The Friday Article Roundup
Browse through the best pop culture writing of the week.
This week you will check out:
Give a hoot, email the FAR! Send articles to be featured throughout the next week to magpiesmedia [at] gmail, post articles from the past week below for discussion and Have a Happy Friday!
Brandon Soderberg covers the archival treasures of Beyond Video for Bmore Art:
According to streaming prognosticators, all of movie history is out there on the internet. The reality is all of movie history has now spread across multiple online services, a rights transfer or movie studio sale away from disappearing temporarily, or forever. “People have a sense that because something is on Amazon or Netflix or, worst of all, something is on YouTube, that it has been properly archived, that it is eternally available, and that is not the case,” collective member Eric Hatch says. “Having physical objects cared for and kept in a collection and made available is better than relying on it being available at a link.”
At Media Industries, Peter Labuza reviews a new book examining the way art, through the machinations of private equity, has become financialized:
[Andrew] deWaard’s final chapter rebounds abandoning a data approach for a Theodor Adorno-like ranting on contemporary Hollywood filmmaking. In what he amusingly calls “mise-en-synergy,” the result is an attempt to paint the idea that films like Ready Player One, The LEGO Movie, and Space Jam: A New Legacy grapple with their own concentration as a form of speculation and securitization. deWaard is only slightly less biting than Adorno, but he can be particularly cutting toward films made “to develop a fantasyland made in the image of the financialized marketplace, reflecting our dystopian reality back to us as a playful fantasy.” Most of these texts ultimately exist to “reassure adults that their commodified memory is all in good fun,” a bleak outlook as one could imagine.
Jonny Auping pays tribute to the Mavericks’ Raul Malo at Don’t Rock The Inbox:
It’s rare that people who truly cross genres with any musical intention – by that I mean, they are potentially unaware they are crossing genres but they are very aware of the two or three things they are bringing together – are celebrated in any real way. Born of Cuban parents, Raul Malo made music with The Mavericks that has obvious Latin roots while also having success on the country charts, itself an impressive accomplishment. But it also rocked, in a very specific American way. I picture my grandpa’s 1957 Chevrolet when I hear some of The Mavericks’ hits.
Vikram Murthi reviews Ella McKay and finds a strain of screwball at Indiewire:
The dramatic shorthand Brooks deploys in “Ella McCay” might seem jarring relative to modern Hollywood offerings. Uncharitable viewers will likely find it inept. With all respect to the film’s ensemble cast, largely comprised of veteran actors, this type of filmmaking fared better in a Hollywood of yore, which was filled with players capable of putting together entire characters in one scene, or even a single exchange. Alas, there’s an inevitable awkwardness watching present-day actors attempt to do the same.
At The Walrus, Greta Rainbow takes aim at the concept of “cozy lit”:
Cozy lit has its tropes. There should be cats. There should be books in the book. Tea. Rain. The seaside. More cats. There are actually so many cats. Reading this, you might be picturing a woman alone, swaddled in fleece blankets, her own cat on her lap. Indeed, cozy lit is feminized. And more than that, its absorption by Western publishing is the new frontier of chick lit….The Eastern approach to literature—often prioritizing worldbuilding over action enfolding—comes from a different storytelling tradition than our own. But the cozy approach is something specific, and it’s been co-opted as a way to say nothing.
Tags for this article
More articles by Dave Shutton
Double Features
Considering the comedy in The Phoenician Scheme and The Naked Gun.
The Friday Article Roundup
Going on the record with the best pop culture writing of the week.
The Friday Article Roundup
A cowardly and superstitious lot? No, the best pop culture writing of the week.
The Friday Article Roundup
No kings, of pop or otherwise, just the best pop culture writing of the week
The Friday Article Roundup
Out of the mists of history, the best pop culture writing of the week.
Department of
Conversation
Been seeing the phrase “cozy horror” and it is making me reach for my revolver (yes I know who said it but Mission of Burma got there too).
