One of my favourite things in fiction is when a story is based upon very clear principles and then it takes them somewhere completely unique. Curb’s basic principle is most certainly not unique – autofiction is a long-established genre, and even outside that, people have been putting their experiences into fiction since fiction was a thing. Frankly, I always had a bit of scepticism of it; you’ve got the dual problems of a) suggesting a paucity of imagination on the part of the writer and b) most of it feeling like therapy on the part of the writer. Larry David’s work on both Curb and Seinfeld has brought me around on it; just because a thing can be done badly doesn’t necessarily mean it will be done badly.
Season Seven of Curb brings us to an absolutely bonkers concept: using one show to wrap up another. This isn’t completely without precedent – The X-Files wrapped up its own spinoff Millennium with an episode – but I think you can agree Curb goes into a lot more detail than anyone else has. There’s something very Larry David in how this season is somehow both an apology and non-apology for Seinfeld’s finale, with every character except Larry agreeing it was at best deeply flawed, and the story they discuss being much closer to the show’s ethos than the high concept of the actual finale.
And almost every actual example we see of the Seinfeld reunion drops the ethos of Curb for that of Seinfeld – even, remarkably, when we see the rehearsals and table reads. What gets me is that David drops character and relaxes, showing us his sincere reaction to the rehearsals – you can see him slip back into character when it’s necessary for the story, like his reactions to Cheryl and Virginia. The actual Seinfeld stuff is a sincere demonstration of how they’d do a Seinfeld reunion.
I also love how we get a bit of insight into David and Seinfeld’s creative process. One thing that amuses me is that the very first scene of Larry and Jerry together instantly – instantly – falls into the George and Jerry dynamic. On top of the famous repeating dialogue thing, Jerry has long symbolised success and confidence on Curb, like a spectre haunting Larry, and he instantly embodies that – Jerry’s relaxed, he’s comfortable with himself, and disinclined to either escalate a situation or let Larry delude himself.
As they discuss the show, we see their ease in bouncing off each other, suggesting ideas and sharing experiences they could feed into the show. We see Larry do dumb shit out in the real world, and then we see it happen in Seinfeld, even if through metaphor, and we hear a very familiar rhythm between them. Now, on the one hand, my life experiences aren’t nearly as weird or funny as David’s; on the other, it does make sense to me to feed my more banal observations and experiences into a work just to fill it out.
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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"Obi-Wan never told you about your father."
"I love you." / "I know."
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Department of
Conversation
What did we watch?
Get Christie Love!
This is the hour-and-change pilot to the TV show of the same name. I watched it because it’s referenced in Reservoir Dogs, with Mr Orange explaining this as the ‘Pam Grier show without Pam Grier’. I have not seen Foxy Brown and thus cannot compare on that level, but this does have a fascinating comparison to other 70s cop shows. The procedure is ludicrous even by those low standards; much of the process is a blur, and the goal of trying to flip a witness by digging for information to blackmail her seems counterintuitive. But the show has its moments. Christie starts off coming off as very childish and belligerent, but Teresa Graves reveals a sweet professionalism as she goes on, and has a great scene where she comforts the witness dying after a car chase.
The Seven-Ups – I was yesterday years old when I learned that there was a 70s car chase that was better than both the one in Bullitt and the one in French Connection, made by the same people. I really wonder why this is forgotten since the movie is better overall that Bullitt. But in the crowded market, I suppose there was room for only one sequel to French Connection. And with Roy Scheider basically playing the same role (and with the ex-cop his character was based on, Sonny Grosso, coming up with the story), this is basically a sequel of sorts. (A side-quel?) Also fits very well into the larger picture of 70s NYC cop movies and TV shows. Grimy and more expensive than Kojak, and also darker though not by a lot. Also love the use of the grimier side of the city. The funeral home is real and still in business.
Frasier, “You Scratch My Book”/”The One Where Sam Shows Up” – In the former, Frasier dates a gorgeous pop psychologist and is torn between his professional standards and his libido when she asks him to write the forward to her next book. Frasier of course does the right thing, which impresses the woman until he naturally overdoes it. Generally funny episode but you can see what has to happen. Shannon Tweed, Playboy model turned B movie queen and wife of Gene Simmons, is pretty good as the pop psychologist. In the latter, Ted Danson makes his final appearance in his first iconic role, arriving in Seattle after leaving his bride to be at the altar. But when Frasier fixes things up and the bride follows Sam, it turns out Frasier had a one night stand with her after the engagement started! A fun episode that recaptures the old buddy energy between Danson and Grammer (energy that worked despite a decades long estrangement), but that also changes how we see Sam. He is still the same handsome womanizer he always was, but in the contest of Frasier, he comes across as more of a troubled man, if never a loser. This one also has a funny little continuity patch to explain why Sam (and the rest of us) didn’t know Frasier’s dad was alive. Tea Leoni plays Sam’s intended.
