Monica Rawling (Glenn Close) and I could not be more opposed in ideology, but she has the quality of character I most admire. The Shield is a series comfortably showing its protagonists violating civil rights and enacting violent retributive justice, and Rawling is the character most comfortably embodying that as an ideal – almost a Form. I always liked that she took the basic principles the characters expressed on the show up to that point and followed them through as far as she could take them but without any compromise or fear of the consequences.
She makes a good pairing with protagonist Vic Mackey (Miachel Chiklis) because they’re a united force; any shot of the two of them working together has titanic energy. She also ends up revealing his hypocrisy, often in surprising ways – early into her story, when she’s enacting her asset forfeiture policy, she finds she has to turf a single mother and her children out onto the street. Vic tells her that now that the case has been resolved, she could potentially look the other way, and she chooses not to. The short-term negative consequences will be worth it, she decides.
This is to say that Rawling is one thing and not another. It makes her come off like a force of nature. I’ve always been particularly struck by the energy she gives off when she makes these decisions, too – she’s not thoughtlessly or reflexively reacting the way Vic does, and she’s not impulsive like Shane (though in the last few episodes of her story that creeps in) – she actively considers and then commits.
One of my favourite scenes of her is nearly her last, when the IAD investigator explains that one of Vic’s guys blatantly stole some heroin and shows her the witness. She hears out what he has to say, and realises she has to make a decision. Glenn Close is a careful actor; I read once that her process begins with her giving herself permission to ‘disturb the molecules’ around her – and her performance as Rawling has been aggressively internal, conveying only that she’s thinking but not necessarily what she’s thinking.
To my eye, it’s less that she’s making a decision and more that she’s summoning what she must do. This, more than anything is what attracts me to the character. At the top of their games, Close and Rawling have an otherworldly energy that comes from pulling something from another world entirely. It’s one thing to impulsively act; it’s another thing to make a decision, and it’s something else entirely to submit to the will of the universe as Rawling does.
And what’s especially amazing is that she carries this in her daily actions. Like Aceveda, she tells cops what they want to hear – they’re diligently working a dangerous, difficult job with no appreciation – and unlike Aceveda, she means it. She speaks with the full force of the Truth. The first time you see her arrest someone, the action isn’t really that different from anything else we’ve seen, but she brings a weight to it that is intensely charismatic. Her actions feel consequential even before we’ve seen the actual consequences. That kind of conviction and fearlessness would be nice to have all the time.
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."
"I'm terribly sorry - no no, please don't get up--"
"I don't believe it." / "That is why you fail."
Department of
Conversation
What did we watch?
The Incredibles
Definitely my favourite Pixar film – the most elegantly constructed, the most thematically wide (next to Finding Nemo, and my favourite emotional beat (Bob’s ‘not strong enough’ scene). What fascinated me this run is how literally no individual beat is original; as has been pointed out before me, this even lifts elements from Watchmen (though I would not, as some of those same people have suggested, consider this a spiritual adaptation of the work). This is a classic case of a storyteller rearranging old imagery into a new myth.
Much has been made of this movie’s streak of conservatism and even Ayn Rand politics, with characters bemoaning that they’ve been reduced to mediocrity and Bob complaining about celebrating Dash going from the fourth grade to the fifth. I think the movie’s politics are simpler in intent and more complicated in expression than that; the actual movie is more interested in personal expression of talent than in broader political structures. This time I interpreted the penultimate scene of Dash at the track has him fitting more comfortably in the world now that he has a way to express his desire to run fastly.
It’s notable to me that we spend very little time with ‘mediocrities’ or ‘normies’ or whatever you want to call them; the only one presented in any kind of completely critical context is the suicide guy. Dash’s teacher (who gets the tack) is furious and cartoony, but also quite reasonably upset about Dash’s behaviour. If there’s a distinction between being the best and being better than other people, this movie is completely preoccupied with the former.
Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire
Watched this because my friend put it on, with absolutely no context from previous movies. I kind of admire this for committing to strongly to the lore-heavy wiki-tickling approach – almost everything the human characters say is exposition and they power through it, which is less emotionally resonant than the Kong stuff but also the crew clearly realise this and power through it as fast as they can get away with. Plus, it looks incredibly colourful and beautiful – the anti-sub-Fincherian dronelike bullshit.
