Books:
The Lost City of the Monkey God by Douglas Preston
This is a nonfiction book about the discovery of a lost civilization in the Honduran jungles though what it really was was a National Geographic article about the topic stretched in an extremely dull and increasingly desperate way to something resembling book length. The writing is decent (I’ve read a bunch of the Preston/Childs science thrillers (with, to moi, what became a series-killing supernatural twist but I digress my digression)) but really no amount of research or clearly-articulated science facts can overcome the reality which is something like: excavations involve history, politics, bugs, and tropical diseases and that is an article not a book as the word-count of a non-fiction book demands an enormous amount of actual stuff happening lest it become this book which is the same number of words but devoted to things like setting up tents and paddling on a river. The first third or so was pretty interesting - it was about the history of the area, why it was so difficult to explore, why anyone wanted to, and how, with LIDAR technology, the group ultimately did and what happened when they sent a small expedition team (plus film crew of course) to go excavate for the first time. And that was more or less the end. Except it went on and on and on, primarily about how everyone on the crew got infected with a parasite called leishmaniasis and then went into page after page about everyone's disease progress and treatment and really would you like me to devote the remainder of this year’s Media Reports to discussing my efforts to smooth a heel callous and how I started by ignoring it then decided to maybe pick at it in the shower if I remembered then I bought a loofa but forgot to use it for a few weeks and then I remembered and it didn’t work anyway and then I saw one of those pumice things but the plastic handle broke immediately and then I started thinking about the buffer attachment on my Dremel tool and then I decided I was too lazy to care? Would you enjoy reading about that for 200 pages? I have to admit: part of me wants to write a 200 page nonfiction book about my heel callous and see if I can get it published. In any event, I finished (this book I mean but arguably my callous as well), but really there's nothing here other than "we used cool tech to find a lost city" with a massive amount of padding.
TV/Streaming:
Are You the One (Season 8):
So I've shamewatched several seasons of this abominable reality dating show and they were all exactly the same and absolutely no better (or worse in fairness whatever that means in terms of a show this bad) for a few seasons at which point I got bored and stopped then jumped ahead to this one… which was by far the most entertaining (which doesn't make it one bit less shameful btw) for the reason that this season is the only reality dating show I know of where everyone on it is somewhere on the bi side of the gay/straight spectrum meaning everyone is dating everyone which really does make it a bit more fun. The basic premise of the show is that a squad of matchmakers and psychologists - the producers I presume - have determined each contestant's perfect match and, if every match can pair up, everyone splits $1 million. Each week there's a ceremony where couples pair up and are told how many perfect matches the group has but not which couples got it right. The show is mostly hot people wandering around shirtless (if male-identifying), drunk (if female-identifying (mostly)), and upset with each other (gender neutral) and this season had all that plus the sex/gender mashup which was entertaining partly because it felt a bit more modern, partly because it increased the number of possible options making the game itself harder to predict, but mostly because there were so many more opportunities for people to be mad at each other which is really the only reason to watch shows like this (and by watch I mean in the background because this show would certainly collapse under the weight of undivided attention). It is truly not good. The game element - there's some challenge or whatnot every week where the winners go off on dates but it adds little to nothing since the dates are really no different than what people are doing back at the house - is dumb, the weekly pairing-up ceremony is draggy, and most of the people are idiots, but the emotions seem real as opposed to juiced up for camera and, because the show is about people overcoming dating mistakes they've made in the past, there's some pleasurable schadenfreude in watching contestants repeat them in front of us. Definitely idiotic but so is the entire genre and if you like this kind of thing well really there are worse shows in this genre out there (like suicide-mad Love Island for example).
