"His House" and "Vitalina Varela"

Rial (Wunmi Mosaku) and Bol (Sope Dirisu) are refugees from South Sudan who have been granted temporary asylum status in the UK.  They're set up in a run-down house on the outskirts of London, with a long list of things they're not allowed to do.  Bol is eager to start a new life, but Rial finds it more difficult to let go of the past, especially when strange phenomena start to happen in their house.  Rial soon surmises that they are being haunted by Nayagak (Malaika Abigaba), their daughter who did not survive the journey from Africa, and a malicious spirit called an apeth (Javier Botet and Cornell John). 

This is the feature debut of Remi Weekes, but arrives fully formed and beautifully executed.  The state of the house reflects the emotional state of Bol and Rial, which goes from bad to worse as the film goes on, eventually full of holes and refuse, with ghosts multiplying everywhere when the lights go out.  Dream sequences merge with supernatural encounters and finally fold into flashbacks to the horror and carnage that the couple only barely escaped.  As a psychological horror film, "His House" is visceral and thrilling, full of startling images and wrenching, emotional reveals.  However, its quiet commentary on the mental traumas faced by refugees and their survivors' guilt give the story extra impact.    

There's a wonderful efficiency to how Weekes uses his visuals, distilling and combining so much familiar imagery of British poverty, Sudanese strife, and refugee migration into this haunting fable.  I've seen Mosaku and Dirisu in other productions, but didn't recognize either of them here, where they seem to totally disappear into their troubled, traumatized characters.  Their performances are excellent, but it's the ghosts and monsters that make the film so memorable.  And for all its darkness and despair, "His House" has a happy ending  - conveyed in a hopeful, wordless montage that's one of my favorite sequences of the year.   

Now, over to Portugal, the home of Pedro Costa and his latest film "Vitalina Varela."  Its titular character is an aging Cape Verdean woman who comes to Lisbon in the wake of her husband's death.  She spends several days at his home in the shantytown of Fontainhas, piecing together their past, both together and apart.  It is an unapologetic art film, much like Costa's previous films that I've seen - "Colossal Youth" and "In Vanda's Room."  The camera stays mostly static, and the characters - almost all poor, dark-skinned, and elderly - often seem to be in danger of becoming lost in the dark, nocturnal compositions that make up their little world.  The film is a series of tableaux, where we observe the characters talking, washing up, or simply existing.  At first, Vitalina Varela says little, but eventually her story emerges.  

The film is a melding of truth and fiction, with Varela playing herself, re-enacting a real episode from her own life.  Hers is another story about the immigrant experience, and about the absences and distances that end up defining a woman's life.  Vitalina herself is not an immigrant, so out of her element in Lisbon that she steps off of the airplane from Cape Verde in bare feet.  Her departed husband, however, came to Europe to seek his fortune, and started a new life without her.  He became alcoholic and destitute, part of a community of forgotten men who only seem to exist in shadows.  As Vitalina sits in his tiny hovel, ruminating over how he came to woe, the air seems thick with ghosts.  

We see scenes of other characters - the mourners coming home from the cemetery, the neighbors and friends who populate the rest of Fontainhas, and eventually a local priest (Ventura), who meets with Varela and agrees to perform additional rites for her husband.  Ventura and Varela engage in spirited discourse as daylight finally begins to filter into the shantytown, chasing back some of the shadows.  In spite of her frailty, and in spite of her circumstances, Varela remains indomitable and resolute.  Her tale is told slowly, and requires significant effort to engage with, but I'm glad to have spent the time with her.           

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The Oscars Hangover, 2021

I was only able to watch this year's Academy Awards sporadically throughout the evening, so I missed a lot, and wasn't able to catch up until the next day.  So, when they announced the Best Picture winner shortly after 8PM, I thought that I had somehow missed a big chunk of the ceremony.  Had everything shifted half an hour earlier?  But no, the order of the awards had just been swapped around this year so that Best Actress and Best Actor were announced last.  I can see the logic, since the frontrunners for Best Picture weren't popular films this year, and everyone expected the Best Actor trophy to go to Chadwick Boseman.  However, it all backfired spectacularly.  Winner Anthony Hopkins not only didn't show up to the ceremony, he didn't even bother to Zoom in from Wales.

It was a weird year in general.  We all knew it was going to be a weird one, with the Oscars under a lot of pressure to deliver after the Golden Globes flubbed it, and all the recent awards shows delivered awful ratings.  Steven Soderbergh was recruited to produce the show, and he made some big changes.  First, because of COVID restrictions, the ceremony was split up over several locations, including the BFI in London.  At the main stage at Union Station in Los Angeles, the space had been converted to accommodate socially distanced seating with cafe tables.  The stage itself was fairly small, making the whole setup look like a Las Vegas dinner show.  With no orchestra pit, the ceremony was DJd by Questlove, who didn't play off any of the winners.   All the Best Song performances were moved to the preshow and broadcast remotely, so there was plenty of extra time.  

Again, there was no Oscar host, but presenters like Regina King, Reese Witherspoon, Riz Ahmed, and Harrison Ford were recruited to deliver fun facts about the nominees and do cute bits before handing out the prizes.  I will forever treasure Harrison Ford reading the studio notes about "Blade Runner."  With the Hersholt award going to the MPTF and Tyler Perry, there was more emphasis than usual on industry solidarity and trying to put a positive spin on a terrible situation.  The default for the Oscars is to be political now, like it or not.  However, the speeches this year were not especially inflammatory.  Daniel Kaluuya, Youn Yuh-jung, Emerald Fennell, and Frances McDormand were a lot of fun.  The actual awards and winners are rarely the issue with Oscars telecasts.  

Some of the other creative changes, however, raised some eyebrows.  I initially thought we were in good hands as Regina King strutted her way into the ceremony wearing a fabulous dress.  The show did a good job juggling all the different feeds and transitions.  Technical glitches were few.  However, the show felt awfully scarce on content.  I'm generally not a fan of all the little filler segments, but this year there were close to none - Glenn Close shaking it to Da Butt was a notable exception.  Not only were there no full Best Song performances, but most of the clips were missing.  Actor and production nominee clips went MIA, in favor of clips for broader categories like Best Documentary, Best Animated Film, and Best Foreign Language Film.  The In Memoriam segment went by at alarming speeds, cramming in a ton of honorees with barely any time to register the individual names.

