Incomplete Completionist

We watched Despicable Me 3 last week - picking up the series after several months hiatus - but I'm glad... I think it's possible that I would never have seen any of this entire series if the first one hadn't been released in 2010 - my summer in Miami - when I saw pretty well every single movie released that summer and before... It's not a great movie series, but it's better than good,,, really quite good

Daredevil was for many years the comic book character who I declared as "my favorite!"  I think it's true, too, but even if not, I've loved the filmic variations of the characters.  I think my favorite characteristic of Daredevil's that I never, perhaps, identified as the reason why I loved him - weirdly - is his religiosity.  

This may sound somewhat counterintuitive as I am a generally irreligious person myself - but I think that's why I gravitated toward him when I was young and still full in the midst of full blown indoctrination... to find a hero who was struggling with his faith - often questioning it, but still allowing himself to be guided by it.  I remember when Daredevil showed up on a made-for-tv-movie of The Incredible Hulk and I just about blew a gasket!

It was almost exactly 10 years ago now that the Daredevil series premiered, and - by my calculations - I finished the first season in about a month*, give or take.  The second season, otoh, I didn't finish until March of 2018 - a full two years after its debut, and in the midst of my trying to catch up on the entirety of the The Extended Marvel Universe Chronology.  

I'm pretty sure I started that second season of Daredevil right away, but faded away, losing interest in the whole The Hand sub-plot (though when I did finally go back to it, the development of a new Elektra portrayal made the season worth it on the whole - if still not great).

Once Charlie Cox started showing up in officially sanctioned MCU stuff I still didn't go back and watch Season 3 until now, with the premier of Daredevil: Born Again coming along now.  Season 3 is GREAT, and I'm on the verge of finishing it.  I am starting to suspect that I may not ever finish TV... (let alone movies!), but to have left 'my favorite' behind for so long I feel like I've missed out.

I've got quite a lot of catching up to do with Marvel Netflix Universe (let alone finishing TV), but glad to be starting down the road with some new Daredevil stories.

* I am not a huge binger, especially with material that I have never seen before.  Even if it's not new, if it's "new to me", I like to parse it out, watching a single episode or maybe two and then moving on to something else for a few days.  (It is for this reason that I almost never watch anything wholly with my wife - she generally leaves me behind in a series - gets all the way through it, and then if I'm watching it again later, she'll dip in for a re-watch)

a work in progress...

There was once a place on the erstwhile internet called "Seen Reading" (which seems now to have become a book, because, sure, I guess, let's print off the whole internet!).  The premise was a brief observation of a person, usually on public transit, who was reading a book, noticing what page they were on in that book, and then quoting on that page.

This premise of seeing where a person was - both in their reading journey of a particular book and in transit - I suppose it's a bit fanciful, but it feels like we might gain some insight (imperfect and incomplete to be sure into a person who we see where they are in their journey.

When Tim asked me (a bunch of us really) a month or so ago what we were currently reading, I answered him a list of 7 books - a sort of typical number that I'm usually in the middle of.  So I thought a current reckoning - not only of books, but of shows (and perhaps any movies too) that I'm in the midst of completing.

I've been on goodreads quite a bit more in 2025 than ever before, because I'm planning on writing a short review of each book I finish this year, not just cataloging them.  They have a feature of the "currently reading" list called 'tabled', so I'll go through my active reads and watches, and then see if I can complete a catalog of tabled texts as well:

Books (Updated 7/7/25)

[I thought it might be fun to occasionally revisit this list from time to time... and indeed it now seems an opportune moment, half a year later, and having just finished the last of the original five books just this weekend...]

1. The Handmaid's Tale, by Margaret Atwood
2. The Final Girl Support Group, by Grady Hendrix
3. American Like Me: Reflections on Life Between Cultures, by America Ferrera
4. The Hunger Games, by Suzanne Collins
5. The Quest For Tanelorn, by Michael Moorcock
6. Life on the Mississippi, by Mark Twain
7. Swan Song, by Robert McCammon
8. Syllabus: Notes from an Accidental Professor, by Lynda Barry

[It may be that I just revisit this list with books going forward... I did manage to finish both How I Met Your Mother & Dark Matter from the previous "tabled" section, and at least a few of the shows & both movies, but I feel like the "tabled" section overall grew, and maybe that it and the books bit is the only relevant part to come back to]

tabled (still or now...)

[I'm not sure if I intend to finish some of these, or most of these or what, but l started them all with that in mind, I'm sure.]

Wallace & Gromit: Murder Most Fowl

Time Bandits

Franklin

What If, Season 3

Northern Exposure

The Sticky

Castle Rock, Season 2

Pop Culture Jeopardy

The Magic Island, by William Seabrook

An Island Away, by Daniel Putkowski

The Journey of Natty Gann

Dune: Prophecy, Season 1
Star Trek: Prodigy, Season 2
No Good Deed, starring Ray Romano & Lisa Kudrow
mr. & mrs. smith, Season 1
The New Yorker Presents, Season 1

Books (Original Posting)

[This feels like a fairly low number of active books for me, but in part, I don't have any of my typical encyclopedic works that I am working through, of which there is usually one or two]

1. Light in August, by William Faulkner
2. Frank Talk: The Inside Stories of Zappa's Other People, by Andrew Greenaway
3. I Cheerfully Refuse, by Leif Enger
4. The Hunting Party, by Lucy Foley
5. Plagues Upon the Earth: Diseases and the Course of Human History, by Kyle Harper

Shows 

[of course there are many shows that I am between seasons for - I've watched 3 seasons of Barry, but not the 4th again.  I watched The Bear, Season 1, but not the rest,,, yet]

1. Dune: Prophecy, Season 1
2. Laid, Season 1
3. Fast Friends, hosted by Whitney Cummings
4. Star Trek: Prodigy, Season 2
5. The Decameron, created by Kathleen Jordan
6. No Good Deed, starring Ray Romano & Lisa Kudrow
7. mr. & mrs. smith, Season 1
8. The New Yorker Presents, Season 1

Movies 

[I may actually adjust this list before I hit "Publish", as I'm working my way through one of them now]

1. The Raven, starring John Cusack
2. Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, starring the BeeGees!

tabled 

[I'm not sure if I intend to finish some of these, or most of these or what, but l started them all with that in mind, I'm sure.]

Wallace & Gromit: Murder Most Fowl

Time Bandits

Franklin

What If, Season 3

Northern Exposure

Dark Matter

The Sticky

Castle Rock, Season 2

Pop Culture Jeopardy

The Magic Island, by William Seabrook

How I Met Your Mother

An Island Away, by Daniel Putkowski

The Journey of Natty Gann

Toys vs. Tools

We watched (and bought*) Twisters 'tonight' - and it was totally, absolutely pretty good.  For context, Twister was a movie that came about in the heart of my youth and is a movie that I truly love, unironically, and unapologetically.  It came out when I was 18 years old and weeks away from graduating high school, and it imprinted on me.  Twister is earnest, a little schlocky (in all the best ways), and a fairly fun ride (literally, too, as Brooke and I did the Twister ride at Universal Studios Florida, although not actually literally as the ride wasn't that great - I just remember standing in a room with a fence, and then it was kind of windy, but not at you, just near you...).

Anyway, the point is - Twister is a pretty okay movie that comes to some relevant (if somewhat cliched) conclusions - "Making something of yourself" and "Don't be a total sellout" and "Love love (or no divorce allowed or something...)".  The science bits / meteorology / plot stuff is all very good.  There's a science bucket full of science puffins, and if they get the bucket in front of the twister and all the puffins fly up into it, they get science to speak tornado!

Twisters on the other hand starts with some children hobbyists who have a geo-engineering science fair project that ends in tragedy.  The tragedy of standing in front of a tornado and being killed by it - shocker.

