by ·Comments Off on I Saw the TV Glow (2024, Jane Schoenbrun)

Much larger in scope than Jane’s previous movie – even though it’s still just two lead characters who spend their nights looking at screens. Two awkward students bond over a TV show named after a Cocteau Twins album, a Buffy/X-Files-ish thing with deep lore. They try watching it together but they’re both afraid of their stepdads and settle for trading VHS tapes. They attend Void High School “VHS,” home of the Vultures, and lead dude Owen (Justice Smith of that recent Dungeons & Dragons movie) starts talking to us, so the movie’s never going for naturalism.

The stars of the show-in-the-show are Helena “Madeline” Howard and Snail Mail. Also, a suspicious mention of Michael Stipe right before a TV episode about where the ice cream man goes in wintertime.

The older girl with a later bedtime is Maddie (Brigette Lundy-Paine, a daughter in Bill & Ted 3), and she twice offers to take him away from it all. She runs away from home but he freaks out and doesn’t join her, then his mom dies and the TV show is canceled. Eight years later Maddie reappears and says she’s been living inside the show after having herself buried alive in Phoenix (haha), and says they need to (re)bury themselves now to save their TV avatars, but he pushes her down and runs. Twenty years later, he’s alone, has made no career progress, and has a Videodrome TV inside his body.

Good, mysterious movie, evoking thoughts on nostalgia and (super)fandom and friendship and risks not taken, even though the creator has said that it’s just about being trans.

Ice Cream Man in early season of The Pink Opaque, played by Albert Birney:

Nightbreed guy in the unreleased post-final season:

Not the biggest World’s Fair fan, I held off on watching this until I saw that pd187 approved of it.

Good Sam Adams article here despite the “ending explained” hook.

by ·Comments Off on TV/Q2/2024

All of this quarter’s television was watched on the exercise bike (:muscle:)
Still purportedly watching The Curse (not on bike) and I’ve started Lodge 49 s2 and Painting With John s3.

I’m a Virgo season 1 (2023)

Giant boy Jharrel Jerome (young André Holland in the middle section of Moonlight) is awkward because he has never socialized or even left the house, but after his first public appearance everyone is interested in him: an agent, a fashion company, a burger girl, a cult, a superhero, the teens. Burger girl becomes his girlfriend, has super speed powers. His friend with a car’s superpower is having a car. Their buddy Scat dies for a stupid reason, getting injured on his bike then turned away from the hospital for not having insurance, and this enflames the community, led by activist Jones. Meanwhile Cootie’s hero (“The Hero”) Walt Goggins is out busting protesters during evictions. Apparently lo-fi photography pulls out crazy technique when desired. Music by Tune-Yards. Showstopping didactic anti-capitalist rants and general anti-authoritarian vibe mix with The Hero’s identity crisis and random superhero stuff (Cootie’s parents have prepped a supervillain lair, some of the neighbors wake up fun-sized). Created by Boots Riley, who shared a list of further viewing/reading with Vulture:

One that is very inspiring is Matewan by John Sayles. There’s a book called Class Struggle Unionism by Joe Burns that just came out. A History of America in Ten Strikes by Erik Loomis. There’s a movie called Seeing Red, it’s a 1983 film by Jim Klein and Julia Reichert.

–
The Twilight Zone, Vol. 3 (1959)

106. Escape Clause

A basic deal-with-the-devil scenario, not even as interesting a concept as the pitchman from episode 2, but our lead idiot is good (David Wayne, the killer in Losey’s M). A hypochondriac who takes an offer from the devil (Thomas Gomez of Force of Evil, Key Largo) to be immortal, all he can think to do with his new vitality is throw himself in front of trains for kicks (and settlement money from the city). After only a week of this, the kicks aren’t enough, and when his wife (Virginia Christine of The Killers) falls off their apartment building trying to stop him from jumping, he takes responsibility so he can defeat the electric chair. But his lawyer gets him life in the pen, haha. I guess if he’d been good at thinking through consequences he wouldn’t have dealt with the devil in the first place, but Americans couldn’t be expected to know how to live immortally before Highlander came out.

–
107. The Lonely

Jack Warden (best known for the Hubleys’ Dig) is losing his marbles alone on an asteroid, serving a prison sentence in solitary. Back home there’s political pressure to pardon Jack, who of course claims innocence, and/or abolish the asteroid prisons, possibly as much for its cruel-and-unusual nature as the difficulty of keeping the prisoners fed via rocketship deliveries. Space-warden John Dehner (killed by Gary Cooper the previous year in Man of the West) drops off a gift for Jack: an AI woman named Alicia (Jean Marsh, queen of Willow). It’s not implied that her womanness is a factor here, Jack just wants somebody to play chess with. He bonds with Alicia, then the captain brings a pardon for Jack on his next visit, and shoots Alicia in the face since she’ll be too heavy for the ship. New director Minnesotan Jack Smight would later make the post-apocalyptic Paul Winfield movie Damnation Alley.

–
108. Time Enough at Last

Two man-alone-in-the-world episodes in a row? The one where banker Burgess “The Penguin” Meredith just wants some time to read but his horrid wife and boring boss (Vaughn Taylor, also the boss in Psycho) won’t let him. Time enough (and food enough, ammo enough) at last when he’s the sole survivor of a nuclear blast, but his glasses break on day two. Some nice-looking wreckage in the final stretch. Director John Brahm had made films in the 1940s, including a remake of The Lodger.

