It reminds me of how I always think that the sequel to action movies should be an actual sequel, where you have to deal with all the collateral damage: large scale memorials and funerals and community mourning, fundraisers to repair all the damaged institutions, rubble and clean up everywhere, demoralized communities relocated to temporary housing and they rebuild, etc etc etc.
I love this idea. Godzilla II: Consequence Management. It also reminds me of a good book: William Hitchcock's Liberation - The Bitter Road to Freedom
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Liberation-Bitter-Freedom-Europe-1944-1945/dp/0571227732
also William Langewiesche's American Ground: Unbuilding the World Trade Center.
I'm so glad Hawaii's video consumption is being carefully moderated.
Isn't mocking teenage (mostly white) girls for blandness a long term thing? Pumpkin spice lattes, basic bitches, and so on? VSCO is just what you call a girl for being bland this year.
Fair point! But there are plenty of teenagers with amazing, interesting fashion choices which I am wholeheartedly in favor of. Usually inventive fashion choices are the ones that get coined with a desirable moniker.
Also, TikTok really does seem great. It's a mishmash, but there's a lot of kids putting great effort into something just because it's fun to put great effort into something. Somehow a side effect of the political chaos of the last few years is that I get almost teary with sentimentality when people go to great lengths for a pure-hearted, non-profit-based motive.
I thought VSCO was kind of a slam. Something people would admit about themselves, but in the same sense they'd admit to being basic, not a desirable moniker.
On the water-bottle front, I am amused at the staying power of water bottles as social markers. When I was an undergrad, it was Nalgene. Anybody who was serious about their leftist politics had a Nalgene (because hiking? and re-usable). When I was in law school, it was the waning days of the Camelbak reign—the bottles that narrowed slightly toward the top and had a flippy nipple-straw thing. Now, it seems, there are several fashionable options, with Hydro Flask maybe as the leader.
On the VSCO front, the one positive thing I heard was that, compared to Instagram, VSCO is less about amassing the highest number of likes/followers, less about going viral, and more about sharing one's authentic, unvarnished self. If that's true, that seems like a positive thing. But it also seems like a great way for someone to sell scrunchies.
Maybe so. Like I said, I only heard of it this past weekend.
Maybe so. Like I said, I only heard of it this past weekend.
There was a vox explainer (which said more or less the same things as the OP).
VSCO girls were always sort of a joke. Way back in January, YouTuber Greer Jones delivered a deadpan introduction to a video called "becoming the ultimate VSCO girl": "Today I'm going to be trying to become a VSCO girl, because that's my life goal, you know, I'm not focusing on college, not focusing on my grades, because that's irrelevant," she says sarcastically. "I really look up to the girls on VSCO."
Back then, becoming a "VSCO girl" basically just meant making your VSCO feed look cool; In the video, Greer tries to achieve the retro-flecked, trying-to-look-like-you're-not-trying aesthetic popular on the app -- she takes photos of white sneakers next to succulents and says dryly, "I think my shoes and the plant, it just really shows who I am as a person and, I don't know, it's pretty deep."
1.1 Yeah that's a great idea, I'd watch the hell out of some sequels like that.
So basically, I'm so out-of-touch that I took an insult and explained that someone who exhibited those traits would not be desirable. Great!
The real VSCO is the turtles we saved along the way.
The second-season reveal about Greg was a similar flip, no?
Yeah, true. That one seemed like more familiar sitcom territory but you're right.
1 - That's kind of what Colossal does, except it's not an action movie, it just uses kaiju as pathetic fallacy/metaphor.
I've got an even better example on the tip of my tongue, but it's eluding me for now. It is of course a common theme in videogames, from Sim City on.
I think Shin Godzilla was kinda that, but it was in Japanese so I couldn't really follow.
Now I'm rereading the TV rec thread from one year ago that gave me Jane the Virgin, which I super adored. Any updates of what you all love or hate?
In the last year, I've watched:
A few episodes of Mrs. Maisel, The Good Place, and Veronica Mars, all stalled out due to trying to watch them with Jammies who has no time.
Jane the Virgen
Crazy Ex-Girlfriend.
(I think I'll bookmark that thread above for consulation.)
I'm watching Veronica Mars now. Turns out it's good, who knew?
How is VM, by the way? It's still not airing anywhere in the UK and my other usual sources of US TV buzz don't seem to be watching it.
The new season? No idea. I never watched to begin with, so I'm still on season 3.
21: You mean the new season, or all of it?
I enjoyed the first few episodes of the new season. Elsewhere I read someone was disappointed, but I'm not disappointed yet.
I'm mostly upset at how hard it is to watch Colombo reruns now. New stuff is probably not as good.
