The Youtube Essay Recs, 2021

I've found myself becoming a fan of more and more Youtube essayists over the past year or so, and many of their videos have gotten longer and longer over time to the point where I'm watching what are essentially feature length documentaries and thinkpieces.  I thought it was high time I devoted a post to these, which may become a continuing series.    While most of these videos relate directly to media analysis and media criticism, others are more tangential.  The last few months in particular have made it clear to me that I am now one of the Olds, and falling way behind when it comes to the state of online media - which I don't feel the need to truly participate in, but I do feel it's necessary for me to keep up to date with, just so I can understand and discuss media in any kind of socially relevant way.

Here are the videos that I've found the most helpful in parsing just what the hell has been going on in the last year:

Folding Ideas: In Search of a Flat Earth - The rise of the QAnon conspiracy over the past few years has been one of the more frightening aspects of recent American history.  Dan Olson addresses the topic of conspiracy theories, very gently at first, conducting his own experiment to find the curvature of the Earth, before moving on to grapple with the minds of Flat Earthers.  And then the QAnon adherents.  And the right wing insurrectionists.  And it's absolutely terrifying. 

Sarah Z: Fandom's Biggest Controversy - Proshippers vs Antis - Oh boy.  The media fandom ecosystem Sarah Z discusses used to be my old stomping grounds in the early 2000s.  I got off this train ages ago, but even then I could see the trouble on the horizon as some of these more traditionally transgressive subcultures were on a collision course with the emerging moral absolutists as media fandom became more visible.  Sarah Z presents a nice primer on the latest terminology and the latest round of clashes, plus discussion of a shiny new (ish) generational divide.  Fun!    

Brows Held High: Starship Troopers - Fair warning that this is a three part series that totals well over four hours altogether.  Grappling with a piece of problematic media that still has so much to say is very familiar territory for me, but the level of scrutiny that Kyle Kallgren achieves is wild.  He discusses both the film and the book "Starship Troopers," the work of director Paul Verhoeven, Dutch culture, Dutch language, and Kallgren's own experiences living as an expat in the Netherlands for several years.  It's deeply personal, often uncomfortable, and tremendously rewarding when Kallgren finally starts tying all the disparate threads together.  

CJ the X: Bo Burnham vs. Jeff Bezos - So, here's someone else who fell down the same Bo Burnham rabbit hole that I did over the summer.  He uses Burnham's work and interviews to look at transhumanism, runamok capitalism, meme culture, and the soul-sucking performative nature of social media that has been making everybody's lives miserable.  CJ's combative, funny, and unflinching exploration of these topics is as entertaining as it is alarming.   And I love that he finds a light at the end of the tunnel and takes the trouble to ask and answer the big question: Are you happy?  

Dave Chapelle Only Tells Half the Truth - There were a couple of F.D. Signifier videos I could have put here, but after the blowup over Dave Chapelle's latest Netflix special, this is the one that felt the most important. What I like about this video in particular is that it keeps the focus on the black trans women who are being treated badly by nearly all parties involved in this blow-up. And the dressing down he delivers to Chapelle is so thorough and so devastating, I consider this essay the last word on the subject.

Tracing the Roots of Pop Culture Transphobia - Yes, it's Lindsay Ellis. Annnd, I don't feel bad about avoiding "Ace Ventura: Pet Detective" for the last three decades anymore.

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The "Demon Slayer" Movie is Baffling

"Demon Slayer: Infinity Train" is now the highest grossing Japanese film of all time.  It's also done well around the world, even topping the box office in the U.S. for a week in April.  I figured it was my duty as a movie nerd and former anime obsessive to see what all the fuss was about.  I'm not familiar with the popular "Demon Slayer" franchise, but I've seen plenty of anime and plenty from this genre in particular.  And frankly, this movie has me stumped.

"Demon Slayer" is a typical Shonen Jump franchise.  This means it's aimed at teenage boys, and built around a familiar formula of superpowered combatants, epic battles, and strictly delineated hierarchies that our heroes are meant to ascend as they get stronger and more experienced.  "Demon Slayer" began as a serialized manga, and is currently one season into what is sure to be a long-running anime adaptation.  "Infinity Train" takes place between the first two seasons, and feels like a short arc from the anime.  Aside from some CGI elements, the animation is roughly the quality I'd expect from a television show.  It's not remotely in the same class as the Ghibli films or Makoto Shinkai's films.  Overall, the film struck me as deeply, deeply mediocre.