–
109. Perchance to Dream

Nearly an it-was-all-a-dream episode. The title clues us in, and from a childhood watching Nightmare on Elm Street sequels I’m attuned to characters “just closing their eyes for a few seconds.” This one’s more of a narrated dream-flashback inside of a dream, as a nervous imaginative man with a heart condition explains to a psychiatrist that his subconscious has mixed up his sex/death drives and now a hot cat lady is trying to kill him with kicks (the Ann-Margret Kitten With a Whip kicks, not the Michelle Yeoh Executioners kicks). If he falls asleep he’ll fall off a rollercoaster / jump out the window, which he does. From the psych’s POV a guy he’s never seen before came into the office, lied down and promptly stopped living. Starting to think Serling created the show just so he could see every working actor play desperation in closeup. But this is the first one he didn’t write – Charles Beaumont (The Intruder) would become a regular on the series. Director Robert Florey had a long career, from the great silent short Life and Death of 9413 to the Marx Brothers, then 1930s and 40s crime movies. The psych later played Dirty Harry’s boss, lead dreamer Richard Conte was a noir regular.

–
110. Judgment Night

Man onboard a British ship in dangerous waters during WWII has got an extreme combination of amnesia and deja vu. Carl (Nehemiah Persoff, father Mousekewitz in An American Tail) seems to have specific knowledge about German submarines stalking the ship, and when he goes down with the ship it’s revealed that Carl was that sub’s commander, and he’s in hell, nightly reliving the fate of his victims. A panic-stricken half-hour with a comforting message (the nazis that killed our family members are experiencing endless torment in the afterlife). His fellow doomed Brits include Patrick Macnee (originator of the Ralph Fiennes role in The Avengers, later in The Howling), Disney voice actor (and Sound of Music nazi) Ben Wright, and Cat o’ Nine Tails star James Franciscus.

–
111. And When the Sky Was Opened

Two astronauts in recovery after a flight crash-landed, but Rod Taylor (The Birds) is in a complete panic because he claims there were three astronauts and that their friend Charles Aidman (narrator of the 1980s ‘Zone reboot) vanished and nobody remembers him ever existing except himself. We see them together in flashback then Aidman feels strange and says maybe we weren’t supposed to come back, and disappears from a phone booth, his beer magically gone with him and the headlines rewritten. Taylor responds the way people do in most Twilight Zones (and in all British horror), by blubbering and yelling and repeating himself. When he vanishes too, the remaining hospital-bound astronaut Jim Hutton (of Major Dundee, Timothy’s dad) knows he’s next. Director Douglas Heyes made Kitten With a Whip, and I didn’t know about him when I referenced that movie two episodes ago.

Taylor (right) with spaced-out Aidman:

–
112. What You Need

There are plenty of salesmen in the Zone. This would seem to be an inspiration for King’s Needful Things, but our aged salesman (Ernest Truex of Christmas in July) isn’t malevolent, hands out humble objects that he predicts will help people in the future: a bus ticket for Read Morgan (a former baseballer playing a former baseballer) to get to his next gig, something for a lonely pretty girl (Arlene Martel, Spock’s fiancee) that gives her an excuse to meet a hunky (drunky) former baseballer. The salesman (whose character shares a name with the inventor of the Chia Pet) doesn’t want to deal with loser shithead Steve Cochran (White Heat) but the guy smells money and pesters then threatens the old man until he gets what he needs (a lifesaving tool, a bunch of money, an early grave). Based on a short story from the writers of The Twonky. Director Alvin Ganzer assisted on The Great McGinty and other 1940’s flicks then moved permanently to television.

–
113. The Four of Us are Dying

A guy who the voiceover tells us is a real lowlife loser has the supernatural ability to face-shift and be other people. Apparently he’s pretty good at doing voices and knowing personal details about the people he imitates too, fooling friends and enemies. His default identity is Archie Hammer (Harry Townes), then he picks up the hot girlfriend (Corman/MST3K regular Beverly Garland) of late musician Ross Martin, then becomes late gangster Phillip Pine (loud and annoying in Murder by Contract) and runs off with a pocket full of dirty money, then to escape the gangsters he gets the face of Don Gordon off a boxing poster. Boxer Don (Bullitt, The Mack, gold miner in The Last Movie) was apparently such a lowlife that his dad shoots him (them) dead. A nice bluesy New York episode, features some fancy trick photography in the identity shifts, and some lazy edits when they didn’t need to be fancy. From George Johnson, story writer of Logan’s Run and Ocean’s Eleven.

Archie “Armie” Hammer:

by ·Comments Off on TV/Q1/2024

Still haven’t finished I’m a Virgo, not too far into The Curse, and one episode of Mindhunter was plenty. But I did get into some shows.

–
How To With John Wilson season 3 (2023)

1. John tricks a self cleaning toilet stall into running while he’s inside it, briefly decides to prep for nuclear emergency, gets kicked out of more places than usual, rides a party bus, spontaneously goes to burning man for a week but isn’t allowed to air any footage. A very poopy episode.

2. He cleans his ears and notices new sounds, interviews people who live in unusually loud apartments or who make an awful lot of noise, learns about a pollution detox place, interviews electrosensitive people – and notices that the common element everywhere is people arguing with their neighbors.

3. He asks a compulsive masturbator how to stay motivated, gets a cat photographer to take “before” photos of his body, but the photog’s cameras get stolen so he asks a mystery author to help find the thief by reviewing John’s footage… interviews the personal trainer of one of the 9/11 hijackers, films his own rejection from an awards season HBO afterparty, wonders what he’s doing in television, sadly tries to connect with old college life, then stumbles into the world of competitive pumpkin growing.

4. He goes to a rained-out Mets game, goes home with a superfan… has to clean up to host a sports party but his vacuum is broken, so goes to a vacuum convention and finds some moving personal stories there.

5. He digs up scandal in the birdwatching community – this leads inevitably to UFO abduction stories, lie detector test, wondering whether things from previous episodes were real. Everyone thinks his show is fake, which it sometimes is, so he tries making a different kind of movie, a doc on the titanic sinking. “There was fake news right from the beginning” says a guest expert. “What does Anne Frank have to do with this?” I saw the car explosion coming, I’ve seen movies before.

