Space opera is an interesting subgenre. The name originally comes from the now virtually unknown term ‘horse opera,’ (itself a reference to soap operas) which refers to a formulaic and unimaginative western that could be pumped out by radio and movie studios and book publishers at low cost. Thus, originally calling something a space opera was a way to deride it as clichéd, hack science fiction. Before long, space operas were a large group of lazy space stories that used plots taken from naval adventure novels and cowboy stories.
Eventually, some decent writers started taking the things they enjoyed about space operas, like the huge scope, advanced future/alien societies, high stakes, adventure, and relatable heroes, and writing stories that didn’t suck. They still called them space operas.
The most famous example of a space opera is Star Wars. The film is literally a sci-fi interpretation of the westerns and swashbuckling naval films George Lucas loved as a kid.
Despite its dubious coinage, ‘space opera’ isn’t shorthand for ‘terrible.’ They can be a whole lot of fun.
Leviathan’s Wake is an entertaining blend of genres set against the backdrop of potential human annihilation, like a smart summer action blockbuster in space.
The story moves forward following two protagonists:
I’m missing. I have been for some time. At times I surprise myself by showing up again for a moment or two, but most often I only see the self I once knew in flashes. In glimmers and glimpses.
I’m simply not myself these days. At least not the self I once was and want to be.
My voracious appetite for culture and story is missing. My incessant need to be writing and creating is missing. My curiosity and energy are greatly diminished. My drive for engaging conversation is missing. I’m going to find these parts of myself again if it kills me.
I think the primary thing that is missing in me is hope. A variety of circumstances and failures and belief shifts have left me without the ability to believe in my own significance and potential, without the ability to believe the things I do and create can have weight and merit.
I’ve always been a realist. I’ve never been able to blind myself to the darkness and evil and violence in the world. And still, most of my life I have always been obsessed with finding beauty buried in the trash.
My friend Lindsay recently reminded me that I once said something along the lines of, “I don’t believe magic exists, but that doesn’t mean I don’t wish it did.” Lately, that has manifested in me only in a lamentation at the existence of so many impossibilities. But there was a time not terribly long ago when it manifested in the desire to lean into those impossibilities, to see the magic in the mundane and ordinary in a way that made the world a more beautiful place to live.
Without hope, I’ve lost the will and ability to write, I’ve lost the passion for writing that was constantly bubbling over into unread blog posts and random bits of fiction. Without hope, I’ve lost the ability to read the way I once did, where I engaged so many different texts (be they books or stories or movies or songs or people) as artifacts waiting to be pored over to find goodness and beauty and truth about what it means to be human and alive.
I need to rediscover my hope. If I simply wait for it to reemerge, I may die before I find it again. I’m not letting go of who I was and want to be without at least going down swinging. Whatever Thomas might have meant originally, his language seems pretty apt to this moment for me. I will rage against the dying of this light. I will not go quietly.
I’m going to try to write my way towards hope. This won’t be the first time I’ve tried, but I simply have to try again. I must. I know no other way.
I am hoping I can find a community of writers and creators to share this journey with me, this mad leap to something better. Whether that be in person or virtually, I think the chances of success will be higher if I’m not alone.
More to come on what specific form this might take, but for now, consider this the opening lines of an invitation to collaborate with me toward hope and creation and life.
As promised a very long time ago now, here is the first post where I explore the reasons I revisit something over and over again. As was also promised, first up is the Three Flavours Cornetto Trilogy, aka the Blood and Ice Cream Trilogy.
For the uninformed, the Three Flavours trilogy is comprised of the three films directed by Edgar Wright, written by Wright and Simon Pegg, and starring Pegg and Nick Frost: Shaun of the Dead, Hot Fuzz, and The World’s End. Each film represents another flavor of the delicious Cornetto ice cream treats. Shaun of the Dead is Red (strawberry): blood, gore, horror. Hot Fuzzis Blue (original/plain): cops. The World’s Endis Green (mint, my favorite flavor of Cornetto): apparently science fiction was also referred to as green fiction at one point. Each film actually features the delicious ice cream treats, altough in the World’s End it doesn’t happen until the very end, and even then it’s only the wrapper (I was actually consciously starting to worry as the film was clearly winding down that there wouldn’t be an Cornetto reference).