I can't argue with most of the winners this year, though I'll privately grumble about "Soul" and the damn octopus movie.  It was good to see the love being spread around, so most of the bigger nominees walked away with something.  Anthony Hopkins was the only real surprise of the night, and his statuette was very deserved.  As for the telecast, it was underwhelming and weird, but destined to be such an outlier that I feel it's too early for anyone to be predicting the demise of the Oscars.  It does, however, puncture my theory about the awards being more accessible if everyone could watch the nominees from home.

I'll be looking forward to "In the Heights" and "West Side Story" bringing back the spectacle next year.  And maybe getting a decent host again wouldn't be a bad idea.     

  

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Collapsing the Window

The Coronavirus pandemic has hit the theatrical exhibition industry very hard, and looks to have permanently changed the business in some significant ways.  Last spring, Universal Pictures tussled with theaters over the release of their films on PVOD (premium video on demand) before the usual 90 day window of theatrical exclusivity had elapsed.  

A deal for a seventeen day PVOD window was announced in July, with AMC, which Regal and Cinemark vocally criticized.  However, the pandemic lockdowns dragged on, and more studios followed Universal's lead, often cancelling theatrical runs entirely and releasing their films to rental or to streaming services.  Then, a few months later, Warner Brothers dropped the bombshell that they were going forward with simultaneous theatrical and HBO Now releases for their entire 2021 film slate.  And Disney released "Mulan" and "Raya and the Last Dragon" using a similar model via Disney+, while pulling the theatrical run of PIXAR's "Soul."

These moves are largely being treated as experiments or temporary fixes while the pandemic is still keeping theaters closed, and the new streaming platforms are jostling to attract subscribers.  Because hard numbers are difficult to come by, it's not clear how well the simultaneous releases have been doing for Warners and Disney, but they're clearly affecting how the films are performing in theaters.  "Godzilla vs. Kong," "Raya and the Last Dragon," and "Tom and Jerry" have opened pretty well domestically, but have subsequently fallen off more steeply.  Things are going to change quickly again in the next six weeks, when vaccination access will increase, and we'll start seeing the releases of some bigger titles exclusively in theaters.  

However, it's clear that all of these new distribution changes are going to have some long term impact.  Warner Brothers recently announced that they will return to exclusive theatrical runs for their film slate in 2022, but the terms of their new deal with Regal Cinemas and Cineworld specify a 45 day window of exclusivity.  This has been regarded as a win for the theaters.  Consider that Lionsgate released "Chaos Walking" in theaters on March 5th, and then rushed it to PVOD on April 2nd, when it became clear that they had a box office bomb on their hands.  Consumer behavior has shifted toward streaming and PVOD options, and many of the films that are currently only playing in theaters risk falling through the cracks.  If it's not available via streaming or a VOD option, many potential viewers simply aren't interested.

Remember that the war over PVOD has been going on for over a decade now, since Universal decided to test out releasing "Tower Heist" on PVOD, three weeks after it's theatrical premiere in 2011.  Several theater chains threatened a boycott that got Universal to shelve their plans, and future attempts were far more modest, using lower profile films.  The pandemic, however, has provided the opportunity for the studios to test out the model fully, and it's no surprise that it's caught on so quick.  PVOD is often more convenient, and in some cases a better bargain for consumers than a trip to the movie theater.  Interest may wane when the theaters reopen, but the studios have confirmed that the demand for PVOD is there, and they don't want to lose the new revenue stream.

Looking ahead, even if everything goes back to something like normal for theaters, it's going to take a while.  Considering the current state of the summer movie schedule, the studios are anticipating a long adjustment period in the U.S., and it'll likely be even longer in other parts of the world.  I expect that it won't be until the end of the year, that we really have a good picture of what post-pandemic moviegoing looks like.  For now consumers win, because they're getting more options.  I don't expect it'll last, so I plan to enjoy it while I can.

  

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"And then We Danced" and "Another Round"

Catching up on some foreign films.

I missed "And Then We Danced" back in 2019, a LGBT coming of age film that caused a ruckus in its home country of Georgia, despite content that seems pretty tame in the U.S.  It was written and directed by Levan Akin, and stars Levan Gelbakhiani as Merab, a dancer who has dedicated much of his life toward becoming a member of Georgia's national dance company.  He and his older brother David (Giorgi Tsereteli) both train under a strict choreographer, Aleko (Kakha Gogidze), but David has been losing interest and getting involved in petty crime.  Merab, paired with a student named Mary (Ana Javakishvili), struggles to improve his prospects, which are threatened when a more talented dancer named Iraki (Bachi Valishvili) appears as a new rival. 

It's so satisfying to watch "And Then We Danced" slowly transform into a full-blown romance, punctuated with a series of dance sequences that build up to one of the most vibrant, exuberant endings I've seen in a movie all year.  Levan Gelbakhiani, who carries the bulk of the film, has no other acting credits, and neither does most of the rest of the cast.  Dancing ability was clearly prioritized, lending authenticity to the presentation of the traditional Georgian dances featured in the film, and a wonderful physicality to the performances.  Dance is used to convey tradition, seduction, rebellion, and a slew of other themes, while giving the whole production some big visual oomph.  There is sex, kept just out of frame, but it's the intimacy that has far more impact.  Merab and Iraki's relationship plays out in such a compelling way because Akin does such a good job of setting up the personal stakes for everyone involved.  The real life drama around the film only makes it feel more vital and immediate.

Speaking of dance sequences, Denmark's "Another Round" might also be mistaken for a dance picture, because the only clip of it I've seen in circulation is the final five minutes of the film, where Mads Mikkelson performs an exhilarating, drunken dance routine.  In actuality, the film is about a quartet of teachers who decide to experiment with alcohol, and try going about their daily lives while constantly inebriated.  Director Thomas Vinterberg explores the Danish drinking culture, which is far more intense than the American one.  The drinking experiment escalates with predictably negative consequences, but Vinterberg isn't out to vilify alcohol, but to use it as a way to explore the lives of his middle-aged protagonists.

Martin (Mikkelson), Tommy (Thomas Bo Larsen), Peter (Lars Ranthe), and Nikolaj (Magnus Millang) all teach together at the Danish equivalent of high school.  Some are married with families, some are not, and all are in a rut professionally.  The experiment invigorates their lives, at least for a while, as they find that keeping a small, but significant amount of alcohol in their systems actually improves their teaching ability and personal happiness.  Martin, who doesn't drink at the beginning of the film, goes through some especially wild swings in attitude and behavior, impacting his family, his job, and everything else.  The film has been billed as a dramedy, and manages to walk a fine line between funny and poignant.  I was less receptive to the humor, probably due to the cultural differences, but I found the foursome rediscovering their joie de vivre, battling alcoholism, and facing their demons together to be terrifically entertaining.    

