Media Report

Lupin, Mel Gibson, and more!

Books:

Before the Fall by Noah Hawley

It’s compare and contrast day here on Media Report, and this purported mystery about two survivors of a private jet crash which goes back and forth between passenger backstories and a present tense investigation/media-hounding serves as the shiznit end of the comparison because what this book really is is a nonstop spluge about the state of broadcast - Fox - news interrupted occasionally with “oh yeah right I forgot about this being a mystery hang on let me throw this plot point in.” I believe this was published due to “voice” specifically Fargo creator Noah Hawley’s, and oh dear, dear publishing industry - and I’ve railed about this before and will no doubt rail again - plot and story are what earn the writer the right to have voice because voice in the absence of the others is a voice I, at least, have no interest in hearing. Like what's the difference between reading a plotless voice voice VOICE VOICE VOICE book like this one and being stuck next to Noah Hawley at a dinner party as he blithers on about his opinion on various topics while I smile politely and scramble to invent a plausible medical issue that will require me to go home immediately? The food I guess. I can only imagine the reason for all this primacy of voice is that the individuals involved in publishing want to be associated with what the publishing industry echo chamber tells them will make them look cool, edgy, whatnot. All I know is that I've suffered through too much Contemporary American Soporifia in the past decade to not be completely resentful. And to make matters even worse, all these publishers must have realized that no one wants to read this crap anymore and have consequently started lying on the label and like where’s the FTC?! The mere fact of an unresolved plot point doesn’t mean that a book is a “thriller” or “mystery” or “page-turner” (screen-tapper?) but rather that it’s doing the baseline bare minimum of any non-experimental fiction writing. Perhaps it’s that the publishing industry people have become so inured to the tyranny of airquotes voice that they actually think, as with 18th century debutantes swooning in a faint from having their wrists brushed during a waltz, that leaving a plot point unresolved IS thrilling and exciting relative to the plotless vacuity they read and publish all day long. By contrast dot dot dot…

Fierce Kingdom by Gin Phillips

So to me, this is book is a fine example of how plot allows an author to be heard, in this case the story of and musings about a mother's love for her child but entirely in the packaging of a thriller. The main story is about the lead taking her 4-year-old to the zoo where something happens that I won’t spoil but which results in their being trapped there after dark with the animals out of their cages in addition to the unspoilered human-animal-created problems. The vast bulk of the novel is the narrator’s thoughts about family and children with no more plot than the Noah Hawley book certainly only the author never forgets the mother’s circumstances while these thoughts are happening, i.e. there’s a plot. Thus I would categorize this book as Contemporary (Old-School?) American Fiction of the kind I used to enjoy rather than a genre book - the thriller aspect is tense for much of it then dips then returns at the end - because it’s really more about motherhood against a backdrop of tension rather than, see above, a bunch of jibber-jabber with some crime-ish asides. This book has a clear plot which, publishing-people, far from undermining the writing, is why I’m giving it the much coveted Janice nod of approval.

TV/Streaming:

The Cry:

This is a 4-part BBC (or maybe Australian) miniseries twisty thriller that's really well done and totally entertaining and thus another total Janice nod. It's a slow burn and the twists are doled out rather then fast/furious, but the acting is good and the writing really pulls it all together, like even though I found myself questioning character motivations at certain points, it all made sense in the end and parts that I thought were plot conveniences or illogical completely paid off - you just have to wait it out to understand everything. Entertaining from beginning to end, twists I didn't see coming (and I'd advise skimming or skipping plot summaries, recaps, etc. because the show is very spoil-able), eminently binge-able (I watched all 4 back-to-back), an ending that pays off your time investment, and what more could one ask for?

Lupin (Season 1):

