My Favorite Things This Week #109
The Friday High 5: Exploring anime, back to Montana, and the MCU's ongoing redux
Every Friday I share 5 things I enjoyed this week. Also, high fives are inherently cool, and I think we can all agree Friday is the bestest day. Hence the Friday High 5. 🙏🏻Frieren
Like most people groups, we nerds are not monolith. There are substrates beyond which we will not delve. A friend of mine considered D&D a bridge too far, but thought nothing of comic books or computer RPGs. (He’s since seen the light.)
I partake in most of the buffet but have never been an anime guy. Something about it just doesn’t do it for me. Does The Last Airbender count as anime? I think it’s considered borderline, which is probably why I like it. But I’ve bounced off the others I tried.
So when my friend suggested I try Frieren—an anime by way of D&D tropes—I was very skeptical. I finally relented when he asked about it a third time, and threw it on while riding the exercise bike.
You know what? It’s actually pretty good.
Frieren is about an immortal elven sorcerer (named Frieren) who sorta exists outside of time, and tries to grapple with the finite nature of everything around her. It starts where many shows would end—with her and her companions having vanquished the Big Bad. Time passes swiftly—50 years in about 50 seconds—and her companions are now old and dying. And there the story begins.
I’m only 4 episodes in, but I’m really enjoying the non-traditional narrative. Years pass as an inconsequential afterthought, if it’s considered at all. One moment Frieren’s companion is a little girl, the next she’s taller than Frieren.
I still find the anime of it off-putting. I don’t know if it has something to do with the Japanese to English translation, but man, the melodrama is painful. Or maybe clumsy is a better word? And there’s random sexualization that’s just there to be there. In the third episode, Frieren comments that her companion is really blossoming, and then stares sidelong at her breasts. And immediately after we’re shown two piles of rocks that are clearly meant to evoke breasts. The episode tosses in another set of rock-boobs towards the end. I don’t know what I’m supposed to take from that other than the Japanese be horny.
Those are relatively minor quibbles. Frieren is interesting and fresh. Best of all, I have no idea where the story is going. I sense the overall arc has to do with her learning to recognize and appreciate the fleeting nature of life. Or maybe she’ll just travel the world ogling boobs. All options are on the table.
Streaming on Netflix.
David Sedaris: The Best of Me
I’ve been really enjoying The Best of Me, a collection of Sedaris essays / stories I borrowed for free from the library. This is my first Sedaris, even though I own several of his books. I think I’m more inclined to read library books because they come with an expiration date, whereas I can theoretically read books I own at any time, which usually translates to never. A topic for another time.
Like most essay collections, the stories are sometimes a bit hit or miss. They’re all enjoyable, but some are outright hilarious.
Jesus Shaves is one of those.
David recounts his experience taking a French language course in France with a multi-national group of newbies. During one of the lessons, the class tried to explain Easter to a Muslim woman using their ill-formed French.
“It is a party for the little boy of God who call his self Jesus.”
“He call his self Jesus and then he die one day on two… morsels of… lumber.”
“He die one day and then he go above of my head to live with your father.”
“He nice, the Jesus.”
It goes on from there. I was literally crying in bed.
Rebel Ridge
Rebel Ridge is a riveting movie that’s guaranteed to piss you off. Highly recommend.
It’s about a former U.S. Marine who is accosted by a small town’s police force for some bullshit—they accuse him of stealing a bicycle, presumably because he’s a black man riding a bike. He’s traveling with a bunch of cash, which the police seize because of course they do.
It’s so unfair, and is a great way of immediately getting us on the Marine’s side. Doubly so since he remains calm, even noble, in the face of gross injustice. But our outrage is also for ourselves because we suspect this kind of thing happens all the time, and will probably happen even more frequently in the new America. It’s therefore gleefully cathartic when the police discover they’ve fucked with the wrong dude.
Rebel Ridge is a modern, socially conscious First Blood. Don’t miss it.
Streaming on Netflix.
Yellowstone: Season 5 Part 1
My wife and I came late to Yellowstone, quickly binged the first 4 seasons, and then put it aside for a while. We’re just now dipping into season 5. I’m sorta happy to be back but also starting to feel unsure about where this thing is going. The narrative thrust that propelled the early seasons is gone. Everything just feels sorta listless.