Our Flag Means Death (Season 1):
So this is a very broad really dumb yet (mostly) entertaining sitcom (well it's a 30 minute comedy at any rate) about a wealthy 1600s Englishman in the Caribbean who has a midlife crisis and decides to buy a ship and become a pirate and what happens when he partners up with Blackbeard. In some ways it's impressive that what's essentially an SNL skit manages to - more or less - sustain across 10 episodes (and apparently is returning for another season) because the jokes are unbelievably broad, like Benny Hill broad, though with a very modern sensibility which is really what makes the humor work at all. There's definitely a vague plot and, while I wouldn't describe people as having character per se, there are (again, broad) distinctions between all of them, e.g. the super queeny quippy pirate, the weird pirate, the snarly pirate, etc. and they are all exactly that in every scene they're in. The show is dead center of the Ted Lasso genre (and hopefully doesn't do what that show did in season 2) meaning it gets by primarily on charm rather than cleverness or plot and your enjoyment of the show will be utterly dependent on whether or not you find the leads to be charming and the side characters to be funny because, beyond that, there's not much to grip. Is this reading like a pan? It's not a pan. I genuinely enjoyed most of it though honestly I got kinda bored in there as well. The characters are what they are and never change (mostly) and that's somewhat the point of the show, these people behaving this way and speaking in this manner no matter the circumstance. It's iterations on a fish-out-of-water joke for 10 episodes, again like Ted Lasso or the first two seasons of Schitt's Creek, meaning if episode one isn't doing it for you, none of them will and the reverse holds true as well. When the jokes hit, they definitely hit and they're nonstop so if one doesn't work there's another around the corner. It's an easy comedy with a lot of silly humor and even if it did get a little draggy in parts for me, it was nothing so egregious that I won't be tuning in for season 2.
Movies:
Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings (Marvel Universe #25) - So while this is supposedly in the Marvel Universe, given that I've seen literally no one in this film (except Ben Kingsley and a note on him in a moment) in any universe Marvel or otherwise ever before, I think we can all officially agree that the Marvel Universe exists nowhere but in the minds of copyright attorneys and the marketing team because, whatever (thin, incomprehensible) links may have existed in prior films, this one isn't even pretending.
That being said, who cares? I was pretty entertained by this movie between the now-expected 15 millions years of exposition which exposes nothing and the nonstop action finale. Though I must point out the following: I guess the Marvel writers, who seem to live in a filmic world where, when you come up with a fun idea (like, for instance, someone being deceived into thinking they're fighting the good fight when it's really the baddies pulling the wool over their eyes or whatever sensory body parts they’re comprised of), you just keep doing that in literally every film forward from when the idea occurred to you. I mean why give up on a good thing right? Maybe that’s the unifying link of the Marvel Universe - abject writer laziness! Like that idea - realizing you’re fighting for baddies - was really fun in Lady Marvel then still kinda fun because there was a (vague very very vague) twist on the deception in Spider-Man: Far From Home then by Black Widow you just got so lazy with this plot point that you were like, "Fuck having to come up with a whole set of characters and whatnot to enact a deception - we'll just have a drug do it instead then we don't have to come up with anything YAY!" So I'm refusing to call it a spoiler that ONCE AGAIN the entire plot of this film revolves around the sole idea some of the highest-paid writers (or maybe not actually - I have no idea) can come up with: good guy is fooled into doing bad things. I didn't realize California's reduce, reuse, recycle plan applied to film scripts as well but congrats on the (writer) energy savings - more time for napping, you!
All that aside, assuming you're either unbothered by the plot repetition, bothered but loving the hate-watching, or too high to notice, here's the basic gist of this one: oh no before I give you the plot I have to make a qualification about my plot-giving here because - and I completely blame the director for this - the way this movie was structured is it interwove a present-tense story with some backstory... only without much notification (if at all) of when you were in one or the other. And while you may be thinking, come on, Janice, you're unbelievably hot but that aside can I worship you? And THAT aside, surely you were able to tell when the movie dropped back in time because the actors were younger, right? And I would say right to all of that, especially the first two points, and blame myself as I've done in the past… only we were cutting back to different people at different ages with no indicator that we'd done that nor any real time markers (like everyone having '80s hair or something) so the issue I kept having were things like: are those two kids supposed to be the present-day brother/sister but younger or are those two kids also in the present-day and about to be saved from a bus blowing up by the brother/sister? See? It’s not all my fault!
Regardless, Marvel, in its new trend (I guess) of telling family dramas from the POV of sullen children but with a five-digit body count, just like in Black Widow, here it is yet again. We have a nuclear family - maybe literally? - and, backstory, the dad somehow finds these 10 chunky resin wrist bangles I can't remember how - some magical Etsy I’m guessing - which grant him the both superpowers and immortality, a combo that, as with most jobs, sounds great on paper but turns out to be so boring that all he can think of to do is create a gang to randomly overthrow countries then move on, which must offer its own satisfactions I guess. Eventually, he meets up with some kind of wood nymph or something like that and is surprised, since his natural inclination upon meeting anyone is to try to murder them, when that doesn't happen. After a meet-cute where they beat the crap out of each other, they eventually get married, give up the whole wood-nymphing/government-destroying thing and have two kids.