There is another, extremely important normie scene in The Incredibles — Mr. Incredible trying to help the little old lady not get fucked by her insurance plan. The lady is not condescended to in her ordinariness, she just needs some help, and Mr. Incredible’s heroism is how he instinctually wants to help and looks to ignore or at least work around barriers that would prevent this helping. Ultimately this results in violent vigilante action against a system that society has agreed to accept, but what is the point of this system if it is harming individuals like our little old lady? Brad Bird’s libertarianism comes from a much more interesting place than Rand’s, he also has the understanding that these tensions will not be reconciled so he can have fun exploring them in a 90-minute cartoon, rather than saying he’s solved them in a 1200-page book.
You’ve cited Pixar’s obsession with reducing fantasies to workplaces, which I don’t disagree with, and maybe this is why Incredibles is also my favorite – this is libertarianism I can get with, fuck insurance! (Also I didn’t get the joke as a kid who did not comprehend bureaucracy, revisiting later as a desk jockey made it hilarious.)
Oh wow, I had not really thought of The Incredibles in that context but you’re totally right — this explicitly rejects the mundane workplace for fantastical action, in the insurance office but also with the loving embrace of retrofuturistic maximalism, the volcano lairs and crazy gadgets and especially Edna Mode’s whole (rather Randian) deal. Not what if fantasy was a job, but what if your job was saving the world, i.e. being a superhero.
To Live and Die in LA – At last streaming (on Amazon Prime)! Media Magpies gets results! I appreciate that Freidkin was trying to make a French Connection for the 80s, leaving behind NYC grit for LA neo-noir style and jacking up the energy. That works well in terms of the direction, especially the elaborate car chase. But the overall arc of the film overdoes the luridness and stumbles badly with its “hero.” Who is impossible to root for. And incompetent as hell. And dully played by William Peterson. Conversely, while rooting for the bad guy isn’t something I am inclined to do either, Willem Dafoe has the right energy for the role, plus the bad guy treats his woman a lot better than the hero does. So in the end, this was at once great to watch and hard to watch.
Kojak, “Acts of Desperate Men” – Eugene Roche is an accountant who watches his crooked boss get killed. Bruno Kirby (billed as Bruce Kirby Jr.) is the killer, seeking revenge for a murdered father. Roche and Kirby meet and bond. The story is very unlikely, but the performances by the established character actor Roche and the new kid on the block Kirby elevate the story a lot.
Frasier, “Travels with Martin”/”Author, Author” – In the former, Frasier agrees to rent a mobile home and go on vacation with Martin. Hijinks ensue, most notably accidentally entering Canada and risking Daphne’s status as an immigrant because she doesn’t have her green card yet! Entertaining, the sort of plot that would now maybe be half a season of story. The latter has Frasier and Niles trying to work together on a book, and it should be much funnier than it ends up.
M*A*S*H, “Life with Father” – A Korean woman with a newborn shows up and asks help finding a “rabbi for bris,” since her GI husband is Jewish. Meanwhile, letters home from Henry’s wife and Mulcahy’s sister bring troubling news. The subplot with Henry, where he discovered his wife might have been having an affair, is brutal. The circumcision is much more uplifting and more or less accurate. There is also a scene here of a party after the bris that I have never seen before. Why would you cut people doing a hora in a rerun being shown in NYC?
NBA on ESPN/ABC, Sixers-Bucks – The game was pretty good till the Sixers ran out of steam. But the big event here was the final broadcast of Hubie Brown, who started as a color man in 1980 or so and is retiring at the age of 91, still sharp as ever. The game was orchestrated as a tribute to him, and ABC and the NBA did a good and heartfelt and tasteful job. Including a virtual visit by Mike Tirico, who doesn’t even work for ESPN anymore! Happy trails, Hubie.
My response to To Live and Die in L.A. is based on how it retains the moral ambiguity of film noir in the adrenalized style of its era’s buddy-cop films, updating both its style and its drawing troubling comparisons and contrasts between lawbreakers and law enforcers. Friedkin has said that The Big Heat was an influence on this. He really seems as invested in Masters as the counterfeit artiste, and his strangely eroticized connection to the artificial, than with his antagonist, whose pleasure derived from the power invested in his of his authority is deeply troubling, in that it is so infectiously ingrained in the film’s energy and disdain for legalities. It’s a pretty radical dialectic between art and capitalism with, you lnow, car crashes.
