We kick off 2022 with some quick bites and a look ahead

It's going to be a great year for subscribers

It’s Tuesday, January 4th, and here’s where we are…

Happy New Year, folks.

I want to kick off this year’s newsletter with a few simple questions. What was the first film you watched this year? What was the last film you watched in 2021?

Do you attach any import to these things? Do you use films as milestones? I saved something special for New Year’s Eve, and I have a stack of films I’m using to ease my way back into the New Year, and all of it is about recharging the batteries for whatever 2022 is going to be. I’m going to be staying out of theaters for a while now while America fumbles its way through the latest COVID surge, and that means more movies at home, and the overall anxiety of all of this starting up again means I’ll likely lean on comfort food again.

We’re five days away from the second anniversary of Formerly Dangerous. Considering when I started this publication, any success I’ve had is damn near miraculous. The fact that you guys have chosen to support this completely independent publication means the world to me. One thing that may shift a bit this year is that I may actually use this as a newsletter in the more traditional sense. If there’s news about another season of VOIR or about other creative endeavors, I’m going to be sharing a bit more of that process. If I’m working on a big project, instead of letting that be an obstacle, it’s going to be part of what you hear about. I’ll still be reviewing media and writing about media in all the same ways I have, but I think I’ve finally reached a place where I’m going to stop treating all of my writing as separate because that’s not how it feels to me. I’m going to be writing several pilots this year and at least one feature, and I have no particular interest in pushing people to read any of it. I’m going to write them for myself, and in general, I think it’s time for me to reconnect with the type of work that I love the most. I don’t really care what the industry is or isn’t doing right now… that’s not why I started writing in the first place, and I’m trying to remind myself of that.

I want to read your responses to my opening questions below, but first, let’s jump in with the year’s first assortment of one-paragraph reactions to things…

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QUICK BITES

image courtesy of HBO Max

Our New Year’s Eve was quiet this year, exactly how we wanted it to be, and we threw on a few different things as we drank mimosas. The first was the new HBO Max documentary The Super Bob Einstein Movie, a pretty basic look at the life and work of a guy who could easily be described as “every comic’s favorite comic,” the kind of person who was never super-famous but who worked consistently for over 50 years. I knew him first as Super Dave back in the early days of cable when I’d see him on Bizarre, and when I learned that he was Albert Brooks’s brother (and that Albert’s real last name was Einstein), it was mind-blowing. I love that Einstein had a great run late in his career on Curb Your Enthusiasm, and the documentary does a great job of pulling together clips from the entire breadth of his career as well as testimonials from his friends and colleagues. I loved hearing Steve Martin talk about their time together on The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour, and I really loved hearing stories from both of his brothers. I’ve always loved the scene that Bob Einstein played in Modern Romance and wondered why they didn’t work together more often, and there’s some unspoken tension that this film hints at. The overwhelming portrait is one of love and respect between them, though, and while I think it’s entirely adequate as a film, it’s nice to see this particular fringe player placed center stage for once.

image courtesy of Hulu

We’re currently plowing our way through the second season of The Great on Hulu, and the show’s gotten even better in its second year. The show’s subtitle is An Occasionally True Story, and that’s a cheeky way of imparting the show’s overall tone and attitude. Elle Fanning plays Empress Catherine II, and Nicholas Hoult is Emperor Peter III, and the stakes are nothing less than control of Russia itself. Created by Tony McNamara, Oscar-nominated for his script for The Favourite, this is often breathtakingly funny, bitter and wicked and rude. By acknowledging that history is merely a springboard to explore an entire world of dynamics, it allows The Great to do anything it wants with the wonderful cast of characters they’ve created. Season one was all about Catherine’s immersion into the world into which she’d been married, and her gradual realization that she needed to stage a coup to take the country from her husband. Now, in season two, she’s won the country and she’s realizing that it’s far more difficult to actually do the job than it is to get the job. Fanning’s never been better, and it’s definitely because the writing gives her room to play so many different things. It also helps that she and Nicholas Hoult feed off each other so beautifully. He plays a spectacular shit here, gloriously vain and blissfully awful, and just as Catherine is wrestling with the nature of the task she has taken upon herself, he’s starting to wrestle with the freedom that comes from no longer having to carry his birthright. As her soul starts to get dirtied up and frayed around the edges, her idealism gradually dimming, he’s starting to come into focus as an actual human being. It’s terrific work, and it’s one of the most visually lush shows on television, and the writing is just as florid. I know there’s a shelf life to the story they’re telling, but with a cast this great from top to bottom and scripts this razor-sharp, I hope we get ten more seasons at a bare minimum.

image courtesy of Disney+

Finally, we wrapped up our New Year’s Eve with the final installment in Peter Jackson’s The Beatles: Get Back, and I am truly amazed by what Jackson and his collaborators put together. It’s the cumulative weight of the nine-plus hours that impresses me, because there are so many ways this could have gone wrong. Instead, it feels like it was curated carefully to emphasize just how amazing the creative dynamic between The Beatles really was, and how impressive a feat Let It Be is as an album. When you look at where they are when they first meet at Twickenham compared to the way they play together on the roof of the Abbey Road studios, it’s clear that the process rekindled the joy they felt when everything was working. The film changes the entire narrative around the making of this album, changes the context in which it’s always been viewed, and I feel like I have a very different picture of these uber-famous artists as people now. I’ll be writing more about Get Back in a few weeks, but for now, I’ll just say that there are few projects, theatrical or streaming, fiction or non-fiction, that meant more to me in 2021, and I feel like the things I took from this one will be rattling around inside me for a while.

image courtesy of Disney+/Lucasfilm Ltd.