M*A*S*H, “Mad Dogs and Servicemen” – Plot A has a soldier suffering from psychosomatic paralysis, and Hawkeye follows Sidney Freeman’s advice and refuses to coddle him. Plot B has Radar being bitten by a dog and facing a series of rabies shots. Both plots are resolved a bit too easily, but there is a lot of human emotion in both, especially in Margaret’s compassionate care for a feverish and drowsy Radar. (The script was co-written by Linda Bloodworth, who will in two seasons redefine Margaret forever in “The Nurses.”) This one introduces Rosie and her bar, and Radar’s menagerie.
Doctor Who, “The Mind Robbers,” parts 1 and 2 – In order to get the TARDIS out of a lava flow, the Doctor uses the “leave all of time and space” button and things get confusing. The visuals are solid and there is the nub of a great story here, but it’s also a bit slow and muddled. Plus we have the odd circumstance of a substitute Jamie while Frazier Hines was recovering from chickenpox.
NBA on ESPN, Nuggets vs. Celtics – A pretty good game though neither team was sharp. The Celts, missing two starters, hold on over a clearly hobbled Jokic.
I’m so glad to see more people picking up The Seven-Ups. Rewatched it again on Sunday in preparation for writing it up for Wednesday, and this time I dragged my wife into it so she could also rejoice in that car chase. The grimy ’70s New York of it all really is impeccable, and I’m so glad to learn that funeral home is still around.
The interesting thing is that a lot of the grimy NYC is still there (or it was before the pandemic). The Bronx, if it changes, changes slowly. The only thing that’s really missing is the graffiti.
The Seven-Ups is my wife’s favorite cop movie and is on pretty constant rotation at our chateau.
I think the coolest thing is how the filmmaker revisited Roy Scheider every seven years so we could see how his life changed over the decades. Very poignant when he ends up on SeaQuest.
(Also glad that someone else watched it since I was lamenting not making this dumb joke on Lauren’s post last week.)
Well, having visited Jupiter, the only place left to go was to sea.
I saw two episodes of SeaQuest. Was there ever a “bigger boat” gag on a show starting Scheider and produced by Spielberg?
Some great sets in Mind Robbers. I like the trippy production design and interesting direction in Troughton’s years. They are both consistently better than what many serials have in later years.
Ocean’s 11
Watched with a group, including one person who hadn’t seen it before. (Her reaction was, “I liked that a lot more than I expected to,” but I don’t know her well enough to ask why she didn’t expect to like it risking being obnoxious. I am wildly curious, though.) Anyway, beautiful Soderberghian cool here, and funny and (at least intermittently) lived-in, with a real sense of long-time partnership between Danny and Rusty and some textured history and fondness elsewhere, too. Carl Reiner was my MVP this time around.
The Shield, the rest of Season 4
More highlights and random comments, with overarching SERIES SPOILERS. Trying to avoid anything I’ve already talked about a thousand times:
– Lem’s exuberant glee at the Dutch-Billings fight is both infectious and adorable, and I love the whole Barn instantly devolving into a middle school cafeteria: “Fight! Fight!” I think that’s Shane trying to tell Billings not to pull Dutch’s hair, too. Vic breaking it up once actual punching starts is another nice touch.
– I love seeing the Strike Team in the aftermath of “Back in the Hole,” even if my heart can’t take knowing where it’s going. There’s such a relieved giddiness to 90% of their interactions in that last stretch of episodes, like their collective marriage was on the rocks but now they’re all renewing their vows. Shane keeps making corny puns, and everyone else keeps laughing at them, because they’re all just happy to be together, happy to be enjoying each other. The necessary counterpart to all this is Lem’s occasional bittersweetness–saying that maybe “this is just who [they] are,” him included, and there’s no course-correcting for it now, and privately telling Army he should take his chance and leave–but he lets it surface only rarely, because he’s mostly as delighted as everyone else. This is his family, and it’s back together.
– Further “my heart can’t take this” stuff: some terrific, affectionate Shane-Lem bits here, too, with Shane patting and holding a tense, adrenaline-shaky Lem in the aftermath of the shotgun fight and then the two of them play-tumbling like amiable puppies in the finale. There’s nothing they won’t do in this long, long friendship of theirs!
– This is one of The Goggins’s best seasons, which is saying something, and he’s fantastic at the almost transcendent peace that comes over Shane when he’s at his lowest (for now): his close-ups have rarely been more beautiful than when he’s closing his eyes in the face of Vic’s gun or making the call to kill Antwon and save the rest of them the trouble. And speaking of that first bit–an absolutely killer scene between him and Chiklis, and one of my favorites in the series–since I know that Ryan weighed the possibility of Vic killing Shane there, I’d love to pop over to a parallel universe and see how the rest of that version of The Shield shook out, especially if it went with the full, unshakeable moral weight of Vic pulling the trigger after he knows Shane doesn’t want to do the same, after Shane’s begged him for help. Big hit to the soul, potentially a lot harder for Vic to process than Terry’s murder. But how would it come back on him, and how would the consequences rebound into the future? Curse my lack of interdimensional travel!