I think I like a fair number of things that sometimes get categorized (usually retroactively) as cozy, and there are certainly things I like that make me feel cozy, but coziness as a marketing category sometimes bugs the shit out of me because it feels like a steamroller flattening everything out and selling it based on lowest common denominator ideas, which this article gets at: there’s an artistic movement that’s not based on trying to give someone a kind of sanitized, Hallmark-esque hug at a distance, but that’s how it gets replicated en masse.
Yeah, I’m not even against cozy as a concept, god knows I need easier work sometimes, but cozy horror as a phrase brings out the Reynolds Woodcock in me. “I hate that word!”
“Cozy? Fucking cozy?”
Reading the description of the fantasy restaurant book here made me realize that either it is a ripoff of the TV show Midnight Diner (also Japanese) or the other way around. Mrs. Shutton really liked the show, I thought it was fine but one-note and very cozy at the expense of finding different shadings. But I wonder if this medium splits the difference between Instagram scrolling and theoretically deeper novels – the half-hour TV show is very much a thing that can be familiar and comfortable and lightweight by design.
Most half-hour sitcoms fall under the umbrella of what people call ‘cozy’ these days – comforting and familiar That was traditionally the sitcom’s job, IMO, and like Conor and Lauren I think it serves a useful purpose.
There’s room to do something really great with it, by making the cozy itself the source of horror, like Roald Dahl’s The Landlady or the bed in the Grudge or the bed in the bed that eats people.
What did we watch?
Babylon 5, Season Three, Episode Seventeen, “War Without End, Part 2
“I am as tired of my life as you are.”
Ownage. My favourite part is the jaunt into the future, establishing stakes for the story; granted, we now know none of this aside from Sheridan and Delenn knocking boots will happen, but it’s inherently cool nonetheless. Londo’s fate is the best part, showing how he looks having sold almost the entirety of his soul, and the most shocking part is seeing one possible expression of his vision from the first episode of how he and G’Kar will kill each other; I can only presume the actual result will play out differently.
(Great detail: Londo drinking to turn off the mind control or whatever)
Anyway, puzzlebox storytelling! I admit, some of the details were lost on me, given I saw the episode this is riffing on forty-one weeks (or 10 months and one week) ago; one can only imagine what it was like watching it with a two year difference. I actually deeply appreciated the flashbacks here as a simple reminder, and it did indeed build up my interest and excitement; as usual, the final reveal of Sinclair’s fate was amazing. Puzzlebox storytelling aims to create awe at seeing at how it all comes together, and this definitely got me with that – the Minbari-to-Human machine in particular really got me oohing, and it serves the overall emotion of people of different kinds coming together to do the work – the liberal ethos.
I know that Straczinsky had to change his plans for the show when Michael O’Hare had to leave (apparently, and this was only revealed recently, because O’Hare was suffering paranoid schizophrenia and hallucinations, which would have ruined his career at the time); I also know he anticipated this, and had created backup characters for the entire main cast. I wonder how much of Sinclair’s fate here was intended to play into the finale and how much was him seizing another character. Definitely some impressive rejiggering, even without knowing what he did exactly.
Here’s a thought: if Marcus is the show getting goofy and pretentious, Lennier is its full expression. Dorky, but in a sincere and lived-in kind of way; a proud product of an institution with strong traditional moral values.
The Cure: The Show of a Lost World – Saw it in theaters and if you are a die-hard Cure fan, it is not optional. As a casual fan, it was very good. The caveat: it is also three hours long, given that it’s a document of one of their last shows ever…for now. A fantastic fucking band live though and Smith and the other members are visibly happy and enjoying playing together. (Smith even does a white guy shuffle to “Close to Me.”) Not a packed house but people started clapping and even singing along.
Cast a Deadly Spell – Los Angeles. 1948. Everyone is using magic. Everyone but private eye H. Philip “Phil” Lovecraft. So naturally he gets sucked into a case involving the collector of rare books and his virginal 16 year old daughter; his corrupt former partner on the LAPD who now runs a nightclub, and the ex who choose the partner over him; and of course the Necronomicon. The premise is very clever, but the film’s tonal shifts between serious noir, mild horror, and broad humor weaken the material a bit. As do some aspects of the movie that have aged poorly, mainly that grown men are way too eagerly lusting after the 16 year old. But Fred Ward is unsurprisingly great as a noir detective, Clancy Brown is a lot of fun as the ex-partner, and there is no one I would rather have reading from a book of apocalyptic spells than David Warner. Directed by Martin Campbell before Goldeneye. And despite being made for HBO and having an R rated, not a single cuss. (Weird fact: there is a sequel to this with an entirely different cast, directed by Paul Schrader!)
