{"id":4897,"date":"2020-03-07T12:46:24","date_gmt":"2020-03-07T11:46:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sunpig.com\/martin\/?p=4897"},"modified":"2020-03-07T12:48:41","modified_gmt":"2020-03-07T11:48:41","slug":"mixed-media-saturday-7-march-2020","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sunpig.com\/martin\/2020\/03\/07\/mixed-media-saturday-7-march-2020\/","title":{"rendered":"Mixed media, Saturday 7 March 2020"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p><strong>Films<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"600\" height=\"927\" src=\"https:\/\/sunpig.com\/martin\/images\/2020\/image.png\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-4898\" srcset=\"https:\/\/sunpig.com\/martin\/images\/2020\/image.png 600w, https:\/\/sunpig.com\/martin\/images\/2020\/image-194x300.png 194w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 600px) 100vw, 600px\" \/><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\"><li><strong>Once Upon a Time in Hollywood<\/strong> A film so memorable I forgot to include it in my <a href=\"https:\/\/sunpig.com\/martin\/2020\/02\/01\/mixed-media-saturday-1-february-2020\/\">last mixed media post<\/a>, despite updating that post twice with items I&#8217;d forgotten when I first wrote it. It&#8217;s a very <em>pretty<\/em> film. The cinematography is amazing, and it evokes a wonderfully moody feel for Los Angeles in 1969. It just doesn&#8217;t have anything to <em>say<\/em>.<\/li><li>\u2b50\ufe0f <strong>Birds of Prey<\/strong> Fiona and I went to see this to celebrate her being able to watch 16+ rated films here in NL now! It&#8217;s very good. Fun story, great use of narrative structure and editing to tell it in a way that echoes Harley Quinn&#8217;s manic and fragmented personality.  <\/li><li>\u2b50\ufe0f <strong>Train to Busan<\/strong> Zombies on a train!<\/li><li>\u2b50\ufe0f <strong>Uncut Gems<\/strong> I saw the Safdie brothers&#8217; previous film <em>Good Time<\/em> in 2018, and thought it was excellent. <em>Uncut Gems<\/em> has the same frantic energy and characters right on the edge of chaos. Don&#8217;t let the presence of Adam Sandler fool you: this isn&#8217;t a comedy. He plays a terrible person, and the awful situations he finds himself in are all of his own making. He&#8217;s an anti-hero all the way. The film didn&#8217;t make me <em>care<\/em> about him in the sense of wanting him to be happy, but his story was relentlessly compelling. I was practically holding my breath the whole time, wanting to know how (and if) it was going to work out in the end.<\/li><li><strong>The Last Thing He Wanted<\/strong> Wherever the line is between &#8220;understated&#8221; and &#8220;bland&#8221;, this film was on the wrong side of it.<\/li><li>\u2b50\ufe0f <strong>Sonic<\/strong> Yes, genuinely good. Despite a characteristically cartoonish performance, Jim Carrey <em>contributes<\/em> but he doesn&#8217;t <em>steal the show<\/em>. The heart of the film lies with the friendship that develops between policeman Tom and Sonic. It&#8217;s corny, but it works.<\/li><li>\u2b50\ufe0f <strong>Parasite<\/strong> Amazing. Deserves all the praise it has got. I&#8217;m sure there&#8217;s a lot of symbolism and cultural meaning I missed, but no matter what I missed it&#8217;s still an amazing thriller with universally relevant themes.<\/li><li>\u2b50\ufe0f <strong>Better Luck Tomorrow<\/strong> Early film by Justin Lin about a group of teenagers whose indiscretions and petty crime spiral out of control. Alex pointed out that this film is actually set in the <em>Fast and Furious<\/em> universe, with the character Han (played by Sung Kang) making his very first appearance.<\/li><li><strong>Spenser Confidential<\/strong> Why. Whyyyyyy. Why does this film exist? Working theory: it exists to entice and then disappoint Robert B. Parker fans everywhere. This is not a <em>Spenser<\/em> film. <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Spenser_Confidential\">Wikipedia (currently) says<\/a> that the film is &#8220;very loosely based&#8221; on the novel <em>Wonderland<\/em> by Ace Atkins, who took over writing the Spenser series after Parker died. How about we go with, the film is based on the <em>names<\/em> of characters featured in the book. Because other than the fact that Henry runs a boxing and MMA gym, and that Pearl is a dog, these characters are completely unrecognizable. The thing is, this would have been a perfectly serviceable crime thriller otherwise. Just give the characters different names, and I would have been down for this anyway. Mark Wahlberg, Winston Duke, Alan Arkin, and Iliza Shlesinger have some good on-screen chemistry! So if you have no prior knowledge of the Spenser books, you might enjoy this as a relatively lightweight crime\/corruption thriller. But I&#8217;m feeling grumpy about the naming, so it gets no star from me.