"Black Bag" Snaps

I was a little worried about seeing Michael Fassbender playing another intelligence operative in "Black Bag" so soon after I'd seen him in "The Agency."  However, the two characters and the two projects are completely different.  Fassbender and Cate Blanchett play married MI6 agents George Woodhouse and Kathryn St. Jean.  We first meet them when they're throwing a dinner party for two other co-worker couples from British Intelligence.  There's Clarissa Dubose (Marisa Abela) and Freddie Smalls (Tom Burke), whose tempestuous relationship is on the rocks.  There's psychologist Dr. Zoe Vaughan (Naonie Harris) and Col. James Stokes (Regé-Jean Page) who are more recently linked.  Also, one of the people at this dinner party is a leak, who may be responsible for putting a cyberweapon in the wrong hands.

"Black Bag" is an espionage thriller, but one that is very small scale and very tightly focused on the interplay among a small number of characters, all of them connected to each other through various personal relationships.  As George hunts for the leak, he stress tests all his suspects, including his wife, who has always disagreed with him on the subject of their finances.  Their fascinating relationship is at the heart of the film.  How do they manage to maintain their marriage and their careers in a field where nobody can trust each other, and everyone around them has made a mess of their love lives?  We listen to the pair exchange pillow talk and promises, some that we're meant to take at face value, and some that we're not.  George says he'll never lie to Kathryn.  Kathryn says she'll never lie to Greorge - unless she has to.  

I expected "Black Bag" to be more of a standard spy thriller, with the chases, fight scenes, and other showy set pieces that I associate with the genre.  What director Steven Soderbergh and writer David Koepp have put together is a lot sparser and more down-to-earth, built around conversations, interrogations, meetings, and some very tense dinner party games.  It's more stylized and definitely more sexy than the soberly paranoid spycraft of John LeCarre, whose work is alluded to in various ways, but it doesn't bother with the flashy business of going on missions or putting on false identities.  Wardrobes are aspirational, but reasonable.  There's a little bit of globetrotting, a few shots fired, and one satisfying instance of incendiary vehicular carnage, but otherwise the performances are the main event.  And of course the performances are great.  Fassbender and Blanchett have loads of chemistry, and we get to see it up close and personal.         

   

It's really extraordinary how Fassbender and Blanchett have both played similar characters before, but George and Kathryn feel entirely unique, and in conjunction with each other they're a different organism altogether.  I've seen a few reviews of "Black Bag" reference "The Thin Man" movies, which star another effortlessly suave crimebusting couple, but like everything else in "Black Bag," more is done with less.  George and Kathryn aren't showy or demonstrative, but their obsession with each other is plain.  Unlike the other couples in the story, their romance is very much alive, and their seduction of each other is ongoing.  I appreciate that it's an unfussy romance for adults as well.  There's a remarkable degree of self-control and letting the silences speak, which does so much to cultivate the air of mystery around our leads.  

What keeps me from wholeheartedly falling in love with "Black Bag," is that I saw Soderbergh's "Out of Sight" recently, which has a similarly low key, mesmerizing love story playing out.  And that highlights the one thing about "Black Bag" that I felt fell somewhat short - the score.  The irony is that the composer is David Holmes, who did the score for "Out of Sight," and many, many other Steven Soderbergh films over the years.  Much as I love the "Black Bag's" commitment to minimalism, there were some scenes where I just needed a bit more.  Then again, I've only seen "Black Bag" once, and I suspect this is the kind of movie that improves with repeat viewings.  In any case, it's not one to miss.

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"What If…?" Year Three and "Creature Commandos"

I did "Rank 'Em" posts for the first two seasons of "What If…?" but I don't have much to say about the individual episodes of the third season.  And since this is also the concluding season, I thought I'd put down some final thoughts on the series as a whole.  

So, this season of "What If…?" feels like an afterthought.  Most of its eight episodes are spent on oddball pairings of characters from the MCU's Phase Four, like Shang Chi and Kate Bishop, and Agatha Harkness and Kingo the Eternal.  We get another original character, Byrdie the Duck (Natasha Lyonne), who is the daughter of Darcy Lewis (Kat Dennings) and Howard the Duck (Seth Green).  The episode explaining how Darcy and Howard got together is far and away the best episode of the season, because it's something so weird and nutty that it could only happen in this series.  The slapstick humor premise, where all the biggest baddies in the universe end up chasing Byrdie's egg, actually works.  

Like the previous season, there's an ongoing plot involving the Watcher that ultimately turns into another big multiverse-spanning fight involving Captain Carter, Kahhori, and other recurring characters.  It's completely unnecessary, but in the interest of giving the series a definite ending, I guess it's fine.  I have more of a bone to pick with the lackluster individual plots this year, like "What If… the Emergence Destroyed the Earth?" which spotlights Riri Williams (Dominique Thorne) in a post-apocalyptic universe, or "What If… the Hulk Fought the Mech Avengers?" where a motley collection of second stringers fight kaiju.  The ideas aren't bad, but the execution is lackluster, and it's very apparent that the show  is trying to boost the profiles of some characters it wants us to care about.  Meanwhile, hardly any of the original Avengers lineup even show up for a cameo.  There are a few surprises and the humor is generally better, but this season of "What If…" appears to have been severely limited in its choice of material, and it's something of a relief to see it go.  The series as a whole has been an interesting experiment, but always felt very constrained by studio politics.

Meanwhile, over in another comic book universe, the animated "Creature Commandos" on Max is the first official project to come from James Gunn's new creative leadership on the DC superhero franchise.  It's essentially "The Suicide Squad" with monsters.  Under the command of Rick Flag Sr. (Frank Grillo), Task Force M is made up of dangerous individuals who aren't technically human but capable of heroism.  These include G.I. Robot (Sean Gunn), the radioactive Doctor Phosphorus (Alan Tudyk), Frankenstein's monster (David Harbour) and the Bride (Indira Varma), the amphibious Nina Mazursky (Zoe Chao), and the Weasel (Sean Gunn).  James Gunn wrote every episode and is very gung-ho about this being a launching point for all kinds of media to come.  Unfortunately, "Creature Commandos" completely failed to win me over.

I think if I had seen this series a few years ago, before the "Harley Quinn" series and before "Invincible," I would have found it more interesting.  Unfortunately, after the most recent batch of edgy animated series based on comic books, "Creature Commandos" can't help but feel derivative.  None of the characters particularly stand out.  The production values are decent, but nothing special - the animation, action scenes, and level of violence are all fairly middling.  Despite the big names in the cast, I didn't particularly like any of the characters.  They're all extreme personalities who eventually learn to get along and bond with each other, while fighting much less interesting villains.  Each episode fills in the backstory of one of the Taskforce M members, which are all predictably tragic and violent.  

I've liked most of James Gunn's comic book movies up to this point, but the tone is something I've had to get used to.  There are always a lot of juvenile assholes and hostile reprobates trading one liners, and everyone seems to have a lot of pent-up aggression.  While everyone eventually becomes like family to each other, the learning curves can be pretty steep, and the universe is far too grim and mean for the show to be a good time.  This approach is perfect for "Creature Commandos," a show aimed at angry adolescents, where everyone has an awful backstory and plenty of excuses to behave badly.  However, I'm not an angry adolescent, but a bored elder Millennial who has seen this kind of thing too often.  Good luck to Gunn, but I can recognize when a piece of media is definitely not for me.       

