Favorites: May - July 2018

Favorites is a monthly feature that offers up quick thoughts on media, both new and old, that I've recently enjoyed.

I've been a bad little boy and I've neglected to do a post about my monthly favorites for the past few months.  In all fairness though, I have a good excuse: writing sucks.  If you're out there and you're thinking about writing something, anything at all, I do not recommend it.  With that being said, I'm back with a catch-up on some favorites since I've been away.  I'm also going to try to recommit myself to the awful task of writing more posts, but I can't make any promises.

Movies

Leave No Trace

Winter's Bone was received warmly throughout the film world when it came out in 2010, so you would think that it would have led to director Debra Granik getting a slew of projects made, but Leave No Trace is her first feature film since then.  (Her 2014 documentary, Stray Dog, came and went with little fanfare.)  Fortunately, this follow-up was worth the wait.  Leave No Trace is the latest in the ever-present "white people making a go of it in the woods" genre, as it follows a father suffering from PTSD related to his time in the military raising his teen daughter on the outskirts of society.  It's a story that moves with such grace and subtlety, building so gradually that you don't expect it to wallop you as much as it does by the end.


Music

Dirty Projectors - Lamp Lit Prose

After loving the era-defining Bitte Orca and Swing Lo Magellan, I was not a fan of the Dirty Projectors self-titled album from last year.  A self-indulgent, nasty, tune-deficient effort, it felt like maybe Dave Longstreth was lost without his former creative partners who infused their impulses into his best work.  So I was just as surprised as anyone by how great Lamp Lit Prose is.  A return to form in every sense of the phrase, the album re-injects energy and vitality into the band's sound.  If you hopped off of the Dirty Projectors train after the last album, give "I Feel Energy" or "Zombie Conqueror" a try.

Hatchie

I recently became a fan of Hatchie after listening to her debut EP from earlier this year, Sugar & Spice.  It's a lovely bit of 90s style dream pop that's endlessly catchy and swoon-inducing.  I have some concerns about how well her style will hold up on a full-length, but the five songs she's given us so far really do the trick.

Television

Channel Zero: Candle Cove

I checked out Syfy's anthology horror series Channel Zero, which adapts a different creepypasta each season, back when it first started, but dropped it due to time constraints and a slow start to the show. However, I recently just back into it and finished the first season.  Candle Cove doesn't ever ramp up from its deliberate pace, but eventually the show's mounting dread begins to pile on.  It's a show that knows how to unsettle the viewer with simple images (often pulling off the trick in daylight scenes) and I look forward to seeing what the following two seasons bring.

Pose

Over the years, I've slowly warmed up to Ryan Murphy's work, to the point where I even consider myself a fan.  Part of the reason is that he produces so many shows now that he has to take a step back -- instead of shepherding shows with his go-for-broke, chaotic sensibilities, he helps other writers get their vision on to the screen while providing a perfect splash of his style.  Such is the case with Pose, an iridescent blast of a show about the LGBT community and ball culture in 1980s New York.  Murphy and his team of writers find the perfect balance of joy and tragedy in this story of society's outcasts trying to express themselves.  It can get a little after-school special with its drama, and not all of the acting is up to snuff, but it earns its broad moments by making you care about its colorful, complicated characters.

Succession

Many people gradually came around to HBO's Succession, the amorphous genre blob from Jesse Armstrong (Fresh Meat, The Thick of It, the "Entire History of You" episode of Black Mirror) but I'm here to tell you that they're wrong. Succession was great from the very beginning, it's just so radical that it took a while for people to get on its wavelength.  We've seen funny dramas and dramatic comedies before, but the energy of this series feels unique and unable to be squeezed into either of those boxes.  The closest approximation to its tone is, well, The Thick of It.  All I can say is that this vicious, hilarious series about a slimy rich family is one of the best shows on television, and there's no shame in hopping on this wild freight train late.

Miscellaneous

Crunchyroll Premium

I've been watching alot of anime lately (maybe you'll see a post about it soon!) and I figured it was time to upgrade to the Premium version of Crunchyroll.  For those who don't know, Crunchyroll is the most popular (legal) anime streaming site that offers over hundreds of series, and even simulcasts new shows that are airing in Japan.  The Premium version is great -- you don't have to wait a week for the new simulcast episodes and you get to watch videos in HD on any device.  It's well worth the $6.95 per month price, even if you're just a moderate anime fan.

