Books:
All the Dangerous Things by Stacy Willingham
Well this was some highly-non-Janice-lauded DNF'ed snoozerina ostensible thriller that, unless napping is thrilling (and you know what? maybe it kind of is), was completely mislabeled genre-wise to hardly mention being a plotless bore regardless of genre. Yes, there are two mysteries which is presumably where the marketing came from. The first mystery is a woman's infant goes missing and it's a year later, her life's a wreck, and she's still trying to figure out what happened. The second mystery is less mystery and more withholding information as the lead woman - our first-person narrator - flips back to childhood with some trauma involving a younger sister that she simply doesn't discuss for a while. It's not a terrible setup and while, sure, we've all read books where the author does the thing where they don't have the lead tell us what they know and those books can be good or bad depending on what's happening in the lead's present tense and how well the author is at crafting character, well I think you know where this is going: this author's writing is a dud. Leaden, endless sentences that drive plot absolutely nowhere, as in pages and pages and pages of the lead thinking about stuff - and the same stuff over and over to boot - and not doing anything other than annoying people because the author didn't craft a character who seems to have a single skill set beyond moping. Like if you're going to have a present-tense investigation by an amateur then surely, a year into the case, that amateur should have a few tricks up their sleeve because they've seen what worked and didn't work and have adapted. Not this character. She does dumb and useless things over and over and, like, is that thrilling? For example, it takes another character - a podcaster the lead is working with - to suggest she look at the babycam tapes in the months leading up to disappearance. What do you think of a character who has all those recordings but, in the year of investigating since her child’s disappearance, it never occurred to her to look? Are you interested in watching her investigate anything? The same holds true for the past tense stuff where it's a blandly southern gothic-y upbringing - there's an old house on a marsh involved - and again, no character, no person, just stuff. I've written too much about this book already. I gave this book close to 50% before DNF'ing and I can say with absolute certainty that, if something's calling itself a thriller, then something thrilling needs to happen long before that point and nothing did.
TV/Streaming:
The Great British Bakeoff (Season 13):
I have to hand it to whomever created the format of this phenom baking competition reality show as it's just a solidly good way to make an otherwise insanely dull (I mean you're watching people mix things together and put them in an oven for an hour) series into something soothing, pleasant, and engagingly, if mildly, suspenseful. For those who haven't seen, this is a baking competition show and the format is a theme each week (some of which make no sense to me like "desserts" as the whole series is basically desserts but whevs) with three challenges: the first is something the bakers have practiced at home a la "make 24 identical macarons in the flavor of your choice you have 90 minutes go", the second is a challenge for which they have no prep and which is judged blind, and the third is a bigass showstopper which they've also had time to practice. All of this is very glossily shot and the judges give meaningful critiques so you can get a sense of why things worked or fell apart. The reason I'm complimenting the format genius is that, 13 seasons in and despite some judge and host changes (and the hosts have really gone completely downhill over the years), it's still a consistently pleasant show to watch with enough of a sense of the contestants that there's some personality but without being a particularly personality-driven show as in it's about the baking and the judgement and, I guess, a sense of good-spirited competitiveness - it's not a cheery show exactly but it's also not going out of its way to make anyone feel bad. The hosts are truly awful, at least these past few seasons, like just bouncing around the tent being unfunny idiots, though I guess if your idea of comedy is bad puns delivered with frantic energy bordering on desperation then this will be your heaven. Really the hosts in the first few seasons were much better, not so much because their puns were better, but because they had a bit of snark to them that was entertaining. Plus the early seasons sent the hosts off to do background on some of the more obscure bakes, kind of like on Antiques Roadshow (if you've watched) where the host will go off for a few minutes to learn about something arty and local in whatever town they're in; I'm not saying I miss those segments, though in some ways I wouldn't mind if they returned, but rather they added a texture to the hosts and made them more than just joke-crackers wandering around a tent and into people who at least gave the appearance of being interested in the subject matter - baking - as opposed to the current situation where it feels like bored standup comedians trying to entertain themselves and get on camera which, well, is pretty dull unless you just love those jokes. But as I mentioned, the strength of this show's format is such that even all that criticism really doesn't matter because it's background to the main event which is watching normal people but with a particular interest in baking trying to overcome the pressures of being on camera, being in an unfamiliar kitchen, and being under serious time pressure and seeing if they'll be able to pull off what they intended or if it will all fall apart. All of which adds up to an engaging competition as far as I'm concerned.
Babylon Berlin (Season 4):
This fourth season of a highly stylized series focused around cops (and a lot of others) in early '30s Germany was decent but frankly too long as in I liked it while also finding myself drifting at points. If memory serves (and it absolutely may not), the first season of this show was 8 episodes and this one was also 8 episodes... only stretched over 12 episodes. And by stretched I mean that the final episode of the season (don’t worry, no spoilers) which, you know, should really be all the plot threads coming together, spent what felt like 80% of the episode on a boxing match between two characters we’d never seen before and with our leads in the audience cheering them on. Um, yeah. The other thing with this show, a thing which existed in the first season and every season subsequently, is that there’s an I don’t know – plot? beat? – with the lead where he’s the subject of some doctor’s experiment or something like that and really, four seasons in (you’ll see for yourself at the end of this season), I have no idea what all that is and it feels so like something from the plot of James Bond villain or the like. I don’t know. I thought I understood it season 1 (something about PTSD from WWI and addiction and an effort to overcome that) but… I don’t know. I don’t get it at all nor do I know why it’s in the show or what any of it is supposed to mean. If anyone makes it to the end of this season, feel free to explain it to me! The plot picks up from where our characters were in the prior season and, annoyingly, absolutely assumes you remember who everyone is and what happened to them before and what all of their interrelationships are, i.e. each episode REALLY needed a previously-on and none of them had that. Like in episode 5 or 6 some character shows up and I was like... uh who's that again? Only to have the same experience in episode 11. Like kudos to the writers for having an ongoing story but, I mean, come on, there are years between seasons here, people! Just toss my poor old cerebellum a bone: who’s a communist, who’s a Nazi, who’s on what side and why and what are they trying to achieve? Please? Right up to the very final episode, there was stuff that I just didn’t get because I didn’t feel like dashing off to Wikipedia or reading some recap before as “doing homework” seems pretty antithetical to “watching television.” This also, in part at least, contributed to some of the slowness of the show so perhaps if you're binging all the seasons at once, you won't have that experience.