       

It's strange - in a good way - to see a male bonding through substance abuse film approached from such a different angle, and taken to its logical ends.  We see the consequences of romanticizing irresponsible behavior and risk taking, while at the same time Vinterberg and company seem far more accepting of a certain amount of social lubrication than most.  Their final stance on alcohol is a mystery, with the fates of many of their characters - happily drunk again - left ambiguous.       

 

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On the Road in "Nomadland"

I find it difficult not to look at Chloe Zhao's latest film, "Nomadland," in the context of other American road films and Westerns.  There hasn't been a film in a while that has really captured the vastness of the country, the horizons that seem to stretch forever, and the beauty of the natural scenery.  It's an easy place to get lost in, or hide in, and has always been perfect for long journeys of self-discovery.  

And so it is with Fern (Frances McDormand), who we first see working a temp job at an Amazon facility, and living out of a van.  Her husband has recently died, and the manufacturing plant that they worked at in Empire, Nevada has closed, turning the town into an economic wasteland.  Fern decides to become a "nomad," travelling around the country in her van, taking on a series of seasonal jobs - maintenance work at campgrounds, harvesting beets, and staffing concessions booths.  She becomes part of the nomad community, meeting people like Bob Wells and Charlene Swankie, real members of this far-flung tribe, sharing tips for "stealth parking" and vehicle maintenance.  She also becomes close to a man named David, played by David Strathairn, who she crosses paths with multiple times.   

"Nomadland" is very episodic and incidental, following Fern from state to state, and from job to job.  She faces tough times and many crises, weathering busted tires and empty pockets.  It's only near the end of the film, when Fern is given the opportunity to get off the road, that she does some soul searching and brings her journey full circle.  There's a quiet, elegiac mood to the film, which is littered with signs of the recent recession, and the grim new status quo of economic instability.  Many of the shots reminded me of John Ford, who made so many memorable Westerns, but who also made "Grapes of Wrath" in 1940, another film that examined the lives of wandering itinerants against the magnificent backdrop of the American frontier.  One of the final shots of "Nomadland" seems to quote "The Searchers."  Or maybe it's Lynne Ramsay's "Ratcatcher."  Or both. 

Chloe Zhao came to prominence a few years ago with "The Rider," which featured non-professional actors, several of them re-enacting episodes from their own lives.  I had trouble connecting to the material and the extremely low budget filmmaking.  "Nomadland," however, is a more conventional narrative with olds pros like McDormand and Strathairn providing an easier entryway into the world of the nomads.  Their performances are very subtle and subdued, aiming not to stick out from the crowd of real nomads who appear in the picture, most of them playing themselves.  The cinematography is also far more picturesque, indulging in the occasional beauty shot of sunsets or mountain ranges, which are put in stark contrast with images of Fern and David working endless menial jobs to stay afloat.     

 

"Nomadland" is based on a Harper's magazine article and subsequent book by Jessica Bruder about the growing population of aging Americans who have taken up this lifestyle, trying to survive on their own terms and maintain some independence.  The story has quite a few themes in common with "Leave No Trace," Debra Granik's film about a man who abandons society in favor of the wilderness.  In the case of "Nomadland," however, Fern's reasons for going on the road, for hanging on to her "ratty" van, and for coming back to Empire in the end, are more complex and largely left ambiguous.  

And I keep wanting to compare the film to "Paris, Texas," to "Easy Rider," and to so many more films about exploring America that were reflections of their time, of their eras of filmmaking.  It's hard to look at "Nomadland" and not see such a perfect reflection of America in the era of COVID and growing social inequality, with so many scattered in the wake of disaster, and left to fend for themselves as best they can.  This is without a doubt, the film most emblematic of 2020, a film of such bleakness and loneliness, and yet all about soldiering on and finding connections where you can.    

       

It may also be the best film of 2020, which has turned out to be a pretty damn good one for movies.

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"Minari" Hits Close to Home

Writer and director Lee Isaac Chung based "Minari" on his own childhood, growing up on a farm in Arkansas in the 1980s as the son of Korean immigrants.  There's been some controversy in the awards race, with the HFPA having classified it as a "foreign-language" film, and thus ineligible for the main Golden Globe award categories.  It's hard to think of a film this year, however, that is more American in its aims and its outlook.    

We see most of the story through the eyes of David (Alan Kim), a seven year-old with a hole in his heart that has to be carefully monitored.  He and his parents, Jacob (Steven Yeun) and Monica (Han Ye-ri), and older sister Anne (Noel Kate Cho), arrive in Arkansas to live in a cramped mobile home on a remote plot of land.  They're strangers with no ties to Arkansas, having eked out a living in California, and saved up enough for Jacob to pursue his dream of having a farm of their own.  From Monica's reaction to their new home, however, it's apparent that it's not a dream that they share.  A short while later, Monica's mother Soon-ja (Youn Yuh-jung) comes to live with them, meeting David for the first time.  He's not happy to have a grandmother who only seems interested in feeding him herbal medicines and teaching him to play cards, which causes more tensions in the household.  

"Minari" is a very personal movie, very small in scope and specific in its milieu, but it's achingly universal in its themes.  Jacob and Monica do their best to fit in, but they mostly converse in Korean with each other and their children, and struggle being so cut off from any community support.  They constantly fight over their mounting debts and what's best for the family.  Monica wants to go back to California, or anywhere closer to civilization.  Jacob sees the farm as the only way they'll have something for themselves, and is willing to take more risks to ensure its success.  Their white neighbors are mostly friendly, and Jacob hires an eccentric man named Paul (Will Patton) as a farmhand.   There's no overt racism in the story, which I'm glad of, because the Yis have enough to deal with, just trying to get by.

The experiences of David and his family are very familiar and resonant for me, though my parents were Chinese immigrants, and I grew up on the West Coast.  Watching the film brought back memories of my parents' stories about living in the Midwest before I was born, the different relatives who came to stay with us over the years, and hanging on to small tokens of our heritage and culture.  Jacob deciding to grow Korean produce to cater to the growing population of Korean immigrants in the area seems like a foolhardy risk at first, but then there's the scene of Monica nearly in tears at the sight of familiar ingredients her mother brings from South Korea.  And I remember my mother telling me about driving for hours to buy Chinese cabbage in the early '80s - only to have the bad luck of bringing home a rotten one.

