The Friday Article Roundup
The top-rated media site provides you the week's highest-ranked pop culture writing.
This week, you will give your top ratings to:
What do you rate highly? Send articles throughout the next week to magpiesfar [at] gmail! Post articles from the past week in the comments for discussion, and have a Happy Friday!
At Aftermath, Chris Person examines why so IMDB rates so many classic movies between 6.3 and 7.6:
Part of this is that IMDb uses a 10 star system, which is wrong as hell and conceptually murky. I don’t think numerical ratings matter, but to the extent that they do, movies traditionally have existed on a 4-5 star/bucket of popcorn range, or occasionally two guys on TV giving thumbs up. It is harder to get consensus on what a ten scale means than a five scale, and simply multiplying a five scale by two does not convey comparable ideas. Three stars out of five does not read the same as 6/10 stars even if they are fractionally identical. Ten stars is conceptually absurd.
Craig Jenkins memorializes the always-seeking artistry of D’Angelo at Vulture:
D’Angelo was always grappling with the past — at Switzerland’s Montreux Jazz Festival in 2000, his performance of Brown Sugar’s smooth “Shit, Damn, Motherfucker” arrived at a beefy proto-metal space somewhere between Jimi Hendrix and Rage Against the Machine. But in his miraculous late-career resurgence, he was not just synthesizing soul history but almost confrontationally using it to speak for him. Footage from the years of appearances that lead up to the release of Black Messiah reveal some of D’Angelo’s most breathtaking performances. He didn’t always play much of his own music. Sitting in communion with his inspirations, after a taste of their triumph and tragedy, he taught us to appreciate his gifts and perseverance, not just his hits and abs.
At Time Magazine, Stephanie Zacharek pays tribute to Diane Keaton’s sense of style:
So many women growing up in the ’60s and ’70s were raised by mothers with specific ideas about how a lady should dress and comport herself: The shoes should match the handbag. Nylons are a must with all but the most casual outfits. Never leave the house without a clean hanky. In the face of that, Keaton’s off- and sometimes on-duty style represented limitless possibilities, and a previously incomprehensible kind of freedom. Today, nearly everyone is hip to the power of thrifting, but in the ’70s, mixing and matching used clothes made you part of a secret society, and Keaton was our clubhouse president. She turned slouchy tweed jackets into totems of offhanded glamor. She knew the power of a scarf, worn long and draped under a blazer or tied in a floppy bow under a high-buttoned collar. She wore socks with high heels.
Walter Chaw murders Mark Wahlberg and his portrayal of Parker in the “adaptation” Play Dirty at Film Freak Central:
This Parker, as played by vacuous wet wool sweater Mark Wahlberg, is a dead-eyed, humourless simpleton constantly wondering in the wordless, pleading way a goat asks for a field of milkweed. If the cadence of normal speech is iambic pentameter, make his an iambic dumb-asseter, all of short phrases ending in a mildly questioning tone, whether or not a question is being asked. The kind of cadence that develops when one becomes used to always needing to ask questions, and equally as used to not understanding the answers. You keep asking out of habit. You can tell by the blankness of his expression that he’s not expecting an answer he will understand. It’s like explaining physics to your dog.
Kenan Malik writes in The Observer about false distinctions between “high culture” and “working class”:
The old relationship of workers to the arts was shaped by collective organisations and movements that allowed ordinary people to enter a cultural world denied them by their class and education. Some were formal organisations such as choirs, brass bands, music clubs and libraries. And some were informal networks. The Welsh miner Robert Morgan, who later became a poet and printmaker, tells in his memoir My Lamp Still Burns of workers in his village regularly meeting at the home of one, Jeff, to listen to his collection of classical recordings. It liberated them from being “colliers doing menial and dangerous jobs in the bowels of the earth”, and turned them into “privileged human beings exposed to something extraordinary”.
And at The Reveal, Scott Tobias talks to Kevin Tighe about his career culminating in One Battle After Another, and what his life brought to the role:
KT: Not to get too involved in [the details of] Parkinson’s, but it is an interesting disease to deal with. One of the things that I have is, other than mild cognitive impairment, is horrible dreams, nightmares. I thought of this man with that in mind, as a repressed part of who we are. It becomes almost laughable and a little absurd, a character trapped in this carnival. He’s seemingly in charge and yet is he? Who is he, when all those [other Christmas Adventurers] leave?
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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
Nah, Chaw is wrong. Parker is written so far from the character that no actor would have been any good. Parker does not wisecrack.
Agreed, but the delightful pan of Wahlberg at his worst is what got the nod here.
Wrote this for Cul de sac of Blood: https://www.culdesacofblood.com/society
What Did We Watch?
Seinfeld – “The Parking Space” and “The Keys”, aka the end of season 3.
Loved “The Parking Space”, something I basically always love in comedy is a standoff where people start citing obscure “rules” that may or may not have any actual legitimacy as they take sides, all of the background characters weighing in on whether George or Mike had the right to a parking space was very funny.
