Books:
Under Fortunate Stars by Ren Hutchings
Well this ostensibly fun but in end DNFed space opera was annoying mostly because I was in the mood for something light but not this badly written. Part of me honestly wondered - and still wonders come to think of it - why I'm writing this review, but given that I found this book on some Best Of list and that there are a bajillion high-star Goodreads ratings, I thought it was worth warning you off in case it's on your radar. The basic plot: the people involved in a momentous peace event with otherwise warring aliens wind up in some time-travely-stasis-thing with a ship from 150 years in the future and, I guess, in that yawny way of time loop/travel books they have to get the past right or risk messing up the future plus figure out how they're in the stasis and why. Other than the insanely boring Back-to-the-Future-2 past/future thing, I thought it sounded kinda fun. Oh and btw the reason I find that time loop cliche to be so dull, aside from the fact that it's been done so many times that the supposed stakes are just really boring at this point, is that it's an uninteresting perspective on time isn't it? And kind of silly because it only focuses on a major event - like, in BttF2, if your father doesn't meet your mother, you're never born - as opposed to the interconnectedness a la chaos theory of minor events e.g. you showed up and the mosquito bit you instead of that other person and they therefore never got malaria and thus did x, y, and z instead etc. etc. Time travel stories pointedly ignore minor events (understandably in some ways as a story focused on the consequences of minor events being changed would be infinitely long a la most Netflix shows). So when you read these books, they're just about, kind of, making sure all the enormous pre-school puzzle pieces fit as opposed to putting together a multiquadzillion piece puzzle which gives the entire plot said pre-school feel because it's all so simplistic. And of course, it all ignores more interesting perspectives on time travel, like the one in Dan Simmons' (genius) Hyperion series, which is kind of that everything moves forward meaning, in the BttF2 example, you don't need to save your father's relationship because his never meeting your mother occurred after you were born though 30 years earlier. How’s your brain doing with that sentence? Kinda weirder. This book is none of that. And, even worse, nothing happens in it and I gave it to around 40% so, like, surely something should've occurred by that point, but I guess no. All that happened was two groups of people came to together and talked a bunch but like teenagers from rival summer camps meeting and not like adults trapped in a stasis with their life support failing to hardly mention time traveling. Plus a bunch of backstory which is incredibly boring in face of zero frontstory, as in the only reason I, the reader, would care about the history of the lead characters is if they're actually doing something in the present that that history clarifies. Otherwise, I'm just reading author notes. In any event, if this is on your list, my advice is cross it right off as there's nothing original or of interest here.
TV/Streaming:
The White Lotus (Season 2):
Blwaaahh. Is that a review? For those who don't know, this series is a sort of wry drama with different people (mostly) at a different high-end hotel locale each season (that would be The White Lotus hotel chain) in which various storylines unfold and people learn (or don't) things about themselves and their relationships over the course of their stays (my season 1 review here which spoiler alert is kinda like this review’s gonna be). It's firmly in the people-at-a-hotel subgenre, my earliest exposures to which were Murder By Death, Plaza Suite, its sequel California Suite, and, of course, the uber people-at-a-hotel plaid-bag mixup comedy What's Up Doc. As you can see, the '70s were the heyday of these movies at which point they kind of dropped off the map, and I feel the cultural examination of why all that happened is definitely fodder for someone's Film Studies PhD thesis and feel free to credit me for the idea. While this show isn't as slapstick as those movies, it's definitely in the same basic format where the series covers checkin to checkout and where the weeklong stay focuses on different guests plus staff and locals and their stories and interactions over the course of that week. Look, the show is very watchable as in I watched it and Mike White can definitely write and the dialogue, especially around modern social issues, is often really sharp and funny. And it's different than other shows out there right now so is a nice break from other viewing. But there's also something flaccid and contrived about the show that keeps me, not actually bored, but thinking that at any moment I might become bored. For example, there's an entire subplot involving a friend of a hooker (who's a main character in this season) who is also a kinda sorta but not a hooker and is trying to become a singer and there's something spoilerable with another person at the hotel and, you know, that's about it, she wanders around with the hooker for a bit, she goes to try to sing for a bit, and that's, yeah, what that plot is. And, sure, shows of this ilk aren't designed to be super plotty as they're more about micro-character beats so I guess I'm saying that either some of the character beats are verging on micro to the point of nonexistent or they're more someone-gently-shut-a-car-door-a-block-away-or-did-I-make-that-up? than substantive story beats. You're watching something and it's happening and then it's done.
Because there's a lightness to the show and everyone's pretty hot - I mean, hats off to the casting there's a lot of hotness in here across the board - it's fine. But I can't imagine binging it. And the contrivances, I mean on the one hand that, too, is part of this genre as in people come to the hotel with preexisting problems and intentions and those all get discombobulated in some way. But, if you've seen this season, what did you think of the Jennifer Coolidge plot (and no I'm not describing it beyond that as it's spoilerable)? What did you think of it last season regardless of what you think of her as an actor (if you’re me, not much though I’m aware others completely disagree with me about that)? There's another plotline this season with these tech bros and their wives and, I don't know, there was a lot of contrivance around the relationships (vague to avoid spoilering) between the husbands, between the wives, and between the opposite husband/wife pairings. Again, that plot was there and I guess interesting in the sense that it talked around things with money and rich people but it also made little to no sense. Without spoilering, certain pairings were shoved into certain circumstances by the plot and nothing else, because the characters as written offered no logic as to how they would wind up in those circumstances. So what you're left with is a kind of "what if" as in person X would never do thing Y with person Z... but what if they were forced into a situation where they did? Then what? The show is filled with stuff like that, where characters wind up passively accepting certain circumstances - for those who've seen, what'd you think about Jennifer Coolidge’s assistant and her last day or two and why she passively did anything/nothing she did? - just so the amusing character can now be stuck in this new thing and do whatever they do. So that's my mixed feeling on this show. It's not terrible by any stretch and as I said it's watchable, but it also butts right up against something that's totally dull, silly, and not as good as it thinks it is. Even though I'm obviously on the fence, I'll clearly be watching the third season and I'd say, if you haven't seen before, you'll know within an episode whether or not this show is for you and, if you've watched the first season, well whatever your opinion was of that one will be the exact same for this one because it is exactly at the same level of whatever-it-is-ness both seasons.