Soon-ja is easily my favorite character, a lively, irascible old lady who develops a love of wrestling shows and teasing her grandson.  The film's title, "Minari," comes from the secret crop of Korean minari plants that she grows at a nearby creek, which she observes has many uses and will grow anywhere.  However, Steven Yeun and Han Ye-ri do the bulk of the heavy lifting, playing a once loving couple that is fraying after years of stress and bad compromises.  While we root for them to overcome their hardships and stay together, their opposing views only seem to become more and more entrenched as the film goes on, and neither of them are wrong to want what they want.

I love the look of the film, warm and nostalgic, with a special emphasis on capturing the intimate family moments and the natural beauty of the rural landscape.  There are no obvious indicators that the film takes place in the '80s, but nonetheless it perfectly evokes the era.  The pace is slower, the atmosphere is rich, and the melodrama is heartwarming, life-affirming filmmaking of the best kind.  

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The 2020 Films I Didn't Watch

I write these posts every year to sort out my feelings toward some of the more prominent movies I've made a conscious decision to skip watching.  Below are seven movies that didn't make the cut this year - and it's been quite a year.  At a few points I was watching pretty much every new release I could get my hands on, but we have to draw the line somewhere, as I'll discuss below.  I reserve the right to revisit and reverse my viewing choices in the future. However, I still haven't watched anything from last year's list.

Midnight Sky - Along with "Hillbilly Elegy," and "The Last Full Measure," this title has fallen victim to my growing lack of patience with awards season fodder.  In another year I might have checked this out simply because it was a George Clooney passion project, and some of those have been interesting over the years.  However, the roundly mediocre reviews, unappealing plot, and glum dystopian setting have thoroughly put me off.  I'm actually more likely to watch "Hillbilly Elegy" for the trainwreck factor.

Boys State - I feel the most guilt about this one because it's gotten so much praise and it's the kind of tiny documentary that needs as much attention as it can get.  However, 2020 has soured me on political films, and I barely managed to get through the "Borat" film.  I'm absolutely in no mood for another eye-opening piece on how screwed up the American political system is right now, so this and Jon Stewart's "Irresistible" are out of luck.  No hard feelings, but I need some distance from the topic.    

City Hall - Frederick Wiseman films are boring.  There, I said it.  Sometimes I'm perfectly receptive and appreciative of boring, and I've loved other Wiseman films about museums and libraries and so on.  However, 272 minutes of anything is a lot to take, and spending them hanging around Boston's City Hall is just not going to happen this year.  I may come back to it eventually, but there are several other Wiseman films I'm more keen on watching first, including that 244 minute documentary on UC Berkeley.    

Tesla - I seem to have a thing about avoiding Ethan Hawke, lately.  He's very good in the right project, but in others he can get awfully self-indulgent.  And while I've liked Michael Almereyda's last two films, self-indulgent seems to be the right descriptor for "Tesla," which is full of little anachronistic gimmicks and fussy framing devices.  I've seen enough bad takes on Tesla over the past few years that I'm not in any hurry to add another one to the list, even if the movie turns out to be good.  

The King of Staten Island - Judd Apatow films are hit or miss for me, and I'm undecided on the charms of Pete Davidson, but I can safely say that a 137 minute feature from these two, about a manchild learning to adult, is an automatic no.  No thank you, we've had enough of that for the foreseeable future.  I went through a phase where I couldn't stand  angsty teen films, before they became nostalgic viewing.  Maybe I'm going through the same thing with "failure to launch" movies about people in their twenties.

The Godfather Coda - Really, Francis Ford Coppola?  We couldn't leave "The Godfather, Part III" alone after all this time? Really?  Reactions to the new cut haven't been bad, and I'm open to taking a look at this someday, maybe when I inevitably revisit the first two films.  However, me making time specifically for a recut version of "Part III" is not in the cards.  To date, I've also avoided the alternate cuts of Coppola's other films, like "Apocalypse Now" and "The Cotton Club."

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"Lupin," Part One

I've seen the first five episodes, half of the first season of the new "Lupin" series, created by George Kay and starring Omar Sy. It's my first foreign language series in a while (not counting anime), but it's also very familiar territory. "Lupin" is following in the footsteps of "Sherlock" and the other Steven Moffat retoolings of classic characters. Sy plays Assane Diop, a charming professional con-man who takes inspiration from Maurice LeBlanc's beloved literary gentleman thief, Arsene Lupin. And so there are capers, and misdirections, and disguises, and clever reveals all over the place, along with a lot of allusions and references to the original Lupin stories.

"Lupin" is not especially smart or well-written, but it is terribly charming and looks terrific. Likewise, Assane Diop may admire Arsene Lupin, but he's not Lupin, being prone to mistakes and bad decisions, and he often gets by on pure charisma and confidence. His various cons and thefts are all being carried out in order to fulfill a larger purpose: finding out why his father Babakar (Fargass Assandé) was framed for the theft of a necklace by his boss, Pellegrini (Hervé Pierre), when Diop was a child. Diop also has an ex-wife, Claire (Ludivine Sagnier), and teenage son, Raoul (Etan Simon), he's trying to do right by. And after the first daring heist, involving a theft from the Louvre, Diop also has the police trying to catch him, with the investigation lead by Captain Laugier (Vincent Londez).


"Lupin" largely rests on the shoulders of Omar Sy, who is physically about as far away from the classical Lupin character as you can get, but also absolutely irresistible in the part. He makes all the ridiculous gimmicks and disguises work, and puts some underdog heart into the story, enlivening the old heist and caper tropes. Because Assane Diop is so fallible, it introduces some real tension and suspense into what are pretty predictable scenarios, like an interrogation and blackmail attempt that goes totally sideways. Though I'm fairly sure that our intrepid hero will outwit everyone in the end, I also have no idea what twists and turns are coming next, and that's always fun. Not having much knowledge of the original source material, I'm enjoying staying spoiler free for the duration.



As with all series like this, however, I'm worried that "Lupin" may overstay its welcome. At five episodes, I was already getting a little restless toward the end, and finding out that the first season was actually twice as long was a little discouraging. I think my biggest issue is with the overreliance on flashbacks, where young Assane is played by Mamadou Haidara. There's simply not as much going on there, except to reveal how Assane Diop met and formed many relationships that are important to the present day story. They eat up a lot of time, and rarely offer up much important information, so they feel like filler. I think it's pretty telling that one major character has gotten next to no attention at all, despite probably being the secret big bad of the series.


