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Media Roundup: October 2023
Oog. So I got absolutely nothing done last night; didn't run, didn't even download Dynamite, still haven't done my naked nails (and fucking shattered one on the key cabinet as a result), I just watched the silly Halloween IWTV thing, ate a burrito and a bunch of leftover candy, and passed the fuck out with all the lights still on like I did back in high school. What a bad scene! But I at least got SOME sleep, so hopefully today will go better now that I'm a little bit more human-adjacent than I was yesterday. Turns out staying up until seven in the morning on... was it Monday? Was maybe not the smartest thing I've done in a minute!
I should do something with my email inbox today, it's getting... bad again.
But first! All the junk I took in during October. I Halloweened really badly this year!
MOVIES
The Creator (2023): This could have been an amazing visual album for some electronic band, and instead it is merely a decent movie. Extremely aesthetically engrossing, just a really fantastically MADE film, but with all the narrative depth of a cool music video, or maybe an elaborate photo shoot.
Dark City (1998): They simply do not do neo-noir sci-fi bullshit like they did in the '90s! Absolutely nothing beats those hyper-artificial combination-soundstage-and-CGI cityscapes and I want to go back! Take me back!
Deep Cover (1992): A work of deeply cringe art. Jeff Goldblum asking why he loves balling black chicks so much. Over-the-top Larry Fishburne noir narration. Also it's a Christmas movie. Also the theme song became Dr. Dre's first-ever single???
Five Nights at Freddy's (2023): Very dumb and bad! The animatronics/suits looked really great, though, and a guy complimented my ridiculous Kenny Omega boots! I had a good time!
Jewel Robbery (1932): A fun bit of fluff after One Way Passage left me with a hankering for more of that dynamite William Powell/Kay Francis combo. Lots of sex, lots of marijuana, lots of suave heists, it's a GOOD PRE-CODE TIME.
Killers of the Flower Moon (2023): I think the incessant discourse that X.COM insists on cramming into my eyes every time I make the mistake of opening that garbage app has ruined Scorsese for me a bit, but it's good! Earns its runtime in a way that The Irishman never did for me, it's just a slow, inexorable trudge towards turning over all these rocks and letting the bugs slither away in the light. Leo's constant >:( face is very funny, and I learned what Jason Isbell looks like.
One Way Passage (1932): One of those movies I've been meaning to watch for aaaaaages now and it totally lived up to the hype; I've definitely heard radio adaptations before so I was familiar with all the plot beats, but I was still totally knocked on my ass by Powell and Francis' chemistry that just sells you on the corny cliched melodrama of the circumstances INSTANTLY. Sixty-seven minutes of pretty much the perfect tragic romance that still manages to be uplifting at the end? Everyone dies, but they actually get to live a little first, love still wins!!!
A Self-Induced Hallucination (2018): Oh, this is so interesting, if simultaneously deeply embarrassing. Not the subject matter, obviously, but just the whole approach of YouTube videos as historical record? It feels... important, somehow, even if the increasing emphasis on sensationalist like and subscribe culture as it goes on dilutes that somewhat. That's a whole other thing!
Talk to Me (2022): I'm so glad our theatre finally got it, even if it was only for three days! Also glad Australian people aren't real, 2spooky.
Westworld (1973): How did I never notice Majel Fucking Barrett is the madam of the saloon before??? I guess I was always just too distracted by how much Christian Bale looks like James Brolin. Still mad they cancelled the show, btw!!
SHORTS
Back Stage (1919), The Bell Boy (1918), The Butcher Boy (1917), Coney Island (1917), The Electric House (1922), The Goat (1921), Hard Luck (1921), His Wedding Night (1917), My Wife's Relations (1922), Out West (1918): A whole bunch of really old Buster Keaton shorts that I didn't hit up back when I was plowing through them in August. Good shit! The later ones that he did on his own hit harder and funnier than the earlier Fatty Arbuckle ones, but it's pretty fun to see him playing a wider variety of characters in those ones, too, before he perfected his persona.
