Dropping in to say this will be the last email until mid-May. My family and I head out early next week on a Disney World/Universal Studios vacation that we’ve been planning for a while. The kids are the perfect age – at 12 and 8, they’re still young enough to enjoy the magical elements while adventurous enough (and tall enough!) to do the roller coasters. It’s been a hectic, stressful last few months, so it’s going to be good to shut off the email for two weeks and enjoy time together with the family.
I briefly considered doing some marathon writing sessions to set up some pre-scheduled posts for when I’m gone. But time didn’t allow and, honestly, I didn’t want to have to deal with the headaches that come from making sure everything is published and hits social media. I want to take this time to enjoy the vacation with my family and clear my head; to let my soul catch up with my body, as some have said. So, a two-week break. And I’m hoping that in the days before and after the trip, I can sneak in some movie going, so I’ll be ready to write about The Fall Guy and Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes upon my return.
But before we take to the friendly skies for warmer climates, I had a few items I thought I would take the time to chime in on, including some TV show, book and movie thoughts. And once I’m back, we’ll be in the thick of the summer movie season – and I’ll be starting another summer revisit series – so we’ll have plenty to talk about. Now, on with a few topics:
Conan O’ Brien hits the road
If you asked me who the funniest person working is, I wouldn’t have to hesitate. It’s Conan O’ Brien, and it’s not even close. And it’s been that way for a long time. He was a writer and producer on The Simpsons during two of its arguably greatest seasons, and his satirical voice and surreal humor is a big part of what shaped that show’s voice. I was too young to watch Late Night when it debuted, but as soon as I started catching up, I realized that his brand of silly absurdity was dialed directly into my comedic wavelength. One of my favorite time-wasters is just to pull up old Conan clips – be they from Late Night, The Tonight Show or his TBS show – and spend hours on them. Somehow, he made the move from TV to podcasts and only became better, a consummate interviewer and deft improviser. His recent “Hot Ones” appearance was one of the most demented and brilliant examples of committing to the bit that I’ve seen.
So, it’s no surprise at all that I found his new Max show, Conan O’ Brien Must Go, an utter delight. I’ve seen two of the four episodes, and both hit the sweet spot of everything Conan does so well. The premise of the show spins out of his podcast Conan O’ Brien Needs a Fan, in which he chats with admirers from around the world. In the Max show, he surprises these fans with a visit and then spends the 40 minutes exploring their countries. That means a trip to Norway, where he plays around with Vikings and contributes a hook to a Norwegian rap. And in Argentina, he learns to dance the tango and talks cuisine with his foil, Jordan Schlansky.
If you like what Conan does, you’re probably already sold on this. It’s silly, it’s crude, and Conan understands how to banter with his new friends and put a joke on himself. The show is beautifully photographed, and Conan has a lot of fun playing around with the expensive drones HBO purchased for the show. The big bits usually hit – notably a sequence staged like a Viking epic in the first episode and an The expensively photographed tango sequence in the second – but it’s really Conan’s interaction with people on the street that serve as a highlight, particularly in the Norway episode. It’s funny and weird and completely disposable; it’s been fun before-bed viewing.
Yes, we’re also a ‘Bluey’ family
It’s kind of funny to me that the most popular show on the planet right now is a 7-minute cartoon originally marketed to preschoolers. But families who discovered Bluey during the pandemic get it.
So, yes, of course we cleared out time a few weeks back to watch the 28-minute special episode “The Sign” when it debuted. And of course we laughed (I will laugh at anything Muffin-centric). And, of course, I was fighting away tears when it hit the finale. As others have written much better, there is a special magic to Bluey that works on multiple levels. For kids, it’s a creative, joyful and often beautiful ode to playtime. For parents, it’s hilariously honest about raising kids, and also knows just when to deliver a deeper meaning that will wrest tears from adults while going over kids’ heads. And so (spoilers) when the end of “The Sign” found Bandit ripping out the “For Sale” sign because he knew the better thing for his family was to stay in their home, I was overcome with emotion. Mainly because, as this show so often proves, a cartoon dog is often a more selfless, patient and flat-out better dad than me (although, to be fair, I did wait in a line with 275,000 people trying to get my son into Detroit’s NFL Draft Experience the other day, so maybe I have more Bandit in me than I realize).
