Which streamer's fantasy world is the one we want to drown in the most?

Plus we do some 4K Quick Bites and gush about Bowie

It’s Saturday, September 3rd, and here’s where we are…

It is taking a lot for me to finish the February 1981 edition of The Last ‘80s Newsletter (You’ll Ever Need), and I had to take a moment to consider why it was so difficult. It’s not that I don’t want to do the writing, because I’m actually enjoying this project more than almost any large-scale writing project I’ve ever done. I think it’s more that, since the end of HitFix, I’ve gotten used to writing about what I want when I want, and part of that is good, but part of it is bad.

It’s great because it means I don’t get stuck having to write about every single thing that comes out and I don’t have to write about things that don’t interest me at all. Those are important muscles to exercise, though, and with the ‘80s newsletter, those muscles all get worked and then some. There is a rigor to having to write about things in the order they were released with no real room to skip or to give something less attention.

This newsletter, however, has increasingly come into focus for me as I’ve spoken to people about it and as I’ve experimented with different formats. If you look at today’s media landscape as an ocean that just keeps expanding as studios pour more and more content into it, then the only real value I can offer you is to try to offer up curation as a kind of life raft. I’m taking in as much of it as I possibly can to try to help you cut through the noise to find the things that might be worth your time.

For example, if you’re a horror fan, I want to make sure Adam Cesare’s new book Clown in a Cornfield 2: Frendo Lives is on your radar. The quickest way I could describe this series of books is “the smartest riff on Scream so far.” Basically, the first book, released in 2020, told the story of a girl in high school who moves with her father to a small town in Missouri after a family tragedy, only to end up at the center of a massacre on Founder’s Day, a local holiday. There’s a mystery, a conspiracy, a creepy clown, and there is indeed a cornfield, and the whole thing is a rowdy, bloody treat. Cesare clearly loves classic slasher tropes, but he also managed to write something that felt modern and that was character-driven, and the sequel does all of that but with an even more assured voice. I think these books are technically “YA” titles, but that only underlines how useless some of these labels are for me. These are just good horror stories, and Cesare knows how to craft a solid scare on the page.

For Star Wars fans, there are always new Star Wars books you can enjoy if you’re interested, but it feels like this year’s crop has been robust. I liked Star Wars: Brotherhood by Mike Chen, a Clone Wars-era story of Anakin and Obi-Wan, as well as Adam Christopher’s Shadow of the Sith, which does a ton of heavy lifting to help explain dangling story threads from The Rise of Skywalker. The best of the bunch, though, has to be The Princess and the Scoundrel by Beth Revis, which picks up about eight minutes after the ending of Return of the Jedi. As the title makes clear, this is the story of Han and Leia making the decision to get married as the Rebellion attempts to solidify the victory that was kickstarted by the death of Palpatine and the destruction of the second Death Star. Revis has a fantastic ear for the voices of Jedi-era Luke, Han, and Leia, and she takes full advantage of our fondness for that era. I love the way she uses the Ewoks at the start of the book, leaning into conversations that fans have been having about those shaggy little shits since 1983.

There’s a bit of shameless corporate cross-promotion here as Leia and Han take their honeymoon on the Halcyon star cruiser, which is the cruiser at the heart of Star Wars: Galactic Starcruiser, the breathtakingly expensive hotel/themed experience that is connected to the Star Wars Galaxy’s Edge area in Orlando’s Hollywood Studios park. I think SW: GS sounds like a disaster, and not only would I not pay to stay there, I wouldn’t go there for free. It really sounds like my nightmare, a shitty loud cosplay event that overpromises on immersion. It sounds like a Disney cruise ship experience, and that is not my jam in pretty much every single way. In the book, though, it’s just the backdrop for the story and I just plain enjoyed spending this time with these characters. That’s all the Star Wars books are at this point, but when they’re executed at this high level across the board, that’s perfectly fine with me.

So, the response to Monday’s issue of the newsletter was very strong, and to get today’s newsletter rolling, I wanted to hit you guys with five quick reviews of 4K titles that I’ve seen and purchased recently that I think are worth your time or attention. There are so many titles being released now, and I’ve certainly embraced the format wholeheartedly. If you want to see a full list of what I’ve purchased so far, I try to keep it up to date over on Letterboxd. With that in mind…

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4K QUICK BITES

image courtesy of SPHE

There was a long period of time when music rights kept Heavy Metal completely off of home video. The only exception seemed to be occasional appearances on late-night pay cable, and that’s where I videotaped it around 1986 or 1987. For years, that was the only access I had to the film, and I think that rarity gave the movie a reputation it might not have enjoyed if it had been readily available the entire time. I have enormous fondness for it, uneven as it is, and I wish it had been a monster hit in the US, warts and all, just so it could have kicked off an era of adult animation from the studios. It is mind-boggling to me that I now own a 4K Blu-ray of the film, and that it’s as great a presentation as it is. The animation is never going to be presented in a more faithful reproduction than it is here. You can see brush strokes in the image in places. One of the things I find amazing about this generation of home video is how it’s giving animation nerds a chance to study the craft on these older titles like never before. Even better than the picture? The soundtrack. Heavy Metal’s soundtrack has always been a record of a very specific moment in mainstream pop metal, and the Dolby Atmos remix they’ve done here gave my soundsystem a real workout. This is a flawed movie, goofy and juvenile, but it is often high on its own supply, giddy about what it gets away with, and I have a real soft spot for it. That’s why I can’t get over seeing it look like this.