I’m also getting tired of all the Dutton drama. Somebody just take their damn ranch already and put Costner out of his misery.
I think the meta story of Yellowstone remains interesting. It’s just being told from the wrong PoV. I’d love to see this same story with Thomas Rainwater as the protagonist, as opposed to being the sometimes Dutton antagonist, otherwise background character. Rainwater is just a more interesting character, versus John Dutton (Costner), whose motivation begins and ends at “the ranch.”
I’m only a few episodes into season 5. Hopefully it’ll turn around.
Captain America: Brave New World
I’m working on a longer piece about how this movie unintentionally mirrors what’s going on in America and the MCU. Hoping to get that out this weekend. In the meantime…
I was excited to see Brave New World because I remember the thrill of going to MCU films during its incredible 10-year run. They were events. Even the not-great ones were still pretty good. The last 5 years have not been kind to MCU fans, but I was still enthusiastic for Brave New World. Part of that was Anthony Mackie. Part of it was the promise of something actually new. And yeah, part of it was naked nostalgia.
Brave New World is not a good movie. It’s not terrible. It’s not the worst MCU film; Thor: Love and Thunder still holds that crown. Quantumania (e.g. Ant-Man 3) is probably worse. The Multiverse of Madness is also in the ballpark. Brave New World isn’t offensively bad. I wasn’t pissed off afterwards, like I was for the other three movies I just mentioned. Maybe that’s a sign I no longer get my hopes up for the MCU, but I don’t think so. I think it’s just solidly mediocre. It exists, and that seems to be all it aspires for.
There were so many things this movie could’ve done. Could’ve been about. Rebuilding the Avengers. Exploring the implications of a Black Captain America (touched on in the Disney+ series, but race remains an evergreen topic in America and addressing it only on a spin-off show feels like a cop-out). More bro times with Bucky and Zemo (please please please). What about the Sam Wilson of it all? For all the screen time Sam Wilson has had, I still don’t feel like we know who he is. Not in the same way we knew Steve Rogers or even Scott Lang.
Instead of doing any of that, Brave New World plays like a Great Value brand of Captain America: The Winter Soldier. There’s some mystery that isn’t very mysterious, and political intrigue that doesn’t politic or raise any real questions. Worst of all, the Captain America part of the story is a gaping hole. Even in his own movie, Mackie still feels like a sidekick.
The most interesting thing about Brave New World is that it directly addresses the elephant in the room: What is Captain America without super strength? The answer is reaffirming in an after-school special kind of way, and also caps what Captain America can actually be. Marvel thinks they answered that question by pitting Cap 2.0 versus Hulk 2.0. But all they really illustrated is how far the MCU has fallen.
Your turn!
What’s giving you good vibes this week? Let me know so I can check it out.
Iron Man is still the only MCU film I've ever seen, and tbh, I don't see that changing anytime soon. 100% with you on Yellowstone. I was ALL IN for awhile, but it seems like it just ran out of steam? Maybe Taylor Sheridan's just being pulled in too many directions at once. I'm hoping that tunrs around.
Going the other way, I'm obsessed (am I too old to use that phrase?) with White Lotus.
I'm a suburban dad, which means I'm legally required to be in a fantasy baseball league, and the draft is tonight. I am comically bad at this, so who knows how it'll go? But it's fun, which is in short supply these days.
Also: U of O Ducks men's hoops!
I'm clearly not a very good film critic because my (adult) son and I really enjoyed Captain America: Brave New World. Of course, part of that is probably the fact that he moved out a few months ago and we don't see each other much anymore, so getting to watch a new Marvel movie on the Xtreme Screen together is fun in and of itself! We both like Anthony Mackey and empathized with the whole "super hero without super powers" struggle. Sure, it wasn't up there with the Winter Soldier or Civil War, but it felt like Marvel was getting back to the storytelling and human aspects, as opposed to the over-the-top otherworldliness of recent movies. And, I have to admit, we like the possibilities that were teased - finally addressing the giant dude in the Indian Ocean, introducing adamantium, etc - which got us excited about what comes next.
These days, my son and I tend to think of the MCU as a giant TV series with 2+ hour episodes dropping on the big screen a few times a year... and that works for us! :-)