– You know, sometimes I have complex moral musings, and sometimes I just think Aceveda arranging murders is hot and he should do it more often. I contain multitudes. (Sorry about how horny these write-ups often are, though.) But seriously, the Aceveda-Antwon scene is superb–two equally adept holders of power meeting, recognizing each other, and getting along just fine. If those two had somehow partnered up long-term, they could have ruled the world.
– Aceveda spends most of this season in a pretty dark place–it’s not that he’s working out his trauma with Sara, it’s that he’s gotten unstable enough to lash out at her outside of their arrangement (researching her other clients, demanding more of her time, and finally pushing against her limits until they break and he at last feels that, empathizing first-hand with the horror but knowing he’s come close to perpetrating it). Even his political power trips feel more vicious and personal. But he comes through–after that last scene with Sara, where, as Grant’s pointed out, he finally manages to sick something up, which he couldn’t before–and after that, he’s … well, not better, exactly. He still goes on to arrange a murder. But more himself, a David Aceveda who’s incorporated his experiences into his understanding and who finally has a hold on them instead of the other way around.
– So happy to have David Marciano around. His “beautiful mug,” per Babalugats, achieves its peak–up to this point–when he asks Claudette and Dutch out for drinks after they solve the car wash murder and keep him out of it … and they demur because at the moment, they’re feeling pretty contemptuous of him. The way the camera holds on his face right then, his happy relief crystallizing into recognition of what they think of him before moving on into acceptance: amazing.
– Dutch and Claudette’s little scene in the finale–“Someday you’ll understand”–is so adorable, and the perfect button for their relationship in a season where that went through a rocky period. (I also love Dutch immediately championing Claudette to Phillips.)
– Glenn Close is just in magnificent form here, so still and controlled so much of the time that the moments when that self-possession snaps into something rawer and rougher–when Army refuses the polygraph, when she finds out Aceveda made the deal for Antwon–are instantly alarming. But not, to her credit, as alarming as when she’s owning with complete control, as she does in the brutal interrogation scene with Antwon. (When she and Anthony Anderson square off against each other, it legitimately feels like two titans coming together, like the rest of us will not survive this.) And her glassy fragility at the end of the season, crying alone in the Farmington house she risked making into a home, sitting alone with her beer … painful but still regal. She also gets one of my favorite lines of the season: “I wish I wasn’t.”
It’s from the next episode, but this reminds me of one of my favorite It’s Always Sunny in Farmington posts.
I love how disappointed Shane looks in that last shot.
Me too, it makes the whole post. Looking back at the Barn, wistful for a time when Strike Team shenanigans did involve gay sex…
Big weekend for me.
True Confessions — In the immediate post-war era, Robert DeNiro is a golden boy priest in the L.A. diocese who has made the diocese financially successful via his connections to a corrupt developer (Charles Durning). Robert Duvall is his older brother, a hot-headed cop who years ago was on the pad for Durning and regrets it. When a girl gets killed, the situation becomes volatile. Kind of.
Years ago I took a screenwriting class and the guy teaching it said if your story and characters end in the same place they began, it’s not a movie, it’s a book. This isn’t quite that, but given that the screenplay was written by Joan Didion based on her husband’s novel, perhaps we are not surprised that it’s not a highly cinematic story. The conflicts are primarily internal and while well acted are rarely dramatized — DeNiro in particular is shown to be disaffected by the aclerical nature of his work, but we don’t really see anything making him that way. Good performances, some good scenes, but less than the sum of its parts.
Something Wild — I didn’t quite like this as much as everyone else does. I enjoyed it, but at multiple points the characters make decisions because they think things are a big deal that aren’t really that big a deal. And at the same time the story takes some half-steps that make things easier on the characters than they could be (such as Melanie Griffith’s mom knowing the score). Also, and I recognize this sound boorish to say, Griffith never really did much for me. Which is a problem when I need to believe all the things Jeff Daniels would go through to get a piece. That said, I did find the way the structure of the film morphs from one thing to another interesting, and it benefits from the last third of the movie being the best part with the introduction of Ray Liotta’s dangerous charisma.
Fly Me to the Moon — This was sold as a movie about NASA faking a moon landing as a backup plan in case the real landing didn’t come off, but that’s actually a pretty small part of it, introduced when the picture is already halfway over. It’s really a romantic comedy in which ad exec Scarlett Johansson has to convince NASA launch director Channing Tatum that public relations aren’t a distraction but are actually valuable to his mission, as Apollo has become less popular in the midst of a decade of political upheaval and Vietnam. And that stuff is all very charming. They have chemistry, both characters’ perspectives are reasonable, and it all works. When the fakin’ it subplot rears its head, the movie just dies. None of that stuff is funny or interesting, and it keeps Tatum out of the scene — romantic comedies are about the sparks between the leads, so when several sequences forcibly separate them, your movie loses its verve. It finally pays off, kind of, in the climax, but I bet the film would have been improved if that whole idea were excised and the picture climaxed with some sequence where Tatum had to embrace PR to get the mission off the ground.
