I'm definitely disappointed in how universally every republican in the country (which includes a lot of friends/aquaintances since I live in a red state) has fallen for the balloon hysteria. Don't you people stop to think even for a moment? Don't answer that. I guess it's been long enough since the last caravan/ebola/guatemalan-gang-with-scary-acronym-in-your-neighborhood that I forget. But nice people outing themselves makes me sad.
I'm using an iPad and when I tapped the link in the OP, the Netflix app gave me a moment of confused amusement by opening at the last movie I watched (Lyle Lyle Crocodile) before proceeding to You People.
I don't know anything about that movie in particular, but my guess is that it's the usual situation where the masses love cheesy schlocky stuff and critics hate it. It's fine and normal for low culture and high culture to disagree on nuance.
The idiocy of them posing with guns like they can shoot 11 miles up is so galling because you know if a Democrat made some technical error they'd be all over them for ignorance of how Real Guns work. But pose with a shotgun with a range of 200 feet like you're going to shoot down a high altitude balloon and you're Tough. It's all such performative bullshit to cheer on your team.
1 really is weird. It seems just so transparently idiotic that I'm not sure what to even make of it. Republicans can't *all* be *that* dumb, so what's going on?
I had trouble staying in the room when it was on, but I have that trouble for lots of movies and TV.
Reviewers seem pretty agreed that the first act of You People is actually kinda good, and then the rest is a hot mess. The reviews don't seem to indicate anything about the discourse that Heebie is gesturing at (which I hadn't seen any of, literally hadn't heard of this film), the takes seem mostly lukewarm like this lede from the Rolling Stone:
"THERE'S AN ALTERNATE timeline where You People, the feature directorial debut of Kenya Barris (black-ish), is the next great romantic comedy. There's another version where it's a biting satire that delves into the strain parents can inflict on their grown children. There's an even more distant option, where it's a sharp critique on race relations that both entertains and tackles the hard truths around cancel culture, privilege and faith. While the film clearly wants to be all of those options, it ends up buckling under the weight of its intentions and landing as... well, fine. "
3,7: It's much more racially tinged than that - what racially-charged humor do people find funny? What do they find tired or played out? My suspicion is that perennially online people have a much lower tolerance than my vague happy-go-lucky friends.
For example, my friend* quoted the Jewish family making some fumbling line about how they were the OG slaves as hysterical. I'm inclined to find that line tired and cringey.
* Is her race relevant? I can't decide
"Tired and cringey" could be read as saying roughly the same thing as "cheesy and schlocky." Do you mean something substantially different?
5. after posting 1 I remembered one of Kevin Drum's recurring bits where he dives into actual right-wing media and points out that with absolutely no irony, at least 35% of the country believes that Joe Biden and all Democrats are literally trying to destroy America, that seeing the U.S. brought down and humbled is what the woke libs want. If you accept that framing, then the rest of it kind of follows. And consumers of right wing media are told that constantly, I guess.
10: Sure, and neither of those are a priori race-tinged. But when the subject matter is race, I think there's an interesting question of when does "tired/cheesy/shlocky" become problematic. Do we demand that everyone has the same exposure to hacky jokes? How do you deal with the fact that hacky jokes are new and clever the first time you hear them, but grate if you're the minority who has heard them a billion times? Is everyone expected to be inoculated to hacky racial jokes or do we grant people the space to find tired old jokes new and edgy if they're new to the individual?
Speaking of things Jewish people started, I guess Tu BiShvat is the OG Arbor Day and the ancient Nebraskans stole it because they got tired of seeing nothing but grass and corn. Sorry.
I would bet that it has a lot more to do with education level of the listener than race. I bet this film is a *lot* more popular with 50-yo no-college Black people than 25-yo competitive college grad white people.
(Not saying it's not problematic, but most people don't really care about whether something is problematic, or even understand what the word problematic means.)
Like, it's a Rom-Com, you can't make a Rom-Com that's not problematic!
I found myself wondering if Balloon Juice is still an active blog and if they've taken advantage of the situation. Then I decided to live with the wonder instead of looking that up.
16: Well, that's why I provided the option of talking about balloons.
This movie is why Democrats should nominate cheesy, schlocky, tired, cringey, and problematic candidates of a diverse array of races. Biden-Harris 2024!
if Balloon Juice is still an active blog
I check in on it occasionally bc there's still a link in my bookmarks, but it's about ~50% people talking about their pets.
Not that I'm throwing stones here in the Glass Cockjoke Emporium.
Que voudriez-vous savoir?
