HARLEY QUINN: A VERY PROBLEMATIC VALENTINE’S DAY SPECIAL (2023)

February 11, 2023

My apologies in advance for posting yet again about HARLEY QUINN but I will never, ever shut up about this show.

It is not only a paragon of comedic entertainment, with a joke-per-minute count that puts ARRESTED DEVELOPMENT to shame, it features some of the most thrilling and cartoonishly squeamish scenes that would make Sam Raimi jealous, it dives head-first into some of the thorniest depictions of trauma — seriously, the first season’s Bensonhurst should be on every screenwriting syllabus — and it has one of the best penned romances of television time. (Suck it, Jim & Pam.)

And it does all of this under the umbrella of the scattershot DC universe somehow.

I’ll note that the show has radically changed over its three seasons: the first season was fundamentally about Harley separating herself from the abuse of the Joker and finding a supportive network. The second season was about her finding herself and reconciling her history. The third kind of blew up her support network, but also (finally) found her living her best queer life with her love Poison Ivy.

That’s a lot for a show to tear off, much less do well, and manage to do so in gut-busting way.

A bit of a sidenote: I think a lot of people get a tad too hung up over ‘being Harley’ or ‘being Ivy’, in the stupid way everyone in the 90s felt the need to label themselves as a Seinfeld or Sex and the City character. (I still don’t understand why anyone would want to self-identify with those hateful people, but it’s not for me to judge. Well, maybe a little, unless you’re a Samantha because she’s the best.)

What I love about the series — and what makes this special so very special — is that the characters are far more complicated than base archetypes. I can’t help but identify with both. I’m the filthy over-eager people-pleaser that Harley is, but I am also frequently misanthropic and want to do nothing but watch my stories and retreat from the world because I also hate everyone and everything. (Nothing personal!)

However, they make it work. They’re loving, but also have to be constantly mindful of each other’s needs.

That’s one of the great things about this show: it’s one of the first non-John Waters works I’ve seen that celebrates horniness, even against a culture that actively tries to beat it down. (Pun intended.) This episode is wall-to-wall horny in a celebratory way, in the way that I wish sex was more popularly portrayed. It’s mostly about Harley buying drugs to give Ivy the best orgasm of her life — which leads to one of the best lines of the show:

“Oh you can’t possibly be mad at me gettin’ ya off too good. That is not a thing!”

Even us damaged folk want to get our freak on, and this show helps to normalize that.

And then there’s Bane! Kaiju Bane, fucking every building he sees because he took some bad drugs! Literally laying waste to the world, and it’s hilarious.

This show is bonkers, but also manages to be one of the most grounded works out there. I’m so tired of seeing poorly-penned 20-something relationships in media, and HARLEY QUINN gives us something meaningful and substantive, while also being narratively interesting!

I’d like to note that Alan Sepinwall is also extolling the show’s virtues (or, err, lack there of?) so I’m not alone:

https://www.rollingstone.com/tv-movies/tv-movie-reviews/harley-quinn-hbo-max-twisted-valentines-day-special-abbott-elementary-dc-comics-1234673252/

Cripes, I didn’t even get to mention all of the WHEN HARRY MET SALLY riffs. Also: ETRIGAN and his rhymes?! And their V-Day hairdos! Just watch the damn ep — it speaks for itself!

Fuck AMC

February 8, 2023

Taking a rare timeout to get on a different sort of soapbox today:

Look, I realize I’m in the minority when it comes to movie viewing and theatrical outings. I actively — often solo — pursue indie theaters in the name of art versus a collective outing to fall asleep during the latest Marvel film. Also: I hate middle seats and sitting around people, especially in megaplexes. I have long legs — long enough that if someone needs to pass me by, I have to stand up; the sideway scrunch doesn’t cut it — so I routinely sit in one of the most unpopular seats in the house.

That said: AMC’s decision to move towards tiered prices for seats is a disheartening and damaging one, one that signals that they’re tilting towards Ticketmaster. I honestly wouldn’t be surprised if, within a year or two, we start to see them boost their own ticket hub to auction off ‘sold out’ seats for tentpole releases. (I still don’t understand how Ticketmaster owning and funneling tickets off to StubHub is legal.)

