Sunday!
When I walk past the supermarket tabloids, I find myself not recognizing anybody except, maybe, some of the Royal Family. I have a sneaking suspicion that the primary reason that the Royal Family polls so very well over here is because a huge number of people say stuff like “I used to recognize everybody on these things… now I don’t recognize anybody… OH LOOK IT’S PRINCE WILLIAM AND PRINCESS KATE! Whew.”
Over the weekend, it looks like the Number One movie that made the most money at the box office was Pitch Perfect 2. My first thought, when seeing it, was that they were doing this thing where they were jumping immediately to the sequel as a plot device… you know, start the story in medias res or something like that. That way they wouldn’t have to give us the backstory and just start immediately with the singing. Which, as these things go, struck me as a little overwrought, but an interesting way to do things and I wondered that if it was successful, we’d see this device used more and more and more and I’d be stuck wondering if “Superhero Movie III” was really the third one or the studios were just leapfrogging to make the most profitable movie first.
As it turns out, I merely was ignorant of pop culture. Pitch Perfect was, apparently, a huge hit three years ago. Made for less than $20 million, pulled in $100 million worldwide… huh. What in the heck was I doing in 2012 that I had never heard of this?
Anyway, Pitch Perfect 2 is on a schedule to make $60 million this weekend (and maybe $70 million!). Given that it cost under $30 million to make, that ain’t too shabby.
Mad Max, by comparison, cost $150 million to make and its opening weekend appears to be on schedule for $44 million.
(Avengers 2, by comparison to *THAT*, seems to have just broken $1,000 million.)
So we can look forward to a Pitch Perfect 3 and Avengers 3 in a couple of years, and I’m keeping my fingers crossed for another Mad Max movie because, seriously, the post-nuclear apocalypse is my favorite apocalypse.
So… what are you reading and/or watching?
(Photo is “Movie Night“, taken by Ginny, used under a creative commons license.)
Director Elizabeth Banks thought if it as a sports movie, and modeled it on Rocky IV.Report
And the first one was modeled after Bad News Bears.
Good artists borrow. Great artists steal.Report
Is there a character in it who’s the male lead’s girlfriend, becomes pregnant unexpectedly, and then gets written out of the show?Report
Well, I have been watching Veep, which is seriously hysterical if you even remotely follow politics (and probably just as funny if you don’t, but I wouldn’t know about that.) Although I had insomnia the other night, and watched Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow, which I thought would put me to sleep, but instead I found it to be fairly engaging. Stupid, but engaging.
Am reading Eco’s the Prague Cemetery, which so far seems good…Report
Veep is hysterical. There’s no one on that show that — including all the reoccurring, guest, and bit actors — that doesn’t have unbelievable comic timing, which is one of those thing you don’t notice is as rare as it is until you see a show like Veep.Report
I binge-watched all of 30 Rock recently, and noticed something I’d missed before: Scott Adsit is amazing. As the show went on, Pete receded more and more into the background, which is a damned shame, but whenever he was on-camera every line, every reaction, every facial expression was perfect.Report
30 Rock is a show full of actors I would never have thought were as funny as they are had it not been for 30 Rock.Report
Scott Adsit was amazing on 30R, I just wish the show had maintained the writing strength of the first 3 years. It really dropped off after that. Acting was still good though.Report
Yes, Steal like an artist.Report
I am still reading Peter Watson’s massive History of Ideas:
http://www.amazon.com/Ideas-History-Thought-Invention-Freud/dp/0060935642Report
I accidentally stumbled into the bookstore Friday and bought two Gide novels. I read The Immoralist yesterday, which was wonderful, and I’m reading The Counterfeiters today. I can’t remember who recommended Gide, but if it was someone here, thank you!Report
That was me, but I was actually recommending The Hitchhiker’s Gide.Report
@mike-schilling is just zis gide, you know?Report
His name is pronounced kinda like JEE-duh, very close to “Sheba,” but with a “d.” Unfortunately I can’t think of any good puns with that.
“Just let it go? Never! Gide one who started it!”
