Let’s get the Saturday Free-For-All back on the rails. And let’s table all the COVID-19 talk for a while. We all get it by this point. It’s been weird so many days in a row that it’s starting to feel normal.
When I ask you guys a question here on these Saturdays, all I’m looking to do is start a conversation, and part of that is participation on my part. I’m not just here to throw up a post and disappear. You guys are making a decision to use your time and energy to support this newsletter by reading it, and I want to know more about you as a group and as people.
There are some of you who are already comfortable posting about most topics. And I’m sure there are some of you who have no interest in posting about anything. That’s fair, too. You’re just here to read something, and you don’t want to participate.
Earlier today, I went for a walk here in LA, and the thing that struck me most was how incredibly beautiful it is outside right now. I’ve lived here since 1990, and I’ve never seen air quality like this. I’ve never smelled LA smelling like it does right now, especially after a week of rain on top of everything else. It’s remarkable.
As always, I want you to use this space for any conversation you feel like having, and in particular, I’m curious how many of you are reading during all of this. It’s one thing to sort of passively absorb some movies or TV shows as a way of coping, but books always transport me in a different way. I just read a terrific first novel called The Last Human by Zack Jordan, and another terrific first novel called Most Likely by Sarah Watson, and I’m finding that reading is a balm that almost can’t be matched right now for me.
How about it? What’s on your mind this week?
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Thanks for this. Here’s something that’s been in my head for a couple weeks now, and haven’t had a chance to blather it out.
Lately I haven’t wanted to watch anything new - meaning anything made in the last 10 years or so. Maybe it’s regression, I dunno. But right now period is where my head is. My wife and I were watching a bunch old older romcoms, and then I suggested AGE OF INNOCENCE. Always been one of my favourite Scorsese’s, from the day it opened. Honestly think it’s one of his best, easily top 10. And it didn’t disappoint. If anything, it gets better every viewing.
But for the first time, I realized that there is an entire other movie I kind of...not missed, but never gave enough weight to. And the best way I can explain it is to use Scorses’s own famous quote that cinema is a question of what’s in the frame - but just as importantly, what’s OUT of the frame.
So the story is ostensibly about Newland Archer, his engagement to the socially acceptable May Welland, and his doomed love for Countess Ellen Olenska. And by the end, he realizes that both women have decided his fate, and May in particular has ensured he will remain hers for life. A tragic, somewhat pathetic tale of a life unlived. That’s the story IN the frame.
But the story OUT of the frame is about two women, completely at the mercy of a brutal and pitiless patriarchy (sorry for the cliche, but still). Any woman not accepted by it is cast out, and left to fend for herself. A man could go off and be a scandal, but still work, live, etc. A woman? Where would she go that she isn’t at the mercy of even worse men and mores? We see several examples throughout, and it isn’t pretty.
In THIS story, the very sensible, smart and sympathetic May ensures not that she has “the right husband” (she even gives him a chance to leave, and I think it’s sincere), but that she (and her family, without a son of its own) can survive in this tribal society. And protects poor weak indecisive Newland too. I. This story, if she isn’t a hero, she is at least the protagonist of her own drama. And she succeeds. And her family survives.
This may not seem all that surprising to anybody else. Maybe that was always the point. But I guess I just got it. What I always took to be a classic Tragic Love Story was also a secret or whispered tale of survival. And maybe that’s why Newland never went up to see Ellen in the end. Maybe he finally understood that she did what she had to survive as well. Thanks to men like him.
Thoughts? Obvious? Way off base? Would love to hear anybody else on this. “Well, duh”’s are welcome...
My 8 year old has asked for a Mission Impossible... I think he’s ready, but is there a definitive “starter” M:I you’d recommend? I don’t think the origins the best place to start for him...
I'm finding myself very intrigued by the work of director Leos Carax. I haven't watched them yet, because I don't know where to start? Where should I start with the filmography of this European maestro of cinema?