Anyway, I don't own a water bottle, but I do have a titanium canteen.
It was... fine. Perfectly watchable, not-great ending. There's a good critique out there about how all of VM past season 1 struggled to move her character beyond spunky-girl-detective and fell into the regular TV "trauma as plot device" trap, and how the new season recapitulates that. So if you liked seasons 2 and 3, you'll like season 4.
I haven't seen Shin Godzilla but I've heard very good things and I want to see it. I'm dying to see Parasite.
I recently did a Sopranos rewatch and I'm currently in the middle of a Deadwood rewatch.
Also in a throwaway line it sort of makes Veronica a NIMBY.
That's a shame. It's very easy here. They show them pretty much every day in the afternoon on a free OTA channel.
31 to 26.
28: Hmmm. I'd give Season 1 10/10, 2 7/10 and 3 6/10.
If 31 was to me, they do that here also. I keep forgetting about that as a possibility.
By 'here', I mean Pittsburgh, not the interstate rest stop that I'm currently at.
I mostly stall out on TV but I thought Fleabag was excellent; the aggregate time commitment is pretty small and it has something like the dynamic described in the OP, starting out as cringey sex comedy and then executing a flip and goes deeper, IYKWIM.
I'll second Fleabag. I also recommend Succession (the theme song alone is fire, as the kids say) as well as the Righteous Gemstones, which is basically Succession re-imagined as a wacky dark comedy.
Righteous Gemstones is another one that hasn't crossed the pond yet, annoyingly. Most of the good HBO stuff ends up on NowTV pretty much simultaneously but not this. Or the new season of the Deuce for that matter. I'm beginning to wonder if Sky's rights deal has run out.
35: It doesn't take long to flip either.
Good Omens is very well done if you like that sort of thing. Other than that and Fleabag, I haven't really watched anything for .. 18 mo? So I'm no good to you. I've had multiple people tell me MindHunter starts off well and then sucks, ymmv.
Snowfall, real cumulative long-form (and like super-woke-relevant-retro), Get Shorty wonderfully produced Hollywood love-hate-toxic-relationship.
Nia at 13 self-IDs as sort of a VSCO girl, adding the caveat that she can't say sksksksk. She certainly wears scrunchies. And her newish (multiracial) friend group apparently required leggings and Vans slip-ons for her to fit in after I'd already bought her a jeans-based school wardrobe. She remains deeply hurt that she was called basic by one of my girlfriend's friends last spring, because she's quite sure that basic girls drink one complicated Starbucks drink while she drinks another, though clearly I've forgotten the details. She is warm and charming and definitely has mainstream tastes, also disapproves of Mara, who wears a tiara and a lot of overalls and what Nia claims is too much cleavage, though at least she seems not to need the wolf ears and tail she wore a lot last spring. Kid trends are so bizarre from the parental side. And both of them are big enough to wear some of my clothes, which is also weird.
Heebie, you might like Derry Girls. There's basically no continuity, so you don't have to watch it as much of an arc, just drop in when you have the time. I loved Fleabag. I'm also fascinated by Bonus Family on Netflix, mostly because the tv-Swedish norms for both teen and adult sex and relationships are so different from what I'm used to here. I am probably showing how basic I am too, and I really should buy a water bottle.
Also thought Fleabag and Good Omens were great. If you aren't adverse to cartoons, Disenchantment is perfectly fine. Basically a fairy tale Futurama with compelling leads once they're fleshed out.
Both Fleabag and Derry Girls are great.
I'm loving new Netflix She-Ra although it is targeted to kids. Heebie, have your kids cottoned to it?
I should go back to Fleabag. I watched the first two episodes, and I did like it, but I'm more intrigued to know there's a flip coming.
My one rush-home-and-watch show at the moment is Mr. In-Between, which is a vexing state of affairs b/c I haven't met a single other person who's seen it to talk about it with, and because it does a thing -- violent criminal as loveable anti-hero -- that I hate in principle and am also sick to death of at this point, and yet I can't help loving the show and its anti-hero.
Thorn, I watched the first season of Bonus Family when I was deep into my wishing-I-were-Scandinavian phase which probably qualifies me as basic too if loving a charismatic criminal didn't already do it, so you're not alone.
Thanks to Barry for reminding me that I drunk-watched the first half of Parasite before passing out and I really should go back and make a better effort.
43: they didn't hate it, but they don't reach for it, either.
Good Omens was kind of pleasant to watch, but the fact that it took us three months to watch six episodes doesn't make me optimistic about watching anything else.
There's a good critique out there about how all of VM past season 1 struggled to move her character beyond spunky-girl-detective
This, and it's really a shame. There's no reason she couldn't evolve.