It was a beautiful, funny and charming episode, and not just because it took its central illustration from my favorite scene in Charlie Wilson’s War. The episode was cleverly structured and a wonderful celebration of all that makes Bluey great – and to adults who still remain skeptical about why this cartoon is so good, can I direct you to my personal favorite episode, “Faceytalk”? It was a reminder that in the conversation of all-time great kids’ TV, Bluey deserves a mention alongside Sesame Street, Fraggle Rock and the rest. And while it’s still up in the air whether the show will be back for a fourth season, the surprise episode released last week – appropriately titled “Surprise” – actually ends on a note that would a perfect series finale (but I hope – and suspect – we haven’t seen the last of the Heelers).
Nuclear War sent me into an existential panic
Annie Jacobsen’s Nuclear War: A Scenario is the best book I regret reading.
The book is exactly what it describes itself as. Based on years of in-depth research and extensive interviews with military professionals, scientists and strategists, the acclaimed journalist imagines what a response might look like if North Korea attacked Washington, DC, with a ballistic nuclear missile. Spoiler alert: It would be very bad.
This is not a novel. There are no characters to root for. There is very little emotion. There is very little in the way of discussing what the decisions of the powerful might mean to the millions of citizens they are called to protect – or, indeed, the billions around the world who will be at risk because of the decisions of the few.
That clinical look at nuclear war is what makes the book so effective and so terrifying. Following policies like “launch on warning” – which the U.S. may indeed have as its guiding nuclear policy, and which has us launching our entire nuclear arsenal of more than 1,000 missiles when an incoming attack is confirmed – the book details how one attack – or perhaps an error in our alert systems – could escalate to a nuclear world war that destroys nearly every major city on Earth in less than an hour with little to no warning for anyone. It’s fitting that civilians are not a part of the book’s calculus – because we’re not part of the calculus for politicians and defense leaders, either. If what Jacobsen suggests were to happen – and, to be clear, she’s imagining truly worst-case scenarios and intelligence errors – all of civilization would be decimated in less time than it takes to watch a movie. It would be horrific. It would be painful. But, I guess, at least it would be quick.
The book is terrifying, and it should be. It reaffirms that a nuclear war would be catastrophic and stupid for everyone involved, and that creating and housing these arsenals is the dumbest idea in the history of dumb ideas. It’s also an illustration of how our civilization depends on the decisions of a few people, and how just the wrong temperament or judgment could eradicate us all in seconds. I’ll be honest: I lost a bit of sleep over this one, and given that it’s something I cannot control, maybe being blissfully unaware would be better than being informed and impotent in this case. But if you can stomach it, it’s a gripping read.
Quentin Tarantino gives up on Movie Critic
Like many movie nerds, I was disappointed to hear that Quentin Tarantino was dropping The Movie Critic as his 10th and final film, choosing to pursue another project instead. We didn’t know a ton about the project, except that the phrase “what if Travis Bickle had been a movie critic” was tossed around a lot, and it apparently was based on a real-life critic who wrote for seedy magazines in the 1970s. Having just read Tarantino’s fantastic Cinema Speculation a year ago, the project seemed right in line with all his interests, and I was really curious about this one.
Word this week trickled out that as the project took shape, it became something different, more of a QT universe film. Brad Pitt was going to return as Once Upon a Time in Hollywood’s Cliff Booth, and the film would have somehow brought back stars from other Tarantino movies playing their iconic characters. There was even a suggestion that the film would feature scenes set in a theater where a young Quentin worked as an usher, and what initially seemed like a Cinema Speculation-inspired movie now seemed more like it was inspired by his Once Upon a Time… novelization.
And if that’s the case, I’m kind of glad it fell apart. It’s nothing against Once Upon a Time in Hollywood…, which I quite like, and it’s not that I’m asking Tarantino to not be self-indulgent (that would be like asking Spielberg to pull back on the wonder). But if QT is really going out on his next film, I don’t want it to be a rehash of things he’s done before. I want him to take a swing; The Movie Critic sounded like it could be a fascinating character study and a potential alternate universe look at Hollywood (I always imagined he was going to integrate his what-if takes on ‘70s films from Cinema Speculation). I don’t want him trotting out old characters (nope, I don’t want him to go out on a Kill Bill Vol. 3, either) and more than I would have liked him to go out on a piece of IP like Star Trek. If he’s hanging up the camera, I want him to go out on something special.
