Books:
The Final Girl Support Group by Grady Hendrix
So some Janice rec'ed this meta-genre novel about what if the surviving virgins from cliche slasher movies formed a support group for each other only to find a slasher was coming after all of them and thanks, Janice, because the book was totally fun! Though the story is set today, the book is nonstop '70s/'80s slasher-movie references and in fact most of the "final girls" are lifted more or less directly from things like Nightmare on Elm Street, Halloween, Texas Chainsaw Massacre, etc. but with all of those stories treated as fact and now it's 30 or 40 years later and those women have moved on with their lives but are still traumatized. And the book itself is written with the heightened ridiculousness of all those movies which will either be fun - me - or unreadable - you if you aren't into that particular flavor. I'm not going into plot, not so much for spoiler reasons because, in that genre, you already know what's going to happen just not how or how it's going to turn out in the end, but because the pleasure of the book is that it's very much in the now. The events are happening to our first-person narrator and you therefore get an enjoyable mix of backstory and nonstop present-tense action as she tries to figure out what's going on, why, who, and how to stop it. There was definitely a frustration with the lead character in that the author made this slasher experience a character journey as well based on what happened to our lead in the past, how she related to the other women, and her choices going forward, all of which was good, but I'd say one problem is that there's a certain passivity and/or bad decision-making at the beginning which I found to be a little annoying because I didn't want to stay with a character like that the whole time, i.e. someone who, as in those movies, more or less screams and runs (not exactly that way in the book but you get the gist). I'm noting this because if you find yourself in the same space, keep going, the author gets it all there in the end, but it definitely sat in that spot too long for me to the point where, even though I was enjoying the book, I contemplated DNF'ing because I just didn't want to be with that character anymore or in the - being vague here to avoid spoilering - circumstances she was in that lifted it out of real as in legal reality and into the space of slasher-film reality and I began to feel as if I was in a world without rules anymore with a character who was a cipher and nothing more. I was wrong, so if you end up feeling that too, keep going! This is just straight-up entertainment in a sort of heightened real world that plays out its ideas in a really entertaining way even if you're only a casual fan of the genre (like I don't think I made it past Halloween II for example). The writing's breezy, there's a ton of action, and, beyond the character quibble I noted, I flew through it and you could happily inhale this on a cross-country flight.
TV/Streaming:
Fauda (Season 1):
Third (fourth?) time's the charm (or at least not DNF) maybe for this Israeli action series which covers both an anti-terrorist unit and the Palestinians they're chasing not in a heroes/villains way but in a way that seems pretty even for both sides. The reason I started and stopped this show multiple times wasn't that it was bad but rather than it felt really generic with a bunch of Israeli macho hotheads grabbing Palestinians off the street and interrogating them and it just reminded me of all the worst parts of the series 24, not so much in terms of the righteousness but in terms of what seemed like some really dumb behavior for an anti-terrorist squad. For example, everyone's face was uncovered yet one of them was also kinda sorta undercover and, well, doesn't it seem like a bad idea for an undercover operative infiltrating a terrorist cell to expose his face while working with his counterparts? After a while it just began to annoy me because it felt as if I couldn't trust the writers, like they were too lazy to cover someone's face so how could I count on them to take me through a whole story? And, spoiler alert, that assessment remained true throughout this season. There were some incredibly blatantly dumb moves, ones that were there solely for plot convenience (don't worry, I won't mention them for spoiler reasons) to hardly mention in the final episode one of the Palestinian characters behaved in a way that was so incomprehensible that initially I thought I'd missed something but later, after some intensive Googling, realized that, no, it was just bad writing where the writers didn't explain or even imply the character's behavior at all but just had him do it then called it a day. So why, you're dying to know, did I finish this season and am planning to watch the future seasons? Basically because a fellow Janice told me the show got massively better and that the things I disliked and which made me DNF in the past went away and it became much more textured and interesting. And I can actually imagine that. I mean the basic setup of these two regions at odds with one another but right next to (or within depending on your political perspective) each other and where there's some combo of violence and oppression but also just people trying to live their lives but, because of these larger circumstances, unable to is there in the show. Look it's not like this show is terrible, just over the top a bit, somewhat ill-plotted, and very very very unshowered but there's definitely character there plus each episode is under 40 minutes so, for the promise of better to come, I was okay watching this season and will assuredly report back on whether or not my (minimal) time investment was worth it.