John Carpenter’s Ghosts Of Mars — flashbacks nestled into flashbacks, what is this shit? Carpenter is the most straightforward guy around and all this undermines the story’s momentum. And the story is a decent one, Assault On Precinct 13 IN SPACE, a bunch of people holed up against a deadly army. But the actual comp for this movie is Bozo Fog — the vibes are not incredible autumn cozy ghostiness shot with widescreen composition and perfect unrushed pacing to soak in the landscapes and rooms invaded by lepers to ominous tones, but possessed miners in Juggalo outfits slugging it out with space marines in a dead town with quicker cuts and Anthrax and Buckethead shredding Carpenter’s score. To be clear: this rules, it is incredibly dumb fun totally carried by that score, not exactly nu-metal but adjacent in its uncomplicated but primal aggression given juice by Carpenter’s structure. A movie that interestingly got a lot better as the second beer was cracked (and that flashback bullshit largely melts away), it may not be good (nobody is performing to their best level here) but I had a blast by the end. Interesting to note Chad Stahleski and David Leitch in the stunt credits, I enjoy this kind of action a lot more than their (admittedly superior in terms of choreography and scale) post-Wick work.
Don Hertzfeldt’s Animation Mixtape — from last friday, with Not David Lynch! It has been a busy time. Hertzfeldt curates a collection of shorts from the 80s to the present in all kinds of styles, simple line (as in just lines) to CGI to everything in between, straightforward narratives and surrealism. A great program with only one dud, highlights include Maks Rzontkowski’s Martyr’s Guidebook (a fake altruist rooms with a close-to-biblically accurate angel, very weird CG stuff with solid humor underpinnings), Wendy Tilby and Amanda Forbis’ The Flying Sailor (about a man during the 1917 Halifax Harbor explosion, moody and wondrous) and Richard Condie’s The Big Snit (a 1985 Plympton-esque mix of nuclear war and couple’s Scrabble, the second part is extremely accurate and hilarious). Good shit, catch it if it comes through your town.
Yeah, I should give Mars a shot as a Carpenter completionist but I know it’s gonna be a comedown from his other movies. Ice Cube at least SEEMS like a good fit for his tough guys!
He should be but is just eh, the cliche instead of the archetype. I think some of this is on the less elegant filmmaking, earlier Carpenter gives actors more time in the shot and I think that helps them find depth.
I’ve been awol for a bit. Catching up:
creature commandos. Comic book and superhero media has a bad habit of giving villains face-turns and then sanding the edges off a bit too much. Villains turn into antiheroes too cheaply; a sympathetic backstory or one good deed papers over too much evil. So I really like CC, where the antiheroes have made very little progress on their redemption arcs, and the villains with sympathetic backstories who find themselves allied with heroes are still actually just bad guys. You’re able to have distinct shades of gray in the storytelling because you still have a clearly defined moral spectrum, even if most characters are clustered just near the lower end of the spectrum.
succession, up through s2e7. . At first glance this is arrested development played straight. As the show matures into season 2, it’s more like King Lear, except Lear has even fewer redeeming qualities. There’s a run in the middle of season 2 that’s just incredible dry comedy, with Tom interviewing the anchor suspected of being a nazi, the fake safe room, the boar hunt, roman’s humiliation, etc. Kendall explaining his actions with “my dad told me to do it.” It’s great.
weapons. made it about 30 minutes before it was too scary for my wife.
What did we read?
