Week 2: Am I Still Doing This?

 I made it to a second (well, third) post! Good god. Anyway.

Watching:

The Book of Boba Fett Episodes 1 & 2: Episode 1 was fine but holy shit, the second one utterly blew the doors off. Even included a Fast & The Furious action scene that beats the pants off anything they've done since Fast Five. Loving this show and also how much Temmura Morrison seems to be working his own indigenous culture into the culture of the Tuskens, doing great work moving them from "savages" to a real culture. Also, MY BOY.  (Disney+)

The Irishman: I watched this way back when it first dropped an always meant to get back to it. Shockingly, it holds up, despite the 3.5 hour runtime, it's a prefect kind of hangout movie. The relaxed pace only adds to the feel that you are seeing a man's entire life, and the back half of the 20th century, move by. There's definitely something to be written about how this film and The Wolf of Wall Street are Scorsese's final words to be said about how the mob of his youth morphed into the government and big business of today, but I don't have the brain cells for it right now. 

In The Heat Of The Night: As you do when a famous person passes on, I immediately grabbed my copy of this off the shelf when I heard that Sidney Poitier had died. I bought this bluray back during Criterion's sale over the Summer and never got to it but man, I wish I had sooner. One of those films that's so perfectly crafted that is stuns you while watching it. People often say "You can't make that film today" and for this one it's 100% true, not because of the realism of the ingrained racism of that time in America, but because there's not a "good" liberal white person to make the audience feel good about themselves. Everyone in that town resents or outright hates Pitier's Virgil Tibbs for simply being a black man who has status and demands respect. Rod Steiger's police captain is perfect because even though he eventually grows to have a base of respect for Tibbs, you know that doesn't even put a dent in his racist worldview. But it's not homework, at its heart the film is a pure murder procedural that never goes out of its way to make judgements, it just shows things as they were, and still are. (Also streaming on HBO Max now)

That's the hits, as always you can head over to Letterboxd for the full list of what I've watched. 

Reading:

The Divide Series by J.S. Dewes: Blew through the first two books in this series this week and I'm now waiting with bated breath for the trilogy capper (due in 2023, maybe). If you've enjoyed the Murderbot series this definitely fills that hole, with a crew of human disasters sentenced to guard the edge of the universe and find themselves as the only people who have the ability to save it from disasters both natural and political. Definitely check them out.

The Green Lantern by Grant Morrison & Liam Sharp: I know that the conventional wisdom on this has been that it's Morrison's weakest DC work in a while, but I was surprised to see last arc show up on both Graeme and Jeff's best of 2021 list during their year end show on Wait, What so I decided to read through the whole thing via the library. The first volume is fine, it's really a showcase for Liam Sharp's art but that's not a knock as his work is gorgeous (with lush colors by Steve Oliff). I had read up to maybe issue 8 when it originally was coming out so I'm eager to dig into stuff that is new to me with the next volume. 

Speaking of Wait, What, Graeme has a new newsletter going and I can't recommend it enough. The last one is a dive into Marvel's decision to bring Miracleman into the Marvel U proper and whether that is inadvisable (spoilers: it likely is) and also the recent win for employees at Image Comics in their union election. Great stuff, the kind of deep dive opinions that is sorely lacking in the current comics journalism sphere.

I've also started this twitter thread that will document every single issue comic I read this year. That's all for this week.