“romantic comedies are about the sparks between the leads, so when several sequences forcibly separate them, your movie loses its verve” — this is an excellent observation and it’s making me think on the idea of structurally preventing this, like setting the movie on a boat or a train or some other space that requires closeness (the road trip of It Happened One Night maybe). Box yourself in in the first place to find ways to deal with separation and conflict (gotta have that third act) while keeping the sparks.
True Confessions, the book, which is sadly out of print, relies heavily on third person omniscience, almost going into streamof consciousness. making it a particularly thorny challenge for movie adaptation, and the narrative was expanded to give it more cinematic juice, to mixed results. I think it’s an OK movie but not a definitive L.A. historical crime romance (and still the best movie inspired by the Black Dahlia murder).
The Royal Tenenbaums – first time in quite a while and this remains mid-level Anderson for me, although his mid is still excellent. There is a lot going on here and while it all moves along beautifully it doesn’t have the structural snap of later stuff. It does have Hackman and Stiller at the end, not the famous line but the wordless look a scene later, and Anderson always entwines emotion and artifice (he doesn’t bury the first in the second or treat one as more important than the other, they are both necessary and meaningful) — the “Needle In The Hay” scene remains devastating and its precision in editing and song selection make it devastating. Sad and funny (“Can he tell time?” “Oh, my lord, no” — this is why Bill Murray exists) and oddly mean toward the Clash, who are tied to Eli Cash at his douchiest. But there is room for Cash at the end so maybe there is room for Clash as well.
No Way Out — apparently Richard Schickel wrote that an audience member arriving five minutes late and leaving five minutes early would get a better movie and woof was he right. Updating/remaking The Big Clock is an interesting idea, doing so in the world of DC politics is certainly a viable choice, the twist that No Way Out grafts in is in someway demanded by its updating but that does not make it any less stupid. And much worse is taking a movie that, whatever its faults, is zippy and ruthless in its two-day timeframe and stretching it to six months, the opening third of this is interminable and it is very easy for the the viewer to root for Gene Hackman to finally kill Sean Young already (Young is bad and her chemistry with Costner is nonexistent, it is a relief when she’s offed). The movie explicitly states Will Patton’s fixer is gay when the 50s original could only imply it and so what? It does nothing beyond state that, although Patton is best in show here it’s not like his character has any more depth than the original. And the remake trades Elsa Lanchester’s screwball artist and her clever extortions and off-kilter decisions — a character — for Iman’s roomate, a role that requires Iman to look pretty while being menaced and then being rescued. A real misfire.
Thief — in the mood for skilled professionals after No Way Out, was absolutely hooting and hollering thirty seconds in at those gorgeous rain-soaked streets courtesy of Donald E. Thorin. A fucking MOVIE. Noticed this time how Frank is a small business owner with his used car dealership and how the mechanics call him “boss” as he walks by, he’s so compromised right from the start. And as a diamond heister he requires a middleman, moreso than a guy stealing cash, he was always at risk of the spot he’s put in at the start of the movie. None of this is to blame Frank, just that there is no way to be in the world untouched. Frank knows that (the quiet but unmistakable allusion to being gang-raped in prison) and maybe he’s created a real world face to counter that, the forceful charisma and defiance that tells people to back off or get hurt. But that face will only take you so far, and then the other face comes out.
The fact that I read this and can’t immediately go rewatch Thief is causing me physical pain.
Sometimes you just have to be the obvious mark Criterion knows you are. Putting that Michael Mann collection up like that right after I watch bad crime, what am I supposed to do here.
Clearly people named Donald E. should make fiction about professional criminals.
I tried to explain the plot to No Way Out to my wife and just kept tripping on things badly. So many moving parts but they don’t really move anywhere. And I somehow came to the odd conclusion that I would have rather seen a movie about Hackman and Fred Dalton Thompson trying to undermine each other in the name of the greater good than this mess.
Your last sentence is completely accurate and it speaks to the multiple trip-ups in adaptation here. The general idea of “what if we added politics?” is undercut immediately by the specifics of the politics, which the movie feints at but does not understand in the slightest (making the CIA quasi-heroic is another issue here). There is definitely a good idea of Hackman as DC politico Little Bill, a guy trying to create order and not being wrong to do so but having that tied to his own character flaws, and Thompson would be an excellent foil in this regard. But then you’re in a different movie.
although I haven’t read it, the novel that The Big Clock is based on has a lot of subplots that deal with politics in a Marxist sense.