8-Bit Theater, Strips 0390-0420, Brian Clevinger
This finishes off the Earth Orb arc; a great moment of clever wording when Thief gets the lich’s soul out of the Earth Orb by citing environmental law, and a great example of an 8 Bit anticlimax when the lich is defeated by Black Mage emerging from Hell under him. It’s interesting because it’s a rare case of the characters looking cool for a moment (signified by the fact that BM is glowing and red, hilariously undermined by his sprite basis); BM completely owns the lich in a moment with a badass quip. It’s a subversion of the comic’s usual approach, if you like, making it more interesting; it is of course subverted itself in two strips when the lich simply takes over Hell himself and sends a minion to reduce BM to a mortal again. Comedy is music.
After this, the characters technically have no reason to be around each other – BM even points out Thief has no real reason to steal anymore – so Clevinger has fun making an arc about White Mage trying to push them back to the main plot. As well as a small, pointless, but very funny arc about the Dark Warriors spreading a negative ad campaign against the LW that they respond to (“Do we even HAVE a news media?”). Absolutely brilliant joke when Thief makes a racist remark against humans in front of the camera and RM effortlessly refers to him as Mr McHumanwitz. Garland ends up in a plot where he’s seeing a psychologist to convince himself there’s no such thing as forest imps, when the doctor is an imp in disguise. These casual jokes are what make the comic so fucking funny; the energy has long been established and the jokes are getting ever more elaborate.
This contains one of the several attempts Clevinger made to shorten the comic by half. I get it as an attempt to reduce the amount of work and churn out strips faster but I happen to like the lumbering pace of the comic as is.
“So what was Hell like? Figure I ought to get ready.”
There’s also a great joke about how BM uses his temporary cosmic powers to will that contracts don’t apply to him, to get out from under Thief.
No Longer Human – So depressing that it’s 170 pages and took me a month plus to finish – would you believe the author and his mistress killed themselves after the book was published?! An intensive and well-written epistolary of masking and complete alienation, Camus could only dream of this level of outsiderdom. However, like a lot of 20th century books, the misogyny involved did turn me off quite a lot.
And Then There Were None – The original title is repulsive and Christie’s entire book fucks. Shocked by how much the tone of the story veers into sheer horror too, with the tension ramping up with the body count until one character is in a waking nightmare. It’s also one of the rare mysteries where the complete explanation is satisfying and creates a diabolical and satisfying feeling. An extremely well-plotted account of how we can lie to ourselves as well as be totally honest, with only one character seemingly satisfied with what they are and what they are capable of.
I also started Laird Barron’s Worse Angels, the third in his Isiah Coleridge series. Good stuff though it’s early days yet.
Fuck yeah, And Then There Were None. This straddles the mystery-horror borderline in fine form; few have ever done it better.
If you decide to read more Christie and ever want recommendations, let me know!
Have read this one and a Mrs. Marple book, so I’ll take more!
Sweet! A handful of recommendations, chosen at a guess for what may appeal to you. There are a lot that I either like or love, so I needed some way to narrow them down:
The ABC Murders: Poirot. Three people–one with the initials AA, one with the initials BB, and one with the initials CC–are gradually murdered, and it all feels like Christie’s response to contrived serial killer plots, though I will say no more. A book with a strong sense of cruelty at work.
Five Little Pigs: Poirot. A retrospective mystery, with Poirot looking into a murder that happened sixteen years ago to see if the right woman was convicted for it. Very good ending, good psychological portraits of the characters.
A Pocket Full of Rye: Marple. Not my favorite Marple–I’m partial to the earlier, more sparkling ones or the ridiculous-in-concept-but-deeply-fun A Murder Is Announced, which also has a lesbian couple for bonus points–but the murder of this businessman has an ending that really goes hard. Maybe best read after you have a few more Christies under your belt, for reasons I won’t get into.
And then an assortment of ones I really appreciate but don’t have any specific Conor radar on: The Murder of Roger Ackroyd (good plotting), The Murder at the Vicarage (good voice–I tend to like Christie’s spunky ingenues), Peril at End House (good ideas about the human condition), Death on the Nile (good characters; the Peter Ustinov movie is my favorite Christie adaptation); Sad Cypress (good low-key emotional arc); The Hollow (good look at a suffocating emotional environment); and Crooked House (good darkness). But honestly, I have fun with most of these, and the total misses, like Murder on the Links, are pretty rare, although as a rule of thumb, I find it’s often best to avoid the more spy-like thrillers.