Since Friday:
Repulsion (1965)
I hate that this was made by Roman Polanski because it’s so incredible. It’s hard to reconcile this and Rosemary’s Baby with his crimes because the two works are so understanding of the horrors women will suffer at the hands of men, yet he did the same things to women. This is one of the great works of subjective cinema, only really presenting us with Carol’s perspective. It’s an incredible performance by Catherine Deneuve, and everything about the film is amazing except its director’s real life crimes.
Dog Man (2025)
My 7 year old has this thing where she gets stuck in a rut of watching the same thing over and over, and right now it’s a shitty Nickelodeon sitcom that’s available on Netflix. So I put in extra effort to get her out to the movies, and she has read a bit of the Dog Man graphic novels, so this was a good opporunity. I’m glad we went, though I found the film itself a bit meh. There is some really good manic energy in the first half, and the conceit that it’s written as if by a 6 year old makes a lot of it really fun. But then the second half slows things down a lot to make room for emotional stakes and sentimentality that just didn’t land with me. Leave that shit with The Wild Robot and make something that’s balls to the wall wackiness!
No Other Land (2024)
Probably the most important film of the year. The title card that they finished the film in October 2023 hits like a ton of bricks. This is a film about the slow and steady destruction of a centuries-old group of Palestinian villages in the West Bank. The film is an act of witness. The activism is in presenting facts. Watching the Israeli government prevent the Palestinian people from getting permits to simply build homes (after a while most of them are living in caves) while using the lack of homes as justification for getting rid of the rest of the homes. It’s heartbreaking to watch this film. If you get a chance to watch it, do it. It’s a hard watch, but worth it.
Becoming Led Zeppelin (2025)
Boomer catnip. I can tell because the classic rock DJ this morning said listeners should run, not walk, to see it. The film goes from the members’ childhoods to the band’s performance at Royal Albert Hall in January 1970. This means that the film sidesteps anything that might be a difficult conversation. There’s a single reference to drugs and women. The film wants you to focus on the music, and it does a great job of that by presenting live performances with complete song performances. It’s good, since the power of Zeppelin comes from the music itself, so the film lets the music speak for the band. I don’t know that I needed to watch Jimmy Page watching old footage of himself and narrating himself walking down an alley to the studio. But I did get to learn that Page and John Paul Jones were session musicians who performed on “Goldfinger”, which is a neat tidbit. All in all, a fun, if slight, watch.
No Other Land – Is really well done, one of the best of the past year.
Live music — went to the local basement mentioned the other day (https://www.mediamagpies.com/attack-the-slop/) for some more tunes, was pleasantly surprised by opener Arto Vaun and his band playing solid indie rock but was extremely cheesed off during the middle band, they were OK but I was unable to give them full attention due to the dipshits next to me having an extremely loud conversation about their jobs. Shut the fuck up! Such are the perils of live music though, I made sure to shift position for Thalia Zedek, who crushed it for the second time this year. She and her band are so locked in, it is such a pleasure to watch and hear and this time I was especially paying attention to Daniel McCarthy on drums, timekeeping as bear trap snaps.
The Straight Story — a massive industrial building looms, an ominous hum envelops the scene, cut to Richard Farnsworth and Sissy Spacek relaxing in their rural yard, Farnsworth enjoying the sound of the farm machinery at work. Eraserhead becomes the Lawnmower Man, the anxiety of creating a family becomes the fear of losing one — this is the un-Lynchian Lynch movie in some aspects but just as Lynchian in others (the deer scene!). Farnsworth talks about the importance of family to a young runaway but his has been rent by loss and the state and his own actions, Lynch lets all this sit as Farnsworth has, letting the burden exist while moving with it at five miles an hour. The scene with Farnsworth’s fellow WWII vet is remarkable (Greil Marcus had the great observation of the bartender at the very edge of the scene at the end, trying to fade into the wall away from intruding on these men), how they recognize the need in each other and how that recognition has to be enough, it isn’t really answered. And that points to the final scene and its recognition and restraint. Like Angelo Badalamenti’s score, you wait for a false note but it does not arrive.
