Seen Anything Good Lately? Vol. 1

In my attempt to post more regularly to this wonderful Newsletter, I have started, I will try to write about media I enjoyed and have taken in lately. I will limit it to three times a year for now so I don’t overdo it. Also…as you may be aware…last year’s WGA Writer’s strike and SAG Actor’s Strike, both of which I supported wholeheartedly, have left this year feeling a little more empty media-wise than usual. And again, they told us that. That was part of the promise, if they didn’t get back to work with fair conditions, we were not going to get the same volume of content we were accustomed to. But even then…it still feels like a more shocking change in content than I was prepared for.

With that being said there have been some bright spots and I will try to focus on those. I’m not a critic, I’m a person who wants people to like the things I like. I’m going to talk about Movies, TV, and Podcasts. This time around, though, books are going to wait because I have a stack of them I have not dove into yet. I will also do comics next time, there I have the reverse problem, I’ve been reading so many fantastic ones lately it’s hard to narrow down just a few to write about. ON TO THE REST.

Movies

CIVIL WAR. Alex Garland’s Ex Machina was one of the first movies I saw when I moved to LA in the spring of 2015. That movie blew my mind, it felt like the arrival of a tremendous director, and for me, it introduced me to someone who had already written a great many projects that I went back and discovered. Garland has become a writer I greatly admire these last nine years, even when I have some issues with his projects I admire how frank he is, how smart he is, and how willing he is to put ideas out there that are not always enjoyable but are understandable. That unfortunately feels possible.

Civil War feels like the culmination of all of that. I think it is Alex Garland’s best work as a director to date. The cast contains Kirsten Dunst, Stephen McKinley Henderson, Caille Spaney (who if you haven’t seen her in Priscilla, watch out for that future superstar), Wagner Moura, Nick Offerman, and one of those most devastating and brief performances Jesse Plemons help Garland create a world and situation that is painfully plausible and at moments detached in a manner that I think is attended to try to wake people up. This movie will not work for everyone, but the fact that as of the writing of this, the movie has been number one at the American box office is inspiring for both original movies and complicated movies.

DUNE PART 2. Like many American audience members, I first discovered Denis Villeneuve with the release of 2013’s Prisoners. It’s been impossible to take your eyes off of him ever since. I have truly loved all of the movies he has made since then Enemy, Sicario, Arrival, Bladerunner 2049, Dune, and now Dune Part 2 a seven-movie streak…and that’s not even including the work he did before working in America…I haven’t seen anything like it since Tim Burton’s initial run of movies in the late 80’s to early 90’s. Villeneuve makes big, impressive, but never condescending blockbusters. These movies are all thoughtful and have beating, complicated human hearts, that make the spectacle you are experiencing even more brilliant. With this movie, he takes all his skills up to eleven. You won’t see a more beautiful special effects movie this year, I feel confident about that. But the biggest thing he does well is he uses the narrative of his movie in tandem with the audience’s interest in its young movie stars: Timothee Chalamet, Zendaya, Florence Pugh, and the frighteningly cool Austin Butler to make these actors even bigger stars and to make you even more invested in the movie itself. That’s old-school Hollywood magic. That’s some Steven Soderbergh stuff.

SELF RELIANCE. I cannot claim to be the president of the Jake Johnson fan club, while I adore him, and will watch anything he does I am sure there is a bigger fan than me. I will at least say I am in the Jake Johnson Fan Cabinet. Which made me very excited for his directorial debut Self Reliance. I like this movie quite a bit, it doesn’t completely go the distance with its concept. Jake Johnson plays a lonely man who is very clearly depressed after a break-up is offered to be a black market game show where he has to avoid being killed for 30 days and if he does he wins a bunch of money. And he can’t be attacked if he is with someone else, which forces him to look at his relationships with his family and forge new relationships with characters played by actors Biff Wiff and Anna Kendrick. One of Jake Johnson’s greatest superpowers is that I think he has chemistry with every actor he’s ever worked with. That is especially evident in the stretch of the movie that focuses on him and Anna Kendrick getting to know each other, I could have watched that part of the movie for another hour at least. The thing that I liked the best about this movie, though, is that I think it’s the first post-COVID movie I have seen to start articulating the loneliness we felt during that time. The awful, embarrassing, ridiculous, seemingly undefeatable loneliness that consumed a lot of us that I think a lot of us are still unpacking. This movie made me feel better about those feelings. And it made me laugh a lot too. There are a couple of incredible scenes with Andy Samberg in the movie that you just have to see for yourself.

TV

CURB YOUR ENTHUSIASM-He really ended the show this time. After 24 years, 12 seasons, and more “Fucks” than any other show has given us, Larry David ended Curb Your Enthusiasm. For my money, this was a terrific season of Curb. If I had to do a Youtube-style tier list I’d say this was An A-Tier season that came perilously close to being S-Tier. A few of the episodes of the season especially, the Bruce Springsteen episode in particular, were as funny as Curb has ever been. This was a show that before I had access to HBO, I would sneak up my grandparents’ attic to watch because they had a cable package with all the channels. Eventually loving the show so much I bought all the seasons on DVD, before the advent of streaming. This is a show that became a secret language between me and some of my closest friends. I don’t know if it is my favorite comedy ever, but it is surely the comedy that I have laughed at and quoted the most. And I will never stop rewatching this show.

