What I Watched: I binged all four seasons of You. I am late to the party, but glad to have stumbled upon a show where one roots for a sociopathic, violent, stalker fellow. Season one has a slow build to OMG, and season two gives more backstory. From there, I want to avoid spoilers, so trust me that it is worth watching. Here is the Season One Review:
In the first, Penn Badgley was Joe Goldberg, a puppyish New York bookshop manager with romcom good looks, who also stalked, wooed and eventually murdered Guinevere Beck, a lost-soul writer and poet who had the misfortune to visit his store. It was tense, twisty and audacious, with about as little regard for propriety as it had for common sense. Never has a show incited viewers to shout “buy some curtains” at the screen with more urgency. Don’t get me started on the lack of password protection on any devices crucial to the plot.
And here is the review of Season Four:
The point with You, though, is to just let it wash over you without thinking too hard – essentially it’s a soap, just with higher production values and an incredible face and performance at the centre of it – and the schlockiness of it has always been a feature, not a bug. No more is this evident in season four, where Joe – doing the usual growling, menacing voiceover that Penn Badgley so excels at – is faced with a cavalcade of posh English people, all sounding more English than an English person has ever sounded on screen. Obviously, at some point, someone dies. The cogs whirr into motion. Bluffs and double-bluffs. Every character could secretly be a threat. Thrills and twists await. And then, that beautiful woman wanders casually on to screen and – hello, you.
And trailers:
Season Four Part One and Season Four Part Two
What I Read: In keeping with the theme of likeable murderers, I recommend to you Murder Your Employer: The McMasters Guide to Homicide by Rupert Holmes (famous for, among other things, The Pina Colada Song). It is different, written from differing views, and even the initial vocabulary is fun. Here is the blurb:
From the diabolical imagination of Edgar Award–winning novelist, playwright, and story-songwriter Rupert Holmes comes a devilish thriller with a killer concept: The McMasters Conservatory for the Applied Arts, a luxurious, clandestine college dedicated to the fine art of murder where earnest students study how best to “delete” their most deserving victim.
Who hasn’t wondered for a split second what the world would be like if a person who is the object of your affliction ceased to exist? But then you’ve probably never heard of The McMasters Conservatory, dedicated to the consummate execution of the homicidal arts. To gain admission, a student must have an ethical reason for erasing someone who deeply deserves a fate no worse (nor better) than death. The campus of this “Poison Ivy League” college—its location unknown to even those who study there—is where you might find yourself the practice target of a classmate…and where one’s mandatory graduation thesis is getting away with the perfect murder of someone whose death will make the world a much better place to live.
Prepare for an education you’ll never forget. A delightful mix of witty wordplay, breathtaking twists and genuine intrigue, Murder Your Employer will gain you admission into a wholly original world, cocooned within the most entertaining book about well-intentioned would-be murderers you’ll ever read.
What I Listened To: Continuing with the theme,Psykhi – Death’s a Creep; Fugees – Killing Me Softly With His Song; Talking Heads – Psycho Killer; and Post Malone – Die For Me.
Thank you for playing Brain Drain! How are you, dearest ones? DeadSplinterites, what is up with you? Do tell!
…for…reasons…I’m still watching picard…which keeps threatening to be much better than it is but is mostly enjoyable enough for all that
…& the mandalorian…which continues to be indulgently slow-paced…but…fingers crossed…might be on course for a pretty decent season?
I love “for reasons”, I imagine that they have everything to do with life getting in the way as opposed to the show itself. I seem to encounter “reasons” all the time. Also, we get access again to Mandalorian with the new phone bundle, so yippee!
Watched: Thor Love and Thunder. I have to say that the post Infinity War films have all gotten kind of aimless and blah. This one is funny, as all the Thor films are, but like some of the other Marvel films I’ve seen recently, it’s just…not that good.