6. He asks a psychic where his missing package went and gets the death card. Looks into pizza delivery and medical/organ shipping, gets piano-organ shipping instead, so he drives to Arizona with an organ shipping truck, meets a guy who freezes dead customers, and goes to a party full of people with sci-fi-ass beliefs (The Matrix comes up more than once). Meets an employee who watched The Bachelor ten hours a day and made a complex excel sheet. RIP this show, it was very good.

From Alissa Wilkinson’s Vox interview:

Wilson can’t physically be everywhere, of course. The show’s team includes a second unit, who get what Wilson describes as a “scavenger hunt” list of types of shots to find that might be included in episodes. It sort of wrecks their brains, Wilson said: “Even after we’ve wrapped the season, they’ll continue to send me images of things that were on the scavenger hunt list, like houses that look like faces or something like that. Until they get a new list of things to shoot, they can’t turn off the part of their brain that’s trying to locate this stuff in their environment.”

Wilson interviewed in Filmmaker:

I feel like knowing that this was going to be the last season, I was able to unlock a few different things that I was afraid to put in previously. It allowed us to be more ambitious narratively and what we reveal about the production in terms of the spectacle of the whole thing. Also, what we reveal about how the show has impacted my life, which was something that I wanted to do … I did want the show to potentially have some kind of real-world impact, even though it was done through goofy, satirical means sometimes.

–
Archer season 9: Danger Island (2018)

Archer’s a one-eyed pilot who keeps crashing or getting shot down, his mother a business owner – everybody reimagined on a post-WWII island full of snakes and quicksand and cannibals, all after some treasure/plutonium. Kreiger gets to play a parrot, leaving the nazi role free for Cyril, so everyone can try on some new accents, and David Cross is an anthropologist studying the cannibals.

–
The Twilight Zone, Vol. 2 (1959)

Continued from late 2023… the workout routine isn’t very routine yet…

104. The Sixteen-Millimeter Shrine

Sunset Blvd was a decade earlier, and Rod has clearly watched it, but he takes the story of a washed-up movie star obsessively reliving her glory days in a different direction. For a story about classic Hollywood, you get a classic Hollywood director: Mitchell Leisen, also past his glory days, who’d recently wrapped up his film career (whether he knew it or not) with some Jane Powell fluff. The great Ida Lupino qualifies for the part – she’d most recently been tenth-billed in Lang’s While the City Sleeps. For once there’s no hint of anything supernatural or even unrealistic until the twist finale. Ida sits alone every day in her screening room watching her roles from 20 years ago with the handsome young Jerry. Her agent/friend Martin Balsam (jury foreman of the 12 Angry Men) tries to get her to live somewhat in the present-day. He finds her a minor film role but she gets into an insult match with studio head Ted de Corsia (villain of The Naked City), and the agent arranges a visit from her former leading man but she’s upset to find he’s now a middle-aged supermarket mogul (Jerome Cowan, who appeared in High Sierra with Lupino). Finally she leaves reality behind and disappears into her eternal-youth film screen.

–
105. Walking Distance

Gig Young (Katharine Hepburn’s boss/bf in Desk Set) is an NYC hotshot worn down by the grind, come to visit the small town where he grew up, but he finds it’s in the same state he left it 20+ years ago – exactly the same state, complete with his eleven-year-old self. As he starts to figure things out he confronts his parents and neighbors, freaking everyone out. Cool canted angles as he frightens his young self off a merry-go-round, giving both of them a leg injury. Finally he has a surprisingly level-headed convo with dad (Frank Overton, a general in Fail Safe), who says maybe look for some joy in your own time and place and stop haunting us. Appropriately, director Robert Stevens returns from the first episode, which was also about a guy flailing around an out-of-time small town. Little Ronny Howard plays a local kid, and they shot on the Meet Me In St. Louis street.

–
The Kingdom season 3: Exodus (2022)

Old woman Karen (star of The Idiots two decades prior) watches The Kingdom on DVD, says “that’s not an ending” then sleepwalks with Hellraiser eyes into a waiting taxi to the hospital, where reception tells her the show is fictional and calls Trier an idiot. The story is that the hospital is real, and a combination of its personnel and some actors starred in the series – so we swing between pretend-documentary (Kingdom-show tourists walking the hallways) and straight sequel. I’m not sure it all comes together in the end, but also can’t complain about getting five new episodes.

The hospital’s soul is in trouble again, leading up to Christmas, threatened by murderer Krogshoj (who they’ve allowed to stay and run an opium den for emeritus staff), and giant baby Udo Kier (now in a bleaching pond ghost-realm), and the evil antimatter doppelgangers of Karen and her spiritual son Balder (also a hospital porter in De Palma’s Domino), and of course the selfish and useless Helmer Jr (the actor just played Dag Hammarskjöld in a biopic), and the devil himself: Willem Dafoe. It’s fun how the show manages to pile further abuse on ol’ Helmer even though he’s long dead. Halfmer’s quirky department co-head is Ponto (Lars “brother of Mads” Mikkelsen), his fellow Swede who alternately helps and sues him is Anna (Tuva Nuvotny, died first in Annihilation) and we’ve got some new admin staff and a computer hacker. Still around from previous seasons is Udo’s mother Judith, Mogge Moesgaard in a propeller hat, and Helmer’s gal Rigmor, who maybe dies in a building-climbing wheelchair incident.

The owls are exactly what they seem:

Adam Nayman in New Yorker:

Karen’s condition is played simultaneously for laughs and for a kind of implicit empathy. As black as the show’s hell-is-other-people humor can be, it’s rooted in a tender sense of human frailty. It is not particularly scary in a horror-movie sense, instead accessing a more ephemeral, existential sort of terror that, in von Trier’s hands, is indivisible from comedy … At once confrontationally repulsive and mesmerizingly abstract, [The House That Jack Built] was easy to interpret as a self-portrait of sorts, the story of a loner trying to reconcile his aesthetic impulses with his depressive misanthropy. It featured clips from von Trier’s own filmography, giving the proceedings a valedictory air. The same could be said for The Kingdom Exodus, with its endearing, old-school echoes of its predecessor. But, like The House That Jack Built, the series is ultimately too thorny to function as a victory lap. In 2017, Björk accused von Trier of sexual harassment on the set of Dancer in the Dark; he claimed that he’d only hugged her. In the new series, he coyly includes a running subplot about Halfmer’s alleged (and utterly hapless) impropriety toward a female colleague — a spoof of P.C. culture from the experienced but untrustworthy vantage of somebody who’s spent decades working and living on the edge of cancellation.