OP.last. I'm not an expert on the genre, but didn't a few of the superheroes-wreck-an-entire-city Marvel and DC movies talk about that? In one of the superman movies Batman is trying to destroy Superman because Superman wrecked a big chunk of Gotham City or Metropolis. In one of the Avengers movies Iron Man is completely in favor of destroying the "aliens" like Thor, Loki, and the rest of the Norse pantheon, because they wrecked some cities or towns during their first visit. (I'm sure there are total experts here who can say exactly which movies these were.)
OP.2. We watched a bunch of Crazy Ex-Girlfriend but somehow bogged down in the second season. Your spoiler makes me interested in seeing the rest.
Awesome re the kids, Thorn. Growing up.
And both of them are big enough to wear some of my clothes, which is also weird.
In HS I started wearing some of my dad's 1950s sportshirts (Odd colors and patterns! Weird plackets!) and he would look aghast and say things like "they're too big for you" - they weren't - and "they're out of style"- for him, for sure. Also some of his WWII army clothes, which if cotton were really comfortable and if wool were incredibly scratchy.
51 was me.
TV:
enjoyed Dark very much, but tentatively. Feels like it could go pear-shaped in a Lost way.
Fleabag was good. She seemed less "bad person" than I was expecting, although she read as early 20s in age.
Good Place is still good.
Mind hunter I enjoyed a lot, though that might be affected by liking police procedurals as my lowbrow veg-out tv, and it is a nice contrast to those.
19: Ugh, I'm sure this is just me feeling stuck in a rut, but I'm depressed that that thread was a fully year ago, it feels like I should have got more done since then, even if "got more done" just means "consumed better fiction." I haven't watched any more Marvelous Ms. Maisel since then, and from this thread, I enjoyed She-Ra a bit and have barely started, I didn't like the first episode of Disenchantment much but if someone here recommends it maybe I should give it another chance, and then there's other things that pass me by. I just found out A Cosmology of Monsters is due back at the library in two days, I can't renew it, and I'm only about 40 pages in...
As for offering a recommendation, currently we're watching Prodigal Son. Michael Sheen is a great serial killer. I think the first episode of the series promised more excitement than later episodes have delivered on, but I'd still call it good in the "police procedural with a twist" genre overall.
Really though, this stuck-in-a-rut feeling has more to do with work than entertainment. My job is indoor with no heavy lifting, pays the bills, and my boss seems happy with me, but it just takes way, way too long to get anything done around here and doesn't seem to matter.
49: I haven't seen Batman vs. Superman, but I gather that what you're talking about drives the plot. Captain America: Civil War was kicked off by the destruction in Avengers 2. The villain of Spider-Man: Homecoming was out to screw the man because someone else got the waste disposal contract after the big battle in the first Avengers movie.
49.1: They talked about it, technically, but mostly as a bit of setup, not really as the OP proposes. Some of the Marvel TV shows (almost all set in New York) tried to set themselves more oppressively in the aftermath of the "Battle of New York" (Avengers, first movie), with, e.g. plots in Daredevil surrounding the real estate politics of redeveloping wrecked parts of the city, but that part still never really resonated. It mostly felt like our world with some extra happenings bolted on.
If you mean the Marvel movies rather than TV, I'm not sure which you mean. If Stark expressed that view it was probably brief given they all made buddy-buddy with Thor pretty quickly in Avengers.
53.last: I guess that is true about the sequencing from Avengers 2 to Civil War, but that still felt more like backing into a desired finale, one that resembled a CGI-ified depiction of a toddler banging two action figures against each other. "Fast-forward", as I once read porn performers call their dialog.
I remember thinking this about Independence Day almost as soon as the film ended: what I really want to see is the film where some countries are completely untouched, others are trying to deal with the destruction of their largest cities, and everyone is moving from "hurrah! The americans saved the world!" to "wait, you mean the Americans knew the aliens were out there for fifty years and didnt bother telling anyone until they turned up and nuked Delhi and Mumbai? I HAVE AGGRIEVED QUESTIONS."
Isn't 1 basically the first third or so of Avengers Endgame?
I don't know how far you are on CXG, but pretty much every episode of Season 4 made me happy and made me feel like a better person for having watched it.
I endorse Fleabag (Season 2 is perfection), VM Season 1, Derry Girls, and Succession.
Two not mentioned:
Catastrophe, which is delightful. It's about a one-night stand that turns into a pregnancy and a marriage and then a life together with a lot of good and bad.
and
Big Mouth. I really cannot say enough good things about this show. It is raunchy and profane but also very sweet and thoughtful, It's a cartoon about kids going through puberty, and it's very frank about sex. Granted, some eps are a little boring, and some are really gross (anything with Jay and his pillow). But it's so real.
