The Friday Article Roundup
Tis the season for the best pop culture writing of the week.
This week, yule enjoy:
Don’t wait for the holidays to gift the FAR! Send articles throughout the next week to magpiesmedia [at] gmail, post articles from the past week below for discussion and Have a Happy Friday!
At Screen Slate, Justin LaLiberty looks back on that Christmas classic, Batman Returns:
In a 1992 episode of NBC’s A Closer Look, Faith Daniels interviewed kids who had seen Batman Returns. One of them called it “an attack on children” and another remarked, “I’ve never been scared of a movie like this before.” The popular McDonald’s tie-in campaign was also criticized for luring children to a movie that wasn’t intended for them. The kneejerk response would be to look at this reaction as a precursor to the Satanic Panic that took hold of the ‘90s, with audiences fearing that a latex-clad superhero and fast food mash-up was aimed at indoctrinating kids into developing leather fetishes and terrorizing cities. But what’s most impressive about Burton’s sequel over three decades later is just how potent and pervasive its kinky sexuality and madcap terror truly is.
Bill Ryan looks at C.S. Forester’s grim crime novel Payment Deferred in Mythaxis:
The novel is quietly morally grotesque, and not just in how quickly and easily its protagonist resorts to murder. He does not experience guilt, or if he does he has kind of sublimated that into a paranoid drive for self-preservation. This can be read as guilt: they can never know what I have done, because deep down I know that what I have done is bad. But it could also be: they can never know what I have done, because for some reason they think what I’ve done matters. Either one could be the case with [protagonist William] Marble, but his indifference over his sister’s death suggests guilt is an unfamiliar emotion, and a later reaction to what should be a more emotionally shattering death reads on Marble as just another burden to be gotten through.
Caro Alt considers differing musical perspectives on the Southern Loser:
Isbell and Lenderman agree on some aspects of Southern Losers. They both sing about men they recognize from home who are motivated by flat narcissism, who inflict pinching cruelty when they can. Obtuse men who are resilient in their obtuseness. Their Southern Losers are terrible and will run you off the damn road because they’re bored. Where they differ is what particularly disgusts them about these men. Isbell imagines these Losers as men with an undercurrent of violence running through them and is disgusted by it. Lenderman, however, identifies Losers by their disgusting, never-ending, self-inflicted loneliness.
For the LA Review Of Books, David Shipko muses on the nature of Helldivers 2’s satire:
There is thus a lot of evidence to support the game’s reception as satire, but there are also compelling reasons to question satire’s contemporary function, particularly in this game. Rather than ensuring its critical impact, the satire in Helldivers 2 actually enables unrepentant enjoyment, providing enough distance for players to feel separated from the fascist imperialism into which they have enthusiastically enlisted. This produces a mode of identification-through-disidentification that Mark Fisher has described as “postmodern fascism,” whose strategy of disavowal is “to refuse the identification while pursuing the political programme.”
And Caroline Siede revisits Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon as a different kind of action film:
Romance is traditionally a “woman’s genre.” There’s no need to explain why a woman exists in a romantic movie. It’s not notable when she’s surrounded by other women. And the idea of exploring her motivations, desires, and emotions is the very basis of the genre. It’s male-led romances like What Women Want and Hitch that need to thematically justify why men are at their center. It’s taken as a given that women deserve to be there. And that’s the quality that makes Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon so unique. Rather than an action movie with romance, Crouching Tiger is a romance with action. And that slight shift turns the entire energy of the film on its axis.
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More articles by Dave Shutton
The Friday Article Roundup
There's still time to experience the best pop culture writing of the week.
Double Features
Family heirlooms loom large in Father Mother Sister Brother and Vulcanizadora.
Double Features
Moving in time with One Battle After Another and Caught By The Tides.
Department of
Conversation
I think I forgot to share these at any point, but here’s two NYT pieces from the last month covering artists you may be interested in (and that I am, although admittedly I haven’t finished reading the first piece here):
A longer profile of Sarah Sherman / “Sarah Squirm,” now on SNL for a few years, who released a new special on HBO earlier this month: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/12/08/style/sarah-sherman-squirm-hbo.html
And a brief little Q&A with Slick Rick: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/12/13/arts/music/slick-rick-la-di-da-di-anniversary.html
Also from the NYT (this is not a full endorsement, we swear), jere’s a NYT breakdown of the MPAA rules against the F-word (better known as fuck) in movies, with its impact being defended by august men of letters like Tony Kushner and the guy who directed Billy Madison:
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2025/12/19/arts/swearing-pg13-r-rating.html
Screenwriters bat around ideas in competition for the funniest or most dramatic deployment. Actors angle to be the one to say it; fans delight in tracking it. In test screenings, filmmakers note which utterance gets the biggest laugh. “You typically have a handful of options and then you pick the horse you want to ride to the finish line,” said Rawson Marshall Thurber, the director of “Dodgeball” and other PG-13 comedies.