Michael Sicinski in Cinema Scope:

[Overgrown Baby Udo Kier] becomes one of The Kingdom‘s primary plot strands, and it tends to signify von Trier’s loss of interest in real-world matters like the abuses of science and industry on the Danish people. Instead, Kier’s malformed sacrificial lamb permits The Kingdom to double down on its most obtuse, lunkheaded ideas … if The Kingdom gradually reveals itself to be a case of diminishing returns, that’s because the series initially asks to be taken somewhat seriously as an artistic enterprise, but winds up abandoning any pretense of commentary or real-world purchase in favor of a cosmic shaggy-dog story that insists on pointing out how self-aware it is of its overall lack of substance.

by ·Comments Off on Hotel Room (1993, David Lynch)

Created with some usual collaborators, and some unusual (James Signorelli, director of the second episode, also made Elvira, Mistress of the Dark). Scenes set in the same hotel room across eras, an excuse to rifle through the rolodex of interesting actors.

1969: Harry Dean Stanton and his girl Darlene (Dirty Rotten Scoundrels) check in, are visited unexpectedly by beardy Lou (Dune). Some kinda twisted psychological game ensues, I think Harry gets conned by Lou, then arrested for the murder of his wife (not Darlene, she’s ok). Written by Barry “Lost Highway” Gifford, but the only thing usually marking this as Lynchian is the Badalamenti music.

1992: Deborah Unger (The Game) has her girls over (Mariska Hargitay of Lake Placid, Chelsea Field of Dust Devil), is gonna confront her man and ask for a commitment. Griffin Dunne arrives but instead of committing, he dumps her, and Unger bonks him pretty hard on the head. Written by Jay “Bright Lights Big City” McInerney.

1936: More spectral than the others, Oklahoma couple Crispin Glover and Alicia Witt (Dune, Cecil B. Demented), conversing very slowly in a blackout. “I saw you on the other side… but it wasn’t you.” They’re in the city so she can see a doctor. She can sorta remember that they had a child who died Don’t Look Now-style, but she remembers a neighbor getting run over really clearly, and Glover follows with a story of a navy buddy who died. After a phone call, the room and the wife become enlightened.

by ·Comments Off on TV/Q3/Q4/2023

Command Z (2023, Steven Soderbergh)

A grungy little show that feels unsettlingly like an advertisement, with substandard writing by a couple of podcasters. Heart’s in the right place I suppose, with a vidscreen Michael Cera ordering some shabby quantum-leapers to change history by talking evil billionaires out of destroying the planet. Among the culprits for killing the world are businessman Liev Schreiber, the Christian church, weak-willed dem congresspeople, a Ready Player One-style VR game, and Michael Cera (played in the present by Kevin Pollack, haha). Our saviours: standup comic Chloe Radcliffe, musical theater producer JJ Maley, and Roy Wood Jr.

–
The Underground Railroad (2021, Barry Jenkins)

This took me two years to finish watching, after opening unpromisingly (sound design all rumbling portent, slow-mo slavery-is-bad violence), setting up lead characters Cora (escaping from horrible conditions) and bounty hunter Blackhat Ridgeway with his dapper little companion Homer.

Cora rides the literally subterranean train line to enlightened South Carolina, where she works in a museum of slavery and fellow escapee Caesar works in an explosion factory, but the town’s Negro Betterment Society turns out to be sinister medical experimenters. In hostile North Carolina she finds a supposedly sympathetic family who had no plan beyond letting her live in their attic forever. Blackhat captures Cora here, and we pause to explore his background and family situation… a whole episode of a white guy talking about manifest destiny and the American imperative, oh no. Cora escapes, is joined by Fanny from the attic, finds cute William Jackson Harper at a vineyard town. We know he’s going to die – everyone in this show dies – but while the town is debating Cora’s fate, speechifying in church, putting America on trial, a white posse barges in to massacre them. Cora takes Blackhat to the railroad, finally kills him in an endless scene. More flashbacks, then Cora and Fanny head west.

The music is usually bad, dialogue often shaky, streaming compression fucks up the inky blackness of the train tunnels. Some next-level photography, but if you are a modern master at capturing light on prores video, why make a grueling 10 hour slavery drama with actors doing big corny accents?

Head writer Jihan Crowther did Man in the High Castle, others worked on Moon and The Leftovers. Cora and her mom Mabel costarred in The Woman King… Blackhat Joel Edgerton is the Master Gardener guy… The kid Chase Dillon did a Haunted Mansion remake. Fellow escapee Caesar was Mid-Sized Sedan in Old. Attic homeowners are Charlie Manson (Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, Mindhunter) and Lily Rabe (American Horror Story). Slaver Foghorn Terence is Benjamin Walker, title star of Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter. Blackhat’s dad Peter Mullan played the Top of the Lake drug lord, and Will Poulter of Midsommar played a photographer.

Cora and Chidi:

Caesar and Poulter:

MVP Chase Dillon as the dapper companion:

–
Yellowjackets season 1 (2021)

Exasperating to watch this for ten hours and somehow they never get around to the dark-secret culty stuff from the plane crash until the final few minutes, setting up a second season that I don’t have the energy to watch despite now liking the lead actors more than ever. It’s very into its 1990s soundtrack, and I guess so am I, since my choice of favorite scenes was based on whether a Belly song was playing.

