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I love John's drive for excellence as well as how he plays with Alex using a yes-and Taskmaster fan approach, like creating another task card.
posted to FanFare by brainwane at 9:04 AM on May 12, 2024

I agree that it would be a completely different show if everyone had the same approach, whether that approach was "clown" or "compete" or "faff about," and that it's pleasing to have the contrast!

I think it's interesting how much the show's executives and staff have to juggle, to simultaneously trade off the 3 levels of (1) making an entertaining TV show, (2) running and maintaining a workable system of games, and (3) taking adequate care… [more]
posted to FanFare by brainwane at 6:55 AM on May 13, 2024

You're using assessment words like "is"/"aren't" more than you're talking about your own subjective preferences, and I think you and I will simply have to agree to disagree about things like whether John's performance is endearing (I find it endearing and you don't) and whether it's fun to watch someone figure out something like an answer being written on the wall behind the contestants (you don't like it, I do).

Similarly, the derogatory slang term… [more]
posted to FanFare by brainwane at 12:16 PM on May 13, 2024

People who appreciated this may also appreciate Jeanne Dielman, 23 quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles (which is however more unambiguously about a person who isn't Living Their Best Life).
posted to FanFare by brainwane at 9:05 AM on May 6, 2024

Thanks for the tip! My household may check this out.
posted to FanFare by brainwane at 9:46 AM on March 4, 2024

kristi, did you listen to it? I'm looking forward to knowing what you thought of it!
posted to FanFare by brainwane at 4:17 AM on March 1, 2024

Found this film via DirtyOldTown's comment in the weekly free thread and watched it with my spouse. WE LOVED IT. So sweet and smart! Thank you so much for the recommendation!
posted to FanFare by brainwane at 2:14 PM on February 22, 2024

Background character played by a young Anthony Rapp!
posted to FanFare by brainwane at 10:23 PM on February 21, 2024

I saw this film in theaters. And the most memorable moment was that for a few seconds, somewhere in the middle of the movie, a woman runs into the storm-chasers' workroom and yells something, and I sat astonished because she looked like me. I caught a glimpse of an Indian-American woman with short hair and an unusual face and big eyeglasses, someone I had never seen before on the big or the small screen.

Turns out that was not a South Asian actress, it was Wendle… [more]
posted to FanFare by brainwane at 10:28 PM on February 21, 2024

"I loved the footnotes. I wish I could read them all fast enough though. Don’t know that I’ve ever watched a movie with footnotes before."

I just saw the film today and didn't notice any footnotes! Where should I have looked?
posted to FanFare by brainwane at 2:27 PM on June 23, 2023

Aha, thanks! I did see those and just hadn't put the word "footnotes" to them. I understand now, thank you.
posted to FanFare by brainwane at 5:32 AM on June 24, 2023

I enjoyed this film and I enjoy quieter or at least non-maximalist cinema as well (Newton, Born Bone Born, Recorder: The Marion Stokes Project, Booksmart, The Lost City, and The Blind Man Who Did Not Want To See Titanic are recent examples). I do think that post-2020 cinema from the big US studios tends to want to explore the medium in a direction argybarg is less interested in. argybarg, hope you and people who feel like you are enjoying a lot of other film instead!
posted to FanFare by brainwane at 2:48 AM on January 15, 2024

I've now watched it twice, and it was just so fun both times. The second time I could really appreciate how the movie treats Ria's concerns. And the style of it!
posted to FanFare by brainwane at 5:40 PM on November 28, 2023

I went into this assuming that Hanks's character would be villainous, that this would be a tale of a band with great potential utterly exploited and ruined by the recording label. And then it went much more softly. I gotta adjust my genre expectations.
posted to FanFare by brainwane at 6:19 PM on November 7, 2023

This is free to watch on Tubi right now and I just saw it. What a delight! I cried when the dad realized at the end that he could taste the soup.
posted to FanFare by brainwane at 6:08 PM on November 7, 2023

On the changes between the prose story and the film, and how Louise's experiences and choices thus differ.
posted to FanFare by brainwane at 11:40 AM on November 6, 2023

Viewers might be interested in some background on a particular location shot from this episode.

