Briefs
Tuesday, April 25th, 2023
At The Ringer, Succession via the prism of Tom:
Along with a five-figure Patek Philippe watch, Tom delivers a joke to Logan: “It’s incredibly accurate. Every time you look at it, it tells you exactly how rich you are.” Unimpressed, Logan says, “That’s very funny. Did you rehearse that?” … While watching Macfadyen in that scene, [Adam] McKay recalls, [Jesse] Armstrong leaned over to him and said, “Well, I’m going to have to expand this character.”
Friday, January 6th, 2023
Pull up a chair, Bob Iger absolutely regales us for over an hour on the A16Z podcast.
Tuesday, August 2nd, 2022
The problem is not that television presents us with entertaining subject matter but that all subject matter is presented as entertaining.
Neil Postman, Amusing Ourselves to Death
The act of thinking … is as disconcerting and boring on television as it is on a Las Vegas stage.
Neil Postman, Amusing Ourselves to Death
Ventriloquism, dancing and mime do not play well on radio, just as sustained, complex talk does not play well on television.
Neil Postman, Amusing Ourselves to Death
Monday, April 11th, 2022
Screenwriting — and acting — genius: Billions, Cory Stoll as Mike Prinz, after a bluff that apparently puts Chuck Rhodes in prison, is watched by the replacement attorney general as he leaves to go to the elevator. Feeling faint and queasy from moments ago losing $3.5b in crypto while pretending to know nothing about it, he leans on the wall in a way a person just wouldn’t normally do. And she knows he was lying. On this subtle display of body language rests so much. Plus, the episode ends with Jerry Garcia singing “Don’t You Let That Deal Go Down”.
Friday, March 25th, 2022
Top-flight series of Hebrew animated shorts חדר וחצי about a bachelor clown and his home.
Monday, February 14th, 2022
Oh, the minor yet multitudinous wonders of our age! I just discovered Yarn, where you “search by word or phrase for TV, movie and music clips”. What a fun business to have created!
Thursday, January 20th, 2022
The most important Abraham Accords peace dividend so far: the beautiful Dubai, Dubai, Dubai by Israeli comedienne Noam Shuster-Eliassi. Israel’s biting satire — mocking Arabs and Israelis alike, and in Arabic leavened with Hebrew (or is it vice versa) — has more of a chance of freeing the Middle Eastern masses than in retrospect the US Armed Forces and State Department ever had. As Frank Herbert kind of say: he who control the comedy control the universe.
Thursday, December 16th, 2021
Ouch, Jeff Garlin puts himself through a Vanity Fair struggle session with one Maureen Ryan who speaks in such chilling gems as “I see a lot of people complaining about what I would call consequence culture, and then not doing any work.” Garlin seems to be eagerly drilling his own grave.
Oh, by the way, I certainly want to make changes. I don’t know what they’ll be. But I know that I certainly can make adjustments. Because I’m pretty much, to be frank, a loose cannon on set—not a loose-cannon saying mean-spirited things. But anything that crosses my mind in my ADD way, I just say, if I think it’s funny. And I may have to figure out a new way to do that—[because I’m] not entitled to that. See, I’m open to it all. I’m humble. I’m not going to be Baron Von Defending Myself. Except with the physical altercation, which has never happened and never will. I also am a big believer that when there’s a comedian and you don’t like what they’re talking about, don’t watch them. Don’t appreciate them. You know, shut them out of your life. I understand that. Anyone who, in my comedic ways, doesn’t find me funny, whether it’s on The Goldbergs, Curb, stand-up, I’m all for it. Please just push me out of your life. I’m all good.
Can I be Suzie Green for a minute and yell Just shut the fuck up!