Also, the books are really, really good.Report
Like how Boston fans said Derek Jeter’s last name?Report
Pretty damn close.Report
And what New York Giants fans call Tom Brady.Report
I’m pretty sure everyone calls him a cheater at this point.Report
Pomeroy’s The American Far West in the Twentieth Century. I liked it well enough that I ordered a used copy to keep on the shelf.Report
Still working my way through Daredevil. The TV seasons are wrapping up, so I’m about to be deluged with things to watch.
Still listening to The Killing, which has turned out to be quite phenomenal after the lackluster first season. I have five episodes left, and fear I am in for a disappointment.Report
@will-truman – did you ever pick Fortitude back up?Report
Did not. My watching has slowed to a crawl as I’ve been on Daredevil and The Americans for something like a month.Report
Dude. Maribou and I just finished Daredevil.
After a preliminary explanation of how, seriously, we couldn’t condone anything that we had seen on the show, we both said “WOW THAT WAS AWESOME”.Report
We enjoyed it, but the teenager was disturbed by the violence. I take this as a sign that there is hope for the world.Report
I thought that the violence in the first, oh, five episodes was downright inexcusable.
By comparison, the violence in the last five wasn’t so bad.
But the first five? I was asking “Who in the heck am I supposed to be rooting for here?”Report
Right. It was beginning to upset him, and I thought about not watching the rest. Then it toned down a bit.Report
Listening to The Killing? As in, no pictures? And: the Seattle-based murder show?
Was that you (Will) who was asking about a show you would listen to sans pictures? How’s that going?
We’ve talked about this, but I really didn’t think the first season was lackluster. In terms of the case resolution, maybe (but it was just spread over two seasons… what’s wrong with that)?
But I really felt like the way the show dealt with the immediate fallout of the actual death on the family was revolutionary at the time for a show that was ultimately a mystery/cop show. And the tone of that first season to me is still the most arresting thing I’ve seen on American TV since I don’t know when. For tone and style and emotional realism I’d still take The Killing (U.S. version), including season one, over either True Detective or The Americans. It’s obviously not as well-constructed in terms of plot and theme as The Americans or the major prestige shows, but for the creation of affect and simple emotional force it delivers in ways they don’t IMO. (They’re too sophisticated for that.)
Also: one of the best parts of The Americans – the actress who plays Paige – has a major part in The Killing, though not in season one.Report
The first season of The Killing was good, but I cannot think of a darker show, except The Killing season 2 and The Killing season 3.Report
@chris Season 4… does not get lighter. Skinner’s daughter in tears showing up at Sarah’s doorstep asking where her father is and Sarah having to obviously imply that he’d abandoned her had me all “spitspitspitspitspitspit”… except not spit.Report
I remember thinking during season 1 that there was no way the show could survive. It would just be too easy to say to yourself on the night it airs, “You know what? I’m just not up for this tonight,” and then feel like you’re behind and can’t watch the rest of the season. Netflix really was the only possible medium for it.Report
@michael-drew The ending of season one just underscored the “Totally Guilty Suspect Of The Week Unlike The Totally Guilty Suspect Of Last Week That We Vindicated In The First Ten Minutes Of This Week” thing…
Season two actually did help, in that regard, but providing a framework wherein it seemed to me that the plot started actually building the framework around which the murder occurred. I wish that season one had looked more like season two in that regard.
I thought the family subplots was really good, both in Season One and Season Two.
Yeah, listen-and-not-watch. Which isn’t completely accurate because I was really switching back and forth. Not enough to recognize Paige, though. Barely enough to recognize Kaylee from Firefly (though she has a more distinctive “Who is that?” voice). Who did Paige play?Report
I saw Pitch Perfect entirely by accident. We (wife and I) were at someone’s house and there was a DVD of it and one of the other guests had been wanting to watch it. We’d never HEARD of the movie when it was in theaters.
I was…surprised by how much I enjoyed it, since it was not my type of movie at all (in any sense, whatsoever).
I’m in no hurry to see the sequel though. It didn’t seem the sort of movie to demand one, although as I understand modern movie making “Made a profit” is what demands sequels. (See also: Gaming).