What deficiencies there are in the writing and performances are smoothed over by the slick-looking production, full of beauty shots of Paris, snazzy action sequences, and a very quick pace. Louis Leterrier was recruited to direct the two most action-heavy installments, including the first episode with the big Louvre heist. I expect that some viewers will be a little disappointed that not every episode is so spectacle-heavy, but the story is strong enough, and Omar Sy's performance is magnetic enough that I was entertained the whole way through. And I'll likely finish out at least this season, whenever the rest of the episodes are released.

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My Top Ten Films of 1958

This is part of a series of top ten lists from the years before I started this blog.  Entries are listed below in no particular order.  Enjoy.

The Ballad of Narayama - Of the two cinematic versions of this story that exist, I prefer the older one directed by Keisuke Kinoshita, with its more classical, fable-like framing and devices.  I love the way Kinoshita uses color and stylized designs to give the film the look of Kabuki theater.  I love the way that the morbid subject matter and moments of horror are presented in such heightened, sometimes bizarre ways, making the film feel like something out of a nightmare.

The Big Country - Gregory Peck plays a pacifist who is forced to take a stand in this beautifully shot western from William Wyler.  The epic cinematography is gorgeous, and the cast is excellent, especially Jean Simmons as the love interest, Burl Ives as a cantankerous paterfamilias, and Charlton Heston in a rare antagonist role.  And while the handling of the themes is a little rough at times, it's always good to see a film from this era tackle toxic masculinity.  

I Want to Live! - A melodrama about a condemned woman, featuring a fantastic performance from lead actress Susan Hayward.  The film targets the overzealous justice system and the media for their part in subjecting Hayward's character, Barbara, to so much unnecessary strife and cruelty.  It's a pity it was based on a real case and took such major liberties with the truth, because the film works better as an allegorical narrative than the biopic it was originally billed as.

The Music Room - One of the best Indian films ever made follows the waning fortunes and downfall of a privileged man, beset by tragedy and ultimately brought low by his own hubris and neglect.  Satyajit Ray paints such an absorbing portrait of his protagonist and the little kingdom he rules over, and uses several music and dance performances to further the aims of the story.  And all the cultural details, relayed in such universal terms, translate beautifully.

Mon Oncle - My first Jacques Tati film, and the most delightful blind watch I've ever had.  Full of visual puns, gentle situational humor, absurd production design, and sly observations on human behavior, "Mon Oncle" is a sound and color film that would fit right in with the silent classics.  "Playtime" may be more epic in scope, but this is the Monsieur Hulot outing that truly endeared him best to me - cementing his image as a lonely figure of sanity in a harsh modern world.

A Night to Remember - I prefer this film to "Titanic," because I enjoy the slower, more gradual buildup to the disaster, the quiet shots of the empty rooms and the simplest indications that things are starting to go very wrong.  The film is also more of an ensemble effort, telling multiple stories and providing a wider scope to the tragedy.  And the sinking itself still looks pretty convincing sixty years later, with several effects and disaster shots that are impressive to this day.

Touch of Evil - Putting aside the questionable casting choices, the contentious post-production, and the fights over editing, there's a lot of great work from Orson Welles in this film.  The famous opening shot with the ticking bomb remains a nail-biter, and Quinlan's last stand is bleakly gorgeous.  Welles is so convincing and committed in the part of the corpulent Quinlan, I didn't realize that it was Welles himself playing the part until I'd seen the film multiple times.

Vertigo - I'm not one the crowd that considers this Alfred Hitchcock thriller one of the best movies of all time, but I can certainly appreciate the moody San Francisco beauty shots, the lurid sexual undercurrents, and the joy of a beautifully executed dolly zoom shot.  And those moments where Hitch got experimental.  Bernard Hermann's score is a personal favorite, and having Jimmy Stewart in one of his most ambiguous, troubling leading man roles doesn't hurt either.

Le Beau Serge - One of the earliest films of the French New Wave is Claude Chabrol's melodrama about a man who discovers the dangers of trying to go home again, and trying to save an old friend from his own worst impulses.  Like Chabrol's subsequent film "The Cousins," the main characters are played by Gérard Blain and Jean-Claude Brialy, skillfully hashing out a similarly tangled, troubling dynamic.  The psychological realism and ambiguity set this one apart.

Damn Yankees - The "be careful what you wish for" story is fairly tepid stuff, but the charming musical numbers built around baseball and baseball culture, Ray Walston as a perfectly deadpan sly devil, and Gwen Verdon's efforts as the immortal temptress Lola are very hard to resist.  Verdon is an incomparable entertainer, and I was always sad we didn't get to see more of her work onscreen.  This is easily her biggest screen appearance, and she just kills it.  

Honorable Mention

Les Amants/The Lovers 

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Checking in on "Disenchantment"

I've just finished what Netflix is calling "Part 3" of "Disenchanted," which is the first half of the second season.  I'm still enjoying the show very much, and got through the latest ten-episode batch without any trouble.  However, I can sympathize with those who have gotten frustrated with its ups and downs and bailed out earlier. Matt Groening and company are still having trouble with the bingeable Netflix release model, and trying to maintain a serialized story.  "Part 3" does an awful lot of setting up for narrative payoffs that aren't going to happen until "Part 4."  The one big reveal we got at the end of "Part 3" involves a character I had completely forgotten existed, since he was last seen in an episode that premiered way back in 2018.

Still, I found"Part 3" of "Disenchantment" consistently fun.  The characters have gotten more comfortably familiar, their flaws more endearing.  The production quality has improved considerably, especially the animation.  While some of the humor is repetitive and indulgent, the earlier efforts toward worldbuilding have paid off nicely, so wacky concepts like a Steamworld freakshow and the snooty kingdom of Bentwood land easier.  Even better, the central relationships and the big season arcs are very solid.  Bean has matured a bit, drinking less and worrying more about her father and her kingdom.  King Zog gradually loses his marbles after a coup and attempted murder, which creates a lot of opportunity for pathos and gallows humor.  Bean, meanwhile, spends most of the season trying to get to the bottom of the conspiracy, and dodging the plots of her evil mother, Dagmar (Sharon Horgan).    

