The Friday Article Roundup
Pop culture articles from the past week that are twice as good as average.
I’m seeing double! Six Articles!
Thanks twice over to Dave for his contributions this week. Send articles throughout the next week to ploughmanplods [at] gmail, post articles from the past week below for discussion and Have a Happy Friday!
The A.V. Club‘s Craig D. Lindsey raises an eyebrow at the press coverage of Ryan Coogler’s hit Sinners:
Sinners has received across-the-board love from critics and audiences (it’s the first horror flick to get an A from CinemaScore, ever). Fans (which includes actors like Pedro Pascal) rave about it on social media. TikTok features everything from people seeing it again in a different format to Christians who claim that it’s demonic. Much like when Coogler’s Black Panther became a cultural movement during its theatrical rollout (remember all those African outfits?), [critic Brandon] Collins believes Sinners is causing a wave Warner Bros. wasn’t banking on. “I think they definitely were hoping to break even, you know what I mean, with the movie,” he says. “But I don’t think they anticipated the cultural moment that it’s having now, right? Because I think for Warner Bros., the issue for them is it’s drawing attention to Ryan Coogler’s deal.” (Although it’s similar to the deal Tarantino made when he released Hollywood with Sony, Coogler’s deal, which includes first-dollar gross and ownership of the movie reverting to him in 25 years, is allegedly making studio executives freak the hell out.) Collins believes that the media didn’t expect the Sinners crowd to be so, shall we say, 10 toes down with their support, especially after revealing what Coogler will get if Sinners is a smash.
K. Austin Collins considers a retrospective of L.A. Rebellion films and filmmakers for 4Columns:
There’s a version of the LA Rebellion story in which all was lost: the great films that sat unrestored for decades, minimally released in their own time. Penitentiary, said to be the highest-grossing independent film of 1979, is a counterpoint to that narrative. It is an exploitation film hiding out in an art movement—a bridge between South Central and the barely-made-it outskirts of Hollywood proper, too tough to be heartbreaking, yet too strenuously, knowingly masculinist in its depiction of prison violence and the Black macho to be anything but a tragedy. When [Zeinabu irene] Davis’s documentary shows us multiple clips of Snoop Dogg talking about Penitentiary as if it were a sacred text, the effect is extraordinary, a harbinger of the unacknowledged, Black cult figures and deep cuts lingering just beneath the surface of global pop culture.
At Decibel, Justin Norton interviews Alicia Cordisco of Transgressive about the band’s new EP and the state of tolerance in metal:
Q: “Where do you think metal is as a culture in terms of trans acceptance?”
A: “We are 100% better off now than we were 15 years ago. But we’re in a worse place than we were five years ago. I think the backslide is temporary. The reactionary people are pumping their chests, and the right wing is in power in many places. A lot of global progress is going backwards. I do see the seeds of us pushing back. As we do, we’ll go further than we have before.”
For Quietus, Mat Colegate celebrates the last fifty years of movies about violent future sports:
Always quick to chase a trend Corman reckoned that this brand of science fiction might be the next big thing and so set about creating a film to soak up some of the extra money that Rollerball might leave behind. If his project failed it was no matter as his productions did not cost much in the first place, but if Rollerball built a fanbase who wanted more of this type of… whatever-it-was? Well, that would mean money. And Roger Corman liked having fun with money. And so, as is often the case when a new high concept begins to infiltrate the public consciousness, the Violent Future Sport phenomena that was to move through movies, comics, TV and video games began with an outlier. Rollerball, released on 25 June 1975, despite being the first name most people would think of when asked to name this type of movie, and despite being one of the most aesthetically influential films of the 1970s, is closer in spirit to the brooding and malcontent dramas that had been popular a few years earlier; the brooding and malcontent dramas which would be put decisively to the mat by Rocky, with its stoical and uncomplicated hero, a year later.