I’m not sure where I land on The Book of Boba Fett so far. I enjoyed spending time in that world, as I usually do, but I’m still not sure what I think of this incarnation of one of the strangest side characters in the entire franchise. It’s more than a little bit insane that Boba Fett’s return is almost shot-for-shot the way it was described by Patton Oswalt in his infamous Parks & Rec nerd meltdown, but there aren’t too many ways they could have handled it. I liked the episode but didn’t love it, and I’m curious to see if they’re going to bring Emilia Clarke back as Q’ira. Her Solo character is a major player in the Marvel comics Star Wars world right now, and it feels like they’re setting her up for a live-action return somewhere. They’re also leaning on the Crimson Dawn theme in the first episode’s score, hinting at something we’ll see in the series. If she does indeed return, then I would not be shocked to see them try something with Han Solo along the lines of last season’s Luke Skywalker appearance. It almost seems impossible to imagine that they’d try to tell a Boba Fett story without having Han show up for at least a moment. Still, this was a soft opening episode, and without the name recognition of Boba Fett, I’m not sure I’d feel much of a pull based on what we’ve seen so far.

image courtesy of Netflix

I’m only three episodes away from the end of Cobra Kai’s fourth season, and it feels like it is very much of a piece with the rest of the series. It’s enormously earnest, constantly teetering on the verge of cheese, but somehow always managing to land most of the punches it throws. The show’s greatest strength continues to be the way it interrogates the entire binary notion of “heroes” and “villains.” Ralph Macchio and William Zabka have both found more depth and grace notes in Daniel and Johnny than I would have ever thought possible, and Josh Heald, Jon Hurwitz, and Hayden Schlossberg have examined every corner of the Karate Kid film series and managed to wring real juice from even the worst of them. This season leans heavily on The Karate Kid Part III for the first time, and it nods to the idea that the film was completely off-the-rails insane even as it folds it into continuity without apology. The show was built originally on flipping our perceptions of both Daniel and Johnny as they rekindled their rivalry, but this season has forced them to work together. I love that they acknowledge the Rocky III paradigm right away, but this never becomes the easy friendship that evolved between Rocky and Apollo. Daniel will always look down on Johnny in some key ways, and the show is unafraid to show us just how petty and shitty Daniel can be at times. “LaRusso sure can hold a grudge,” Kreese (Martin Kove) says at one point, and he’s right. Even now, four seasons in, there is plenty of room for these characters to grow, plenty of imperfections that they are still grappling with, and while the show can feel very young at times, that’s fine. I think it’s a perfect family show, something that could spur strong conversations between parents and kids about real issues that families deal with all the time. The cheese feels like it helps make some of the harder ideas palatable, and there is an emotional maturity to the show as a whole that is lacking in a lot of mainstream pop culture. I’m glad they’ve already got a fifth season shot and ready to go, and I hope they’re working towards a conclusion, one that allows them to wrap up the story on their own terms.

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AND FINALLY…

I’m still working on my Matrix Resurrections review, and I’ll definitely have it for you this week. I think it’s hard to write about it without also writing about pop culture and fandom as a whole right now, and it’s a piece that I think I’ve had brewing for a while, even before I saw the film.

At the opening of the newsletter, I asked if you watched something special to start the year. I kicked mine off with the Blu-ray of It’s A Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World, and as soon as I did, I logged it over on Letterboxd. I’m using Letterboxd more than ever this year, because I had a great experience with it last year. 2021 was the first year I really kept a comprehensive list of what I watched using the site, and I think it may be my favorite social media site ever. I like that it’s just about movies, and I’ve never had any of the other noise that can clutter up other social media. It’s the first time Toshi’s had any social media, too, and I love that he’s starting to find his voice when he writes about movies. When he was here for Christmas, one of the films we watched was the Spike Jonze film Her, and when it ended, he didn’t say anything. He just got up and headed into his room. The next morning, I found his review when I woke up, and it’s clear that the film landed on him like a ton of bricks. When I browse the site, I love how some people are like surgeons, nailing a film with a single sentence, while other people use the site almost like a blog.

I’m hungry for good conversations about movies this year, and that’s why I’m heading back into the podcasting world. I’ll have some news about how you can help support that effort if you’re interested, and that should be very soon. Hopefully, you guys like the ad-free model because that’s all I’m interested in. I may feel like I’m busking every day and shaking the cup for you guys, but I’d rather do that than head back to any model that requires me to treat you guys as data points and ad impressions rather than human beings who are reading my work.

If you’re reading this, today’s newsletter was a freebie. If you want access to everything I write and publish, it’s $7 a month or even less if you buy a whole year at once.

And if you’re already subscribed, then spread the word! Tell people about the newsletter! The more the merrier!

I’ll see you back here on Friday for that Matrix conversation, the weekly media diary, and some more Quick Bites, and I’m just glad we’re off and running for a new year.