Point of fact– Tamra Davis directed Billy Madison; Tim Herlihy co-wrote it with Adam Sandler.
What did we watch?
M*A*S*H, Season Three, Episode Seven, “Check-Up”
“Officers will examine themselves and vice versa in private.”
“I’ll do you. I’m used to autopsies.”
This is where Trapper discovers he has an ulcer and initially thinks he’s getting out of the army, only to get bad news and told he can either transfer or stay (he chooses to stay). I feel like this has some impact lessened by the fact that he actually does leave at the end of this season, though of course the producers couldn’t possibly know that. But there’s still some meaning here; Hawkeye’s ode to him early on and, most canny, the decision to have us see Trapper learn he’s not going home before he goes out to the party, giving us a very little suspense thing as he soaks up everyone’s feelings about him before dropping the bomb.
Favourite scene in the episode: Frank’s delight at losing Trapper, meaning he’ and Margaret will have one up on Hawkeye (which he expresses with the show’s typical wordplay). I’m also amused that Trapper is initially wary of being treated in the camp specifically because he knows what the conditions of the campe are like.
“Macintyre refuses to take his clothes off!”
“Well not everyone is Major Houlihan.”
“Which is a relief to us all!”
“There is no room in this tent for perverts!”
“Should we all leave alphabetically?”
Babylon 5, Season Three, Episode Nineteen, “Grey 17 is Missing”
This was kind of a dull episode; the two central plots are a slightly dumb mystery about a missing level of the station (which this show can’t and doesn’t pull off) that gives way to Robert Englund babbling philosophy; it’s not quite on the level of Windom Earle babbling about nothing in his last scene with Ted on Twin Peaks, but it comes close – although the philosophy Englund espouses is another expression of Straczynski’s ‘we are all one, we are the universe observing itself’ mysticism. Given that Straczynski wrote every episode bar one from this season on, it feels simultaneously like a logical extension of his process, an honest observation of his creative process, and a bit of a cheat.
Franklin going through withdrawal is a great beat. Very funny to have him explain that with stims, it kicks in later – it feels like Straczynski covering his ass over a writing error (this is 100% something I would do).
Watching Garibaldi and Zack Allen play with a revolver like it’s a toy is ludicrous in a way I’m not entirely sure either Straczynski or the actors intended.
Normally I hate people using language to bullshit their way into something they want to do anyway, but it’s funny when Lennier does it, and also honestly part of his character. Lennier also saves the boring Minbari Warrior Caste plot with his pithy observation afterwards; one I disagree with, but is nonetheless interesting.
Lol, you finally met THE ZARG! What a fucking joke, as you note the whole episode is pretty dopey but the show has built up enough goodwill in the alien department to sell the idea of “most dangerous creature in the galaxy” as a real threat and likely a uniquely weird one (like those parasites from earlier) — no, it’s a fucking guy in a suit going GRAAAGH. So stupid, at least it has given the Shutton household a fun reference for grumpy stumbling around in the pre-coffee morning.
Twelfth Night – The 2025 production at the newly renovated Delacorte Theater directed by Saheem Ali was filmed for Great Performances, and is still streaming for free at the PBS website till Wednesday. If you are a fan of (more or less) contemporary clothes and somewhat reworked Shakespeare with good actors, it’s worth your two hours. I didn’t love all the innovations, but many work, and we must always remind ourselves that Shakespeare plays have always changed with the times and the audiences. The cast has a lot of familiar names if you watch the right TV shows, and unsurprisingly the best performances are from Lupita Nyong’o as Viola (with her brother in the smaller part of her brother Sebastian) and Peter Dinklage having too good a time as Malvolio. The PBS production has a few odd choices in what camera angles it uses and some sound glitches, but I think by now the people at GP know what they are doing.
And the play…it turns out that pretty much every issue I had is in the play itself. Especially how Malvolio goes from being the Sideshow Bob of the play – my wife pointed out that Dinklage is funny because the schlub’s got dignity – to a tragic and abused victim whose desire for revenge feels right. It’s a strange turn that collides with the general cheeriness of the happy endings for most. I thought this when I saw the production in Central Park with Christopher Lloyd about 20 years ago, and I think it even more now. And the rest of it is…well, if you accept that some unknown foreigner who just washed ashore can become a duke’s closest aide with ease, and also that he is a she, everything else lines up reasonably well. But this is not top tier Bard, and Toby Belch forever feels like what my wife called “dollar store Falstaff.”
