Capsule Reviews of Stuff I’ve Liked Recently
“It’s like family, but with more cheese”
Here’s some stuff I’ve watched with my eyeballs and heard with my earballs lately. If you don’t like me talking about this stuff instead of political crap all the time, have you tried complaining about it? That usually works.
Sisu is sort of like a spaghetti western. Except it’s Finnish. And it’s set in WWII. What would you call that? A lutefisk war flick? Is lutefisk even Finnish? Probably not. But they eat fish there, right? Whatever, we can fix it later.
Seriously, that’s a spaghetti western premise, right? Prospector hits jackpot and fights through army of varmints trying to steal his gold. Except in this case, the varmints are Nazis. And boy oh boy, does this tough old mofo kill the hell out of ‘em. I haven’t seen this many Nazis get owned since Inglourious Basterds.
I don’t know how historically accurate it is, but I liked the Finnish pride that courses through this crazy film. They keep telling us “sisu” is untranslatable, but I think I get the idea. This man just does not quit. He’ll literally set himself on fire just to thwart you.
The movie isn’t quite the wall-to-wall splatterfest the trailer promises, but it’s a hell of a lot of fun.
Oh, and don’t worry, it’s in English. They want this to make money.
Funny or Die’s High Science on HBO Max1 is basically Bill & Ted Go to Beakman’s World. (No, don’t say Bill Nye. You’re better than that.) It’s odd and funny and, ahem, highly educational. Get it? Because they get high. But not on actual drugs, wink wink.
That’s right, Paul Bettany does the voice of a bong that can talk because it’s also a super-smart robotic science teacher.
Seriously, I learned some stuff by watching this goofy show! The first episode was all about the moon, and now I know 5-7 things about the moon I didn’t know yesterday. For one thing, did you know it’s not made of green cheese? Which makes sense, now that I think about it. Like, how would that even work? Green cheese, LOL. Nice try, but my buddy Science here just kicked your ass with facts.
There’s one annoying thing about the marketing of this show, though:
Oh, is our society “hostile to science,” British man? Nah, I won’t be scolded about being “anti-science” by people who insist a fetus isn’t human and Dylan Mulvaney isn’t a man anymore. How about you just make a good show without scolding people for their skepticism? Which is, after all, essential to science. Skepticism, I mean, not scolding. Scolding is anti-science.
Also on HBO, the long-delayed second season of Perry Mason just wrapped up:
I’m not old enough to have seen the original Perry Mason, and I never watched it in reruns as a kid because it was in black & white and was about boring lawyers. But I get the basic premise: Do-gooder defense attorney takes hopeless cases, there are a lot of plot twists, and in the end he cuts through all the BS and sees justice prevail. This show gives you that, competently enough.
Some of the anachronisms drive me nuts, though. They spent all this money on 1930s period detail, but then they let the weirdest little things slip through. LED flashlights that won’t exist for 75 years, that’s a big one. Oof, that drives me bonkers. Or people dropping F-bombs all over the place and saying things like “shit show.”
I kept waiting for Perry to say, “This evidence is #sketchyAF.”
And there are several sequences that take place at a certain four-way stop in LA. They rented a bunch of old cars, and they dressed the houses and shops to look like 90 years ago. But then they kept the sidewalk wheelchair ramps and fire hydrants that wouldn’t exist for decades. It just takes me right out of the story. “Hey guys, why not just throw a little CGI on those curbs?”
The second season ended on a bit of a downer, even for this show. But there’s a spark of hope, which is what Perry Mason is all about. And Matthew Rhys is dependably great, even when he’s better than his material.
Perry Mason: It’s Fine.
And let’s close things out with some bleeding-edge nightmare fuel:
What in the name of Papa John was that?
According to the creator, who calls him- or herself Pizza Later, this fake ad was created in a few hours, almost entirely by AI. The script is from ChatGPT, the voiceover is from Eleven Labs, the images are from Midjourney, the video is from something new to me called Runway, and the music is from SOUNDRAW. Mr. or Ms. Later edited it and did the chyrons (AI can’t spell… yet), but otherwise that’s 100% robot.