Black Sunday — the big game! John Frankenheimer is a bit wobbly at the beginning here, commando raids are not his thing and this has weird Delta Force vibes at the beginning, but things settle down (also, Stephen Keats is here for a bit and his mean edge helps a lot) and a later scene of car carnage is right in his wheelhouse. The Thomas Harris-ness of the story is here in sympathy and indulgence in mental illness (one late scene is an acting showcase and just that, lots of psychobabble marking time) but also in the pulpy details of the plot and what gives this movie its irreplicable juice is how the pulp is completely integrated into the mainstream — this is a movie where terrorists put the world’s largest claymore mine on the Goodyear Blimp and fly it into the Super Bowl, and the film uses the actual Goodyear Blimp and the actual Super Bowl. The former came via Frankenheimer’s prior good relationship with the company* and the latter is courtesy Steve Sobol and NFL Films, shooting the Steelers and Cowboys in Super Bowl X at the Orange Bowl down in Miami (the Robbie family appears in the film, as does Pat Summerall) before the action sequences were filmed separately in the stadium a few weeks later. So the last hour or so of the film is the world’s greatest footage of Roger Staubach threading dimes and the Steel Curtain stuffing dudes in real life interspersed with crazed Vietnam vet Bruce Dern and his Palestinian/German terrorist girlfriend machine-gunning fools, the mix of modes is wild and the verisimilitude of the game and actual aerial work with the blimp helps counter the somewhat shoddy effects (rear projection that is both necessary but at times bad, some doofy explosions). While the chasing terrorists plot would be repeated again and again — and it is not bad, hero Robert Shaw is tight-lipped but slipping and Dern is a great sympathetic crazy — the particulars are one of a kind. Can’t imagine watching any other football game.
*and required a few caveats, like “the blimp itself can’t kill anyone e.g. with its propellers”
Sounds like one of us watched an unimaginable Super Bowl disaster of epic proportions and the other watched Black Su— I can’t even finish, fucking hell.
Bruce Dern had a better performance under pressure than Mahomes and stayed in the game all the way to the end!
As a former Goodyear blimp pilot, I remember liking this one a lot. The weird part is how much you find yoirself root in for Dern to succeed — he’s worked so hard!
Hahahaha I was 100 percent on Dern’s side! He works his ass off and there’s a lot of great suspense in maneuvering this giant unwieldy thing toward the game, it gives you the time to get really invested in him pulling it off in a way a faster pursuit would not. Also, the national anthem is sung by Up With People so it is impossible to root against the terrorists at that point. *looks at comment again* wait, what? You were a blimp pilot?!
My dad worked for Big G when I was growing up. I’ve been up in the blimps twice, and when I was a teenager they let us all take a turn at the stick for about five minutes. It moves so slowly, it isn’t really possible to crash a blimp (so long as there is someone who knows what they’re doing available to take over if necessary).
You got to live Homer Simpson’s dream! I am envious.
I admit all I hear is buzzing after your first clause. This is a fact you should drop casually in conversation way more often, like a Harvard grad and their alma mater.
Yeah, I’m with Dave. You can’t just throw out “I was a blimp pilot” and then not elaborate. Inquiring minds want to know.
You haven’t been?
Well, not the pilot part.
Wooooo live music in a basement!!
Cuckoo – It is a great tragedy that this era of horror, roughly Hereditary to Longlegs, will go unscathed by brothers Wayons and Zucker. I’ve enjoyed a lot of these movies, but Cuckoo inadvertently slams into the creative wall that’s been completed this year. Maybe all the movies that added their copyright date under the opening title 70s-style thought they were first to do it. Cuckoo isn’t as obnoxious about its use of 35mm as the worst example of these trends, Strange Darling, but like most of the films aping the look of grainier days (and I’ll include the much more celebrated The Holdovers) it’s an affectation, not an aesthetic. Only Sean Baker seems to understand the visual capability of the medium beyond imitating older movies.
But even after half a movie of simple-minded brown vs. blue production design and shocking moments where you can feel the movie is going to smash cut away before things get too exciting – you also begin to suspect that director Tilman Singer has the chops to make this work. An oddball choice here, a finely executed bit of action there, and a genuinely unnerving and unconventional monster with a screech announced by close-ups of a throbbing throat – when the film finally kicks into gear for its second half it’s less a total surprise and more like relief at seeing obvious talent fly free. Knives get twisted, spaces get liminal, and everything that felt borrowed looks fresh again. Still would love to see the Wayons’ version.
Football? – Never heard of it.
“Maybe all the movies that added their copyright date under the opening title 70s-style thought they were first to do it” — is one of the signature aesthetic choices of the past decade Stranger Things straight ganking the Stephen King font for its title? An extremely pleasing reproduction/reference that ultimately indicates nothing new to say?
And it’s been forever since I saw a Scary Movie, what I recall (and I could be wrong) is that it goofed on tropes and specifics in performance and narrative far more than it did in style. But style is what this era of horror is long on, right? Is that something that works for a full-length spoof?
