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.