Cards on the Table is one of my favourites. I really love the conceit with the four suspects and the only clues being the bridge scores and their histories.
I will throw in my own recommendations:
Poirot-wise, I’m a big fan of Cards on the Table, but second Lauren on ABC Murders (which has great Poirot-Hastings bits). Appointment with Death I also really like with its monstrous matriarch character dominating the family on holidays.
Murder is Announced is one of my favourite Miss Marples, but I think Body in the Library has some of the best of the fundamental Marple plot-device: when she draws psychological parallels between the dramatis personae of the murder, and people she’s known from her little village.
I second all these recs but the Marple ones, I still haven’t read enough Marple.
Murder on the Orient Express is a classic for a reason, and if you want something a bit lighter, the Tommy and Tuppence books and stories are great fun – kind of a Thin Man vibe, with less alcoholism.
Well, I finished Heart Full of Headstones, and Ian Rankin pulled the rug from under me. After what seemed to be a typical satisfying if somewhat formulaic conclusion to the main plot – Rankin is a good writer but his mysteries leave a bit to be desired – everything is upended and John Rebus ends up going to prison for…well, let’s leave at least one spoiler. So I had to leap the most recent book, Midnight and Blue, where John is indeed behind bars, and of course there is a murder, and of course it’s not just the usual prisoner-on=prisoner violence. Not far into things yet, but it’s fun in a way to just jump from one book to the next.
And started a bio of Rose Valland, the art historian who more or less saved France’s art from leaving Paris when the Allies arrived. If you remember Frankenheimer’s The Train, you might remember the woman at the beginning who gets the ball rolling on Lancaster’s scheme. That is Valland, albeit with a different name. The book is by Michelle Young, founder of the Untapped New York podcast, website, and tour agency, and I am big fan of her NYC work.
Cards on the Table, by Agatha Christie
Part of the ending feels a bit tacked-on, but this is very strong overall, even if it’s not the out-and-out banger of Conor’s selection. It’s interesting to see how Christie makes the form work with such a small set of suspects (only four), and the structure of the mystery provides good opportunities for Poirot’s psychological methods of assessing character and turn of mind (asking everyone about the bridge hands and what was in the room, in this case). There’s a character here who earns Poirot’s admiration in an unconventional way–admitting past evil with no interest in justifying or apologizing for it–and they’re my favorite part of the book.
I like that this is a case where the murder victim is a fool who dies essentially cutting himself on his own edge by inviting four suspected murderers to a party alongside four detectives of various kinds: a stupid thing to do, and Christie and Poirot both savage him for it. I always appreciate when Christie’s detectives are explicit about the fact that solving a murder is sometimes less about avenging the victim and more about preventing future deaths: once someone works out that killing can be an effective problem-solving tool, they may resort to it again.
Ariadne Oliver is a particularly funny, acidic bit of self-parody here, and I’ll always love her self-irritation at making her fictional detective a Finn and her mechanical understanding of how her plots work.
Speaking of, the most interesting, short story-esque character in Boston Legal might be this character Bernie who kills his overbearing mother and then finds he kind of enjoys the attention and how it quickly solves his problems.
Yes, I love how things went with Bernie. Alan’s sense of betrayal was comedic gold (and at least dramatic silver).
Was he based on the real-life Bernie the Linklater film was about?
Maybe an inspiration? Doesn’t seem as direct, Bernie on the show is more of a meek, mild man without many connections where Tiede by all accounts was so well liked people wouldn’t convict him.
And of course it wasn’t his mother IRL. The name is unusual enough I wondered.
I really loved Ariadne Oliver.
I love it whenever she turns up! She’s one of my favorite parts of Hallowe’en Party and Dead Man’s Folly, too.