8, 10: The Discourse around it such as I've seen has to do with Lauren London and Jonah Hill having zero chemistry, and that it's outdated and unfunny, but I've also seen people being tired of Kenya Barris and his relentless working-out of his own neuroses (see #blackAF, Mixed-ish, etc.) and complaining about casting a light-complexioned biracial woman as the child of Eddie Murphy and Nia Long. (Oh and some discussion specifically of Lauren London because of the Nipsy Hussle connection, including a song on the soundtrack.)
We watched You People the other night and it wasn't great. No chemistry between the leads at all. It felt like it might be funny for a small and specific audience, but not one that included us. Good to see Eddie Murphy is keeping busy, though.
The only laugh out loud moment was when we were googling the actors (our interest in the film having flagged) and learned for the first time that there was an actual adult human being who called himself Nipsey Hussle.
Nipsey Hussle had an iconic cameo in Crazy Ex-Girlfriend.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ky-BYK-f154
Now 24, specifically the lack of chemistry and the colorism, sounds like stuff that you'd hear from Black people regardless of education level, and not overeducated white people.
"you can't make a Rom-Com that's not problematic!"
...really??
25: I mean, he was genuinely famous! Platinum album, Grammy nominations, as far as I can tell widely beloved in South LA. And a musical cameo on Crazy Ex-Girlfriend, what bigger sign of fame can there be.
Vibes is a completely non-problematic romantic comedy.
29: In 2023 it's just barely possible to make a nonproblematic Unfogged comment.
30: Today is also the day I first learned there was a thing called "My Crazy Ex-Girlfriend".
Surely "Bringing Up Baby" is in no way problematic.
33: The show is very spotty in terms of quality, I'd only say the first season is in any sense good, but the music is just so great. Adam Schlesinger (who died in the first covid wave) was a genius (also wrote "That Thing You Do" and several of the Josie and The Pussycats songs, as well as fronting Fountains of Wayne), and he and Rachel Bloom just did such a great job with the songs.
Who has the most theater kid energy in the world? Rachel Bloom or Lin-Manuel Miranda?
Some other great Crazy Ex-Girlfriend cameos are
Josh Groban: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2U7k7aPKue0
Patti LuPone: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iLNa-ocdryY
I really enjoyed Black-ish, except I haven't watched the later seasons yet, so probably I'd watch You People if I had Netflix, which I don't.* I tend to enjoy comedy in twenty to thirty minute segments over full movies, though.
*Is this the new I don't even have a tv? I also don't subscribe to Hulu, where apparently I could watch the rest of Black-ish.
It has not only a Les Mis parody song, but also another Les Mis parody song that's specifically parodying the Tom Hooper film.
Anyway, President DeSantis will pressure media to stop making anything "racially tinged" unless it makes white people look good.
I meant feel good, not look good. You're already not supposed to do anything that makes those people feel bad.
31 is still right. Nothing can make white people look better than Peter Falk, Cyndi Lauper, and Jeff Goldblum.
37 !!!! Bloom is a huge talent, the show is brilliant. Where it deviates from convention, question ing convention is the right response (sitcoms as a genre were made by audience-hating network executives). The linked clips that are simultaneously musical numbers and uncomfortable highlight this-- the hollywood musical convention of a spontaneously improvised musical song-and-dance (in fact the most highly rehearsed and planned part of any musical, much harder to do than repeated takes on an empty soundstage) is explicitly subverted in the linked clip, WITH MIRRORS yet.
Contempt for the musical desecration of Hugo's novel is just sprinkles on top of her sundae of brilliance. Fantasy collaboration between Bloom and Buster Keaton, when AI can make that happen I'll be convinced.
I'm with LW. I wouldn't say it's got universal appeal, but I don't think the quality ends with the first season. I think I posted about how well I thought they handled the "crazy" diagnosis.
At one point, then, you deftly avoided reading a post about it. http://www.unfogged.com/archives/week_2019_10_13.html#017030
That was a very busy week, health and career-stuff.
Heebie, have you seen Vengeance on Prime? I liked it better than I thought I would.
Anyway, people said the Chinese balloon was looking at missile silos. They're on Google maps.
And wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/341st_Missile_Wing_LGM-30_Minuteman_missile_launch_sites
BalloonDance is the real Chinese name for ByteDance. Puncture TikTok now!
I am also in the "Crazy Ex-Girlfriend is good" camp.
That one guy who got shot by Cheney just died. If I were Lin-Manuel Miranda, I would have given him Hamilton tickets, just because of the commonality.