At Dirt, Michelle Lyn King writes about structuring life, tarot and stories with narratives:
I teach creative writing to high school students and college undergraduates and one of their more common questions is “How do you finish a story?” My students are always starting stories and never finishing them. I encourage them to not even attempt to understand their stories until they have a complete first draft. You don’t even know what it wants to be yet, I tell them. You have an understanding of the story you want to tell in your head, but you have to see for yourself how that story actually functions on the page. There’s no way for them to understand their stories until they have something with a beginning, middle and, most importantly, some sort of end. Only from there can they refine through the process of editing. I share with them a quote from the literary theorist Ronald Sukenick, courtesy of Jane Alison’s book on craft, Meander, Spiral, Explode: “Form is your footprints in the sand when you look back.” They stare back at me. This is not the answer they want.
And at his substack, Carl Wilson remembers the irreplaceable David Thomas:
You certainly could count Thomas among the great bards of the non-neurotypical, but such categorizations are too dull a tool with which to treat this man who was absolutely one of one…. One thing that’s often lost in the mythos about the Cleveland industrial landscape and musique concrète and other critical clichés (all also true) is that Thomas is a deeply romantic writer, though by no means a sentimental one. The frustrated yearnings of estranged lovers are as present in his work as the spooky entanglements hidden beneath the American surface, both natural and cultural. As well as, you know, ducks and dinosaurs and radios and stuff.
About the writer
C. D. Ploughman
The weary Ploughman is a writer and filmmaker, focusing these days on documentary and educational projects. He obsesses over movies with his very patient wife and children.
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The life and career of a man who found the extraordinary in the ordinary.
The Friday Article Roundup
An assembly line of this week's pop culture writing from around the Internet.
Lunch Links
State of the art special effects, little attention paid to plot - what's changed over the past 120 years?
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The Friday Article Roundup
A catty roundup of great pop culture writing from the past week.
Department of
Conversation
What did we watch?
Babylon 5, Season Two, Episode Eight, “A Race Through Dark Places”
Finally, some good fucking plot. The frustrating thing about this show’s slow plotting is that the reveals genuinely are spectacular; the idea of a psychic underground railroad is awesome enough, let alone the reveal that Franklin is running the thing and has been ever since he opened the free clinic in season one. It’s not just cool on principle, it’s a solid reflection of his character; Sheridan tells him this is a breach of his ethics as a soldier, and Franklin retorts that he prioritises being a doctor, as he always has. It’s also a great and very Babylon 5 moment at the end when he comfortably lets the railroad die now that it’s been found out, knowing someone else will pick up the slack. It’s not quite ‘trust the system’ – literally the basis of the story is that the Psi-Corp is evil and chews up human beings – but it is ‘trust that someone will keep the light going’. “My work here is done.”
We also dive a bit into Delenn; she’s sincerely curious about other people and ends up effectively dating Sheridan. She talks about the idea that we all have more in common than we realise; sadly, this doesn’t hit on an individual level, let alone a spiritual one, because I’ve realised I just don’t care for Sheridan as a character. There’s not much more to him than benign childish and petulant – this episode has him throwing a fit because the bean counters want him to start paying rent or move into smaller quarters, going beyond reasonable annoyance and into a tantrum.
Hush
“Well, you’ve seen it now, haven’t you?” Great, effective home invasion thriller, and it benefits a lot from keeping its killer on a human scale: he can be ghoulish and terrifying, especially in that line (the best in the movie), but he’s also pointedly just Some Guy, and there’s even a bitterly comedic beat where he notes how easily he would have lost a fair fight with Michael Trucco. A fair amount of satisfying payoff here, plus a lot of great visuals (the glass raining down into the bathtub, for one).