B.L.B. (2014), A City of Children (2012), The Dreamer (2012), El Train (2014), G.F.C. (2012), Heist (2012), Indigo's Smile [Interlude] (2014), Kids (2013), Too Much Cendi [Skit] (2012), Trey [Interlude] (2012): A.V. Rockwell's Open City Mixtape, but I watched them all separately instead of together. Beautifully shot, glossy little tales of the street that aren't afraid to have some bite to them. The mix of documentary and fiction in particular worked really well for me. Did not realize until much later that Rockwell is a woman, and was very surprised, but then I thought about how many of them focus on children being children and how that made sense, and then I thought about how lame and reductionist it is to automatically associate a female filmmaker with work about kids, and ANYWAY, some of these are really going to stick with me, I think. Desperately hoping that Indigo and Trey did well for themselves.
Jimi Could Have Fallen from the Sky (2017), Native Sun (2011), No Ward (2009), Swimming in Your Skin Again (2015), Their Fall Our All (2014), Univitellin (2016), You and I and You (2015): Some Terence Nance shorts! I'd only seen Univitellin before, and that one's definitely the standout; most of the other ones didn't really hit for me, at least consistently throughout, but there was definitely something of worth to pull from all of them.
Hyperfate (2022): One of those pieces of art that doesn't feel like it says much of anything particularly insightful but is clearly deeply important and personal to the filmmaker, so still winds up being inspirational to me, if not for the reasons intended? I, too, enjoy making shit that nobody but me will care about! And the sword you were made by, you will die by.
Lizard Ladder (2020): At first I thought it was just a lazy and ugly bit of nothing (I guess it's actually a tech demo?), but the more it went on, the more I found myself super engrossed, in a 'this is scratching my ape brain impulses in some very primal ways' fashion. The colours and the movements, they are very pleasing to the senses. Lizard! Leave that egg alone!
Nettles (2018): I've seen this before, but it's so aggressively boring, I remembered none of it. I still really like the premise, though? It's a sticky concept that I've carried with me, I think.
Parsi (2018): A sensory nightmare! Really really bad to watch! Maybe the poem is good, or maybe it's just enough bullshit thrown at a wall for long enough that it's impossible not to find some sort of meaning in it eventually, but pairing it with the ethnographic stuff truly did nothing for me.
TELEVISION
Dinosaurs Season 2 (1991/92): Because sometimes you just need more big puppets in your life. MAN, this thing went in hard on the critiques of television culture, huh? Really makes it starkly stand out how that's just... not a thing, anymore.
Heels Season 2 (2023): Lots of fun, Josh Segarra showed up, really excellent catharsis for the brothers, AND THEN IT GOT CANCELLED ON AN ABSOLUTELY FUCKING BRUTAL CLIFFHANGER AHAHAHAHA FUCK EVERYTHING BURN IT ALL TO THE GROUND. I blame CM Punk.
The Life of Marcus Mathers (2023): This child! This tiny wrestling infant! Seeing him with all his little envelopes, working so hard to make sure his show was good and all the stars got paid, oh man, my heart, the kids are alright.
Our Flag Means Death Season 2 (2023): This was so good, I... kinda hope it doesn't get renewed??? How often are things actually allowed to end this satisfactorily these days???? brb crying about izzy hands forever
The Venture Bros. Season 2 (2006): Doing a slow li'l rewatch now that it's finally over! I don't actually remember where I fell off watching, since it's been a million years! A lot of it doesn't hold up well at all, but it's still mostly pretty fun!
AUDIO
Run the Solar System: Edumacational!
Uncover Season 22: Oof, yeah that was a rough one. Just a school full of teachers raping their students for generations without consequence! Cool cool cool!
Who Shat on the Floor at My Wedding?: Pretty funny! Even with no real resolution, since that's always where the 'silly true crime investigation' genre tends to falter.
Volcano Race: Outran some magma. Made a friend. Yes, Peter's VA talking about being in a zombie movie popped me.