Live Music – spent the whole weekend in the next city over watching various varieties of UK indie-rock. My beloved Dancer played back to back with the similarly excellent (but more high-energy Devo-style synth-punk) Cowtown on Saturday night and that was definitely my highlight, but there was also some excellent Superchunk-esque fuzz from Good Grief! and on Sunday things moved to the downstairs room of the same venue and the excellence continued, closing with the double-grunge-pop punch of Fightmilk and Cheerbleederz. Wish I wasn’t at work today but this was a great weekend!
Justified, S4 “This Bird Has Flown” – look, if you get out of jail, obtain a chunk of money and your big plan for the cash is to get into cockfighting then I’m just not really sure you’ve planned your life out very well. This season keeps delivering the pulpy thrills so far, having a good time.
Woooo live music! Excellent progression of band names from straightforward to enjoyably ridiculous as well.
Cheerbleederz looks like something from Homestar Runner.
Woooooo live indie music!!
Chicago (2002)
The night before the Oscars, I wanted to watch an Oscar winner. Good not great. The bad first. Rob Marshall is a bad director on a technical level. He is capable of getting good performances from his characters, but he is really bad at filming musical numbers. He is mostly saved by the decision, whether in the script or in the execution, to make the music numbers non-reality, representing character dynamics while we watch plot progression in the real world. That part was absolutely brilliant, and it makes the film worth watching. But Marshall can’t seem to hold a shot for more than 2 seconds, which is absolutely brutal.
I know Zeta-Jones and Zellweger are not career dancers (mistake number one), and it’s been a couple decades since I’ve seen it, but I remember being absolutely baffled when he films a dance number near the end without showing their feet.
I feel like Rob Marshall’s career is defined by learning all the wrong lessons from the success of Chicago. His strength is not in musical numbers, but that’s where he’s been ever since, with the occasional disaster of Memoirs of a Geisha or Pirates of the Caribbean 4. Have any of his musicals after Chicago been any good? Their reputations suggest no.
The Gorge – Stayed in an Airbnb where somebody had left their Apple+ account open, so time to catch up on what we’re missing! (Thirty seconds later) Not a whole lot!
They advertised the heck out of this one and annoyingly didn’t put it in theaters. It’s not a great loss to the vast population of non-Appleplused, but a project of this promise (two hot stars, mysterious monster, gorge, roadmap) should not be buried alongside… trying to think of another Apple+ movie. This is an often serviceable, sometimes dumb but rarely dull movie. The menace in the Gorge is a little different than I’d imagined, which is to say it’s a rip-off of a different type of creature than I thought it would rip off. Anya Taylor-Joy is always a welcome presence in a non-Mario movie and Miles Teller is a capable sack of meat. They’re both overqualified but game for it. If the film declined to copy/paste its third act “twist” (can a well-worn trope even be called a twist? It just feels like an inevitability) it would be even better. Gorge is the right feature – neat, but nobody’s going to go out of their way for it while canyons are available.
The 2025 True/False Film Festival – You’ll be hearing plenty about this later in the week.
The Oscars – Well, about 2/3rds of it. Yay Anora. Otherwise another squarely boring telecast in what could have been an explosive evening (a tribute to James Bond? Give me a fucking break). The entertainment industry giving an exhausted population a much-needed evening off from concerns of the world? Or leading the way in turning our nice soft bellies toward our fascist masters? Does it even matter anymore?
While Miles Teller is definitely a sack of meat, I draw the line at calling him capable. Guy’s mostly circus animals with some filler.
I realize now my perception of Teller is 95% his youthful, appealingly arrogant press tour during Whiplash, and 5% “oh yeah, he was one of the lead meatheads in Top Gun: Meathead.”
He plays drums here…which is what he’s best at???
I immediately clocked the James Bond thing as “Amazon gave the Academy a ton of money to put something together to highlight their newest acquisition.” It feels even worse looking at it through that lens. Shout out to No Other Land. I wish we got an angry Gal Godot reaction shot. That would have been enjoyable.
And No Other Land has no distributor in the United States, while Bond movies get a ten-minute advertisement when there isn’t even a new movie scheduled.
FRIDAY
Gene Hackman tribute night!
Heartbreakers
Probably not one of the more highly regarded Gene Hackman films. But! David Mirkin wrote and directed it, so how bad can it be? Roger Ebert even gave it three stars.
If you’re not familiar with it, Sigourney Weaver and Jennifer Love Hewitt play a mother-daughter con artist team, whose scheme involves Weaver seducing and marrying a man and Hewitt then getting him into a compromising position as grounds for divorce. It’s worked pretty well so far, with their latest victim being Ray Liotta’s chop-shop owner. Hewitt’s Page wants to go it alone, so Weaver’s Max convinces her to go for one last score that will set them up for life, so they head to Palm Beach to look for their mark.
