Books:
Mad Honey by Jodi Picoult & Jennifer Finney Boylan
So first off there's a big spoiler that appears roughly in the first third of the book which I'm not going to reveal and which I didn't know going in, and, if you read this book, I advise you do the same because the spoiler, for me at least, made me rethink a bit about what I'd read to that point and added some intellectual interest to the book. The book itself - and this is not really a spoiler because you know it's present but I'm going to be vague in the details just in case - is about a trial and is told from the POVs of both the mother of the accused and the victim of the crime. It's not a mystery per se though the courtrooms scenes were interesting; rather it's about two people in very different ways coming to terms with their pasts. Again, not saying more for spoiler reasons. And to be clear: this book is firmly in the contemporary fiction world not the crime/mystery world but it traffics in a lot of current social issues meaning the particular social issues each character faces have certain reveal-worthy components, and part of what I liked about the book was that I didn't know anything going in so just experienced the characters as their stories were written which then, as more backstory came out, caused me to look at them from a different angle. This is why I was glad I didn’t know everything going in as I wouldn't have had the chance to make that comparison. I liked the book okay but, as you can probably tell from this review, it was of an intellectual interest rather than being inhaled by a story. For example, I thought the mom character was pretty flat and a bit of a textual meat sack for authorial interests and ideas rather than feeling like a real person. I'm not saying those interests/ideas were boring; I mean there was a lot of stuff around the history of honey-making plus some well fleshed-out ideation around the struggle to back one's child while not really knowing 100% whether or not they're innocent and how that internal battle might play out in reality. I haven't read Jodi Picoult before but I gather this is what she enjoys writing, i.e. taking some current topic and playing it out against a plot backdrop primarily as a means of looking at people's thoughts and behaviors around the given issue. It was interesting enough but in part the reason I haven't read her before is because that kind of thing isn't my bag; no shade to Jodi Picoult but in the same way I'm not into historical fiction I'm also not into contemporary social-issue fiction. That being said, I was still interested in reading this book to the end though I was also okay putting it down for stretches. If it's been spoilered for you already, you probably have a sense of whether or not you want to read it and there are definitely insights into both lead characters that are of interest; if you don't know the spoiler and you like the general genre then I'd say it's worth giving it a go because, as noted, while I wasn't inhaled by it or anything, I'm still glad I read it.
TV/Streaming:
Ted Lasso (Season 3):
This show, never good then even worse, has degenerated into a full-on chore to watch by which I mean I left it on in the background and despised it the whole time and sat through it solely for the point of, well I don't know, my own completion issues maybe? I believe the show is cancelled but it's definitely cancelled for this Janice. Its plotless pablum was okay and even charming in its aw-shucks American charms first season, but let's also remember that that first season was around 30 mins per episode as opposed to the 60 mins episodic bloat of this season. Additionally, season 1 at least had some kind of vague conflict for the lead characters: fish-out-of-water non-soccer coach struggling to win; vengeful/saddened divorcee owner struggling to lose; lead soccer players in combat with each other all within a shaggy dog sports story package. Those characters actually COULD have gone somewhere but instead the show decided the best tactic was to make itself into a kind of live-action Davey and Goliath where people are just really nice to each other all the time, no conflict of any kind exists, and all relationship issues are worked out with just a heartfelt conversation and some ownership or hurting someone’s feelings. For season 3, that became every single episode nonstop. All conflicts arose just long enough for our lead characters to be really adult about them then move on to a new conflict ad infinitum. The soccer was there solely to show us what big goofy man-children sports stars are and how they can evolve, conflict by tossed-away conflict by yet another tossed-away conflict, into meaningful adults, making this show less about soccer players and more about The Forum attendees in tube socks. The awfulness of this show borders on contempt. I mean, it's about a soccer coach so, like, 3 seasons in we're still doing a thing where he doesn't know how to coach and this is having no consequences for what reason exactly? Despite the fact that it's set in a somewhat unseen world - the business of sports and its marketing - and therefore could have shown us some interesting actual stories and conflicts, instead it does things like spend 80% of an episode with the soccer players debating whether to go to a sex show while in Amsterdam or a party. Or devote an entire endless multi-episode subplot to one lead dating her firm's financier - only she had no idea that person - spoiler alert! - was a woman. I mean that's how dumb this show is aside from the overarching question of what idiotic venture capitalist puts money into a random sports PR firm run by the PR person of the worst team in the league. And, um, wouldn't you know who was financing your company because, like, you had to meet with them at some point to get their money? Ugh, why am I bothering? But I guess I am! I mean it's that level of lazy awful writing. It's so lazy there's even a sex tape and not handled in a remotely modern way (whatever that might be) but rather like it's 2011. Oh and also just FYI for the writing squad: no one even knows who runs a PR firm let alone cares about their sex life let alone needs to have them make a Twitter (or X now I guess) statement about said sex tape. Literally no one. This show is just an abomination. It was hanging on by a thread from the beginning but the abject lack of skill by the writing team to overcome the press it generated in season 1 about its being this throwback sweet breath of fresh air during COVID lockdown (air that didn’t seem so sweet but rather downright hostile at that point as we all recall) and evolve the show into a substantive if still down-homey comedic take on sports relegates this to the trashbin of Media Report, the ultimate insult! AVOID!