Present-day housewife Melanie Lynskey is married to Warren Kole (of Pick Me Up, a fellow high schooler who wasn’t on the plane) and sleeping with mysterious Franco-looking Peter Gadiot. Tawny Cypress (of that “save the cheerleader” series) is running for office, straining relationships with her wife and their messed-up son. Juliette Lewis and Christina Ricci are wildcards in their own way. Somebody dangerous is after them, may have murdered fellow survivor Travis, but is it the mysterious boyfriend, the husband, the kidnapped reporter, a political rival, a follower of freaky crash-kid Lottie, or nobody and they’re all being paranoid? If anybody watched season two, please let me know.

After pilot director Karyn Kusama sets the tone, a Norwegian who worked on American Gods alternates with Deepa Mehta(!), an original Blair Witch director, a guy from Empire, a Top of the Lake veteran, and an actual 1990s director (who made the Frances McDormand Madeline). The creators previously did a show called Narcos – joined here by writers from Animal Kingdom, How to Get Away with Murder, 90210 Reboot, Jane the Virgin, Scandal, and Hacks.

–
The Kingdom season 2 (1997, Lars Von Trier)

Hospital director Moesgaard gets hypnotized by a makeshift-office basement weirdo while the brotherhood is trying to root out occult influences. Bondo gets his cancerous transplant removed, but too late. Hook becomes a zombie due to Helmer malfeasance, becoming a murderous megalomaniac. New guy Christian wants to impress the cute Sanna by becoming the masked ambulance racer Falcon. Mrs. Drusse keeps looking for ghosts, including by helicopter. Rigmor shoots Helmer, who then kidnaps brain-damaged Mona, then loses her. Most importantly, Udo Kier is a gigantic baby in constant agony. Ends on a cliffhanger, but we’ll see you again in 25 years.

–
The Twilight Zone, Vol. 1 (1959)

I thought I’d do a morning routine of exercising to a Twilight Zone episode, but quit (for now!) after three. Doubtful that I’ve seen more than half of the original show, and not in a couple decades anyway.

–
101. Where Is Everybody

Earl Holliman (Forbidden Planet, Nightman) doesn’t recall who he is or how he arrived in a completely empty town, becomes increasingly panicked as he searches for human life or some explanation. Right after he logically determines that the town is too detailed for this to be a dream or delusion, we discover it’s a delusion – he’s a would-be astronaut losing his marbles after spending weeks in an isolation chamber.

This aired in Fall 1959, so before the Apollo program was developed. Director Robert Stevens was a veteran of this sort of thing from the early 1950’s Suspense and then-current Alfred Hitchcock Presents. Of the guys in the final scene, one played a senator in The Manchurian Candidate, another would later find TV fame on Peyton Place.

Earl stops to watch an obscure Douglas Sirk film:

–
102. One for the Angels

TV star and Disney’s Mad Hatter Ed Wynn is good as a street vendor who makes a deal with death (Murray Hamilton, mayor of Jaws) and death deals back. Laboriously told story, but that’s per 2023 me, who is well used to seeing Death in movies. Love how the plot hinges on Death himself getting so mesmerized by modern advertising techniques that he starts buying stuff he doesn’t need – he’s tried to tell us that the hereafter doesn’t consider work/professional achievements noteworthy, but capitalism triumphs over the heavens.

Death checks out the amazing tensile strength of that thread:

–
103. Mr Denton on Doomsday

Right after the Death episode we’ve got a guy named Fate. Hopefully these head-clunkingly obvious episodes are meant to ease viewers into the supernatural concept and things will get more elegant later on. Killer cast here – Lang regular Dan Duryea is a top gun-turned-town drunk, tormented by local bully Martin Landau (same year as his North by Northwest breakout), until Fate (Malcolm Atterbury of Rio Bravo) steps in and gives Dan a pistol and a fastest-gun-in-the-west elixir (ingredients: hightail lizard, rushroom). It’s not clear whether Fate is to credit for Dan’s weird ability to skillfully defend himself while waving his gun around blindly, though his rum shakes prevent him from shooting straight on purpose. This being The West, a young dude (Ken Lynch, a cop in NxNW) appears instantly to prove himself in a gundown with Dan, but they both drink the same elixir and only blast each other’s hands, Fate’s complex scheme to pacify the West a couple gunmen at a time. This is the first episode with a real lady in it: Jeanne Cooper, last-billed in The Intruder.

Cowboy Landau:

–
Also watched Dina Hashem’s new thing, which was low-key and good.

by ·Comments Off on TV/Q1/Q2/2023

Some TV watched the first half of 2023. I’ve also been watching Underground Railroad for over a year, and Yellowjackets s1 for all of 2023, and I’m only halfway through either of those. Hourlong shows are my kryptonite, unless they are The Kingdom. Also in the middle of a couple shows with Katy (Schmigadoon, The Diplomat) which I don’t know if she’ll want to finish. But here are some shows I actually watched.

–
Painting With John season 2 (2022)

“Welcome to Painting With John season 2, the show where I do not teach you how to paint.” I heard season 3 was coming (edit: it’s here!), so it’s time to catch up. Some good birds in the paintings this time. It’s not all paradise; John tells us of his bats and termites and flooding. With the lo-fi composited segments (Synchronized Swimming and Cowboy Beckett) I started thinking of the Talking Heads song “Found a Job” – this could be the show he’s singing about.

I stopped keeping track of specific episodes, but they hide from the camera, turn potatoes into spearheads, speak to the show’s subtitler, relive the 1962 world series, get in an argument with the moon, tell a story I hope is true about a conference in Barcelona, and dance like nobody’s watching.

–
The Last Movie Stars (2022, Ethan Hawke)

“Characters rub off under the actor. One of the areas of great discontent is they probably feel that as human beings they are merely a collection of old characters that they’ve played. I sometimes get that feeling about myself, that I have become a series of connectives between the parts of the characters that I really like and I’ve strung them together into kind of a human being.”

Really great doc about Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward, their lives and careers, getting deep into the art and philosophy of acting. A perfect lockdown series, largely archival footage with current actors reading interview transcripts from an old abandoned project, and Hawke zooming with the actors to discuss the movies and people involved.