The first mistake was to make the movie as a completely standalone sequel - like, it didn't need to integrate big parts of the earlier cast, but some cameos and nods to the earlier work would have been nice.  And grounding it in the 'science' of the earlier - a bit of "standing on the shoulders of giants" - I think might have grounded the plot in some semblance of the realistic, but of course those are not themes that we like in our current era, whether fictional or non-fictional.

The young will save us, and a profound disinterest in the ideas that came before... (generally before 2015 or so if you investigate the thinking very deeply).  The absolute importance of being liked - and if you aren't liked publicly (praised visibly), then you may as well not bother.

The central message of this far inferior sequel seems to be about "Ways to 'keep' getting ahead".  The happy ending isn't anything about doing good science for the world, or even like getting married or being happy or anything but frakking starting a company!

Congratulations!, You made it, please begin exploiting... 

{sigh}

* renting on Amazon Prime is a total scam - the cost of buying is generally just under double the cost of renting, and I feel like most movies - you will find another time in life when you are going to watch it or show it or reference it, so just own it forever (until Amazon collapses, which at this rate will likely be after the US government collapses!).

You have no idea the torment and torture...

 So, I saw Madame Web yesterday with my bro, against my better judgement (but well within my completionist tendencies...), and while it was mostly very much no good as expected, I had the chance to couple it with a new (to me) kaiju film on Max: Invasion of Astro-Monster.

While I'm not a massive connoisseur of kaiju films, I understand the formula (albeit almost as much from Mystery Science Theater 3000 as from seeing them on the their own).  I get that you're not meant, necessarily, to question the structural logic or motivations of characters in kaiju, but when that kaiju half of your Double Feature Challenge is the movie that rings truer, has characters with more realistic emotional lives and motivations, and more intellectually satisfying plotting, then if you are ready to embrace the camp and absurdity of your day of movie-watching, you could, potentially, be in for something of a treat... probably not, but I'll see if I can unpack it here a little bit.

 The post title here is a line from one of the more obscenely, absurdly dumb sequences in all of Madame Web, where our villain, Ceiling Guy is lying in bed (just like Brian Wilson did) with a woman who he just met, and we are meant to believe seduced a scene earlier at the opera by picking up a piece of garbage from the floor and handing it to her, then watching some of the opera.  This woman who is seduced by Ceiling Guy('s I wanna say evident sensitivity or intelligence {or possibly wealth?} because he's at an opera), turns out to be a spy who no one will miss or notice that her password is being used 24/7 by Ceiling Guy's ??Executive Assistant?? to access every camera in the city (in the world?, it's never quite clear), and our Spy Woman's susceptibility to sleeping with 'super' villains moments after meeting them is only the second dumbest thing about this whole sequence.  The worst by far is Ceiling Guy's continued use of the phrase "you have no idea..." or "if you only knew..." or such similar to imply that he has good reason for doing all the dastardly things he's doing, but really only serves to have the viewer say, "right, I don't know... are you ever going to show my or hint at some further reason?..., but no, they aren't going to.

The aliens from Planet X (Xiliens) by comparison have pretty clear (if insanely overcomplicated) motivations...  Upon revealing themselves to the human astronauts, they befriend them by sharing their deepest fear of King Ghidorah (a giant, flying, laser / lightning spitting monster), and then ask for Earth's help by loaning them Godzilla and Rodan (I'm not sure why, exactly, they wouldn't then just be harried by G & R if they succeed in chasing KG off)...

With kaiju, the camp is baked in - to be expected - and even if Madame Web wasn't made meaning to lean in to the camp, I think if you watch it the same way you might watch a kaiju film, there's something here to enjoy.  It's dumb (like, for some reason no one ever goes looking for a stolen taxi and first aid solely consists of chest compressions... just do that forever, and you can save anyone, no matter what has happened to them), but if you just go with it, and assume that they're doing all of this intentionally for comedic affect, I think it might actually be enjoyable.

My advice, if you're taking on this challenge is 1) drinks, lots of drinks; and 2) start with Invasion of Astro-Monster, and then move on to Madame Web, to sorta get you in the mood...

Vengeance, Naked

Tonight we had the rare opportunity for An Uncorrupted Double Feature (viewing two new {to me} movies, one after the other, thereby linking them forever in my mind and creating thematic linkage).  

As an unchilded human, this might seem on offer more often than to others, but it is, truly, a real rarity...  The first offering was Vengeance - a 2022 dark comedy by B.J. Novak, who quite possibly might turn out to be the most talented person to have been on The Office.  Vengeance is Novak's directorial debut, and in addition to being highly entertaining, it's possible that it may also turn out to be a defining film of the era.  It's the best kind of lowkey potentially great movie where it is surface level charmingly clever, spreading some sort of message that feels sort of important and profound (in the case of Vengeance there are 3 or 4 of these differing, but related messages), but nothing too scathing or cynical; and then on further reflection and examination it starts to dawn on you that this movie may in fact be not only deeply meaningful and great, but, in fact, important.

"Important" works of art are ones that are not just elegant or profound or even sublime, but I think most importantly they are the ones that are exceptionally timely.  What the world needs now, is aptness, sweet aptness.  Very often the messages that are needed at any given time are political (which is why so many "important" movies or "important" art generally is often political), but I think just now the messages we might most need are cultural and critical (in the academic sense) in nature.  

At one point in Vengeance, Ashton Kutcher's character (Quentin Sellers) says by way of critique of our current moment we find ourselves in: "Everything means everything, so nothing means anything."  The quote diagnoses the extent to which we have entered, just in the past few years, a postmodern cultural era.  Postmodernity is a complicated thing to define (just ask Fred Jameson who spent 500 pages or so in an attempt to do just that).  Possibly my favorite attempt at a definition is in Jameson's introduction to his book (and in postmodern studies, you only ever have to read introductions to books... or even just the marketing blurbs!).  He offers it somewhat glibly, but I think we can retrospectively now take it somewhat seriously...  He says something like:

"the Postmodern is thinking about the present historically in a world that has forgotten its history"

We are living in an era of supreme subjectivity where everyone's thoughts and identity have become significant and actual meaning and complexity and depth have become tertiary.  We have fully blown past Colbert's Era of Truthiness, briefly paused at the moment of "alternative facts", and now exist in a time when claims of "I feel that ____" and "I know the __{insert expert here}___ says ________, but I believe that ___________" have equal epistemological standing to previously 'absolute' truths like 3 + 3 = 6 and "water is made up of 2 parts hydrogen to 1 part oxygen".  And this, I think, is closer to a postmodern sensibility:

"Nothing means anything, so everything means anything"

That mentality is perhaps more akin to a less thought about branch of postmodernity called supermodernity (which itself is thought of as a branch of hypermodernity) which I think of as the notion that the meaning of the whole of anything can be ascertained by closely examining and understanding any part of it.  It's what Walter Benjamin was on about in his unfinished master work The Arcades Project, but I think it's also what's going on, in a satirical way, in Vengeance. In the movie, one of the Shaw daughters primary aspiration in life is to be famous - when this gets interrogated, and she is asked what she wants to be famous for - does she want to be a famous singer, or a famous actor, she decides she wants "to be a famous celebrity" - and this pretty well encapsulates the thesis of the movie, but is a throwaway joke line, soon forgotten.

And so (i haven't forgotten) we come on to Juliet, Naked, a bizarrely un-timely movie that came out in 2018, but is about email - in a moment after "email is over". It's based on a book by Nick Hornby from 2009, a time when email ruled - and the adaptation took the material straight (which is generally the best choice when adapting Hornby - who has kinda always already gotten it...), but that makes for a weird unmoored feel to the movie.

