Wow…it’s been a while. I have so many drafts of stuff I started writing. It’s crazy.
This piece is part of what I hope will become a regular thing of Friday “catch all” pieces, that will be less formatted and more regular feature stuff. Pretty loosey-goosey format wise, and just off the cuff, whatever I feel like writing about.
School Daze
Firstly, the life stuff. In October I started taking a continuing education certificate course in Marketing and Strategic Communications (Hooray!). I learned a lot about social media, which dovetailed nicely with my increasing disillusionment with the dangerously unchecked misinformation factory that Facebook has become (Boo!).
I learned about personal branding and the importance of authenticity in self promotion (Hooray!). Just in time to become completely leery of the idea of becoming a public figure of any renown having seen a number of ways that parasocial relationships between content creators and fans can go badly (Boo!).
So I threw myself into school work. Knocking off 7 overlapping, month long courses in just under 4 months because it was something to do, to feel like I was doing something. My non-school writing took a bit of a backseat at that point. Just in time for Seasonal Affective Disorder to tag in as winter set in.
It’s at this point I must offer apologies to all 3 of you waiting for my Hamilton Part 3 deep dive. About the time a group of brainfucked Facebook uncles and white nationalists stormed the US Capitol trying to stop the peaceful transfer of power because Youtube and social media told them to, it became clear that I would probably have to start from scratch on that. It’ll probably end up being like the 4 Avatar sequels James Cameron keeps threatening us with. Someday it might come out. Someday.
Also, note to self: Don’t promise an ambitious deep dive trilogy of pieces, until you’ve at least written them. You’re just setting yourself up for failure when you inevitably get bored talking about the same thing for 15,000 words.
Anyway…back to school.
I learned a lot in school. I learned that when the website says “You can finish this course in as little as one semester, up to 3 years” the word “can” is being used in a very particular way that isn’t apparent until you try to do it all in one semester.
It was only when exhaustedly limping past the finish line, hurling my final assignment into the online dropbox that I realized how much heavy lifting the word “can” was doing in that sentence. Sort of like “You can eat an entire cheesecake in a single sitting.” In this case “can” was meaning, “we want your money so we won’t tell you not to…but maybe don’t.”
So I finished school. I’m waiting for my certificate to be mailed so that I can…I don’t know…update my LinkedIn so that I can continue to never use LinkedIn.
The TTRPG Bug
Beyond school stuff, I’ve developed some other interests and hobbies to keep me busy. I’ve gotten into table top role playing games lately and a weekly one I’m in is a recurring highlight of my week. Big shout out to John, Jazz, Pat and Wil for keeping me sane during all of this.
It’s funny, once I got bit by the TTRPG bug, I’ve suddenly felt cheated that I didn’t get into it sooner in life. I knew a few people who were into D&D but no regular games going on. In the small town I grew up in, nobody played it, so I was always intimidated to try later on in life because it seemed too complicated. Now that I’ve played it, I’ve realized that it absolutely scratches the itch for my creative, and storytelling interests. Once I realized that it was basically gamified group storytelling, it instantly de-mystified the game to me and I realized “I can do this”.
To the point where I’ve got designs on trying to run my own game in the future as Dungeon Master (that’s the person who tells the story the player characters interact with…careful googling it with the safe search off).
One of the cool ways that the rise of “actual play” podcasts and video series have been helpful, is allowing a complete newbie like me to basically sit at the table and learn how things work without feeling like we’re holding up everybody else. I think one of the major barriers for people who want to get into the hobby but don’t feel comfortable jumping right in, is the intimidation aspect that nobody wants to be the new person at a more experienced table holding up the works while the game is explained. Having the ability to pause and look things up without stopping the game removes that pressure.
If you’re out there reading this and you have that creative side that you want to let out to play, I would say give it a try. A personal favourite actual play series that I’ve gotten into is CollegeHumor’s Dimension 20 series (if you’re like me and not into straight high fantasy, they always put interesting setting and style twists on D&D).
Oh yeah…I used to be good at this
One other thing I’ve gotten (back) into recently, mostly so far in conjunction with my new TTRPG interest, is video editing. Mostly making fun intro “credits” for the games as a lark and as a creative brainstorming exercise.
Lately I’ve been re-acquainting myself with editing software (which I haven’t touched in a decade), and remembering that at one point I used to be pretty ok at it. Just like riding a bike: crashes and all (some parts of video editing have not changed).
Could this mean branching out into more multi media offerings coming soon from this site? I defer to my Hamilton Part 3 note above. No promises…but stay tuned.
If you’ve been reading this site from the start, you’ll know that I do essays on film from time to time that could benefit from a visual component so I’m brainstorming some options there.
