what are you watching?

[yourfriendclaire]

SEV! ER! ANCE!

Has any show come out so guns blazing on its first season like this? Just like tonally, conceptually, visually, whole world-ly? It's so stunningly complete. With this show and Everything Everywhere All At Once I think we're entering a new era of elevated mind-bender—fingers crossed for an echo of that late 90s/early 2000s moment when all movies were about the collapse of consensus reality (Matrix, Thirteenth Floor, Truman Show etc). I don't know what it says about our culture other than the obvious (we live in a simulation).

[meadows]

Haven't watched Severance- I'm saving all of Apple TV for some future date, to explore en masse

Is anyone watching Our Flag Means Death? It's so funny and so sweet- by the end I had a tear in my eye. Kind of a slow-ish start so if you aren't fully amazed, be patient!

[richjensen]

Severence has caused me to re-evaluate Ben Stiller's contribution to the culture.

[richjensen]

(I really wanted to say, 'reëvaluate.')

[richjensen]

Partner and I were screaming at the screen for the last ten minutes of the season closer. I don't believe that has ever happened before in the history of family screen-viewing.

[yourfriendclaire]

Ben Stiller also directed some episodes of Escape at Dannemora, which I thought was great. Superlative claim: comedians who go dramatic, both in front of and behind the camera, always excel. All the clowns are sad beneath it all!

@meadows We just finished Our Flag Means Death! A slow start but agreed, a real sweetie of a show. It's hard to sell to people without spoiling the turn it takes. But it feels like a real gap in all our educations that we didn't all already know that queer relationships at sea were extremely common during the Golden Era of Piracy!! No spoilers

[richjensen]

We have moved in to The Morning Show which has some fantastic moments that shine through its a-list soap opera gloss. [Update. S2 E7 is so schmaltzy and preposterous I withdraw any endorsement of this project.]

On the weekends when the teen checks in (soon to leave us and join the mad swarm of global proto-adults) we catch up with whatever Atlanta is offering.

[infopetal]

finally starting Severance!

[richjensen]

began the flag show. charmed. (they make such wonderful flags!) thank you dismantle.cult for dismantling our evenings.

[richjensen]

we can speak of big screen here too, right?

been out in the malls a bit to breathe in their saltpeter fragrance of collapse, everything simultaneously over-priced and abandoned, images in a fever.

last night our provocation was 'men'. i've found alex garland's prior directing worth watching and this was enough to demand that partner and teen join me at the AMC multiplex on the fourth floor of the mostly uninhabited Pacific Place Center in Seattle's mostly uninhabited downtown core.

movie: city lady finds respite from gendered pagan archetypes.

beautiful photography and sensitive acting deliver a surrealism that works.

warning, celt is a gruesome imaginary.

[m o l l y]

I like this as short story. I had a nice little stroll through google image search for Pacific Palace Center Seattle. It calmed me.

[kmikeym]

everyone is talking about The Bear on hulu. i liked it. a cooking show.

[yourfriendclaire]

I was mostly nonplussed by "Men" except for that truly gruesome & unreal ManBirth scene

[alex]

I am thinking about setting up an identical copy of Dismantle.work for us to practice discussing The Rehearsal before we discuss it here, if anyone is interested

[alexshred420]

I am at an Airbnb and they have a big TV.

I watched the first two episodes of the Last of Us (scary, sad, but good)

And the first five episodes of White Lotus (funny, well-written, good skewering of privilege)

I downloaded The Rehearsal to try and watch that, but honestly, I find Nathan Fielder pretty manipulative and hard to watch. He could punch up, or punch himself, but he punches down, and I'm not here for it. If he was fucking with rich people I'd get into it but he's mostly fucking with common people, right? Fuck that.

[infopetal]

I was grumpy about Oscars noms this week because so many of the movies are bleh, but I looked up what movies were released in 2022 and realized it was a generally bleh year.

what I think was objectively the best movie of 2022 was All the Beauty and the Bloodshed. I am a changed person.

also fun and slept on were Girl Picture (Swedish teens! the mall! smoothies!) and the Disney(?!) Alice Rohrwacher–directed short Le Pupille (ornery French children! nuns! cake!).

[m o l l y]

I am watching The Office.
It makes me feel fragile and fresh. Somehow I waddled, like a toddler lost in Manhattan, through the world and into 2022 (I started last year) without ever having the plot spoiled. I knew nothing of Jim and Pam's future. What would happen with Holly? Would Michael ever find love? Will Dwight and Angela or won't they? Jo the CEO!
I'm on the 2nd to last season. Michael is gone. Andy is the boss. Pam is pregnant again. I abstained and it was worth it.

[yourfriendclaire]

Totally a bunk movie year! Can you believe Avatar is up for best picture?

All The Beauty and the Bloodshed was perfect
I liked Marcel the Shell a lot
I hear Women Talking is great but I haven't made it out to theaters for that one yet

Everything is aggressively mid. My big media theory now is that everything is more or less "fine" and whether a movie/TV show/album is interpreted as brilliant or embarrassingly bad is just a completely arbitrary pendulum swing dependent on the likability of the people involved and whatever is cooking in the media conversation—whether we "as a culture" have determined that such-and-such deserves a win (Brendan Fraser) or deserves to be pilloried (Olivia Wilde).

[kmikeym]

I liked the STUTZ doc where Jonah Hill makes a film about his therapist.

So far this year the only thing I've liked has been the 1982 film 'King of Comedy' and the night Jona and Claire came over and we just watched short films and trailers from Ryan's plex server.

[m o l l y]

Man, I saw The Last Picture Show on the big screen and it is goooood.

[kmikeym]

Just started watching it. Amazing how long it goes without any dialogue!

[kmikeym]

Finished 'Last Picture Show' and it was very good.

Watched 'Heat' and didn't love it.

Finally started 'Last of Us' on Home Box Office.

[m o l l y]

Just saw the Irish film, The Quiet Girl, based on the novella, Foster, by Claire Keegan. It's rill perdy and I keep thinking about (alive) horses found at sea. I recommend.

[infopetal]

a very cozy rec: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Makan ... aiko_House

[kmikeym]

i liked this movie. it made me cry a little.

https://www.straymovie.com/

[kmikeym]

Anyone else use letterboxd? it's fun to see what other people are watching...

https://letterboxd.com/kmikeym/

[richjensen]

Onboard the LAST OF US train, though ep. 2 was pretty tedious. Before that, followed my Mother's suggestion to check out Ancient Apocalypse. Always good to have something to share with the elders.
Quite a bit of good information about very old cities and megaliths though obscured by a hokey breathless style. Joe Rogan is a hype-man for this researcher so there's a weird moment in one of the latter episodes where he appears without explanation for a sort of interview in the middle of a random desert seeming kind of dazed and sunburned, or maybe having a chemo treatment? (His skin seems oddly colored for reasons that are not revealed.) Anyway, we read THE DAWN OF EVERYTHING last year which covered similar ground with much more curiosity and rigor, but the pictures were nice. Can't seem to remember what screen time we consumed previous to that. Did I mention the Guillermo Del Toro Cabinet of Curiosities creepshow anthology ? LOVED the weird pastiche of 70's excess with Peter Weir. Made me go back to look at MANDY from that film-maker, Panos Cosmatos. (The short was better.)

[kmikeym]

Just watched The Philadelphia Story (1940) and I liked it a lot except for the beginning when Cary Grant physically assaults Hepburn for laughs.

Are friends here using letterboxd for movies?