So I know this show was supposedly wildly popular but let’s bear something in mind: Netflix counts 2 minutes as a “view.” I note this because while, yes, most of us - even we judgy yet also thoughtful and super hot Janice types - actually watch a show for longer than, say, the credits sequence before deciding whether or not it’s for us, Netflix’s overhyping dishonesty may make you feel like you’re missing out on something and so let me clear this up right now: you are not. The essence of this show is there’s this master thief and some bad guys and stealing stuff and jewelry and a backstory, i.e. nothing you haven’t seen before which in and of itself is fine, but what’s crazy bad about this thing is that it’s a children’s show. Really! I mean, the characters, plot twists, etc. are all super G-rated. In fact, were it not for that, I’d probably have glossed right past this show entirely because the plot is dumb and full of conveniences but it’s pretty inoffensive, short for a Netflix series (5 eps/45 mins per ep), and this just would’ve been one of those “if you’re bored and there’s nothing else” reviews. But the children’s show aspect makes it difficult to engage with if you’re over, say, 10, because there’s really no illusion of danger, nothing that will really ever challenge the lead who will always be smirkily two steps ahead of whomever he needs to be ahead of in that moment, the cops all a bumbling two equal steps behind until the plot needs them not to be, and the villains so mustache-twirling with such hazy motivations that it’s hard to get invested in any of it. This show is background noise at best if you don’t have young children and something you’ll be playing Fortnite on your phone through all of it if you do.

Behind Her Eyes:

Some Janice rec’ed this mini - sorry “limited” - series, and while it is NOT GOOD, I watched it all and I say that with a certain amount of shame because although I started out thinking I was in a classy high-end mystery (thus making me classy as well), by like the second or third episode I realized I was in classy/high-end garbaaaaaaaage (thus making me, well, my normal viewing self) and, despite that knowledge, I kept going. If you've watched The Sinner or Doctor Foster, you'll be familiar with this "fun mess" genre (and if you like this one you should certainly go watch those and vice versa). As with all fun mess shows, it takes itself lethally seriously, is super expensively produced, and is plotty enough to keep you engaged yet you know to the core of your being that you're watching total idiocy. This one had all the hallmarks of the genre: broken marriage, mysterious backstory, maybe/maybe-not some cheating, maybe/maybe-not some psycho behavior, lots of red herrings and misdirection, and a self-belief that it’s a dazzling award-worthy Hitchcock-level mystery when really it’s basically a 5-episode arc of Knot’s Landing. Believe me, when you get to I think episode 4 and realize you have completely genre shifted, you'll either be enraged and DNF or do what I did and giggle straight through to the end - which btw actually had a pretty good twist!

Movies:

The Night - This is an extraordinarily dull and cliched psychological horror story about a couple who wind up at a spooky hotel and the internal unravelings that occur in the face of said (not even remotely spooky) spookiness. As if all that weren’t enough, it was also insanely overrated by non-Janices, maybe because the filmmaker is Iranian and they’re trying to be supportive at the expense of their sole reason for writing anything about the movie at all? Look, I’m fine with a slow-ish psychological horror - the primo example of nothing happening very very menacingly being Polanski’s Repulsion IJHO. If Fierce Kingdom (above) was - and I’m quoting Janice here - “the story of and musings about a mother's love for her child but entirely in the packaging of a thriller” then this movie was - Janice again - “a couple’s secret feelings being revealed to each other in the OMG I fell asleep in the middle of this sentence.”

Apocalypto - This is the Mel "Sugartits" Gibson movie made in the early 00s set in the Aztec era about a man escaping from a human sacrifice and trying to get back home to his wife and child who are also facing unspoilered issues. It’s an action movie with honestly pretty decent character setup for something with little dialogue and that all in ancient Azteci. I didn't see the film when it came out and I remember it being widely panned but I thought it was actually pretty entertaining - it’s basically a straight-forward action movie only set a few millennia ago. BTW, I feel like this is going to be the trend with cancel culture: a few years after the cancel-y event when you only have a hazy recollection of why the person was canceled - #metoo issue? something racist? the mere act of being a college professor? - the canceled person’s art will wind up on various streaming sites and, operating on the assumption that everyone on the planet is exactly like or aspires to be me, people will watch and go, “Oh yeah, that’s pretty entertaining” like I just did! Yes I’m sure Cancelled Person X actually said or was accused of something horrible but to moi as long as CPX wasn’t actually convicted of something horrible (Bill Cosby), my feeling is enjoy away, i.e. I hereby formally absolve all Media Report lectorii of any and all guilt over secretly liking that future [Kevin Spacey/JK Rowling/Jimmy Fallon/randomYouTuber/Ellen DeGeneres/Doja Cat/Shia LaBoeuf/Chris Pratt/someone from a Bravo show/Scarlett Johansson/any statue] piece of media. Namaste. And just throwing out this amazing ida here right now: the Oscars should consider adding, as with the “In Memoriam” obituary montage, a “Cancelled” montage to celebrate those famous people who spent the prior year Tweeting themselves out of their own careers - someone start a Change.org petition pronto!