But I also think this is a result of Tarantino calling his shot and forcing himself in a box to go out on film 10. I think he’s utterly wrong about the majority of great directors losing steam in old age – Scorsese, Schrader, Spielberg are still making masterpieces in their old age; Sidney Lumet’s final film, Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead, was made at 83, and it’s one of his best films. I get why Tarantino thinks it’s better to burn out than fade away and if his tank is truly coming up empty, maybe it’s best he hang it up. But he’s apparently still filled with ideas, and I’d hate to think that in boxing himself in to go out on a masterpiece, we’re missing opportunities for him to play around and deliver some solid, fun movies.
Spending a ‘Late Night with the Devil’
Finally, I took some time last weekend to pull up the indie horror hit Late Night with the Devil, which debuted to strong reviews earlier this year. And I’m glad I did.
The film is presented as a faux documentary or piece of found footage, as late night talk show host Jack DelRoy (David Dastmalchian) carries out an ill-fated Halloween broadcast in 1977. Jack has been beset by personal tragedy and is flailing in the ratings and attempts to goose attention by bringing on a clairvoyant as well as a potentially demon-possessed child for an on-air, live exorcism. The majority of the movie is just watching this “episode” of TV play out in its entirety, with brief behind-the-scenes snippets to clue us in to its unraveling.
Directors Colin and Cameron Cairnes do a wonderful job re-creating the look and feel of a late-70s talk show, from Jack’s tan suits to the hideous orange, brown and gold motif of the set’s walls. They capture the sometimes-cheesy, sometimes overly serious vibe of these shows well, and one of the best compliments I can give the movie is that if I had never seen Dastmalchian in a movie before, I’d be convinced this was a genuine artifact from its time, at least before everything goes to hell.
The movie’s a slow burn. And, as you might imagine, the supernatural happenings at first seem a bit campy and silly before the film really starts to go bananas. There’s nothing to the scares we haven’t seen before – exorcism movies are more plentiful than ever, and if you’ve seen one character projectile vomit bile, you’ve seen them all. But the film is unsettling because these familiar horror tropes take place in an aesthetic we equate with something more grounded in reality and in the way it breaks the rules of these type of shows. Its most unnerving moments might be when the possessed teenager stares into the camera, willfully shattering the barrier with the audience in a way that guests are explicitly directed not to. The low-fi special effects fit in so completely with the aesthetic that it feels surreal and eerie, and a sequence that hinges on the concept that the entire viewing audience might have been hypnotized is a wonderful trick.
None of this works if the film feels too much like parody, and its cast grounds it well. Dastmalchian has been lurking around in genre fare for years and I’m glad he’s finally been given a showcase role. Jack DelRoy feels real. He’s troubled and haunted in a way that helps blunt some of his more calculated, craven instincts, and there’s a heartbreak and emptiness at his center that Dastmalchian captures well. The film’s casting of its secondary characters – particularly Rhys Auteri as Jack’s sidekick – puts unknowns throughout the film, making it more plausible that we’re looking back at a genuine show that might have gone under our radar. I don’t know that I’d call the film genuinely scary, but it’s a successful technical exercise and there is an unsettling quality that gets under your skin as the film ratchets up the tension.
I am still torn on whether I buy the events of the film’s final act, which incorporate an aesthetic switch that I think undercuts the film’s horror. It’s an attempt to get us deeper into Jack’s mindset, but it’s distracting and confusing and blunts the impact of what came before; that said, the film’s final shot is a wonderful last-minute gut punch, and I don’t know if it would have the power it does had we not taken this tangent.
Late Night With the Devil isn’t perfect, but I enjoyed it quite a bit. I’m really eager to see what the Cairnes do next, and this should help Dastmalchian move on to greater things.
And that’s it, folks! I’m heading out on vacation, but I’ll catch you all in Mid-May!