Books:
The Books of Babel Series (Books 1-4) by Josiah Bancroft
Well this is just a pretty friggin' spectacular fantasy series. I'm calling it fantasy because it's certainly not set on Earth but it's also not the kind of series that most non-fantasy readers associate with fantasy - Tolkien-y epics with medieval-ish settings - but rather something that falls more on the side of fantasy that fables or the Grimm Brothers or maybe Candide inhabit. It's not high kings or dwarf/elf or that sort of fantasy nor is there any magic of any kind involved, though there's an odd sort of science I guess you could say. I mention this because if you love high fantasy (i.e. kingdom/magic kind), this is not that and if you hate it, well, this is not that. The essence of the story is about a schoolteacher and his wife who make a visit to the famous Tower of Babel, not the Biblical one, but an invention that's essentially an enormous megalopolis broken up into a series of discrete "ringdoms" and where, more or less, tourists are fleeced nonstop and what happens when the schoolteacher and his wife get separated. There are three things that set this series apart from so many others: the plot, the characters, and the writing, i.e. everything. For the first 50% or so of the first book, I can't say I thought it was going to become as great as it did in large part because the schoolteacher - Senlin - came off as an annoying pollyanna and what I didn't understand at the time was that that was deliberate. The books are very much about his transformation from that naive person into someone completely different (not going into details about the difference due to spoilering) and in fact all the main characters (there are around 5 or so) are incredibly well-drawn and specific and also transform across the series which makes not only reading from their POVs really enjoyable but also makes their plot decisions credible, even when they're insane (which some of them are later in the series), because you understand what's driving them. Once the plot gets going, it roars. I found myself somewhat amazed that the author was able to blend so much somewhat devious action sequences with all the character stuff and packaged with some truly great writing. I mean the creativity of the author is nuts. Even a description of some place the characters wind up for a quick stop is described with such depth and specificity that you know he has the entire thing somewhere in his head, his notes, wherever, and it made me utterly trust him. In the same way that Steven Erikson's Malazan series had such incredible depth that you knew the author was going to get you to the end and not peter out at some point (well, right at the edge there with the Malazan series), so with this author. Plus there's some real humor underlying all the characters and descriptions which gives a vibrancy to the read. I know I've described almost nothing plotwise and even less about what the Tower is, how it works, and what happens to everyone in there, and I'm not going to. The pleasure of this series is in many ways knowing little to nothing and figuring it out as you go and, IJHO, the author takes you the whole way. If you like this genre, I'd say this is a must-add for your list.
TV/Streaming:
Project Runway (Season 19):
So when starting this season I really thought I'd have nothing much to say about it beyond the normal stuff. I mean it's Project Runway and basically if you've seen one you've seen them all. And because, unlike with Making the Cut or The Hype, the contestants are forced to both design and sew their creations (as opposed to just think about them and send instructions out to others), you, the viewer, can make a decent judgment in that you've watched someone's thought process and then their execution and then it comes down the runway and you see what you think. Even if you dislike the judges or find them to be boring (as I do), it doesn't matter. The final runway reveal is always interesting, at least to me. Well trigger alert: rant coming! So in episode two of this season, the producers did something so appalling that I'm honestly not sure if I'll be able to watch this show again (famous last words). What happened is this:
Project Runway has always spread a message of, hmm how to phrase, "liberal openness" (though liberal has a political feel I don't like but I hate "inclusivity" even more because it has the dreadful ring of being compelled, quarterly, to spend days stuck in excruciatingly dull HR trainings but okay whatever) by casting people of all backgrounds - based on absolutely no data whatsoever, I'd say it's been somewhat instrumental in making plus-size a bit more mainstream - with lots of skin tones and shapes and being pretty current on issues around gender and race and whatnot. But that was just in the casting, meaning the show itself was just about the contest and nothing more though it allowed contestants to say whatever they wanted. So in the second episode, the designers are told the next challenge is streetwear and they'll have to work it out amongst themselves who gets which model, which really meant people just grabbed the model cards off the table and one Black Haitian guy (race and country are relevant here) arrived late and got the last model who was a White guy. Okay, fine. So he sits there and complains about it because the streetwear he wanted to make was a design statement about Haitian independence from its White slaveholders in 1804 and how doing that with a White model was a violation of every principle etc. etc. So later in the show, mentor Christian Siriano asks a designer to swap her Black model for the Haitian guy's White model. So just to be clear: there's no way she could say no right? Because it's, ya know, the mentor who's a famous designer and part of the show and there you go. And what was rolling through my mind at this point was two things - and I don't care that I'm obsessing about this point DEAL WITH IT - first, um if instead of it being Black and White it was plus-size and skinny, would Christian Siriano be going over to some other designer and saying, "Gee that guy really only wanted to dress a skinny girl so could you take the chunky one?" Uh, no. But with race, somehow yes. The second thing is that this is a design competition, meaning you, Black Haitian designer, were under no compulsion whatsoever to do a design about Haitian independence and when you got stuck with your model because you showed up late to model selection, maybe... you change your design; your design choice is not immutable - in fact it’s part of the challenge of the show! - so save the Haitian independence design for a future challenge. Right? But no one said that to him so it's already, to me, this weird accommodation which resulted in pressure on someone else which in turn sold out the competition since of course if you bought fabric for your model's skintone and cut it for your model's size, you are now under the gun since you have to rework all that and no one else does.
