the other able to stare that howl in the face and know there’s no real answer to it.)
Like any good Shield apostle, I’m showing it these to a friend and hit up to “The Spread.” Love Lem’s goodbye too and goddamn Vic is such a bastard. It’s weird that there was a 2000’s debate in the culture about whether Mackey is a good guy, and no, he shot a guy in the face.
Vic would stare at you so incredulously if you brought that up. Uh, in “The Spread,” you’ll see that he doesn’t bet on the basketball game he’s rigged but instead did it all for the love of the Lakers, so I think you’ll find that he’s a great guy, actually. Terry? Never heard of him.
Hah, even today, first-timers continue to grapple with the question as they go through the show…
I keep forgetting to mention (or, in the case of today, running out of time to mention) that I’ve also been watching some commentaries on The Shield since I finished my recent rewatch.
Maybe I’ll have something more detailed tomorrow. One of the funniest moments is from “Dragonchasers,” when the commenters are introducing themselves before the episode properly begins. “I’m Michael Jace, and I play Julien.” “I’m Catherine Dent–” scene opens on a stripper’s ass “–and that’s me.”
“Dragonchasers” is such a banger of an episode that it’s only appropriate for it to have one of the greatest commentary moments, too.
One thing I like about the ‘squints when he lies’ thing is that it doesn’t even need to be true – Shane is so easy to manipulate at this point that it could just be Aceveda making him selfconscious.
“How the hell are you still bothered by something that happened two episodes ago???”
Hahaha
I was trying to look for it this time, and I’m leaning towards no actual squinting. Just plenty of subsequent panicky paranoia that he’s giving himself away. (And of course, by that point, he is.)
Night Of The Juggler – An ex-NYC cop’s daughter is kidnapped and he goes on a tear to get her back. James Brolin has a particular set of skills but acting isn’t one of them. Dan Hedaya plays a cop who’s really annoyed by Brolin. But this is more interesting for capturing a time in NY that no longer exists – rough and dirty streets, real life colorful characters, sleazy bars and just a sense of filth. It’s clearly shot without permits and you can see background people interested in what’s going on. It’s gritty but not John D’Amoto gritty, but still pretty good. On YouTube.
I can so perfectly imagine the gravelly, leering voice-over of “Night … of the JUGGLER!” in a radio spot for this, RETVRN to this kind of sleazeoid filmmaking/advertising.
Well, now I’m imagining Robert Mitchum in a clown suit, thanks(?) for that
What did we play?
SnowRunner
I have a habit of getting through the tutorial of these ultra-realistic simulation games and thinking “This is not fun. I am not enjoying this. This is inherently anti-fun for me”. The closest thing to fun was when I was driving a Chevy in the tutorial and was reminded of my dad taking us off-road driving when I was a kid (which was very fun). I get into an actual truck and I’m like, this is boring. The weird upside to all this is that I’m getting very useful reminders than I’m on the right path in life.
No D and D, but we made a decision to try to shift from three hours every two weeks to six hours once a month. I have my doubts, but the mob has spoken.
Nothing. Maybe I should get into video games. My fellow neurodivergents are horrified by my lack of knowledge.
Eh. On the one hand, I’d love to hear what you thought of things like The Witness or Inside. On the other, I’d hate a timeline where your poetic output is halved because you got super into Call of Duty.
Made some good progress in Amnesia: The Bunker. In addition to turning off the aggression of the rats, we dulled the monster’s ability to find us a little bit (getting caught by “the beast” is an auto gameover and resets your progress to the last time you visited the save point). I appreciate the “homebase” design where you can stash items and hit the save button, and I also appreciate the scalability of the difficulty. The purist in me ideally wants a game where I’m playing through according to the game creator’s set parameters, what’s the point of a game where I can move the goalposts. But the pragmatic person in me who has at most an hour to play a couple times per week appreciates not losing that hour’s progress because I stepped on a metal grate at the wrong time. It still doesn’t let you play stupidly (tip: if you use a noisy grenade to blow open a door, don’t stand around admiring your work while heavy footsteps come toward you), but it also doesn’t penalize you for being out of practice navigating tunnels in the dark.
Also great, turning on the closed captions, which help give clues as to what the monster is doing (“[beast emerges]”) and add a little extra comedy (the monster frequently lets out what’s described as “[surprised grunt]”, which sounds a little like I’m being pursued by Homer Simpson or maybe Tim Allen).
Stray – finished last night. This was nice / fun / an enjoyable diversion but kinda topped out at that for me. It would be hard to make a cat / robot adventure game that I DIDN’T enjoy but I guess I hoped for a little more, the puzzles and stealth sections just feel a bit straightforward and I wouldn’t have minded a few surprises.
