“Say Scuba.”
In season one, episode six of The Venture Bros, there’s a little scene where Hank is hanging out with Brock while the latter exercises. Hank, as he is wont to do, is babbling inanely, and ends up latching onto the word ‘scuba’, amused by the sound of it; he asks Brock to say it, and Brock indulges him, also amused by the word scuba. This scene is very typical of The Venture Bros on a number of levels; mostly in the sense of it being more about being funny and illustrating ideas than plot (‘round these parts, we’ve often speculated what an entirely comic version of The Sopranos would be, and I imagine it would strongly resemble VB) and partially in how it feels very naturalistic (on top of the funny dialogue, Hank is trying to catch coins on his elbow). It also manages to distill a lot of what is fun about Brock.
Brock is cool. Brock is easily the coolest character on the show; he’s likely the least needy and he’s definitely the least whiny. A lot of it has to do with his cartoonish levels of masculinity performance, but as Todd Alcott noted, that performance walks a very fine line between cool and stupid (he has a mullet, for god’s sake); much of his actual coolness comes from his detached intelligence. The script and Patrick Warburton work very well together here; Brock must be one of the smartest characters Warburton has ever played, and he’s very good at conveying that Brock has his mind on something even through almost monosyllabic lines.
This intelligence is paired with an acceptance of almost anything the world throws at him. Brock has no need for the world to look a certain way; he is concerned almost solely with the actions he can take within it. So long as he can kill guys and work on his car, he’ll go along with just about anything. The genius of the show is the way it reveals complexity in a seemingly simple guy; not just in that he confronts and deals with a certain level of neediness (in that he will murder anyone who shows him less that total respect, and realises that’s kind of destructive), but in how this coolness has evolved over his life, where he was almost sociopathically hedonistic as a young man and sees feelings of guilt and love catch up to him.
This scene is an early example of all of this, as well as a demonstration of what people who are good with kids are like. Kids, like cats, are very strongly attuned to neediness, and are deeply drawn to people who lack it. Most people can treat children as receptacles for their own needs, even when that ‘need’ is the self-image of someone who can take care of a kid, and that can breed some resentment. Brock, as a cool person, is free of this burden; he’s in a room because he wants to be, and he’ll tolerate anything as long as his one basic need – which is usually something he can accomplish himself – is filled, so he tolerates little annoyances and even engages with them with an open mind (“Scuba. Yeah, it does sound funny!”).
Of course, this is also interesting to compare to The Monarch. In a lot of ways, Monarch parallels Brock; he’s equally as delicately walking a line between cool and buffoonery, and he’s equally as goal-oriented, though unlike Brock, his goal is extremely specific and requires long-term thinking (kill, or possibly merely humiliate, Rusty Venture). Monarch is really the Nerd to Brock’s Cool; he’s unfailingly neurotic and even whiny, but he snaps into precision when chasing his goal, pulling together into a systemic focus that a) mirrors the show’s structure and b) is really attractive.
When he’s buffoonish, it’s because he’s dressed like a butterfly; when he’s cool, it’s because he’s chasing his goals with a clarity of vision that reeks of indifference to what anyone thinks of him. This often leads to a mutual respect between him and Brock in a game-recognize-game kind of way. Otherwise, you can’t really call it detachment; if anything, it’s charisma that comes from a hyper-investment in one’s surroundings and a willingness to broadcast that to anyone who’ll choose to listen; a drive to action, which is universally attractive.
About the writer
Tristan J. Nankervis
Tristan J Nankervis (aka Drunk Napoleon) has been a writer, pop culture critic, dishwasher, standup comedian, waiter, potato cake factory worker, gamer, TV worker, and various other things. You can find him in Hobart, Tasmania.
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Department of
Conversation
The smartest character Warburton ever played was Lemony Snicket, but I think no one remembers that.
I keep meaning to check that out, because I saw part of the first episode and he was amazingly heartbroken in that.
Wow, I’d certainly forgotten about it. I remember Warburton being excellent but the show itself suffering from massive streaming-itis, bloat and blah whenever he wasn’t around.
Same, I bailed halfway through the second season. I wonder if some of these Netflix bloat shows could be stronger with an edit job.
What Did We Watch?
The Substance
Really good shit. This is what most people think David Lynch films are – very directly, specifically making a point in the strangest way ever. I knew I was in good hands from the opening scene, conveying an ancient idea – the rise and fall of a Hollywood starlet – in the single most imaginative way I’d ever seen. What I admired was how surprisingly open the metaphors were; despite the voice on the phone stressing they are one person, you could very easily grasp why women fight each other based on this. Older women can feel like younger women are sapping the life out of them; younger women are terrified of what older women represent.