<\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p> <strong>TV<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=tFVMs4Ru_jI\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"600\" height=\"338\" src=\"https:\/\/sunpig.com\/martin\/images\/2020\/image-1.png\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-4899\" srcset=\"https:\/\/sunpig.com\/martin\/images\/2020\/image-1.png 600w, https:\/\/sunpig.com\/martin\/images\/2020\/image-1-300x169.png 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 600px) 100vw, 600px\" \/><\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\"><li>\u2b50\ufe0f <strong>Road Quest<\/strong> A Kickstarted YouTube series produced by <a href=\"https:\/\/loadingreadyrun.com\">Loading Ready Run<\/a>, in which six of their hosts drive three second-hand cars on a road trip from Victoria, British Columbia, to Dawson City in the Yukon. It has certain elements of <em>Top Gear<\/em>, but it&#8217;s a completely different experience. It&#8217;s <em>kinder<\/em> for a start. Also, although it&#8217;s professionally produced, it&#8217;s still beautifully <em>amateurish<\/em> in the sense that these people don&#8217;t make automobile content for a living. They&#8217;re just a bunch of friends (presenters, comedians) who decided to make a video series about a journey they thought would be fun to take. It&#8217;s relaxed, relatable, and full of geek culture references. Alex was a backer on Kickstarter, and he&#8217;d been looking forward to it ever since it was announced. When it started streaming, I became a fan, too. It&#8217;s just so Canadian and lovely. The <a href=\"https:\/\/biggiantcircles.bandcamp.com\/album\/road-quest\">soundtrack<\/a> is great, too.<\/li><li>\u2b50\ufe0f <strong>Locke and Key<\/strong> (season 1) I love the comics, and I thought this was a great adaptation. It dials down the family tragedy, violence, and existential horror by quite a bit, but it retains much of the mystery and wonder. The season finale leaves the door open for a season 2, but wraps the story up in a sufficiently satisfying way that it doesn&#8217;t <em>feel<\/em> like a cliffhanger. (Come to think of it &#8211; TV shows are starting to get good at this kind of ending. Consequence of the streaming &#8220;all episodes at once&#8221; era?)<\/li><li>\u2b50\ufe0f <strong>Runaways<\/strong> (season 1) Same as above. Love the comics, love the adaptation. Unlike <em>Locke and Key<\/em>, which sticks fairly closely to the books, <em>Runaways <\/em>takes the basic elements of the source material but runs them very differently. The fact that the <em>adults<\/em> get equal screen time (and are developed sympathetically) is one of several <em>major<\/em> shifts. I think it works. The show has two more seasons already out in the world, but they haven&#8217;t landed on Disney+ yet, presumably because of licensing issues.<\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Films Once Upon a Time in Hollywood A film so memorable I forgot to include it in my last mixed media post, despite updating that post twice with items I&#8217;d forgotten when I first wrote it. It&#8217;s a very pretty film. The cinematography is amazing, and it evokes a wonderfully moody feel for Los Angeles &hellip; <\/p>\n<p class=\"link-more\"><a href=\"https:\/\/sunpig.com\/martin\/2020\/03\/07\/mixed-media-saturday-7-march-2020\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;Mixed media, Saturday 7 March 2020&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[1841,1839,1901,1747],"class_list":["post-4897","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","tag-comics","tag-films","tag-lrr","tag-tv"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sunpig.com\/martin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4897","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sunpig.com\/martin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sunpig.com\/martin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sunpig.com\/martin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sunpig.com\/martin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4897"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/sunpig.com\/martin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4897\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4902,"href":"https:\/\/sunpig.com\/martin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4897\/revisions\/4902"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sunpig.com\/martin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4897"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sunpig.com\/martin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4897"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sunpig.com\/martin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4897"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}