The Practice, “The Deal” – The journey into serialized absurdity starts with both Michael Emerson starting to stalk Lindsey and Bruce Davison killing his ex-boss in front of Ellenor and Jimmy. At least Emerson is compelling. But all this starts to overshadow the main story: Bobby’s current client may or may not have kidnapped a little girl, but definitely knows where she is, and plays hardball to the nth degree on cutting a deal in time to save the girl. So Bobby lies to him to force his hand. It’s harsh, and made harsher by Eugene utterly refusing to put the girl’s life ahead of even this scumbag. Dakota Johnson (maybe age 6) makes a tiny appearance as the girl.
“my wife pointed out that Dinklage is funny because the schlub’s got dignity” — superb reference to drop, you married a keeper.
What did we read?
The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York, Robert Caro
Incredible stuff; my book of the year. Nath’s Discord is now filled with me, Conor, and Lauren getting into a fannish heat over the life of a New York Parks Commissioner – this is an epic tragedy, complete with rise and fall. Robert Moses’s central tragedy is that he’s a creative, and in particular a creative park designer; I marvelled at his Stalinist work routine, even as it horrified me.
What got me was the audaciousness of his cruelty and sadism; one particular turn in the book – which Lauren said was the one thing she’d keep long after forgetting any other aspect – was the reveal that, when building a certain parkway, Moses had actually designed it to prevent busses from getting onto it, something that would take decades and much money to ever change. The cruelty of this! The pointless cruelty! But also, the vision this requires! To know people would try and use a parkway to transport poor people, and to prevent that early on.
It’s also the story of a reformer ‘made good’, so to speak; I marvel also at how Moses learned quickly from his early failures, switching to realpolitik in order to Get Things Done, as the book repeatedly puts it. Caro has an eye for novelistic details; the ‘Becoming What I Beheld’ idea is an intoxicating one, and he betrays every principle he had to get parks (and later, highways) built.
This is also the story of New York, and it’s shocking how much Moses individually influenced it; in fact, it puts a human spin on the old ‘City Hall trashing through a small community’ cliche, with the horrific image of Moses surrounded by yes-men amusing simply because I don’t know how someone could unironically do it now. Caro goes into detail about communities Moses wouldn’t have given two fucks about; these sad little people who have their lives at the whims of a man fully disconnected from reality at that point.
Moses’s weak point is his ego; there’s an amusing (and horrifying) turn when he tries running for election and implodes immediately because he can’t take criticism, and ultimately, this is what fucks him over, as his real personality comes visible to any New Yorker who cares to notice. This is a tragedy up there with Macbeth or The Shield, and even informs them all with its specific details (it makes me notice that, for all his faults, Vic wasn’t stupid enough to enter a professional field he had no knowledge in).
The Girl With All The Gifts, MR Carey
I spent the entirety of this book thinking it was an alright (if deeply cliched) cheesy scifi thriller. The characters have real arcs and relationships, the plot kept moving, and I cared when they started getting picked off, but it has kind of an annoying dick-swinging energy and is overloaded with exposition. But then I got to the last ten pages and they owned hard. Recommend, with the proviso that you’ll probably enjoy it best if you go in knowing nothing at all about it.
The boyfriend gave me this book to read, and we ended up watching the movie as well. It oversimplified the story a bit, and they (who is a trained biologist and enthuses over every bit of fungi we walk past) were deeply pissed at the representation of the fungi as a kind of grasping vine and potato, but it has an amazing performance by Glenn Close.
Killshot, Elmore Leonard
Another straightforward Leonard. This time, I obviously considered Leonard’s style in light of Lauren saying Justified took his ideas far enough to make her question Leonard; I would say that the show improved upon his aesthetic by virtue of the nature of TV making the plotting faster and more intense, which makes the characters stranger and more vivid and gives the sense of saying something even though, technically, it says no more than he does.
What attracts me to Leonard is that all his stories essentially capture the feeling of shooting the shit with your coworkers; his stories feel like breezy anecdotes with what ZODIAC MOTHERFUCKER referred to as REDLINE SPIKES OF OWNAGE. This is deeply pleasurable to me and I wish there were more Leonards operating in genre, but I can see how Justified goes somewhere more interesting.
8 Bit Theater, Strips 0450-0480, Brian Clevinger
Really great strip where Black Mage immediately clocks that Black Belt has mistaken a volcano for the dojo where he trained and studied, and BB takes his points increasingly philosophically, driving BM into a rage which can only be expressed through violence.
Great gag where BB and WM are discussing the possibility they’re not actually the real LW while RM is dying in the background (“Our weapons are useless, reliance upon them is death!”). This is a classic example of a ‘real’ plot to which the jokes are reactions; I also like that the further a character is pushed into the background, the less personality their lines are given. It’s an oddly funny idea.