Max chooses Gene Hackman’s William B. Tensy, a wealthy, elderly tobacco magnate who is constantly smoking, constantly coughing, and thinks everyone else should be smoking more or less all the time too (children and pets included, if the movie is any indicator). While that’s going on, Page starts her own con on Jason Lee’s beachfront bartender when she learns he owns the bar and is getting multi-million dollar offers to sell for the valuable real estate. Many, many complications ensue.
The movie runs a little long but it’s all in all pretty funny, with some definite side bits of Mirkin-type weirdness that really help carry it along. Hackman is great, of course (Ebert said he plays Tensy as W.C. Fields). There are a lot of early roles for people you’ll recognize, like Sarah Silverman and Zach Galifianakis as Lee’s co-worker buddies. Michael Hitchcock of every sitcom in the 2010s shows up at one point. Patricia Belcher plays a hotel maid; she’s HR’s Janet in Better Off Ted, the judge in Sunny’s “The World Series Defense,” the superintendent in A.P. Bio, and perhaps most notably, the cafeteria lady from the Community pilot. (“Were you conditioned to pay for your damn tacos, Seinfield?”) Also, Nora Dunn and Kevin Nealon show up in minor roles, and that’s Ricky Jay as the auctioneer.
Anyway, it’s a touch over two hours, but it’s funny in its character quirks and interactions and has some very good bits as well as some stranger asides and bits that could only come from the mind of David Mirkin or someone like him. I had a good time.
The Royal Tenenbaums
There’s a lot I could comment on: How you can see the seeds of some of his later work like Grand Budapest Hotel and Moonrise Kingdom here. How the kids’ adult fashions being stuck in the 70s reflect them being stunted in their own ways. How the only two pop/rock songs to appear in the movie that aren’t from the 60s or 70s are “Needle in the Hay” and “Rock the Casbah” and what that implies, particularly the latter one (don’t become a cokehead, because cocaine leads to the 80s).
But instead, I’ll just say:
“I’ve had a rough year, Dad.”
That’s it, that’s the whole movie right there.
SATURDAY
Animal Control, “Party Animals”
Fiona breaks up with both Frank and Victoria right before heading to Paris, so they decide to get their revenge by throwing a rager at her house, and very poorly disguising that from Emily. Shred and Patel are primed to have a boys night, and then Shred talks Patel into letting their squatter / his roommate Parker hang, and then Parker talks them into going to the party, too. Some wild party-related stuff happens here that’s pretty fun, and it seems even more evident that some kind of thing between Frank and Victoria is bubbling under the surface (especially since, despite their age gap, as Fiona says, they’re similarly immature). Fun stuff.
Abbott Elementary, “100th Day of School”
The cold open is pretty inspired, with Jacob trying to help his class learn Spanish through telenovelas. It’s pretty funny, too.
Otherwise, not a particularly memorable episode. O’Shon is thinking of asking Ava out, so Janine and Gregory try to coach him on how to do it right. This is pretty annoying, probably because it’s obvious from the jump that they’re the last two people who should be giving dating advice to anybody. But that makes it that much funnier when O’Shon completely blows them off and does it his way.
Some good sight gags with Barbara’s fear-of-aging makeover, and a few other good bits and details here and there, but mostly I don’t have so much to say.
SUNDAY
Going Dutch, “Trial of Jan”
Patrick’s attempt to instill more discipline and love of work in his base butts up against Dutch labor laws, and after he targets Jan for firing, he has to demonstrate to a mediator that this latest incident was his fault. Eventually, Maggie takes up Jan’s defense case. One of the better episodes so far, as the case’s twists are pretty well plotted, and there are a lot of strange, funny moments (many of which, as they so often do, involve Papadakis).
I really like the observation of Tenenbaums as forerunner of Moonrise and Budapest, both of which I’d put as superior. Budapest has a stronger central figure (absolutely no shade on Hackman, who is wonderful, but Fiennes is one of the best performances of the past 20 years) and Moonrise’ kids are actually kids — again, no shade on the siblings of Tenenbaums but I think Anderson is strongest with actual young people while still being very strong with no-longer-young people in arrested development.
Even reading that Tenenbaums line makes me tear up.
Also, you’ve sold me on Heartbreakers.
Heartbreakers is fun! It doesn’t quite move into the top tier of silly midbudget comedies, but it really is funnier than you’d expect it to be by all rights, especially at a time when there was just a sea of garbage comedies trying to do There’s Something About Mary / American Pie crudeness without any of the wit or charm.
“It’s Seinfeld!”
I saw Heartbreakers on a plane and didn’t much care for it, although IIRC it was my third movie of the flight. The thing I remember most about it was that, you know how sometimes if you view a computer screen at a weird angle some of the colors can warp? Well, the precise angle this screen was at made it extremely clear that the top third of all Jennifer Love Hewitt’s blouses had been added by CGI to cover up her décolletage, and I wondered if it was like that in the theatrical version or if the bowdlerization had been done only to the in-flight cut.