I've become a big, big fan of Brandon Sanderson as an author. He's writing epic fantasy by the barrel-load. Dude's as prolific as Stephen King . His major works are Mistborn and The Way of Kings, and he's creating this vast unified storyline that ties all his different fantasy worlds together in one actual solar system. He also was the guy who wrapped up the Wheel of Time after the author died. I promise I'm not related to the guy or anything, but I've become a pretty solid fan after plowing through his bibliography. If you want to ease in, he wrote a standalone fantasy novel called Warbreaker that's both published in print and also free to read on his website. Worth it if you like epic fantasy, which I know is a bit too much of a time devotion for some.
I don’t read as much as I’d like due to timing with work and family. So I do audiobooks while I’m running instead, which is usually excellent. I normally have a few different books going at once, to suit the mood. The Last Human sounds great and I’ll grab it with my next credit.
That said, it’s been harder to listen to any audiobooks while running lately. It has to be music cause I can’t concentrate like normal - and I’m really missing it honestly.
The air quality is amazing. I live in DTLA and every day I open my bedroom windows as wide as they go and sit on my bed looking out the window. I had never ever done that in 6 years in this apt and now it’s my sacred ritual. Really into listening to the Mario paint background music while doing so if I’m feeling particularly dank.
I don’t read as often as I like, but I’ve been taking the time in quarantine reading Harry Turtledove’s Worldwar tetralogy. I love world war 2 history, I love alternate history, and I love alien invasion stories, so right up my alley!
Just started reading The Black Prism, which starts out nicely. At the very least it’s a fantasy book that can tide me over until I can handle more Brandon Sanderson, which I sort of overdosed on last year. It’s been really nice getting stuck into a good book again in these weird times,much more calming for me than shows and games.
Right now, I’m reading THE SCIENCE OF STORY TELLING by Will Storr. He talks about how your brain reacts and doesn’t react to story, and it’s pretty interesting. For fun I just got through reading THE PHILOSOPHERS WAR two book series by Tom Miller. It was fantastic - compulsively readable.
I tried out the Drafthouse-at-home thing and saw CENTIPEDE HORROR. I loved it. If you've seen it, the thing with the chicken bones made me happier than anything I've seen in months.
I do not read typically, but there are a great many books I’ve gotten over the years I should make a point of getting to over this time- I might start next week with the Ahsoka book that came out a few years ago.
This week, my wife and I started to binge SyFy’s “Haven” on Netflix on a whim. We’ve gotten into it, although I’m not sure if it’s something I’ll ever revisit. I’m also watching Scorsese’s faith trilogy- I watched “The Last Temptation of Christ” on Sunday,” and “Kundun” yesterday; I plan on watching “Silence” tomorrow.
Hey Drew! Excited to find this after having listened to and now (re-listening to!) all of your '80s All Over content and appreciate you making the patreon stuff available now. After I'm done posting here I'm going to sub up for the year because I've been a fan way back since the AICN days. As for what I'm reading it might be better to ask what I'm not reading... Simultaneously and depending on my mood..Nashawaty's Caddyshack book, selections from With Nails, Richard E. Grant's film diaries, Scott Snyder's American Vampire hardcover collection, rereading Fever Pitch by Nick Hornby because I am desperately missing Premier League, intermittently enjoying Gary Janetti's short essay collection, Do you Mind if I Cancel? and just starting Kate Racculia's Bellwether Rhapsody after hearing it recommended on NPR. Can you tell I cut the cord on my cable? 🤔
Sorry I'm late to the party. I did some spring cleaning on my MacBook that took all weekend plus an extra day.
I finally bit the bullet and purchased a DCU subscription (though only monthly, as I'm still convinced WB will fold it into HBO Max in some way). The original content (Young Justice and Titans) are good, and I love being able to watch Green Lantern: TAS for the first time. Talk about a show that was cancelled far too soon. From what I understand, it failed because the movie sucked, so no one wanted to watch it. It's a shame, because the show is everything the movie should have been, as is the case about anything Bruce Timm produces.