(I am, of course, not assuming all women are like this, only that it explains specific behaviour I’ve seen)
My (trans non-binary) boyfriend remarked that they didn’t like the violent, bloody, extreme climax, believing it could have ended with the final transformation and look in the mirror and been just as (if not more) effective. I disagree (a movie needs a climax like that, particularly a body horror, and I do believe it has a few more good points – certainly even I, a man, have walked down the street feeling like a revolting monster and being shocked nobody sees this) but I see where they’re coming from. Their favourite scene was Demi Moore looking in the mirror before her date, slowly going nuts as she tries to get her appearance just right.
I also liked how you could tell this was directed by a woman based on how she displayed bodies; the sexuality is pushed into uncomfortable parody and the actual nudity simply presented their bodies as physical objects. Like, they’re both very attractive women, but they came off as simple sacks of meat in those scenes.
This also has one of the most insane Dennis Quaid performances I’ve ever seen. He looks and acts like Vince MacMahon.
Meet The Robinsons
I went into this knowing it’s considered underrated Disney, and I see it. I was annoyed by the try-hard humour at points – I think this would have been a much more effective film if an actor played Bowling Hat Guy rather than the director – and it seemed a little overstuffed with characters, but the thematics are a little more complex – I enjoyed how clear it was that Bowling Hat Guy was driven by insecurity that reflected the hero’s story of pushing past the embarrassment of failure, refusing to learn where Lewis continually studied his results and kept working.
I was also amused by the fact that the comedy sidekick looks and acts a lot like a young Mac from Always Sunny.
Quaid eating the shrimp and dressed like a Batman villain is amazing, I want his suit. Me in the theater when Monster Sue tries to put her earrings on: “Make it work…”
Housekeeping – have wanted to see this for a while, as a fan of Bill Forsyth’s other films. I found this one charmingly odd and melancholy but it didn’t quite hit me as hard as Gregory’s Girl or Local Hero – it did make me want to read the novel though, and then possibly give it another shot. I did love that it has many cats in it, and also I barely recognised anyone in the cast which is always an interesting experience, they all do fine work too.
How Are You? It’s Alan, episode 3 – some very funny stuff about AI, this continues to be a delight.
Seinfeld – “The Fix-Up” and “The Limo”. The first of these is a strong but straightforward Seinfeld episode (featuring Janice from Friends!), but “The Limo” makes such wild choices that I was surprised to find it has a bare-bones Wikipedia entry without huge sections about its impact at the time etc. I couldn’t quite believe what I was seeing!
“Kind of a cute Nazi, though.”
Really says something about Seinfeld cosmic indifference that it could make a plot out of accidentally getting embroiled with Nazis and have it be a wacky comedy.
Nothing in the show so far prepared me for them to just throw in a “George is accidentally mistaken for the leader of a white supremacist group” plot like it’s nothing at all. And that makes it funnier!
To be fair,mwe had a different relationship with Nazis in the ‘90’s, when we thought they were beaten.
The Limo also does that faux-news coverage bit that is really outside the show’s style and it totally got my ass when this aired live.
Peter Krause as one of the Nazis!
Pushover – 1954 Richard Quine-directed B movie, where detective Fred MacMurray gets involved with Kim Novak, the mistress of a bank robber, and concocts a scheme to kill the crook and take the missing loot. This is a generally well directed LA noir, with the streets all slick with rain and the action mostly at night, with a strong cast – Novak is pretty good in her first major role, MacMurray as ever comfortable not playing the roles he was most famous for – but this struggles to keep my attention. The plot is a bit stretched out, and include a subplot of another cop (Phil Carey) falling for a good girl nurse (Dorothy Malone0 mainly by watching her apartment as well as Novak’s. It also doesn’t help that MacMurray’s presence makes me want to think about Double Indemnity, but that’s not really fair. This does what it wants to, it just takes too long to do it.
The Practice, “Split Decisions”/”A Day in the Life” – The big multi-episode cases are on hold, and we get a few short and somewhat unexciting cases. The former is split between a friend of Eugene’s arrested for solicitation while dressed in woman’s clothes, that also involves a candidate for DA and Helen’s boss pushing to make a bigger scandal. It’s only marginally interesting. Meanwhile, Ellenor pushes for the firm to take on work defending a company sued in asbestos cases, which is really out of character. The latter is mainly about a family that Bobby knows where a teen has secretly given birth and accidentally killed the baby. And any advice Bobby and Eugene give is going to get them in trouble. Especially when things are much worse than they seemed. This one is rough to watch, and sinks into levels of tawdriness that are still infrequent here (but not for long). Guests in the first include Tim DeKay a decade before White Collar; guests in the second include David Dukes as the grieving father and Howard Hesseman as a judge in a case that is otherwise not that interesting.