Fatal Fury 2 – Super Nintendo on Nintendo Switch Online
Finished the arcade mode with both Terry and Mai. Very good adaptation of the kind of arcade game that by rights probably shouldn’t work on SNES. I haven’t tried the arcade version since starting this one but I will to see if I can get a streak going.
F-Zero 99 on Nintendo Switch
I keep telling people that it’s funny how often you remember near-misses than outright wins and I got a reminder of it this week, when I followed up a win on Classic mode (my eight overall, I think) with a Classic race on Big Blue that I led for most of the final lap but couldn’t avoid a bumper on the final stretch and it cost me finishing second by a matter of miliseconds. Bummer, because I still haven’t won a race in Big Blue on any mode and I really want to. But I got one more win this week, and I have to feel good about that.
Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown on Nintendo Switch
A few more rounds running around the palace, collecting upgrades and unlocking some new areas. Will pick up the main quest back next week.
After an outing Saturday afternoon, I felt like doing a little gaming, but something familiar and engaging I could do pretty quickly. So Bionic Commando, the original NES one, was my choice, since it had been a while, and it turns out I can beat it in a couple of hours. I might look into the remake again, to see if there’s anything I missed that I still want to collect.
Too bad the last time I watched The Untouchables I found it dull. Also absurd, but mainly just dull. And now that I know just how insane De Palma can be, it’s kind of disappointing that he was so conventional here.
No one has ever made a TV show or movie even coming close to the real story of Capone and Ness. I am not demanding that adaptations are true to history, but I would like to see someone do more with the messy war that brought down Capone but that barely touched the overall Mob, and with the very human and very flawed Ness. (Max Allan Collins’s two books on the subject are excellent, BTW.)
Lots to chew on here! Small note, the Fifties should be the Thirties.
“I’m particularly baffled by people who need superhero movies to contain complete fidelity to their source material, but I also include people who react negatively to any betrayal of their sense of realism. It seems that most people really just want a story to conform to their prejudices” — slightly afield from the main thrust here, but I frequently get annoyed by adaptations not because they do not conform to my prejudices but because they conform to larger prejudices of what a movie should be, they take a unique story or character and instead of being faithful to it or doing something also unique they fold it into pre-existing templates. Comics-wise the Watchmen movie is a pretty good example of this. The example I always turn to is the various film versions of Richard Stark’s The Hunter — Mel Gibson’s Payback is cliched garbage that updates the book but sands it down and softens it to standard tropes, Brian Helgeland’s original version is a pretty faithful update, John Boorman’s Point Blank keeps the story and period but makes the tone far more jarring and haunting. It’s not a particularly faithful adaptation in some major ways but it’s a good verging on great movie, I can look past my prejudices to see that.
“Life’s not so much about having no enemies as it is about worthy enemies – ones that you are content becoming. To walk away at the end of a conflict believing you have chosen a glorious opponent. ”
Very Spartacus, and not something I see at all in The Untouchables and particularly Costner. He’s doing a job, he doesn’t see Capone as worthy or glorious (and nor should he), and that job supersedes all other aspects of the “job” of law enforcement. And when the job is over he does a different job. The movie is a pretty good portrait of that attitude but it’s not one I find worth emulating and it’s frequently (because Costner) not that interesting. For all the talk of Dirty Harry’s fascism the Ness of this movie is far more oppressive.
I wanted to like this movie more, but a fundamental problem is Costner’s dry paint dullness.
For sure – my interest was mainly in the line here, so good that it justifies the movie to me.
“Don’t just stare into that abyss, dive in there and rip that motherfucker up.” I can get behind this. Engage with the abyss.
I’ve unsurprisingly thought about this issue–in life, more than in movies–a lot lately, due to everyone’s exhaustion with the inefficiency of the “when they go low, we go high” approach to politics. It’s not working! Maybe stealing the tactics and unscrupulousness of the opposition wouldn’t ultimately work either, especially not as a pale imitation (“You get dick because you are a follower and a thief”), but it has to be worth a try.
And your last paragraph really speaks to me on an artistic level. Frustration with a work can be as inspiring–or more inspiring, sometimes–than adoration of it, and there are plenty of times when something failing (at least for me) has inspired me to really clarify my ideas on story structure, what I value in art, etc. (Also, if you ever want to link more of your fiction anywhere, I’m very down with that. I still think about The Talleyrand Trial.)
In related news, I made pasta with walnut pesto for dinner last week (allegedly Al Capone’s favorite meal), and it turned out great. I’m definitely going to make it again, which is good, because I bought a huge Costco bag of walnuts. (I also made Dolly Parton’s walnut pie, also great. Walnuts! Who knew?)
Did you use a baseball bat to brutally bash the walnuts for the pesto?
Who’s askin’?