Well, I don’t know if I saw the theater version, but as I recall, I didn’t notice anything like that. (Or, I guess more accurately would be to recount what I did notice.) And, I mean, it would make more sense if they were out, so to speak – the whole plot is her and Weaver seducing men!
Smile 2. After reading Lauren’s review in which she kinda hated/kinda liked the first Smile movie I suggested it to my wife and we both watched it. We enjoyed it enough to watch the sequel and (spoilers) I liked it. I liked it a lot. The main selling points are: 1) A lot more smiles and 2) The lead performance by Naomi Scott. She really throws herself into the roll, she can sing, she can dance, she can act, but most importantly, she can smile. It’s on Paramount plus.
Götterdämmerung, through act 2 and the start of act 3. I’m so close to the end. Gonna wait till I finish to go in depth.
But Hagen and his vassals in act 3 give off real fascist vibes. I assume this is intentional in the 1980 production. And of course from 1933-1945 I don’t think would explicitly make this connection. In 1880 there were right wing militias but they were still only proto-fascist. (I’d say even only proto-proto-fascist; and then you got proto-fascist militias in the run up to wwi and actual fascist militias after). I’m not sure to what extent Wagner meant to evoke them. (Wagner’s politics and antisemitism are apparently hotly contested among Wagner scholars). I kinda wonder how Hitler could watch Hagen assemble an army of brown shirts and come away without ant self-reflection, but then I remember how much modern fascists love the matrix, star wars, and even cut songs from Disney’s aladdin. The thing is they’re idiots.
A 16 hour ring cycle movie would be intensely anti-commercial. Someone should do it though. Much like how the USSR bankrolled Bondarchuk’s war and peace after being embarrassed that the Fonda-Hepburn war and peace was a success, they should have then bankrolled an even more enormous production of the western european canon. They didn’t, so now China should. Can you imagine how angry the American right would be with a $300 Million chinese Wagner adaptation?
Alternatively, hear me out: Netflix. The characters are already singing what they’re doing, which Netflix wants in their productions. But you would need a really high quality english verse translation.
The joke is that Gotterdamerung is the best one because Wagner abandoned all his academic principles of what opera should be and just wrote the best thing he could.
Early in COVID the Met was making one opera from the archive free to stream every few days, and they did the 2010’s Ring at one point. It’s a weird production, based on a giant rotating set of planks or columns that are sometimes the floor, sometimes the background, and sometimes a prop. I found it interesting even if not entirely successful, but I ended up watching the entire Ring over several days, so it can be done!
What I really want to see is a full traditional staging. I want horses and goats; horned helmets and breastplates. Live, trained birds. Real trees. Real fire. An actual dragon.
What did we play?
Mad Max – slowly taking back control of the wasteland! This continues to be a good time and an easy way to relax and accidentally lose multiple hours. Enjoying the way the various car upgrades really feel like they make a difference, and I’m not sure I’ll ever get bored of blowing shit up when the explosions are this satisfying. This seems to have had mixed reviews when it came out but has found a cult following since, I guess maybe it lacks depth compared to some of the other post-apocalyptic open world games but I haven’t played those and also I love the Miller-approved world-building (this game features the first appearance of Scrotus!) so I can’t see myself souring on this really.
Donut County – I have been trying to introduce the 8 year old to games through Princess Peach: Showtime and Super Mario Wonder, but the fact that they have a fail state means her lack of coordination leads to frustration. So I went with something different this weekend. We started Donut County, a game without a fail state and whose main purpose is trying to do the funniest stuff possible. Massive success. She’s not good at the game, or at least she isn’t with a controller on Switch, but that leads to a lot of humor as my frustration with her play never boils over but instead is channeled into half-joking complaining. It felt legitimately great to have this experience with her. I don’t know what we’re gonna play after this, but we have this for a few weeks, which is awesome.
Beat my first playthrough of Civilization VII. I wasn’t planning or intending to win a military victory, but then four countries declared war on me simultaneously, and I had a big treasury and a tech advantage, so I bought a bunch of troops and bombers and made them pay for that. I guess all of my city conquest accelerated my production enough to get Operation Ivy completed after settling the last of those wars.
Tried to play Ender Lilies: Quietus of the Knights while looking for a new Metroidvania, but the first boss was pretty ridiculous compared to the limited controls and powers you have when facing it. I’m reconsidering this plan, though I’ll probably end up trying again at some point.
Golden Axe III – Sega Genesis Classics on Steam
After making it two thirds through the game on Switch and running out of continues, I opted to switch to the PC version I also own, since it’s far, far easier to pull off the level select code there than on Switch controls. Once I pulled it off, I saved the state and beat the rest of the game. The final third of the game might be the best stretch of the whole trilogy, as you hop a ride on the back of a giant eagle to the bad guy’s castle, where you get a rematch with the half-man/half-eagle guy in front of the gates, then go into the castle. The castle itself finds into the problem every Golden Axe game has, where the levels are simply one straight corridor with nothing to it, though this one does end with a great-looking background and a proper boss fight (and a much fairer one than the final bosses from the previous games). Makes me appreciate the layouts in Sega’s sister series Streets of Rage so much more.