Pitchfork's interview with Liz Phair and Lindsey Jordan

I try not to write too much about things that are likely to end up on my year end list in this column, or else I would've covered the debut Snail Mail album Lush, which I was skeptical of at first but then quickly fell in love with.  So it was a real treat to read the recent Pitchfork feature where Lindsey Jordan, the songwriter behind Snail Mail, and Liz Phair interview each other about various topics.  Few things are more enjoyable than seeing these two different generations of indie rock have a freewheeling conversation about music and gender.

The New Yorker's profile on Ryan Murphy

Emily Nussbaum's profile of Ryan Murphy from a couple of months ago is such an entertaining read, and even the biggest Murphy skeptic -- as I used be -- might come away from it respecting him more.

The Bold Type is assuaging all showrunner change fears in its great second season

Usually the words "showrunner change" elicit waves of fear in the fans of a show.  Who can forget the huge dip in quality that Community took when main creative force Dan Harmon left the show in season four, or the post-Aaron Sorkin years of The West Wing?  A changing of the guard may as well be the death knell for a series in the eyes of some.  So when last year's renewal of Freeform's The Bold Type came coupled with the news that showrunner Sarah Watson would be parting ways with the series, it was pretty alarming.  It certainly didn't help that there were rumors that Watson cited "creative differences" with the network as the reason for her departure.  Under her leadership, season one of the The Bold Type defied expectations, delivering a thoughtful weekly delight that uniquely focused on female friendship and navigating the working world as a young woman.  If Freeform couldn't see eye-to-eye with Watson and her vision, then it was cause for concern that maybe they didn't understand what made the show great.

Thankfully, there hasn't been any quality dip in the show's second season so far.  If anything, it's been even better with Amanda Lasher (Sweet/Vicious, Riverdale) running things.  That's not to say there hasn't been a notable difference in the voice of the show.  The tone feels a touch more comedic, particularly in its first few episodes back, with characters cracking more aside jokes than it seemed like they did last season.  And the characters feel a little tweaked too, especially Sutton, whose characterization as a sexual free spirit who has had alot of partners in her life feels like a shade that was only invented this season.  The writers have also done work to expand the world of Scarlet Magazine, adding tertiary characters who make the workplace feel more real and lived-in.

In all the ways that matter, though, this is still The Bold Type we know and love.  At its core, this remains to be about what it's like to be young and trying to make it in the working world.  Vox's Constance Grady wrote a terrific piece a few weeks ago where she posited that this series is a romcom, but that the love interest is these women's careers, and that's the best way to describe what makes it so refreshing.  From the beginning, it's been devoted to telling stories about the intersection of life, love, and profession, each of those threads tangling together and complicating one another.  Most stories about young women use their jobs as mere window dressing at best, but for the three leads, the work is an essential part of what defines them.  Season two has given us more rich stories in that vein, with Jane trying to find her post-Scarlet footing as a freelancer, Kat taking on  new responsibility as a department head, and Sutton struggling to find a balance between after-hours networking opportunities and not burning herself out.

But the greatest love story of all in the The Bold Type is the one between its central trio.  The friendship between Sutton, Kat, and Jane is one of the richest relationships on television, and one of the few friendship circles that operates the way actual ones do.  Shows are so focused on dishing out story that it's rare for them to show the characters just hanging out.  Often, the best scenes in The Bold Type are the ones where the main trio are spending idle time together, filling one another in on their lives and asking each other for advice.  It's a friendship built on towers of mutual love, respect, and care, not manufactured drama and petty backstabbing.

That's not to say there isn't conflict between the women, it's just that when there is, it feels like the organic little disagreements that pop up in any friendship.  A perfect example occurred a few episodes ago in "Stride of Pride."  Jane finds out that she didn't get a job she was excited about because the magazine is trying to diversify its hires, and when she complains about it, Kat gets upset with her for implying that whoever the magazine did hire would be less qualified.  Later in the episode, they come to an understanding, as Jane learns to recognize her white privilege and Kat realizes her response might have been extreme towards her friend who desperately needs a job.  It's a conflict that lasts all of two or three scenes, but it's compelling because the show understands how thrilling it can be to see people communicate and work through their disagreements in simple but real ways.  It feels almost radical how central talking things out is to every story.

The show feels modern not just in that aspect, but in the way it engages with issues effecting our world today.  It tackles everything from body positivity to sexual assault -- last year, it covered the #MeToo movement before there was even a term for it -- with grace and aplomb.  And it does so in a way that feels organic to the show, because it knows that these are things that are baked into the everyday lives of young people.  This season has been a wonder that shows no signs of slowing down.  Not only has it stepped aside any worries about the offseason showrunner change, The Bold Type has become one of the best shows on television.