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My Favorite Shirley Clarke Film

Shirley Clarke was a Jewish female filmmaker who came to prominence in the 1960s, which meant she was almost unique.  She started out as a dancer and choreographer, who moved in independent and experimental film circles when she crossed over into filmmaking.  Her later work in the '70s and '80s consists almost totally of live video projects and dance-related endeavors.    When she was active as a feature filmmaker, her work was almost totally unknown in the mainstream, and it was only after significant restoration efforts by Milestone Films that much of Clarke's work became available to the wider public in 2012.  

Though some of her short films won awards and were well received, her features were not.  Perhaps this is because so many of them were about African-American men.  As Clarke put it, she didn't know how to deal with the "woman question," and found that she could relate better to the struggles of black men - a Harlem gang member, a beloved jazz musician, and a fascinating gay hustler and performer, who goes by the name Jason Holliday.  Holliday is the subject of Clarke's 1967 film "Portrait of Jason," and I don't know whether to call it a documentary or not, because I have no idea how much of what we see is real and how much is a performance by the title character.  

Jason Holliday is the only person we ever see in "Portrait of Jason," as he's being interviewed by Clarke and her partner Carl Lee, who can be heard offscreen.  The interview took place entirely in Clarke's living room, during a shoot that reportedly lasted for twelve hours.  The film cuts the footage down to 105 minutes.  During this time, Holliday reels off stories about his life and adventures, several of them salacious and shocking.  He frequently appears to be inebriated.  He giggles, rambles, and seems to be on the verge of tears at one point.  He spars with the interviewers, who call him out for his bad behavior, becoming more and more emotional as time goes on.  There's been a lot of conjecture about what really happened during the course of that marathon all-day shoot.  Was Clarke's goal to get Holliday to break down on camera?  Is the film exploitative?  Is it in bad taste?  Holliday himself seemed to be delighted with the results in interviews, or at least with the attention and the notoriety the film brought him.       

How much of what Holliday is telling us, is the truth?  His stories certainly have the ring of authenticity to them, giving us a glimpse of the usually invisible lives of sex workers, LGBT individuals, and others on the lowest rung of the social ladder.  What's so striking here is Holliday's attitude.  He speaks about controversial, and at the time what would be considered indelicate subject matter, with great pride and wit.  He's not ashamed of who he is and what he's done, even when challenged by the interviewers.  He styles himself as an aspiring cabaret performer, sharing his observations on life and love with his audience.  Jason Holliday is a persona, but it's a persona that has been chosen wholeheartedly.  

Shirley Clarke had a fascinating career, and by her own admission it was only possible because she was rich and privileged, with the connections to get things made that other filmmakers couldn't.  However, she used that privilege to put the lives of black men, heroin addicts, the unseen, and the ignored on screen.  Her first feature film (which also happens to be the first found-footage film), "The Connection," was the subject of a pivotal censorship lawsuit due to its realistic use of vulgarity.  Most of her narrative films blur the lines between truth and fiction, telling their stories through the improvisations of non-actors, usually to a jazz soundtrack.  "Portrait of Jason" has more in common with these films than her straight documentaries, which is why I'm still hesitant to put it into either category.  

Finally, I want to make a quick note that Andy Warhol tried to make a movie with Jason Holliday before Shirley Clarke did, which never came together.  And this is probably the closest I'll ever come to covering Andy Warhol's work on this blog.   

What I've Seen - Shirley Clarke

The Connection (1961)

Robert Frost: A Lover's Quarrel with the World (1963)

The Cool World (1963)

Portrait of Jason (1967)

Ornette: Made in America (1985)

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"The Last of Us," Year Two

I want to state up front that I haven't played either of the "Last of Us" games.  Spoilers for the first season, but not the second ahead.

"The Last of Us" is one of the HBO shows that has been the most affected by the WGA and SAG strikes, and the behind-the-scenes turmoil going on at Warners.  The second season is only seven episodes, down from nine in the first season.  It's based on "The Last of Us 2," but apparently covers less than half of the story from that game.  I suspect that these issues would have already been testing the patience of the audience, even before we got into the various adaptation decisions that irrevocably changed the nature of the show.  In short, this is a risky and difficult season of television, but it's not without some rewards.

Without getting into too many details.  Season two of "The Last of Us" is a transitional year, where Ellie eventually emerges as the main character of the series, and a lot of new characters are introduced.  We open on Ellie and Joel living in Jackson, Wyoming with Joel's brother Tommy (Gabriel), in relative safety.  Other members of the community include Ellie's love interest Dina (Isabela Merced), her ex Jesse (Young Manzino), Tommy's wife Maria (Rutina Wesley), a therapist named Gail (Catherine O'Hara), and her husband Eugene (Joe Pantoliano).  New villains include Isaac (Jeffrey Wright) and Abby (Kaitlyn Dever), members of a paramilitary group based out of Seattle.  There are still plenty of the Infected around, and they're as significant a threat as ever, but the major antagonists this year are all human.

There's a time skip between the seasons so Joel and Ellie aren't quite the same as when we last left them.  Their relationship has become much more complicated, as Ellie is now an adult who is doing her best to distance herself from Joel for a variety of reasons.  The events of the season one finale are a major component of the rift, and both of them are still dealing with a lot of guilt and trust issues.  Revenge is another major theme for several different characters, but most prominently Abby, who has connections to last season's Fireflies.  I understand that she's supposed to be one of our new POV characters, but she doesn't get as much screen time this year as I was expecting.  Neither does Pedro Pascal as Joel, which really leaves a void.  Bella Ramsey is a solid performer, but she's better when she's playing off of Pascal, and pairing her up with newcomer Isabela Merced for so much of the season instead is a significant downgrade.

Still, there are a lot of great moments this season.  I love that there's room for some of our veteran character actors like Wright, O'Hara, and Pantoliano to have some extremely affecting moments.  Nothing is quite on the level of Nick Offerman and Murray Bartlett's episode from the first season, but the potential is certainly there.  "The Last of Us" has an extremely deep bench of talent, and I kept spotting familiar actors like Hetienne Park, Ariela Barer, and Danny Ramirez in minor roles.  It's impossible to predict where any episode is going to go, and even who's going to survive the next five minutes.  The shrinking episode numbers aside, "The Last of Us" still boasts a large budget and prestige television production values.  A massive scale Infected siege on Jackson is one of the major highlights of the year.  And yet it's nowhere near as impressive as an episode later in the season, made up almost entirely of intimate dialogue scenes.

However, there's no getting around that the season ends prematurely, and it feels like the show has turned a corner into much dicier territory.  Like "House of the Dragon" last year, the lower episode count is definitely a problem, but I suspect the real issue is that both series are trying to stretch out the life of their available source material.  "The Last of Us" could make it work with the talent that it has, but it'll be an awfully long time before we find out - maybe too long for some fans.  Season Three won't be here until 2027 at the earliest.  

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Meet "Mickey 17"

Bong Joon-Ho makes two kinds of films.  He makes socially conscious Korean dramas with genre elements, like "Parasite" and "Mother," which are generally smaller scale and usually very, very good.  When he can get a larger studio to foot the bill, he also makes more elaborate allegorical science-fiction films, like "Snowpiercer" and "Okja," which are usually in English, more cartoonish, and I don't enjoy them nearly as much.  "Mickey 17" falls squarely in the latter group, a big budget sci-fi black comedy, starring Western actors, that seems very concerned with being broad enough to appeal to a Western audience.  It is by no means director Bong's worst film, but "Mickey 17" is far from being another "Parasite."  I liked it mostly for Robert Pattinson's performance, but I understand why other viewers have been less happy with the end results.