The Righteous Gemstones, “Is This the Man Who Made the Earth Tremble” and “They Are Weak, But He Is Strong”
The Gideon reveal is great, especially because it’s not only a reveal but an actual push forward in the plot: Gideon making the necessary decision to return home to try to salvage some money out of all this and defuse the murderous tension with Scott. And now we also have Baby Billy, obviously financially desperate and in a bad fix but still scrounging for opportunities to feed his ego; his mutually testy relationship with Eli was instantly intriguing to me, and there’s a real sense of relief to them dissolving into laughter together at the end, despite all the bad blood. Goodman’s weary, grandiose, sometimes sinister paternalism–all crumbling from grief–is a great match for the mercurial flimflam thing Goggins is going for here; one stone, the other slippery. (Also, a thousand points to one of the stripped-naked vandals for walking back through the mall at a measured, this-might-as-well-happen pace.) Great to get some more humanizing material for Amber, too, after she was set up as a kind of polished evangelical trophy wife in the pilot–she quickly emerges in these episodes as a woman who genuinely loves her estranged son, not just her status.
Speaking of movies about violent future sports…The 10th Victim – War has been abolished, and the need for violence has been funneled in The Big Hunt, where participants alternate between hunter and being hunted. Ursula Andress is just one kill from her tenth, when she will achieve massive fame and riches. Her next target is Marcello Mastroianni, quite successful so far as well but bored and cynical about the game and his life. And under the rules, she knows who her target it, but he can only guess that the woman asking to interview him for a TV show is actually trying to end him. Naturally, they fall in love. And did I mention this is a comedy? We get a very weird and oddly entertaining mix of action, science fiction satire, and offbeat humor, and while it takes a while to get going, it really chugs along nicely till a rather incoherent ending. The leads are engaging, and director Elio Petri and his crew use a mix of contemporary settings, wild costumes, the occasional odd bit of furniture, and a few info-dumps to effectively create a sense of being into another time, similar to Alphaville in some ways. Oh, and of course we have Andress’s double barreled silver metal bra-gun.
Kojak, “Dead Again” – Brooke Adams spots someone from her hometown who was supposed to have be killed by the Mob, and runs to the police to protect her since she is sure he will kill her. Kojak befriends Brooke but doesn’t believe her story, and when she ends up dead, he throws himself into solving the case. Even as the seemingly dead man starts to extort money from a department store chain by planting bombs. And while the initial plot is still in the background, we shift to Simon Oakland in shady detective mode, this time an ex-cop working as a department store dick. The pieces don’t entirely fit together – I feel like they had two plot ideas that weren’t big enough for an hour – but Kojak’s guilt sort of keeps it moving. Looks like the budget for filming in NYC ran out since we have our first “LA pretending to be NYC” scene.
Frasier, “Our Father Whose Art Ain’t in Heaven” – After not being allowed to pay for dinner or a movie once too often, Martin buts Frasier a painting he said he liked at a restaurant, only Frasier was just saying that to get a table. Things go awry, but in the end father and smooth things out. We’re at the point when it can said we get a standard issue Frasier and Martin episode. Never bad because there is too much heart, but predictable.
Andor
Season 2, Episode 6. “What a Festive Evening”. First time.
SPOILERS
Great scenes between characters here, with Cassian and Luthen butting head twice over the Ghorman rebels strategy and Bix. This is the most overtly romantic the show has been too, with a tender (for a while) reunion between Cassian and Bix and another loaded one between Vel and Cinta (impeccably acted from both), with both couples overwhelmed by the demands the rebellion imposes on them. Cassian manages to wrestle some agency for him and Bix from Luthen in a very tense confrontation, while Vel and Cinta get tasked with helping the Ghormans getting their shit together, with tragic results. The nature of this show naturally demands that most of these characters won’t make it out alive, but it’s still hard to fathom one of the rebels’ best operatives getting killed in a mundane mission by one their own guys, with a gun he’s not supposed to have, over a scuffle with a guy who’s on their own side. It’s a tough loss but one that can happen to any of them at any moment. Great, emotional monologue from Faye Marsay after it, just raw, righteous fury.
Elsewhere, we get an extended party in Coruscant with Luthen, Kleya, the senators and a bunch of ISB assholes (there’s something quietly obscene about the latter two groups just mingling together socially, very Nazi Germany shit), which leads to an extended suspense set piece as Kleya retrieves a spy bug that could give them away. Once again, it’s fun to see the show wring meaningful action out of something quite mundane that could doom them all. Terrific punchline at the end too.