Movies: Lizard vs Mon-kay!!!
Speaking of films, let talk about some new releases I’ve seen. I recently shelled out a whopping $25 to watch the on-demand release of Godzilla vs Kong.
Is it weird that getting horribly price gouged to watch a movie about a giant lizard and a giant ape (I know Kong’s not a monkey…it’s just funnier to call him that in the heading) engaging in some old school kaiju smacky-smacky, was a welcome dose of normality for me?
The price tag I initially scoffed at, but once I added up a $13 movie ticket plus at least $10 in concessions (just for a basic drink and snack), minus the need to leave my house or put on pants I considered it all a pretty even score.
As far as this movie goes…it’s a movie about a giant lizard fighting a giant ape. I can’t say it doesn’t deliver what is advertised on the tin. It’s not great art, but it’s a damn good time.
I won’t give any major spoilers here, but if you’ve seen the previous movies in the post Godzilla (2014) monster-verse you’ll probably have already figured out that it’s not a straight up 1 vs 1 fight and there are surprises along the way.
The most interesting and unexpected thing about this film, was that Kong is the main character. I know it sounds like I’m setting you up for a sarcastic punchline here, but the main emotional driver of the plot is the mon-kay!!!
Kong is given an unexpected depth in the film. His bond with a little deaf girl (who is the last surviving tribe member on his island) is surprisingly sweet. He’s a lonely giant mon-kay who is the only one of his kind, and is forced to be relocated from his doomed Skull Island to other remote places (it’s explained in the film that the isolation of Skull Island kept Kong off Godzilla’s radar and that the “alpha” titan would eventually come for our sweet mon-kay boy once that isolation was no longer available.
It was a pleasant surprise as I’ve gotten so used to Godzilla being nothing but a plot device and personality free force of nature, that it was cool to see what a hot mess of a mon-kay Kong turned out to be. There’s a moment where he basically pulls a Martin Riggs to pop a dislocated shoulder back in place. That’s worth the price of admission alone.
As far as the human characters go, they can almost completely get squished into paste and I wouldn’t miss them. This isn’t one of the big beastie movies like Godzilla (2014) and Kong: Skull Island (2017) where the humans on the ground get most of the screen time. We’re here to watch big things punch each other and I respect that this movie understands that.
Millie Bobbie Brown has top billing, but is given very little to do. The human characters mostly exist to a) look in wonder at the giant things while they smash, b) complicate the giant things smashing by doing stupid human things or c) get smashed by the giant things.
I give it 3 giant mon-kay thumbs up out of five. It’s a fun bit of mindless fluff, and that’s what I paid for.
Saul Badass
I’ll be honest here. I’m a sucker for the “unexpected action hero” genre. It’s a trick that when it works, it really works.
Keep your beefcake action bros. Give me the unassuming ass-kicker and I’m happy. I’m a pretty easy sell for that. So when I heard that Bob Odenkirk – who started in sketch comedy with Mr. Show, and is more recently known for playing the comic relief/decidedly not an action hero Saul Goodman/Jimmy McGill in Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul respectively – was going to get the John Wick treatment, I was all in.
Ticket sold. No questions asked.
And make no mistake about it, the influence of the John Wick movies can’t be divorced from Nobody. The plot hinges on a seemingly normal man, forced to revisit his violent past when he run into conflict with a dangerous Russian mobster due to a previous conflict with a family member of said mobster. We then find out that seemingly normal person is more formidable than they let on (this is not a spoiler, the trailers basically give this away) and there’s a mysterious world of underground information brokers that we get a glimpse into but not a clear picture (via the appearance of Colin Salmon playing The Barber, who provides intel to our hero).
What makes Nobody stand apart from it’s Keanu driven inspiration has to do with two key factors: Bob Odenkirk’s everyman easy going persona, and a gallows sense of humour that pushes this one closer into the action-comedy realm than it’s more serious, neo-noir progenitor (though some awkward tonal balancing makes it not really fit either genre).
The world building is less stylized here, and the presentation swaps out dramatic techno noir, for classic blues, R&B and cheeky pop music needle drops. One of my favourite bluesmen, Luther Allison gets a drop here, which was cool to see. This would make a spiritual double feature with The Equalizer (2014) in terms of threading the needle between serious, gritty action film and the stylized mythicality of the John Wick series.
The sense of humour in this film veers sometimes toward the whimsical, particularly when it comes to punctuating intense action scenes with moments of black comedy. If you’re looking for a movie where a fight scene on a city bus involves the use of a pull chord as a setup and a “Stop Requested” sign as a punchline, then this one will probably do it for you.