Is this going on too long? NO!
All right, so the next thing that happens is some Filipino designer asks to swap his White model with some White woman who had an Asian model specifically (I think) Japanese (not Filipino you'll note). Anyway there's some whole drama where she doesn't want to swap but feels pressured to do so and resentfully swaps and then the Haitian guy, who has nothing to do with any this, starts insulting her and I couldn't even track why he was so upset. But whatever it's Project Runway people get angry and storm around and rant kind of the way I am right now and I would totally do it to camera if Media Report were a reality series (I’m taking offers btw). Okay so the thing that did me in was this: the Filipino guy comes up with this last-minute completely hideous look and when he's being asked about it by the judges, he starts getting all teary and talking about the drama in the workroom and then the Haitian guy chimes in. And then the judges, who for very good reason have always stayed away from all contestant drama in order to remain unbiased, not only start asking about it all but simply take his story at face value (the White female contestant had stomped off the show by that point) and - and this was the point where I had to stomp off the show i.e. watch something else - tell him how sorry they are that his feelings were hurt.
To be clear: we have reached a point, at least in this competition reality show, where (a) the judges are invested in someone's feelings of being less-than (as opposed to, say, being there just to judge the final product regardless of what happened behind the scenes) and don’t even bother to pretend to be interested in hearing the whole story (as mentioned, the White woman was gone so the whole thing was one-sided) but rather taking everything at face value and being all inclusively sad about it. I feel like HR needs to give them a training in doing their jobs which, given that it’s a design competition about eliminating people every week, is somewhat explicitly about exclusivity. But I digress from my digression. Here's the thing. The entire purpose of the setup and judging in a competition reality show is that you, the viewer, are getting some professional constructive criticism where you can see the garment or whatnot through the eyes of a pro. If the judgment is being made on people feeling disenfranchised and bad... then what am I watching? There are like 14 60-90 minute episodes of this show. At the end, is this Queen for a Day, a reality show from, like, the '50s (maybe ‘40s?) where the woman with the worst sob story was given a prize? I mean isn't that just flat-out insulting? Isn't real inclusivity a combination of opening a door that was previously shut along with treating everyone who made it through that door... the same? In other words - and we've seen this in this show in its early seasons - if basically everyone up there was White and was telling the same story about feeling put-down and less-than, the judges would've stopped it immediately because it has nothing do with their judgment. And no host/mentor ever would've asked anyone to swap models in that instance.
To be clear about this, I have no issue with people talking about themselves, their experience, their issues, their cultural beliefs, their feelings, their anything. Rather what I found so repulsive in this show is something I've seen and found to be gross in other shows, which is the smacked-ass self-stroking of the judges and the production team (because remember: this could've been edited out) in which they're congratulating themselves for all their deep concerned feelings and how amazing they are for being so wondrously sensitive in acknowledging the expression of cultural and personal pain and look, world, at how caring we are! It wasn't unbearable that the contestants sniped then cried. I mean honestly, contestant drama can often be a large part of enjoying a reality show and I am so so fine with people saying whatever they want about whatever they want. The problem for me was that the show itself made a judgment, not on clothing, but on itself for its peacock display of concern over the wrongness of wronged people feeling bad and aren't we WONDERFUL FOR ACKNOWLEDGING YOUUUUUUUUUUUUUU! Or at any rate, that's what I saw walking down the runway, some self-satisfied smacked-assery on the part of the producers and the judges, and a competition show in which the judgment is based on how the judges themselves want to look in part probably because they mean it but let's be real here: we all know if they're cancelled on Twitter or wherever Bravo or Lifetime or wherever will fire them in one hot second meaning even if they wanted to say "I'm sorry you had a bad experience in the workroom, but to be fair to everyone we can only judge and discuss the garments" they couldn't and instead fawned all over a bunch of feelings and therefore what the eff is this show anymore?