Listened: This week’s stop on the best engineered albums of all time brings us to Spirit & the Blues by Eric Bibb. This guy grew up with legends. His father, Leon Bibb, was a singer who made his name in the New York folk scene of the 1960’s. Bibb’s uncle was Modern Jazz Quartet pianist John Lewis. Pete Seeger was a family friend. Bibb knew Bob Dylan and had a conversation with him as a kid, when Dylan encouraged him to “Keep it simple, forget all that fancy stuff.” That’s certainly the case with this album, which was released in 1994 and engineered by Jan-Eric Persson. This is very much in line with the style of Keb’ Mo’s eponymously titled album which also came out in 1994.
It’s surprisingly difficult to find official Eric Bibb recordings of this album on YouTube, so the ones I’ve found have been uploaded by other people and thus don’t have the fidelity of the original recordings. But, you’ll still be able to hear the great soundstaging, performance, and clean, clean sound.
I always appreciate your musical 🎼 reviews and artist picks!
I saw Love and Thunder when it first hit streaming and I’ll be damned if I can remember anything of the plot besides Thor goes somewhere with the rock guy, Valkerie and Jane show up, and there’s a hospital scene.
Some emo guy was the bad guy, I think? Not a good movie.
…shame, too…the comics arc with jane foster as thor were a pretty good run
…as was the story with the god butcher
…I like taika waititi…& I enjoyed the movie for what it was…but most of the elements of it deserved better…admittedly that’s true of a fair bit (though by no means all) of the source material that gets blended into comic book movies…like the previous thor movie that was basically “planet hulk”…most of the consequences of which never made an appearance in the MCU…but…they still somehow seem to be better at live action stuff that DC…who mysteriously seem perfectly competent when they go the animated route
…it’s a mystery to me…but…I know several people who had reasons for remembering the part in olympus that weren’t about the dodgy greek accent…so…they do seem to give a lot of people what they want…or thereabouts?
I think that Taika Waititi seems like he would be fun in real life. I remember seeing outtakes from a Daniel Craig dancing commercial he directed and thinking that he seemed nice.
Thor: Love and Thunder had potential to be so much better than it was. Like there were moments that were awesome (the kids at the end) and things that needed to be dialed down (oh hmm, let’s have the goats screaming again).
I really like the idea of Gorr the God Butcher and I definitely think Christian Bale made a great anti-hero. Like he’s not a villain.
The biggest problem (and I get that this is probably in the comics too, but also, fucking change it up), is that Marvel has a pervasive thing where the optimal life result is to be a middle-aged man with a family. That’s the aspirational goal. It’s not a bad thing, but it means that those stories get focused on and if female characters get to have miserable outcomes to support men getting to be daddies, welp them’s the breaks. Black Widow dies, but it’s cool because Hawkeye gets his kids again and Steve Rogers gets to have his happy marriage in the 40s. Poor Tony Stark making the ultimate sacrifice and losing out on living the rest of his life with wife and kid, let’s have a 30 minute denouement about it.
So like let’s keep fridging female characters. Might as well kill off Jane Foster, too. Because he needs the emotional growth of that grief. Killed off Gamora, Black Widow, Wanda Maximoff, Aunt May, Queen Ramonda, etc.
Obligatory screaming goat clip:
Even Deadpool/Deadpool 2 goes there.
…fair…but…at the risk of winding up as some sort of comic-nerd devil’s advocate
…it’s sort of different when it’s deadpool?
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/ComicBook/DeadpoolKillsTheMarvelUniverse
…I think it goes with the fourth-wall-breaking thing…it’s the sort of thing that those play into/off in a way that the regular stuff doesn’t?
…like…he’s clearly nuts…but so is moon knight with the whole split personality thing…& both times the “delusion” being real is part of the set-up…but with deadpool he actually comes back to the idea they’re in a comic as part of the stuff that in-universe is evidence he’s coo-coo-for-cocoa-puffs crazy
…I don’t know if that makes it better, exactly…but I think it’s…different…in that it’s not thoughtlessly killing off a supporting love interest for cheap emotional stakes & short-hand character development for the male protagonist…it’s hanging a lantern on a trope…I dunno…ymmv by a pretty wide margin but that’s how it seems/seemed to me?