Given its excessive untimeliness, Juliet, Naked is anything but important, but as is so often the case with Nick Hornby, it captures aspects of the modern human experience, and interrogates them from a myriad of angles.  Here we find an investigation of highly curated fandom - questions of who owns a work of art, the artist or the appreciator of the art.  The movie is about the fraught-ness of an artist putting themselves out there, but also the fraught-ness of putting yourself out there - committing yourself to someone despite all their foibles and obsessions and insecurities.

As with Horby's best works - really all of his work that I've encountered, whether in writing, film, or song - the central question being asked is, "what is a life?" or maybe, "what should I do in my life?"  What to do with your life feels all-encompassing, and final, but what to do in your life feels like a good question to ask - where to spend your energies, what (and who) to give your attention to.

Life is like a weird dry run where only at the end of it we realize it was practice for a performance that's never going to happen

Potentialities, or Could Walter and Martin have been friends?

Earlier this year (about a month or so before squirrel* {BS}), I started again to read works by one of my top two "favorite"^ writers, Walter Benjamin, whose first volume of his collected writings in English I finished in toto last July.  To be sure, I've read a lot of these three collections that I own (I have Volumes 3, 2 & 1 in my collection the first {or the 3rd, depending on your perspective} of which I received as a "gift / bribe" from Malynne at the end of the first course I took with her "Cults of Personality: Hitler, Stalin Mao").  

This second volume has begun with quite a lot of short reviews and happenings-related short pieces rather than the deeper philosophical pieces that he's most known for (if Benjamin can be said to be well known in any capacity).  The reason for this is clear, with Benjamin as a young man in is mid-20s he was struggling post university to find work and publishing these short, timely works wherever he could.  Two such articles published just a couple weeks apart in a couple different newspapers were both clearly derived from one single meeting / conversation / interview with André Gide, and another couple were (very) short reviews of a book by Karl Gröber.  What's amazing to me is not the brilliant extent to which he so brazenly double dips (nor the fact that you used to just be able to do book reports and send them to a publication and get paid for it!), rather it's the way that all of it is dripping with intentionality, but so rarely concerns itself with execution.

Por ejemplo, in Benajmin's interview with André Gide, Gide repeatedly discusses the lecture that he had planned to given while he was visiting Berlin (his visit to Berlin being the occasion of Benjamin's meeting with him), but that he has been so distracted by such visits and because of the nature of Berlin life, "the leisure [he] had counted on never arrived," and he never got the chance to write the lecture. And so, instead of giving a lecture, he just vaguely outlines the ideas he had intended to cover to Benjamin, who dutifully laps them up and writes them up for two separate German newspapers, and his (Gide's) work is "complete". 

I love this concept of doing something just by saying it out loud.  Come to think of it, this is rather the same method of work employed by Peter from my time at MPS, a deep underlying faith that if you just talk about what you want to have happen it will come into being (although in this latter case it involved employing an entire staff of people who were basically there to just try and discern his wishes, and then carry out all of these whims as much as possible). In the earlier case of Benjamin and his contemporaries, the focus is much more on the potentiality of having had a great idea, and then thinking about how great it was, and not concerning yourself terribly with the fact that it never came to fruition.

Another thing that I find compelling about Walter Benjamin is that he is a near exact contemporary of my grandfather, Martinus Kvidt.  Born just 9 months apart, Benjamin on the pre-anniversary of my own wedding on 15 July 1892, and Martin on MKE day 14 April 1893, they were both part of The Lost Generation of their respective countries, and while my grandpa was off to Europe to fight in World War 1, Benjamin was a country or two away studying away at university.  

I'm not entirely sure why, but I have always been interested in synchronicities - the phenomenon of things things happening at the same time in different places (and in different worlds, even - fictional and historical and historical fictional or futural historical...).  For years, I have tried to find (or create) a calendar app that would allow for historical events to be created throughout the past (weirdly, google calendar seems to have an odd glitch {or maybe it's actually iCal that has the glitch} where you can create some events in the far distant past and they will sometimes reappear, so I sometimes am able to re-discover that George McFly was murdered on March 15, 1973 {or it possibly could have been early in the morning of the 16th; anyway the same week as when the Watergate break-in guy was being paid off...} while looking through my calendar, but other times not, as the event appears and disappears unpredictably on my Calendar app).

I like to think about contemporaries in history, art, cinema (like, for instance what was going on in 1999 cinema that made it such a spectacular sampling of content while the history of that moment wasn't especially exciting - although we were on the brink of a lot that would happen in just the next few years and ultimately set up much of what we find around us today...), literature and also to consider the generations looking back at their influences from prior generations (a process that I would have thought I could have generalized as a faster and faster process, with TikTokkers citing Taylor Swift as major influence {some 10 years earlier}, whereas Benjamin and many thinkers of his era largely looked back Centuries, and in particular 150 years give or take to the Romantic Era of German literature {your Goethes & your Schillers, etc.}, but I think this tends to over-generalizing the history of cultural influencers {ikr!?}.

Perhaps the greatest of these Influencers of the 19th Century (don't worry, I'm bringing this in for a landing) is the Kurt Cobain or Jim Morrison of his era, John Keats, who died at 25 and then suddenly thereafter became a famous and great poet.  Keats is of course most famous for writing the poem that you read in high school, "Ode to a Grecian Urn" and for aggrandizing the concept of Negative Capability.

 Negative Capability, Keats called when one is “capable of being in uncertainties, Mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after facts and reason.” 

More than anything, this concept seems like the philosophical equivalent of the thinking without necessarily doing life philosophy we were talking about before (rather like the "Harold Hill Think Method" of marching band instruction!, "la-di-da-di-da-di-daaa").

*We had a moment this past spring, where we encountered a full-on squirrel nest in the engine block of our erstwhile Ford Edge, a vehicle that had had (before and after) A LOT of other issues once it was rapidly wandering out of warranty.  It took some help, but we have finally found our way out of that Capitalist death trap, and are generally on to lower and worse things, but at least out of that! 

an interregnum

 I am currently existing within a time period where I know which ubiquitous 90s song Sister Hazel is responsible for. (hint: "It's hard to say what I see in you--u-u!")

They, evidently, had a song on the 10 Things I Hate About You soundtrack (they announced that at their show before playing said song, and I shouted, unexpectedly, "I LOVE THAT MOVIE!!!" which I do, but nonetheless didn't expect to yell), but Brooke & I went and watched 10 Things the very same evening that we got home from seeing Sister Hazel, after hearing that very same song after they announced it was the song, and still was not able to pick their song out of the movie lineup.

I'm convinced every 90s one hit wonder band (and maybe some 3/4 hit wonders) should learn and perform the hit songs from Sister Hazel, Del Amitri, Deep Blue Something, Blind Melon, etc. and play those songs throughout their set and then be like, "nah, that one's not ours!"

Much better sets overall, I think - without the pressure of playing every song you've got in your arsenal when everyone is just waiting for your last song before you leave so they can hear the one they know.

[this post feels a bit like a really overly long mean tweet and i am sorry for that.]

The Obligation of Cinematic Nostalgia

2021 was a banner year in content creation - content maximization, really - for the MCU with 4 new movies (its most ever) and 5 original series on Disney+.  In 2022, 5 separate Star Trek series will release new episodes: FIVE!!!  

Source: medium.com

When The Matrix: Resurrections was released on HBOMax, I decided to sign up for a month of the service to see the new movie.  Before I did, I decided to watch Reloaded and Revolutions again, because I was sure I had seen the original movie several times, but each of the sequels maybe as few as twice each.  Upon starting Reloaded, I was completely lost, and realized what I was expecting to see was actually the back half of the original, so I went ahead and took most of my month's purchase time to get through the full trilogy again, and then - finally - watched Resurrections on the last day that it remained streaming on the service (for now).  The reboot / sequel / most recent installment was... okay.  Pretty good in fact, with a fun and inventive central conceit... but really just the same again as before (which I really think is kind of the central unintended theme of The Matrix franchise).