It would be a bit of a challenge for the franchise, admittedly, there’s nothing that pops as much as I See Dead People or Blair Witch’s ending (which is another strike against these movies in general, they’re filled with visceral gore but few images that stay in the head (say what you will about Alex Garland’s Men, I can name for you three scenes without having to think very hard). But I’d also argue there me plenty of content commonalities to parody, starting with the much-sinister trauma plot.
Ha, the trauma plot was exactly what I was thinking of, both as common ground and difficult long-term parody prospect. Trauma is the boogeyman the way Freddy or Jason (or per Scary Movie, Ghostface) is, but without the iconography or even corporeality, it manifests differently every damn time. Although maybe our old pal Mr. Babadook could be reconfigured here. And perhaps old people as a more dynamic signifier?
The Wayons version would be called The Cuckoo with Long Legs While Drinking Your Juice In The Hood Darling. I’d watch it…
Memories – Heavy Metal-like anthology drawn in the iconic 80s and 90s anime style with thematic material in line with the great SF films of world cinema. Memories, humanity and powerful emotions run through the films.
Magnetic Rose – A deep space salvage crew happens upon a Sargasso Sea graveyard of ships. There are space opera scenes reminiscent of 2001 with animated ships dancing in orbit to minimalist techno music and Madame Butterfly. The crew investigates a shipwreck with the film turning psychological, recalling Tarkovsky’s Solaris. The interior of the ship is designed in the neoclassical style like the end of 2001. The astronauts soon realize the ship is filled with the memories and life experiences of a young woman long since dead. The young woman’s spirit begins to communicate with the men in ways personal to themselves with warm nostalgia becoming a nightmare.
Stink Bomb – A step down after that though still very good. This is a similar story to Akira – A young man is infected by a mechabiological weapon and is hunted down by the military. Unlike the dreamy and contemplative first segment it’s wild and violent not quite fitting in with the next either. But there is enough here in the story to fit in with the overall themes of the film.
Cannon Fodder – Things step up again with the steampunk design in the third story where a young boy and his father live in a city under siege for as long as anyone can remember. Any fact based history has been erased with it becoming what you are told by those in power and where dreams of something better are crushed. Very 1984ish. Their home is outfitted with a canon they must take care of and operate. Everyday they fire a bombardment against an unseen enemy. It casts a bleak shadow of endless large-scale war over the world, a classic downer ending.
Challengers — I liked this a lot. It was done a disservice being billed as the Zendaya threesome movie, because it’s actually the Zendaya love triangle movie, and that’s a lot more dramatically interesting. The cast, especially the two boys, does an excellent job of wearing their characters’ emotions. (Zendaya herself is winning in the fun and flirty flashback scenes. She’s less good as the worn out wife in the present day material. Faust and O’Connor are more consistent, but also their characters undergo less change.) The staging and cinematography are highly active, and sometimes that’s overly gimmicky, but mostly it works. Although I doubt anyone working on the movie would say this, it really is a kind of movie for adults like they don’t make that much anymore.
Babylon — The first two hours, which are a comedy, are very funny and just a great time. The third hour is the predictable third act where everything sucks and it’s time to pay the piper, and that’s less engaging, although Pitt remains excellent at playing “aging Brad Pitt.”
The Seed of the Sacred Fig – went to see a near-3hr Iranian political thriller with documentary elements for a friend’s birthday, because we are the original party animals. Pretty great for the most part, it’s set against the real-life protests that took place a couple of years ago and integrates real cellphone footage of the protests and resulting violence against the story of a family struggling to deal with the father’s role as part of the oppressive system. The last act gets into more familiar thriller territory and the film felt like it lost some of its uniqueness at that point, still compelling but in more well-trodden ways.
Live Music – really great show from a semi-local band (one local member, others scattered around the UK, not really sure how they rehearse) called Plum Jr. who play the kind of heavy grunge-pop where every time the distortion kicks in you feel it through your whole body but also the hooks are really catchy. The band they were touring with / shared a member with were new to me and very much did not live up to their name (Sombre) because they were great fun, kinda jangly Smiths-y guitars but with a bit more of a punk / new wave edge and witty lyrics. Good to be out watching bands again, hopefully I can stay fit and healthy a bit longer this time.