…in the comics the jane foster arc had more time to breathe so it was better in a few ways & the resolution was more satisfying…but truncated to a sub-plot in terms of a one movie narrative it lost a lot of that…which as you point out is sadly typical
…on the upside though ms marvel went pretty well…& I think they have a few things coming up that might build on that & the capt marvel stuff in hopefully a more satisfying way than the girl power montage in one of the endgame fights?
…writing off wanda or black widow dying or (depending how they do the adam warlock stuff) gamora (maybe?) dying might be a more doyle than watson thing about contracts & wanting to recast…which doesn’t mean it couldn’t have been handled better but might not predict more of the same?
…I think there’s maybe something on the slate that would be the two marvels, monica rambeau & maybe the new black widow & the other hawkeye…plus there’s riri williams as ironheart & the new black panther…& she-hulk….so…we’ll see, I guess…but they at least seem to be getting on board the idea that girls might actually be a bigger chunk of their audience than they’ve been catering to…so with any luck there’ll be some improvement on that front?
Honestly I don’t care what happens in a given round of the comics’ run. Disney/Marvel has artistic license to do all sorts of things they want with the characters and comics like to reinvent characters all the time.
I care because they keep killing off female characters of which they have a ridiculous paucity of to begin with. And as a female viewer, the sausage party of *this character is important* gets fucking old.
I doubt the contracts mattered here for the fridging, because Elizabeth Olsen didn’t realize she was getting axed. Black Widow movie was made and came out after they killed her off. The script for Wakanda Forever had to be rewritten after Chadwick Boseman died. Etc etc.
Like whatever, but they barely even pass the Bechdel test most of the time (Ryan Coogler movies notwithstanding).
…yeah…I wasn’t disagreeing with any of that…the way the black widow movie got put off & put off & then eventually made & put out at a point where it didn’t fit as well as it could have earlier never made any sense & the way they tried to jerk johansson around on the cut they owed her by changing the release model was all both shitty & very comics-industry-ish
…I guess I’m just hoping that (while in letitia wright’s case it may only be on account of the tragic loss of boseman) the fact that a much bigger proportion of their main-character roster in the next “phase” isn’t guys means there might be less of that kind of thing going forward…in both the doyle & watson senses
…the in-the-comics part about jane foster was just a nod in the direction that it wouldn’t have been impossible to have that narrative arc play out without it winding up just being yet another entry on that here-we-go-again list…not intended as any kind of defense of the fact that’s exactly what they did with it
I watched Chernobyl, which I couldn’t face when it first came out.
It’s extremely gripping, especially as it deals with the start of the crisis and the immediate attempts to handle — or hide – it.
I think this is an interesting critique of it.
https://www.newyorker.com/news/our-columnists/what-hbos-chernobyl-got-right-and-what-it-got-terribly-wrong
Masha Gessen says it mostly fails to capture the ways the Soviets exerted power, although she highlights some successful efforts by the show.
I think that’s fair — it’s hard to capture groupthink on screen, and the show tends toward oversimplifying conflicts, probably more than it should.
Still, I think it does a good job of starting the conversation, at least. And I think it’s strongest when it does this in the context of the first days and months.
The acting helps a lot, as the subordinates reflect astonishment and then anguish as they realize how far bosses will go to look for wrong explanations that meet preordained conclusions.
I understand being unable to face Chernobyl; it is for (I am guessing) similar reasons that I am an outlier regarding true crime. The reality recitation of tragedy, terror, and disaster are more horrifying to me than fictional tales.
It got a big rebound when Covid hit, but watching the GOP fall into line in denial and obstruction with Trump was all I could stand at the time.
Luther. You guys. It was lame. I’m disappointed. It’s like they plopped Luther into a first draft Bond flick minus the funding and gadgets. Some slight spoilers ahead. They even had a ridiculous Bond-esque villain whose infinite money, resources, and lair were so over the top it was unbelievable. His evil plan was uninspired and lacked comprehensible motivation. Even his image was farcical. He looked like one of those cartoon renderings of yourself that tourists buy on boardwalks. He looked like Gollum but with Johnny Bravo’s hair. There’s no way Luther couldn’t crush him in a one on one fight…I really had to suspend my disbelief when that happened. There was one direct nod to Bond (more like a shaking of the head) in which Luther enters a fancy bar and is offered a martini. He pauses and firmly declines.