Mickey Barnes (Pattinson) has signed on to be an "expendable" employee on a space voyage to colonize the planet Niflheim.  Thanks to clone printing technology, his memories and consciousness can be transferred to a new body every time he bites the dust, which he is obliged to do over and over again.  He's given all the most dangerous assignments on the ship, used as a human guinea pig by scientists, and generally treated very badly by just about everyone.  However, during the voyage he does fall in love with the security agent Nasha (Naomi Ackie), who makes things more bearable for him.  Others on the ship include the immoral expedition leader Marshall (Mark Ruffalo in "Poor Things" mode), his calculating wife Yifa (Toni Collette), and Mickey's untrustworthy old friend Timo (Steven Yeun).  However, Mickey's worst enemy may be himself.  After his seventeenth clone, Mickey 17, is mistakenly left for dead on Nilfheim's surface, he makes his way back to the ship to discover Mickey 18 has already been printed.

Roughly the first half of "Mickey 17" is very good.  The worldbuilding is excellent, the dark humor is fantastic, and the performances are great.  Robert Pattinson is easy to root for as Mickey - a slightly dim working stiff who is unhappy with his lot in life, but very easygoing and loveable.  He's that perpetually accommodating loser who doesn't know how to stand up for himself, and ends up being bullied by everyone, including himself.  Marshall and Yifa are playing the usual selfish elites that usually show up in  Bong Joon-Ho movies - thoughtless, cruel creatures that can be fun if they're funny enough.  I wanted Ruffalo and Collette to go further over the top than they did, but I don't really have any complaints.  They fit right into "Mickey 17's" nightmare vision of space exploration, where the lower level workers are routinely exploited and deprived with frightening nonchalance, and Marshall and his too-perfect teeth cultivate a zealous cult of personality that keeps him in power.  Watching Mickey suffer and die in increasingly gruesome ways is morbidly funny and impactful.  

Where the movie loses its way is around the midpoint, when it feels like it's obliged to be a typical Hollywood action blockbuster, and find some way to engineer a happy ending for Mickey and Nasha.  This roughly coincides with the appearance of the "Creepers," the dominant alien life form on Niflheim, who look like giant pillbugs.  If you're familiar with "Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind," they're dead ringers for the Ohmu.  Suddenly we're in a very different kind of movie, where the conflicts become very black-and-white, a few minor characters suddenly get a lot more screen time, and Mickey 17's existential quandary with his unwanted twin gets shoved into the background.  It's not bad, but it's not nearly as interesting as the movie that we were watching up to that point.  There's some messiness with shifting POVs and a weirdly structured ending that makes me suspicious that director Bong was forced to compromise on his finale.       

   

If you're familiar with Bong Joon-Ho's other films, "Mickey 17" fits right in with his other work thematically and aesthetically.  It's awkwardly trying to graft a lot of those elements on the structure of a typical blockbuster with mixed results, but I thought that there was plenty worth watching.  Pattinson in particular is a lot of fun as the Mickeys, and I hope he has a chance to work on something this big and weird again soon.  

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"Lost," Year Three

Spoilers ahead for the first three seasons of "Lost."

The third season of "Lost" is a big improvement over the second.  It feels like the writers know where the story is going, even if that may not be the case.  The focus is narrowed to only a handful of characters, who finally get enough screen time to gain some more depth, and the story builds over the course of the whole season to a satisfying climax.  The season finale is the best episode of the show so far.

Having good, well-defined villains helps a lot.  We get a much better picture of Ben Linus and the DHARMA Initiative group, as Jack, Sawyer, and Kate spend the first several episodes imprisoned in their stronghold.   The one major new character this year, Dr. Juliet Burke (Elizabeth Mitchell), is introduced as a villain and becomes more complex as the season goes on.  While I'm still not as interested in the captured trio as I am with characters like Locke, Hurley, Sun, or Sayid, at least this run of episodes fleshes out Jack, Sawyer, and Kate to the point where they feel like more well-rounded characters.  Sawyer in particular emerges at the end of the season with a very good arc.  DHARMA could be more threatening though.  Ben and Juliet's mind games are awfully tame by 2025 standards, and the stakes always feel very arbitrary for everybody - all the attempts to recruit Jack and Locke into the cult feel silly.  Still, I'll take the crazy cult over the smoke monster and random polar bear sightings.  There's still too much about the island that's way too mystery-baity.  

The best storyline of this year definitely belongs to Charlie.  I haven't written much about Dominic Monaghan's work in the show, because there simply wasn't much to the character aside from being an addict and glomming onto Claire to worrying extremes.  Desmond's premonition gives him a chance to finally make some meaningful decisions and be a hero.  I'm heartened that the show managed to stick at least one good exit for a character.  The worst storyline is probably the little experiment with Nikki (Kiele Sanchez) and Paolo (Rodrigo Santoro), two background characters who have their own running narrative in the background of other episodes.  While I like the concept, and I'm glad the writers are experimenting like this, it's just not done well.  We barely learn anything about these two before their featured episode, where they're killed off with surprising cruelty.  

And speaking of being killed off, I was not pleased to lose Mr. Eko, whose actor quit the show.  Unfortunately that means the only surviving character from the tail section group is Bernard, and all the black regulars are gone aside from Rose and some random flashes of Walt in the finale.  The cast keeps getting whiter, and the issue is glaring.  On the one hand, I don't think the "Lost" writers should have felt obliged to tie themselves in knots trying to keep up the characters and storylines that weren't working.  On the other hand, this is clearly a systemic issue.  Lindelof and company getting called out for this kind of thing was instrumental to getting us the much improved "Watchmen" and "The Leftovers," later on down the line.  

I like that the flashback-heavy structure is still being used, and especially that this allows backstories for some of the characters to be gradually deepened and given more context.  Flashbacks build on flashbacks, setting up the next season when we'll see how the characters' absences will affect the direction of their stories.  I like Sun and Jin's episode this year in particular, because it shows how much the two of them have habitually been keeping secrets from each other.  Then there's Locke, whose terrible father (Kevin Tighe) keeps coming back in more surprising and entertaining ways.  The flashbacks are also handy for fun guest star appearances.  It was nice to see Nathan Fillion as Kate's ex, Zeljko Ivanek as Juliet's ex, Bai Ling as Jack's ex, Cheech Marin as Hurley's dad, Beth Broderick as Kate's mom, and Billy Dee Williams as himself.  The production values continue to improve.      

I've been warned that the show peaks with the fourth season and it's all downhill from there.  All of the subsequent seasons are also shorter than the first three, so I'm actually well past the halfway point for "Lost."  I'm enjoying "Lost" enough that I'm going to see it through to the end.  However, at this point I'm glad that I didn't watch this while it was airing.  The ability to work through the episodes at my own pace is very important to bolstering my goodwill toward the show.  Also, having some foreknowledge of where the story is going is helping to curb expectations.     

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"The Gorge" and "Companion"

2025 has been very good for original genre films so far.  A few minor spoilers ahead.