Secret Base, “The History of Scoragami,” part four – This one tries to figure out the likelihood of future scoragamis happening, both at the high end of the scale and at the very lowest. This one goes ninety minutes and has a lot of weird math and really threatens to get lost in the weeds, but Bois and co-conspirator Alex Rubinstein never entirely lose the thread or the necessary sense of humor. And I did learn that in theory, a team can score a single point in a way besides the extra point, but it’s never happened in the NFL.
MLB Playoffs – watched some of Saturday night’s not-very-exciting game. The first two rounds provided a fair number of exciting moments, but the games have been kind of bland.
Million Dollar Quartet the musical, more thoughts in my review later but this is basically critic proof in it’s crass spectacle and also how the actors playing Elvis, Jerry Lee, etc. are clearly having fun playing these songs live.
Are the songs as good as this?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i7qeS0vy7c0
All classics so debatable!
The Comfort Of Strangers – Interesting classist, sexual psychodrama from Paul Schrader. There is a sinister undercurrent throughout, heavily driven by Badalamenti’s score, despite the beautiful Venice location, and the warm and lush cinematography. I kept thinking of Eyes Wide Shut, The Talented Mr. Ripley, and most of all, Don’t Look Now. It’s especially menacing whenever an underseen Christopher Walken is present. When he isn’t the film drags a bit. It took me some time to see where this was going. I finally landed on gender roles and the roles we play in public especially upon meeting someone new and the power dynamics established during that. This really comes out during an all-time monologue from Walken about shitting and puking in his father’s study and receiving a beating for it. It’s not quite up there with Pulp Fiction or True Romance but I watched it three times. Walken feels like he’s been leading up to the role of high class serial killer and has finally found a couple he, and an equally deranged Helen Mirren, can play with. They have a Crazy Joe Davola room full of photos of Natasha Richardson and Rupert Everett. The final twenty minutes almost rewards the deliberate pacing of the first ninety minutes. But its philosophical exploration took just too much effort for me with less of a reward than I’d hoped. I would probably watch this again and like it better after reading the Ian McEwan book. Maybe it takes multiple viewings to get the layers of obsession and gender roles. Harold Pinter’s dialog is dense, layered and as labyrinthine as the streets of Venice.
I wish I could get with this film. And I agree with your assessment, “But its philosophical exploration took just too much effort for me with less of a reward than I’d hoped.” The film also felt to me like the familiar scenario that Jordan Peele has so roundly mocked: white people lacking the basic awareness to, you know, “scappare”.
The Fog — Spooky season comfort food! Still odd in its mix of scares and hang-out, Carpenter has been better at both, but unbeatable for atmosphere. Mrs. Miller pointed out how the interiors here just look great, not necessarily in terms of decor but as lived-in spaces shot well. My kingdom for a lighthouse radio station.
Live Music — the annual HONK! street marching band festival, always a great time. I only caught a little bit of the whole festival but I hit the entire set of Kandjanwou Rara, a band with Haitian roots and a unique structure, lots of percussion and handmade vuvuzela-esque horns, they were goddamn fantastic — most bands play songs (sometimes covers, sometimes activist marches), these guys stretched out into hypnotic jam/drone that got people dancing and moving, with an excellent flag guy providing more action. Hell yeah.
The Monkey — this got very divisive reviews and I am one of the haters, I doubt I’ll see a worse movie this year. It is competently made but contemptuous of its characters and the audience, Osgood Perkins takes a very good Stephen King story and turns it into a dogshit Final Destination knockoff without that movie’s sense of cruel balance (i.e. Death coming for those who “cheated” it). The point is that death gets you no matter what, but the gimmick of wacky gore (weightless and suspenseless) is not a blackly comic realization of this but a cowardly turning-away, because death mostly doesn’t come in this fashion, it comes mundanely and slowly and it fucking sucks. So the movie lies about what it’s about and doesn’t have the decency to lie well, it is astonishingly lazy in dialogue and setup. Nothing matters, so you might as well watch this hateful and rancid movie, appears to be the point. Or go dancing? Motherfucker, I went dancing at the music festival that day, I don’t need your piss in my eye. The one bright spot is the monkey itself, a delightful puppet that deserves a lot better.