Fans might complain that I'm not familiar with "Demon Slayer," so I'm not one to judge, but there's really not much to the story.  The premise involves an organization of demon slayers who are eternally at war with destructive demons.  A group of greenhorn fighters, including our young hero Tanjiro Kamado (Natsuki Hamae) and his demon-infected sister Nezuko (Akari Kito), are sent to hunt a dangerous demon that has been sighted on a train.  They're meant to assist a "Hashira," one of the most powerful Demon Slayers, named Rengoku (Satoshi Hino), whose powers are all about fire. About half the film is spent trying to rouse Kamado and his friends after the villain traps them in dreams that also serve as helpful flashbacks.  The other half is having the big showdown with the demons.  The story beats are laid out so that the chapter/episode breaks are clearly identifiable, so  I expect that this is going to be broken down to be broadcast as four episodes of the ongoing anime eventually.

Viewers who aren't familiar with manga or anime will probably have a tough time with this one, because it indulges in some of the most tiresome anime tropes - the "Dragonball Z" style screaming dialogue, the constant torrent of made-up terminology for fighting techniques and magical abilities, and so much time spent just posturing and comparing power levels.  And my god, the villain monologuing is so needlessly annoying.  The execution is pretty decent otherwise, and I like some of the character designs, but I have absolutely no idea what makes "Demon Slayer: Infinity Train" any more appealing than the many similar "Naruto" and "One Piece" movies, let alone the big guns like "Spirited Away."  "Demon Slayer" is a bloodier example of this kind of franchise than most, with some horror elements, but it's not especially dark.  From what I can tell, the most interesting character, Rengoku, really only plays a major part in this movie, and isn't prominent in the rest of the franchise.  

So how to account for the movie's runaway success?  Is this a "Pokemon: the First Movie" situation where a super popular property supercharged interest in a mediocre tie-in?  Did the pandemic removing all competition from western sources give the film extra legs?  Is the movie better than I'm giving it credit for?  Probably all three to some extent.  I haven't liked many of the popular anime series in a while, and I never had much success with the boys' action shows even when I was a really committed otaku.  Those curious newcomers who come into "Infinity Train" expecting something better than "Your Name" and the Ghibli movies are bound to be disappointed.  Still, the movie has made its many fans very happy, and I think it best to just let them have this.                 

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"The Suicide Squad" Takes Another Stab

It doesn't say anything good about the current state of commercial filmmaking that we have yet another comic book film that is really a second try at adapting a popular franchise, after the first one failed to impress.  Five years after David Ayer's "Suicide Squad" was a cinematic trainwreck, but made a lot of money, we have the James Gunn helmed "The Suicide Squad."  It is a considerably better movie all around, but thanks to COVID and streaming, it's on track to somehow make less money.  Frankly, it just doesn't seem right.

With this in mind, I can happily recommend "The Suicide Squad" for all your R-rated comic book punch-em-up needs.  Gunn happily embraces the most ridiculous conceits of the DC universe, giving us characters who shoot deadly polka dots at people, throw deadly boomerangs, or are half-sharks, or are humanoid weasels.  A few characters are brought over from the 2016 "Suicide Squad," including headliner Harley Quinn (Margot Robbie), evil administrator Amanda Waller (Viola Davis), and the upstanding Captain Rick Flagg (Joel Kinnaman).  Joining them on their latest mission to infiltrate and shut down an enemy weapons projects, are super assassin Bloodsport (Idris Elba), Ratcatcher 2 (Daniela Melchior) who can control rats, fanatical soldier Peacemaker (John Cena), and the aforementioned King Shark (Sylvester Stallone) and Polka Dot Man (David Dastmalchian).  