Mainly though, I've been using the sub to read comics from my youth on my Fire Tablet. It's one of the reasons I didn't get a sub two years ago: no Xbox or Fire Tablet app. Now that they have both, I'm able to read these amazing books I haven't seen in 25 years or more. The Dixon run on Nightwing that began in the mid-90's is FUCKING AMAZING! Marz's relaunch of Green Lantern with Kyle Raynor is also great. While I'll always prefer Johns's Rebirth of Hal Jordan as the one true Lantern, so to speak, I loved reading about Kyle trying to figure everything out mostly on his own when I was a kid, and now I get to read it again. If you love DC Comics back in 90's and early 00's before writing and characters really fell-off during the mostly terrible New 52, I can't recommend a DCU sub enough.
As a child/early-teen, my comic book heroes were Sylvester, The Nebbish, and Alfred E. Newman. I didn't, therefore, read much other works in comics, even the greats.
Finally finished Watchmen over the weekend; inspired to read it as a prelude to either watching the Snyder film, the Lindelof sequel-series, or maybe both. I now know how someone would feel reading Neuromancer for the first time in 2020... not a bad thing, but a combination of "oh, now I know why people like this so much" and "damn, I wish I'd read it during its time."
Context-switching to non-fiction: Fault Lines from Kevin Kruse and Julian Zelizer. Probably might be more depressing now, but I'm very curious how contemporary-of-mine Kruse documents the history we lived through.
Keeping up with '80s wannabes, I finally caught up with the first 2/3rds or so of "Young Sherlock Holmes" (I saw the back 3rd a while back), one of the great examples of a big-studio tentpole movie so desperate to be The Next Big Thing that it tries to be everything popular at once ON TOP OF what it should be. It's not as bad as "Howard the Duck" or "Van Helsing" or "The Lone Ranger" -- it looks great, it isn't 2+ hours, and I'm pretty sure in some alternate universe Nicholas Rowe became a star -- but it's easy to see why people didn't respond to it in 1985. (Though I am shocked that another would-be tentpole, "Santa Claus the Movie", which admittedly lost far more money, actually posted a bigger box office gross that Christmas -- and I will defend that movie). Also, it's pretty much a template for all the belated prequels we've been getting in recent years, starting with the Star Wars ones.
Being someone who has a tendency to buy DVDs/Blus in order to make sure he has them... and never watches them, let alone open them (DON'T JUDGE ME), I've started doing Unwrapped Cinema.
I've already seen the films, just not seen them on DVD/Blu.
I've watched PRINCE OF DARKNESS and HAYWIRE already, and have nearly twenty more to go! Plus, Shout Factory sale hasn't made it easier!
If you're like me, I highly recommend it as a way to pass time and free the media from their plastic prisons!
Last year I was unemployed for about 8 months. I was on unemployment for most of that time so I fell into a routine that worked for me. I could read and write and watch movies and workout. Really make the most of the free time. Watched tons of movies, read a ton of books, and I got 4 scripts done in that time. I'm back in that routine. I'm working from home, but it's a quick workload and I have plenty of time to do all I want to do. So I'm really just trying to keep myself busy in many ways. Actively engaged or just relaxing. I keep finding myself really blown away by how quickly things can turn around in a year. From the lowest point in my life to actually pretty comfortable, all the while the world around me is burning down. Just an insane cognitive dissonance going on.
So I watched THE POISON ROSE last night, a Neo-Noir with Travolta and Morgan Freeman and a barely recognizable Brendan Fraser (who nearly stole the movie. THE POISON ROSE is a terrible movie with slumming actors, a lazy script, and leaden Noir narration from John Travolta. (Not to mention the worst hairpiece I've seen in quite some time.) It's got a 0% rating on Rotten Tomatoes, and for good reason.
And yet I ate it up. There's something about Noir that speaks to me, sometimes even when the movie is terrible. (And this one really is.) There's something about one capable, tarnished man trying to make good that gets me every time. I can't defend it, I can't explain it, but I can observe it. I really cannot recommend this movie on any level, and yet I enjoyed THE POISON ROSE as much for the genre tropes as anything.
