Wednesday's Interesting Things
Problematic movies. Problematic television. And Sly Stone.
Will Eddington be Ari Aster’s scariest horror movie?
The director of Hereditary and Midsommar has a new movie bouncing this summer. Billed as a “modern western,” I feel that may be a mite bit misleading. A new trailer is out and while hinting at the corners of a larger story, there still seems to be plenty under the surface in this movie…
The trailer starts rather small, giving us two men squabbling over town politics before growing into something bigger and meaner. I can’t quite grab onto the genre of this movie, which for me personally, is a good thing. Aster’s last movie, Beau is Afraid, was a prescription pill fever dream, dealing with monstrous complexity. At times brilliant, it was also maddening, exactly what I suspect a prescription pill fever dream to feel like. It feels as though Aster enjoys trading in this mish mash of wild swings and uncertainty, so I assume Eddington will have a similar vibe. Reviews suggest as much.
Movies that push the audience around are good for us; unfortunately, that’s not a Hollywood sensibility so we get fewer and fewer of these. Art is created for a variety of important reasons, that we have elevated entertainment to the top of the list is unfortunate. Aster at least is out here reminding us about the other reasons too. I can’t tell you Eddington is going to be good, but I bet it will stay with you should you choose to watch it when it comes out in July.
What Else to Watch
Yikes. That reaction has nothing to do with the quality of Ironheart, as I haven’t seen it, nor do I think it will be particularly bad. That reaction is for the crumbling foundation of the Disney controlled Marvel’s current situation, which has fallen so far after Endgame. And while I understand there were a lot of mitigating, external factors that forced them to pivot in directions they didn’t want to necessarily follow, it still feels like they’ve cooked up a real shit stew and have no alternative than to force feed it to us all. Anyway, I do hope Ironheart is good.
I am sure there will be plenty of context and legit reasons for the actions in the Oh, Hi trailer, but without that this feels… Crummy? Creepy? I’m not sure we live in times where this type of movie can hold up the idea of kidnapping because a dude is a jerk. Again, that’s only from the trailer of course, but it doesn’t make me want to go out and see it necessarily…
What to Read
Sounds like we really missed out on… something when David Lynch died, as he had a Netflix show cooking called Unrecorded Night. Barely more than a script, I hope it at least gets released in some form so we can see what could have been.
Awesome, we’ve made the world so shitty that people are not having kids anymore. Go us!
By the time you read this, the teen slang will be so yesterday. But maybe you’ll stumble across it in a book or something and you’ll then have the context. The best way to figure out how the kids are talking? Watch Love Island with a Gen Alpha. It’s eye opening.
What to Listen To
I’ve shared Tropical Fuck Storm’s cover of Stayin’ Alive before, but even I then kinda wrote them off as a band with a great name, cool cover and little else.
That’s on me. Because here they are with a new album coming out next week. Give ‘em a listen:
Jam of the Day
RIP to a real one…
Excited to see Eddington despite poor early reviews