The sewing shop is indeed between 35th and 36th Streets on Broadway, and we see a green "35th Street" street sign in the background. But we clearly see the trio walking the 35th St-36th St block on Broadway IN QUEENS, not the bit of Broadway in Manhattan between 35th and 36th Streets (which is what people in Manhattan would, by default, assume you mean if you just… [more]
posted to FanFare by brainwane at 2:36 PM on September 27, 2023

Navelgazer: Right! The building heights, the shapes and ratios of things, etc.

(People who live outside of NYC may be asking "isn't it confusing to have two different Broadways in the same city?" YES IT IS. There are at least three, actually: one each in Queens, Brooklyn, and Manhattan, if I recall correctly. And yes, at least once I have tried to arrange to meet someone at the intersection of Broadway and such-and-such street, and there was one in Manhattan… [more]
posted to FanFare by brainwane at 2:45 PM on September 27, 2023

Interesting interview with a few of the people behind the show.

I’ve been doing this for a long time. Maybe the thing I’ve learned more than anything else is that reality is a very sturdy construct for people. No matter what happens to people, they are going to find a way to make it fit within the reality they think they’re living in. You can do anything, basically and as long as you tether it to some loose form of reality, people are going to want to believe… [more]
posted to FanFare by brainwane at 5:58 PM on September 18, 2023

This was a hilarious episode, and it made me tear up with grief - when Uma is suddenly alone at the diner, or Dickie mentioning that when someone dies you remember a thousand little details about them.
posted to FanFare by brainwane at 1:05 PM on September 15, 2023

Recently a friend watched this with teens and had to explain to them that a movie character from this era coughing a bit of blood into a hanky = tuberculosis = they will die by the end of the film, and that moreover, even stories set in the modern day where you notice a character coughing probably also are foreshadowing the character's death.

My spouse and I watched this for the first time a few days ago and:

Luhrmann was partly inspired by… [more]
posted to FanFare by brainwane at 4:50 AM on September 10, 2023

My household sadly concluded that the café was way too roomy and upscale (e.g. the surely very breakable chair hanging from the ceiling) to actually be in Jackson Heights.
posted to FanFare by brainwane at 2:41 PM on August 25, 2023

I had seen, like, a rumor of the crossover but not KNOWN it was coming. So I was just so over-the-top delighted. I said THEY'RE DOING THE THING THEY'RE DOING THE THING as a bouncing-on-the-couch chant as soon as I realized, and I laughed and I teared up, and by the end of the episode I was blissful at a level I can't recall a Trek episode causing in me in recent memory.
posted to FanFare by brainwane at 3:02 AM on July 25, 2023

I remember watching and enjoying this movie around when it came out. The scene that stuck most in my memory was Chenille telling Sara that Derrick was "one of the good ones" and noting that Black girls had to compete with white girls for him. A short scene but I think it was the first time I saw a film where someone mentioned that dynamic.
posted to FanFare by brainwane at 9:40 PM on July 7, 2023

This was absolutely my favorite episode so far of SNW. Jokes that, in retrospect, are exposition; a bunch of character development for La'an; a genuinely interesting Kirk; a Manny Coto Would Be Proud retcon .....
posted to FanFare by brainwane at 6:13 PM on July 1, 2023

I presumed Roy asked for the identity of the original video recipient so he could go shout at the guy.

The "Hey Jude" performance reminded me - hey, wasn't it just a little while ago that you couldn't legally digitally stream the Beatles' music at all? It feels like .... yesterday.
posted to FanFare by brainwane at 6:54 AM on May 7, 2023

This one is just so so so good.

My late mother-in-law loved Discworld and had a collection at her place; I bet that's where I first read it, 20+ years ago or so.

Brutha is such an unusual character in the mix of humility and certainty he demonstrates, and I cherish him.
posted to FanFare by brainwane at 9:03 PM on April 28, 2023

I really enjoyed the Deanna-Will scene -- two mature people discovering and working through some married-people stuff, and a believable sketch of what difficulties Deanna would have with her empathy in the midst of familial crisis.