Movie theaters will never die — you will always have misfits operating a creaky projector in whatever abode they can finagle — however, it is about damn time that theaters as monopolies die. What many folks forget about American capitalism is that Hollywood was the very pinacle of ‘vertical integration’, where one singular power controlled the creation, distribution, and consumption of their product, giving studios unbridled sway to essentially extort money from the public. Eventually the Supreme Court interceded and handed down a brutal number of penalties against the major players. It’s worth noting that Disney actively engages in ‘block booking’, which is why you can see the latest Marvel film on ten screens in the same theater, but there’s no room for the latest Sarah Polley film. (For more, see: https://constitutioncenter.org/blog/the-day-the-supreme-court-killed-hollywoods-studio-system)

However, as Elijah Wood noted: movies have a history of being an egalitarian entertainment. Before there were movie houses, folks roamed from town-to-town, setting up a hand-cranked projector and a screen outdoors for public entertainment (and a bit of profit). When movies went indoors, the spots were often known as movie palaces — not just for their opulence, but because they were spaces to collectively congregate for the better part of the day, and a nickel would give you a way to beat the heat, learn about current events via newsreels, have a few laughs and maybe shed a few tears. (And yes, that’s where the term ‘Nickelodeon’ comes from.)

Not to be all ‘back in my day’ but back in my day, there were a number of national franchised movie houses, like Loews. Now, AMC owns them all and have a virtual monopoly on movie theaters. Now they’re charging more than what you’d spend to stream a film upon its release. (Those of my age may remember that, ‘back in the day’ you couldn’t buy films on video for less than $100, but that’s a subject for another time.)

Again, this isn’t about me. I’ll pay the minimum price for the handful of films I attend at an AMC for a year and it’s no skin off of my nose. (There’s no way in hell I’m paying a membership fee for the privilege of a discount, though I will note that I do pay a yearly membership fee to my favorite movie theater: Chicago’s own Music Box.) However, it does severely impact families. I can’t speak for everyone, but I vividly remember my early moviegoing experiences with my family, the awe of big screen spectacle, being swept away by intense emotions, sometimes to the point of having to be ushered out of the theater and comforted by my parents. I’m saddened to think that most of the youth of the current generation will not have those experiences — it’ll just be a blur of banal streaming works on a poorly calibrated flat-screen TV because it’s financially impractical as an outing.

(That said, my parents also hewed strictly to ratings and rarely let me watch anything they hadn’t already seen before. Let this post be a lesson to all of you young parents: restricting media to youths only serves to turn them into media-obsessed monsters.)

I wouldn’t be surprised to see AMC either revert this decision, or simply double-down on it. It’s just disheartening and sad to see what should be a simple experience of going to the movies — a literal trope in many movies — become overly complex and expensive when, if matters were better managed, it wouldn’t be a problem.

Janelle Monáe

February 2, 2023

Diving into Janelle Monáe’s back-catalogue:

I was lucky enough to see her live at the Chicago Theatre, one of the oddest places for her to play as you’re meant to have your ass in your seats, and if there’s anything that Monae’s work is about, it’s about getting your ass up to dance.

So I did, but tried to do so in the least in-fractious way possible, but still kept bumping up against my ticket neighbor. After the show ended and the lights turned on, I apologized to her, and she retorted “If that’s the worst thing I have to endure today, I’ll consider it a good day.”

THE MENU (2022)

January 23, 2023

There’s an old adage that one should work a service industry job, just for the experience, just to know what it’s like to have to perform a job that you will not be acknowledged for, one in which you will be treated like dirt. I didn’t do so for the experience — I needed the money and worked as a dishwasher and then was promoted to a line cook. (Then I was fired and re-hired because my bosses discovered that I found out how much my fellow employees were making. I honestly didn’t care, because they had far more experience than I did, and I don’t value my self-worth because I’m dumb, and basically groveled to reclaim my place and retained it until I moved. But that’s another tale.)

So it’s nice to see THE MENU call this shit out, when instead they could have absolutely ignored it and penned a basic classist slasher-thriller. Instead, it’s a supremely smart and thoughtful dramatic thriller about the entire operation of feeding people, especially rich people, and fulfilling expectations while also fundamentally undermining them, but also undergoing a certain type of self-examination.

I’ll note that, yes, while I grew up in blue-collar joints and learned how to perfectly cook a cheeseburger to someone’s needs, I have indulged in dining in the exact restaurants that THE MENU riffs on such as Alinea. I’ll note that it is hard to overstate the impact of Alinea, especially in a frequently overlooked culinary city like my residing city of Chicago. (We’re more than deep-dish pizza, you know.)

This will age me, but my wife took me to Alinea for my thirtieth birthday. I’d been salivating over them before they even opened, as I’d been following the progress of the restaurant via the eGullet forum, despite not really being a foodie, and definitely not being a restaurant-scene chaser. It looked absolutely radical.

I felt like a schmuck because I was still kind of young and barely knew how to dress myself for the surprise occasion. No, we did not have the fabled dessert because it wasn’t part of the menu at that time. At that time, they were known more for a table-centric chocolate bomb, which was just as delightful/terrifying.

I do not say this to brag. I do not like to pretend that I’m above my station. (To quote Groucho Marx: “I don’t want to belong to any club that would have me as a member.”) I proposed to my wife over fried chicken, if that tells you anything. (Granted, it wasn’t KFC, but Harold’s Fried Chicken — some of the best goddamn fried chicken in the world, however, you routinely have to order it through bulletproof-glass.)