Really enjoyed “The Keys” too, Jerry’s frustration with Kramer leads to the removal of his key privileges with many unforeseen consequences! Including Kramer going on a crazy hitchhiking adventure and guest-starring on a TV show. Can definitely feel like the show starting to expand a little this season, more ambition and weirder ideas, I’m all for it.
Private Detective 62 – Don’t ask me what the title refers to, since it’s never used in the movie and fits nothing in the plot other than “about a private detective.” William Powell is a Fed who gets caught trying to recover stolen documents from the French police and is sent home in disgrace. Desperate for work – it’s the Depression, after all – he ends up working with a shady private eye, one partnered with a mobster. Soon enough, Powell is asked to do one too many dirty deeds and helps the socialite he’s hired to spy on (and of course falls in love with). A lot happens in 72 minutes, but the various pieces are only held together by Powell’s effortless charm and the young Michael Curtiz’s emerging skill.
Frasier, “There’s Something About Dr. Mary” – When Roz goes on vacation, Frasier brings in a young woman from a job training program to fill in. Naturally, the woman takes over the show and Frasier is at loose ends in trying to take it back. Oh, and did I mention she’s a Black woman (Kim Coles)? And Frasier, full of liberal guilt and not someone with any Black friends, is scared to say anything because of this. I suppose I should give the writers of this very white show some credit for realizing what sort of world we’re in here, but this just does not work. It doesn’t work because “Dr. Mary” is a stereotyped sassy Black woman who speaks the truth in a folksy way. It definitely doesn’t work when Frasier, trying to show Niles how he thinks Mary would react, starts to imitate her (though he at least has the decency to be embarrassed). And it accidentally shows that Frasier’s advice as often as not is BS and maybe he shouldn’t have a show. Bizarrely, I didn’t cringe that much compared to “Frasier screws up his love life” episodes, maybe because if nothing else Frasier is aware how how looks. But I wonder if Coles gave any feedback about this to the staff since it’s painfully clear white men wrote it as well as acted in it.
The X-Files, “Jose Chung’s From Outer Space“
I love how many of the initial absurd details here–the startled aliens talking to each other in English, the imprisoned alien smoking a cigarette–actually, and unshowily, pay off within the plot and are consistent with it: as Scully says, they may never have complete closure on this case, but they have more than they sometimes get.
Probably my favorite comedy episode so far: Mulder’s yelp! Alex Trebek! Sweet potato pie! Bleep! Blaine’s desire to be abducted by aliens rather than look for another job! The playfulness extends to the visuals, from the iconic image of the Cigarette-Smoking Alien (rightly replicated on Chung’s book cover) to the opening where the power-company machinery is shot to look like the underside of a spaceship (which also brushes up against the multiple POV conceit of the episode). More seriously, and more poignantly, bits of the ending, with its look at the supporting cast continuing on, either deriving meaning from all this or rejecting it, also remind me of the generational and collective aspects of Taken. Lovely stuff appended on to all the funny stuff.
I have my usual complaints about Darin Morgan’s writing of Mulder–there’s a bit where Mulder leverages the possibility of prison rape against a suspect/abductee in a way that falls flat with an absolute thud: like bleep would he do that, and I don’t want to see him doing it even in a slippery POV/reality is a construct/memory is an illusion episode–but again, this does give us Mulder’s yelp, so there’s that.
Tales from the Crypt: Demon Knight
I’m in love with Billy Zane now. This is a blast in general–fun, gooey creature and gore effects; CCH Pounder saying “pussy”; wild reveals; hilariously epic and grandiose in-movie mythology about the origin of an apocalypse-unleashing key; a siege–but Zane steals the show with one of the most exuberantly, delightfully hammy performances I’ve ever seen. He’s a pitch-perfect old school comic book-style villain: colorful and ridiculous, but also genuinely threatening (the scene where he forces Jada Pinkett in the bathtub to wash the protective blood off her is a moment of straightforward, skin-crawling horror).
A+ visuals throughout, from Zane popping a sponge out of his mouth to the unnerving moment when the new Collector can’t board the bus at the end (which is also an excellent use of space and the rules the film has established). What a good time at the movies.
I don’t think I’ve ever seen a less-than enthusiastic review of Demon Knight. And while the Crypt-Keeper is always great to have around, he was grafted on here and I wonder if his presentation and presence in the title gives this a cheapo TV vibe for people unfamiliar with it, as opposed to the real Movie it is (Ernest Dickerson has a lot of fun here) and if that kept it from the acclaim it should’ve gotten.
Yeah, as much as I enjoy the Crypt-Keeper, I agree that it might have hit better as a pure standalone horror-fantasy without the branded framing. (The friend I watched this with theorized pretty much the same thing, that people were basically like, “We have Tales from the Crypt at home,” and didn’t want to pay to see it on the big screen; you’d hope the actual critics might be more perceptive, but clearly that hope was in vain in this case.)
It’s weird because the tone if not the plot of the story is very much in a Tales From The Crypt (jugular) vein, with Zane’s performance being exhibits A-Z. It’s not a bad conceit to link the two, but it winds up cheapening the appearance.