–
TraumaZone: Russia 1985-1999 (2022, Adam Curtis)

1. We run from 1985 to 1989 pretty quickly, moving on to the good stuff. Chernobyl, Georgian protesters murdered by Russian army, retreat from Afghanistan, managers partnering with gangsters to loot industry, the first two oligarchs, some local keyboardy post-punk.
2. Yeltsin becomes president as communist supply chain plan falls apart. Each ep has a personal story wound through it – this one is a woman traveling to visit her sister for a food swap, and a girl begging for cash in the city.
3. Ukrainian wedding across the street from a Stalin-era mass grave. Moscow coup attempt while Gorbachev on vacation, Yeltsin disowned it. Military killed a bunch of people. Things moved really fast in Aug-Nov 1991 – all the power shifts at the top, and the titles say “and nothing changed.”
4. “Shock therapy” free market experiment does not work.
5. Protestors destroy parliament… which was then shot up with tanks. A mini-economy rises around a “very affluent minority.” Russia becomes more racist and opts to distract from troubles at home by invading Chechnya.
6. Lot of murdering going on, as the Chechen invasion goes badly and the Oligarchs buy up the country’s remaining resources. Wow at the oligarchs promising that if you vote for them, you never need to vote again.
7. The series comes to a merciful end, better in theory than as a viewing experience.

–
Atlanta season 2 (2018)

201. Alligator Man, feat. Katt Williams as Alligator Man
202. Al’s drug dealer robs him. Tracy (Khris Davis of the latest Space Jam) is staying w Al so Earn sleeps in a storage unit.
203. Clark County (RJ Walker of a Guy Pearce movie) has a manager who gets him advertising and soundtrack spots. Earn gets kicked out of every establishment trying to pay with hundreds – including Onyx, just down the street from Taqueria Del Sol.
204. Earn is a bad boyfriend, acts sullen at the Helen GA German festival then loses Van over a game of ping pong.
205. Al tries to get a haircut from hair/scam artist Bibby (comedian Robert S. Powell) who takes him on a ride of chaos through the city. Good one, and a welcome break from pitying Earn. Music by Flying Lotus and Thundercat, whoa.
206. Darius attempts to collect a free piano from the mansion of a tormented homicidal shut-in (Glover in albino-face). Get Out vibes.
207. Van goes to a New Year’s Eve party at Drake’s house, has encounters with guys attempting to be charming and coming off as creepy. Her friend Adriyan Rae ditches the group for another party… Danielle Deadwyler (star of Till) fails to start a fight with a white girl… Gail Bean gets too high, finds Darius who explains that the world is a simulation (and so was Drake).
208. Al’s celeb friend Ciara gives him advice on fame, but he’s not listening. So he tries to walk home, but gets robbed and threatened and chased and shot at and lost in the woods. Apparently filmed in East Point.
209. Trip to Statesboro on a bad campus visit. All their stuff gets stolen or destroyed, Earn loses a fight with Tracy (there for “security”) and maybe/almost gets fired.
210. Weirdly un-comic full-episode flashback. Al (in ROTC uniform) gets Earn out of trouble for wearing a bootleg shirt, deflects blame to another kid who kills himself. Filmed in Stockbridge, SE of the airport. Young Al played a bully in Brightburn, the suicidal kid is lately of Stranger Things.
211. On the eve of the Euro-tour, Earn is having doubts about his value and his future and his kid’s future, and I am calling bullshit because he’s rushed heading to the airport with a forgotten pistol in his backpack. But the show lets him get away, and Clark’s manager Matthew Barnes (lately of Creepshow: the series and Scream: the series) takes the fall.

–
Poker Face season 1 (2023)

episode 1: RIP to Natasha’s best friend Dascha Polanco (Joy, In the Heights), the friend’s bastard husband Michael Reagan (Adult Swim Yule Log) and casino manager Adrien Brody. Unknown whether casino security Benjamin Bratt (Demolition Man) will recur (edit: yep). Natasha Lyonne hitting the road, Adrien’s dad swearing revenge.

2: RIP to Brandon Micheal Hall (Search Party), dispatched by local creep Colton Ryan for a winning lotto ticket. Natasha is helped out by John Ratzenberger (!) and goth chick Megan Suri (of the new Searching sequel Missing) while trying to save trucker Hong Chau (Downsizing, Showing Up) before the bad guys catch up to her. Alice Ju (Russian Doll) is our new writer.

3: RIP to BBQ king Larry Brown, smoked to death by his brother Lil Rel Howery (TSA buddy in Get Out) for the crime of watching Okja and turning vegan. Co-conspirator Danielle Macdonald (Patti Cake$ herself) goes down too, Natasha helped out by voice-shifting DJ Shane Paul McGhie. Writer Wyatt Cain (Prodigal Son: a Lou Diamond Phillips crime psychologist series) and director Iain MacDonald (Shameless).

4. RIP to young drummer Nicholas Cirillo, electrocuted by his bandmates to steal his song, which he stole from a TV theme. Chloë Sevigny, John Darnielle and GK Umeh are a pathetic metal band touring on an ancient hit, their only new original song “Merch Girl” inspired by Natasha. MVP Chuck Cooper as the roadie who knows about capacitors in vintage amps. Writer Christine Boylan worked on Katy’s show Castle, director Tiffany Johnson was on the Dear White People series. Darnielle’s first Rian Johnson movie since The Life of the World to Come in 2010.

5. RIP to Reed Birney, presumably the Strawberry Mansion director’s dad, poisoned by the gals he ratted on in the 1970’s: TV veterans Judith Light and S. Epatha Merkerson. Natasha is working at the old folks’ home, befriends and then turns on the drug-dealing domestic terrorists. Not a big fan of the FBI-good-guy (Simon Helberg!), hippie-bad-guy formula, but easily the best written episode so far, excellently directed by Lucky McKee (The Woman, Sick Girl).