I know I've mostly just insulted this show but the good thing about it is that it not only has a sense of humor but a really good sense of place and time and a great kind of spirited Shirley-Temple-movie vibe but with the grimness of Nazis rising which makes for an interesting series to watch. You'll note I've said nothing about plot not so much for spoiler reasons (though that's partly true) nor because I wasn't 100% tracking it for the reasons noted above (also partly true) but primarily because, while this is definitely a very plot-driven show as each season circles around some new major criminal investigation which ends up intersecting with politics, romance, gender issues, and the German cabaret scene, the reason to watch the show isn't the plot. The plots are fine even gripping at points, but the overall style and musicality (there's some fantastic dancing in the show (not as fantasy sequences or anything but woven in as in there's a major ongoing subplot involving a highish end dance club)) and a German lens on the German politics at the time. I mean most Nazi-era stuff I've seen or read - and this is still pre-war, like early '30s - has been done by non-Germans. In fact the only German movie I can think of off the top of my head that dealt with this era was the pretty interesting The Nasty Girl which was based on a true story about about high schooler in the 1980s or so who, for a school paper, was researching the history of the town and basically discovered everyone in it had been a Nazi during the war and the townspeople's efforts to suppress her findings. So I think the reason I like this show and will continue watching even though, as noted, I found it draggy in parts this season, is that it presents something familiar in an unfamiliar way meaning it intimately understands German people and culture in a way non-natives simply can't. Plus, all insults aside, when it's good it's really good and as noted it looks cool plus dancing so all in all, if the show ends here, that's fine and, if it's picked up for more seasons, I'm good with that too.
Movies:
All My Friends Hate Me - Though not as much as I hated this movie. Hated. As in the writer and director are moving to my "avoid at all costs" list a list that exists solely in my mind and therefore I have no doubt I'll wind up completely forgetting who these people are and watching something else they do in the future and being deeply resentful - remember, me! The basic premise of the movie is a reunion of college besties a decade later and, I guess (not clear at all), they're not really besties anymore but have drifted but whatever, they're getting together in a super rich bestie's isolated parental mansion to celebrate the birthday of the lead. For a reason that's never (really) explained, there's a non-bestie there who looks at least a decade older than the rest and whom the besties say they met in a local bar and bring along to hang out for the weekend. And, for the lead, it's essentially like having a college reunion only your friends randomly picked up Beetlejuice and this totally abrasive stranger gets rowdy and rude and insulting and the friends all act like the lead's the problem in his reactions rather than the stranger and his bad behavior. That's basically the movie. The supposed friends are horrible to the lead, there's this addon weirdo being mean too, and everyone acts like the lead is the crazy one and the lead hangs out for the weekend having a bad time and thus the title. If you go look at non-Janice reviews which I did because it was inconceivable that anyone could recommend this movie to anyone, you'll see a lot of references to this movie being about social anxiety, presumably because all those reviewers were handed a press release telling them so before they watched as I can assure you that someone going in blind (moi) could see no such thing and here's why. In order to do a movie in which the audience is torn between wondering whether (a) the lead is being gaslit for some reason presumably to be revealed at the end or (b) the friends are behaving normally and the lead, due to insecurities or whatnot, is hearing/seeing everything through the filter of his own issues, you'd need to setup a character logic for that as well as plot actions that could conceivably be viewed either way. There could be something there, right? Like is something really going on or is the character blowing up a sarcastic moment or a bit of incidental rudeness into some larger conspiracy? And I guess I could even live with (maybe) discovering the character is that way as opposed to setting up the character as insecure in advance. This movie opted for neither. It was setup as just a normal guy driving for a few hours into the countryside to hang with his friends and, oh, the guy's girlfriend was going to come up too a day later. But fine. The real problem is the friends and the Beetlejuice guy in particular actually were horrible and/or weird in ways that were not open to interpretation, like subbing the lead guy's herbal pills with a roofie (or something) or a scene with the Beetlejuice guy wandering into the bathroom while the lead was naked in the tub, shaving despite the fact that that clearly crossed basic social boundaries, then in a, I don't know, bro not a gay way reaching into the tub and grabbing the lead's dick then making a joke about its shape. Like if someone did that to you, would you conceive of that as your own social anxiety rather than, say, being groped by a random asshole stranger? How about a total stranger chasing after you with an ax and screaming at you and then, haha, it's all a big joke that your friends set up - is there even a question about whether or not the problem is in the lead's head? No. So basically, absent reading something telling you what the film is - like I’m doing right now but likely not the way the producers were hoping - you're watching a person meet a group of people who are ostensibly his friends plus one asshole total stranger, being treated horribly by them all, staying anyway for no discernible reason, having everyone act like he's the problem, and then they all go home. If that sounds like a satisfying 100 some-odd minutes to you, go enjoy!