Zombies, Run! Season 3: THIS THE GOOD SHIT, MAN. While I am sad that the modern phenomenon of shrinking episode counts has even bled into my silly zombie apocalypse soap opera fitness app over the years (and also they just fired over half the staff including all the company founders, so it might not be around for much longer lol), at least I will always have this 60-mission behemoth to go back to. I don't know that it necessarily needed to be that long, but the whole Comansys mystery is teased out really deliberately and works really well on a relisten, especially with how hard it works to tie up all of the loose ends from the first two seasons along the way. And then once you hit the Diana/Moonchild twist, it's just completely gripping, right until the big ridiculous ending. Biggest revelation for me this time around was falling in love with the Radio Cabel crew, since I pretty much ignored radio mode back in the day OH MY GOD THEY ARE MY CHILDREN AND I LOVE THEM SO MUCH. IF ANYTHING BAD EVER HAPPENS TO PHIL CHEESEMAN I WILL KILL EVERYONE AND THEN MYSELF. Also, hearing their little arc play out within the proper context of the season as it unfolds, seeing them get a happy ending SO peaceful and earned and satisfying that it manages to somehow make you okay with the fact that it's basically a series wrap for Jack and Eugene really fucking drives home just how big a deal it is that Phil and Zoe eventually come BACK from Alderney. Are... are they the biggest heroes of season 5??? I HONESTLY THINK THEY MIGHT BE (okay, Steve probably deserves a shout, too, I AM GETTING AHEAD OF MYSELF, THIS IS SEASON 3, STEVE ISN'T HERE YET). How Many Times Does Runner Five Hallucinate Over The Years Count: 6 after the Moonchild arc, and some of them are DOOZIES. The run that's just wall-to-wall nested Moon Knight-ass 'what is actually real and just how crazy are you' drug trips?? God DAMN. Do not look too hard at the flower.
Zombies, Run! Season 4: I was gonna hit pause on the relisten for a while since the first three seasons hold up so well as a continuous story, but season 4 is where my interest started to wane for a while, so I wanted to see how it holds up as I continue to hyperfixate hard! Updated opinion is: it's a'ight! Definitely the weakest season (of the six I've run, anyway), though. The highs are high! That one five-mission stretch right in the middle where it just goes unrelentingly BABY'S COMING AND VAN FLIPPED OVER AND PAULA'S TURNING AND ZOMBIES ARE COMING AND TOM KIDNAPPED THE BABY AND THE CAR EXPLODED AND ABEL IS UNDER ATTACK AND NOW A ZOMBIE KIDNAPPED THE BABY AND THE ZOMBIE LOOKS LIKE 5 AND IT BIT SAM AND SAM'S DEAD AND THEY HAVE TO FIND HIS ZOMBIE TO KILL IT WAIT MAYBE NOT???? is just. The worst, most stressful thing they have ever done and I mean that in the best possible way. But the entire first half of the season is just kind of a slog of boring Viking and John Dee history lore stuff, plot-wise it really does nothing for me until you get past the Peter intro and that switch flips and it kicks off the whole war with the Minister which is still going on where I'm at two seasons later. The character stuff they pull off is really impeccable, Janine's complete fakeout breakdown arc where she DOES WAR CRIMES on her BABY BROTHER and Sam's fatherhood anxieties and Paula accepting her coming death and Veronica's losing battle with scientific ethics and Cameo struggling with Yang's death and Owen not actually wanting the confirmation about his mum being alive or not and Steve's last-minute face turn, like there is a LOT of good meat on those bones, I just wish the story they hang on was more engaging! Also the fact that I now care a LOT more about Tom and Steve than I did the first time around adds a lot. Also, man, it's kind of embarrassing that it took me until he came back in season 5 to realize who Peter is because they were NOT subtle about it, dang. The only times Moonchild has taken over to that point are when 5 is in desperate need of an assist, very few and far between, and then she just randomly pops up to chime in with "HEY THIS GUY'S PRETTY SKETCH, HUH? WHAT'S HIS DEAL, WINK WINK?" cryptic bullshit while they're being completely unbothered at the fucked up circus?? Fuckin' Peter, lol. How Many Times Does Runner Five Hallucinate Over The Years Count: 13, we are in full 'there is a dead murderhippie living in their head' territory now. Also, I very much missed my radio babies, but I appreciated the experimental format they took to Radio Mode this season, I'm fucking gutted that we've never heard more from Dom and Baz, and the saga of the D&D campaign almost made me cry at work this time around!