As I suspected, Elfo and Luci are a lot more fun the less we see of them.  This year Elfo's big arc is getting separated from Bean during an adventure in Steamland, being imprisoned in a freak show for two episodes, and then falling in love with a boat.  Luci's best moments come during his brief rivalry with a talking cat (Dave Herman), as the B-plot of an episode.  Bean ends up shouldering most of the melodrama, and gets to be a lot more competent and admirable in general, which is great.  We also spend more time with Odval, Prince Derek, and some of the castle regulars like Pendergast (Eric Andre) and Turbish (Rich Fulcher).  Meanwhile, "Disenchantment" introduces a handful of new characters like Mora the mermaid (Meridith Hagner), Sagatha the fairy (Tress MacNeill), and Steamlander Alva Gunderson (Richard Ayoade), mostly to help nudge various characters along toward maturity.  Oona is now my favorite character - she's way more fun as Zog's ex and Bean's drug supplier.

The show's humor is still a lot of variations on old gags and gross-out jokes, but we're also getting more character-based laughs.  Zog's descent into madness this year is the big highlight so far, and it's fun to see the situation approached from a lot of different angles.  There's Odval and the Archdruidess (MacNeill) constantly trying to machinate their way around the situation.  There's Bean, Oona, and the castle staff getting frustrated trying to take care of him.  And there's Zog himself, who veers wildly between moments of lucidity and unhinged wackadoodle antics.  While the lunacy is fun to watch, he's also terribly poignant and sympathetic as he realizes he's losing himself.  It doesn't hurt that John DiMaggio's performance as Zog is absolutely hysterical, with generous amounts of raving, muttering, and goose honking sounds.      

I look forward to "Part 4" of "Disenchanted" with some impatience, because I want to see where some of these long-gestating plotlines are finally going to go.  Elfo is well overdue for that big reveal about his origins, and Luci's still hanging around for some reason.  Dagmar's clearly got a few cards left to play, and Zog's story is definitely not done.  I swear, though, if Bean and Elfo end up together, I'm going to be deeply disappointed, especially since Bean finally got a decent love interest this season.  "Disenchanted" isn't as good as I hoped it would be, but it's still lumbering along, doing its own thing, and I got a good amount of laughs out of it.  So, I'll still be watching, and waiting (and waiting, and waiting) for the next chunk of episodes.  I really hope it's worth it, but I've gotten enough out of the show that I'd be okay if it's not. 

  

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My Favorite Elia Kazan Film

Elia Kazan remains a controversial figure in the film world.  He made very socially conscious contemporary features, and was celebrated for his intense and stirring melodramas.  He never made anything else.  His preference for more psychological realism onscreen brought actors like Marlon Brando and James Dean to prominence.   However, his testimony to the House Committee on Un-American Activities during the Hollywood blacklist era made him a fiercely divisive figure, and his reputation never totally recovered.  The quality of his work, however, has never been in dispute.  

Kazan was no stranger to controversy from the beginning, often picking projects with provocative subject matter like miscegenation in "Pinky" and antisemitism in "Gentleman's Agreement."  He came out of the theater world, where he collaborated with playwrights like Tennessee Williams and Arthur Miller.  He directed the original Broadway production of "A Streetcar Named Desire," and cast then unknown Marlon Brando in the role of Stanley Kowalski, one of the new breed of "Method" actors who had trained under Lee Strasberg.  When Warner Bros. hired Kazan to direct the film adaptation, the entire cast came with him, except Jessica Tandy, who was replaced by Vivien Leigh from the London production because of her star power.

The play had to be streamlined from its original form, and significantly toned down to meet the Production Code requirements.  Rape, homosexuality, and pederasty were only to be hinted at rather than explicitly referenced.  Five minutes of footage were also cut to downpay the sexuality and violence of certain scenes.  However, there was no hiding the brutality of the play's themes, the rawness of the performances, or the sheer physicality of Marlon Brando.  "A Streetcar Named Desire" looks dated to modern eyes, but Brando's screen performance as Stanley Kowalski was a major watershed in American cinema.  There is no carefully restrained, image-conscious movie star gentility apparent anywhere.  When Stanley bellows for his wife, it is lurid, and animalistic, and spine-tingling. 

Matching him beat for beat is Leigh as Blanche DuBois.  She described the role as grueling, and the toll that it took on her is apparent in every frame.  Watching Blanche disintegrate into alcoholism and mental illness is difficult, and the shattering of her illusions and carefully constructed self-image is deeply tragic.  I feel such sympathy for her, even though Blanche is the kind of person who I'd find impossible in real life, and who would clearly be a contemptible villain in someone else's story.  What makes the confrontations between her and Stanley so intense is that they go on for so long, and build so much roiling tension before things finally explode.  Though I know the scene was supposed to be longer and more violent, I can't help feeling relieved that Kazan cut away from the final, climactic fight between the two of them.  

In the supporting roles, Kim Hunter is also great as Stella, but I feel like circumstances undercut her work.  Several of the cuts to the film involve downplaying her sexuality, and removing some of the ambiguities in her relationship with Stanley, so I always feel a little uncertain when parsing my feelings toward her character.  The altered ending for her in particular seems unnecessary, and one of the few adaptation decisions I have serious qualms with.  The performance that always quietly knocks me off my feet, however, is Karl Malden's work as Mitch.  He starts out as such a milquetoast figure, a ready dupe for Blanches scheming.  When her lies are revealed, however, and Mitch is humiliated, he turns ugly and threatening so fast, it takes your breath away.  

Kazan would go on to make several more classics in the '50s and '60s, beloved as an "actor's director" with a knack for provoking and encouraging greatness from his actors.  His work remains deeply influential in spite of his infamy, and still retains much of its dramatic power.  I don't think Brando was subsequently ever as good as he was in Kazan's films.  However, with melodramas having quietly receded from the spotlight in recent years, so too has much of Kazan's work.   

What I've Seen - Elia Kazan

A Tree Grows in Brooklyn (1945)

Gentleman's Agreement (1947)

Pinky (1949)

A Streetcar Named Desire (1951)

Viva Zapata! (1952)

On the Waterfront (1954)

East of Eden (1955)

Baby Doll (1956)

Wild River (1960)

Splendor in the Grass (1961)

America, America (1963)

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Bye Bye Blue Sky

Well, the axe finally dropped.  Blue Sky Studios, home of the "Ice Age" movies, is being shuttered by Disney in the wake of their acquisition of Fox.  In addition to all the talented artists being put out of work, the move will leave their last production, an adaptation of the webcomic "Nimona," unfinished despite being 75% complete.  With WDAS and PIXAR to worry about, and the pandemic making the economics difficult, it didn't make sense for Disney to be running a third major animation studio.  It's still disappointing that this is the way Blue Sky is going out.

