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taika waititi. [a month of happy.]

By • On • In month of happy, movies, scott, trailer park • 2 min read

When I watch a Taika Waititi film, I feel happy. As a person with clinical depression, that’s basically like saying that I found a huge gold stash hidden in my basement.

I’ve already written about him twice since October, so imma be lazy and repost all that. Still true.

Taika Waititi and Jemaine Clement have a comedic voice that is unendingly amusing to me.

All of Waititi’s writing has this rare combination, where it’s so sharp and funny, but also genuinely sweet and warm. He revels in the flaws and awkwardness of his characters, and it’s where I find so much joy in his work.

And:

A friend recently asked people on Facebook to give a list of their favorite films since 2012, and I listed What We Do in the Shadows; not just because of my affection for that film, but because I needed a representative of Waititi’s work.

His films are so full of charm and joy and sweetness, and Hunt for the Wilderpeople is no exception. Plus, I’m a sucker for stories about people who come together and make weird nontraditional families. It deserves all the inclusion it has gotten on various lists of underrated or underappreciated films of 2016.

…

Taiki for life!

I bet some people are unreasonably disappointed when they visit New Zealand and it’s not actually Middle Earth. I’m probably going to be unreasonably disappointed if I ever go because everyone doesn’t talk like a character in a Taiki Waititi film.

And:

Here I am, the president of the Taiki Waititi fan club, at it again.

I don’t really know what else to say to get my friends to watch Waititi’s movies. I don’t know how anyone could not love his work. Don’t you like being happy?!

Hunt for the Wilderpeople is stuffed with joy, charm, and Waititi’s trademark lovable weirdos who become a family. There’s so much sweetness, but it never gets cloying.

Recently, when I recommended Hunt for the Wilderpeople on this blog, I joked that I’ll probably be disappointed if I ever go to New Zealand because people won’t talk like Taiki Waititi characters. The more I think about it, I realize it’s actually just disappointing that the people of the world in general don’t act more like Taiki Waititi characters.

Also, here is a trailer for Boy, which is criminally underseen.

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saga. [a month of happy.]

By • On • In fictionista, graphic content, month of happy, nerd candy, scott • 2 min read

You should be reading Saga. 

I don’t care if you don’t like comics or speculative fiction. I don’t care what bullshit preconditions you put on what a good story can be. They don’t matter. You should be reading Saga.

At its core it’s the story of a family set in a sprawling fantasy space opera… on acid. I was going to make a list of the themes Saga tackles, but I realized that Saga is about everything. It’s about being alive, about everything that happens along the way, and about knowing you and everyone you love are eventually going to die. I know, I’m not necessarily selling this. Existential Dread! Only $4.99!! But seriously, read Saga. 

Writer Brian K. Vaughn came up with the idea as a kid, as he says, when he was bored in math class. That seed seemed to grow somewhere in his brain while he built a prolific comics career with creations like Y: The Last Man and Runaways. As that seed was planted and left to grow for so long, Saga appears rooted in Vaughn’s life — in being married and having kids and all the ordinary things that are much more compelling if you set them in the midst of a horrifying galactic war.

Saga is funny, violent, weird, sweet, perverted, brutal, and tender. It’s also really smart, but more than just smart, it’s got an emotional depth that rings of truth.

The war in Saga doesn’t have good guys and bad guys, although it does often have perpetrators and victims. But everyone loses, everyone pays, nobody wins. All the characters are interesting and well-drawn — both literally and figuratively — and while most are at odds with each other, everyone has a point of view you can understand.

There are scenes in this story that stuck with me well after I’m done reading. The final panels in the most recent issue have haunted me since I read it, for reasons I obviously can’t describe without spoilers.

Part of what makes Saga amazing is how good artist Fiona Staples and Vaughn are together.

Every panel Staples creates is inventive and energetic. There are some really great artists working in comics right now doing original, exciting stuff, and Fiona Staples is their rightful queen.

I have no idea how the collaboration works in practice, but between these two creators the imagination is apparently bottomless. The book is an immense hodgepodge that jumps between genres, inspirations, biologies, and ideas, and brings them all together to create one seamless trippy tapestry.

Anyway, like I said, you should be reading Saga. 

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a closer look. [a month of happy.]