MUSIC
Dale Hollow - Hack of the Year: I actually looked forward to an album release date! I honestly cannot remember the last time I was into a current musician enough for that to happen! Technically it was last month, but I was still debating including a music section (when I've got my 1001 Albums posts, anyway) last month and I'm still spinning this thing pretty much constantly, so it goes here! Somebody get my guy a wikipedia page, already.
Sufjan Stevens - Javelin: oh my god, this poor man
I should do something with my email inbox today, it's getting... bad again.
But first! All the junk I took in during October. I Halloweened really badly this year!
MOVIES
The Creator (2023): This could have been an amazing visual album for some electronic band, and instead it is merely a decent movie. Extremely aesthetically engrossing, just a really fantastically MADE film, but with all the narrative depth of a cool music video, or maybe an elaborate photo shoot.
Dark City (1998): They simply do not do neo-noir sci-fi bullshit like they did in the '90s! Absolutely nothing beats those hyper-artificial combination-soundstage-and-CGI cityscapes and I want to go back! Take me back!
Deep Cover (1992): A work of deeply cringe art. Jeff Goldblum asking why he loves balling black chicks so much. Over-the-top Larry Fishburne noir narration. Also it's a Christmas movie. Also the theme song became Dr. Dre's first-ever single???
Five Nights at Freddy's (2023): Very dumb and bad! The animatronics/suits looked really great, though, and a guy complimented my ridiculous Kenny Omega boots! I had a good time!
Jewel Robbery (1932): A fun bit of fluff after One Way Passage left me with a hankering for more of that dynamite William Powell/Kay Francis combo. Lots of sex, lots of marijuana, lots of suave heists, it's a GOOD PRE-CODE TIME.
Killers of the Flower Moon (2023): I think the incessant discourse that X.COM insists on cramming into my eyes every time I make the mistake of opening that garbage app has ruined Scorsese for me a bit, but it's good! Earns its runtime in a way that The Irishman never did for me, it's just a slow, inexorable trudge towards turning over all these rocks and letting the bugs slither away in the light. Leo's constant >:( face is very funny, and I learned what Jason Isbell looks like.
One Way Passage (1932): One of those movies I've been meaning to watch for aaaaaages now and it totally lived up to the hype; I've definitely heard radio adaptations before so I was familiar with all the plot beats, but I was still totally knocked on my ass by Powell and Francis' chemistry that just sells you on the corny cliched melodrama of the circumstances INSTANTLY. Sixty-seven minutes of pretty much the perfect tragic romance that still manages to be uplifting at the end? Everyone dies, but they actually get to live a little first, love still wins!!!
A Self-Induced Hallucination (2018): Oh, this is so interesting, if simultaneously deeply embarrassing. Not the subject matter, obviously, but just the whole approach of YouTube videos as historical record? It feels... important, somehow, even if the increasing emphasis on sensationalist like and subscribe culture as it goes on dilutes that somewhat. That's a whole other thing!
Talk to Me (2022): I'm so glad our theatre finally got it, even if it was only for three days! Also glad Australian people aren't real, 2spooky.
Westworld (1973): How did I never notice Majel Fucking Barrett is the madam of the saloon before??? I guess I was always just too distracted by how much Christian Bale looks like James Brolin. Still mad they cancelled the show, btw!!
SHORTS
Back Stage (1919), The Bell Boy (1918), The Butcher Boy (1917), Coney Island (1917), The Electric House (1922), The Goat (1921), Hard Luck (1921), His Wedding Night (1917), My Wife's Relations (1922), Out West (1918): A whole bunch of really old Buster Keaton shorts that I didn't hit up back when I was plowing through them in August. Good shit! The later ones that he did on his own hit harder and funnier than the earlier Fatty Arbuckle ones, but it's pretty fun to see him playing a wider variety of characters in those ones, too, before he perfected his persona.
B.L.B. (2014), A City of Children (2012), The Dreamer (2012), El Train (2014), G.F.C. (2012), Heist (2012), Indigo's Smile [Interlude] (2014), Kids (2013), Too Much Cendi [Skit] (2012), Trey [Interlude] (2012): A.V. Rockwell's Open City Mixtape, but I watched them all separately instead of together. Beautifully shot, glossy little tales of the street that aren't afraid to have some bite to them. The mix of documentary and fiction in particular worked really well for me. Did not realize until much later that Rockwell is a woman, and was very surprised, but then I thought about how many of them focus on children being children and how that made sense, and then I thought about how lame and reductionist it is to automatically associate a female filmmaker with work about kids, and ANYWAY, some of these are really going to stick with me, I think. Desperately hoping that Indigo and Trey did well for themselves.