6. RIP to Jameela Jamil from The Good Place. Actors Ellen Barkin and Tim Meadows pretend to be trying to murder each other onstage, Jamil gets killed instead, and this somehow makes it not a crime? A young actor catches on, and stagehand Natasha intervenes before they poison her as well, then pulls a confession via hidden mic. Katy is getting tired of all the bad people and the killings. New director Ben Sinclair (High Maintenance) with a writer from a long-running crime show called Leverage.

7. Nobody dies for once, but the joint tampering by Tim Blake Nelson and Charles Melton (Hot Reggie in Riverdale) on a racecar leaves TBN’s daughter hospitalized. Natasha meets both the moms and all the drivers, puts the plot together with no cop involvement. Especially good episode, from the director of ep 3 and a Bojack Horseman writer.

8. The stop-motion episode… mad sfx god Nick Nolte works on his hermit epic with assistant Natasha while film producer Cherry Jones kills her guy (Star Trekker Tim Russ) and Nolte, and archivist Luis Guzmán helps Natasha (who is also this ep’s director) put it all together.

9. Less sweet sfx in this snowy cabin-bound ep, mostly just CG deer, and more gnarly injuries than ever. Natasha is nearly killed two or three times by Joey Gordo-Levitt, who holes up with his buddy David Castañeda in a motel, murdering klepto car aficionado Stephanie Hsu to cover their tracks and reprosecuting the murder they did ten years prior. Rian is back, written by two Zuckermen, who worked on a couple shows Katy watched.

10. RIP to Ron Perlman, the big boss who’s been chasing Natasha across the country, murdered by his flunky Ben Bratt, who defected to mobster Rhea “no relation” Perlman. Agent Helberg is back, Natasha gets little sympathy from sister Clea DuVall (Carnivàle, The Astronaut’s Wife) and goes back on the run. Directed by Janicza “Zola” Bravo, with style to spare.

–
Planet Earth (2006)

Apparently there’s also a U.S. version with Sigourney Weaver voiceover, so I suppose we’ll just have to watch this whole series again someday. Some of the footage felt familiar, and I just figured out why.

–
The Kingdom season 1 (1994, Lars Von Trier)

Extremely film-grainy restoration of this show I originally watched on dubbed VHS.

Most actors are best-known for this or some other Lars movie. Mogge (young glasses prankster, son of an admin, doesn’t really work there) showed up in Flame & Citron. His blackmailer Hook played a doctor in Downsizing. Old Mrs. Drusse (orderly Bulder’s mom who can hear ghosts) was in the psychokinetic doppelganger film The Man Who Thought Life. Red-haired Rigmor, deluded because she likes Helmer, played the cave woman in Jauja. And Bondo, who transfers a rare cancer into his own body to study it, was in Dreyer’s Gertrud.

They locate the dead girl Mary, tormented in life by her father Udo Kier then kept in a glass display for decades until buried at Bulder and company. But the spirits are unappeased, as Dr. Judith gives birth to… Udo Kier.

by ·Comments Off on Rewind & Play (2022, Alain Gomis)

Grungy documentary outtakes, then a French TV studio – the idea being that Gomis is showing the rushes from a conventional half-hour Thelonious Monk TV appearance. We do get to hear him play more than once, first in a traveling shot around the studio where everyone else is chatting and not paying any attention, then for a few songs in a row after the interviews have gone badly.

A Michael Caine-ish host talks about Monk to the viewers in French while leaning on the piano, then they do retakes of the interview questions until it feels like Monk is caught in a Lynchian limbo. Monk suggests they forget the interview and go to dinner, they can’t have a conversation because the interviewer wants to rephrase everything in French and Monk won’t repeat the same answer twice in the same way. And certain topics are forbidden as “not nice.” This movie landed with good timing for me, as I’m “getting into jazz” and just watched a trio whose latest album is a Monk tribute.

Michael Sicinski on lboxd:

Gomis’s presentation of the material, largely untouched, not only displays the technical mechanics involved in “making TV,” although there’s that. When Monk doesn’t provide satisfactory answers to Renaud’s questions, the crew adopts a plan-b mode, showing Monk playing during extended shots, and then later shooting B-roll with Renaud pretending to listen appreciatively. But more than this, we are seeing how a media apparatus deals with an artist it finds difficult or uncooperative. French TV is trying to sell a product called “Thelonious Monk,” and the man himself is perceived as an impediment to that pandering.

Max Goldberg in Cinema Scope:

Rewind & Play brings to light the violence of getting an artist to say what you want them to say. Not coincidentally, it also centres the musical performances recorded for Jazz Portrait, allowing them to flow together as a solid block of song. Taken together, the two things insinuate a sharp critique of the standard music documentary.

by ·Comments Off on TV/Q4/2022

Irma Vep (2022, Olivier Assayas)

Mira in the catsuit > Director Rene > Gottfried > Mira not in the catsuit > everything else

Mdou Moctar opening theme is always an incentive to watch the next episode, and I think the title graphics are a reference to Leaud’s experimental re-edit. The film-scratching is also referenced when director Rene breaks down and gets temporarily replaced by some superhero director, but in this version he comes to terms with things, and finishes the shoot peacefully. You can’t scratch up the negative when you’re shooting in HD.

Cast and crew are constantly referencing looks and movements with the original serial, which they’re watching on their phones. And Assayas has got his own 1990’s film on his mind, bringing in a Maggie Cheung surrogate and holding a cringey psychotherapist discussion about her. They bring in meta-elements, filming Musidora’s diaries alongside the remake of her film, which probably isn’t a reference to Maggie’s Center Stage, but you never know.

Mira’s assistant is Devon Ross, a Disney fashion model. Blowhard lead cop actor in the serial is Vincent Lacoste of Smoking Causes Coughing. Alex Descas works on the budget, Carrie Brownstein as an agent. Besides the Maggie surrogate there’s footage of the real Maggie, and a big Kristen Stewart scene in the final episode. As the costumer, Rivette actress Nathalie Richard is replaced by Rivette actress Balibar, who hit the Feuilladian rooftops herself in Va Savoir (and at one point Irma goes by the name “Juliet Berto”).