The third film came out just last year, so obviously I don’t have years of revisitation for that one, but the first two films are the sort I come back to over and over. On average, I watch them a little more than once a year, and while there are times I worry I’ll get sick of them, it just never seems to happen.
This is why, as I was rewatching The World’s End recently, I couldn’t help but start wondering what it is that brings me back to these movies specifically, and to my favorite movies, shows, and books in general.
As I said in the last post introducing this idea, the reasons we love the things we love are too numerous and complex to flesh out with any certainty or finality. We can say things about this topic that are true, but that truth is never exhaustive. So, here are some true things about why I just can’t quit Edgar and Simon and Nick, at least when all three are together.
I don’t have to look very hard to see what first drew me to these films. Right on the surface, these are beautifully made movies. For all their levity and silliness, there is a technical skill at play that makes it easy to watch them again and again. Their combination of creativity/innovation and homages to the great films Wright and Pegg love is unparalleled. Here is Tony Zhou singing Wright’s virtues:
It’s so fun to watch someone do something they’re really good at. These guys are really good at making movies, and they are even better at displaying their love for the medium of film in general. It started with Spaced and has just kept on going. In this case, as with Tarantino, there is also such a deep, wide well of movies being referenced visually that as I continue to widen my exposure to the history of film I’ll catch even more of those references with each viewing.
Another reason I return to this films, as I mentioned in the intro post, is that these movies function like security blankets or comfort food. These films are familiar and comfortable. Yet, they still have the power to move me and inspire me. All the jokes still make me laugh, even though I quote them constantly in daily life. The sweetness and lovability imbued into all the characters by Wright and Pegg’s writing, as well as the acting, makes it feel like having dinner with old friends. And just like old friends, they feel safe, but still have the ability to surprise me.
These films are also nostalgic for me. Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz each connect to moments outside the film entirely. So many memories are associated with these films. Brian, one time (and maybe future?) RtM writer, and I could probably communicate fairly effectively with each other using only lines from these movies. And I don’t just mean barebones communication either. We can communicate humor, frustration, distress, sadness, and most importantly affection fairly well using Cornetto dialogue, combined with the decade of layers that added on since we started watching these movies together. Fortunately we don’t have to, because we have a massive catalogue of dialogue from other movies and shows that we use in addition to those from the trilogy.
Technical skill and artistry, beloved material, and nostalgic connection to my past: just one of those would be a good enough reason to rewatch. Yet, I think the biggest reason I rewatch them, or at least the reason I am rewatching them right now, is the way they engage life in general, and my life in particular.
These movies are about zombies, or weird secret murderous cults obsessed with having the ideal village, or alien invasions, but more than that they are about growing up. Not coming of age in the traditional sense, where young folks learn about love or death or friendship or loss for the first time. These coming of age stories are about growing up in the current millennium, where a great deal of our growing up happens in our 30’s and beyond. It’s the sort of growing up that feels close to my own story, or more accurately, my own insecurities and frustrations.
Shaun of the Dead is about zombies, but it is also about moving deeper into your 30’s and still having nothing in your life figured out. It’s about fear and lethargy and how too often we live life by default instead of making choices.
Hot Fuzz is about murderous village conspiracies, but it is also about having trouble being close to people, and how an overactive brain can make connection and intimacy difficult.
The World’s End is about a robotic insurgency created by aliens, but it is also about how hard it is to be an adult who never lived up to the potential everyone thought you had when you were young, to feel like all your friends have passed you by and you are the pathetic one, the embarrassment. It’s about the need to take responsibility for ourselves.
In other words, these movies are about me, which is the amazing thing about stories, because obviously they aren’t about me at all. Wright and Pegg have never met me before, which means these connections I see to myself are a result of something else. Partly, these connections appear by coincidence, or because of ideas and feelings common to our culture and times as well as those more specific subcultures I’m a part of. More importantly however, these connections are there because of the human tendency to read ourselves into stories, and to read stories into ourselves.