THE MENU sees all of this, and sees the possible pretension and artifice and demon-mongering that can go into it, and it explores it. I commend it for that, because certainly, there are plenty of terrible restaurants out there that prey on it, on giving pretentious service that can fail to fulfill its promise. (Alinea’s rotating sidecar restaurant — NEXT — has done that more than a few times for us, but has also been absolutely amazing at times. I can’t forget the pressed duck that we had at our first endeavor — their recreation of a Parisian menu from 1906 — and then they walked us through the kitchen to show how it was made which, well, it made it more miraculous.)

Long story short: restaurants are complicated creatures. Unlike films, no one ventures to one for the fun of a ‘bad time’ but THE MENU twists all of that around. I can’t say it didn’t leave a bad taste in my mouth — it certainly did — but it’s certainly a film that provides food for thought.

Postscript

It’s worth noting that one of my favorite films of all-time is Peter Greenaway’s THE COOK, THE THIEF, HIS WIFE AND HER LOVER. You might think that it and THE MENU are different sides of the same coin, but really, apart from taking place in a restaurant and extolling haute cuisine, they are worlds apart. THE COOK… is far more mannered and political and British, whereas THE MENU is far more American in every which way.

BAYONETTA 2 (2014)

January 19, 2023

(Switch/WiiU) BAYONETTA 2 feels like a parody of videogames, something so ludicrous that it’s hard to believe it even exists. It’s something so deliberately non-sensical, hyper-sexualized, cartoonishly violent, and completely and utterly removed from reality that it could -only- be realized as a videogame.

On paper, it shouldn’t work. The protagonist is utterly outlandish: Bayonetta brandishes her hair as her costume and as a weapon and as identity. Every appendage of her is weaponized — literally: guns as high-heels. BAYONETTA 2 isn’t just hack-and-slash, it’s absolutely gonzo.

However, it does work. While, yes, Bayonetta has a lot of fan service — I often say every work speaks as to the creators’ fetishes, but this nakedly puts it front-and-foremost — it feels like the lingering camera and leather and latex comes from a place of positivity instead of exploitation. Bayonetta exudes cool like James Bond and flexes it. She’s living her best life as a badass witch, a devil-may-care woman who does what she wants and loves what she does. Couple that with a myriad of mind-bending set-pieces, bonkers bosses, and a litany of combo opportunities and it’s a phantasmagoria of delight.

Postscript

I highly recommend the following write-ups regarding BAYONETTA 1 & 2, from Leigh Alexander and Maddy Myers.

LEOPARD SKIN (2022)

January 18, 2023

(Peacock) LEOPARD SKIN is an eight episode limited series from Sebastian Gutierrez, perhaps best known for the recent neo-noir series JETT or for the cult comedy ELEKTRA LUXX or a little joke of a film named SNAKES ON A PLANE, depending on the kind of person you are. (I fall in the first camp.)

JETT was known for its supremely hyper-stylized lighting and framing patchwork — segmenting the action to heighten tension as well as to just look cool. As you might imagine, it owes a great deal of debt to Steven Soderbergh’s adaptation of Elmore Leonard’s OUT OF SIGHT with a dash of WILD THINGS. Tellingly, Gutierrez also wrote an episode of the short-lived Karen Sisco spin-off of the film where THE HAUNTING OF HILL HOUSE’s Carla Gugino played Sisco. (It’s worth noting that Gugino and Gutierrez have been entangled for quite some time.)

At first blush, LEOPARD SKIN appears to be a conventional heist-goes-wrong: three ruthless strangers are blackmailed into stealing millions of dollars worth of diamonds by a corrupt judge (an isolated Jeffrey Dean Morgan). They get the diamonds but shit goes sideways, their driver gets shot during the getaway, and they end up at the doorstep of a mansion occupied by an ex (Gugino) and a widow (Gaite Jansen), and the ex just happens to have footage of the widow killing her ex and then blackmails her by requesting that she becomes subservient to her every want.

In other words, it’s all about knowledge, power and sex.

While JETT was dreamlike, LEOPARD SKIN comes across as Lynchian in fashion commercial mode: overly visual and sumptuous, but often also stilted and performative in all the best ways. This is a show that should not exist, and the fact that it’s only available to stream via Peacock is even more mind-boggling, especially since it’s clear that this was not their intended network as the show is not paced for ad-breaks but yet has some of the most disjointed and abrupt ad-breaks, lending an even more surreal atmosphere to the show.