I’ve watched it about 20 times. It’s strange, horrifying, and hilarious. I just can’t decide which one prevails.
Horror, I think. This stuff is a weird little novelty right now, but the software is getting better every minute of every day. Imagine a future, not far off, where anybody can type anything into a laptop and turn it into a photorealistic video within minutes.
What could go wrong?
TGIF (Torvald Generates Infinite Flatulence), and thanks for reading this free newsletter. Haven’t done a free one in a while. You’re welcome!
I know I keep talking about my other job without really talking about it, but I’m trying to err on the side of discretion. The work seems to be going well. I was already accustomed to writing a lot every day, and now I just need to get used to my ideas not always making the cut. It’s a lot more collaborative than I’m used to, and working remotely makes me feel disconnected from the end product, but I’m getting the hang of it.
As for all the crazy stuff going on this week… 🤷♂️! It’s so far above my pay grade, I can’t even see it from the ground. So I’ll just do what I always do: keep my head down and get on with it. Thanks again for bearing with me.
Or is it just Max now? And are we supposed to pretend Max is a better name than HBO? Everybody knows HBO. That’s the brand, man! Mickey Mouse, Coca-Cola, HBO. They spent 50 years building that brand, and now they’re just throwing it away? It’s like McDonald’s suddenly insisting on being called Steve.
I don’t care what they call the thing, I’ll just deadname it. It’s not Max, it’s HBO.
That you occasionally write about things I don't care about is part of the deal. I mean, I can skip past it right?
I don't 'watch' TV anymore, but it's partly because my earballs don't work so good anymore, even with hearing aids, and closed captioning makes my brain hurt. But I sometimes give shows you discuss a look, because you've proven to be a pretty good indicator of what I like. OTOH, I'm not willing to spend much on streaming channels for something I don't watch a lot. It's difficult balance, but please continue your recommendations and discussions and blurbs. I think I'll try Sisu.
As for science, I know enough about it to know that most reporters/journalists/talking heads/policy promoters/bureaucrats essentially have negative knowledge about it. They are seriously (and frequently, I think) deliberately ignorant and obtuse. I refuse to be lectured by such mental midgets. (Am I insulting mental midgets? So be it.)
The original Perry Mason novels (I've read all of them, some 80 or so) were incredibly predictable but fun. Especially when you realize how they reflected society writ large in the 1930s and 1940s. The TV show was fun, mostly because the 4 main characters were so well cast. Again, very predictable but a satisfying hour of watching for the most part. (Back in the 60s I could buy them at used book stores for 10 cents apiece. Wish I still had them. Lost in an actual flood.)
And Erle Stanley Gardner was one of the first to try to help those innocents who had been found guilty. He founded "The Court of Last Resort" to help them. An all-around good guy I guess.
He also wrote as A.A. Fair a series about Donald Lam (a disbarred attorney) and Bertha Cool (he had a thing for names, like Ham Burger in Perry Mason) that I liked a lot. They were private detectives, but Lam couldn't get a PI license, so he worked (sort of -- he did his own thing and they argued a lot) for Cool.
He wrote a shit-ton of stuff, so I never read all of hit, but like so many that popular he was a heck of a story teller. I am aware of other major characters he wrote about, and have read a few. He makes Stephen King look sad, both in terms of output and plotting.
The AI stuff in particular is going to get weird before it gets commonplace and accepted. What we are looking at is an alien intellect's idea of what normally appeals to humans eating their normal human food. Eventually, it will get good enough to replace whole offices of people that do that stuff - but, it'll still just be a tool of humans, a force multiplier, allowing the very creative a virtual ad department at their beck and call. Compared to decisions like Dylan Mulvaney for Bud Light, it can't be worse? We're getting closer to the Technological Singularity everyday - when you look at something whether it's and ad, a TV show, listen to some music, or even pornography, and can no longer tell whether it was real or AI generated, we'll probably be already past that singularity point.