Jimi Could Have Fallen from the Sky (2017), Native Sun (2011), No Ward (2009), Swimming in Your Skin Again (2015), Their Fall Our All (2014), Univitellin (2016), You and I and You (2015): Some Terence Nance shorts! I'd only seen Univitellin before, and that one's definitely the standout; most of the other ones didn't really hit for me, at least consistently throughout, but there was definitely something of worth to pull from all of them.
Hyperfate (2022): One of those pieces of art that doesn't feel like it says much of anything particularly insightful but is clearly deeply important and personal to the filmmaker, so still winds up being inspirational to me, if not for the reasons intended? I, too, enjoy making shit that nobody but me will care about! And the sword you were made by, you will die by.
Lizard Ladder (2020): At first I thought it was just a lazy and ugly bit of nothing (I guess it's actually a tech demo?), but the more it went on, the more I found myself super engrossed, in a 'this is scratching my ape brain impulses in some very primal ways' fashion. The colours and the movements, they are very pleasing to the senses. Lizard! Leave that egg alone!
Nettles (2018): I've seen this before, but it's so aggressively boring, I remembered none of it. I still really like the premise, though? It's a sticky concept that I've carried with me, I think.
Parsi (2018): A sensory nightmare! Really really bad to watch! Maybe the poem is good, or maybe it's just enough bullshit thrown at a wall for long enough that it's impossible not to find some sort of meaning in it eventually, but pairing it with the ethnographic stuff truly did nothing for me.
TELEVISION
Dinosaurs Season 2 (1991/92): Because sometimes you just need more big puppets in your life. MAN, this thing went in hard on the critiques of television culture, huh? Really makes it starkly stand out how that's just... not a thing, anymore.
Heels Season 2 (2023): Lots of fun, Josh Segarra showed up, really excellent catharsis for the brothers, AND THEN IT GOT CANCELLED ON AN ABSOLUTELY FUCKING BRUTAL CLIFFHANGER AHAHAHAHA FUCK EVERYTHING BURN IT ALL TO THE GROUND. I blame CM Punk.
The Life of Marcus Mathers (2023): This child! This tiny wrestling infant! Seeing him with all his little envelopes, working so hard to make sure his show was good and all the stars got paid, oh man, my heart, the kids are alright.
Our Flag Means Death Season 2 (2023): This was so good, I... kinda hope it doesn't get renewed??? How often are things actually allowed to end this satisfactorily these days???? brb crying about izzy hands forever
The Venture Bros. Season 2 (2006): Doing a slow li'l rewatch now that it's finally over! I don't actually remember where I fell off watching, since it's been a million years! A lot of it doesn't hold up well at all, but it's still mostly pretty fun!
AUDIO
Run the Solar System: Edumacational!
Uncover Season 22: Oof, yeah that was a rough one. Just a school full of teachers raping their students for generations without consequence! Cool cool cool!
Who Shat on the Floor at My Wedding?: Pretty funny! Even with no real resolution, since that's always where the 'silly true crime investigation' genre tends to falter.
Volcano Race: Outran some magma. Made a friend. Yes, Peter's VA talking about being in a zombie movie popped me.