The unexpected joys Starz's masterful Howards End adaptation

When you hear about a production like Howards End, which originally aired last year in the UK and just finished its four-part American run on Starz, you assume you know what to expect.  There will probably be a very stiff and stately air to everything.  Characters will be wearing fancy, finely tailored costumes.  And of course, there will mostly likely be lots of blustering about matters of propriety, inheritance, and who's going to marry whom.  So it would be understandable if somebody saw a promo for Howards End, figured they had seen everything it had to offer, and decided to give it a pass.  But doing so would be a huge mistake, because they'd be missing out on one of the most remarkable pieces of television to air so far this year.

The miniseries comes with an extra pile of "been there done that" baggage.  Not only is it based on a classic novel that many people read in school, there is also a beloved Merchant-Ivory film adaptation (which notably won Emma Thompson an Oscar for her performance).  I'll admit that I've never read the book or seen the Merchant-Ivory film -- both of which I plan to rectify soon -- so that could be lending to my feelings of goodwill towards this latest adaptation, but it feels so fresh and unlike anything else I've ever watched.

All four parts of the series are written by Kenneth Lonergan and directed by Hettie MacDonald.  Many may know Lonergan from his extensive work as a playwright and his three excellent films You Can Count on Me, Margaret, and Manchester By the Sea.  In both media, he's applauded for his ability to create deeply human characters and scenarios, reveling in realistic dialogue that reveals the core of those people.  You can see it in the way he brings this version of the story to life as well.

Howards End is the story of the oddly intertwining lives of the Wilcoxes, Schlegels, and Basts, three families who all hail from different economic and intellectual strata but find themselves inescapably in each other's orbit.  That is to say, it does contain many of the tropes one has come to expect from these kind of Victorian-era tales of social status.  But the Starz miniseries also feels radically spritely for its genre.  The look of the show may be lush and languishing, yet its energy comes from how it sounds. Every dialogue exchange has a brightness and bounce to it, somehow balancing witticisms with character building information.  Most of that can be credited to Forster's source material, but Lonergan and MacDonald do wonders with the pace of the words spoken, letting them overlap and spill out in unexpected ways.

Perhaps the greatest work the language of this adaptation does is capture the warmth between the Schlegel siblings.  So much of the miniseries' runtime is devoted to observing Margaret, Helen, and Tibby in their downtime together at their home in London, and it's some of the most authentic sibling interaction that's ever graced the screen.  Those scenes have a wonderful lived-in quality, and even in moments where the sisters are expressing annoyance at their kid brother Tibby, it feels rooted in a deep sense of love and history.  Part of the credit is owed to the actors, who all give assured and lively performances.  Alex Lawther knows how to milk Tibby's peevishness for maximum laughs, and Philippa Coulthard imbues Helen with a naive optimism that's both endearing and frustrating, but it's Hayley Atwell who steals the show here.  She's so present and engaging here as the open-hearted, fiery, progressive Margaret, commanding the ability to convey so many complex emotions with just the flick of a facial expression.  With these actors at the center, you'll want to spend forever with the Schlegels.

That time investment pays off in the home stretch of the miniseries, when complicated circumstances arise and drive Margaret and Helen apart.  Because the show attaches us so much to these characters, the stakes of their minor schism feels absolutely world-ending.  By the end, I wanted everything to work out for them so badly that my heart hurt.

That ability to wring big emotions out of relatively small events extends to the major conflict between the families as well.  Watching the conservative Wilcox worldview clash with the progressive Schlegel mindset, and the ways they manage to bridge the gap between their ideologies through empathy, kindness, and understanding, is riveting and moving all at once.  (And in this day and age, it feels like a downright aspirational fantasy.)  Howards End makes the case for the importance of humanity in storytelling.  Sometimes you don't need cataclysmic events to make an impact on the viewer, you can just start with real emotions and let the drama take its natural course. It's a lesson that so many shows and films could stand to learn.

Favorites: March and April 2018

Favorites is a monthly feature that offers up quick thoughts on media, both new and old, that I've recently enjoyed.