Movies:
Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania (Marvel Universe #toolazytogoogle) - This is another delving into the most visually boring environment of all time - trippy purple! swirly things! - with - and my expertise in this arena is nothing more than watching 50 bajillion movies - the worst green-screening I've ever seen in a $200 million dollar or whatever this cost film to date. For real, I've seen TikTok shorts that do it better by which I mean there isn't one second in this movie where you're not aware the actor is standing in front of something rather than being in something, i.e. it looks like all the actors are cosplaying at Comic-con while standing in front of one of those industrial-sized OLEDs which is playing "futuristic aquarium" on a loop. Not only is this movie incredibly stupid - though in fairness that's totally in keeping with its prior iterations (here and here) - it's also crazy dull because none of it makes sense, meaning nothing that's happening plotwise even at the base level of hero v. villain is remotely engaging. Look, I don't need a lot here as you can tell from my willingness to watch more or less anything, but this movie bordered on being a filmed theater piece, as in there's a cast of like 5 people all against a similar backdrop but in different locations - "purple squiggly here" and "purple squiggly there" - and they do a lot of proscenium-style scenework talking at each other and, come to think of it, perhaps this movie should be viewed by the Tony nominating committee. Okay, you're thinking, it's a play with actors against a fake background, but surely there something exciting happening, right? I mean it's called "quantumania" after all so surely the quantum should be something marginally interesting and there should be nonstop mania right? RIGHT?!?! Here's what makes this plot so bad by which I mean boring because I'm fine with a ridiculous plot as long as the movie is overall entertaining: there are zero stakes. I mean you're in a swirly environment of the quantum realm and someone - Jonathan Majors - is a quantum villain and honestly it's possible that someone monologued at some point during this theater piece that if Jonathan Majors wins it will have devastating consequences for human existence or somesuch but it's all super who cares. Not-who-cares (meaning actually writing a plot) might look like Jonathan Majors breaking out of the quantum realm and doing all kinds of bad quantum stuff on Earth and our lead squad having to stop that. But with this movie there's none of that. The whole thing is set in that purply swirly space meaning your level of investment is essentially that of picking up a dropped sliver of hotdog from the pavement, sticking it under a microscope, and watching one bacteria attempting to eat all of it while another tries to stop it. Exciting!
Oh sigh. It's strange because while most of the Marvel movies have a political message as reiterated over and over here on Media Report - that the world is better off with a White fascist whimsical male dictator around to make moral decisions about who lives and dies - these Ant-Man movies, which are basically extended Saturday morning cartoons, are somehow even worse. Like absent the (admittedly likely unintended) political commentary, what am I even watching? Because the writing is awful in both. I find it so strange that a successful franchise which makes gobs of money can't even be bothered to hire writers who can craft a meaningful world and characters. I mean they're spending a ton, but not on that? Or, more likely, it's the executives who read these awful scripts (i.e. send them out for coverage) and then just greenlight them because it doesn't matter they'll make money regardless so who cares. And that's the part that's so bothersome. Don't you, executive, writer, Marvel, care? I mean, yeah you're guaranteed a billion no matter what, but you're still sitting there for years developing and shooting and editing and watching cuts and all the visual effects; during that time, the two or so years of your life that will never never never get back, don't you want it to be filled with something you personally think is awesome and that you're proud to be a part of? I'm not dissing the commercial part of commercial art but I am saying that the art part, meaning the part where everyone involved is self-expressing via the commercial vehicle, doesn't need to be nonexistent. You can actually have both! You can, and plenty of people have, make something big and entertaining and also coherent and occasionally even thoughtful. Top Gun: Maverick was certainly the height of nothing other than being exactly the sequel everyone thought it would be with Tom Cruise doing zero more than Tom Cruising his way through the film and with a not-so-great plot and not-so-great characters but with coherence and an overarching sense that it wanted to say exactly what it ended up saying. Like whether you enjoyed the movie or not, everyone knew what they were making and why and actually seemed to care about the final product and that was apparent on every frame.
This movie? Let's start with something obvious: Why is Paul Rudd even an ant? It has nothing to do with anything. I get the ant=small thing but if you're calling your shrinking character Ant-Man to hardly mention putting it in the title, well wouldn't coherence mean doing something, ya know, ant-y? I know this seems like a dumb point but really think about: why?!?! I mean call him Quantum-Guy if that's what you want him to be, but you called him Ant-Man and then did nothing ant-related at all other than randomly have some ants show up at some point. Same with Wasp - why?!?! Why all the insect stuff then they're in quantum mechanics with Michelle Pfeiffer (not an ant or wasp), Michael Douglas (ditto), and Jonathan Majors (tritto) and that's that. Do you see what I mean by lack of caring or coherence? At a basic level, wasn't there anyone in the entire non-ant aka human food chain who cared enough to say, "Hmm, we have insect-y leads so let's come up with something where their insectness will be embedded in the plot." I mean didn't they see their own equally insect-y Spider-Man movies where, ya know, it's not super spidery in all honesty but his prime thing at least is shooting out webbing? This movie? This is just sticking random stars in costumes in a totally unthought-out world (there is no world, no rules, no nothing - but there are purply swirls for those who love them) and shoving them in a generic plot where each of them has to to do something meaningless and nothing tied to who they are as people or superheroes because they're so ill-defined that they can't really be classed as either of those, all in order to stave off a generic statement of the-world-will-end-if-we-don't-intervene then slap that in plot-beat order, pad it with quips rather than relationships, and rake in your money. Which you could have done while also writing something that shows anyone cared but no one there did and that's this movie. Enjoy!