ABBOTT ELEMENTARY-During the pandemic there was a great proclamation that the American sitcom was dead. Why did this happen? I think it was a combination of not having that type of show on the air for a while and misreading of the show WandaVision (which I liked). It was a take that made me very mad. I love the American sitcom, will always defend it, and believe it is an art form that will endure. That’s one of the many reasons I was so happy when Quinta Brunson’s Abbott Elementary came along. Not only was it instantly a fully-formed and terrific sitcom, but she went out of her way to say that’s the show she wanted to make. She didn’t want to make a “prestige” show on a different platform, she wanted the challenge of making an honest-to-God sitcom on a broadcast network and show it could still be one of the best shows on TV. For two seasons she did that and wowed the world, myself included. This third season, started strong, I think got a little lost in the weeds, but has redirected itself. And honestly? That’s been the trajectory of many sitcoms for the last twenty years. The first two seasons are sensational, but there’s a bit of a slump in the third season (but honestly the quality change has been so minor I would call it a hiccup), and then the show finds its course for the long term. This is one of the best shows on TV, it has one of the best casts around, and I want more Abbott Elementarys. Right now I only have two network sitcoms in my life. This and Fox’s wonderful Animal Control. I love them both, but I need four more shows like these at least.

TED, THE SERIES-It was Christmas morning of 2012, I was home from the fall semester of my junior year of college, and my dad was so excited. Earlier that year he had taken a bus trip to see a football game and on that bus ride, they had watched the movie Ted starring Mark Wahlbergg and his talking teddy bear. My dad loved this movie so much that he bought it for the family for Christmas, and we watched it the second we were done unwrapping gifts. And I gotta tell you, we as a family had a fantastic time. Now fast forward twelve years, I wouldn’t think I would be telling you that one of my favorite tv shows so far this year is the Ted prequel series on Peacock, but here we are. This show shouldn’t work. Each episode is an hour-long, unheard of in television comedy even streaming shows yet it’s completely earned, it’s set in Massachusetts in the ‘90s and doesn’t have an aggressive nostalgia problem, and at its heart, it’s a really good family sitcom. As part of the generation that brought back Family Guy from cancellation by watching reruns on Adult Swim and buying the DVDs of the show, I am reminded of the mixture of heart and absurdity from the best years of that show. Seth MacFarlane has made hundreds of hours of family sitcoms, watching him do it in a prestige streaming setting is like watching a master of the craft at the work. Not unlike what Bill Lawrence has done with his Apple TV shows, it’s exciting to watch new voices make great things and we need more of that, but it can be just as amazing watching someone who knows exactly what they’re doing and who has hundreds of thousands of hours logged doing something just knock something out of the park. The heart of the show is the cast, everyone is phenomenal, but Alanna Ubach who plays Susan, the mother of the family is just remarkable. She can make you laugh hysterically or break your heart at the drop of a hat. Similar kudos to the outstanding Max Burkholder who spends the most time with the CGI Ted (which looks great) and makes us fully believe that Ted is real. Seth MacFarlane’s vocal performance as always is hilarious but Max has to sell that relationship in addition to Ted’s existence more than anyone else on the show and just does a wonderful job. Also, Burkholder never plays his character in a way that’s creepy or off-putting, he’s a totally sweet, sincere, and often very hilarious character which is refreshing and something I didn’t expect walking into the show. In the wrong hands, his character could have been a complete disaster.

Podcasts

24 Question Party People/Bandsplain-Yasi Salek is the world’s greatest podcaster. She hosts two of my favorite podcasts that now alternate, 24 Question Party People where she asks 24 questions of some of the most iconic and interesting people in music. And Bandsplain, the podcast where I first encountered her, where she does incredibly deep, researched, and phenomenal long-form episodes about bands with cult followings. Yasi is the main reason I like these podcasts: she’s funny, she’s honest, she’s curious, and she has a very low tolerance for bullshit. Most importantly, she reminds me of how the internet used to be. The internet was a place where we could discover and get into cool things. When we lacked a shepherd in the real world to show us things that we were interested in, we could turn to the internet and do research on it. And back in the early days of the internet, if someone was writing about something, it was because they loved it. When Yasi talks about a band you get the sense it’s because she loves them, or she knows other people do and actively wants to understand why. She can be cutting, sarcastic, and remarkably funny, but she’s never condescending. She is the internet’s cool sister trying to get you into cooler stuff. The Bandsplain episode she did on the iconic band The Replacements finally gave me the keys I needed to get into that band, and now I love them. These two shows have inspired me to be more of the way the internet used to be about stuff I loved. I want people to join me in it. I’m not scared about thinking talking about the things I like is cringe. As our Queen Yasi says “I am Cringe, and I am free.”

The Lonely Island & Seth Meyers Podcast-Growing up I was a huge fan of SNL. I started with the reruns that would air on Comedy Central, but when I became old enough to stay up late and watch the show it was during the era that featured Seth Meyers on Weekend Update, Kristen Wiig, Andy Samberg, Bill Hader, Kenan Thompson, Maya Rudolph, Amy Poehler, Will Forte, and many other phenomenal luminaries. The show made me want to do improv comedy, and it introduced me to people who I have followed creatively for my whole life. This podcast follows Seth Meyers and the Lonely Island (Andy Samberg, Akiva Schaffer, and Jorma Taccone) talking about all of the Digital Shorts that the Lonely Island did while they were at SNL. From a nostalgia standpoint? This is perfectly targeted at me. However, the thing I love about it, similar to David Spade and Dana Carvey’s Fly On the Wall podcast is that it shows you the behind-the-scenes of a place like an SNL that is really cool. I almost want to use the word demystifies, but that would imply it’s removed magic for me. And the opposite is true. This podcast has shown me how much magic it takes to get great things on the air and there’s just the endless magic of listening to these people I admire talking about one of the greatest times of their lives.

End Vol. 1

THat’s it for this week. I hope you all enjoyed this pop culture breakdown, I look forward to doing it again in a few months. Next week I am betting we will go back to doing something more comic-focused!

Stay safe!

—Dave Wielgosz