In addition to being better conceived, better written, better shot, better designed, and much better edited, "The Suicide Squad" is better than its predecessor because it actually understands the assignment.  This is not a gritty adult film in the trappings of a kiddy comic book.  This is fundamentally a kids' power fantasy with a rather heartwarming moral center that is told through a joyously profane and gory lens, full of sick humor and naughty subversions.  There's nothing thematically or aesthetically that really pings as grimly adult, the way something like "The Boys" does, and everyone is staunchly asexual throughout.  Lots and lots of characters get killed off in all sorts of goofy, splatterific ways, but Gunn does the work of getting us to care about a surprising number of them.  All the main players have little moments of character building that make the movie an eye-watering 132 minutes, but also results in making everyone truly memorable.  I never thought I'd empathize with a giant man-eating shark mutant, but there it is.

I also appreciate "The Suicide Squad" for being an unapologetic comic book movie that takes place in a full throated comic book universe.  There are some truly wild and wonderfully weird visuals here, from silly costumes to giant monsters to Harley having a fight scene where gushing blood is replaced by sprays of Sion Sono-esque animated pastel flowers.  While the base level reality is fairly bleak and washed out, in keeping with the Zack Snyder style, there are also wonderful blasts of color to contrast against this, especially in the various fight sequences.  A great little touch is the intertitles, which declare act breaks or new settings, being designed to pop up from the environment in eye catching ways.  A lot of the gags and jokes rely on carefully designed shots and composition.  The zip-pan to John Cena in tighty whiteys is a personal favorite.

You can tell that Gunn is a dyed-in-the-wool DC fanboy from the characters he chose to spotlight and the references he sneaks in.  Superman is the only superhero who gets a quick shout-out, while all kinds of minor baddies with obscure powers get roped into the fun.  I won't spoil all the cameos and callbacks that come up, but I will just say that "The Suicide Squad" gets extra points from me for putting one the most ostentatiously monstrous DC villains onscreen at last in all its Lovecraftian glory.  Also, the film includes what I think might be my favorite genre trope of recent years - the gaggle of lowly office workers who creep around the edges of the story in support roles, and eventually help save the day.        

I really hope James Gunn and company find some way to score a win out of this, because I want more DC films that are willing to be this nutty and this much fun.  I also want to see these characters again, but Harley aside, sadly that doesn't look likely.

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"Stillwater" Raises the Right Questions

Amanda Knox is furious about "Stillwater," and I don't blame her.  Writer/director Tom McCarthy clearly used her story as a jumping off point for "Stillwater," which heavily involves an American student incarcerated in a European prison for the crime of murdering a fellow student.  Some of the details shared between the two stories are a little too close for comfort.  However, "Stillwater" notably is not about the Amanda Knox stand-in, Allison Baker (Abigail Breslin).  It's about her father, Bill (Matt Damon), a troubled blue collar worker from Stillwater, Oklahoma, who travels to Marseilles, France to try and do right by his daughter after a lifetime of bad choices and bad behavior.  It's also, more broadly, about the uneasy relationship that exists between America and the rest of the world in the aftermath of the Trump presidency.

McCarthy's been awfully hit-or-miss over the past few years, and "Stillwater" is no different.  The first two thirds of the film, where Bill tries to investigate Allison's claims of innocence, and manages to build a pleasant little life for himself with single mother Virginie (Camille Cottin) and her young daughter Maya (Lilou Siauvaud), are very low key and satisfying.  McCarthy does a great job of dramatizing the culture clash experienced by Bill, the resentments felt by many of the people he meets, and how characters are able to overcome this - to an extent.  The final third, however, veers into crime thriller territory and pushes the bounds of plausibility a little too far for my tastes.  However, the ending is a very good one, leaving the viewer with a lot of uncomfortable questions to chew over.    

I like the way that the narrative is a total inversion of the usual "stranger in a strange land" stories about American exceptionalism and genre stories featuring self-righteous investigators who stubbornly prevail against all odds.  Bill's efforts to clear his daughter's name have a serious cost, both for himself personally and for those close to him.  The film does not let him get away with avoiding the implications of his privilege or the consequences of playing by his own rules.  The fact that the film treats his stubborn faith in his own judgment as a defect instead of a strength is very interesting.  Virginie is also a character with a lot to unpack, an artsy liberal who never hesitates to call out Bill for his failings, but also has some of her own biases and faults on display.  