Anyway I finished the season but as background noise and honestly the feelsiness of it was irritating the entire time and I'm not sure when they got rid of the Heidi-Klum-replacement-model host and instead decided to have the judges give the tag lines, but it definitely felt weird and fake though of a piece with the overall judge intrusion into the contestant drama and not just giving critiques about the clothes. Of course, that wouldn't allow them to look all carezy and in fact might even make them seem, well, like everyone who buys clothes and more or less has zero clue about the drama behind their creation (to hardly mention pretending it's not all from more or less slave labor) and just judges the final product by, ya know, the final product. It's a bummer how the producers, in their efforts to coat themselves in a sheen of not being rage-Tweeted at for staying above the fray I'm guessing to hardly mention some self-congratulatory social-issues ass-patting - "we're so GREAT for showing appreciation for everyone's cultures" as opposed to "we're so GREAT for letting the contestants be exactly who they are and speaking their minds on any topic while also allowing the judges to see nothing other than a garment on a model" - that I'll probably try one more season before deciding whether or not I’m done with this show. Which is a bummer because when it was good, it was actually really good.
Manifest (Season 1):
This Lost-alike in which a bunch of people on a plane wind up in a storm and, when they land, it's five years later (and they maybe have psychic powers or something like that?) is pretty much 100% spot-on dumb entertainment - and that's a compliment. Yes, it's a network show (or it was; in fact I refused to start watching until I found out Netflix had picked it up after the network dropped it meaning the writers will be able to give it an ending) with all the character "depth" a network show entails: everyone's doing everything for the right reasons (read: family) and there's not a ton of texture especially given that much of the show is around the issues that arise from everyone thinking the plane had crashed somewhere and everyone was dead only now they're not combined with everyone on the plane having had fights, romance, whatever yesterday in their minds and now it's five years later and they're stuck in the past. If you've seen The Returned, there are many of the same beats: relationships reconfigured, children grown up, job status discombobulated, etc. But it kind of doesn't matter that these things all play out in a somewhat predictable way because the writers have clearly learned the lessons of Lost and pay an enormous amount of attention to making sure the plot makes sense and that it feels like it's all leading up to something. I certainly hope it is (knock wood) and the way it all unfolds indicates that it's going for something bigger. Basically, all the surviving passengers have a strange bond where they occasionally hear a cryptic message telling them to do something unclear but, once they figure out what that thing is, it seems to be leading them down a road... to something. There's also a whole plot with the government trying to kidnap the passengers for scientific/military reasons to hardly mention a cult that's formed around them. I hope this isn't reading like a pan because the show is actually super fun. The writers manage to keep just enough balls in the air characterwise, e.g. what will Passenger X do now that her boyfriend from 5 years ago is married to her best friend, and plotwise, which is mostly the efforts by a group of passengers to uncover what happened to them and why and where it's all going and what the voice is leading to all while they evade government agents, to make it engrossing. I didn't watch Lost when it aired but rather later on streaming so I didn't care so much about the ending (if you don't recall: people went crazy because they hated the ending so much after their multi-year investment in a bunch of mysteries that never paid off) in part because I knew upfront that the ending sucked but mostly because my investment was a few months of binging rather than years of water-cooler speculation so it was more about the ride than how it wrapped up. I'm hoping this show has an awesome ending but, even if it doesn't, if this season is any indication of how the future seasons will be, it's a fun ride and I’m really good with that, though I give myself the right to retract this statement if the ending truly sucks.
Movies:
The One I Love - This was on some most overlooked list and, as I've observed with so many of these sorts of films, they're overlooked for a reason, the reason in this case being it's (a) boring, (b) endless, and (c) incomprehensible. I will roll up my sleeves and do my best though. Basically Elisabeth Moss and a Duplass brother are having marital trouble and therapist Ted Danson recommends some getaway house that's helped couples in the past and they go there and discover what seems to be each of their doppelgangers up there as well (don't worry, it's not a spoiler since it's basically the entire point of the movie (if we can say something pointless has a point)). The idea of it, I guess, is that each of them, while trying to figure out what's going on, falls in love - or not - with a different version of their partner, i.e. Duplass A with Moss B and vice versa. I'll just say none of it makes a lick of sense. What is the device doing? No idea because in order for that kind of device to be meaningful, it needs to be in, say, a Freaky Friday context; yes I know that's body swapping not doppelgangers but same basic principle - the purpose of having two of the same person in what's otherwise in the romantic drama genre is some version of self-understanding (obviously in sci-fi, horror, etc. doubles serve a different purpose). So basically you have a married couple with boring we're-drifting-apart-from-each-other married couple problems who go to some house where they meet other versions of the themselves who are EXACTLY THE SAME AS THEY ARE and we watch for what feels like a decade while they figure out what's going on then emotionally cheat on each other with the doppelgangers and eventually everyone meets up at which point the entire thing goes off the stupidity deep end both in its final explanation of what was going on - no idea (that would be the writer's explanation btw and mine as well as it turns out) - or why I watched any of it. If you like boring non-romance non-mysteries that say nothing, go nowhere, and make no sense, you'll totally enjoy this one.