Woooo live music! Good to know you don’t have to know the songs of Plum Senior to appreciate the newer band.
distortion buzz coming from the speakers Wooooooo live music!!
the super bowl. I enjoyed seeing the chiefs get a drubbing. It felt like the reverse of super bowl LI, where atlanta gave brady a beat down before a major reversal. Here it was just non-stop walloping. It’s probably not psychologically healthy to assign the teams respectively as avatars of wokeness and reaction, but it’s still fun.
dragon prince: legend of aravos. This series from the avatar creators is still going; though it may have just had a series finale that ends on a 7 year cliffhanger. Pretty good overall; similar themes to avatar and korra but set in a western fantasy / dnd-ish world.
the ring cycle, end of Siegfried through start of Götterdämmerung.
Following the defeat of Fafner, Siegfried accidentally consumes a little dragon blood which gives him the power to understand bird song and to hear the true meaning of words (an ability he apparently
loses in Götterdämmerung. I hope someone got fired for that blunder). This leads to a hilarious comic scene, with the dwarf Mime heaping invective on Siegfried and promising to kill him, all while Mime attempts to sweetly persuade siegfried to drink some poison. Mime here has a real put-upon, beleaguered manner, like costanza or larry david. His plot obviously fails.
Then we get Siegfried and Brunnhilda, which will ultimately destroy the world of the Gods. Siegfried wakes her up, Brunnhilda is at first frightened (for obvious reasons) and then in love with the hero who knows no fear. Except the big climactic duet is still tragicomic—siegfried singing about how in love he is, Brunnhilda singing about her visions of the end of the world. The whole thing is very open to a feminist reading (as is its source, the volsungsaga); the crimes of the gods, giants, dwarves, and gibichungs are a series of implicit rapes and forced marriages. Even after she is in love with Siegfried, Brunnhilda laments her loss of power as a valkyrie; her sword, her shield, her armor, her horse’s ability to fly—all gone.
Götterdämmerung starts with the norns giving some foreshadowing / exposition, then brunnhilda and siegfried in their cave and then the gibichungs. Hagen is a great villain. Just pure evil radiating from him. The cherau boulez production gives them tuxedos, like 80s stock millionaires. Hagen makes Gutrun and Gunther passive pawns for their own power play. He gets a great villain monologue at the end of the scene.
One thing of note so far is that it’s weird how much german nationalists like this. Wagner was clearly working much more from the scandinavian volsung saga and the prose edda than the German lay of the Niebelungen. Other than the Rhine, it’s not specifically German. Is the german spirit best captured by the conflict between forced marriage and incest?
more on the super bowl:
using “your own personal jesus” to promote a nominally christian ministry without a hint of irony is very funny.
I like Kendrick’s performance; he has a real natural charisma and the sam jackson character was great. I don’t know if I’d call it a great half time show, to the extent that’s a different genre than just a musical performance.
the commodification of “banana taped to wall” is incredible. I don’t particularly care for it—it seems pretentious without being funny, unlike dadaism, but this has broken through in a way LHOOQ didn’t. Perhaps The Fountain will end up being longer lived as a stock object of anti-intellectuals who believe the only value in art is the technical
skill of the artist. (I do sort of agree with adrian brody in the french dispatch—if you want to evaluate an abstract artist’s work, you should ask to see their technical ability to make representational art; not that you necessarily need that skill to be a good abstract artist but I do actually think it makes abstract art if you have the basic technical skill).
anyway, banana taped to wall is a provocation about art valuation, and now it’s in a super bowl commercial for a trillion dollar company’s sunglasses that allow to offload the process of being human. Did meta pay the artist? Is banana taped to wall copyrightable? Does the continued anger provoked by banana taped to wall somehow elevate the original?
Let’s Start a Cult
Watched it again now that it’s on streaming. Second time, still just as funny, so I consider that a good recommendation. I also picked up a couple moments of foreshadowing I didn’t realize were foreshadowing on the first watch.
Shoresy, “Good and Weird”
“The Bulldogs hold a kangaroo court and prepare for the Weird Sudbury prospects party.”
That about covers it! Pretty fun episode, especially considering it gives us something a bit different than the first three episodes have given us.
The Shield stuff
Some commentaries, but I really wanted to highlight “Wins and Losses” (the mini-episode that the show produced between seasons 5 and 6), since I’d never watched it before. And then I watched “Delivering the Baby: The Making of Episode 511.” Kenny Johnson seems to pretty much be Lem in real life.