So apparently this New Yorker piece on Succession actor Jeremy Strong was considered a hit job, but it doesn’t seem so to me, just your typical profile braided with the bitterness of a fellow Yalie alum and thus former equal up against a subject now immortalized on the cultural pantheon:
Strong’s dedication strikes some collaborators as impressive, others as self-indulgent. “All I know is, he crosses the Rubicon,” Robert Downey, Jr., told me. In 2014, Strong played Downey’s mentally disabled brother in “The Judge.” (To prepare, he spent time with an autistic person, as Hoffman had for “Rain Man.”) When Downey shot a funeral scene, Strong paced around the set weeping loudly, even though he wasn’t called that day. “It was almost swatting him away like he was an annoying gnat—I had bigger things to deal with,” a member of the design team recalled.
Wednesday, December 15th, 2021
Shea Serrano at The Ringer dives in to the most magical scene in “All the Bells Say”, the season 3 finale of Succession:
Greg, a 10-foot-tall gingerbread man and also Tom’s accidental best friend, approaches. Before Tom can say anything, Greg begins telling Tom about how he and a woman a few steps removed from royalty have hit it off. Tom lets Greg talk, but he’s only half-listening because he’s still rolling around in his head the information that Shiv has just given him. When Greg is finished, Tom has a realization, and pivots away from the talk of Greg potentially becoming the king of Luxembourg via a countess. “Greg, listen,” he says, and then he pulls out two chairs from a nearby table while looking around to make sure nobody is within earshot.
Sunday, November 21st, 2021
“I love Shivan, I love Tom, I love Greg.” The increasingly tolerable Russell Brand celebrates Succession, his favorite TV program for a while.
Friday, November 12th, 2021
In this fun review of the Succession episode “Lion in the Meadow” (though surely a better title would have been “King Kong Comes to Dance”), Andrew Gruttadaro quotes the episode’s closing line “a timely fucking Evian”. Having watched that scene a few times over last night, I thought, no, there is no adjective between “timely” and “Evian”. But rewatching the scene, I’m wrong — I didn’t even hear the fucking word, that’s how much we’ve debased it.
A timely Evian; like everything else in this episode, what a great line! And this review transcribes much of the juiciness. The author also has a short Twitter thread on one of its great set-pieces, Adrien Brody’s Josh Aaronson’s layers.
Wednesday, November 10th, 2021
The best Star Trek starships by Josh Tyler at Giant Freakin Robot.
Saturday, November 6th, 2021
Nice appreciative review at Cult of Mac of the latest Foundation episode, “The Missing Piece”.
This week’s episode gave him the Lee Paciest showcase any of your finer Lee Paces could hope to deliver. Appearing to be on death’s door yet radiating immortality, staggering through the desert with red, peeling skin and dirty feet, a false messiah nearly killing himself to gain even more power. This is the kind of thing that simply has to be seen.
Lee Pace for James Bond. Or Scaramanga at least.
Saturday, October 30th, 2021
After googling Jordan Hoffman, I see his Every Episode of Every ‘Star Trek’ Series Ever, Ranked (all 695 of them) from 2014, for Playboy no less.
Wednesday, October 13th, 2021
I think that if we were told 40 years ago that Bill Shatner would actually go into space at age 90, we’d think things turned out pretty well.
Monday, July 19th, 2021
Via Hacker News, “The Eleven Laws of Showrunning” by Javier Grillo-Marxuach is so beautifully written and serves as a primer for management of anything
As special and wonderful as creativity and process may be, they are assets that can be channeled, managed, made to work on call, and sent to bed at a decent hour.
Since I’m currently watching Disney Gallery / Star Wars: The Mandalorian, showrunners Jon Favreau and David Filoni appear to exemplify the virtues.
Monday, July 12th, 2021
I link to this survey of recent British TV comedy in UnHerd if only because author Gareth Roberts calls out the depressingness of Louis Theroux.
In the same publication, “Why Miranda is more daring than Fleabag”.
Friday, December 11th, 2020
Well all this looks like too much fun: trailers for upcoming Marvel TV shows. It is indeed the best of times, the worst of times.
Tuesday, September 29th, 2020
What a shame that this seemingly literate musing on Stormfront in The Boys dives off the deep-end into America-reviling revisionism:
The Nazis actually praised the American system and copied a lot of its most atrocious ideas. So when the U.S. government welcomed Nazi scientists into our space program, it was an unsurprising extension of that connection.