49: I even responded to that thread! OK, I should have known it existed.
One of the interesting things about this golden age of television is the opportunities it gives to women. Crazy Ex-Girlfriend is great, and the narrative is very female-centric. (And it was created by two women, including the star, Rachel Bloom).
My other favorites in this category: Fleabag (which everyone should watch), Killing Eve, iZOMBIE, Orange Is The New Black and Jessica Jones (especially the first season).
Sarah Lancashire is in two very good ones: Last Tango in Halifax and Happy Valley.
And, of course, Girls. I know everyone hates Lena Dunham now, but we rewatched the whole run recently, and other than the terrible last season, it holds up.
Jessica Jones's first season is probably the most intense TV I've ever watched. Probably should have been around two episodes shorter, but what a show.
I think of iZombie as a Rob Thomas show, but of course Diane Ruggiero-Wright too. I watched almost the whole run and really liked the first season, but it's certainly no Veronica Mars.
iZombie is making me think I need to find a good *bad* TV show to watch to fill the "The 100" shaped hole in my heart.
Thoughts on Gaslit? I liked it a lot, again a bunch of great cinematography (mirrors here too, as well as well-done outdoors), Julia Roberts is great in this, as is Darby Camp, who plays her daughter, and the depiction of the white house as den of bumbling clowns is fantastic. There's a very nice way of dealing with Nixon himself also.
"My relationship with Alison Ashmore lasted for six hours: the two hours after school before the 'The Rockford Files' for three days in a row. But on the fourth afternoon, Kevin Bannister..."
59: I am finding increasingly that good TV shows fall into two categories: ones where I don't like any of the characters except the one or two leads, and ones where I like all the characters except the one or two leads. (Like as in they are interesting performances with depth and character development. Not necessarily good people.)
So Jessica Jones (and Ozark and for that matter Star Trek) would be type 1, and Killing Eve and Game of Thrones and The Expanse would be type 2.
Both types can be good fun but Type 1 shows tend to keep the attention longer.
I liked the leads in Killing Eve. Jodie Comer got the kind of flamboyant psychopath role that would normally go to a Jack Nicholson or a Christopher Walken -- and she really runs with it.
I just don't find psychopaths terribly interesting as characters. You can tell good stories involving them, sure, but that's not the same thing, and you need good characters around them for the film actually to be about.
People too often make the mistake of thinking that "Silence of the Lambs" is a film about Hannibal Lecter, and it isn't - yes, Anthony Hopkins is brilliant, and deserves credit for the performance, but he isn't the lead - he's barely on screen. (He gets quarter of an hour in front of the camera.) A film that was actually about Hannibal Lecter would be a dull film.
This is the mistake that Killing Eve makes. They give Villanelle too much time on camera, and they lack a good lead character. Eve herself is not a particularly good character and Sandra Oh is a shrug in human form.
The real star of Silence of the Lambs is Soldiers and Sailors, which was used for the exterior shot of Hannibal's jail and I used to park underneath it before I figured out the bus.
67: Which Star Trek? Or are you usually able to find one or two out of whatever ensemble it is?
Ugh, discussion of Sandra Oh got me to look up that "The Chair" got cancelled. Netflix always immediately cancels anything that's at all good.
Which Star Trek?
Original series; I haven't really seen enough of any of the others.
https://people.com/movies/jonah-hill-lauren-london-onscreen-kiss-done-with-cgi-effects/
78: Very many.
I'm sure I've shared this before, but whev. My best friend from HS went into the Navy. Soon after I went to architecture school and learned about soldier & sailors. My mnemonic for remembering which was which was that sailors are the broad-shouldered, more manly ones.
But I just looked up the actual place. Maybe it is actually about real human soldiers and sailors.
Jonah Hill is only 39?? Good heavens. He needs to improve his diet and start getting some early nights.
It's too bad the whole world doesn't have the same cultural support for healthy lifestyles as you see in Scotland and northern England.
84: it would certainly be an improvement for the US, judging by your abysmal life expectancy numbers. Scotland has the lowest life expectancy in Western Europe and we're still about a year ahead of the US.
Yeah. I relish the irony stemming from the lack of irony.
What did surprise me is that whatshername who played his mother is 60. Neither of them look remotely their age, in opposite directions.
Speaking of what ages actors look, someone pointed out that Leo DC and his new girlfriend are the same ages as the actors playing the two leads in The Last of Us.
Thanks. I knew she had three names but so many people have three names these days.
Mostly just her and serial killers.
Yeah but their middle name is always "Wayne"