The hostages on the bridge stuff.... Torture porn of that type (even if it's mostly psychological) is not Star Trek to me. Chain of Command is about the triumph of the spirit, of Starfleet values, of… [more]
posted to FanFare by brainwane at 10:13 AM on April 8, 2023

Didn't Troi say that the Changeling Riker was good in bed? Which means she slept with them? But also didn't she say that she figured out that they were an impostor as soon as they showed up?

Also, my household is still rooting for the theory that Jack's inhabited by the sex candle ghost from Sub Rosa.
posted to FanFare by brainwane at 3:55 AM on April 9, 2023

(re: the TOS torture scenes) Wow, that's terrible. I have only watched a handful of original series episodes so I didn't realize there's so much torture in there!

The particularly drawn-out scene of the hostages getting toyed with, the lingering on the cruelty and suffering of it, was just so gross. I'm not used to it in Star Trek and I don't care for it, and to me it isn't in keeping with what I want and like in Trek; if past… [more]
posted to FanFare by brainwane at 11:16 AM on April 10, 2023

A zillion years ago I enjoyed the "Five-Minute Enterprise" parody recaps that often ended with "(Enterprise heads off at Ludicrous Speed)". Today, I discovered that Star Trek: Picard gets humorous recaps by Manic Pixie Dust in the form of screen-captures with funny captions, and enjoyed the one for "Surrender", particularly the jokes on pages 10, 11, 16, and 18.
posted to FanFare by brainwane at 2:05 PM on April 15, 2023

I thought the pandering, the self-indulgent nostalgia trip, wasn't working on me. We have a bunch of the same actors and musical score that I remember, but the pleasures of TNG that I remember weren't just about those actors, those characters, and the music.

Our heroes aren't solving problems through creative diplomacy, a major character kept a secret about weird stuff they were going through instead of telling others immediately so they could help fix it, our… [more]
posted to FanFare by brainwane at 6:48 AM on April 14, 2023

Don't get me started. Don't even get me started.

In Year of 1000 Men I deeply enjoyed the indie-theater dancing and stagey movement, especially Trevor's spinning away.
posted to FanFare by brainwane at 3:39 AM on April 11, 2023

I hadn't heard about this movie till this post. A movie about a knowledge worker being really good at their job? Full of office meetings? I am super into it and will try to watch it!!
posted to FanFare by brainwane at 5:59 AM on April 8, 2023

I recall Jade at the restaurant acting racist towards Nate in the past so that's how I'm reading her continued disdain. No matter how much he achieves, he will never be more than a [slur] to her, and his family will never be more than a bunch of [slur]s to her, and she wants him to know that.
posted to FanFare by brainwane at 5:50 PM on April 6, 2023

During this episode's fight scene I yelled "You have a ranged weapon!!" many times. Do not engage in melee if you have the choice of using a ranged weapon from afar instead!
posted to FanFare by brainwane at 11:49 AM on April 4, 2023

I have a pretty wacky hypothesis: the genetically engineered tribble is a JMS reference.

In 2004, J. Michael Straczynski and Bryce Zabel proposed rebooting the Star Trek universe and their proposal included a suggestion: what if the tiny cute Tribbles were "equipped with an agenda, an attitude... and teeth?"

The proposal as a whole makes for interesting reading but I think the Tribble suggestion is pretty laughable. So I think maybe the… [more]
posted to FanFare by brainwane at 3:34 PM on March 24, 2023

I read that there are 9 songs that didn't make it to the movie but we do have the music (though the footage has been lost so we can't see the dance sequences). May chase those down.
posted to FanFare by brainwane at 12:04 PM on March 13, 2023

Shaw monologuing at Picard about Wolf 359 reminded me of O'Brien in the TNG episode "The Wounded" a little -- or Riker's monologue in "The Pegasus". Trauma bubbling up from terrible incidents early in their Starfleet careers.

Changeling: "Noooo they be stealin' my bucket"

Jack just after the mirror scene: "Crap, I fell asleep watching Twin Peaks."