Zombies, Run! Season 3: THIS THE GOOD SHIT, MAN. While I am sad that the modern phenomenon of shrinking episode counts has even bled into my silly zombie apocalypse soap opera fitness app over the years (and also they just fired over half the staff including all the company founders, so it might not be around for much longer lol), at least I will always have this 60-mission behemoth to go back to. I don't know that it necessarily needed to be that long, but the whole Comansys mystery is teased out really deliberately and works really well on a relisten, especially with how hard it works to tie up all of the loose ends from the first two seasons along the way. And then once you hit the Diana/Moonchild twist, it's just completely gripping, right until the big ridiculous ending. Biggest revelation for me this time around was falling in love with the Radio Cabel crew, since I pretty much ignored radio mode back in the day OH MY GOD THEY ARE MY CHILDREN AND I LOVE THEM SO MUCH. IF ANYTHING BAD EVER HAPPENS TO PHIL CHEESEMAN I WILL KILL EVERYONE AND THEN MYSELF. Also, hearing their little arc play out within the proper context of the season as it unfolds, seeing them get a happy ending SO peaceful and earned and satisfying that it manages to somehow make you okay with the fact that it's basically a series wrap for Jack and Eugene really fucking drives home just how big a deal it is that Phil and Zoe eventually come BACK from Alderney. Are... are they the biggest heroes of season 5??? I HONESTLY THINK THEY MIGHT BE (okay, Steve probably deserves a shout, too, I AM GETTING AHEAD OF MYSELF, THIS IS SEASON 3, STEVE ISN'T HERE YET). How Many Times Does Runner Five Hallucinate Over The Years Count: 6 after the Moonchild arc, and some of them are DOOZIES. The run that's just wall-to-wall nested Moon Knight-ass 'what is actually real and just how crazy are you' drug trips?? God DAMN. Do not look too hard at the flower.
Zombies, Run! Season 4: I was gonna hit pause on the relisten for a while since the first three seasons hold up so well as a continuous story, but season 4 is where my interest started to wane for a while, so I wanted to see how it holds up as I continue to hyperfixate hard! Updated opinion is: it's a'ight! Definitely the weakest season (of the six I've run, anyway), though. The highs are high! That one five-mission stretch right in the middle where it just goes unrelentingly BABY'S COMING AND VAN FLIPPED OVER AND PAULA'S TURNING AND ZOMBIES ARE COMING AND TOM KIDNAPPED THE BABY AND THE CAR EXPLODED AND ABEL IS UNDER ATTACK AND NOW A ZOMBIE KIDNAPPED THE BABY AND THE ZOMBIE LOOKS LIKE 5 AND IT BIT SAM AND SAM'S DEAD AND THEY HAVE TO FIND HIS ZOMBIE TO KILL IT WAIT MAYBE NOT???? is just. The worst, most stressful thing they have ever done and I mean that in the best possible way. But the entire first half of the season is just kind of a slog of boring Viking and John Dee history lore stuff, plot-wise it really does nothing for me until you get past the Peter intro and that switch flips and it kicks off the whole war with the Minister which is still going on where I'm at two seasons later. The character stuff they pull off is really impeccable, Janine's complete fakeout breakdown arc where she DOES WAR CRIMES on her BABY BROTHER and Sam's fatherhood anxieties and Paula accepting her coming death and Veronica's losing battle with scientific ethics and Cameo struggling with Yang's death and Owen not actually wanting the confirmation about his mum being alive or not and Steve's last-minute face turn, like there is a LOT of good meat on those bones, I just wish the story they hang on was more engaging! Also the fact that I now care a LOT more about Tom and Steve than I did the first time around adds a lot. Also, man, it's kind of embarrassing that it took me until he came back in season 5 to realize who Peter is because they were NOT subtle about it, dang. The only times Moonchild has taken over to that point are when 5 is in desperate need of an assist, very few and far between, and then she just randomly pops up to chime in with "HEY THIS GUY'S PRETTY SKETCH, HUH? WHAT'S HIS DEAL, WINK WINK?" cryptic bullshit while they're being completely unbothered at the fucked up circus?? Fuckin' Peter, lol. How Many Times Does Runner Five Hallucinate Over The Years Count: 13, we are in full 'there is a dead murderhippie living in their head' territory now. Also, I very much missed my radio babies, but I appreciated the experimental format they took to Radio Mode this season, I'm fucking gutted that we've never heard more from Dom and Baz, and the saga of the D&D campaign almost made me cry at work this time around!
MUSIC
Dale Hollow - Hack of the Year: I actually looked forward to an album release date! I honestly cannot remember the last time I was into a current musician enough for that to happen! Technically it was last month, but I was still debating including a music section (when I've got my 1001 Albums posts, anyway) last month and I'm still spinning this thing pretty much constantly, so it goes here! Somebody get my guy a wikipedia page, already.
Sufjan Stevens - Javelin: oh my god, this poor man