Question: Is this normal? I understand liking a well-crafted movie. I even understand enjoying a fun one which suffers from a lack of craftsmanship. But what is it about specific genre films which satisfy even while the film itself is objectively garbage?
I saw a movie from 2012ish with Jeffrey Dean Morgan called THE COURIER. It was another terrible Neo-Noir film that I couldn't recommend to anyone but which I enjoyed in the watching. It's strange. Does anyone else have a genre you adore despite the relative quality of the film?
Well this is the best thing I could have seen tonight.
sup pops
Thanks for this. Here’s something that’s been in my head for a couple weeks now, and haven’t had a chance to blather it out.
Lately I haven’t wanted to watch anything new - meaning anything made in the last 10 years or so. Maybe it’s regression, I dunno. But right now period is where my head is. My wife and I were watching a bunch old older romcoms, and then I suggested AGE OF INNOCENCE. Always been one of my favourite Scorsese’s, from the day it opened. Honestly think it’s one of his best, easily top 10. And it didn’t disappoint. If anything, it gets better every viewing.
But for the first time, I realized that there is an entire other movie I kind of...not missed, but never gave enough weight to. And the best way I can explain it is to use Scorses’s own famous quote that cinema is a question of what’s in the frame - but just as importantly, what’s OUT of the frame.
So the story is ostensibly about Newland Archer, his engagement to the socially acceptable May Welland, and his doomed love for Countess Ellen Olenska. And by the end, he realizes that both women have decided his fate, and May in particular has ensured he will remain hers for life. A tragic, somewhat pathetic tale of a life unlived. That’s the story IN the frame.
But the story OUT of the frame is about two women, completely at the mercy of a brutal and pitiless patriarchy (sorry for the cliche, but still). Any woman not accepted by it is cast out, and left to fend for herself. A man could go off and be a scandal, but still work, live, etc. A woman? Where would she go that she isn’t at the mercy of even worse men and mores? We see several examples throughout, and it isn’t pretty.
In THIS story, the very sensible, smart and sympathetic May ensures not that she has “the right husband” (she even gives him a chance to leave, and I think it’s sincere), but that she (and her family, without a son of its own) can survive in this tribal society. And protects poor weak indecisive Newland too. I. This story, if she isn’t a hero, she is at least the protagonist of her own drama. And she succeeds. And her family survives.
This may not seem all that surprising to anybody else. Maybe that was always the point. But I guess I just got it. What I always took to be a classic Tragic Love Story was also a secret or whispered tale of survival. And maybe that’s why Newland never went up to see Ellen in the end. Maybe he finally understood that she did what she had to survive as well. Thanks to men like him.
Thoughts? Obvious? Way off base? Would love to hear anybody else on this. “Well, duh”’s are welcome...
My 8 year old has asked for a Mission Impossible... I think he’s ready, but is there a definitive “starter” M:I you’d recommend? I don’t think the origins the best place to start for him...
Seeing Toshi hailing you on the thread just made my morning. And made me feel old!
I'm finding myself very intrigued by the work of director Leos Carax. I haven't watched them yet, because I don't know where to start? Where should I start with the filmography of this European maestro of cinema?
I've become a big, big fan of Brandon Sanderson as an author. He's writing epic fantasy by the barrel-load. Dude's as prolific as Stephen King . His major works are Mistborn and The Way of Kings, and he's creating this vast unified storyline that ties all his different fantasy worlds together in one actual solar system. He also was the guy who wrapped up the Wheel of Time after the author died. I promise I'm not related to the guy or anything, but I've become a pretty solid fan after plowing through his bibliography. If you want to ease in, he wrote a standalone fantasy novel called Warbreaker that's both published in print and also free to read on his website. Worth it if you like epic fantasy, which I know is a bit too much of a time devotion for some.
I don’t read as much as I’d like due to timing with work and family. So I do audiobooks while I’m running instead, which is usually excellent. I normally have a few different books going at once, to suit the mood. The Last Human sounds great and I’ll grab it with my next credit.