The Matrix was released in 1999, which was hands down the peak year of movies in America (and don't take my word for it).  My personal filmic consumption was also at an all time high, so I was hooked on most anything that was being doled out.  Ergo, The Phantom Menace (which I first saw pirated on a desktop computer because I was living in Germany, and it wasn't releasing there until the fall {by which time I was going to be back in the States!}) was such a pleasure when I first saw it - seeing the Jedi at their peak (or their early decline) - rather than something to be scoffed at.  

In a year when Fight Club and Office Space were working to undermine contemporary late capitalism in America from opposite ends of the spectrum (and at a time where the political spectrum wasn't the only spectrum - rather the spectrum in this case is Fight Club's chaotic, anarchic direct action on one end and Office Space's radical, satirical inaction on the other) and realities of all sorts were called into question (whether it's cyberspace v. meatspace {The Matrix & eXistenZ}; spiritual reality {The Sixth Sense}; temporal {Run Lola Run}; documentary v. fiction {Blair Witch Project}; cosmic {Being John Malkovich}; or gonzo-comedic {Man on the Moon}), most of the main modern mythologies were at or near their (then) peaks. 

Since that time, of course, we've had the dawn of the MCU, plus the continuation of the Star Wars prequels and expanded universe, Star Trek trying out a prequel series and then a reboot, before its full establishment of an STU, The Walking Dead becoming a cable tv phenomenon and then (likely) overextending its reaching to create a fuller, awesomer universe, and now everything wants not just a movie deal, but a whole universe that can be endlessly capatilistically exploited.  The Harry Potter Universe (HPU), the DCU, even the dream of the SKU.  Did you know, for example, that Breaking Bad and The Walking Dead happen in the same world?

But it's not just that the maximal capitalistic exploitation feels so oppressive - it's the compartmentalization of it all.  Streaming has only made it more ex-stream! - the ability to only consume the same thing that you always want to consume.  Discovery+ is the most extreme version of this (only because most of it is not my speed), but it's the logical, cultural extension of the political media self selecting that has been talked about for decades.

And the outcome, like the natural outcome of late capitalism, is alienation... we will forever become more separate from each other (on a referential level, but also a relational level), and that alienation is helpful for capitalism (especially late capitalism).  The less we notice the suffering of those immediately around us (not our families, but our neighbors - or if you're weird and still friendly with your neighbors, then I mean the people who live two houses down from your neighbors... yes those neighbors) and the more that we feel that we are alone in our own*.

So, as I'm watching an episode of Star Wars: Rebels, and two Lasat survivors identify a location of a new homeworld for their people, my first thought is <<what is a Lasat again?  Have I encountered these before and why do I care?>> and then <<ok, yeah, I care even if I don't know who they are, because I'm a) invested in this universe and b) generally care about the well being of anyone who isn't always already known to be a prick>>.  

It turns out it's easy to love what you love.  When Discovery zapped its characters into the late 32nd Century, the emotionality of the series ramped up to 11 - at least for those who were invested.  The dismantling of The Federation in the 900 years or so since the crew came through is tragic, but the melding of Vulcan and Romulan species in the newly formed Ni'Var is sublime.

But the trick, i think, is 

* our own suffering, that is...

golfing in the end times...

 I've decided to watch The Walking Dead from the start again with the final season starting this week. I'm well over 2 Seasons in, and quite an awesome thing occurred to me: I need to work on my golf game.

I know it's not where everyone's mind goes to while getting re-acquainted with the Governor and his Woodbury gang, but in one episode, he has set up a tee off the top of their wall, and whacking balls out into the street and at any oncoming walkers, and it occurs to me that after the end times come, and the breakdown of society (whether it be zombie-caused or Super-Flu or something else totally unexpected), we are all going to have a lot of time on our hands.

I know leisure time is not what we generally see depicted when people tell apocalyptic stories - it's all busy busy gather gather fightfightfight. Because activity is helpful to narrative, however in reality, once you're holed up somewhere there will be a fair amount of down time.

The Governor's impromptu driving range is hardly the first golf go-round for a zombie-infested world. When we meet Bill Murray in Zombieland he's just come back from "playing nine holes on the Riviera". Robert Neville, when he waits each day at noon at the Manhattan piers opts to do some practice driving rather than playing a full round (although I'm not sure there actually are any golf courses on Manhattan Island where he is stranded).

And it's not just zombie-ravaged worlds where golf seems like a good hobby to take up: even Hugo sets up a short course on their island on Lost. It's Hugo's course that I modeled the proposed Turtle Greens Golf & Beer Club (or TGBG) after in the Hellwaukee setting - after everything fell apart, it's a great place to unwind.

Evidently, my prescience on this issue had spawned an upcoming hit video game on this very theme.  I'm realizing that this post may need to become a perpetual post, as I think I have run out of examples of golf in apocalypses, so I'll add them as I find them, and please let me know what I haven't thought of yet!

Terror | Terroir

 I've recently watched the Jordan Peele produced The Twilight Zone, and thoroughly enjoyed Get Out when it came out a few year's ago.  I've long made the case that horror is as (or more) necessary as terror, in our daily lives, and I think Peele's horror ouvre, as it continues to unfold in front of us, will provide an object lesson for my argument.

The other night, I watched Us, and was profoundly moved by it (and close to bowel-moved as well it was so freaking scary).  It is the story of a fear of an under-class rising up.  But this under-class is not comfortably something other.  Rather, they are us.

The notion is terrifying (as opposed to horrifying).  I do not love the quickly accessible distinctions between the two (including the one in my post linked to above); a more fulsome account, if desired.  The fear of the revolutionary uprising is something that the progressive / liberal-defining bourgeoisie want to mask.  We support (in principle at least) the overthrow of power, and watching these upper middle class families get their come-uppance is, I would argue, a terror movie rather than a horror movie.

But then, Peele does what he has done so marvelously in much of his recent genre work, he extends.  If you relish the terror of bourgeois families at their vacation houses getting terrorized and chased around by unknown baddies, then by extension you will cheer to yourself similar harassed and displaced.  Of course this (generally) does not hold true, and becomes where we enter the horror genre.  The apocalypse for everyone else and adventure / free to wander tale for ourselves is at the heart of the good old 'merican terror story (The Stand, The Road, Revolution, The Postman, et cetera et cetera).  We love these tales of terror as long as we are in the less than 0.6% who get to survive Captain Trips.

In Us, when we begin to see the masses of underworlders holding hands in lines across streets, in and out of buildings and over mountain roads, forming an echo (but what's the word for an echo that's louder - more heard!?) of Hands Across America, the implications begin to be horrifying.  They are coming for all of us: children and adults, black and white, rich and poor.  

For me personally, Hands Across America was already a horror-laden event.  In 1986, my two brothers and I piled in to the family station wagon with my dad, leaving my mom at home, and drove south toward central Illinois to join in the not-so-nationwide chain of humanity.  On the drive down, the three other boys in the car (7, 14 & 40 years my senior) were discussing apocalypse as some kooky preacher on the radio (and billboards I seem to recall) was predicting Armageddon in the coming days or weeks (evidently it wasn't high-profile enough to make this list, unless perhaps my memories are conflated).  My brothers and dad were discussing the concept academically (or at least the childish version of academically; my family, and in particular my dad, are textualist bible-y people, and while they didn't go in for specific predictions of any moment, I do have the sense that they all kind of generally believed in it 'eventually'), and my 8-year-old mind was swallowing it whole, and I was terrified that the end of my existence was mere days away (hours of it to be wasted in the way back of this damned car!). 