Most of us know something about the origins of PIXAR, which has already become subject to a certain amount of mythmaking, but Blue Sky goes just about as far back, starting with founder Chris Wedge creating early CGI animation in the 80s for the original "TRON" before founding Blue Sky in 1987.  They did a lot of commercials and special effects work in the '90s and produced the Oscar winning short "Bunny" in 1998, before moving into features, starting with "Ice Age" in 2002.  Over the next eighteen years, their output had a lot of ups and downs.  There were five "Ice Age" movies by 2016, as well as more ambitious projects like "Robots," "Epic," and "The Peanuts Movie," which was easily the most critically acclaimed feature they ever did.   Most of their films performed well, with the third and fourth "Ice Age" movies both banking over $800 million.  For a while, in the early 2000s, they were the third major player in American animation next to PIXAR and Dreamworks/PDI.

However, Blue Sky always felt like a second stringer, all the way to the end.  Their budgets tended to be smaller, and frankly I always associated Blue Sky with a very stripped down, bare bones look.  Their character designs tended a little more toward the grotesque, and it's really only been in the last few films that their visuals have noticeably upgraded to keep up with their competitors.  Likewise, while I enjoyed many of their films, I always thought of Blue Sky as a very dependable producer of much smaller scale, unfussy kids' fodder.  Clearly that wasn't all they were capable of or wanted to do, but it never felt like Blue Sky ever really broke out in a meaningful way.  "Peanuts" and the recent action comedy "Spies in Disguise" were the best films I ever saw from them, and it still felt like they were working up to making a really great film somewhere down the line.

Maybe that film would have been "Nimona," which gets more interesting the more I read about it.  This would have featured one of the first animated films with queer leads, something that Disney and Dreamworks might not be in a position to try, but a smaller outfit like Blue Sky could.  This is yet another example of the kind of opportunities being lost as the entertainment industry consolidates.  I wonder if it was ever a possibility for Blue Sky to strike out on its own, and maybe make a distribution deal with a streamer like Netflix or Apple, the way that SPA Studios ("Klaus") and Cartoon Saloon ("Wolfwalkers") did.  Other projects Blue Sky had in development include adaptations of the "Anubis Tapestry" book series and the "Mutts" comic strip.

Of course, Blue Sky's existing library will live on, helping to fill out the Disney+ back catalogue. We'll still be able to visit Scrat any time we want to get nostalgic, and pretend that he's still out there, somewhere, chasing that damn acorn into the sunset.  

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"Promising Young Woman" Leaves a Chill

I was looking forward to Emerald Fennell's directing debut, "Promising Young Woman," and very receptive to its revenge story premise.  However, I found it a difficult film to love because it's so prickly and has far more on its mind than revenge.

Taking aim at toxic male entitlement, our heroine is the self-destructive, ex-med student Cassie Thomas, who we first encounter playing drunk at a bar to entrap the "nice guys" who are all too willing to take her home and take advantage of her.  Cassie has much bigger fish to fry, however, and the film follows her efforts to enact an elaborate revenge scheme on those she holds responsible for the sexual assault, and subsequent public shaming and demise of her best friend Nina.  Targets include a former classmate, Madison (Alison Brie), the dean of their school, Elizabeth Walker (Connie Britton), and of course the main perpetrator, Al Monroe (Chris Lowell).  Complicating Cassie's plans is the reappearance of Ryan (Bo Burnham) in her life, an old friend with genuine romantic feelings for her. 

"Promising Young Woman" is deceptively cheery looking, with its candy-colored production design, and Cassie's habit of dressing up in eye-popping outfits for her various outings.  However, the revenge that Cassie enacts is only fun to watch up until a point.  Sure, it's satisfying to see her give the hypocrites a taste of their own medicine, and force the self-deluded to face the consequences of their behavior, but at the same time it takes a terrible toll on Cassie.  The loss of Nina wrecked her life, causing her to drop out of school and take a menial job in a local cafe.  Her parents (Jennifer Coolidge, Clancy Brown) are supportive, but they've also clearly had enough, not so subtly gifting her with luggage for her thirtieth birthday.  Cassie's interactions with Ryan show deep emotional scars and daunting self-defense mechanisms.  She's rude and acerbic on a good day, and retaliates ten-fold when crossed.  And yet, we root for her because she has her limits, and her vengeance is often so richly deserved.  The title is a reference to rapist Brock Turner, who was described as a "promising young man" by the judge when he was handed a lenient sentence.

The messaging here is loud and clear, but I like the various ways in which Fennell subverts the usual revenge narrative to help get the point across.  The material may be pure pulp, but the execution is far more measured.  First, the scumbags that Cassie targets are all played by sweet-faced boy-next-door types like Adam Brody, Chris Lowell, and Christopher Mintz-Plasse.  Cassie is very smart, but makes mistakes and bad calls.  In one case, where she comes across an intended victim who is truly remorseful and regrets what he did, she has no idea how to react.  I appreciate that few of Cassie's plots involve much direct violence, leaving the most gratuitous content offscreen.  When violence does occur, it's ugly and realistic.  Cassie's anger also wreaks as much destruction on herself as on anyone else, and her ultimate fate makes it clear that this kind of revenge is neither heroic nor admirable in any sense.  

I find myself comparing "Promising Young Woman" to "Joker," not just because Cassie looks an awful lot like Harley Quinn in one of her getups, but because both films rely so heavily on their central performances, and often function better as character studies of people suffering from trauma and mental illness.  I was very surprised to find Carey Mulligan playing Cassie, because she almost never takes on these kinds of genre roles, but like Joaquin Phoenix as Arthur Fleck, she does such a fantastic job of relaying the immense pain and rage that animate Cassie, hidden behind her deadpan demeanor and unnerving directness.  

I admire the film very much, but it's raw and sad in a way that I don't think I was quite ready for.  Kudos to Emerald Fennell for delivering the unexpected, and Mulligan for taking a chance with this role.  The film only works as well as it does because of their efforts.    

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"The Crown," Year Four

I always end up bingeing "The Crown."  Netflix makes it too easy for me, releasing all the season's episodes in one batch, and "The Crown" at its heart is really a soap opera.  It's a lavishly produced, high minded, and often admirably thoughtful show, but still a soap opera about an endlessly dysfunctional family.  After a fairly glum third season, the fourth moves into the tumultuous '80s that offers all kinds of juicy material for writer Peter Morgan to dig into.  Chiefly, this season is about the two women who would define the decade for the UK - Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher (Gillian Anderson), and Lady Diana Spencer (Emma Corrin), who would become Princess of Wales.