This is one of the amazing abilities story has, and a huge reason why we rewatch and reread and relisten. When I revisit the Cornetto Trilogy, I feel less alone. I see I’m not the only one wondering who the hell I am, and how on earth I can become a better version of myself for me and the world and the people I care about. I find reassurance and comfort, which leaves me with at least two potential options: I can sink into that comfort and continue living the version of my life I’m disappointed with, allowing continual visits to Cornettoland to keep me pacified, or I can use that comfort and sense of connection to help me be less afraid and paralyzed, to take a new step forward and grow up a little. As I said, rewatching the Cornetto Trilogy is a bit like dinner with old friends, and just like old friends they can either shackle us to who we used to be, or inspire us to always be moving onto better things.
Recently, I’ve been rewatching the Three Flavours Cornetto Trilogy (Shaun of the Dead, Hot Fuzz, The World’s End). That in itself is unsurprising, even inevitable, as I’ve done that on average more than once a year (for the first two, at least). Yet, this particular round of rewatching has me thinking about all the reasons why so many of us rewatch things at all. Why watch something, as some us do, not just twice, but five or eight or twelve times? As often as people offer lazy, oversimplified answers as to why we might watch or read something over and over again, there is simply no catchall reason. The reasons why I revisit 30 Rock are different from the reasons why I revisit Wes Anderson movies, and the reasons my brother and I watched Newsies and Bedknobs and Broomsticks every weekend as kids differ quite a bit from the reasons my friends and I watched Swingers over and over again in college. I don’t just mean that these reasons differ in the obvious and specific ways, the particular characters and strengths that vary with each example. I mean they differ in profound philosophical and psychological ways. They are different in the way my need to sleep differs from my need for water; I require both to stay alive, but each serves a very distinct purpose.
I’m definitely not the only one who returns to old favorites again and again, either. Revisiting stories is as old as stories. Myths, religious liturgies, fairy tales, oral histories, and the timeless tradition of theme and variation are all examples of the way we return to certain stories over and over again, retelling and rereading as we remake our tales and they remake us. As is the case with anything that has been central to the human experience for as long as there has been evidence of language, it would be a mistake to try and oversimplify it or nail it down conclusively. The reasons are countless, they are nuanced and overlapping, and some are hidden in the realm of the individual and collective unconscious where Jung’s archetypes reside.
Even at just a passing glance I can identify some of the more obvious reasons why we keep returning to favored stories.
We rewatch seeking a relic that remains the same for us as everything else becomes unfamiliar and strange. In other instances, the opposite is true, we rewatch a film or show because it is new every time we return to it, since we are never the same when we experience it and thus will see it with new eyes every time.
We rewatch for a version of comfort food or a security blanket. The familiar characters feel like family, the cherished jokes still make us laugh, or a film is linked to a formative time in our lives and we feel a unique nostalgia connected to a particular cultural artifact. These stories then become a connection to a home we can’t otherwise return to. This particular category would be the easiest in which to identify attracts us to keep rewatching. Yet, even though there are some obvious reasons we can see, each is most likely entwined with more subtle and nuanced factors that keep calling us back.
Other things we return to because of how brilliantly constructed they are, because the beauty of some scene or moment or performance or shot or writing, or combination of all those elements, just won’t let go of our imagination, won’t stop triggering a deep feeling of wonder and so we go back to it again and again to suck all the marrow out. Yet, even these examples are more complicated than that, the beautiful construction was probably a vehicle for a thought or sentiment that connected with us very personally. There are so many well-crafted movies, and not all of them connect with each of us to the same degree. While the artistry is a huge part of what draws me toward the work of Kurosawa, there are other factors at play that make his films impact me the way they do.
All of that to loosely illustrate that there isn’t a final answer we can land on to explain the human habit of continually revisiting some collection of cherished stories again and again. We can say things about it that are true, but that truth is never exhaustive.