That’s not to say that the movie is without it’s problems. One side effect of Bob Odenkirk generally being more of a talker than Keanu Reeves, is that the movie tries to take advantage of that by having him say the kind of twice baked action hero one liners that the John Wick series mostly omits (relying more on Keanu’s brooding silence and leaving the exposition to others). Sometimes it does work, because Odenkirk can sell a cheesy line, but sometimes it feels like his character (featuring the action hero name – Hutch Mansell) is just talking to…nobody.
Wait a minute. Is that intentional?
For example, there’s something of a running gag in the movie where Hutch explains his gritty (and genre appropriately vague) past to mortally wounded enemies, who keep dying in the middle of his soliloquys. It’s a case where I can see the running joke, but it’s never fully punctuated as a gag and makes no sense as a serious moment, so we’re kind of left in this spongey middle zone of wondering why the fuck our hero keeps giving personal exposition dumps to his dying enemies. It’s one of those ideas that I think could have meant more if they had leaned into the comedy a bit more, but this movie tried to juggle two tones and it doesn’t always succeed. As it is, they play it too straight for the joke to land, but too silly for it to be serious.
I suppose it’s maybe the reason that so many action comedy movies end up being buddy movies. Without someone the talk to, the banter just becomes someone rambling glib one liners to themselves.
Oh yeah, and I haven’t even mentioned yet that Christopher Lloyd is in this movie playing Hutch’s former federal agent father. He has a lot of fun getting in on some of the mayhem and has a share of the funniest lines in the movie.
Before I get on with the next bit, I’d better bring out the horn.
Another issue I’m not sure on is the inciting incident of the film that begins Hutch’s return to his old self as it is mostly disconnected from the actual conflict. His return to his old ways isn’t motivated by personal revenge, and his conflict with the mob is brought about more by circumstance than anything.
Early in the film, the Mansell home is invaded in the night, and Hutch stops short of attacking the invaders when he has the chance. This leads to his son (who does tackle one of the invaders) to get slugged in the face and basically everyone in the movie goes on to call Hutch a pussy for the next 15 minutes or so. I’m sure there’s a deleted scene somewhere of Hutch’s proctologist doing it too.
Thing is…the movie sets us up in a way that the normally sour reaction I would have to this dated, toxic, manly-man bullshit is pretty much upended once Hutch does take action. He reveals in a conversation over the radio with his adoptive brother Harry (played by the RZA who goes mostly heard and unseen until a Deus Ex Wu-Tang in the 3rd act) that he knew the gun was empty and that the invaders were more scared and desperate than they were dangerous.
Later on, Hutch tracks down the invaders (mostly to find his daughter’s kitty cat bracelet) and finds them to be a poor couple with a sick baby. He refrains from killing them, goes and punches a wall a few times (like a MAN does when he doesn’t kill people) and then gets into a fight on the bus with some drunk asshole Russian mobsters, admittedly only because he’s looking for someone to fight. That’s what sets off the actual conflict of the film.
I’m conflicted on this because on one hand, depictions of vigilante white people hunting down people of colour, absolutely strikes a sour note in a world where “stand your ground” laws seem to exist exclusively to give white people blanket permission to kill. It’s one of the more problematic tropes of this genre that feeds into real world bigotry, and for a minute it feels like the movie is headed in a Death Wish (the 2018 Bruce Willis version) direction of the white male rage power fantasy.
I guess I give credit that the movie sets up that expectation and then subverts it. Hutch’s ex-soldier brother in law Charlie, behaves like every bit the swaggering macho dickhead that movies like this tend to idealize, but here it’s cranked to 11 and Hutch later calmly puts Charlie in his place (via a single punch in the breadbasket) that makes pretty emphatic that the swagger is all for show.
The trouble is, I can’t help but think that a big chunk of the audience is going to miss the subversive parts where the tropes are mocked and see the theme of this film as “stop being a pussy and go hit someone”.
It’s part of that tonal problem I mentioned, as the film doesn’t lean into the comedy enough in certain places to make the joke clear, and without a clear comic intent, satire often ends up just replicating the thing it’s meant to undermine.
Still not sure where I land on this last thought. I’ve got the movie rented for another 24 hours, so I’ll probably give it another watch and we’ll see how it sits with me.
Maybe next week, I’ll have a follow up. No promises.
I guess as a final word for now, I would give this one a recommendations with the above caveats. Solid passing grade, a little rough in places, but overall a good time. If you like your think outside the box action heroes (who aren’t invincible slabs of meat…Hutch gets the shit beat out of him pretty often here), then this one is a…(sigh) bloody good time.
I’m so sorry about that.
Anyway…
That’s what I’ve got for this Friday. Peace out.
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