And regarding Homelander:
He is misogynistic, homophobic, xenophobic, racist, pro-military, pro-American imperialism, and naturally, anti-abortion. Oh and he’s also a stone-cold sociopath and mass murderer.
A psychopath to be sure, but whence the rest? Homelander seems only cynically a flag-waver/wearer. The author does makes her “progressive” position clear by referring to “pro-military” and “anti-abortion” as evils. I guess I’d been bamboozled earlier by her nice summation of Nietzsche; whoever could do that would not, I presume, be so deeply idiotic.
The author might wish to consider even just for a moment the two greatest wars the United States ever fought — the Civil War and World War Two. Me waxing portentous: if this is normative discourse for geek outlets such as Nerdist, then we must worry for liberal civilization. [You don’t say, me…]
Thursday, August 20th, 2020
The iPhone matters more than anything … it is the foundation of modern life.
Ben Johnson, “Apple, Epic, and the App Store”
Thursday, February 20th, 2020
Mike and Rich of Red Letter Media do a re:View of Star Trek: Picard. I hadn’t articulated to myself why I chose not to watch beyond the first episode — they explain it. One criticism though: they mock the term positronic, seeming not to know it comes from Asimov’s robots.
Tuesday, October 29th, 2019
The Tube Ronnies complete with transcript, thanks to the invaluable IanVisits.
Tuesday, October 1st, 2019
The sweaters of ??Succession??. By Vulture.
Friday, August 30th, 2019
Music from Baskets compiled by Josh Moshier on SoundCloud. There is also the Baskets Soundtrack at tunefind.
Tuesday, January 1st, 2019
Chronicling from “below the API line”, as Venkatesh Rao calls it, are Austin Murphy with “I Used to Write for Sports Illustrated. Now I Deliver Packages for Amazon” in The Atlantic and Lauren Hough with “I Was A Cable Guy. I Saw The Worst Of America” in The Huffington Post.
The depicted harshness of American work life for so many is terrible not just for those involved but for all. (Also these two share a prodigious unmet need to urinate on the job — is this the top new workplace tribulation?)
Wednesday, August 15th, 2018
Clips from the great British documentary The Great British Year. No need for a BBC license; this is the programme’s web page. Just great stuff.
Friday, June 15th, 2018
What a lovely episode of Westworld is the latest, “Kiksuya”. I think the show has been great recently, such as crashing into the Shogun version of Sweetwater in “Akane no Mai”, and James Delos’s incarceration and repeated relaunches in “The Riddle of the Sphinx”.
There is so much death depicted in Westworld; I haven’t watched Game of Thrones nor The Walking Dead so perhaps that is par for the course nowadays on tv but it’s new for me. In reality this level of mayhem only exists in pockets (and of course among the non-human), so I suppose it is important that we be reminded of it.
I love the ongoing reversal within Westworld that the real world shot outdoors is fake while the indoor sets underground, reached through ??Lost??-like hatches, are real. And the music; beautiful! And the scenery, beautiful! Without these two elements, how great can a moving picture story ever be?
Sunday, April 29th, 2018
“Our statement is a non-statement.” In this 2007 interview, Robert Culp (“the talent”) speaks of I Spy and his partner Bill Cosby (“the genius”).
Saturday, April 21st, 2018
We have entered an uncanny valley of algorithmic culture. I believe it’s still easy to step out of, but even easier not to. And maybe it’s merely a speeding up of how things have always worked.
Thursday, April 12th, 2018
It’s nice to see Slant Magazine praise something fulsomely and in detail: Chuck Bowen on Billions, Season 3.
Thursday, March 15th, 2018
The Bloomsbury set thought about work and leisure, with ideas for today as we wrestle more universally with these issues.
Monday, July 3rd, 2017
Giancarlo Esposito talks with Slant Magazine about, among other things, how he created Gustavo Fring. “So part of what I began to do in Breaking Bad was to use my ease of expression—my breathing in and out, my yoga practice—to drop my natural personality. So that I would be calm and relaxed and allow myself to witness a little bit.”