And for a button, we get Cassian and Bix swiftly pulling off a kill, ending the mind control Imperial dude while also getting an important moral victory for them as a couple, and going a long way for Bix’s coping with her PTSD. Very sneaky writing here, as the show doesn’t let on what they’re really doing on how it happened (and especifically, how and why Luthen let it happen) until it happens.
The Brutalist – was genuinely surprised at how swiftly this epic just flew by. This film moves. More impressive is how much scope can be achieved on such a minor budget, and with actual film no less. Very good integration of location shooting with slight cgi retouches. If I have a production quibble, it’s that some of the buildings had flourishes that seemed a bit ornate for Brutalist architecture. I’m no expert though.
The plot is symbolist nonsense but that’s fine with me. (It’s about America, man…) A moral fable, mostly well told.
The film’s greatest feat is making me tolerate and even enjoy the presence of Adrian Brody, a man I once described as “the Viceroy of Dickhead Manor.” Dude deserves the Oscar for that alone.
It is weird how Brody does pretty much forgettable movies, knocks it out of the park and gets and Oscar, goes back to doing garbage (and Wes Anderson roles), and immediately gets an Oscar when he re-emerges in a prestige project. His agent may not have the greatest hold on his strengths.
What did we read?
”The Rats In The Walls”, HP Lovecraft
My second ever Lovecraft and one of my favourites. This is simultaneously very ambitious and very tightly written, and it works the “descent into an underground” semi-formula he had perfectly. In a way, and this is deeply ironic given who Lovecraft was, this is way ahead of its time, even ahead of now – it’s reminiscent of hillbilly horror fiction, except instead of being about poor people, it’s about very rich and powerful people literally farming human beings.
The setup takes someone Lovecraft would have found very cool and admirable slowly discovering the rot behind his family; the eponymous rats recall Poe’s cat in the wall, and the gradual attempts to work them out are exciting and horror-inducing. I think the thing that fundamentally draws me to this story is that arguably, there are no supernatural elements to this; the horror is all-too-possible, and the rats themselves may be a genetic memory bubbling up but might also just be a hallucination, or even Delapore’s imagination playing up.
And it’s a rare case where a horror works by going into vivid detail; the only way we have any distance here is that almost all the horror happened three hundred years ago, but it doesn’t really help that much. It’s almost worth having his single most embarrassing creative choice – the name of the protagonist’s cat.
Also: there’s a reference to the Piltdown Man, which wasn’t proven as a hoax until long after Lovecraft’s death. I always respected Lovecraft’s sincere dedication to learning contemporary science.
“Killshot”, Elmore Leonard – really enjoyed this one, good course correction after the last Leonard I read (Freaky Deaky) was a little underwhelming. Pretty low-key storytelling in this one, there’s a couple of bad guys, a couple of good guys and a conflict that neither side would probably be able to fully explain. But that leaves plenty of room for character stuff and it’s all beautifully written – hang-out crime fiction, I guess.
Started Bruce Watson’s book on Sacco and Vanzetti. From what I have heard, he is going to conclude that they might have been guilty (if also railroaded). So far, he’s plunged into a trial where the DA has put together a methodical case and Sacco and Vanzetti’s lawyer, though a true believer in radical and labor causes, has created a lot of chaos and little in the way of reasonable doubt. Watson also makes it clear than the defendants were connected with the anarchist movement and with the series of bombings that shook America after WWI. Watson seems to have done a lot research, and his presentation of the facts is a bit scattered but efficient more often than not. His prose is functional.