I don't believe that Jordan Peele tailored his horror story specifically to me, but I am curious (and it's probably too late to note, spoiler-alert) as to what the implications of the film might have been had it not been for the twistNotSoTwist ending.  Would Adelaide's (Lupita Nyong'o) doppelganger (Red), who in fact was Adelaide, have seemingly led the uprising had she not come originally from the top side. Revolutionary artists (or perhaps it's more often horror makers) often wind up creating works that actually make arguments quite the contrary to what they themselves believe or would espouse in the real world.  

• Thus, is the argument of Us that in order to make revolution, the underside need a spark (inspiration or perhaps permission) from a member of the ruling class?
• Just as the hippie horror-makers (Wes Craven, Tobe Hooper, John Carpenter) wound up making conservative arguments warning about the dangers of teenage promiscuity...
• And a work of horror fiction as seemingly revolutionary as Mark Danielewski's House of Leaves winds up making a very very conservative argument (albeit circuitously).

It's not to say that it's the fault of these brilliant creators that their works wind up making conservative arguments that they'd rather not be making.  Rather it's the tricksy nature of working in the media of terror and horror and trying to bridge the gap.  It's why a filmmaker like George Romero was less susceptible to falling into the same trap, because he started with the horror and embraced it for its own sake, and the meaning came afterward.  When you try to wield the ephemeral (which is what you're doing when you're creating a work of art), it gets slippery, and doesn't always go where it wants.

It's why when the artistic mockery of religion that is televangelist doomsayers like Jack Van Impe and publishing powerhouses like Joel Osteen and religiosity-based "university" educators like Jerry Falwell Jr... 

• Ply their craft, they wind up arguing against their personal ownership or understanding of church doctrine, and their political and moral arguments (not to mention their continuing calls for their own personal enrichment) wind up making the case for exactly the opposite of their intent.

i get it now!

I have been re-watching the Star Wars saga chronologically in preparation for Episode IX.  I've reached, at long last, The Last Jedi (Die Letzten Jedi, as i like to refer to it, to show that it's plural!) and have been watching all of the Forces of Destiny shorts in order as well as a few of the other ephemera.

So far, i have read several of the comics and working my way through a few novels that are now considered "canon".  Of course, i have throughout my days read some of the Star Wars universe literature (Timothy Zahn's trilogy, Tales from the Mos Eisley Cantina, and Splinter of the Mind's Eye), now all disavowed.  But now i plan to make a slow crawl through this new canon.

Source: funko.com

I promise not to drag it out here and bore you all with an epic play-by-play (as i have been guilty of for some other sci fi universes...), but the pop-cultural mass-production machine has put a mythology together which is vast and rich.  They will spend the next decade exploring it in upcoming tv shows and a new trilogy and more Star Wars Stories (i expect)...

With this third trilogy about to finish its arc (as well as put a closing argument on the entire nonology), I think it's worth noticing both how each trilogy was a set of its time, but the themes of the entire story are timeless and timely.

Much attention has been paid to Kylo Ren's line about "killing your past to become who you were meant to be".  I think this has been read largely as a millennial claim of the future (from the hands of the likes of, say, Boomers like Kylo's annoying dad and his former teacher).  While this trilogy does serve to pass the torch to a new generation, it's also a reminder to us all to leave behind the vestiges of the prior generations that would hold us back in our whole new world.

Kylo's request of Rey (implicitly at this moment and explicitly later) to join him and join the existing corporate power structure {aka "The Dark Side"} and help him overtake it) is one of multiple poles in the power nexus in this galaxy far far away (and so too ours as well).  We will call this particular position the Zuckerberg Lane, a young upstart acquiring a vast amount of power while the primary great powers of government (The Empire & The Rebellion) are focused on consolidating their own power against each other.  

Another "power pole" (i don't love this term...) that explicitly states its case in The Last Jedi is when force ghost Yoda says to Luke that "we are what they grow beyond.  That is the true burden of all masters."  This is an acknowledgement of the idea that our next generation not only will be our betters, but must be.  It's a radical acknowledgement - and one that used to be inherent, unspoken.  When we look back, we (the "now people") look better, smarter, more intellectually sophisticated compared to our ancestors.  This doesn't mean we don't honor them and appreciate them, it's just a different stance from blind fealty.

It's easy to think of the Jedi (current and former) as a bloc of good - all light side, all the time - but I think they more closely resemble something like, say, "Democrats".  Sure, they mostly do good things most of the time and are generally on the right side of history, but in order for them to truly have power we also have to accept the Joe Manchins and John Bel Edwards who may think some things we don't want them to sometimes, but also mostly agree that governments (Galactic Senates or domestic ones) can do some good.  As a bloc, they have also accepted some evils (whether those be Southern Segregationists or an Imperial Clone Army), but those are products of historic naiveté, and must be accepted within its historical context in order to build the movement, n'est-ce pas?

Yoda's line about passing history on to your progenitors is fundamental to a progressive perspective of history.  Each generation must both believe itself to be the best, most enlightened, best suited to move history forward, and also willing to let the next generation be better than they were once their time has passed.  

This is the era we now inhabit, where our "resistance establishment' (pro-Biden Democrats - also perhaps Deval Patrick's constituency) is struggling to make arguments against The First Order (the Tea Party ==> the Trump Party), but hand wringing and hemming and hawing at the radical approach Democrats who want to let the system crumble and build it up new (here Yoda and Luke are played by, I guess Bernie and Warren?? - I think this all ultimately will come to mean that Rey is AOC & Stacy Abrams wrapped in to one, and we will pass the keys on to them soon enough...).

This closing trilogy of the Skywalker Epic is unfolding in tumultuous political times not just here in the US, but globally.  Trumpian politics are dripping even in the first installment in 2015 with the First Order taking out a vast portion of the inner planetary systems and the existing establishment politics.  "Draining the Swamp" as it were.  

The Prequels began in a pre-9-11 moment, and the world they introduce us to in the first installment, it's a dreamy vision of the always better erstwhile.  The Phantom Menace's Coruscant (and even moreso Naboo) are an idyllic past to the familiar worlds we knew from the original trilogy.  While there is a nod to Clinton-Era political squabbles and self-dealing, the world is an "OK, Boomer" dream status that will never be revived. 

It's the middle trilogy, the original set, that comes from an era of our world when they didn't know yet what they were really all about.  It's a big part of why the themes of the movies are so general and mythological.  The trilogy knows it's about struggle, but what that struggle is wasn't clear until much later.  1977 - 1985 was just at the start of the Era of Inequity that we live in now.

This is the struggle of our era - it's the fight of our lives.  We will see what the Rise of Skywalker has to say about it in a month's time.  And then, let's see what we do next in 2020 in our own response.

*      *       *

17 December 2019

Watching Star Wars: Behind Closed Doors from REELZ (is that a thing?), and the clarity of misunderstanding of the prequels is made clear.  A lot of the critique of the prequels is couched in storytelling - i.e. the original trilogy made the battle versus good and evil the main point, but the prequels are so bureaucratic, administrative and political.   The new trilogy has been exciting and modern and definitely better than those pesky prequels.  It's a fair argument, but i think is the argument for what i said above.

The simple way to say this is (unfortunately) that people were simpler.  But it's not just that.  The more important function of (American) history is that the era of the prequels (1999 - 2005) was an empty era (i know, i know - 9/11 happened then, but 9/11 is a logical conclusion of the 1970s/80s Islamic Terrorism that we ignored for most of the 80s and 90s).

Politically, and culturally, it's a kind of boring time.  1999 was a kick-ass year for movies, and the era of prestige tv was about to begin (or maybe did, i don't have exact dates), but it was sort of easy politically.  [NOT HISTORICALLY by the way!!!  Bush v. Gore, then 9/11, then re-electing the (up to then) dumbest person we had elected president.  And culturally, the technological superfuture was still sorta basic. 