First, "The Gorge," which is an offbeat horror-action mystery movie, where the best thing about it is surprisingly the romance that develops between the two leads.  Miles Teller plays Levi, an ex-Marine who is sent by a not-suspicious-at-all Sigourney Weaver character to a mysterious gorge, which is guarded on one side by a lone American soldier, and on the other side by a lone Soviet counterpart, both in command of impressive military arsenals.  Their job is to keep whatever is at the bottom of the mist-shrouded gorge from ever getting out.  The two soldiers are forbidden from contact, but the Soviet turns out to be the lovely Drasa (Anya Taylor-Joy), and both of them are bored, so of course they start flirting with binoculars and homemade signs.

I appreciate that we find out very quickly that there are eldritch monsters who keep trying to come out of the gorge, and have to be repelled with a lot of heavy gunfire.  The mystery is not drawn out at all, though there are the usual twists and turns about what's down under all that mist, for those who are here for the monsters and the action.  However, I was pleasantly surprised by how much of "The Gorge" is actually a romantic-comedy, featuring two capable, attractive young people who come up with a lot of different ways to carry out their romance, despite being physically separated.  Directed by Scott Derrickson, who mostly does horror, this is a fun digression from the usual formula, and I found it very enjoyable.  Well, until the film is obliged to be an action movie again.  

"The Gorge" is a pretty by-the-numbers monsterfest in the second half, when our leads are expected to go fight more CGI beasties and uncover the terrible secrets about the gorge.  Fortunately the actors are very good, especially Anya Taylor-Joy proving again that she's a solid action star.  The creature designs also feature some very creative and memorable abominations.  I think it helps that I went into "The Gorge" expecting a B-movie, and that's exactly what this is.  The romance is a nice bonus, but in the end the mindless violence takes center stage, and is both very mindless and very violent.  It's hard to get too upset with the film for doing exactly what it said it would from frame one.  Would I have been happier with a smarter, more thoughtful film that spent more time on the central relationship?  Sure, but that's not the movie "The Gorge" is trying to be, and I don't begrudge it any of its indulgences.

On to "Companion," a horror/thriller/comedy where I have to tread more carefully because it does have several big reveals that will directly impact audience enjoyment.  Let's just say that the film is about technology and romance, and involves three couples having a weekend getaway together.  There's Iris (Sophie Thatcher), who is nervous about meeting the friends of her boyfriend Josh (Jack Quaid) for the first time.  There's Eli (Harvey Guillen) and Patrick (Lukas Gage), the friendly gay couple.  And then there's prickly Kat (Megan Suri), who is dating an eccentric Russian, Sergey (Rupert Friend).  Drew Hancock, previously of "Suburgatory" and "Blue Mountain State," is making his feature film debut here as writer and director.

"Companion" is one of those tricky little genre movies where the characters are playing cat-and-mouse and trying to outwit each other constantly.  The writing is clever, darkly funny, and occasionally lands a good zinger.  The young actors are a solid bunch who're mostly known for their television work, but easing into bigger film roles.  Sophie Thatcher, of "Yellowjackets" and "Heretic," is the standout.  Iris is our main POV character, and Thatcher is effortlessly genuine and relatable throughout, despite dealing with a lot of heightened, high concept material.  When things go south, she's easy to root for.  

This is the kind of premise that could have gotten very silly very quickly, without Thatcher's grounding presence.  Frankly, the movie still is silly a lot of the time, on purpose, but it also offers some decent observations about how technology can enable some of humanity's worst impulses.  But more importantly, it's a fun watch, and hopefully we'll see everyone involved continue to do good work in the future. 

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"The White Lotus," Year Three

The response to the third season of "The White Lotus" has been much more negative than I expected, which puts me in the odd position of wanting to defend the show more than I might have otherwise.  If you've seen the first and second installments of "The White Lotus," you already know the gist here.  We follow various groups of rich, terrible guests of the White Lotus hotel, with someone guaranteed to be dead by the end of the last episode.  This time the setting is Thailand, in a White Lotus dedicated to health and wellness.  The themes of the season are spiritual rot, mortality, and some really screwed up family relationships.

There's a great set of characters this year.  Timothy and Victoria Ratliff (Jason Isaacs and Parker Posey) have built a family vacation around their daughter Piper (Sarah Catherine Hook) wanting to visit and interview the leader (Suthichai Yoon) of a nearby meditation center.  Their sons Saxon (Patrick Schwarzenegger) and Lachlan (Sam Nivola) are also in tow.  Frenemy girlfriends Jaclyn (Michelle Monaghan), Laurie (Carrie Coon), and Kate (Leslie Bibb) are on a reunion trip.  There's depressed Rick (Walton Goggins) and his much younger girlfriend Chelsea (Aimee Lou Wood), who end up trying to track down the man who killed Rick's father.   Of course we have the White Lotus staff, led by manager Fabian (Christian Friedel), and hotel owner Sritala (Lek Patravadi), though more attention goes to aspiring security guard Gaitok (Tayme Thapthimthong) and his co-worker crush, Mook (Lalisa Manoban).  Finally, you may remember Belinda (Natasha Rothwell) from the Hawaii edition of "TheWhite Lotus," who is on a work exchange trip, and becomes close to her local host, Pornchai (Dom Hetrakul).  Scott Glenn and Sam Rockwell show up eventually in roles I will not spoil the specifics of, along with another familiar face from a previous season.

For the most part I really enjoyed this season of "The White Lotus," about on par with season two.   The show's creator, Mike White, reportedly patterned several of the stories on Greek tragedies, so the threat of bloodshed and highly inappropriate relationships are everywhere.  However, I like that there's a nice mix of more typical, down to earth situations, like the frenemy reunion with its fairly realistic exploration of female resentments and jealousies, and the more absurdist stories involving murder plots and blackmail.  Sometimes there are strange tonal inconsistencies - Belinda's storyline gets increasingly wild as the season goes on - but the various plots and characters balance against each other well.  I never felt, as I sometimes did with the second season, that certain characters or actors were being wasted.  Not all the stories played out the way I wanted them to - the Ratliffs' in particular - but I thought they worked on their own terms.  It's never been more obvious, however, that the foreshadowings of death are only there to keep the audience around for the character drama, and Mike White has no interest in actually constructing a whodunnit or howdunnit.     

I think this year suffered a little from not having a larger-than-life performance at its center on the level of Jennifer Coolidge's Tanya or Murray Bartlett's Armand, though Walton Goggins certainly put in some effort as a man embarking on the worst revenge plot ever hatched.  Jason Isaacs got me to sympathize with Timothy, as he stands on the precipice of financial ruin, and gradually realizes how hopelessly unprepared his family is for bad news.  Piper Perabo is the most delightfully awful rich lady caricature I've seen in some time, with Patrick Schwarzenegger also doing great things as a walking masculinity crisis.   Aimee Lou Wood might be the season's breakout star, as self-deluding but ever-hopeful Chelsea.  All the frenemies are great, but Carrie Coon with a monologue is always a force to be reckoned with.  However, the monologue of the season is definitely Sam Rockwell's - again, I refrain from spoilers.

  

I do feel that the picturesque Thailand setting wasn't used to its full potential.  Most of the appearances of Eastern spirituality are really just window dressing, and it feels like the bulk of the season could have taken place anywhere else.  Of the Asian performers, the only one I felt got much of a chance to do anything was Tayme Thapthimthong as Gaitok, and frankly he gets about the most perfunctory and least interesting narrative out of anyone in the cast.  I could have used more of  Sritala, who at least has hints of hidden depths.  