Matt Damon said some unfortunate things in the process of trying to promote this film.  They're inevitably going to overshadow his work here, which is very good, and a little out of the bounds of his usual screen persona.  In "Stillwater," he's playing a little older and a little sadder as a midwestern everyman, with scarcely any of his movie star charisma in the mix.  He frequently looks lost and subdued as he deals with the French legal system, and has to depend on the kindness and patience of anyone who speaks English.  It's almost a shock to see him in such a different context, when you remember that the first "Bourne Identity" film started off the coast of Marseilles.  On the other hand, this is the first time in a long while that I've felt he's credibly disappeared into any character. 

McCarthy's filmmaking is firmly grounded in realism throughout, slow-paced but always absorbing.  His films have always been at their best in more intimate settings, and "Stillwater" offers plenty of these - Virginie's apartment, a rundown hotel, and the bleak prison visiting room where Bill meets with Allison.  "Stillwater" feels closest to "The Visitor," which also features a man trying to navigate a labyrinthine bureaucracy, and who connects to some unlikely new friends.  However, "Stillwater" isn't nearly as simple and straightforward in its morality, and sometimes even comes across as a repudiation of the optimistic attitudes of the previous film.    

"Stillwater" has so much baggage that I don't know if I can recommend the film outright.  It certainly has some considerable flaws, and some approaches to the material that make me uncomfortable.  On the other hand, it is so heartening to see Tom McCarthy tackling this subject matter head-on, and making a difficult film that is unusually timely and unsettling.  It offers a different POV, one that I find valuable and worth consideration, especially as it urges its viewers to do some self-examination and soul searching.  

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State of the Blog (and the Blogger), 2021

This one is going to be indulgent, but I have a lot of thoughts that I need to get down that I think will be helpful going forward. 

First, the post count has been creeping up because I've had more time to write, and I'll probably hit 180 posts this year.  However, going forward I'm not sure this is going to be sustainable.    

I've had to abandon many of my usual features because of the continuing pandemic.  I didn't have a "Most Anticipated" list in March, a "Summer Box Office" prediction post in May, and I don't expect there will be any kind of summer wrap-up feature either.   Pretty much all of my forward-looking posts have been in limbo because the release schedules have been so tenuous.  I might do some kind of broader box office post for the entire year, but not for a while. 

The plans I had for television and web series blogging are mostly working out, except that the planned post for trailers hasn't panned out.  While the television and web trailers themselves are pretty prolific and getting more high profile, they tend to be released way too close to the time of the release of what they're promoting for me to do much real speculation.  It doesn't help that Comic-Con, which is usually a goldmine for these promos, has been a wasteland in COVID times.

Speaking of television, as content continues to atomize over the myriad streaming and web services, my coverage of traditional network television has diminished to practically nil.  The big story out of the upfronts this year was that NBC, former home of "Must See TV," had no half-hour sitcoms on the fall schedule at all.  I watch late night online.  I watch the news online.  I've given up watching almost all live events because I find the format so irksome now.  The Olympics came and went, and I didn't bother with anything except Youtube clips.  I'm literally two award shows away from full cord cutting.    

My yearly "Top Ten" posts for classic cinema will be ending for now with 1950, the last year where I've watched enough films for the feature.  Though I'm currently watching 30s and 40s films, it's much slower going.  However, as a replacement, I'll be doing a series on Best Picture winners and nominees, though I'm not sure what form this will take.  I finally finished watching all the Best Picture winners last year, and I'm making good progress with the remaining nominees I haven't seen - though I'll never see all of them because at least one of the early silents is now considered a lost film.

"Great Directors" is going strong.  I think I got a little carried away with the week of posts in August, where I was literally posting every day.  I cleared out a lot of my backlog, but I still have an awful lot of directors left.  Sergio Leone is up next, because I've finally watched "Duck, You Sucker!"  I really want to do a documentarian next year, but I'm having trouble getting my hands on some directors' films - except for Frederick Wiseman, because all of his films are on Kanopy.  Unfortunately, Wiseman doesn't seem to want to make films under three hours anymore.  "At Berkeley" nearly did me in.  Stay tuned.   