My argument basically is that folks watching the original trilogy needy clarity (good vs. evil, dark v. light) because they'd just come out of Vietnam, Watergate, hippie reclamation, etc.  The prequels came out when it was only just becoming clear that all of the powers that be (Republicans and Democrats and large corporations and big tech {whatever that might be!} and all of it were aligning against actual regular people who weren't already rich and had maybe just trusted the hangover of the New Deal to carry them through to retirement could just start to grasp that everything was conspiring against us, the regular people.

I think in this context the prequels read amazingly well.  They are prescient, not just of Anakin's turn to the dark side, but of a vast chunk of America - first in the re-election of a war criminal president, and then later in the historic and wonderful and also par-for-the-course election of Barack Obama who governed as a Compassionate Centrist (and i love him dearly and what he accomplished, but by the time The Force Awakens comes out it is clear we are off the rails and are going to elect someone for our times like either Donald J. Trump {or Bernie!}.

Tyler Ledger Joker Fi

I went and saw Joker last night - dutifully.  It was violent, very well made, well acted (and heavily acted), wonderfully shot, all like you've heard.

I would also like to submit that it may just be the most thought-provoking piece of cinematic commentary on our current socio-economic condition in decades.

It is a radical film full of radical ideas and radical violence.  Although it saddens me that it is radical to say that the current economic status quo is wildly immoral and that an existential cognitive dissonance is necessary to participate in the system honestly.

The central question of Joker is whether any of the events of the movie actually happened or not within the confines of the fictional Batman universe.  This question is revealed in the final moments of the movie when Arthur is locked up for treatment of his mental illness.  It becomes clear that this moment is chronologically prior to all of the violence that has previously occurred in the film.  Arthur describes all (or possibly just some) of that violence as a "joke" that as occurred to him as we was speaking with his case worker.  When she asks him what it was, he says that she "wouldn't get it".

Source: tvOvermind.com

This 'final reveal' parallels the 20-year-old final reveal of what I consider the last really radical movie focused on these same themes, Fight Club.  In that movie we learn that our previously reliable narrator was actually Tyler Durden the whole time.  (Also, in a partial re-viewing the scene where Lou drops in on a fight club evening, Tyler's hysterical laughter after having his ass kicked by Lou is preminiscent of Arthur's own manifestations of his mental illness).

Earlier in the film, it is revealed that Arthur's mother was diagnosed with delusional psychosis and narcissistic personality disorder (a diagnosis that may be pretty close to part of Arthur's own plus a dash of schizophrenia - which is reified in the moment when Arthur is actually standing in the room as an adult when his mother is being booked into Arkham after abusing him as a child).  While many reviewers have made much of the portrayal of mental illness in the film, I think the underlying argument of both of these movies is that some forms of thought and action (including some violence) that we casually refer to as mental illness are in fact radical responses to the immoral status quo.

To be clear, I am not condoning any real world violence here, but I do think that artistic depiction of radical political violence can pose important questions that perhaps can't be voiced within the current socio-political climate.  Questions like - what might happen if we take the modern-era royalty (i.e. the super-rich) out of power.  In Joker the one piece of violence that we know "really happens" (although perhaps not exactly as we see it occur in the movie) is the murder of Thomas and Martha Wayne.  This event is formative to the future Batman, so it has to occur within the larger mythology of the film.

We also tend to forget in our modern and enlightened era how rare it is to have massive social change without violence.  Although the "clowns" in Joker are easily read as violent criminal thugs engaged in looting and riots, they are also the lumpenproletariat activated by their clown prince.  They are engaged in a modern iteration of the French Revolution and their King Louis XVI (i.e. Thomas Wayne) needs to topple.  One wonders what, exactly, this makes Batman in this historical parallel?

Still a Good Idea

On this date in Roman Numeral J history in 2008, it was also an Oscar Sunday and I was watching, evidently.  I feel that my post-game Oscar analysis idea stands up (tho, RIP Harriet Klausner).

I turned away this evening - catching up on Walking Dead instead.  I did just go down to watch Bradley Cooper and Lady Gaga sing.  Tonight's festivities started off on a bad foot, when Keks (see most future posts, i expect), our new fur baby, stepped on the remote while we had paused it to see Adam Lambert's Queen opening sequence, which we subsequently missed.

In 2008, the best picture nominees were:

• No Country for Old Men
• Atonement
• There Will Be Blood
• Juno
• Michael Clayton

I think of those i still have only seen Juno (and i see from my Arfives that i saw Michael Clayton) the following year.  I feel like maybe i saw Atonement too at some point, but can't prove it.

This year:

• Green Book
• Black Panther
• A Star is Born
• BlackKklansman
• Vice
• Roma
• Bohemian Rhapsody
• The Favourite

The past two years i've seen the best picture winner each year after the ceremony (The Shape of Water & Moonlight).  I'll likely keep that trend up, but i regret that movies are no longer as much a part of my life as they once were.  I was already regretting it a decade ago i guess.

Bwah-ctober!

I'm not entirely sure what this post will entail, but as it's the first of the fright month, and I'm watching Alien: The Director's Cut, I might try to make a log of a month in the mostly horrific life of Joel.

That's not to say, necessarily, that my life is a horror, rather I would like to catalog what goes on in daily life, and also what muahCtober has in store this time around...


Monday, October 1

I rode a car and a train today to get to Wrigley Field - a previous site of horror if ever you had to go to the Men's Rooms (troughs still abound today, but they're more a novelty and not the required order of going these days).  The Brewers won first place in the NL Central, and have a break until Thursday.

I watched the last 2/3rds of Alien: The Director's Cut tonight on my return after selling a craigslist couch in the rain.  I've subsequently learned that the director's cut is the less-preferred version of the movie for Ridley Scott, but it was my first time seeing it, so sorta slightly interesting.


Tuesday, October 2

I returned to work a (sorta, not really) hero having played hooky yesterday to help the Brewer's win yesterday at Wrigley!  Now watching ESPN coverage of the next game at Wrigley - the NL Wild Card Game between the Rockies and the Cubs (which is starting to turn a bit horrific with a lot of breaks going the Cubs' way and tying up the game in the bottom of the 8th).
And another very strange break in the 11th where Javy Baez hugged a 3rd baseman possibly planning to make a play as he ran and stopped on his way to 3rd.

Still more baseball to come it seems... I hope they play 24 innings and finish around 4am before making their way North to Milwaukee for Thursday's game.  In the changeovers I am going to watch Ouija: Origin of Evil, which i expect will be really good...
and it's a prequel!, evidently.  Oy I may be in for a rough night.

As it turns out, Ouija  is a clumsy but effective movie...  I will have nightmares tonight, but if i were less susceptible, it would seem outrageous.


Wednesday, October 3

The "horror" of today was (what seems to me anyway) an obscure late-80s movie starring Paul Newman and John Cusack: Fat Man and Little Boy.  I also read "The Cottage of Lost Play" from The Book of Lost Tales Part One.

The night itself was haunting - it was 80 degrees outside in October, and the wind howled all through the night.  We opened the windows and our house was like a wind tunnel.  Later in the night, some of the windows we closed, and then the doors (none of which quite latch) opened and closed throughout the night, causing me nightmares and waking starts and shadowy visions (btw i'm afraid of the dark, so there's that).


Thursday, October 4

Watched most of the Brewers game at SC Nomad, and then Bob Uecker drove me home to watch the 9th (which is starting to turn into a bit of a nightmare...).


Friday, October 5

And so the Brewers go up 2-0 in the NLDS.  We watched the heart of the game at Jalapeno Loco (which is the best Mexican restaurant in Milwaukee, near as I can tell).

Watched some of the other playoff games, but also, mostly, watched Dracula (1979) - a Frank Langella vehicle, I guess?