All in all, this season of "The White Lotus" was on par with the previous seasons, but there was room for improvement.  I'd urge Mike White to let things percolate a little longer before the inevitable fourth season.  

—

How Streaming Broke TV Seasons

At the time of writing, "Interview With the Vampire" and "Mr. and Mrs. Smith" were both renewed for additional seasons over a year ago, but neither have started filming yet.  This is especially odd in the case of "Interview With the Vampire," because a brief promo for its third season debuted at last summer's San Diego Comic-Con.  We're not likely to see either show back with new episodes until 2027 at the earliest, which means a three year gap between seasons - a gap that has become increasingly common.    

I've touched on this issue a couple of times before, but since the pandemic and the industry strikes, it's become clear that this is looking like the new normal for some of the marquee streaming shows, and the viewers are increasingly unhappy about it.  I want to break down some of the hows and whys, and what we can expect going forward.  First, it helps to have some context.  The old model of network television shows that debut 20+ episodes a year, every year, is still alive and well on the networks.  "Ghosts," "Abbott Elementary," "Law & Order: SVU," and all the "Chicago" shows regularly have 22 episode seasons, and new seasons premiere every fall like clockwork.  This is achieved by having their crews working steadily throughout the year, with actual production and post-production on individual episodes rarely taking more than two or three months.  The situation for shows on the streaming platforms, however, is very different.

The changes started with the prestige TV boom in the mid-2000s, specifically on cable.  Because of the flexibility afforded by their different economic models, cable shows were able to make higher quality shows with more high-profile acting talent, usually by reducing their episode counts.  The norm was ten to thirteen episodes a season.  These still came back every year - when "The Sopranos" had an 18 month gap before its final season, people raised eyebrows - even if it meant sometimes resorting to tactics like splitting seasons into smaller batches of episodes.  Shows started becoming more expensive as genre series like "Lost" and "Battlestar Galactica" gained popularity.  More special effects meant longer post-production times.  The biggest game-changer was "Game of Thrones" in 2011, which had feature film quality special effects.  It maintained a schedule of ten episodes a year for six years, but was also far more expensive and logistically challenging than anything else on television.  Essentially the show was often three different productions working simultaneously.  The shoots took longer and longer as the show went on, and post-production demands followed suit.  The average time for production and post-production was seven months for most of the show's run.  If it had been on any other platform but HBO, "Game of Thrones" would have likely looked very different.

I haven't managed to confirm this, but it looks like "Westworld" in 2016 was the first major ongoing series that started releasing seasons every other year.  It was another big HBO production with expensive effects and a high-profile cast, featuring movie stars who were more difficult to schedule things around. Cable anthology shows like "True Detective" and "Fargo" were also starting to do this, though their seasons have self-contained stories, so they could function as stand-alone miniseries.  The streamers like Netflix and Hulu in the mid-2010s were just starting to gain some traction, but their shows generally followed the cable model.  They were doing a lot of experimenting with things like episode length and presentation, but the early hits like "House of Cards," "The Crown" and "The Handmaid's Tale" steadily delivered the standard ten or thirteen episodes every year, at least at first.  Episode counts started slipping a few years later, with shows like "Penny Dreadful" and "American Gods" having nine and sometimes eight episodes a season.  More popular shows like "Daredevil" and "Stranger Things" started airing every other year, but it was still pretty uncommon.   

Then came the major disruptions of the 2020 COVID pandemic and the 2023 WGA and SAG strikes, and things went sideways.  Every show saw major delays, compounded by more competition from new streaming platforms like Disney+, HBO Max, and Paramount+.  Where "Game of Thrones" was essentially the only show of its size during its run, now every streamer had multiple expensive shows being made on the same scale, competing for talent.  2022 saw the premieres of "Star Trek: Strange New Worlds," "House of the Dragon," "The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power," "Interview With the Vampire," "Andor," and more.  Budgets ballooned and production times kept growing longer.  Many shows were forced to weather multiple delays, and then the streaming programmers made an important discovery.  Even if fans were forced to wait two or even three years, in the case of popular shows like "Stranger Things" or "The Mandalorian," it didn't impact their ratings when they came back.  And because the streamers were even less impacted by the traditional scheduling needs of the networks, they could program with much more flexibility, premiering shows year-round and at any time of day.       

       

Then the whole entertainment industry contracted sharply after rapid growth in the late 2010s, and suddenly everyone was much more risk averse.  Episode counts dropped again, to as low as six or seven episode seasons due to cost cutting.  The streamers started waiting to renew some shows until after a new season had aired and the ratings came in, so pre-production often couldn't get started until months later.  For the bigger, more complicated shows featuring lots of spectacle and CGI, like "Andor," pre-production times have also ballooned, so it can be a year before cameras start rolling.  Production itself can take up to a year, and then post-production is another year.  That's how we've arrived at these massive three year gaps between seasons of television.  The production cycle now looks closer to what we'd expect for blockbuster franchise movies than traditional television, because that's what we've been getting - shows featuring movie stars, with movie budgets and movie quality effects.     

I want to point out that shows like this are still the exception rather than the norm. Cheaper streaming offerings like "The Bear" and "Hacks" are still consistently delivering ten episode seasons yearly.  "The Pitt" got a lot of attention this spring for delivering a fifteen-episode first season, and promising another by January.  Note that "The Pitt" is a medical drama that only has one major set and no CGI blandishments that I could spot.  However, understandably it's the splashier "House of the Dragon" and "Stranger Things" sized shows that are getting more attention.

The streaming executives and showrunners and everyone working behind the scenes are well aware of their audience's discontent, and we've seen efforts to scale down some shows and keep production times shorter.  However, I'll caution that trying to speed things along usually doesn't end well when it comes to big, complicated shows like "Game of Thrones."  We all know what happened to the last season of "Game of Thrones."  There are going to be these behemoth productions that come back every couple of years for as long as people keep watching them, but there's also been a definite shift to make more television that, well, resembles traditional television.

Expect more shows like "The Pitt" and fewer like "The Rings of Power" for a while, at least until the streamers find a new equilibrium.  And given the way things are going, I don't think the industry disruptions are over yet.   

--- 

"Ibelin" and "Grand Theft Hamlet"

Machinima media is media that uses the existing digital assets and graphics engines of video games to create original animated works.  It's been around for a long time, with the popular "Red v. Blue" series still going after twenty years.  Two recent Machinima documentaries - or rather documentaries that use significant amounts of Machinima - have been getting some attention, so I want to take the opportunity to acknowledge a part of the cinema landscape I'm not very familiar with.  

"Ibelin," or "The Remarkable Life of Ibelin" in some markets, chronicles the life of a Norwegian man named Mats Steen, an avid gamer whose life was limited and cut short by a severe form of muscular dystrophy.  After his death, his family discovered his online life, based around the "World of Warcraft" online game, where he found friends and even love.  Director Benjamin Ree made one of my favorite recent documentaries, "The Painter and the Thief," and displays the same playfulness with the narrative here.  We jump backwards and forwards in time, and significant portions of the film are spent in-game with recreations of Steen's interactions, using the "World of Warcraft" graphics.  The graphics are pretty outdated looking, and the animation is nothing fancy, but they still get across the personalities of the people involved.