Her Body and Other Parties, by Carmen Maria Machado
Short story collection–predominantly dark fantasy/slipstream-ish, but it varies a lot–that only intermittently clicked for me. A few stories, like “The Husband Stitch,” were elegant and clever in the way slipstream generally is, and it’s not their fault I’m not always in the mood for it; “The Husband Stitch” feels roughly on par with Kelly Link, which is high praise. But lately, I’ve felt out of sorts with stories that get so much of their resonance from other stories, especially if it feels like they’re airy structures built on bedrock. It’s not story so much as being clever about story at length, but it’s at least fluidly written and occasionally thought-provoking. Some of the non-slipstream stories, like the eerie “Real Women Have Bodies,” which deals with a peculiar apocalypse of women growing insubstantial, worked better for me.
I had a much harder time with “Especially Heinous,” which may be the most well-known story in the book. It’s a novella made up of capsule summaries (that are often not very much like capsule summaries at all) of Law & Order: SVU episodes, using the real episode titles to build a surreal universe where Benson and Stabler deal with an uncanny New York that includes their doubles. It’s my position that this could have made for some excellent, unsettling flash fiction (which I would have loved) or, at most, an excellent, unsettling short story, but it cannot sustain itself at novella length. As it is, it feels rambling and exhausting, especially as it’s less and less like L&O or an episode guide and more and more like freeform creepypasta. It goes from Totally My Jam to “you know, maybe you should have just written a traditional narrative, nothing wrong with that.” This is all making me feel very curmudgeonly, so if anyone wants to read it and defend it, I’m all for that:
https://theamericanreader.com/especially-heinous-272-views-of-law-order-svu/
Four Quartets, by T.S. Eliot
Casper recommended this as a chaser for all the C.S. Lewis, and she’s absolutely right. I already loved “The Waste Land” and “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock,” but I had never read this, and it’s as moving a meditation on time as you would expect. (“T.S. Eliot is really good,” announces the world’s coldest take.) It’s always strange finally reading something famous and tremendously influential for the first time, especially with poetry: there’s something faintly surreal about coming across a particularly good stanza and realizing that I can recognize at least ten book titles buried in there. Two favorite bits:
There is, it seems to us,
At best, only a limited value
In the knowledge derived from experience.
The knowledge imposes a pattern, and falsifies,
For the pattern is new in every moment
And every moment is a new and shocking
Valuation of all we have been.
and
Every attempt
Is a wholly new start, and a different kind of failure
Because one has only learnt to get the better of words
For the thing one no longer has to say, or the way in which
One is no longer disposed to say it.
Blaze by Richard Bachman – It’s a simple and linear plot detailing the story of Blaze. But it’s the character who enters your heart and stays there rather than what’s going on. Blaze may be a “bad guy” but he’s really an anti-hero with a good heart. He’s pushed to perdition by his social condition, being slow in the head and by frequenting bad company. It’s a quick, spare read, while enthralling at times it still feels like minor Bachman. The structure is something King, er, Bachman can do in his sleep – a chapter detailing the present, then one of the past. Both are enjoyable. But, again, it’s the character of Blaze keeping your attention. Blaze, like all of King’s characters, is masterfully constructed, psychologically faceted, a real character. It’s both a sweet and bitter book, moving and funny with King’s usual cutting irony.
I need to reread this. I remember it feeling much more like King than Bachman (as does my favorite Bachman, The Long Walk, actually), but a lot of the specifics have faded away. Beautiful original cover, though.
Their Eyes Were Watching God – Forgot to report this a couple weeks ago, although not much to say – beautifully written and characters you don’t mind hanging out with even before the storm hits. Kind of a Southern Steinbeck feel to it in the every day and the tragedy.
Year of the Month update!
May’s year will be 1962, so you can write about any of these movies, albums, books, et al!
May 2nd: Gillian Rose Nelson: Moon Pilot
May 9th: Gillian Rose Nelson: Bon Voyage!
May 15th: John Bruni: L’Eclisse/Il Sorpasso
May 16th: Gillian Rose Nelson: Big Red
May 23rd: Gillian Rose Nelson: Almost Angels
May 30th: Gillian Rose Nelson: In Search of the Castaways
And coming in June, we’ll be moving on to 1983, including all these movies, albums, books, et al!