Super Bowl LIX
Well, I did not expect it to be this big a blowout, but then I realized, oh, yeah, the Chiefs have Patrick Mahomes and a lot of other good players, but the Eagles are still better at basically every other position. The defense in particular deserves a huge load of credit for this one. Don’t be fooled by the 40-22 final score if you watched: This game was 34-0 at one point.
Rob McElhenny said when he met Kenny Johnson, he immediately challenged him to an arm wrestling match, so I assume this is absolutely true.
What did we play?
Block Blast!
I got a new phone a while back, and it came with this game that I’ve become weirdly obsessed with. It’s essentially Tetris with a bit of Sudoku – you’re given an 8×8 square and three Tetris blocks to put in it at a time. You line up either a row or column of blocks, and you clear that line and get points. If the board gets so full that you can’t put a new block on, the game ends. The basic gameplay is fun in a ‘appealing to pedantry’ kind of way, and where it gets really compelling is that chaining combos – both multiple lines at once and lines within a series of turns – is relatively simple and really satisfying, particularly because of the cheap celebration sounds played.
Strahd – So as you might recall, I noted on Thursday that my regular DM was in a car crash. The good news is that she didn’t suffer any major injuries and is expected to recover. The less good news is that she can’t do any work for the foreseeable future – her main line of work is dance teacher – and the car is totaled. She did note, however, that her schedule to run games is a lot more free.
She was in her car because she was driving home from covering for someone else. And as we have been stuck in a time loop side quest for weeks, she didn’t want to miss another session, so she asked her husband to fill in. He is both a long time DM and a veteran of Strahd, so he knew the terrain and did a good job shoving us along. (We really do too many side quests from the side quests.) He did not let himself be sidelined by either character or player tangents, which is weird but I think he knew his assignment. With any luck, our regular DM will be back soon.
Finished Amnesia: The Bunker. Surprisingly small game, but if we were so inclined it’s constructed to have greater replay value than the usual survival horror. The final showdown with the creature could have been more satisfying – we had the solution figured out but the game is rather picky about certain items activating only when they’re thrown, not just dropped – but it’s a fine entry in what has turned out to be a very robust series.
Had a go at getting into Shadows of Doubt as my next game project, but didn’t really get on with the vibe. It’s a procedurally-generated mystery investigation game which is a cool idea, but it has Minecraft-esque graphics, an oppressive cyberpunky / dystopian feel and very complicated mechanics and the vibes kinda put me off spending enough time with it to learn the full workings, for now at least.
More Cinematrix which is always fun and unlike Wordle feels tailored to my specific, mediocre talents with names and actors.
F-Zero 99 on Nintendo Switch
A few sessions this week which went very well, including two wins in Classic mode, one of them in Big Blue, which was one of my big personal goals for this game. I had a huge lead from the second lap on in that race, which the second place cut in the final stretch because I crashed into a red bumper, plus I think he saved two boosts. I still held on somewhat comfortably but we finished withing a second of each other. Great racing.
Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown on Nintendo Switch
Returned to the upper city section to find the last two constellations to progress on the main quest. One was guarded by another cool, flashy boss, though as the game gets tougher I find that I’m having less trouble with the bosses. This one is a fast guy with a bow and lots of trick shots but I still beat him in the third try. The other constellation was guarded by a big moving puzzle that requires figuring out the jumps, time jumps and bow. It was quite difficult at first but I used an unfailing strategy: I paused the game for a couple of days and when I came back I figured it out in a matter of minutes. Works every time. Once I unlocked that, I went to the next quest point, where the main characters travels back in time to stop the villain from murdering the prince, trigerring another boss fight. This one is fast, powerful and full of trick attacks (I sense a trend), plus I team up with the past version of my character to fight him for a while. I lost once before going to bed but I’ll probably get him fast next time.
Chess
Played two rounds against our nephew yesterday before lunch and I won both. It was my first win against him (or anyone) in over year and felt very satisfactory. He collapsed the center in the first match, meaning there was no coherent strategy from neither of us. He then castled himself into the corner to protect himself but he ended up giving me just enough of an opening to checkmate him. In the second match we both started with solid strategy but it turned into a shootout in the midgame, with both of use losing our queens and a few other pieces, and the center collapsing again. I stayed sharp and kept my towers and horses and took advantage of him not executing fast or decisively enough to make a successful checkmate. Felt good about this one and I think we both played well. Also, my in-laws put Shrek on the background while we were playing and I suspect that might have affected the kid’s play, but that’s the kind of thing we’ll never know.