That said, it’s been harder to listen to any audiobooks while running lately. It has to be music cause I can’t concentrate like normal - and I’m really missing it honestly.
The air quality is amazing. I live in DTLA and every day I open my bedroom windows as wide as they go and sit on my bed looking out the window. I had never ever done that in 6 years in this apt and now it’s my sacred ritual. Really into listening to the Mario paint background music while doing so if I’m feeling particularly dank.
I don’t read as often as I like, but I’ve been taking the time in quarantine reading Harry Turtledove’s Worldwar tetralogy. I love world war 2 history, I love alternate history, and I love alien invasion stories, so right up my alley!
Just started reading The Black Prism, which starts out nicely. At the very least it’s a fantasy book that can tide me over until I can handle more Brandon Sanderson, which I sort of overdosed on last year. It’s been really nice getting stuck into a good book again in these weird times,much more calming for me than shows and games.
Right now, I’m reading THE SCIENCE OF STORY TELLING by Will Storr. He talks about how your brain reacts and doesn’t react to story, and it’s pretty interesting. For fun I just got through reading THE PHILOSOPHERS WAR two book series by Tom Miller. It was fantastic - compulsively readable.
I tried out the Drafthouse-at-home thing and saw CENTIPEDE HORROR. I loved it. If you've seen it, the thing with the chicken bones made me happier than anything I've seen in months.
Is URBAN COWBOY a sports movie or slice of life?
I do not read typically, but there are a great many books I’ve gotten over the years I should make a point of getting to over this time- I might start next week with the Ahsoka book that came out a few years ago.
This week, my wife and I started to binge SyFy’s “Haven” on Netflix on a whim. We’ve gotten into it, although I’m not sure if it’s something I’ll ever revisit. I’m also watching Scorsese’s faith trilogy- I watched “The Last Temptation of Christ” on Sunday,” and “Kundun” yesterday; I plan on watching “Silence” tomorrow.
Hey Drew! Excited to find this after having listened to and now (re-listening to!) all of your '80s All Over content and appreciate you making the patreon stuff available now. After I'm done posting here I'm going to sub up for the year because I've been a fan way back since the AICN days. As for what I'm reading it might be better to ask what I'm not reading... Simultaneously and depending on my mood..Nashawaty's Caddyshack book, selections from With Nails, Richard E. Grant's film diaries, Scott Snyder's American Vampire hardcover collection, rereading Fever Pitch by Nick Hornby because I am desperately missing Premier League, intermittently enjoying Gary Janetti's short essay collection, Do you Mind if I Cancel? and just starting Kate Racculia's Bellwether Rhapsody after hearing it recommended on NPR. Can you tell I cut the cord on my cable? 🤔
I’m reading THE NICKEL BOYS by Colson Whitehead
Sorry I'm late to the party. I did some spring cleaning on my MacBook that took all weekend plus an extra day.
I finally bit the bullet and purchased a DCU subscription (though only monthly, as I'm still convinced WB will fold it into HBO Max in some way). The original content (Young Justice and Titans) are good, and I love being able to watch Green Lantern: TAS for the first time. Talk about a show that was cancelled far too soon. From what I understand, it failed because the movie sucked, so no one wanted to watch it. It's a shame, because the show is everything the movie should have been, as is the case about anything Bruce Timm produces.
Mainly though, I've been using the sub to read comics from my youth on my Fire Tablet. It's one of the reasons I didn't get a sub two years ago: no Xbox or Fire Tablet app. Now that they have both, I'm able to read these amazing books I haven't seen in 25 years or more. The Dixon run on Nightwing that began in the mid-90's is FUCKING AMAZING! Marz's relaunch of Green Lantern with Kyle Raynor is also great. While I'll always prefer Johns's Rebirth of Hal Jordan as the one true Lantern, so to speak, I loved reading about Kyle trying to figure everything out mostly on his own when I was a kid, and now I get to read it again. If you love DC Comics back in 90's and early 00's before writing and characters really fell-off during the mostly terrible New 52, I can't recommend a DCU sub enough.