Saturday, October 6

Played a steampunk adventure of the Oz Squad with the BRP System.  Scarecrow, Tin-Man, Lion, Dorothy & Toto (I played Dorothy, natch) traversed the Enchanted Forest to find the tomb of the Wicked Witch of the West, and bring her broom back to the Emerald City.


Sunday, October 7

Brewers sweep the NLDS over the Rockies after Liverpool manages a 0-0 draw with Manchester City.  Then, The Walking Dead, Season 9 premiers.


Monday, October 8

Doctor Day!  I've never watched a full season of Doctor Who, though I've seen plenty of episodes.  The first episode of Series 11 (2018) premiered last night with Jodie Whittaker playing the 13th Doctor.

On a parallel track, I've been watching Season 14 (1976-7) with the 4th Doctor (Tom Baker).  Since The Doctor travels through time and space, it seems to me fairly arbitrary what order to experience the seasons in...


Tuesday, October 9

Watching the 2017 reboot of Flatliners.  The main difference clear in the new version is that they waste a lot less time assigning immediate motivations to everyone and every aspect.  And everything scaring the shit out of everyone all the time... like non-stop once it gets going.  Just piling on of creepiness on top of sudden jolts on top of grief horror.


Sunday, October 21

Watched a bit of Luke Cage, and listened to Dan Carlin's Hardcore History: Show 60 - The Celtic Holocaust and on the plane, Alexander Hamilton, by Ron Chernow.


Monday, October 22

I downloaded Harry Potter: Hogwarts Mystery on iPhone after vegging out to some SlasherFest on AMC and watching the 2009 Friday the 13th sequel/reboot and parts of Wes Craven's New Nightmare.


Tuesday, October 23

I finished Luke Cage, Season 1 while waiting for a plane at La Guardia en route home from White Plains, New York.


Wednesday, October 24

Eli Roth's History of Horror has made its way through three episodes and two monster types - zombies (ep. 1) and slashers (eps. 2 & 3).  I finished up episode 2 today and am digging into #3, with some interest.


Saturday, October 27

Continued watching The Haunting of Hill House and the Harry Potter game after watching Liverpool dominate and getting ESPN Gamecast updates that Nottingham Forest were totally robbed, but got a positive result at Leeds.


Sunday, October 28

Watched a dominant Bear's victory over a bad team.  Looks like they're moving back into first place as I also switched back and forth between some more Classic Doctor Who and 1/5th of the Super Sports Equinox, where the Packers lost.  The Vikes may still have something to say about that first place finish today, and i'm watching some of that whilst also watching the newest episode featuring The Thirteenth Doctor.

And it was a The Walking Dead evening...

another look

Source: Heroic Hollywood

With the upcoming release of Solo: A Star Wars Story this month, I thought it was time to re-watch the full series, episodes 1 - 8, plus 3.9 (Rogue One) and, I'm guessing, 3.5 (Solo), and rank them for your edification.

Note, i'm publishing as i watch, so prior to the new movie, the first three episodes are going to be ranked top three - because i'm ranking them relationally.  A movie will only get ranked #1 if it is better than the one watched just before it...

Episode I: The Phantom Menace - 1999 (dir. George Lucas) - Rank #10
(5/13/2018)

While Jar Jar Binks remains one of the most unfortunate characters in the sci-fi pantheon, and he occupies altogether too much screen time in this film, this movie suffered from unfair expectations when it was first released.  It had been 15 years since Return of the Jedi, and now we were only going to get back story - what had happened before. 

The Pod Race is, perhaps, the best action sequence in all of the Star Wars series.  (I think this is true, but will monitor for any alternatives as I watch through the series again).  This is the first view we get in all of Star Wars of Coruscant. 

The light saber battle with Darth Maul also has to be the greatest sword-fight of the series, n'est-ce pas?  The theatrics and the choreography are worthy of Oscar consideration if that sort of thing were awarded.  Our former (or soon to be) mentor, Obi-Wan is the hot-headed upstart who is over-eager to end Darth Maul after Qui-Gon Jinn is ended himself.

Episode II: Attack of the Clones - 2002 (dir. George Lucas) - Rank #3
(5/23/2018)

The second episodes always seems to go dark, but in this first trilogy, it's more of a balanced affair. At a most basic level, Episode II had a lot of work to do that is put upon prequels: creating a love affair that creates Luke & Leia; setting up a Clone War; showing the start of someone 'turning to the dark side'; providing context for the resentment that Luke experiences in Episode IV regarding his father and high-falutin' space-faring... 

There was a recent review (in fact on May the 4th, 2018), which I cannot find, that looked back at Episode II with newfound fondness, and I'm inclined to agree.  Although there is clumsiness here - heartfelt emotion has always been a bit beyond the series, but let's not forget we're dealing with an action adventure here, folks...

While the action sequences are inferior to Episode I, this is a better movie.  Seeing Jedi in action, "on the case" as it were, both in the heat of pursuit and with Obi Wan bluffing his way on Kamino, is a joy of seeing life in Star Wars before everything feel apart.  That Kamino sequence is actually quite marvelous, and introduces us in a very new way to the storm troopers.  In The Clone Wars cartoons (which I will skip here), we get to know them even more, which makes the fall in Episode III and moving into IV all the more painful.

Episode III: Revenge of the Sith - 2005 (dir. George Lucas) - Rank #9
(5/27/2018)

This movie would make a lot more sense if one has watched The Clone Wars series. The motivations, and how we find ourselves in the midst of this all. Overall, this is not a great film, but once again it performs a lot of necessary work.  The revenge in the title definitely implies that things will go poorly for our friends...

The temptation of the dark side has been, for most of the movie series, a bit obscure.  Love and commitment lead pain.  Pain leads to suffering.  Suffering leads to the dark side (i may have skipped {or invented} some steps there).  Once again, though, The Clone Wars cartoon offers another alternative path at least away from the Jedi way (if not directly to the Dark Side).  Ahsoka Tano, one of the most interesting characters in TCW, studies as Anakin Skywalker's Padawan learner.  Before the end of the series (and therefore the beginning of Episode III) Ahsoka had left the Jedi Order to seek a better balance.  

Episode III is not a great film, but it does some of its parts well enough.  I would say that it's a full step above Episode I, because Jar Jar Binks does not speak.  But it's also some fine high drama.  I think the film helps us feel the pain and tragedy of Anakin's betrayal.  It also shows some great battles, but also the great Star Wars Universe moments of Order 66, meeting Chewbacca, (but most awfully) seeing Anakin fall and ultimately murder.  

Solo: A Star Wars Story (Episode 3.25) - 2018 (dir. Ron Howard) - Rank #7
(5/30/2018)

It is very difficult to rank (at least this) Star Wars Story alongside the other episodes. Similar to the prequel episodes, there is a lot of nostalgia that factors in to the viewing joy of this film. However, at its core, this movie is a heist picture and it seems fairly successful at that... (except it has a few too many heists).  If this were Solo: The Kessel Run (aka Solo's Eleven) instead of a Star Wars Story, the structure of the film would've been allowed to be 1) get a gang together (and meet the characters as they meet each other); 2) plan the job (and learn everyone's individual motivations as the plan comes together); 3) do the job (and watch as it all seems to be falling apart, but then comes together in the end). 

This movie has a lot of filling in the blanks work to do as well as we have seen in the first three episodes. EW had a cover story that focused on the birth of the most important friendship in all of Star Wars (the shower scene is very hilarious and perfect), and a lot of post-release commentary has been about the fan-bits that they got right and wrong (how neat that they made it work that making the Kessel Run in 12 parsecs ISN'T just a dumb writing mistake from the '70s!).