Picnic On Paradise by Joanna Russ – A woman from ancient Greece, a thief and assassin, is brought through time to the far future. She is tasked with leading a group of tourists, trapped on a resort planet in the midst of a war, across the open countryside to a safe base where they can be evacuated. She is accustomed to hardship, danger, and endless treks. They are not. The story is interesting because of the interactions between the characters and the obvious contrast between the attitude and perspectives of an ancient woman, accustomed to violence and a harsh life, and the tourists from the future: hedonistic, egocentric, used to an easy life where there are no sorrows or discomforts and everything is solved drugs. A quaint detail is the tourists are over six feet tall. It adds a bit of spice to the story, I suppose, but not very relevant, since the Greek woman, at five feet, is perfectly capable of giving any of them a good thrashing. And some of them deserve it now and then. Russ is known for her feminist work and Alyx starts as a cipher, more a female Conan than Red Sonja, developing into something much more complex, having an inner life of her own. She’s always driving the story, never being a passive character to whom events happen, trying to get the women in the party to stand for themselves, but also ready to punch a whining tourist who rubs her the wrong way. I believe this is Russ’ first novel. A bit of a trifle compared to the feminist manifestos of The Female Man and We Who Are About To…
This sounds very cool.
I’ll have to look out for a copy of this. It’ll be interesting to see what her ‘first’ novel is like in the context of how absolutely searing The Female Man and We Who Are About To… are.
something is killing the children. I ripped through 8 trade paperbacks of this independent horror comic. The premise is pretty simple: monsters are real, there’s a secret order of people that hunt them, our protagonist is one of them. It’s got shades of Buffy but as horror instead of horror-comedy-ya drama. Gradually more conflict builds between our hero, the
vampire slayermonster hunter Erica, a 20s ish blonde girl with striking green eyes, and thewatchersorder of st. george, the monster hunters tasked with killing monsters and keeping their existence a secret. It’s a little cheesy but I suspect it’s right up many of y’all’s alley.the amazing adventures of kavalier and clay, about halfway through. Really excellent novel about early to mid 20th c. Jewish diaspora culture, specifically through the lens of golden age comics. The old world culture is being destroyed; something new is being born in America.
I’m not Jewish, or indeed part of any immigrant or diaspora culture at all; I can trace my family to Scotland and Germany but have no real cultural affiliation with either. I’ve always been fascinated by immigrant/diaspora cultures and old world cultures.
I’m surprised and a little relieved that K&K was never made into a movie (maybe the adult drama epic died so hard not even a comic book angle could bring it back). I’m especially surprise and especially relieved it’s not yet a 10-part prestige streaming series.
A prestige show complete with a spin off of the Russo bros take on the Escapist.
It was made into an opera that was at the met this year that I read about.
(Speaking of tv adaptations, Something is Killing the Children should be very adaptable. It has somehow been in development hell since 2020 and it’s a real case of “whaddaya need, a road map”)
I think it was in development hell for years and simply never happened. Chabon did his share of Hollywood script doctoring too so surprising it didn’t happen.
Seeing all the titles of those cozy café books back to back made it look like a parody of the genre.
Year of the Month update!
This December, we’ll be taking pitches on anything from 1948, like these movies, albums, and books.
Dec. 20th: Lauren James: The Lottery
And here’s the movies, albums, books, TV, and games from 1985 for you to write about next January.
TBD: Ruck Cohlchez: Tim and/or Fables of the Reconstruction
Jan. 2nd: Gillian Nelson: Return to Oz
Jan. 5th: Tristan J. Nankervis: Rambo: First Blood Part II
Jan. 9th: Gillian Nelson: Advice on Lice
Jan. 16th: Gillian Nelson: The Wuzzles/The Gummi Bears
Jan. 19th: Tristan J. Nankervis: The Breakfast Club
Jan. 23rd: Gillian Nelson: The Golden Girls
I really dislike this cozy lit article. The ‘cozy’ label has been in use in English-language genre fiction for a while (though only recently applied to horror, I hate that too!) and the concept is pretty familiar too. Legends and Lattes came out in 2022, and I’ve been told it’s as ‘cozy’ as it gets. People read romance for the low-level peril and the promise of a happy ending. Coffeeshop AUs have been a running joke in fanfiction so long they’re old enough to vote.
But nah, it’s (presumably white) women reading Japanese and Korean texts from the wrong perspective and getting hoodwinked by men.
Sure.
(This is a huge flattening of the article, but to be fair, that article was a huge flattening of the reading audience, so it feels fair.)