Blood On The Stars — the logline for this 1974 flick is “Abominable Dr. Phibes (although I’d say Theater of Blood) meets Village Of The Damned” for a story of a choirmaster and his creepy kids bumping off all the entertainers above them on the bill of an upcoming festival. But the movie is far weirder than that because it is Welsh — linguistically the first Welsh-language horror movie (funded as part of a broader campaign for the language), and culturally it is WELSH — all of the entertainers are real people apparently and pretty much every cultural reference is to something the audience would know but is incomprehensible to a person today. This is not so much folk horror as regional horror and absolute catnip to me, I love this shit — it brought to mind old pal Another Son Of Sam. Not scary in the slightest and sometimes a bit hard to follow plot-wise, but fun in the manner of the Vincent Price movies above and an off-kilter hoot, this has the vibe of almost mocking Wales (pretty much everyone here is a moron) but in the sense of self-mockery, of goofing as pride because it’s still a damn movie about you and no one else is making it. So another counter to the empty nihilism of The Monkey, this has languished in obscurity for years but it’s on Shudder now and will always be worthy of rediscovery and spending time with.
HELL yeah, The Fog. Not sure I agree on Carpenter having a better hang-out movie, I’ll definitely give you scares though.
That Welsh film sounds crazy, never heard of it before !
I think with The Fog you are hanging out with the movie as opposed to the characters, if that makes sense. It’s weirdly disjointed, small groups of people who only meet at the end and who are rarely “hanging out” themselves — Leigh is setting things up and Barbeau is by herself a lot. I think Prince of Darkness and The Thing have more actual hanging out! But this is minor quibbling.
And absolutely get your ass to Blood On The Stars, it is such a weird flick. Only an hour too, which definitely helps it not get bogged down in too much incomprehensibility.
I guess it does bounce around between the various interested parties but I love the vibe of Tom Atkins and Jamie Lee Curtis just continuing to spend time together because interesting stuff is going on and they kinda like each other,
Woo, live music and drones!
Woooooo live music!!
Trick ‘r Treat
Always good October viewing. This makes surprisingly fun use of its loose anthology format, paying off bits of interconnection–the smallest being an allusion to Thurman Merman smashing the pumpkins, the largest being Brian Cox’s fate–in ways that reward attention. This is a classic geeky pleasure, but it’s rare to see it turning up in this kind of film. Would make an excellent double-feature with Creepshow.
Thelma
It’s very entertaining to watch a 93-year-old June Squibb and an 81-year-old Richard Roundtree in a lovingly designed thriller-comedy that makes stunts out of “trying to reach something very high” and “trying to make your way across a cluttered space without tripping” and gets a hacking scene out of “elderly woman tries to log into a bank account despite random pop-up ads.” This could be trite and insulting if it were handled badly, but while it’s funny, it also cares about its characters and invests in their dignity. It’s not just spoofing action movies, it’s elevating the trials and tribulations of old age to the level of action movies, and I certainly care more about whether or not Thelma can reclaim the $10k she was scammed out of, salvaging her dignity and sense of independence in the process, than I do about the big-picture outcomes of most globetrotting thrillers.
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (1990 live action). Showed this to the girls. Huge hit. It’s funny remembering this as a silly movie for kids and watching now being like “oh wow, look at the craftsmanship! This is real
artistry! They don’t make ‘em like dis anymore kids!” (I get a thicker, faker new york accent with every word). This is a tour de force of unsung heroes, particularly the director, puppeteers, and fight crew. The director, Steve Barron, mostly did music videos, including “Money for Nothing,” “Billie Jean,” and “Take on me,” all classics of the form. The puppet crew was all from Jim Hansen’s shop. The fight director, Paul Johnson, also did the choreography for Karate Kid and Buffy the Vampire Slayer (the movie) and had worked in Hong Kong doing stunts. Likewise the martial arts consultant, Tak Wai Liu had been doing stunts in Hong Kong.
The action is fun. The silly premise is played straight, which I think is the way to go here. There’s a great bit where Casey Jones is getting beat up and he sees a golf club and immediately turns the tide, like popeye getting spinach. He’s a psychopath whose power is activated by sporting equipment.
There’s unfortunately a bit of casual sexism. What the world needs now is a woke ninja turtles. If anyone knows where I can pitch my pilot for Axolotl Demon Hunters let me know.
Peacemaker, finale. It ends on a wild-ass cliffhanger. I love it, as long as it is only ever followed up on in a project that is related to Suicde Squad-Peacemaker. If they do some dumb mcu shit and make it plot point in Superman or Supergirl I will negatively revise my evaluation. It also works if they never follow-up on it, like the ending of Terminatoe: sarah connor chronicles.