It’s funny how this game got blasted as more of the same on the Western press when it came out but on this run-through this one was the best for me by a considerable margin. To the point that you could feasible only play this one and get the full Golden Axe experience on consoles. I dug this series overall, though it’s far from excellent. If anything, I’d love it if they made another one now, taking what really worked in the Genesis games and the strides made in modern beat ’em up. There is one new game in the works, though this one will be a 3D game unlike the 2D originals. Looking forward to it anyway.
R.I.P. Joseph Wambaugh—Before Wambaugh, the role of the police in the urban crime story was primarily focused on forensic investigation and analysis. Sure, the main protagonists may have had a few eccentricities and neuroses, but the primary narrative thrust focused on solving crimes and catching crooks. Beginning with the 1969 publication of The New Centurions, a book chronicling the activities of patrol cops on the wild and wooly streets of Los Angeles, the field of crime fiction began allowing for a more picaresque, multifaceted approach to depicting law enforcement, masculinity, and the prevalence of mundane, petty offences clogging the criminal justice system. Over time, this picaresque depiction of crime and the men charged with containing it metastasized into a darker, Kafkaesque vision of a system whose systemic legalism undermined the very people it was designed to protect, not to mention the protectors themselves.
Wambaugh always knew that he wanted to be a writer, but raised as a pragmatist, he worked at other jobs to support himself while earning an English degree at night school. Following his time in the military, one of those jobs was that of a police officer, an occupation that defined the subject matter of all of his work. Through college, as he told T. Jefferson Parker during a public interview in 2023, he read Joseph Heller’s Catch 22, which introduced him to an epic absurdist worldview exploring how institutionalized systems of control, often predicated on the use of violence to achieve order, created absurdist paradoxes that drove and normalized anti-social behavior and eventually crushed those with the sensitivity to identify the contradictions in those institutions. While labelled a ”realist” due to his gritty, and bawdy depiction of cop life, both on and off the beat (Most famously in 1973’s The Choirboys), Wambaugh often offered up a surreal superstructure operating behind the action, describing a specific type of insanity that was an inherent part of criminal justice.
This theme culminated in what is probably Wambaugh’s best remembered effort, 1975’s The Onion Field, which painstakingly described the kidnapping and murder of two police officers, and the prolonged legal aftermath of the perpetrator’s trial. In this, the first of five non-fiction works Wambaugh unsentimentally, yet sympathetically, chronicled the psychological toll of the crime, and the labyrinthian path the case took before its closure. He also produced the 1979 film adaptation of the book, advancing his increased involvement, beginning with his co-producing and consulting role for the TV series Police Story, an anthology show depicting the public and private lives of police officers across the professional spectrum.
After a long period of trying to master procedural novels and other aspects of policing off the urban beat (most notably on subjects ranging from patrolling the U.S.-Mexican border to DNA analysis), Wambaugh returned to the L.A.P.D, in Hollywood Crows, with a series about the L.A.P.D,’s Hollywood substation, and the eccentric, diverse, and dedicated officers confronting the weirdness of the city’s most metanymic borough. The quartet felt like a reconciliation between the author’s persona as a picaresque teller of police anecdotes and as a media celebrity, and served as a fitting capstone for a long career. It is often said that cops make the best storytellers, and Wambaugh was one of the best.
My grandpa had a copy of Police Story on DVD. Sounds like quite a guy.
I have the first season. Not only do the stories focus on different departments and hierarchies within the L.A.P.D., they are very character centered. It’s even better than the Rockford Files in capturing the look of LA at the time it was filmed
I’ve only read The Choirboys and did not clock the Catch-22 influence, that makes so much sense now. He definitely had a real sense of escalating violent absurdism and focusing that at the “local” level of cops as opposed to wartime bridges the gap between those settings in uncomfortable ways.
I firststerted reading Wambaugh in high school but wasn’t able to distinguish the dark, M*A*S*H like dark humor of the off-hours stuff he describes from the really grim stuff his characters encounter from the job. Wambaugh’s major development in crime fiction lay in depicting the sociological conditioning behind an absurdist, existential perception of police officers.
Hey, should we start trying to get interest cooking for our next Happy Hour?
Also great is how the show comments on this directly: Larry steps in to play George and despite his protests that he IS George, it ends up feeling so very wrong.
And hilariously, he’s just copying Alexander’s mannerisms (quite badly!).
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. 4th: Lauren James: The Most Dangerous Game
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. 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
I’ll call The Sixth Sense for April 28th, please!