While there's a lot about "Ibelin" that feels piecemeal and cobbled together from secondhand accounts, it successfully makes its case that gamers can develop meaningful relationships in digital spaces.  And this was especially important for an individual who didn't have a chance to create those relationships otherwise.  Most of the events of "Ibelin" took place in the early 2010s, and gaming culture has changed considerably, but it's nice to have an optimistic look at how online gaming has the potential to make a positive impact on people's lives.  I was surprised at how much real emotion the filmmakers were able to evoke from scenes of fantasy RPG avatars just having conversations with each other.  

Because I'm not much of a gamer, part of me still thinks of modern video games as resembling "World of Warcraft."  So, I was completely knocked for a loop when I got a look at "Grand Theft Auto Online," the setting for "Grand Theft Hamlet."  This is a pandemic film, where a pair of UK actors, Sam Crane and Mark Oosterveen, are playing "Grand Theft Auto Online" during lockdown together, when they get the bright idea to stage a production of William Shakespeare's "Hamlet" in the virtual environment.  Sam's wife, filmmaker Pinny Grylls, documents the process of holding auditions, assembling a cast, trying to keep the rehearsal process on track, and finally holding the live performance.  It's not an easy venture, with so many amateur participants, and everyone tends to get killed a lot by griefers.                 

Though the emotional hooks aren't as strong as in "Ibelin," I still found "Grand Theft Hamlet" thoroughly watchable.  A big part of this is because the graphics of "Grand Theft Auto Online" are so much more cinematic than "World of Warcraft."  The gameplay takes place in a virtual recreation of neighborhoods in the Los Angeles area, with much more realistic and sophisticated graphics.  Crane and Oosterveen come up with their bright idea when they stumble across the game's version of The Hollywood Bowl - standing empty and ready for a performance.  Their version of "Hamlet" ends up being staged in multiple in-game locations, including rooftops, street corners, and even on a moving blimp.  The whole time, they're under threat of their avatars being shot by machine guns and blown up by rocket launchers.

As with "Ibelin," "Grand Theft Hamlet" often feels pieced together out of available footage and whatever limited recreations the filmmakers could manage on a minimal budget.  However, I like that the whole film, aside from a brief coda, takes place in the game.  We hear the players discussing their personal lives and real world complications, and a particularly poignant moment comes when we witness a marital heart-to-heart, but we never leave the "Grand Theft Auto Online" world.  A fascinating reveal late in the film, which I wish had been expanded on, is that one of the organizers is spending much more time on the project than anyone else because it's the only thing he has to focus on in lockdown.       

As for the "Hamlet" performance itself, we only get to see the highlight reel, but it's thrilling nonetheless.

---

"Common Side Effects" and a "Harley Quinn" Check-In

"Common Side Effects" was co-created by Joseph Bennett and Steve Hely, and shares a lot of crew with the short-lived Max series "Scavengers' Reign."  "Common Side Effects," however, takes place in the present day and has a very different style and verve.  Our hero is an eco-warrior fungi expert named Marshall Cuso (Dave King), who discovers a Blue Angel mushroom in Peru that can cure all ills, and even revive the dying.  He's constantly on the run from the DEA, specifically Agent Harrington (Martha Kelly) and Agent Copano (Joseph Lee Anderson) for his possession of controlled substances, but makes his way back to the U.S. to try and cultivate the mushroom there.  He happens across his old high school crush, Frances (Emily Pendergast) and shares his discovery with her, unaware that she works for a pharmaceutical executive named Rick Kruger (Mike Judge). 

I've seen the show promoted as an adult thriller that is critical of the pharmaceutical industry, but it's actually much lighter and stranger than it seems at first glance.  "Common Side Effects" features an interesting mix of conspiracy theory what-if, ensemble comedy, and trippy tall tale.  There are certainly exciting developments as everyone fights for control of the Blue Angel, and more than a few resort to violence.  However, this is a show where death is awfully impermanent, and the big emotional throughline comes down to Marshall and Frances figuring out how to be friends again as they deal with all the chaos that they inadvertently cause with the mushroom.  Yes, there are environmental and anti-Capitalist messages in the story, but our hero is also a rotund hippie who spends a lot of time getting into and out of ridiculous situations, so the primary goal here is definitely to amuse and entertain.  Also, there are the wonderfully trippy hallucination sequences that happen whenever anybody eats a Blue Angel, which could only happen in animation.  

A note about the visuals, while we're on the subject.  The look of "Common SIde Effects" is very distinct, because all the characters have oversized heads, and oddly proportioned faces, so they all look a little bug-eyed and weird at first.  The characters include an interesting variety of types - law enforcement, business opportunists, scientists, Marshall's community of mycology oddballs, and related allies.  Nearly everyone is sympathetic and relatable to some degree,  but most have pretty skewed priorities, and react to the existence of the mushroom in foolhardy ways.  Even Marshall, who wants to use the mushroom to cure the world, repeatedly puts his trust in people he shouldn't be trusting.  However, he's also not the only good guy we meet, and I really enjoyed watching a couple of characters figure things out and end up on the right side of the fight in the end.  Also, gotta love that Peruvian flute theme.

And now, a quick check-in with Max's "Harley Quinn" series, which recently finished its fifth season.  Because we have a new "Superman" movie coming out, corporate synergy likely decreed that there should be a season of the show set in Metropolis.  Harley and Ivy use the excuse that they've thoroughly screwed up Gotham City to the point where they don't have much else to do, and move to the unnervingly perfect Metropolis, where even Superman (Clark Kent) is feeling obsolete because of how well the city is running.  New adversaries this season include Lena Luthor (Aisha Taylor) and Brainiac (Stephen Fry), with more attention on characters like Lois Lane (Natalie Morales) and King Shark's son Shaun (Kimberly Brooks).

Any show getting five seasons is an achievement these days, but "Harley Quinn" isn't in very good shape this year.  A lot of the original roster of regulars has moved on, and there just aren't compelling stakes to their adventures anymore, even though the show's stakes have always been pretty low.  We meet Ivy's ex and get into Harley's family troubles a bit, and both of the major villains this year are pretty good.  However, it's clear that our leading ladies are never going to break up and don't face any threats that are beyond their ability to handle, so there's not much excitement to be had.  It's not a bad watch as a hangout show, but way too many of the characters are now the kids or relatives of other characters, and the creators have apparently exhausted the supply of obscure comic book characters they can dredge out of the DC archives.  It may be time to let Harley and friends have one last hurrah, and bow out.  

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"Presence" and "Love Me"

Director Steven Soderbergh and screenwriter David Koepp are collaborating again, this time for a movie told from the POV of a ghost.  It's a tiny production, filmed entirely in a suburban house, with each scene comprising a single long take.  Like the recent "Nickel Boys," the whole film is shot from a first person perspective.  Despite what the marketing might lead you to believe, this is not a traditional horror film.  It's about a ghost, but a ghost who has to figure out its own identity and why it's trapped in this house, watching over the lives of a typical family of four.  

For most of "Presence," events play out like a non-supernatural domestic drama.  Rebekah (Lucy Liu) and Chris (Chris Sullivan) move into the house  with their teenage children, Chloe (Callina Liang) and Tyler (Eddy Maday).  The family dynamics are difficult.  Chloe is mourning the loss of a friend.  Rebekah is unsympathetic, heavily favoring her son Tyler, who is an insensitive jock.  Chris is more empathetic, but often frustrated in his attempts to communicate with his wife and children.  Tyler becomes friends with a boy named Ryan (West Mulholland), who becomes close with Chloe.  All five of them start experiencing strange phenomena in the house as the ghost becomes more active.