By • On • In month of happy, scott, shows, television • 1 min read

One thing that has helped me stay sane — or at least, stay in the same neighborhood as sane — these last few months, has been comedians who offer clear-eyed commentary on the lunacy of this administration. And for me, Seth Meyers is right up there in significance with Last Week Tonight and Stephen Colbert (whose heartfelt, live plea for hope and reason on election night kept me from the brink of despair that evening).

There’ve been plenty of claims that through all this Stephen Colbert has been America’s dad, and in that vein, Seth Meyers has felt to me like a funny older brother, talking us through the bullshit.

All the praise for Seth’s interview with Kellyanne Conway was well-deserved, but “A Closer Look” is my favorite thing they do. I’m always sad on the days when we don’t get a new installment.

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twin shadow – five seconds. [a month of happy.]

By • On • In month of happy, music, music videos, scott • 1 min read

I discovered Twin Shadow right before leaving Seattle, and by the time we headed south to Portland for the beginning of a meandering road trip east, “Five Seconds” had become the official song of the journey.

12 days, 13 states, a co-pilot trade at around the halfway point, and through it all at least one thing remained constant: this song started each major leg of the journey. It made the weight I carried during a really difficult time just a bit lighter.

Granted, we didn’t ever get to join a post-apocalyptic motorcycle gang, but the song still helped.

As a bonus, this KEXP in-studio from two years ago has a great acoustic version of the song.

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chance the rapper. [a month of happy.]

By • On • In month of happy, music, music videos, scott • 1 min read

Chance the Rapper — aka Lil Chano from 79th, aka Chancellor Johnathan Bennett — may just be the epitome of the ‘month of happy’ converted into human form.

I mean, has anyone seen any definitive scientific proof that Chance the Rapper isn’t happiness personified?

The guy is fucking delightful.

A self-proclaimed man-child, he is infectiously joyful. I have to assume he’s that guy at the party who gets everyone dancing and smiling, but without being annoying about it.

Seriously, what’s not to love. He gives away all of his music, donated $1 million to Chicago Public Schools because politicians were being dicks about it, regularly talks adoringly in interviews about his dad and his daughter, and loves Kanye while also revealing that the stuff ‘Ye says in private is even crazier than what he says in public, which is hilarious.

I love Chance the Rapper. Everyone should. I genuinely think he may become president someday.

Exhibit A, just watch one of his adorable Kit Kat commericals.

 

Exhibit B, his awesome single-take music video for Sunday Candy, a song about his grandma.

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descender. [a month of happy.]

By • On • In graphic content, month of happy, nerd candy, scott • 1 min read

Did you enjoy Westworld? Firefly? Battlestar Galactica? Logan? Then Descender is right for you. Hell, even if you didn’t enjoy any of those things, you should still check out Descender.

In the distant future, a technologically advanced civilization of humans and aliens relies heavily on the existence of artificially intelligent androids.

Planet sized robots called Harvesters appear mysteriously and launch a devastating attack on humanity before disappearing just as mysteriously.

As humans are wont to do, the response is the attempted and ongoing genocide of all artificial life from the universe.

Nearly a decade later, Tim-21 reawakens. A young companion android, Tim-21 wakes up alone on an abandoned mining colony with no idea what happened. He sets off with his robot dog Bandit and a collection of untrustworthy allies to find his human brother, Andy.

Descender is a story teeming with energy and life, full of aliens, bounty hunters, android rebels, a cult of human-robot hybrids and all sorts of SF fun. A little bit of a western, a large bit of a space opera, and every bit enjoyable.

Like all the best SF, the series touches on big concepts, including the nature of life, social structures, war, prejudice, morality, and self-awareness, just to name a few.

I love everything about this series: the story, the worldbuilding, the way it arranges familiar tropes and conventions in an exciting way.

My absolute favorite thing is Dustin Nguyen’s watercolor illustrations. The book is beautiful, and his style is so singular within the comics and graphic novels I’ve read. As a relative novice to the current comics scene, there aren’t too many comic artists who have captured my attention so strongly that I will start finding their work — regardless of what it is — to read it. Nguyen is immediately one of those artists for me.

Sony bought the rights last year, so look for a film, a series, or both on the horizon.

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