Devon directs one day, is inspired by Kenneth Anger to invoke spirits with her filmmaking. Assayas knows how to invoke spirits – most literally in Personal Shopper but it’s there in all his best work, which is why the straightforward e-book drama of Non-Fiction didn’t work for me and I’m not anxious to check out Wasp Network. This version is not great – it’s overlong, episodic TV, more content than cinema, complete with tedious Conveying Information To The Viewer dialogue in the early hours and bad ADR.

–
Mind Over Murder (2022, Nanfu Wang)

Happy to see a True/Falser land a whole miniseries, but I’m sorry that the form seems to mandate six hour-long episodes, since this feels stretched out, with rampant footage reuse, a plodding podcast-ass show compared to the jubilant Last Movie Stars I’ve been watching at the same time. Other comparisons coming to mind: the book Devil House (an 80’s murder case where the number of participants keeps changing) and the show Wormwood (which I thought repetitive at the time, but is looking better and better).

Nebraska, showing movies in ZD:

Hero cop convicts six for a Nebraska murder, but years later a competent cop looks over the evidence by chance and realizes the whole case was a sham. The six are released, sue the county and win, now the locals are butthurt about their hero cop’s reputation and their higher taxes to pay for reconciliation. A community theater reenactment of the case appears for too little (or maybe too much) time in each episode, paying off at the end when many of the involved parties meet up at the show.

Burt, he’s just like us, watching Mind Over Murder with his phone out:

–
Only Murders in the Building season 1 (2021)

Martin & Martin are pathetic washed-up podcasters, Selena Gomez their companion who’s hiding a personal history with the deceased. Suspects include a cat guy, their sponsor Nathan Lane, Sting, and Selena Gomez. They get boosts from Aaron Dominguez and some obsessed fans, and sorta-boosts from Liz Lemon, detective Da’Vine Joy Randolph (also detective of Ultra City Smiths) and murderer/bassoonist Amy Ryan. Cliffhanger ending for season 2 with their arrest for killing the landlady.

Sometimes I think it’s cheesy and I should stop watching, other times there’s a Herman’s Head reference or an episode centered on Jane Lynch as Steve Martin’s stunt double and I’m totally sold. Writers include Martin (L.A. Story), John Hoffman (The Emoji Movie) and people who worked on It’s Always Sunny, Chuck, Barry, and uh, Family Guy. Directors: Jamie Babbit (But I’m a Cheerleader), Gillian Robespierre (Obvious Child), Don Scardino (The Incredible Burt Wonderstone) and Cherien Dabis (Amreeka).

by ·Comments Off on Cabinet of Curiosities 5-8 (2022)

It’s taking a while to get through SHOCKtober writeups, ain’t it?
Here’s the rest of the Guillermo del Toro series.

–
Pickman’s Model (Keith Thomas)

Handsome Christian-Bale-ish lead guy Ben Barnes (of a Dorian Gray movie) is intrigued when older Crispin Glover joins his art class, drawing unspeakable horrors in cemeteries and saying stuff like “suffering is living.” Years later, Ben is still hanging around drawing rooms boring people about the values of modern art, visits the insistent Crispin’s studio, discovers the guy didn’t have a wild imagination but was realistically drawing the beasties emerging from the well-to-hell in his basement.

Keith Thomas? Hardly a master of horror, he made this year’s Firestarter remake (Filipe review: “very uninspired product… cheap and ugly looking.”) Here he makes every actor look foolish, and overdoes the sound design, though the subtle motion in the drawings was neat.

–
The Viewing (Panos Cosmatos)

I knew who directed this one as soon as the Oneohtrix music kicked in. Four TV talk-show guests are invited to rich Peter Weller’s new age bunker: music producer Eric Andre, alien astrophysicist Charlyne Yi, novelist Steve Agee, and ESP expert Michael Therriault (of a recent Chucky movie). Sofia Boutella is there somehow, and a henchman from Books of Blood. They enjoy their host’s special whiskey, magic joint, cocaine and fairy dust, and sinister alien meteorite… then some of them melt or explode, and the rest fight for their lives to escape. Fuckin’ cool.

–
Dreams in the Witch-House (Catherine Hardwicke)

Sharp-eyed readers will notice that I’m tagging these posts “Masters of Horror,” because really, what’s the difference between the two series? This is a special crossover episode, since we saw Stuart Gordon’s version of the same Lovecraft story in 2006. That was the end of practical effects creativity, and though the 2006 rat-person wasn’t brilliant work, it’s miles better than the lazy bullshit computer-rat in this version.

But I get ahead of myself – first Rupert Weasley grows up caring about ghosts after seeing his sister die, works at a brokedown spiritualist society, checks into a house where a woman who claimed dimensional travel once lived. There he has sleep paralysis and is visited by a cool witch and the aforementioned bullshit rat. Second episode this week about otherworldly paintings, as Rupert is warned the witch will kill him by sunrise, and this proves to be true, but I think he manages to resurrect his sister in exchange. Some good cursing, at least.

I was not hoping to be reminded of The Blazing World:

–
The Murmuring (Jennifer Kent)

As someone who rarely goes a day without singing “Murmuration Song” to my birds, a story about a bird-watching couple would be right up my alley. The pair (Essie “Babadook” Davis and Andrew “Walking Dead” Lincoln) are haunted by the ghost of their past (their kid died) and also by literal mother/son ghosts, with increasingly intense visits (not Jennifer Kent with a parental trauma movie). They’ve brought portable recording equipment to an island (reminiscent of Fire of Love) to study sandpipers when Essie starts sidetracking into ghost drama. It’s my first shocktober in our new old house, and all the stories seem determined to tell us that old houses are full of harmful vibes.