Yeah, Demon Knight was such a pleasant surprise. I never caught Zane’s golden 90s apart from Twin Peaks but he is on fucking fire here.
Welcome to the Zaniacs! I recommend following up with The Phantom for wholesome 1930s charming Billy Zane.
I’m so glad I got to see him speak in person earlier this year, because I can say that he comes across in real life as beautifully charismatic, enthusiastic about life and generous with his time. He also has a sideline in painting and they look pretty darn cool.
I definitely have to check out The Phantom!
It’s so cool that you got to see him in person, especially when it sounds like such a treat. And imagine owning an original Billy Zane painting!
Babylon 5 — it is funny how the Centuri and the Narn are touchy, violent and possibly genocidal aliens and yet they generally rule, and the Minbari aside from our pals Delenn and Lennier suck shit, their woo woo bullshit culture puts me to angry sleep every fucking time and even an interesting revelation (about violence!) is not enough to save a Minbari-centric episode. They suck so much! Fucking mall crystal store ass planet too. Anyway, much better is how Delenn and Sheridan and the rest of Babylon 5 get completely owned, that they are cruising for a bruising is obvious but the nature of said bruising is devious and drawn-out to nasty effect (and again, Stracyznski is playing with real-life fire here, but that is as always his defense — I am not referencing anything that has not been done). More of this, less fucking Minbar.
Magnolia — aka Cocaine: The Movie, the first half hour of this is exhausting. Anderson got a blank check and went nuts, I can’t fault him for that, and parts of this are great while others are less so — it is extremely noticeable in a movie about a ton of interconnected people that the few black characters only exist as prods for the white ones (although the performers* do very well in these circumscribed positions). And as others have noted, he really fucking whiffs on Philip Baker Hall at the end, a coward’s way out. But everyone is right about Cruise, he is fantastic — cocky and trapped, in control and off guard, psychopathic and needy. Superb stuff, although the movie’s true hero is Luis Guzman (playing “Luis Guzman!”) taunting children.
*Orlando Jones is barely in this as a character who would appear to deserve more time and he gets a special thanks in the credits — was he edited out?
The answer to the Orlando Jones question is yes. To give Anderson credit here, he cut Jones’ big scene because he realized that it played too heavily into white paranoia cliche. That doesn’t entirely excuse your point, a problem that MAGNOLIA’s chief inspiration, SHORT CUTS, conspicuously shares as well. All in all though, I think the films elements gel for me, and I think it’s a very observant piece of white San Fernando Valley indigenous filmmaking, and very controlled even with its unrestrained emotional outburst and metaphysical pretensions.
Ah, interesting! I definitely thought of Short Cuts while watching this — it has been a long time but that has pretty much all white people, right? I wonder if that actually plays better, an omission that is a significant strike against not just realism but the universality the tone is clearly going for, but one that is less awkward than Magnolia’s unbalanced inclusion that becomes more and more destabilizing the longer the movie goes on. And to the larger filmmaking style, I think Anderson’s control is there but just barely — the manic exposition and big swings for profundity really do scan as a guy high on some supply, if not necessarily his own.
Even with the cut scene, MAGNOLIA’s take on race, when it is present, feels very much part of how the white characters viewed race and the relationship between the city and the suburbs. That theme, which Lawrence Kasdan tried to tackle earlier in the 90s in another Valley film, GRAND CANYON, isn’t a particularly good fit for the version of MAGNOLIA Anderson focuses on, which is largely shaped by addiction narratives ripped from AA (and other recovery) testimonies. It’s a domestic history of L.A. television as interpreted by Bill W., and I don’t think you are wrong to suspect some chemical inspiration here.
Huh, now I want to find this scene, I wonder if it’s on YouTube.
The scene is in the published screenplay and a brief scene of it being shot is in the documentary “The Magnolia Diaries”.
Year of the Month update!
This November, you can write about any of these movies, albums, books, et al from 2018!
Nov. 7th: Gillian Nelson: A Wrinkle in Time
Nov. 9th: Cori Domschot: Book Club
Nov. 10th: Bridgett Taylor: Aquaman
Nov. 12th: Ben Hohenstatt: Bark Your Head Off, Dog
Nov. 14th: Gillian Nelson: Christopher Robin/Mary Poppins Returns
Nov. 21st: Gillian Nelson: Ralph Breaks the Internet
Nov. 28th: Gillian Nelson: Legend of the Three Caballeros
And there’s still time to sign up this mont to write about any of these 1973 movies, albums, books and TV !
TBD: Patrick Mio Llaguno – The Long Goodbye
Oct. 16th: John Bruni: Shotgun Willie/Sweet Revenge
Oct. 17th: Bridgett Taylor: Goodbye, Yellow Brick Road
Oct. 22nd: Lauren James: The Wicker Man
Oct. 26th: Ben Hohenstatt: Mind Games
Oct. 29th: Lauren James: Don’t Look Now