Elsewhere on the movie front, I can feel my tastes changing, when it comes to newer films.  I'm a lot less inclined to watch mediocre sci-fi, action, and animated films than I used to be, and more inclined toward documentaries and dramas.  Maybe it's just the mood I've been in lately.  Maybe it's because last year's award season felt so sparse, and I'm dying to see a lot of these delayed films.  I'm honestly looking forward to things like "Titane" more than the new "Matrix" film, and it's weird.

Finally, I want to acknowledge that I've hit an interesting milestone, which is that for the first time in forever, there's really no major film in the works that I have serious hype for.  "Dune" was the last one.  There are plenty of projects that I'm looking forward to, but not the way I used to.  That's probably not a bad thing.

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My Favorite Michael Curtiz Film

If you're at all a fan of early Hollywood films, you've almost certainly seen something that Michael Curtiz directed.  He's one of the most prolific directors of this era, and he did everything - horror, romance, action, comedies, musicals and more.  He'd racked up credits on over a hundred films in Europe before he got to Hollywood, where he proceeded to work for the next three and a half decades on a slew of familiar classics.  "Casablanca" is his most iconic film, and "Yankee Doodle Dandy" is one of my favorite musicals, but I feel he had the most influence with his action adventure films, especially the ones that he made with Errol Flynn and Olivia De Havilland.  They both became stars thanks to Curtiz's "Captain Blood," but the height of their popular success was undoubtedly "The Adventures of Robin Hood."

I rewatched "The Adventures of Robin Hood" specifically for this post, after many, many years, and was surprised at how gorgeous the film looks.  It's all sumptuous pageantry and swashbuckling spectacle, rendered in lush Technicolor, and an absolute pleasure to look at.  It was Warner Brothers' most expensive production at the time, and they spared no expense .  There's no attempt whatsoever to make the costumes look historically accurate.  Instead, Robin has metallic studs sewn into his clothing to add a little extra glitz, and the colors are all incredibly bright and saturated to show off the capabilities of the new color film stock.  Maid Marian's outfits are art deco masterpieces, sometimes covered in patterns and details that need a large screen to fully appreciate.  The storybook visuals are very reminiscent of "The Wizard of Oz," which was released a year later.

I don't believe "The Adventures of Robin Hood" was intended to be a children's film at the time of its' release, but it comes off as one now.   The story is never more complicated than simple good versus evil, courage over cowardice, and love conquering all.  There's an innocence to the characters and a straightforwardness to their morality that feels strange to me after decades of revisionist and modernized takes on the Robin Hood legend, many of them built on the tropes laid out in this film.  Even the animated Disney version from 1978 borrows an awful lot from Curtiz.  When many people picture the cinematic Robin Hood, this is still the version that remains the most obvious point of reference.  Robin is the intrepid young Erroll Flynn, full of fun and charm and energy.  Marion is the brave, lovely Olivia DeHavilland, who eventually takes matters into her own hands.  The scheming, dastardly villains are Claude Rains and Basil Rathbone, of course. 

The action sequences are still the main event - the archery tournament, the daring escape from the gallows, and the final showdown where Flynn and Rathbone have their thrilling sword duel.  The behind-the-scenes drama of the film's creation offers many contradictory stories, but one of the common explanations for Curtiz replacing the film's original director is that the producer wanted someone who could add more action and thrills.  Similarly, Flynn was a natural choice for Robin Hood after "Captain Blood," and was game to do many of his own stunts.  Much has been written and recounted about the efforts it took to get many of those arrow tricks and sword fighting scenes to look right, and it was worth the effort.  There's still a heady thrill to seeing some of those stunts being performed to this day.   

Curtiz was so versatile and so productive in his time in Hollywood, he's one of those directors, like Howard Hawks, who was often seen as being an extension of the studios.  There's been some debate over whether he really had his own style as a director, and whether he should be treated as an auteur.  However, there's no doubt that he was incredibly technically proficient, an excellent manager, and so deft at orchestrating all the talent involved in these huge productions that he was considered Warners' top director through most of the '40s.  He could make any kind of picture, and was instrumental in the creation of some of the most iconic ones ever made.  A noted workaholic, he kept making movies into his 70s, the last released in 1961.  

Auteur or not, he was a great director.  