Civilization VII – I broke down and bought the early-access edition and put some time into it over the weekend. It’s very different from Civ VI so far. Been pretty fun to try to figure out how the game works and to try to determine optimal strategies. I’m far from figuring out everything, but the changes are so wide it’s been a fun and interesting experience so far. (And the “just one more turn” aspect is still there, so far.)
Great appreciation of Rawling and Close’s performance. She feels like she has the same absolute acceptance of herself that Ronnie does, but her grander ambitions—she’s a political actor in a way he never intentionally is, deeply engaged with the fate of her world—gives her a larger stage and higher moral stakes. And she just has such a beautiful, luminous intensity of presence. I think dramas need their True Believers, characters who are absolutely committed to their higher ideals (even if those ideals are ones I vehemently disagree), and Rawling is the purest of The Shield’s.
Nice stuff, although the headline has me thinking of a supernatural twist on a certain style of aughts comedy e.g. Forgetting Sarah Marshall.
“She also ends up revealing his hypocrisy, often in surprising ways – early into her story, when she’s enacting her asset forfeiture policy, she finds she has to turf a single mother and her children out onto the street. Vic tells her that now that the case has been resolved, she could potentially look the other way, and she chooses not to. The short-term negative consequences will be worth it, she decides.”
I don’t think this is hypocrisy on Vic’s part, or at least not anything distinct from his larger hypocrisies. Vic is a middle manager but he’s still out there doing the work and what he is reacting to here is the classic situation of a new boss upsetting a situation that they will not have to personally deal with. Both Vic and Rawling have containment strategies and Rawling just fucked up Vic’s, he is not wrong to be pissed and Rawling is not entirely considering how the negative consequences are not just the short term of fucking over this family but the extended term of her underlings reacting to getting fucked over. Her conviction and ambition are definitely greater than Vic’s and that gives her the self-possession to have a bigger containment field, I think she understands that there will be blowback but not quite the depth of it. But I also think she’d still do what she does anyway because like you say, she does not fear the consequences — that is ultimately what separates her from Vic.
Good points, though I’ll note that Vic isn’t actually pissed at her in that scene – he gives her advice and says she can choose not to follow her policy, but he backs her play.
Good points here (FYI Dave/miller I loved your basement essay). Makes me think of how Close (and Douglas too) “elevates” Fatal Attraction’s sexism through sheer force of will. You hear “I will NOT be ignored, Dan!” and instinctively sympathize with Alex.
Hey thanks! And while I have no real interest in seeing the 90s live-action 101 Dalmatians, I can’t deny Close as a perfect choice for the unapologetic and willfully evil Cruella De Vil.
Grew up on it and remember one pretty decent set-up/punchline (“Don’t say anything to him about his face”/”Whoa, look at that scar!”), Close killing it as De Vil, and that’s it. She’s just having so much fun being evil. Oh, and like all American children in 1998, I wanted a dalmatian, and thank fuck my parents knew they’re disasters around kids.
Year of the Month update!
This February, you can sign up to write about anything from 2016, including these movies, albums, and books.
TBD: Bridgett Taylor: Rogue One
Feb 7th: Gillian Nelson: Queen of Katwe
Feb. 11th: Lauren James: Inside
Feb. 12th: Bridgett Taylor: Doctor Strange
Feb. 13th: Cori Domschot: Ghostbusters
Feb. 14th: Gillian Nelson: Milo Murphy’s Law
Feb. 18th: John Roberts: Silence
Feb. 21st: Gillian Nelson: Pete’s Dragon
Feb. 27th: Cori Domschot: Hidden Figures
Feb. 27th: John Bruni: Jet Plane and Oxbow
Feb. 28th: Sam Scott: Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping
And 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. 26th: Sam Scott: Peter and Wendy by J.M. Barrie
Mar. 31st: John Anderson: The Lodger: A Story of the London Fog
Hey thanks! And while I have no real interest in seeing the 90s live-action 101 Dalmatians, I can’t deny Close as a perfect choice for the unapologetic and willfully evil Cruella De Vil.
RIP Tom Robbins – I only ever read Another Roadside Attraction and Even Cowgirls Get The Blues. But Robbins always seemed like an interesting guy. I vividly remember seeing the hc for Still Life With Woodpecker and its distinct Camel cigarette pack book cover with a woodpecker on it at the mall when I was a kid. I might have to finally get to reading it.