Making the Cut (Season 3):
Well this latest season is a big improvement over the prior seasons (reviews here and here) of this fashion design competition reality show for the simple reason that clearly someone involved in the production is an obsessive Media Report reader and finally listened to what I've been saying all along, i.e. just copy Project Runway and be done with it. As a reminder, this heavily Heidi (Klum)/Tim (Gunn)-focused show, one which would have us believe they became celebs due to their amazing personalities as opposed to, you know, being on something popular (and, in Tim's case, offering meaningful critiques), is about finding the next big designer (their phrase) for Amazon. It's not even pretending to be anything other than a venal shopping shill, and the way it's structured is that each week the designers have to present both a runway and an accessible look, the latter of which will be immediately available on Amazon but is weirdly - and why they did this I don't know - never shown on Amazon. Like each week Heidi announces with great excitement whomever's look and unnamed accessories will be immediately available which would seem to be a good moment to actually show us all what's available using a still photo of the Amazon web page, right? I mean we're here, we're watching, you're selling, show us what's actually in the Amazon store. But no. Each week they just show the same generic stock photo of the Amazon app with generic stock photo clothes. It's such a strange (read: dumb) decision. Anyway, the reason prior seasons of this show were boring was because designing, meaning someone conceptualizing something in their head then sending it offscreen to be constructed, is boring. In earlier seasons you were essentially watching people think, describe, choose fabric, stare at it, then send it all off to a seamstress then see what came back. So boring! Well this season it's just Project Runway. Yes, there's an offscreen seamstress but they're also sewing and cutting and recutting and making stuff the whole time, just like on Project Runway. So basically if you liked Project Runway and missed Heidi and Tim, they're right here doing the exact same thing they did before only the challenges are more normal (as opposed to make a dress out of car parts or whatever) since the final product is going to be sold. There's some silliness around the designers making a pitch as to why they shouldn't be eliminated and trying to change the judges' minds by talking big picture about why they're amazing - I honestly don't know how anyone involved in the show hasn't realized that there's only boredom and not the mysterious tension they think they're going for in this moment - but other than that it's straight-up old school Project Runway and on that level, if you like watching people create stuff in short timeframes, then you'll like this.
Movies:
Moonfall - This is a bad and not good bad but actually bad as in boring bad quote unquote action movie where, oh well it's so dumb: basically the moon is, apparently, some long dormant alien space station that comes to life and messes everything up on Earth engendering your normal ho-hum planetary destruction that also somehow magically doesn't interfere with son being able to reach mom on a cell phone to tell her he loves her. It's that kind of movie. And while that genre - idiotic spectacle action - can be fun, this was sadly just totally turgid. It seemed to have all the components of a good bad movie, primarily director Roland Emmerich who in his long career of awful action films has occasionally hit the good bad mark right up there with equally usually plain bad but sometimes good bad directors Michael Bay and Renny Harlin, plus star Halle Berry who seems to have become a bit of an indicator of terrible films though then again maybe she's just been busily living her life and buying a new house or she lost a lot in crypto and I guess if someone handed me 8 figures to be in a total hunk of garbage I'd totally take it so maybe I'm not judging here (though maybe I am?). The plot is far too boring and obvious to recount but I'll give you the brief anyway: there's a backstory involving Halle Berry and Patrick Wilson as astronauts and something with some trip to the moon that went wrong but which turned out to be the first sign that the moon was waking up and Patrick Wilson was disgraced in some way and then some guy from Game of Thrones plays an amateur scientist who figures out there's something wrong with the moon and OMFG do you really need me to continue? The worst part of this movie, aside from all of it, is that the action/destruction sequences were so draggy! Like, yeah, digital FX have improved over the years but guess what? Watching the improved version of a major city being leveled in an earthquake or some huge tidal wave or fireballs shooting from a volcano or whatever is as cliche and snooze-laden as the second time all of us saw something like this. I mean at a fundamental level, the sole reason to watch a film like this is for the destruction porn so that shit better be insanely creative, completely new, and totally on point because the movie has literally nothing else to offer. And guess what? It wasn't even close. I gotta say, this genre of movie has some real competition now because TV/Streaming spends so much money on visual FX (like some of the destructo-porn in the (far far far better) Umbrella Academy) that it kind of begs the question of why these movies are made anymore to begin with. I think the idea is that films like this will make us overcome our reluctance to sit in theaters (COVID!, bedbugs!, people texting the whole time!) and be immersed in some mythic Hollywood audio/visual experience that transcends story, plot, or characters because we're all so amazed by what we're seeing/hearing. But it's so run-of-the-mill now; there's nothing special about big FX because we see them all the time and we see them in contexts that actually have story, plot, characters, etc. So to me this kind of movie either needs to seriously up its game or be retired like the dinosaur it is, the one that was so incredible if you were around for Jurassic Park's initial release, the same one that’s been relegated to ho-hum since then.