Jun. 9th: Sam Scott: El Sur
Jun. 23rd: Sam Scott: Codex Seraphianus
Jun. 24th: John Bruni: Legendary Hearts
Hey Friends, What’s Up?
(Has several job applications rejected) Ah, man, what’s wrong with me?
(Has a job application accepted) Ah, man, what’s wrong with this place?
Details to come when I have more time, but looks like I’ll be bringing home a portion of the bacon in the coming months. Today: attempting to tiptoe through the day before the students realize there’s more subs than actual teachers in the building and begin uninhibited rioting.
Congratulations on the job and incoming bacon!
Hahahahaha, that “oh no, why am I getting in?” feeling is very familiar. Congrats!
Congratulations!
Well done on the new job!
That time stamp makes no sense. Something is off today.
But many things are off today. The fat man in the MAGA hat is finally gunning for public media. My employer and the entire industry is at once freaking out and trying to push back, but I don’t see any evidence anyone is making concrete plans for what happens when the money is gone (and I have no reason to think it won’t be).
Meanwhile, we do our jobs. It would help a lot if people got back to me in a timely fashion about all the things I ma waiting on. There will be a lot of notes Monday morning poking people. The big board meeting is coming and I have to do a lot to get ready, and that “a lot” keeps increasing. But that is why they pay me the big bucks.
At least the Knicks are still alive, though.
It’s been a while since I rapped at ya… so much so that there’s quite a few unfamiliar names here. Anyway, I’m Rosy, I was a Solute stalwart and I’ve been gone for a while.
As Chas Tenenbaum said, “it’s been a rough year…” Things went off the rails until my body gave up on me last week and I ended up in emergency. I’m in hospital still until they can find a bed in a long-term mental health facility for at least a few months. This is a good thing. And now that I’m emerging from the valium fog they’ve had me in for a week, I can actually type legibly, even if my grammar still sucks. Anyway, I hope to be back here more often and, who knows, maybe able to contribute articles again soon.
(Thanks to Ploughman and Casper for your concerned check in emails. I couldn’t respond but I saw them and appreciated them.)
Great to see you back here!
Rosy is back! That’s good! He was gone because he was sick! That’s bad!
Good to see you! Hope to see you more! (And most of the names here are Soluters, I’ll email a guide to the name changes)
Haha thanks
Glad to have you back!
Gee whiz. I hope everything works out ok.
I start my new job on Monday! Excited and anxious, and a little annoyed that my body decided to catch a cold for my last week off.
And today the nation goes to the polls and so it’s crossed fingers and toes for the next twelve hours waiting for results. At least we get one last night with Anthony Green.
Good luck! And I remember when “One Last Night with Anthony Green” swept the adult contemporary music charts, it was a wild 80s.
Congratulations on the new job! I hope it’s a good fit for what you want in your life right now.
I wouldn’t be too worried about the election. We’ve got this locked down, I think.
Antony Green’s retiring? End of an era. Incidentally, what’s your take on the new Media Watch host? I’m cautiously optimistic he’ll find his legs. He’s doing OK so far I think.
Congratulations and good luck! (But sorry about the cold.)
We need to have a serious conversation about Media Magpies standards and ethical practices re: making one half of a Simpsons reference in your article headline and then completing it in the article text instead of deferring that to the commenters, thereby giving us Simpsons Reference Blue Balls. Not cool, man.
Me flunk Simpsons reference payoff?
Bonus! And incidentally, the FAR appreciates all articles submitted, but submitting them more than the seven nighttime local hours before the article is set to go live is even more appreciated.
The Captain points us to The Ringer with an oral history of Danny McBride!
https://www.theringer.com/2025/05/01/tv/danny-mcbride-oral-history-eastbound-down-righteous-gemstones
And Casper provides the link to Indiewire where Ben Affleck talks about his career-best work: the commentary track for Armageddon:
https://www.indiewire.com/news/general-news/ben-affleck-armageddon-commentary-track-best-work-1235118866/