Shaw responded… [more]
posted to FanFare by brainwane at 8:18 AM on March 10, 2023

On a NYC subway scene in the film:

Gillett and Bettinelli-Olpin do not live in New York, and they admit that their version of the subway owes as much to cinema as it does to real life. That fits with the ethos of the self-referential “Scream” series, in which characters are continually offering meta-commentary on what they are going through. “‘Warriors’ is like my touchstone for subway movies,” Bettinelli-Olpin said, referring to the iconic 1979 action flick about… [more]
posted to FanFare by brainwane at 8:03 AM on March 10, 2023

I utterly burst into tears at the childbirth scene.
posted to FanFare by brainwane at 9:22 PM on February 24, 2023

I enjoyed this episode and am looking forward to more!

I joked with my spouse that the show was so visually appealing to a particular demographic that it was like the outcome of an experiment like "what if we made a show entirely based on letting set dressers and designers have fun?"

And my spouse pointed out that, in a way, "Hello Tomorrow" is a show that starts with a particular (pre-existing!) aesthetic and then asks: what… [more]
posted to FanFare by brainwane at 5:34 AM on February 20, 2023

Right! As I was watching the opening credits I thought: this was made by people who grew up on the Jetsons and now want to try an adult treatment of that premise.
posted to FanFare by brainwane at 6:29 AM on February 20, 2023

I like that "Home Economics" gets at some of the frictions that show up when you're rich or poor relative to someone you care about. One sibling makes a loan to another; several episodes later, when the borrower tries to pay it back, the lender tries to refuse the payment, calling it a gift, and the borrower is insulted by the attempted charity, because this ties into their own insecurity about being seen as a good provider for their family. And yeah, the… [more]
posted to FanFare by brainwane at 5:49 AM on February 20, 2023

I figure there must be more thoughtful and informed critical commentary somewhere, like, some think tank policy person analyzing it with footnotes and whatnot, but I haven't come across that yet. I welcome links!
posted to FanFare by brainwane at 5:51 AM on February 20, 2023

For this episode in particular I'd like to know more about earlier drafts and what got cut for time. For instance, I bet there was more detail in an earlier draft regarding how Breanna coached Emma so she could actually do the elevator presentation.

Have we seen Nash before?
posted to FanFare by brainwane at 9:57 AM on January 4, 2023

"Reasons why the Benoit Blanc movies work so well": "He is barely a character, he is a plot device.... It is not Benoit Blanc’s movie. It is a movie with Benoit Blanc in." Which makes me think of Mad Max: Fury Road and the actual driver of the plot -- Furiosa, not Max -- much as Helen here drives the plot much more than Blanc does.
posted to FanFare by brainwane at 3:32 AM on December 29, 2022

I haven't listened to it yet, but Good One: A Podcast About Jokes has published an interview with Johnson about Glass Onion as its December 29th, 2022 episode:

Vulture podcast critic Nick Quah sits down with film director Rian Johnson, live from Vulture Fest '22, to discuss his new film

posted to FanFare by brainwane at 11:58 AM on January 2, 2023

Song Exploder (podcast) Episode 245: Son Lux (feat. Mitski & David Byrne), discussing the song “This is a Life” (the end credits song for Everything Everywhere All at Once).

For this episode, I spoke to Ryan Lott from Son Lux, as well as the Daniels. Ryan tells the story of how the song was created, with his bandmates and Mitski and David Byrne and Daniels all adding to it and shaping it.

I enjoyed the moment when Lott… [more]
posted to FanFare by brainwane at 8:33 AM on January 2, 2023

Sophie muses: "What is a con? .... It's a set of artificial circumstances designed to elicit an intended response." And suggests Harry will someday go back "with a very distinctive set of skills" which alludes both to Eliot's frequent "it's a very distinctive [x]" assessment and to the classic quote from Liam Neeson's character in Taken, "I don't know who you are. I don't know what you want. If you are looking for ransom, I can tell you I… [more]
posted to FanFare by brainwane at 4:20 AM on December 21, 2022