Movies
Blockers
Unlike many others, I don't think the trailers for Blockers made the film look bad.  Instead, it just made it seem like a different movie than it ends up being.  Sure, all of the broad hijinks with the parents trying to stop their daughters from having sex on prom night is still there, but the finished product is much more sweet than the trailer lets on.  The film ends up being an endearing look at the anxieties of three parents facing the prospect of empty nest syndrome, and it constantly lampshades the insanity and double standards of their quest.  As a lover of teen movies, I wish it focused more on the girls' stories -- all three actresses are terrific, but Geraldine Viswanathan in particular steals the show -- but I was still satisfied with what it gave the audience.

Game Night
2018 is apparently the year of the surprising studio comedy, because Game Night is another one that came out of nowhere.  While Blockers in the warmer film, Game Night has more laughs, getting tons of mileage out of the way it heightens this night that has spun completely out of control for its protagonists.  Plus, it has Canadian sweetheart Rachel McAdams fully committing to her wild goofball role.

Thoroughbreds
I had been anticipating Thoroughbreds since it premiered at Sundance last year, and it did not disappoint.  This debut film from Cory Finley is a delightfully dark bit of formal rigor, full of austere shots that match the moral emptiness of its two murderous teen protagonists, played excellently by Olivia Cooke and Anya Taylor-Joy.


Music
Belle and Sebastian - How to Solve Our Human Problems Pts. 1-3
Belle and Sebastian are one of my top 10 favorite bands of all time, so I was pretty dismayed by the fact that I didn't love Girls in Peacetime Want to Dance back in 2015.  It's got some solid songs like "Allie" and "Cat With the Cream", but for the first time one of their stylistic switch-ups -- this time, solid gold disco -- didn't work for me.  Their How to Solve Our Human Problems series of EPs, released one month apart between December and February, work to win over those who were put off by their previous full-length.  It still retains some of their recent dancy leanings, but those songs are stronger and more concise than before, not to mention being balanced out by a majority of songs that feel like classic B&S.  Not enough people seem to be talking about this collection, most likely due to the odd release strategy, but combine these EPs and they make for a strong 15-song comeback album.

Empath
The DIY punk scene in Philadelphia just keeps producing great bands, and the latest to rise out of it is the trio Empath.  What makes them stand out is that they're a little more noise-pop than their peers.  I generally don't go for music that has a heavy noise influence like this, but their sugary hooks and clean guitar breakdowns that bubble up from the smear of sounds makes for a compelling dynamic.  If you're new to the band, their recent EP Liberating Guilt and Fear is a great place to start.

Frankie Cosmos' performance on Juan's Basement
When I was a burgeoning indie kid, I loved watching Pitchfork's Juan's Basement video series, where bands performed live sets in a dingy New York basement.  (This Beach House performance is still transcendent and other-worldly).  I was happy to learn that the show was not only back after a 10 year hiatus, but it also featured a new installment from Frankie Cosmos, where they play their incredible new album in its entirety.  Stick around for the band interview at the end, which is a batch of delight all on its own.


Television
The Terror
Horror may be the hardest genre to do well on TV.  There's something about returning to a show's world week after week that doesn't lend itself to be scared as well as a contained two-hour film does.  The Terror, the AMC adaptation of Dan Simmons' best-selling historical horror novel, takes up that challenge and succeeds.  The show follows two ships from the British Royal Navy that disappeared while trying to navigate the Northwest Passage in harsh conditions.  It's not necessarily a terrifying show, but it mounts its dread so slowly and skillfully.  Even before mysterious things start occurring to the characters, there's a foreboding that soaks the series, thanks to its desolate tundra setting.  The first season is a little over halfway done, and if it sticks the landing, it will be one of the most impressive seasons of a horror show in a while.


Miscellaneous
Molly Ringwald's essay on John Hughes (essay)
If you're on Twitter, you've probably already read this Molly Ringwald piece from The New Yorker, but it's worth sharing just in case.  Ringwald offers a wonderful, measured take on the man whose work help put her on the map, and how she's had to reckon with the more problematic elements of those movies.  It's better, more nuanced writing than most culture critics who do this for a living could muster.

On Being Needy (blog post)
Lex Croucher has come up before in my favorite series, when I talked about her podcast Make Out With Him, and she's being mentioned here again because she's great!  This time I wanted to talk about her recent blog post on bad relationships, and when to recognize that you're not being needy, it's just that you and the other person have different expectations of the relationship.  I recently just ended a longtime friendship that was very important to me for similar reasons, so I found this very helpful to read.  Maybe it will help you out too.