I don’t know exactly what is happening when I find joy in seeing a movie for the eleventh time. What I do know is that there is goodness to be found when we acknowledge that there is beauty in something and pore over it. It can reveal beauty that is in the artifact itself, and it can reveal beauty from within us by showing what we find to be admirable and worth returning to again and again. We can learn by looking closely at the things we find worth celebrating, or emulating.
Thus, all these thoughts I’ve had about why we rewatch things, combined with a recent desire I’ve had to thoughtfully return to many of my favorite stories, has led me to start a new theme here where I revisit an old favorite and attempt to discern some of what it is that I cannot escape. For example, as I rewatch the Blood and Ice Cream Trilogy again, what are some of the true but not exhaustive reasons I return to these movies again and again? That will be the first post in this theme, so stay tuned.
There are more great shows on now than there ever have been. It is well documented that we are in the golden age of scripted television… or I guess I should just write ‘shows,’ because ‘television’ is less and less accurate all the time.
With all these great shows, it gets harder and harder to keep up with all new things there are to watch, and to keep up with the shows you already love.
The last thing you need is some asshole trying to add even more to your “to watch” list.
Here are some more shows to add to your “to watch” list.
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1. Moone Boy
This Irish show, now available in America thanks to Hulu, is based on the childhood of creator and co-lead writer Chris O’Dowd, who also stars in the series as the protagonists imaginary friend. The entire cast is charming, I sort of wish I was a member of the Moone family. The setting of a small Irish town as the 80’s turn into the 90’s is a delightful blend of alien and familiar, since I grew up at the same time, just a few years behind young Martin Moone.
Moone Boy is a unicorn, one of those rare shows which is simultaneously light and sweet and still smart and well-written.
I’m so sad this the show only has one episode left ever. Please give us a movie, or at least a Christmas special!
The first two seasons are available on Hulu.
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2. Man Seeking Woman
The latest in the FX (and FXX) hit parade of comedies, Man Seeking Woman is a show about the pressures, anxieties, social rules, and oddities of being a single man in 2015. What sets it apart is the fact that it takes all those elements and exaggerates them into ridiculous metaphors. Louie has always done this really well, but Man Seeking Woman takes it to another level on the crazy meter.
It’s awesome.
Getting set up by his sister with an actual troll, finding out that most other guys were taught “spiral eyes” by a wizard when they hit puberty to make talking to women easier, drinking a dram to fake his own death when a series of casual hookups gets too serious, getting too drunk and forgetting his penis at the bar before taking a woman home, finding out his ex is dating Hitler, strategizing in a war room to craft the perfect text… just a few of the crazy metaphors Josh finds himself living in that make this such a winning show.
The first season is available on Hulu.
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3. Attack on Titan
I’m still slow getting into anime. Not because I have an aversion to it, but more because the genre is so huge and varied. It’s hard to know where to begin, or at least where to go after mega-classics like Akira and Ghost in the Shell. Attack on Titan is a great step into that world. Crazy visuals and concept, over-the-top emotional cues, harrowing odds, bad-ass leads… all the things I expect from anime, as a novice of course.
I liked the early episodes, but for some reason it was when I got to episode four that the show really clicked for me.
Obviously, this is the most particular recommendation on this list, because anime is most certainly not everyone’s particular brand of whiskey.
The first season is available to stream on Netflix.
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4. Justified
I know I’ve been banging this drum for a while, but that’s because no one is listening! I still don’t know anyone outside of Emily who watches this show, which is just stupid. Stupid, I tell you!
Perhaps it is because all of my friends are liberal intellectuals who either grew up on one of the coasts or in another country altogether, and thus have trouble getting excited about a US Marshall from the remote hollows of Kentucky. I don’t know if that’s really the reason, but I can’t think of other reasons why folks would be hesitant about this show.
Well, set your mind at ease liberal whackos, here are some fun facts to remember:
1. You know who else is a crazy, liberal, intellectual, from New York of all places, but still really loves this how? That’s right, ME!