The always-brilliant Kayla Kumari Upadhyaya succinctly stated that “Carla Gugino and Gaite Jansen manage to bring nuance and velocity to a story that doesn’t ever seem to know what it’s doing or why.” LEOPARD SKIN feels groundless but is more interesting for being so. It’s an enigma wrapped in a riddle and is so confounding that you’ll either fall completely in love with it or you’ll find it to be pretentious softcore twaddle. Hopefully, like me, you’ll find it to be the former, but buyer beware.

BATMAN RETURNS (1992) [REDUX]

January 17, 2023

Why yes, I did briefly write about Tim Burton’s BATMAN RETURNS a few years ago, but I wanted to return to it because I don’t think I said all I had to say about it then. Also, my wife gifted me a Christmas portrait of the reveal of HELL HERE, and it’s one of the best gifts I’ve ever received, by one of my favorite artists — Dijana Granov. This photo does not do it justice: her watercolors and markers lend it a luminosity and vibrancy that feels like the character is reborn, and rightfully so. (Also, my wife framed it properly as a window sill, which is absolute perfection.)

I’ll note that I hate overly demonstrative performances like these being labeled as camp, because no: it’s not. It’s sincere. We all have our breaking points. What affects me about Catwoman and BATMAN RETURNS is her being reborn out of traumatic circumstances, in a new skin, and becomes vengeful because of it, but also stronger — a different person.

When she reacts to hearing her abuser’s name on her answering machine, after literally being killed by him, she flies into a fury that I’ve felt so many times; loud acts of desperation, exacted solely because you don’t know what else to do. And then Selina becomes …..something different, someone different, someone capable of reconciling her strife.

Honey, I’m home.

Oh, I forgot. I’m not married.

BLACKWOOD CROSSING (2017)

January 16, 2023

CONTENT WARNING: Family Death

(PC/PS4/PS5/Xbox One) With first-person games, your initial focus is almost always immediately pulled to the protagonist’s hands. If you’re lucky, you’ll see some kind of expressive movement, but normally it’s just two fists, slightly heaving up-and-down, the right hand often brandishing a gun. DOOM and METROID PRIME are some of the rare exceptions — DOOM guy’s avatar acting as a cocky health gauge and METROID PRIME reflecting Samus’ face in her visor from time to time. It’s worth noting that both protagonists are known for their silence.

BLACKWOOD CROSSING opens by drawing your attention to two small hands with chipped black fingernail polish and no gun, and that’s how you build character without saying a thing. Immediately, you know you’re playing as a young, plucky, punkish and self-motivated orphaned girl looking after her little brother.

BLACKWOOD CROSSING is ostensibly a first-person adventure game, which is to say it mostly consists of exploration with some light puzzles. It’s narrative-forward and heavily imbued with magical realism — it’s a story about a brother and sister and loss and trauma and coping. It’s an affective tale, one that doesn’t overplay its hand and perfect for playing on a lazy day if you’re longing for something a bit more engaging than an arty film.

I’ll note that it’s not a perfect game; hotspots are maddeningly finicky and some of the clues are frustratingly opaque — and I did encounter one game-breaking bug — but the journey is worth the pits and stops you may encounter along the way.

Postscript

It’s also worth nothing that BLACKWOOD CROSSING leans on two tropes that I find exceptionally overused in video games: ALICE IN WONDERLAND riffs and butterfly imagery. However, in this case, they’re handled with a deft touch, as opposed to ‘look how clever I am’.

Lastly, I can’t help but think that this riffs on Shirley Jackson, whose novel WE HAVE ALWAYS LIVED IN THE CASTLE is also about orphans also housed under the name Blackwood.

THE LAST OF US – LEFT BEHIND (2014)

January 14, 2023

(PS3/PS4/PS5) I figured I’d chime in about THE LAST OF US, since the HBO adaptation appears to be receiving rave reviews and premieres on Sunday and obviously I’m going to watch it solely for Bella Ramsay and Melanie Lynskey. Personally, I found the first game to be singularly unpleasant miseryporn and I never bothered with the sequel. However! LEFT BEHIND — the DLC for the first game that received a separate stand-alone release — is absolutely worth your time. It’s far more intimate — a story of best friends at a crossroads and queer awakening and finding joy in a world that’s gone to shit.

That said, as you might be able to tell, it does commit a cardinal sin of queer storytelling:

Spoiler

It buries its gays.

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Sure, it’s almost a decade old, but it was a well-worn trope even back then, and penned and directed by dudes that really should have known better.

Nonetheless, if you’re going to dip your toes into this interactive world, I’d start here. It’s a bite-sized effort that only takes a handful of hours to complete and doesn’t require much in the way of stealth or combat. It feels lived in and genuine in a way that I never felt the original game did.

KIMYA DAWSON – Walk Like Thunder (2011)

December 31, 2022

Closing out one of the hardest years of my life with Kimya Dawson, who always helps to boost me.