Perfect, brilliant gag where the characters need to cross a large firey gap, so they throw RM to one end, get BB to hold the other end, and climb across. Then they wonder how BB will get across, which he achieves, despite the fact that they took the rope down on the other end (“But I don’t think HE knew that.”).
Absolutely beautiful joke where King Steve turns out to be a Stevebot, and when he explodes, King Steve comes along and talks about something he shouldn’t know about, including the fact that he shouldn’t know about it. This and the BB joke just above are perfect examples of a character being so stupid they warp reality itself through sheer belief; I’d say this is the point where the gags are folding in on themselves a la the way Always Sunny self-references compound upon themselves until they explode.
“You know, cutting off the only means of escape constitutes a fire hazard. Probably doubly so since that’s a circle of fire.”
This also has two legitimately serious moments – Black Belt dies, and as a result, Fighter legitimately solves the philosophical conundrum from his school days. Black Belt’s death is followed up after the fight by a strip which is hilarious specifically because both sides are understandable; BM rightly points out everything wrong with BB from a narrative perspective (which is presumably why Clevinger killed him off), whilst all the other characters talk about BB’s death as if he were a real person being mourned. This comprehension of the seriousness of a situation – both the preciousness of life and the absurdity of applying that to an 8 bit cartoon – are why this comic is so funny.
There’s another fantastic example of this when RM starts explaining his plan to save the day and then discovers a crucial element is impossible – he needs the bag of holding, but Thief has it and has fled already. It’s a moment that would show up in The Shield.
Very Simpsons-esque joke when Thief hands RM the bag of holding (filled with Thief’s riches), tells him to be careful, RM simply says “They’ll be preserved, I assure you,” and Thief replies “What an odd statement. But my concerns are put to rest by it.”
A line I have stolen many times: “Far from it. Or, more accurately, yes. But this is unrelated.”
King Steve strips are perfect comedy – everything King Steve says is insane, but everything Right Hand Man Gary says is perfectly chosen as well (“Then explain these exit polls.” / “This… This is last week’s cafeteria menu, sir.”).
One of the most novelistic aspects of Robert Moses’s life is how his powerful creativity was slowly suborned to his overall drive for power: Jones Beach, for example, shows so many genuine, clever flashes of artistry and imagination, but as he moved from parks to parkways, that creative impulse–which was at least somewhat tied to thinking about other people and what they wanted as well as to appreciation of beauty, etc.–fell away, and it was just endless purpose and accomplishment that got more and more divorced from what it was all ostensibly for.
Absolutely my book of the year too. I love how it also works as an artistic portrait of Caro, too, and he emerges as a generous, fair, empathetic, detail-oriented writer fascinated by the business of power. One of my favorite writers.
You’re right, and it’s what makes his fall so infuriating – he didn’t need to do this! He didn’t need to fall into ego and lust for power! It’s part of what makes it so compulsively readable.
Someday I will read The Power Broker. But I have been living it my whole life. Thank god we didn’t have the Midtown Expressway foisted upon us.
MR Carey is of course one time comic book writer Mike Carey. I have no idea why he uses this slight alteration (especially since his middle initial is not R) but given that his most famous comic is the Lucifer spinoff from Sandman, maybe he’s better off putting more distance. (I read his short lived Felix Castor supernatural mystery novel series some time back and recommend it.)
I don’t believe I read Gifts but I watched the movie and the ending is great — I think a lot of works in this realm would not fully go there, but Carey does. I haven’t been super into the novels I’ve checked out from Carey but as Simon notes he wrote Lucifer and that is fully NOT OPTIONAL, especially for you — imagine a Vic Mackey who admits his evil but refuses to accept it, because the definer of evil is God and you have the title character.
Making my way through the aforementioned Inspector Rebus book, doing what it says on the tin as usual.
And started Double Take by Roy Huggins, which became his first screenplay, as mentioned earlier in the week.
Year of the Month update!
Here’s the movies, albums, books, TV, and games from 1985 for you to write about next January.
TBD: Ruck Cohlchez: Tim and/or Fables of the Reconstruction
Jan. 2nd: Gillian Nelson: Return to Oz
Jan. 5th: Tristan J. Nankervis: Rambo: First Blood Part II
Jan. 9th: Gillian Nelson: Advice on Lice
Jan. 16th: Gillian Nelson: The Wuzzles/The Gummi Bears
Jan. 19th: Tristan J. Nankervis: The Breakfast Club
Jan. 23rd: Gillian Nelson: The Golden Girls
And there’s still time to write about anything from 1948, like these movies, albums, and books.
Dec. 20th: Lauren James: The Lottery