#13: Good movies, bad TV, and annoying writers
Death By Consumption
7/29/24 - 8/4/24
Do you remember when it wasn't 100 degrees every day? Me neither! Even worse, the MTA decided to make sweaty-back season even worse for me, personally, by essentially shutting down every single subway near my apartment for the next 2 months, virtually guaranteeing I arrive everywhere absolutely drenched until, like, Halloween. It could be worse, yes, but it certainly could also be better!
Trap (2024) — at Nitehawk Prospect Park
It's important to note up front that I accidentally ingested 2x the amount of edibles I intended to before this movie. Which, it turns out, was the perfect amount!!!! Move over Twisters, THIS is the dumb movie of the summer. Our theater was packed and everyone was absolutely dying with laughter throughout (except for the couple next to me, who were taking it very seriously). I won’t spoil anything because it’s best to go in blind and just get swept along in the ride. Josh Hartnett is legitimately great, even when delivering some of the most psychotic lines ever written, and M. Night wins father of the year for making an entire film just to launch his daughter’s pop music career. It's nepotism, but cute nepotism!
The Beast (2023) — on Criterion
A few days later and I'm still not sure how I feel about this one. The film follows Léa Seydoux and George MacKay across three different timelines — Paris in the early 1900s, LA in 2014, and somewhere in 2044 — as a pair of star-crossed lovers. The Paris stuff really drags, which is a bummer because it's the first hour of the film, so I wouldn't be surprised if people turned it off halfway through. But if you stick it out you get to 2014 LA, where the movie abruptly switches into a David Lynch-esque trippy Hollywood nightmare (people over-use David Lynch as a reference when they just mean "weird", but this shit is actually Lynchian), a very welcome tonal shift that makes the rest of the film fly by. I'd say overall I enjoyed it, mostly due to the wild swings it took, and to Léa's performance. Even though the film wasn't as clever as it thought it was, I'd rather they make more movies like this than fucking Deadpool vs. Wolverine SORRY.
"The Mole" season 2 — on Netflix
Speaking of not nearly as clever as it thinks it is! This season was... not great. The Mole is so frustrating!!!! The overall concept and game design has been great for 20 years now, but ever since they lost Anderson Cooper as host, they've failed to recapture the magic of those original 2001-2002 seasons. The Netflix version is FINE, but suffers from the same problem as all Netflix shows: it feels half-assed, like they're not interested in making an actually good TV show, and more interested in keeping your eyes glued to the screen at all costs.
All Netflix programming feels like this, to some extent (the only real exception I can think of lately is "Ripley"). You can practically smell the panic sweat of executives, anxiously checking "minutes viewed" data on the shows they greenlit, hoping they managed to swindle enough people into watching for just long enough that they can earn their next salary bump.
The cast of Netflix's "The Mole" season 2 feels like an AI version of a reality cast. There's a Black woman who gets like no screen time. An old man. An annoying cop who thinks he's smarter than he is. A gay guy. A cocky muscle bro and a blonde woman, who by episode 3 are fully making out even though we never even saw the relationship begin, which just feels perfunctory, like: we're both hot and there's a camera pointed at us so... showmance, I guess? We learn almost nothing about any of these people's lives or feelings. I literally can't tell you the name of the Mole because I've already forgotten it. And the less said about creepy Ari Shapiro, the new host, the better!!!! Stick to radio, Ari.
To paraphrase the reality TV expert herself Kim Kardashian, no one wants to get off their ass and produce good reality TV anymore!
"Big Brother" season 26 — on CBS
Wellllllllllll, one person does want to produce good reality TV. First, some background: Big Brother is one of the worst shows of all time. But every season they manage to cast exactly one person who I become unreasonably obsessed with. Despite hating nearly every episode of every season, I will dutifully tune in to watch for exactly as long as the person I'm invested in lasts in the game. Which means I'm simultaneously rooting for them to do well, while also hoping they get voted out so I can finally be free.