Pandora at Animal Kingdom
Despite being a lifelong Florida native, I only became a Disney World enthusiast recently as an adult.  I've been to the Magic Kingdom a few times in my life but I had never been to Animal Kingdom or Epcot, so my most recent trip was the perfect chance to go and experience the new section of Animal Kingdom based on James Cameron's Avatar.  My family and I chose to go on the Na'vi River Journey first since the line for Flight of Passage was an insane three hour wait.  River Journey is a standard raft-based dark ride but it's the best version I've seen, full of amazing effects and gorgeous music.  Later in the day when the Flight of Passage line went down, we rode that as well and it was another incredible experience.  If you've been on the Forbidden Journey at The Wizarding World of Harry Potter, this is a similar motion simulator experience, except maximized times 100.  The simulator screen is blown out to huge portions and the riding seat is so advanced that you really feel like you're riding a banshee in Pandora.  If you're not into rides, there's still some great scenery in the theme world.  I particularly liked the Swotu Waya drum ceremony that plays once an hour.  Overall, the experience was totally worth the trip.

Paste's piece on The Assassination of Gianni Versace (article)
I thought the second season of FX's American Crime Story was absolutely brilliant.  While it may not have been as buzzworthy and entertaining as the first season, which centered around the OJ Simpson trial, but in many ways it was more challenging and moving.  So it was pretty disappointing to see many critics being so dismissive and underwhelmed by the season.  That's why I loved this Paste article, which not only captures the power of the series, but also rightfully calls out critics on their biases against its subject matter.

Pilot Talk 2018: Rise

Every TV season, networks bring out a new crop of shows, in hopes that they'll be the next big hit.  Pilot Talk is devoted to figuring out whether these shows are worth your time based on the first episode.

Tuesdays at 9:00 PM on NBC

These days, there's an extreme dearth of great network dramas.  With all the different options of places to make content, there's not much incentive for talented creators to bring their ideas to a major network, where they are more likely to receive interfering notes and punishing episode counts.  But if there's anyone you can rely on to deliver a great network show in this day and age, it's Jason Katims.  He's responsible for two of the greatest network dramas of this century in Friday Night Lights and Parenthood, and his gift of elegantly channeling relatable human emotions into his three-dimensional characters fits well with the format.

Well whatever the great savior of network drama is, Rise is not currently looking like it.  Katims' latest show follows Lou Mazzuchelli (Josh Radnor), a restless English teacher who wants to revitalize his high school's theater department by having them do Spring Awakening, and when he asks the principal whether he can take over the position of theater director it's immediately given to him, much to the dismay of the woman who currently holds the position (played by Rosie Perez).  This setup leads to one of the most glaring issues that plagues the pilot: it seems as if the show wants us to root for Lou and his quixotic quest, but he mostly just comes off like a jerk for steamrolling in and taking a woman's job.  Not only is it bizarre that he would be given the position in the first place, we're given no context or history that would make such a thing seem reasonable.

If that were the only issue with Rise, it would be easy to overlook, but unfortunately there are many moments in the first episode that erode all of the goodwill its creative pedigree establishes.  Though it may have surface similarities to Friday Night Lights -- the intimate handheld camerawork, the muted palette, people saying the phrase "QB1" -- Rise fails to capture that same sense of emotion.  It's loaded with cliches and broad characters, like the star quarterback who tries out for the musical or the mean girl with a chip on her shoulder, all of which have been done much better by shows that came before it.  None of the conflicts laid out so far are enough to buoy those characters either.

Another network comparison that comes to mind is obviously Glee, since both shows have a musical element and wear their hearts on their respective sleeves.  But Glee was working from a different tonal framework, which allowed viewers to accept its more ridiculous moments.  The hyper-realism of Rise's aesthetic makes it harder to roll with the idea that a high school would ever entertain the notion of the drama department putting on a rendition of the sexually explicit Spring Awakening.  And without that sense of playfulness that Glee had in its early going, the earnestness of Rise just comes off as saccharine and preachy.

Still, there are embers of promise in the show that make it worth sticking with.  Moana's Auli'i Cravalho is great as Lillette, the young ingenue who's given the lead part in the musical.  She's got a great screen presence, and her level of earnestness seems properly pitched enough to work where other attempts in the pilot don't.  And the high school setting at least provides an interesting ecosystem, one that could lead to some rich storytelling in the future.  It's hard to make any show work immediately, not to mention a network one, where you have to appeal to the widest swath of people possible.  Despite the rough start, it's easy to see Rise becoming a great show if it's given enough time to grow.  Katims has earned that benefit of the doubt by now.

Grade: C+