"Presence" feels like the kind of experimental low-budget movie that a couple of promising first-time filmmakers would make.  It's got a few big twists and some awkward dialogue that don't quite come off as well as I was hoping they would, and the first person camera takes some getting used to, especially when it starts whip-panning in some of the later scenes.  Like many of Soderbergh's recent films, it feels like he's mostly interested in playing with the cinematic visual language - specifically the use of certain camera techniques and the first person perspective.  Not all of these experiments have been very watchable or entertaining, but I thought that everything paid off in "Presence," especially the ending.  And I really appreciate seeing Lucy Liu in a relatively straight dramatic film role for once.  I really wish it happened more often.  

On to "Love Me," which I'd been keeping an eye out for since it premiered at last year's Sundance Film Festival. Brothers Andy and Sam Zuchero have made a romantic comedy about two AI - a weather buoy and a satellite - who gradually gain sentience after humanity goes extinct, and eventually develop a relationship with each other.  It's extremely high concept, very experimental, and I don't think most of it works.  However, it makes for a fascinating thinkpiece and I enjoyed watching the film come up with different ways to portray the different stages of Me (Kristen Stewart) and Iam (Steven Yeun) becoming more and more anthropomorphized over the passing aeons.   

The biggest problem with "Love Me" is that it jumps into the romance before it establishes who Me and Iam are as characters, and blunders a lot of the character development.  It also relies on tropes and meta commentary very heavily, and the fact that the film is self-aware about this doesn't help much.  Me, the buoy, who eventually self-identifies as a girl, is initially the pursuer.  She creates a fake persona for herself by borrowing heavily from the social media of a real couple, Deja and Liam.  Her idea of being in a relationship is copying what she likes.  This means endlessly acting out scenes from existing videos, repeating other people's words and actions.  The message about performative online interactions couldn't be plainer.  It takes some significant conflicts and self-discovery to get our two AI on the right track.

The visuals shift from screenlife text messaging and search engine results to virtual world animated avatars, to finally the live actors interacting physically in the last act.  Frankly, none of it looks very good, but the attempt to piece all this together coherently is admirable in and of itself.  I also do not believe Kristen Stewart and Steven Yeun have any screen chemistry together at all, which may have been the point.  In any case, this is a weird little movie, but innovative and earnestly trying new things, and the filmmakers deserve nothing but encouragement in their future endeavors.  

---

"The Pitt," Year One

A prestige streaming series with a fifteen episode season?  How can this be?  The new Max medical drama looks like "ER" at first glance, and apparently was originally conceived of as a sequel series until rights issues quashed it.  Showrunner R. Scott Gemmill, executive producer John Wells, and star Noah Wyle are all "ER" alums.  However, "The Pitt" is a different beast.  For one thing, it takes place in real time, like "24," with each episode covering an hour of a marathon shift at the Pittsburgh Trauma Medical Hospital ER, from 7:00 AM all the way until 10:00 PM.

Much has been said about how much more realistic "The Pitt" is than other medical shows.  We get to hear curse words!  Sensitive body parts and medical gore are uncensored!  I can't attest to the accuracy of the medical procedures being performed.  However, it is nice to see a much more realistically diverse group of doctors, nurses, and social workers, plus acknowledgement of long wait times, administrative pressures, and the still lingering trauma of the COVID pandemic.  "The Pitt" is not a documentary, and there's plenty of played-up drama. Nobody is wearing a surgical mask.  Morally and emotionally difficult situations seem to arise every few minutes.  The writers tackle every current hot-button issue affecting medical practice, from abortion to anti-vaxxers.  However, I appreciate that the focus stays on the medicine.  We stay in and around the hospital the whole way through, and whatever information we learn about the characters we learn in the course of their day at work.  No flashbacks or cutaways are deployed.

There are a lot of characters to keep track of - Dr. Michael "Robby" Robinavitch (Wyle) is the senior attending physician, and the man in charge of the doctors.  Under him are the senior residents, Dr. Collins (Tracy Ifeachor) and Dr. Langdon (Patrick Ball), and residents Dr. Mohan (Supriya Ganesh), and Dr. McKay (Fiona Dourif).  New to the hospital and working their first shift are a newly transferred resident, Dr. King (Taylor Dearden), an intern, Dr. Santos (Isa Briones), and a pair of medical students, Whitaker (Gerran Howell) and Javadi (Shabana Azeez).  Nurses are sparse in the cast, because of the focus on the doctors, but the most important are the ER's charge nurse Dana Evans (Katherine LaNasa) and everyone's secret crush, Mateo (Jalen Thomas Brooks).  And just when you think you have everyone sorted out, the night shift starts showing up, led by Dr. Abbott (Shawn Hatosy).

The real-time storytelling format is a big plus, because it allows stories to unfold in a more realistic way from episode to episode.  We see the ER workers dealing with cases that are ongoing from previous shifts, and eventually have to hand off their work to others.  Some situations drag on over multiple hours, including a patient named Doug (Drew Powell) who is stuck in the waiting room.  You can spot him in episode after episode, his frustrations building as the hours pass.  There's also an emphasis on how so much of the doctors' work is complicated by other issues - language barriers, patient combativeness, cultural differences, and thorny domestic situations.  One patient may be a trafficking victim.  Another may be plotting something terrible.  Kiara (Krystel V. McNeil), the department social worker, frequently has to be called on.  

Watching The Pitt's newbies learning how to navigate this world is the main driver of the show's excellent character drama.  Noah Wyle's great as Dr. Robby, trying to stave off emotional and spiritual exhaustion as he struggles to lead during one of the worst shifts of his career.  However, I was far more invested in Drs. Javadi, Whitaker, Santos, and King.  Part of the fun of "The Pitt" is the competence porn, where we're watching smart, capable, dedicated people doing good work.  However, at the same time it's about watching people at major inflection points in their lives and careers - learning, maturing, and facing new challenges with every new patient.  Everyone loves Dr. King, who is hinted to be on the spectrum, and blossoms quickly as she gains more confidence under pressure.  However, it's also fascinating to chart the progress of overconfident, pain-in-the-ass Dr. Santos, who shows up with a slew of bad impulses and a troublemaking streak.

All the teaching and learning does mean that the writing sometimes gets awfully didactic.  All the characters are fallible, but they do get self-righteous at times without much pushback.  My biggest criticism of the show is that it allows the doctors to get away with some very risky behavior without enough consequences.  There's some self-awareness of this, especially with Santos's and Langdon's storylines, and all the really touchy subject matter is generally handled well, but I think the show could do better.  

Frankly, I like "The Pitt" so much that I'm really excited that it has the opportunity to do better.  For the few things that rub me the wrong way, there are so many more that delight me.  You don't see many shows this dense with new characters and new information, week after week.  The cinematography and editing do a great job of showing more than you'd expect without showing too much.  There's no backing score and all the music is diegetic.  And there are gossipping Filipino nurses!  

 

Fifteen hours were over too quick.  Pay off Crichton and get the next season into production ASAP.  