What I've Seen - Michael Curtiz

Mystery of the Wax Museum (1933)

Captain Blood (1935)

Anthony Adverse (1936)

The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938)

Angels With Dirty Faces (1938)

Four Daughters (1938)

Dodge City (1939)

The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex (1939)

The Sea Hawk (1940)

Yankee Doodle Dandy (1942)

Casablanca (1942)

This is the Army (1943)

Mildred Pierce (1945)

Life With Father (1947)

The Breaking Point (1950)

White Christmas (1954)

We're No Angels (1955)

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Podcasts Ahoy! The 2021 Edition

Time to go back through my playlist and take stock of the entertainment-related podcasts that I've been listening to.  Below are a couple of new and new-to-me offerings that I've started following this year.

This Had Oscar Buzz - This is one that kept getting referenced by the other podcasts I was listening to, and I'm glad I checked it out.  The subject matter is narrow, but I feel like this podcast is targeted right at me.  I'm one of those people who loves following the Oscar race every year, and always winds up watching a bunch of mediocre films that may start out with a lot of buzz, but ultimately go nowhere.  Hosts Joe Reid and Chris Feil dissect what went wrong, the careers of the primary creators involved, and whether the unfortunate film in question deserves to be forgotten or not.  They're also very good at dissecting the drama going on during various campaigns that I wasn't aware existed. I've been having a ball being reminded of the existence of so many movies that have fallen by the wayside - "Pay it Forward," "Battle of the Sexes," "When a Man Loves a Woman" - many of them made by very talented people.  It's a nice break from so many shows that only focus on the best of the best.      

Still Watching - So, this is the closest thing I've found so far to a regular television discussion podcast.  Joanna Robinson, Richard Lawson, and Anthony Breznican host this Vanity Fair produced series, which serves as an unofficial after-show for currently airing programs like "WandaVision," "Mare of Easttown," and really whatever buzzy piece of expensive, serialized entertainment is getting a lot of attention at the moment.  Lately these have mostly been HBO or Disney Plus shows, but they've covered things like "American Crime Story" and "The Crown" in the past.  There's not much critical discussion for obvious reasons, but "Still Watching" offers a ton of behind-the-scenes information and conjecture about future developments for fans.  Because there's so much theorizing and dissection of minutiae, I've been saving episodes for after a series or season has finished, to avoid stumbling over spoilers.  Vanity Fair's clout means that they can land big guests with regularity - writers, directors, stars, and more.  My favorite episode so far was when Alan Sepinwall dropped by to discuss the ending of "Loki."  Er, more on Sepinwall in a minute.

Mousterpiece Cinema - This one ended a few years ago, racking up 435 episodes covering Disney movies - not just the movies that we commonly think of as Disney movies, but everything that the studio had a hand in over the years - PIXAR movies, Marvel movies, the Touchstone films, the Hollywood Pictures films, and even 20th Century Fox films after the acquisition.  It's "Mary Poppins" one week, and Jonathan Demme's "Beloved" the next. Hosts Josh Spiegel and Scott Renshaw are entertainment writers who clearly have long histories with Disney, as most of us have, and there's simply no end to the titles that they cover.  I'll be digging my way through their archives for a long time to come.

Conan O'Brien Needs a Friend - Yeah, everyone's already listening to this one, but I was late to the party.  I was under the misconception that the podcast was an extension of Conan's talk show.  Instead, the interviews are much more in-depth, more personal, and the guests so far have been fantastic.  Even if I'm not much of a fan of a particular interviewee, the discussions are always fascinating because these are so often people that Conan has some history with.  The Adam Sandler episode is a  particular favorite because it offers such a lovely glimpse into both his and O'Brien's lives when they're not performing.  I still don't enjoy Adam Sandler, but now I respect him quite a bit more.    

Finally, I want to add a brief rant about the loss of the "Firewall and Iceberg" podcast, which has totally disappeared from the internet.  I went looking for it after finishing my "Parks & Recreation" binge, only to find all the files had been purged when Hitflix went south.  All the links to the show are still there - episode descriptions, timestamps and all - but alas, no actual audio files.  

Now I'm resisting the urge to go and back up ten years of the /Filmcast since it's recently become The Filmcast.  I'm going to turn into one of those data hoarders, aren't I?

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