I picked up “A Blink of the Screen” (Terry Pratchett’s full fiction short anthology) and have started that. I also picked up the first three books of the Vorkosigan books. I’m a fan of space opera and have never read Bujold, so I thought it was time to do that. 🙂Report
I’d envy you reading Bujold for the first time, if she weren’t just as much fun to reread.Report
Coding, coding, and more coding – including a package of glitchancements almost ready to impose upon you all – but took a break last night finally to watch INTERSTELLAR, whose absurdities I found myself forgiving, and continue to find myself forgiving, in favor of enjoying the realization of the concept and its argument for its own belief-worthiness rather than its (scant) believability.
Also finished the altogether unexpectedly readable Leo Strauss and the Politics of American Empire. It had been recommended to me on Twitter by a Strauss scholar (Rob Howse), when I asked whether anyone had done much work on Strauss’ encounter with Islamic philosophy, and had considered the implications in regard to the so-called “Straussians.” The book, by scholar Anne Norton, ends up mounting somewhat of a defense of Strauss against his progeny, with relatively little direct confrontation with Strauss’s work, but with rich observations on recent American intellectual and political history, and on the inversion or perversion of philosophy as politics in ways that Strauss himself likely anticipated, or understood as a risk to the philosopher or to philosophy in the founding of a school.Report
Watching interstellar was weird. (Not as weird as the discussions that arise from It’s always sunny in philadelphia, though). I’m referencing the scene where the bloke hacks the drone.
… but I’d probably better not mention the content of the conversation. US Military might mind.Report
Avengers came out? I feel like I should have known about that…Report
RIP to the great historian and writer
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/13/arts/peter-gay-historian-who-explored-social-history-of-ideas-dies-at-91.html?_r=0Report
I am watching so many different things that I can’t list them all without taking a breath in the middle (I know this ’cause I tried, talking to my sister).
Reading is much the same, though right now (as in a half hour ago) I have been reading Max Frei’s The Stranger, which is slow, but quite wonderful, and (for work, though not really at work), The Readers’ Advisory Guide to Genre Blends.
Listening to my usual podcasts, and I’m up to Dead Beat on my epic listen-to-James-Marsters-read-The-Dresden-Files adventure.Report
Reading more of Iain Bank’s Culture books (currently Look to Windward).
Watched the new adaptation of Far From the Madding Crowd last night. It’s very worthwhile; I’d recommend seeing it if period dramas / adapations of classic novels are your thing, and if it’s playing in a theatre near you. It inspired me to (re-)read the book, which I either hadn’t read before or had mostly forgotten; reading the book made me appreciate how skillful the adaptation was in terms of deciding what to keep, what to change, and what to leave out.
It’s always surprising and appealing when someone manages to make an adapation that’s arguably superior to an original work that was already a classic. The only unequivocal example of that I can think of is Ang Lee’s Sense and Sensibility, but Far from the Madding Crowd comes close.
The main character is played by Carey Mulligan; I didn’t recognize any of the other actors. (Well, I was convinced for most of the movie that the male lead was played by Ryan Gosling with a slightly ruggeder look than usual, but in fact he’s not.)
In addition to being a strong story in its own right, the cinematography, settings, and clothing are all gorgeous.Report
Initial thoughts on the upcoming DC You.
So, after the last year of slowly realizing that girls who grew up watching the Teen Titans show were not interested in an apathetic alien whose main goal in life was the pursuit of cock, DC is launching a Starfire that is actually meant to be closer to the cartoon Starfire. It took three years and change but having a Starfire that is not wank material is a step in the right direction.
Cyborg could be interesting if the Man vs Machine goes back to Victor’s struggles to define himself as a human being and not a Frankenstein project.
Black Robin? Sure, why not? Not sure what the relationship is supposed to be between Bat-Gordon and Black Robin though.
The bad:
The tagline is reaching so badly that I actually feel pity for DC’s marketing department.
As for the rest of the titles, I’m reminded of the trailer for the upcoming live-action Jem movie. Hot garbage produced by somebody who has never read a DC comic in their life. I’m just wondering if it’s possible to make a court order that turns all of DC’s print properties over to Dark Horse. They need the boost and, while not everything they’ve produced has been gold or even bronze, they still seem to be a company that overall values story and characters over godawful marketing events.Report