(TV talk will always bring me out of lurkerdom.)
an actual sequel, where you have to deal with all the collateral damage
Halloween: H2O was pretty much like that. Adult Lauri was a PTSD high functioning alcoholic as a result of her run in with Michael Meyers 20 years earlier.
Although I suppose you wouldn't call her collateral damage, since it's not like Michael was trying to kill her by accident.
Fleabag herself is such an endearing character that I was shook when [not really a SPOILER] her sister said she wasn't taking a new job because "my sister is a wreck." Then I thought about it and yes of course she was. Phoebe W-B is an amazing (and now wealthy) talent.
I haven't seen it, but by description isn't the recent IT sequel kind of what you all are describing?
62: I'm not sure IT really counts as a sequel since both movies are based on 1 novel and were broken into 2 mostly to keep the running time reasonable. Sort of like and The Return of the King aren't exactly sequels to The Fellowship of the Ring since the whole story was written all in one go.
I feel like VSCO is responding to teenaged against with comfy clothes and scrunchies, and as an xennial, they're not wrong...
63: That makes sense, and I had no knowledge of the book movie mapping was just relying on a colleagues recent comments on it.
Well, a lot of sequels are about dealing with the aftermath of events in the first book because that is what makes them sequels. Sequels about clearing up the damage from the immensely destructive action of the first book are rather rarer. "The Third Man"?
49.1: It looks like Marvel Comics has had this covered since 1988: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Damage_Control_(comics).
62: I haven't seen the IT sequel, but I did read the book, and I don't think it's the same. I'll explain, but it requires SPOILERS
*****SPOILER ALERT******
*****SPOILER ALERT******
*****SPOILER ALERT******
So, the monster or Evil Creature known as IT is like a cicada -- IT goes underground and sleeps for a set number of years and then wakes up, and wreaks havoc again. In the first movie the kids fight IT and force IT to go underground early, but IT is still alive. In the sequel IT comes back after the set number of years -- the kids - now all grown up- find out that IT is back, and they get back together and this time they are able to kill IT so that IT will never come back again.
(the book alternates between the kids v IT and the grownups v IT timelines)
Anyway, the grownups aren't cleaning up the collateral damage from what they did as kids - they are just finishing the job.
it does a thing -- violent criminal as loveable anti-hero -- that I hate in principle and am also sick to death of at this point
Then you should definitely not be watching Peaky Blinders.
Virtually all of the examples suggested, "dealing with the aftermath of the dramatic events" is not itself the subject of the sequel but the setup for more dramatic events.
35: I really want to watch Fleabag but I don't want to sign up for Amazon Prime.
I'm signed up for Amazon Prime, but don't watch Fleabag.
There's so much prestige television out there that to compete, nature decided it needed to add a choreographer.
I enjoyed Fleabag a lot until the end of S1. The show was very funny and great at being shallowly clever, but I found the attempt at seriousness to be problematic.
Further to 74 (I'm going to try to say more without spoiling): I found there to be a similar issue throughout S2 -- the show wants to be more serious than it is capable of competently being. The result is that its dive into profundity feels cheap, narcissistic and divorced from reality.
Season 2 of Fleabag is so so much better than Season 1.
Drop-in TV rec: Fosse/Verdon is one of the very best shows I've seen in, say, the past five years, and I say that as someone not particularly predisposed to musical theater in general. It's probably too dark for heebie's personal sweet spot, though, unfortunately.
71,72 - maybe Moby can let you log in as an extra device.
It will be like Napster all over again.
45.last You passed out in the theater? AFAIK it's only in the cinemas now.
Everyone keeps telling me to watch Fleabag. Are they right, or are they wrong?
I used to hate the very idea of a prequel, never mind a sequel. Bob Odenkirk changed my mind, because Better Call Saul really is even better than Breaking Bad, which is a pretty high bar to clear.
56: World War Z the book does this, though after the initial response it's less concerned about the international relations part than the differing public policy responses in each country/region.
My daughter does the VSCO thing. It really is just a fashion trend like the inside out sweatshirt thing in the eighties. She has taken all of my second tier t shirts to get the baggy shirt look.
OT: When they calculate inflation, how much do they factor in that Windows Solitaire used to be free (without ads) and that now you either have to pay or have ads?
I'm fine, apart from the high blood pressure which is stubborn.
And the great Microsoft turnaround is really leaving no rock unturned.
I should probably just ask for blood pressure medication, but I have another two weeks to bring it down by diet and exercise.
I'm not sure solitaire will help with that. The ads certainly won't.
Football is making me root for Michigan and Michigan is sucking. I should probably just go to sleep.
It turns out that the DASH diet and I have a serious disagreement about how much candy corn you should eat.