Monday, July 10, 2023
recent fiction intake, first half of 2023 edition
Gilligan’s Island, the first (mumble) episodes or so on DVD while killing time in a ski town (I don’t ski). I had only ever caught smatterings of this back in the era of teevee re-runs. It’s often kind of charming and also periodically extremely racist, which I guess maybe sums up a lot of mid-20th-century American television.
Reservation Dogs, season 2. I think this show might be about as good as TV has ever gotten.
A Prayer for the Crown Shy, Becky Chambers. A Monk & Robot book. I like these, they’re enjoyable, but if I’m honest they feel pretty slight compared to the Wayfarers books. Intentional I’m sure. A fine way to spend an evening without dwelling on the numbing horror of the actual world, but they don’t stick in my head all that much.
Wednesday, Netflix. This could have been good. There’s a lot of talent involved, it’s (mostly) well cast, it’s often very pretty, the costuming is a delight, and the writing is… Ok, first of all, why are they doing a Harry Potter? Second, why does Wednesday need to learn about the power of friendship? Why does she just kind of suck as a character, despite Jenna Ortega’s completely dialed-in inhabiting of the part? Why does the overall mode of this thing undermine all the appealing aspects of the Addams Family material it’s drawing on?
Letterkenny. We’re kind of always watching this.
Avatar: The Way of Water. You know what, I smoked a bowl in the parking lot before the movie, and I had a blast. It’s gorgeous. It’s the first time I’ve felt anything more than polite indifference about a 3D glasses kind of experience. Also, at this late date, and thinking back on Titanic (a movie which came out so long ago that I saw it on a youth group trip to a mall theater) I kind of enjoy the meta of “this very expensive James Cameron movie is totally gonna bomb so hard you guys, just wait”. Many criticisms of the basic ideas and form of these movies are valid, and also I am still waiting to hear that Cameron has cut Alan Dean Foster a very, very large check.
The Lincoln Lawyer, Netflix. My girlfriend was out of town. I was looking for something to watch with the cat while I sat on the couch and wrote shitty code on my laptop. It was Fine. They draw it out a bit too much. The whole plot with the tech mogul… Ehhhh. The main guy is implausibly good and decent. It’s sort of pleasantly low-key. It delivers a couple of really good lines. This is airport novel material but sometimes you just want airport novel material.
Point Break. It had been so long since I saw this. It’s way more over the top than I remembered. “Quit being in the FBI and go surfing but maybe don’t rob banks in a murdery way” is a reasonable stance. If this movie has a stance.
Supernatural. A procedural ghost murder thing with stupid but surprisingly consistent rules? The X-Files by way of Buffy the Vampire Slayer? I dunno. We’re a couple seasons in. This show is completely absurd, and intermittently flat-out appalling, but if I’m honest it’s grown on me. Better-crafted than it has to be, and whoever does the visual effects knows what they’re about. More overt about its religious preoccupations than I usually expect. Weirdly obsessed with quirky vintage motel room interiors. Too much of the thing where the main characters yell at each other about the same stuff over and over again. Like many of its genre cousins, I suspect this works best as an anthology series with a frame of loose continuity and some recurring secondary characters, and kind of hope it won’t get eaten by the Big Plot stuff as it goes along. But then also, holy shit, there are somehow 15 seasons of this?
Ronin. I had never actually seen this. The car chases are legit.
The Witcher: Sword of Destiny. We watched the Netflix show. I liked it despite not being that into all the violence and only knowing what was going on maybe half of the time. I’ve been reading some of the story / book stuff. I expected it to be easier to follow the overall plot of the books than the show, and I was wrong. On the whole, this is derivative schlock in a very uneven set of translations, and it’s frequently pretty sexist, but it’s also… Kind of appealing and humane in an unexpected way?
Lucifer, Netflix. I was home alone again. I wanted pulpy and ignorable. “The literal devil runs a nightclub” is one thing as a setup, “Lucifer uses his oddly-limited and very specific powers to help the LAPD solve crimes and it’s kind of basically Castle” is another. It has its moments, but I’m not sure I’m overly motivated here. It’s a little too standard network murder procedural with hot cops. The cat was indifferent.
The Name of the Wind, Patrick Rothfuss. A couple of trusted friends have recommended this as something special, and they were right. That rare big slab of fantasy that felt like something new despite a lot of familiar genre furniture (with hyper-competent protagonist in a school setting). I am somewhat wishing my trusted friends had mentioned that there’s a second book but not yet (or maybe ever) a third. I’ll probably read the second one anyway.
Dungeons and Dragons: Honor Among Thieves. This was great. A well-resourced action fantasy where the action and the fantasy are both good and the story is constrained enough to make for an entertaining, self-contained film with relatable stakes. Actually funny. Visually appealing in a way that’s meaningfully distinct from the standard visual language of fantasy movies circa now, which is kind of amazing for a product of a media empire that I’ve always thought of as deriving entirely from a slurry of standard fantasy components. There’s a straightforward lesson here that I very much doubt the movie machinery on the whole is prepared to learn, which is go smaller. (Even when you’re going big.) Also: Jarnathan. More bird guys, please.
Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse. This was also great. I’m full up on superhero material in the general case, but this really stands out. The maximalist, meta-textual multiverse thing is probably getting worn out fast, but here it works and has things to say. If you’ve seen it or aren’t worried about spoilers, I recommend Eric’s Superheroes, Miles Morales, and the Fallacy of Hard Choices.
Priscilla Queen of the Desert. Flawed, I think, but kind of an amazing movie in ways I wasn’t expecting.
What We Do in the Shadows (tv show version). I guess we’re a couple of seasons behind? Somewhere along the way this kind of devolved into a mishmash of its constituent parts and characters doing stuff in a way that suggests it probably should have wrapped things up a while ago, but at the same time it’s still a pleasant enough diversion with individually funny bits.
The Bear, season 1. I was iffy on this at the start, because I’m weary of “people yell fruitlessly at each other” as a driving mechanic and stories about the aftermath of suicide are hard even (or maybe especially) when they’re done well (see also Reservation Dogs). On the other hand, I’m a sucker for workplace stuff. Anyway, it’s good. The second-to-last episode of the season is a basically perfect chunk of shit-hitting-the-fan chaos.
(Did I read a sentence like that last one somewhere else about this show? Probably. I’m not sure I’m even capable of original thoughts or phrases at this stage of the game.)