Oh thank you! I decided to wait on Luther (even though my hopes were up for anything Idris) until I heard from this lot at DS. What I did watch instead was 3 episodes of DI Ray, ohmygod so good. I will make Ray a Brain Drain April 8 or 15.
Dammit, I was afraid of this.
Great set of tunes @Elliecoo and I love a theme. 🙂
I watched Season 2 of Hunters, I think someone has already talked about it here. I didn’t enjoy it as much as S1 but episode 7 was AMAZING!
I read Don’t Fear the Reaper by Stephen Graham Jones, book 2 in the Indian Lake Trilogy. It’s four years after the Independence Day Massacre of book 1, My Heart Is a Chainsaw, and Jade Daniels has returned to her hometown of Proofrock, Idaho. She is now going by her given name, Jennifer, and is no longer hiding in the world of slasher flix that she used to protect herself from her trauma. But someone else arrived in town during the blizzard that hit Proofrock on the same day and Jade will once again have to dig deep to save the town. These books are smarter than you’d think. Jones, an indigenous author tackles racism and classism while weaving in some native history. But they are still wild, fun, and full of slasher trivia. I can’t wait for book 3. And as I already mentioned I can’t resist a theme so I have been listening to, you guessed it, BOC.
Thank you @Hannibal. Wait until next week or the week after (I forgot which one) when I feature low monthly play artists as per Spotify. My guess is that your awesome local college 📻 radio station has played them already.
@elliecoo I’ve heard good things about “You” but I’ve been cautiously curious. I was worried that it fetishizes stalking and harming women and romanticizes the male gaze. Going to start it based on your recommendation.
It could be guilty of what you suggest…but, for me, it never lessens the creepy factor in favor of the glamorization of stalking/evil. Also it has many twists, and without doing spoilers, it is equal opportunity for killers and amoral perpetrators. I will be interested in what you think about it. Just know that it is a slow start show.
I started watching Last of Us in between basketball games. I’m enjoying it so far but not too far into it. Very dystopian and depressing at times but that’s kind of what you are signing up for.
Also, trying to figure out what the hell I am watching here…
Listening to Bockhoff
Youngest daughter is driving home today for spring break and my Ecuadorian gets home on Tuesday so things are looking up!
Wonderful! Your empty nest 🪺 is filling back up. I am pretty sure that we of DS will be interested in further tales of Ecuador experience.
Watched the Murdaugh Documentary Series.
Not really a murder mystery guy but this one interested me because of the similarities to people I know and my family in Korea.
This would have been my family if a relative broke real bad. A toxic brew of money drugs upper class arrogance entitlement sex power and classism… Yikes.
Ohhh very interesting…in a “may you live an interesting life” kind of way?
I’m watching Top Boy on Netflix. It’s being called a “British The Wire”. It’s not that, but it’s not bad.
…the first season was a long time back originally…if it’s the thing I’m thinking of
…don’t think I saw all that much of the later stuff but that makes me think there’s a movie or two I think you might like if I can remember what they’re called by next week?
LOL, hear you and may resemble you re “if I can remember”.
It hasn’t rolled up to the top of the watch list yet, but it is on there. More importantly, is it time for farm babies?
April/May
I watched the MH370 series on Netflix, it was well done.
I also watched the ID 3 part series about Jared from Subway and while I’m typically against the death penalty, I’m okay with it for child rapists.
While this is an uninformed opinion, I note that those who protest the most about heinous activities are often found to be perpetrators?
i didnt really read or watch anything last week….my copy of leviathan falls arived but i havent started reading it yet coz i keep staying up late to play in the duans
i am not suited to early shift life and like being awake around midnight and beyond….it doesnt leave time to read myself to sleep when the fucking alarm goes off at 5 am tho..
and listening to gabriella cilmi….just coz the song is my speed and has been for years
now listening to de staat
the animation in this video is a trip
dayum……thats impressive stuff