2. The show is based on a character created by celebrated crime writer Elmore Leonard (Get Shorty, Out of Sight).
3. The collection of liberal whackos known as television critics also love Justified. The final season (only two episodes left!) is the second highest rated show of the current television cycle (tied with Broad City and behind the third season of The Americans).
I can’t find a promo that does the show justice, so instead, read what Matt Zoller Seitz (New York Magazine/Vulture) has to say, which feels like it was lifted from my own soul: “Every conflict or showdown is emotionally or physically concrete yet at the same time metaphorical, the stuff of future legends. And the My Dinner With Andre and His Guns dialogue is so off-the-charts lyrical that you can hear the writers chuckling.”
The first five seasons are available to stream with Amazon Prime.
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5. The Mind of a Chef
Narrated by Anthony Bourdain, The Mind of a Chef focuses on some of America’s best chefs (with a few jaunts abroad) and examines all the things that make them great. Their inspirations, culinary philosophy, the science of cooking, as well as the relationships and stories that make them who they are as a chef is all explored in a style that is funny and engaging. The show follows the brilliant, hilarious, and charming David Chang (Momofuku) through the entire first season, then for seasons two and three each year is split between two chefs.
Every episode I laugh, find inspiration to strive above mediocrity, and learn something new.
The first two seasons are available to stream on Netflix.
And one more trailer for good measure, since I haven’t shared earlier ones for Fury Road. Regardless of how good or bad the movie might be, it’s clear it is going to be quite the spectacle!
Several people, my wife most importantly, have told me they rely on Roused to Mediocrity for trailers. This makes it sad that I’ve been so terrible at sharing good trailers for quite a while.
I’m not going to dip to deep into the past trailers I’ve missed, but here are three from the last week or so that have me wanting to head to the cinema regularly this year.
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Spectre
Casino Royale was awesome. Quantum of Solace was not. Skyfall was awesome. Time to see if it’s going to be an every other movie pattern. Hopefully Quantum was an aberration. So far so good with the trailer, and we do have Bond basically dressed as Archer in the first poster, so we will always have that, at least.
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Slow West
A boy (Kodi Smit-McPhee) comes from Scotland to American old west in search of his lost love. Michael Fassbender is the badass who takes it on himself to keep the kid alive.
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Dope
A movie about LA kids appropriately obsessed with 90’s Hip Hop culture.
Before Akira Kurosawa did Hamlet and King Lear, he adapted Shakespeare’s Macbeth in 1957’s Throne of Blood.
In addition to moving the setting to feudal Japan, Kurosawa also uses original dialogue in the story. He replaces the flowery language of Shakespeare with the stylized, exaggerated gestures of Japanese Noh theater. It’s a device that can be seen in much of Kurosawa’s work, especially the samurai films, but is perhaps at its best in this instance. As we watch the tragedy unfold, with characters manipulated by demonic forces with unknowable motivations, the embellished movement reinforces the eerie wrongness of all that takes place.
The philosophical pondering of Kurosawa is there as always. In Throne of Blood he is illustrating how we are often deluded into destroying ourselves and the people we love because of our own greed and paranoia. The violence and destruction that comes from the self-interested warring between individuals, factions and clans is a common theme for Kurosawa. It’s no mistake that the three Shakespeare plays Kurosawa interpreted are full of this sort of drama and tragedy. By translating the setting, twice to feudal Japan and once to post-WWII Japan, we see Kurosawa’s point that this pointless destruction of peace is timeless. And Kurosawa was always asking if, in addition to its timelessness, is it also unavoidable?
As is so often the case, Toshiro Mifune is amazing. I will always want to be him when I grow up.
Bonus: Tony Zhou did a new Every Frame a Painting installment all about how Kurosawa used movement in his films. I absolutely love the way Zhou teaches us about the art of film, as well as the fact that he is often championing my favorite filmmakers. I have some gripes about the way he frames the negative sides of his argument each time, but that would take too long to explain right now. Feel free to ask me about it, though.