Definitely avoid the third TMNT movie if you want to remain impressed by 90s craft, I remember it being shockingly bad — not just lazy kids crap but the costumes looked like they had literally been eaten by moths.
I should try proofreading my comments. Terminatoe? That’s a spin-off Attack of the Killer Tomatoes where cyborg tomatoes have been sent back in time. Jim
Hansen? He was in charge of the mmboppett show.
The Long Walk
I had some doubts going in — mainly wondering if no one tell Mark Hamill he wasn’t playing a cartoon character this time — but they went away pretty quick. (Even Hamill was firing on all cylinders by his last scene.) I haven’t read the book, so I was a little surprised to realize this was, almost explicitly, a Vietnam War story about boys being drafted to die meaninglessly. I appreciate how they didn’t try too hard to update the story for 2025, which means it works equally well as a possible future and alternate history. I was prepared for the brutality, but I was struck just as much by the brotherhood and hope that survives inside the horror — and has to for the boys to survive. David Jonsson has incredible star power. He has a presence that says ‘you know this guy,’ but it turns out I’d only ever seen him as Alien chow in Romulus. I was disappointed for a while that he didn’t get the lead role, but then I realized he had. There’s a great head-fake there: Jonsson’s character seems like a classic Stephen King Dick Halloran/John Coffey type, which
SPOILERS
makes it that much more shocking and horrifying when the white guy sacrifices his life for him. I was an easy mark for this after running cross-country through high school, so this was all very familiar — the camaraderie sublimated into ball-busting, the people watching at random stretches of the course, the overwhelming urge to just stop running.
BIG OL LONG WALK SPOILERS
You should absolutely read the book, it’s great and I don’t think even the biggest fans of the movie would say it’s superior. And the book and movie have very divergent endings! I’ll let you find it out for yourself but I think there is a read on the movie’s ending that is not sacrificial so much as buck-passing — Ray takes the one choice Pete has and denies it to him so he can make that same choice for himself, putting the actual work on Pete. I do not think that is intentional by any means but it’s there. And I absolutely love the idea of cross-country as a lens for this, because cross-country is a truly team sport, right? Running in a pack and winning based on group performance as opposed to just the first place guy being the winner the way he is here. The physical and group dynamics overlap but the race itself has a different goal structure.
Oh, I like that read
What Did We Play?
Hollow Knight: Silksong – still in act 2, still trying to get through various boss fights that are just beyond my capacity as a gamer, still cursing my own hands and brain constantly.
DOOM on Nintendo Switch.
Progressed a few more levels. Still routinely astounded by the level design here, and the middle of the second episode also brings in some new atmospherics as well. Pretty interesting how it has a lot of sections that force you to take damage by walking across fire/toxic surfaces, yet never feels unfair.
Fatal Fury Special – Super Nintendo Entertainment System – Nintendo Classics on Nintendo Switch
This is the just-uploaded SNES port of the special updated edition of Fatal Fury 2, which is funny because earlier this year they uploaded that game’s SNES port, and I beat all of it. I only played a few rounds of Special and already it controls better, has much more fun AI to fight, and looks better. I might have had a better time had I waited a few months, huh. Might try and beat this one too, while I’m at it.
F-Zero 99 on Nintendo Switch
Played for a few rounds on Sunday. Hadn’t played in weeks, so I’m a little surprised there was no special event this weekend, which there almost always was. Anyway, the servers were light but the racing was tight, and I even won a race on Classic mode. My 18th overall. Good times.
Played a little Silksong this week and am getting close to wrapping up Act 2 on my second playthrough. But I probably will not have a whole lot of play time going forward, as vacation is wrapping up and I gotta get back to making money.
Year of the Month update!
Here’s a primer on some of the movies, albums, books and TV we’ll be covering for 1973 in October!
TBD: Patrick Mio Llaguno – The Long Goodbye
Oct. 14th: Bridgett Taylor: Goodbye, Yellow Brick Road
Oct. 15th: Lauren James: Working
Oct. 16th: John Bruni: Shotgun Willie/Sweet Revenge
Oct. 22nd: Lauren James: The Wicker Man
Oct. 26th: Ben Hohenstatt: Mind Games
Oct. 29th: Lauren James: Don’t Look Now
And this November, you can write about any of these movies, albums, books, et al from 2018!
Nov. 10th: Bridgett Taylor: Aquaman
Nov. 12th: Ben Hohenstatt: Bark Your Head Off, Dog