Of the two performances, Corrin's is more likely to stick because she presents such an appealing version of Diana as a little girl lost, a sweet and naive young woman who fits the part of fairy-tale princess perfectly in public, but whose private life quickly becomes a shambles.  Her terrible marriage with Charles is one of the main throughlines of the season, and "The Crown" is far more sympathetic to her than it is to Charles, who is doggedly still in love with Camilla Parker-Bowles, and takes his frustrations out on his wife.  The series doesn't try to sugarcoat the situation, and please note that several of the episodes spotlighting Diana come with pre-show warnings about the graphic depiction of eating disorders.

The show is far more diplomatic about its portrayal of the Prime Minister, who presided over the era of the Troubles, the Falklands War, sweeping economic reforms, and a punishing recession.  "The Crown" dutifully ticks the boxes and acknowledges each of these events, but they're mostly kept in the background as the show is more interested in examining the people in power.  Anderson's take on Thatcher is a little overly caricatured at first, especially her style of speech, but this settles over time.  More importantly, she brings a humanity and vulnerability to Thatcher that makes it easier to feel some sympathy for her, whether or not you agree with her confrontational politics.  

I expect that some viewers will be unhappy with the lack of attention that is paid to specific moments in history this time around.  The Troubles, in particular, get elided over pretty quickly.  I'm a little too young to remember this era and I'm not from the UK, so I benefit from having some distance from the subject matter.  Peter Morgan and company have taken the approach of not getting too involved in the actual political situation, but instead show the social and psychological effects of the policies that were implemented.  The fifth episode of the season is devoted to Michael Fagan (Tom Brooke), the unemployed house decorator who broke into Buckingham Palace and had a chat with the Queen in her bedroom in 1982.  The series reimagines him as a downtrodden everyman suffering during the recession, who seeks out the Queen as a last resort.    

And speaking of the Queen, Olivia Colman's Queen Elizabeth often feels like a secondary character this year, outside of her clashes with Thatcher.  Though she provides plenty of insight and good counsel to other characters, there are only about two episodes where she really drives the action.  And yet, I find that I appreciate Colman's performance more than ever, as the Queen remains a figure of calm and continuity in often chaotic circumstances.  Likewise, Prince Philip and Princess Margaret are firmly supporting players now, though I appreciate that they do get a few good scenes and speeches here and there in the margins. Elizabeth and Phillip discussing favored children is a high point.    

"The Crown" is a great deal more fun this year, being more eventful, more topical, and making better use of its sterling ensemble.  As usual it looks gorgeous, with trips to Australia, New York, and an excellent episode set at Balmoral Castle in Scotland.  I also appreciate the little '80s touches in the fashions and music, and the episodes where we get to see the economically depressed UK in stark contrast to the world of the royals.  Alas, it feels like the series was too short this time out. I'm already anticipating next year's batch of episodes.  

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Behold the Cereal Mascot Cinematic Universe

So, today's announcements from Warner Bros. about their new slate of films made in partnership with General Mills, Kellogg, Quaker, and Post were a surprise, but honestly not unexpected.  The cereal mascots have been a fixture on children's television for ages, and recently strengthened advertising rules in some countries, and the rise of ad-free streaming services, have made marketing to kids more challenging.  So, why not fall back on the classic tactics of snazzy animation and a shared universe?

Here's a rundown of the major titles coming our way soon, with some of my thoughts on each.

  

"Top Cookie" - It's one of those strange generational markers that how old you are corresponds to which of the three Cookie Crisp mascots you remember: Jarvis the Wizard, Cookie Crook and his sidekick Chip the Dog, and now Chip the Wolf.  Eager to appeal to all audiences, the creators have decided to put all of them together in one feature, fighting over the right to be the ultimate Cookie Crisp mascot.  Several crossover guest stars are rumored to be playing the celebrity judges, including Tony the Tiger, Sonny the Cuckoo, and Cornelius Rooster.  

"Do the Monster Munch" - Count Chocula, Franken Berry, And Boo Berry have been around in animated form since the '70s and were already established as being in their own shared universe, so they make the most sense for feature treatment.  Their squabbling rivalry should translate well to the big screen, and the plan to have them band together to combat more contemporary spookies like the Cinnamon Slasher sounds diverting enough.  Bride of Frankenberry and Berrypatra are expected to make their animated debuts.  Yummy Mummy is also expected to get a redesign and a genderswap.

"Quisp" - His cereal may be hard to find these days, but Quisp, alien prince of the Planet Q, who flies with the aid of a propellor affixed to the top of his head, remains ready for action.  Originally designed and animated by the great Jay Ward, there's a little more substance to Quisp than most of the other cereal mascots.  "Quisp" will see our hero finally become king of Planet Q, and have to fend off encroaching  Martians.  A deal is rumored to be in the works to allow Marvin the Martian to lead the invasion.  Quisp's usual antagonists, Quake and the Orange Quangaroo, are also expected to appear.

"Captain Crunch Conquers the Utensils" - Captain Horatio Magellan Crunch is called back into action when several of his fellow mascots, including Dig 'Em Frog, Toucan Sam, and Buzz the Bee, are kidnapped by disgruntled ex-Pop Tarts spokesman Milton the Toaster, who views the popularity of breakfast cereals as the reason for his downfall.  Captain Crunch will have to fight his way through the hostile territories of the Kingdom of Utensia to save the day.  He'll be aided by the crew of the SS Guppy, former rival Jean LaFoote, and crossover guest stars Captain Rik and Captain Star.   

"The Golden Boy" - Former Golden Grahams promoter the Golden Boy is one of the rare live-action cereal mascots, and this announced feature will follow his poignant post-ad campaign spiral and triumphant return to the spotlight as the new mascot of an up-and-coming minor league baseball team.  Quaker Oats mascot Larry is expected to appear as the Golden Boy's mentor, along with various athletes who have appeared on the Wheaties box, including the 1998 Women's Gold Medal Olympic Hockey Team.

"Rabbit v. Leprechaun" - Finally, the showdown we'll all been waiting for, between Lucky the Leprechaun, the most famous of the the mascots who keep cereal away from kids, and the Trix Rabbit, who has been kept away from the cereal bowl by kids for perhaps a little too long.  Both characters will suffer a botched neurosis reprogramming attempt, and unwittingly become simultaneously fixated on the same cereal, a new product yet to be unveiled.  Hijinks and mayhem ensue, summer of 2022.

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