—

The Time Machine

The Internet Archive went through a rough patch recently, and I'm glad that it's back on its feet.  The site is a repository for so much media that doesn't seem to exist anywhere else.  It's also the closest thing I've found to a real time machine.  

A while ago I stumbled across the Internet Archive's trove of picture books - not just the classics like "Curious George" and "Goodnight Moon" that everyone knows, but all the junk books and ephemera that cluttered our bookshelves and got lost under the bed when I was a kid in the '80s.  I'm talking about the movie tie-ins, the McDonalds give-aways, and the read-along books that came with cassettes or records.  Those were the flimsy, cheap, bottom of the barrel books that somehow stuck around much longer than some of my favorites, even though they were so disposable.  An awful lot of them have been preserved in the Internet Archive, right along with all the classics.  And I'm so glad that they're there.  

I spent so much of my childhood around books that now nothing unlocks my old memories like books.  I got obsessed with finding some of the old 80s and 90s children's media I'd enjoyed as a kid when my kids hit certain milestones - mostly for my benefit rather than theirs.  Looking in on those old pieces of my childhood through the Internet Archive was instantly transporting.  I could feel some of the old synapses firing to life again, the sense memories of dog-eared pages and crayon-scrawled covers returning full force.  I remembered the toys those books were often mixed together with, the carpets and furniture of my childhood home, and the sounds of my parents telling me "five more minutes" or "time to clean up."  It was a shock to see the whole, unblemished versions of volumes like "Over in the Meadow" that I only remember as a half-mangled collection of damaged pages, barely held together by peeling sticky-tape.   Or a "Sesame Street" dictionary where the endpages weren't covered in Smurfs stickers and temporary tattoos.  

It was also fun to suddenly have access to all the books I didn't have as a kid.  I think everybody had at least one book that was part of a series that they were never able to find the rest of.  Sometimes the other volumes were pictured on the back cover or on an insert, to let us know they existed.  I remember loving Graeme Base's "Eleventh Hour" and "Animalia," and wishing I could find his newer books.  And suddenly, there was his entire bibliography, along with all the obscure, out-of-print Dr. Seuss books, the books Roald Dahl had written for grown-ups, and the whole Disney Fun-to-Read library.  I found out that "Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs" had two sequels.   "Babar" has six more books written by the original author, and over thirty more by his son.  And part of me felt like I was seven years old again, and the luckiest kid in the world. 

I understand that every generation has its own media, and have done my best to encourage my kids to explore everything available to them, but it does unsettle me that so few of the books I loved as a kid are available in libraries or bookstores anymore - and, if they are they've been repackaged or re-illustrated, or rewritten to appeal to the current crop of tots.  I can only seem to find the adventures of a younger, more attractive Mrs. Piggle Wiggle, or graphic novel versions of The Babysitters Club books at the local library.  Of course, that happened generations before me, and will happen generations after.  It took some work to find the exact version of "The Little Engine That Could" that I remembered on my bookshelf, which had different illustrations than the original.  Other books I had turned out to be abridged versions or updated classroom versions.  A couple had content so outdated that they're no longer kid-appropriate.    

 

I'm glad that time marches on, and my kids get to enjoy their Mo Willems and Dav Pilkey, but also that I can read them the Bill Peet and Louis Slobodkin books that aren't so easy to find copies of anymore.  I get some reassurance that the books that existed when I was little have been preserved somewhere, and I can visit them once in a while.  It's not the same as having the physical books in your hands, but for me it's enough.   

---

Can't Take a "Joker"

Well, "Joker: Folie à Deux" is not the blockbuster that Warner Brothers was hoping for.  And it's certainly not the film that the fans of  the Joker character were hoping for either.  Todd Phillips, by all accounts, was given carte blanche with the sequel to the surprisingly successful 2019 "Joker" movie, and he made a movie that will only be of interest to a very, very few.  I'm honestly not sure whether or not it's a good movie, but as one of the few people who actually seems to be in the target audience for "Joker: Folie à Deux," I admit that I came away entertained.  However, I completely understand why most viewers were appalled and the studio is treating this as a complete disaster.

Since the first "Joker" was an homage to the early films of Martin Scorsese, and "Joker: Folie à Deux" was rumored to be a musical, I prepped for it by rewatching "New York, New York," and Francis Ford Coppola's "One From the Heart."  "Joker: Folie à Deux," despite Phillips' protestations, is definitely a musical film, but the one I find myself comparing it to is "Pennies From Heaven," the tragic Depression-era anti-musical that juxtaposes its heroes' increasingly miserable lives with elaborate fantasy musical numbers.    "Joker: Folie à Deux" does something similar, taking place mostly in Arkham State Hospital, where Arthur Fleck (Joaquin Phoenix) has been locked up, awaiting trial for the murders he committed in "Joker."  After he connects with a fellow patient, Lee Quinzel (Lady Gaga), in a music class, he starts imagining himself in musical numbers set to oldies and show tunes.  Yes, Anthony Newley and Leslie Bricusse's "The Joker" is on the soundtrack.  

The common criticism I've seen of "Joker: Folie à Deux" is that it's determined not to be a crowd-pleaser on any level, and I don't disagree.  The movie actively undercuts the notion that Arthur Fleck is any kind of heroic figure, so the fans who saw him as a pro-anarchy icon in "Joker" get no satisfaction.  Nearly all the violence in the film is directed against him, with no opportunity for reprisal.  The courtroom drama is farcical and devolves into nonsense.  The romance is promising, but comes up pretty half-baked.  Despite the involvement of Lady Gaga, the musical numbers aren't up the standard of your typical song-and-dance picture.  The raw style and Joaquin Phoenix's shaky vocals match the tone of the piece, but none if it's very memorable.  Plus, there are a couple of fake-outs that seem deliberately positioned to frustrate the audience even further.  

It's admirable that Todd Fields has committed to such a starkly bleak vision for this character, and used Warners' money and resources to do it, but my trouble with the film is that the execution is so lacking.  While the film looks gorgeous and expensive, "Joker: Folie à Deux" is badly paced, with a second act that drags interminably.  The scripting is repetitive, disjointed, and dwells on the unpleasantness.  For the first hour or so, I was keeping an open mind as the love story was being set up, and the first few musical numbers were introduced.  However, the movie is not good at actually being a romance or a musical, and wastes the talents of so many talented people.  Lady Gaga is earnestly striving to distinguish her version of Harley Quinn, but gets little of interest to actually do.  Brendan Gleeson plays a guard who is Arthur's primary tormeter in Arkham, and Catherine Keener is his lawyer - both doing their best with pretty empty roles.  As for Joaquin Phoenix, who won an Oscar for playing Arthur Fleck - well, the singing and dancing is new, but the misguided romance and the mental unwinding isn't.  

I'm very happy that Phillips took such a big swing with "Joker: Folie à Deux," even if it didn't turn out the way that anyone wanted.  I think that he could have gone much harder on the spectacle and violence, and darker on the themes and relationships.  I'm glad that there was no attempt whatsoever to make this more related to the Batman universe, but at the same time Philips has also given up on the Scorsese pastiche, which leaves his movie stylistically adrift.  There are a few individual sequences that I enjoyed, and the use of old standards like "That's Entertainment!" and opening with a Sylvain Chomet  animated sequence are points in its favor, but "Joker: Folie à Deux" never seems to find its footing.  Even the ending feels less like a shocker than just putting the movie out of its misery.  

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