As a child/early-teen, my comic book heroes were Sylvester, The Nebbish, and Alfred E. Newman. I didn't, therefore, read much other works in comics, even the greats.
Finally finished Watchmen over the weekend; inspired to read it as a prelude to either watching the Snyder film, the Lindelof sequel-series, or maybe both. I now know how someone would feel reading Neuromancer for the first time in 2020... not a bad thing, but a combination of "oh, now I know why people like this so much" and "damn, I wish I'd read it during its time."
Context-switching to non-fiction: Fault Lines from Kevin Kruse and Julian Zelizer. Probably might be more depressing now, but I'm very curious how contemporary-of-mine Kruse documents the history we lived through.
Take a “drive” around town w/ your “phone”.
Keeping up with '80s wannabes, I finally caught up with the first 2/3rds or so of "Young Sherlock Holmes" (I saw the back 3rd a while back), one of the great examples of a big-studio tentpole movie so desperate to be The Next Big Thing that it tries to be everything popular at once ON TOP OF what it should be. It's not as bad as "Howard the Duck" or "Van Helsing" or "The Lone Ranger" -- it looks great, it isn't 2+ hours, and I'm pretty sure in some alternate universe Nicholas Rowe became a star -- but it's easy to see why people didn't respond to it in 1985. (Though I am shocked that another would-be tentpole, "Santa Claus the Movie", which admittedly lost far more money, actually posted a bigger box office gross that Christmas -- and I will defend that movie). Also, it's pretty much a template for all the belated prequels we've been getting in recent years, starting with the Star Wars ones.
Being someone who has a tendency to buy DVDs/Blus in order to make sure he has them... and never watches them, let alone open them (DON'T JUDGE ME), I've started doing Unwrapped Cinema.
I've already seen the films, just not seen them on DVD/Blu.
I've watched PRINCE OF DARKNESS and HAYWIRE already, and have nearly twenty more to go! Plus, Shout Factory sale hasn't made it easier!
If you're like me, I highly recommend it as a way to pass time and free the media from their plastic prisons!
Last year I was unemployed for about 8 months. I was on unemployment for most of that time so I fell into a routine that worked for me. I could read and write and watch movies and workout. Really make the most of the free time. Watched tons of movies, read a ton of books, and I got 4 scripts done in that time. I'm back in that routine. I'm working from home, but it's a quick workload and I have plenty of time to do all I want to do. So I'm really just trying to keep myself busy in many ways. Actively engaged or just relaxing. I keep finding myself really blown away by how quickly things can turn around in a year. From the lowest point in my life to actually pretty comfortable, all the while the world around me is burning down. Just an insane cognitive dissonance going on.
I read and loved ARE SNAKES NECESSARY
So I watched THE POISON ROSE last night, a Neo-Noir with Travolta and Morgan Freeman and a barely recognizable Brendan Fraser (who nearly stole the movie. THE POISON ROSE is a terrible movie with slumming actors, a lazy script, and leaden Noir narration from John Travolta. (Not to mention the worst hairpiece I've seen in quite some time.) It's got a 0% rating on Rotten Tomatoes, and for good reason.
And yet I ate it up. There's something about Noir that speaks to me, sometimes even when the movie is terrible. (And this one really is.) There's something about one capable, tarnished man trying to make good that gets me every time. I can't defend it, I can't explain it, but I can observe it. I really cannot recommend this movie on any level, and yet I enjoyed THE POISON ROSE as much for the genre tropes as anything.
Question: Is this normal? I understand liking a well-crafted movie. I even understand enjoying a fun one which suffers from a lack of craftsmanship. But what is it about specific genre films which satisfy even while the film itself is objectively garbage?
I saw a movie from 2012ish with Jeffrey Dean Morgan called THE COURIER. It was another terrible Neo-Noir film that I couldn't recommend to anyone but which I enjoyed in the watching. It's strange. Does anyone else have a genre you adore despite the relative quality of the film?