Monday, January 30th, 2017
Fast, clear, cogent, respectful, dominating — what a performance Hugh Hewitt recently gave on Charlie Rose. He even asked Charlie a couple of times what he thinks, and it quickly became two chummy top media guys sharing ideas, not a mainstream media star interviewing a right-wing kook.
Hewitt managed to work in his career in government — which was all very long ago — and the very many people he knows, but without the name-dropping being the point of his responses. He called Charlie Charlie often enough that Charlie finally called him Hugh. “Great to have you,” Charlie ended it. “Good [ie, maybe not so great] to be here,” the response.
I listen pretty regularly to The Hugh Hewitt Show and it would be nice if we could get this fast-talking, super-smart, reasonable and sophisticated guy instead of the dumbed-down base-cultivating borderline bully we sometimes get on his home turf.
Tuesday, November 8th, 2016
I’m thinking it’s the most awesome TV show ever, but I also thought the same about about the other back in the day until close to the end. This insightful piece by Lindsey Romain in Vulture points out the thematic similarities
between Westworld and Lost. Let’s hope it all doesn’t degenerate into a flabby Manichaeism.
Friday, August 26th, 2016
Sports are the linchpin holding the entire post-war economic order together.
Ben Thompson, The Sports Linchpin
Saturday, July 16th, 2016
“The Kemalist era in Turkish history lasted for almost 100 years, but finally came to an end in the last 18 hours.” A great balance between up-to-the-minute reports and historical background, Walter Russell Mead live-blogs the failed Turkish Coup.
Saturday, June 18th, 2016
Likely the canonical review of Mr Robot, Season #1. By Matt Zoller Seitz.
Friday, February 5th, 2016
We must never forget that PBS aired Are You Being Served as a public service.
ASK
Monday, November 9th, 2015
Antinomy
a contradiction between two beliefs or conclusions that are in themselves reasonable; a paradox
Given that television must revolve off *antinomies* about being and watching, about escape from daily life, the averagely intelligent viewer can't be all that happy about his daily life of high-dose watching.
David Foster Wallace,
“E Unibus Pluram: Television and U.S. Fiction”
Anaclitic
relating to or characterized by a strong emotional dependence on another or others
Solipsistic ads are another way television ends up pointing at itself, keeping the viewer's relation to his furniture at once alienated and *anaclitic*.
David Foster Wallace,
“E Unibus Pluram: Television and U.S. Fiction”
Otiose
serving no practical purpose or result.
What explains the pointlessness of most published TV criticism is that television has become immune to charges that it lacks any meaningful connection to the world outside it. It's not that charges of nonconnection have become untrue. It's that any such connection has become *otiose*.
David Foster Wallace,
“E Unibus Pluram: Television and U.S. Fiction”
Saturday, April 4th, 2015
And for their next trick… Marvel’s Daredevil TV show is ‘extraordinarily good’, says Den of Geek.
Monday, December 15th, 2014
Season 4 of Homeland is I believe significantly more worthwhile than the previous ones. At the Daily Beast, two versed CIA agents opine that it “accurately present[s] the mission, intensity, pace, contradictions and complexity” of such a mission.
Tuesday, August 5th, 2014
Not only isn’t the Israel Broadcasting Association listing the names of the child fatalities from the Gaza bombings but refusing to let B’Tselem pay for an ad doing so. And the Attorney General has upheld the decision. This seems to me a mistake. We must fully own these deeds.
Thursday, April 24th, 2014
Beyond bracin’, stormin’ Norman Podhoretz eviscerates the Palestinian position in the wake of the Kerry talks collapse.
Saturday, May 25th, 2013
Why, by the William Shatner School of Toupological Studies.
Monday, August 20th, 2012
The Making of The Spy Who Loved Me by the BBC for the Open University, 1977. Episode #1: Cubby Brocolli, Producer. #2: Ken Adam, Production Designer (“not indispensible”, “preferable”, “unique”, “important”). #3, Barbara Bach, Bond Girl.