The Bridge (Season 2):
Well I totally got into season 1 of this British competition reality show about people building a bridge for $100k (maybe that should be the pound symbol actually) and tl;dr season 2 is even better. Before everyone drops everything and rushes off to the internets to find this show the way everyone normally does when I recommend something, I must give a few caveats because there's another way to view this show, i.e. as a total snooze. That's not me, but it might be you. So. The first season was 6 episodes and this most recent season is 8 and the extra few episodes earned their keep because of the way the producers upped the game this season (which I won't reveal for spoiler reasons though really there's no spoiler there but whatever). The game, which has a kinda Survivor-ish vibe, puts normal people in hideous physical circumstances where they're given instructions about how to build these floating bridge pieces - the prize is on an island a mile or so thataway - but really none of them has expertise in anything so it's just pure pain for them. They also - and this is part of what makes it fun - don't know exactly how the game is going to be played, as in they don't know certain facts about the nature of the game nor do they know exactly how the prize money works, and that ignorance creates some interest within the social gameplay because they may or may not be screwing themselves over. Also this season they brought in a survivalist who talks to camera (and to the contestants sometimes) clarifying why certain things are so difficult and the choices they'll have to make. And this is where the producers are super clever because they absolutely toss in challenges that pit individual self-interest against the group which allows for a lot of dramatic fretting and snakiness. They also cast a wide variety of people with a wide variety of social tactics. This is in direct contrast to Survivor (typical season review here) which has kind of gotten trapped in this thing where everyone more or less has the exact same social game. On this show, some people are playing a la Survivor (deceptive snakes) but others seem oblivious to the social gameplay nature of the show, perhaps in part because they don't realize how it's all going to come together at the end to win the money or perhaps it's just who they are and how they want to play, plus, very unlike Survivor, it's a nonstop sometimes literally as in a 24/7 physical challenge to build all those bridge pieces and keep them together. And this where I get to the caveat: I 100% understand how people could find this show to be boring. Not a lot happens and what does happen is fairly repetitive. I mean they're building a bridge; it requires X number of pieces; you watch normal people be miserable and rained on while they chop down trees and tie things together and whatnot. Yes, there's a lot of personality stuff in there and the producers are very interested in messing with the personal vs group gain. I'm invoking Survivor but part of me knows that Survivor fans might also be very disappointed with this show because it doesn't have challenges, there's no voting off an island and thus no immunity as there's nothing to play for in that sense. You're just watching people hack at trees and be really wet while scheming to camera and dealing with the curveballs the producers throw. It has more of a social experiment via game vibe than Survivor and, for me with this relatively low episode count, I was into it.
Movies:
You People - This was a shockingly (for me) entertaining comedy about a desperate abrasive White guy who finds true love and companionship with a Black woman and what happen when their somewhat racist parents - Eddie Murphy and Julia Louis-Dreyfus - clash, rudely but politely, over the relationship. The reason for the shocking part is I didn't go into this movie with high hopes (“high” being the operative word here BTW and make no promises for those not in that state) at all as it's not the kind of thing I'd normally turn on. But some Janice said it was super funny and, bearing in mind that humor is totally subjective, I thought it was too. Not only was Jonah Hill's character cringe-y in a way I found to be entertaining but also the writing served to override his JonahHillness which I'm generally meh on. Basically, he was a vehicle for delivering cringe situations that I found to be funny and which escalated to what to me was the real comedy which was Eddie and Julia doing their thing, meaning I'd say one part of your feeling about this movie will be based on how you feel about the lead actors in general because the basis of all the comedy is what you love (or hate depending) about them with nonstop cringe quips. Your other feeling about the movie is whether or not you find it offensive or that other place where you don't find it offensive but at some level you either find it obvious or just don't want to hear about the topics of race and class in comedy form for around 90 minutes. I'm not sure what it even means to be offended by a movie so that's not my metric but Google around and you will see a LOT of people hated this movie for those very reasons. To me, the central determinant in my enjoyment, at least of comedy, is, beyond the obvious subjective sense of humor stuff, whether I feel there are enough sharp lines to justify sticking around through all the somewhat shallow bits and setup. I'd say 30 Rock is a prime example of this where you either click with the rat-a-tat humor where, in a worst case scenario, only a few jokes across an episode will hit for you even if most of the rest don't, but mostly they hit. This movie is the same. It's Jewish White quip-battling Muslim Black and all the attendant micro and macro aggressions, cliches about and by each other, and efforts by the parents to interfere with the main relationship all packaged in a romantic comedy formula that, while not original in the big scheme of things, hit all the beats when they’re supposed to be hit and keeps the whole thing moving along. If cringe isn't your thing or if you're looking for more of a romantic romantic comedy (I mean I guess unless Jonah Hill is the object of your romantic fantasy in which case you'll go nuts) or if the subject matter bugs you or if any of those actors aren't your thing, then you will probably dislike this movie. I had none of that; I liked the cringe, I thought the writing was fun and snappy, I liked Julia and Eddie, and I liked the overall rudeness of the whole thing and thus found it to be highly (noting once again!) amusing.