At some point, the wood nymph gets murdered by some of the dad's old enemies (that happens when you spend eons making people's lives miserable for no reason than immortal boredom) and he, as one does, becomes a sexist tiger-father compelling his son to train nonstop in martial arts and, for no discernible whatsoever other than, I don't know, sexist sexism (as in: dads think boys should be strong and girls should stay in the kitchen, i.e. a typical Marvel thought which manages to insult basically everyone it touches) his daughter isn't allowed to train but instead trains herself in private. I literally have no idea why the father did this other than because the writers needed the brother and sister to be at odds with the sister super resentful.
Though in fairness some of that resentment came from the following DEEPLY BIZARRE choice made by the brother which was: you know that thing where enemies kill mom and dad forces you to train 24/7 - instead of, say, dad dealing with it on his own with his friggin' superpowers - then forces you to use your training to go assassinate the group leader who killed mom and THEN because you just can't take it anymore (at age, like, 14 or something) you decide you’re leaving and your sister begs to come with you and you promise you'll be back in a few days even though you know you won't because... you're moving to San Francisco! I mean, yeah, caring for your sister would be a burden and, okay, maybe you're worried she'll starve to death if you bring her. But why lie to her about it?!? Well I have the answer: because the writers needed it for later, so you did.
Anyway, the son - now renamed Shaun - goes off to San Fran where he seems to be living out his dream of being a parking valet with his bestie, Katy, whom I think he's not dating? Or is? Or isn't? I can't tell but dad's group attacks him and snatches a pendant mom gave him at which point he tells Katy everything about his past and she turns out to be totally fine with the notion of him being the son of an immortal superpower as opposed to, say, offering to get him some medical attention, and because Shaun knows his sister has a similar pendant, he and Katy - who tags along for no reason other than the writers needing her to (a theme in this movie) - rush over to Macau (I think) to protect the sister only she beats the crap out of him because she's still pissed about being lied to and ditched and left, I don't know, with a dad who wouldn't let her train? Or why is she so mad? No idea!
So the family plus Katy the random valet hanger-on get snapped up by dad's goons, all magical-Etsy pendants stolen, and with a mega plan to break into mom's world because, dad is convinced, she's being held hostage... Or is she? And oh did I mention there's some evil superpower locked up in a big cave that wants to get out? Oh yeah and the Ben Kingsley thing, and really I was so insanely confused by this that I may be getting it entirely wrong (no real news there I know), but in some prior movie - and don’t ask me which because I can’t remember (oh wait - this one) and I guess there’s a spoiler of that movie coming so avert your eyes if that sort of thing will bother you - Ben Kingsley played a terrorist only it turned out he was an actor hired to play a terrorist. But in this movie, his character is no longer an actor playing a bad guy but is rather just a bad guy. Yet this movie acts like it’s the same character as the prior movie only he quite patently isn’t since he’s an actual bad guy/terrorist in this one - I DON’T KNOW IT’S SO CONFUSING! Why did they do that? Oh well, it happened.
Anyway, the family battle that ensues is essentially nonstop action sequences and despite all of my complaints, the action salvaged the film. No, the brother/sister thing - which "echoed" (read: “was lifted from” because Marvel is out of ideas) the sister/sister thing with red girl/green girl (I didn’t know why they were so mad at each other either though I think it started in this one but don’t quote me on it - or I take that back: go ahead and quote me on it) - never stopped being annoying because I couldn't really understand the conflict or why emotions were so high or why Katy, who as far as I could tell was just a parking attendant, somehow also managed to fight/survive through all this, but people were kicking and punching each other and that, as is the way of the world, made everything fine.
I'm on the edge of my seat to find out if the next film has a new central plot idea - yep, this is what the excitement of these films has come down to and, no, I don't possess (well not that I'm admitting) a Marvel-level skill in which I can zip into the future to review unreleased or even as-yet-unmade Marvel movies... though come to think of it, given the utter lack of creativity on the part of the writing team and the degree to which they’re into harvesting not just prior movies but sometimes plot points that took place earlier in the exact same film, I probably could.