This season, producers had the brilliant idea to cast one of the most deranged type of people you can find: a 50-year-old realtor from Utah. By day 5 in the house (to win she would have to survive 85 more days in the house btw), this cracked-out grandmother was already so consumed with paranoia, insomnia, and pure hatred that she woke up and, before anyone had even had coffee, unleashed a 9-minute screaming rant against the season's pretty boy, mocking his "crazy eyes" and issuing the instantly iconic burn, "Your words are shit, so you should just put them back in your ass."
Then, a few days later, she turned her sights on another woman, hilariously mocking her walk out of nowhere (this clip alone should win the Emmy — it's so casually hateful!!!!! A masterpiece). And rumor has it she's now decided to potentially start having a romance with a married retired cop in the house??? (Fear not, I don't think he's technically cheating on his wife, since they are reportedly swingers. This season is wild!)
This woman is clearly unwell, but until Angela gets kicked out and I'm freed from Big Brother for another year, I guess I'm spending my summer watching this Utah grandmother wage psychological warfare on a bunch of 20-somethings!
The Savage Detectives, by Roberto Bolaño, translated by Natasha Wimmer (2007) — in paperback
I've had this on my shelf forever, but haven't felt the urge to crack it until it landed on the failing NYTimes' Best Books of the 21st Century. And you know what? The NYTimes was right on this one! The novel is very long and meandering and has about 100 characters and the plot is almost nonexistent, but Bolaño is such a beautiful writer so I never felt bored. Just like my boy Nabokov, he can construct these intricate, endless sentences that are packed with rhythm and land with a punch. The book is a really beautiful meditation on the passion of youth, the glories and failures of Latin American art on the global stage, and poetry. Many of the characters reminded me of myself when I was younger — I had a mortifying flashback to when my family vacationed in the Dominican Republic and my beach read was fucking Dante's Divine Comedy. The pretension!!!!!!
Honestly, a 600+ page book all about a couple of poets roving around the world and endlessly talking about niche literary movements seems like something I would absolutely loathe, so I'm still in awe at how Bolaño was able to make such an impact with this book. Honestly a masterpice!
"Four Friends, Two Marriages, One Affair — and a Shelf of Books Dissecting It" by Chris Heath — in NYMag
If you want a shorter read about annoying-ass writers, this article has four of them! Essentially, this is the story of a pair of married couples that were friends, all of them writers, until two of them had an affair. And now three of these people seemingly can’t stop writing about the affair.
Hannah Pittard and Andrew Ewell, in particular, seem like two of the most obnoxious people on the planet, and I understand why their marriage was toxic. They’re both completely self-absorbed and can’t stop mythologizing themselves. Which is why this article is so good: it never outright says, “Aren’t these people weird and annoying?” but that’s the subtext on every page.
For example, according to Hannah, in her 20s she would “go to Bloomingdale’s in Chicago, gather up an array of expensive clothes she couldn’t afford, then lock herself in the well-lit safety of a dressing room, undress, and go to sleep for hours surrounded by the outfits she would almost never buy before waking and trying them on, playacting the personalities she imagined she one day might have.” NO SHE WOULD NOT!!!!!!! THAT IS NOT A REAL THING SOMEONE WOULD DO. SLEEP FOR HOURS IN A PILE OF CLOTHES AT BLOOMINGDALE’S???? COME ON. This is the most obvious case I've ever seen of a person trying to force whimsy into their public persona and reading it made me absolutely spiral.
Later, Hannah claims that once a year, “almost always on my birthday,” she goes to the ER for a bad back. That is also extremely fake!!! You do not go to the fucking ER on your birthday every year for a bad back, Hannah, stop trying to make yourself into an indie movie character!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
The only one who seems cool and normal is the guy who was cheated on, Ryan Fox. It’s rare to have a poet be the least annoying writer in the group, but he definitely comes across the only one you’d really want to hang out with. For one, he's the only one of the four who hasn’t written about the affair, and the only one who seems to have moved on from it. When interviewed about it all, he sums it up as: “People can’t get enough of each other.” That’s mostly true, except I’ve definitely had enough of these people.