 In the end, this movie has a lot of heart - it's just not where we expect to find it.  Much has been made of the less than plausible love affair between Han and Kira, but it seems to me that it's just one in a series of several formative loves (perhaps even four loves, as Sarah Welch partially posits in a neat post on a site called thinkChristian).  What Welch misses (or skips) is the pushing back on C.S. Lewis' ideas about love.  Solo, I think, argues that friendship - the relationship of Han and Chewie - is the greatest and most important bond in life (and that idea bears out in the course of the rest of the episodes).

Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (Episode 3.95) - 2016 (dir. Gareth Edwards) - Rank #8
(7/15/2018)

Although this movie starts out as a bit of a disjointed mess... it feels a bit like they expect you've watched The Clone Wars with all of the planet hopping... in the end, this episode (or sub-episode) holds up quite well. Particularly impressive is that they have managed to tell a story that every viewer already knows the end, and yet make it suspenseful.

It's a tough story to hear - a lot of sacrifice.  By the end, almost anyone we've decided to care about in the course of the film will be dead. We already know this going in - because of one throwaway line in Episode IV.  But watching it unfold is exciting - it's dramatic.

Even more enjoyable is watching the end of this movie, and immediately starting Episode IV.  The drive of A New Hope has never felt so real or logical as when you've watched the last ditch effort of Rogue One.  Until I rewatched this episode, I was not expecting to rank it as high as I did...  but it's an incredible lesson in fulfilled expectations.  

Episode IV: A New Hope - 1977 (dir. George Lucas) - Rank #5
(7/31/2018)

Such a classic, and difficult to rank, because I've seen it so many times... The movie has it's weak points, which have often been enumerated (by me and everyone). But it's also wonderfully paced adventure movie. It's not the break-neck pace of modern sci-fi or adventure flicks, but it does feel, at times, jam packed.  Always already on to the next thing.

This is, in large part, because the original trilogy is written to be and structured to be so mythological. (See Joseph Campbell). Meeting our familiar friends (and by this i mean of course in this viewing!) is such a joy. Obi Wan got old! And quick!.  And young Han Solo is all grown up. It's a new look at an old friend when you've watched so recently the origin story, where he was a padawan gangster... Now he is just as cocky and self-assured as he was when he was young, but he wears it better. I guess Luke, too... we saw him as a wee baby at the end of Episode III, and here he is as a whiny adolescent!  (Oh, and Uncle Owen and his wife Beru!)

Episode IV started all of this first and foremost because it is a well made movie. It's got iconic characters who we will come to love and care about.  The storyboard for the movie is almost simplistic, but especially when you watch this film after Rogue One, some of the absurdities evaporate.  Why would the Empire build an ultimate weapon that has such an exploitable weakness?  It was an inside job by the rebels!  Well done Rebels!  Looks like everything is going to turn out just fine for you :)

Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back - 1980 (dir. Irvin Kershner) - Rank #1
(8/30/2018)

This is the most complex of the Star Wars movies... It hurts seeing our dear friends suffer, but suffering (along with leading to the dark side) helps us better understand ourselves - and by extension, our characters. The movie stretches far, and it's hard to place on a calendar. How long have these folks known each other once they find themselves on Hoth?  There's a canon answer to that now, I suppose, but at this point it's hard to know.

The family and friendship development takes leaps and bounds in this installment. At the start, Han & Leia are still feeling the childish antics, but by ACT IV, they're ready to say they love each other (to each other). We met the characters in Episode IV (or III or III.25, I suppose), but here is where we really get to know them and love them and learn them. While i think this movie stands strongly as the best of the whole series on the merits of plot and story and all, it's probably universally seen as the best Star Wars movie because it's the one where we really get to know everyone. In love and movies and novels - what we really love is the learning. Meeting new people - learning them - getting to know someone - the exploration, that's what we grasp on to.

Episode VI: Return of the Jedi - 1983 (dir. Richard Marquand) - Rank #4
(9/28/2018)

I think whenever I actually watch Return of the Jedi, I am surprised by the extent to which I not only like it, but think it is a strong contender amongst the top tier of episodes. I'm actually a little torn as i watch this as to whether it ranks above or below A New Hope. This is all said with one large caveat - I know, Ewoks! While i was of the age to be able to enjoy the Saturday morning cartoon (which was awesome by the way), I do now know - and to some extent have always known - that the Ewoks were Jar Jar before there was Jar Jar.

All this is true, but the tri-level battle at the end of the film has to be the best cinematic in the entire series. You've got the papa drama of Luke and Vader in a tiff that they resolve through their mutual eventual hatred of The Emperor (aka Mom), the massive "it's a trap!" space battle where we ultimately learn yeehaw is an innate human expression, and the sorta silly Ewok battle for Endor. 

Know first, that what follows is NOT an apology for Ewoks... 

...that said, the Ewoks represent a small part of the full mosaic that is needed to bring down an empire.  In an era where we have so much tribalism (more on this later), it is easy to forget the interconnection necessary between those tribes to accomplish anything.  The Rebels need help - the Jedi are all but gone, hope is nearly lost, and Endor is under occupation.  Guerrilla war is, fought by natives not only protecting their land, but also fighting for the greater good, is no small thing.  Plus they're just so adorable!

Episode VII: The Force Awakens - 2015 (dir. J.J. Abrams) - Rank #6
(10/11/2018)

It was only 16 years (only seems like a strange word here, but it's actually quite apt) between Return of the Jedi and The Phantom Menace. The wait for this next trilogy to start was only 10 years, and the span between each episode will now be filled by middle episodes (3.9, 3.25, etc.). My hope is that we can someday see some episodes that occur between other episodes (6.5!?, 0.025!!??)

The Force Awakens is a joy, because it continues the story of long-lost friends, and introduces us to a new generation.  It's also a sort of ridiculous echo - The Empire, re-organized into The First Order has created another, newer, bigger planet-killing weapon.  

The film ranks as high as it does, because it's a blast - accidentally re-discovering the Millennium Falcon because the ship of choice in the junk yard gets obliterated; Maz Kanata!, in jokes, BB-8, and the death of Han Solo.  The film ranks as low as it does, because it is first and foremost, a preamble.  The heft isn't there, except in Han's death.  It's a good movie, but the epic part is ahead.

Episode VIII: The Last Jedi - 2017 (dir. Rian Johnson) - Rank #2
(11/17/2018)

This is a fun and funny ride toward the end of the Skywalker Era in the galaxy. The movie is epic in scale, but playful and modest in tone. It's a valuable lesson, to not take history-making and iconoclasm too seriously - particularly from the inside). The movie opens with a cute "can you hear me now" bit between General Hux and Poe and ends with the implication of the rising of an entire new generation of force users.  Between those two moments, the foundation of (let's say, hypothetically, 2) thousand year-old religion burns in a fire started by it's two greatest proponents: Luke Skywalker and Yoda.

The Last Jedi is a riddle - in English it feels like it refers to either Skywalker or Rey. Once we learned the title in German - Die Letzten Jedi - it became clear that there are many more than one last Jedi.  Also clear is that what was the Jedi religion (the light side of the Force) will be different - or differently interpreted - in this new era.  No longer dogmatic.  The question is whether this burning of the old books and the (new to me) magic tree represents: 1) the Reformation or 2) the Enlightenment or Age of Reason.

Neither of these historical moments has quite lived up to it's promise in our own galaxy, but the former in the Star Wars Universe would mean that Force adept folks can interpret and experience the Force in their own ways (think Chirrut Îmwe from Rogue One.)  The latter may mean that the Galaxy is ready to be done allowing faith leaders (light side or dark side) to dominate their politics.  This latest installment of Star Wars is so great, because it finishes the mythology of the Skywalker Era and starts to show us some truer stories of our own galaxy and everyday heroes.

And sure... this list doesn't need to be final - there are plenty more - but to my mind, this is the one to keep on file for the long run...