Happy Monday. Welcome back to Jacob’s Letter, a free pop culture newsletter full of puns and badly-PhotoShopped dog photos. I’m in good spirits today because it is actually my Wednesday, all of my football teams won this weekend (including the Vawls) and I finally got to see the first episode of “County Music” on PBS last night, which we’ll talk about later.
Opal the fiddlin’ hound
This edition features “Country Music” news, an obituary for MoviePass and a look at how Disney+ is coming for your nostalgia. Grab yer partner, swing ‘em round and round, and scroll on down.
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MoviePassed
MoviePass, the oft-controversial, possibly fraudulent and much-ballyhooed movie ticket subscription service that allowed patrons to see a movie a day for $9.99 a month, died Saturday, Sept. 14 after a slow, painful series of financial setbacks. It died in an empty movie theater screening a Tuesday matinee of the “Lion King” remake, surrounded by the predictive text bots that made up its customer service department. It was 8 years old.
The service was founded in 2011 but reached national acclaim in the summer of 2017, when its “movie a day” policy was announced to much fervor. Most people (myself included) assumed this was too good to last, so we went to the movies with abandon, watching good stuff, bad stuff and everything in-between.
More: To all the MoviePass films I’ve watched before
After it was acquired by data firm Helios and Matheson Analytics, it also tried to use the data it grabbed from customers to sell related products or services close to the movie theater. It also didn’t know how to accurately unsubscribe customers from its database, which led to me filing a BBB complaint in order to get $30 back after I unsubscribed from the service.
This business model proved to be unsustainable (go figure) but MoviePass’s legacy is that it forced other theater chains to listen to consumer demands and offer better subscription packages. Now AMC, Cinemark, Regal and Alamo Drafthouse all offer affordable and reasonable movie ticket packages and are finally starting to turn the tide on movie attendance.
MoviePass is survived by the AMC Stubs A-List program, the Cinemark Movie Club, the Regal Unlimited program and the Alamo Season Pass.
Godspeed, and I’ll always remember the time I got to see “Annihilation” pretty much for free.
Disney+ is coming for your nostalgia
As Nov. 12 gets closer, Disney keeps releasing new details about what to expect when Disney+ hits the market. And now that Disney owns the rights to basically every Marvel character, this latest announcement comes as no surprise:
According to Birth.Movies.Death., Disney+ will launch with all episodes of 90s Marvel staples such as “X-Men: The Animated Series,” “Spider-Man: The Animated Series,” “Fantastic Four: The Animated Series,” “Iron Man,” and “The Incredible Hulk.”
More:'The Office' is leaving Netflix. Here's why you should just go buy the DVDs.
This Disney play for your nostalgia comes as Apple TV+ revealed its subscription price will be $4.99 a month, the cheapest upcoming streaming service option available. (Disney+ starts at $6.99 a month.) Also, it was announced last week that Disney CEO Bob Iger resigned from Apple’s board of directors after Apple TV+’s price point was announced. Iger had been on the board since 2011, a month after Steve Jobs died.
The streaming wars are a-comin’.
More: Disney+, ESPN+ and Hulu bundle will be $12.99/month
This is Country Music
For my money, the biggest pop culture event of this year is the release of Ken Burn’s PBS documentary “Country Music.” An event that took seven years of work, more than 100 interviews, God knows how many days of digging through archival footage and a year-long promotional push finally came to fruition Sunday night when the first episode, “The Rub,” aired on PBS. This episode covers the dual influences of the genre’s roots, with the musical influences of white Irish/Scottish and other European settlers combining with the African musical heritage of American slaves combining to create something wholly American.
More: Is country music a genre anymore?
At two hours long, this episode only gets to the early 1930s and culminates in the death of Jimmy Rodgers. Multiple interviews (including some of the last filmed footage of Merle Haggard) populate this episode, with some of the greatest insights coming from Marty Stuart and Dolly Parton. Of note is Parton’s explanation of the term “hillbilly music” as a kind of slur toward Southen folks.
I greatly enjoyed this episode and can’t wait for more this week. You can stream the first episode for free on PBS’s website here.
Trailer Park
Want more trailer news for all the movies coming out this September and October? I have just the thing: Read my fall movie season preview here at jakeharrisblog.com.
“Castle Rock” Season 2
The first season of this Stephen King remix anthology show had some amazing moments, like Sissy Spacek’s heartbreaking turn as a woman with Alzheimer’s and Bill Skarsgård’s chilling villain/protagonist. But for as much as the show captured the minds of King fans, the ending left a sour note for some (as for me, I kind of loved the way it didn’t care about definitive answers). This season focuses on an alternate-reality take on Annie Wilkes from “Misery,” with Lizzie Caplan in the role made iconic by Kathy Bates. If anything, it’s another opportunity to play with the anthology format. Count me in.
“Waves”
As much as I liked the ambiguity of “Castle Rock,” I couldn’t stand the deliberate obfuscation Trey Edward Shults used in his horror film “It Comes At Night.” His latest film, the family saga drama “Waves,” has been getting rave reviews out of the Toronto Film Festival. This trailer alone makes me want to see it solely because it reminds me of “The Place Beyond the Pines,” another sprawling family saga.
“See”
Jason Momoa stars as a blind man named *checks notes* Baba Voss, the leader of a tribe of survivors after a virus wipes out most of humanity and renders the remaining survivors blind. When a child who can see is born to Momoa’s tribe, an evil witch(?) wants the child for her own, and a war ensues. Consider this Apple TV+’s answer to Netflix’s “Bird Box.” (Side note: the fact that the comments are disabled on that trailer is either Apple exercising its right to not care what you think or it’s a preemptive measure against ableist comments about blind people. I’m betting it’s the latter.)
“Living With Yourself”
Paul Rudd and Paul Rudd star in this new Netflix series about a man who goes to a spa treatment facility and wakes up to be the better version of himself…or does he? This is the only “Gemini Man” I want to see. Come to think of it, with this, “Gemini Man,” and news of a possible “Face/Off” remake, are body-switching and body double movies about to become the next big thing?
Letter of Recommendation
Movie: Speaking of Jason Momoa, I turned on “Aquaman” on HBO the other day while I was unpacking and I was very pleasantly surprised with how entertaining it was. Sometimes you just want a good popcorn movie, and this movie knows what it is and delivers. It’s absolutely looney tunes and hardly anything in it makes sense. I loved it.
Music: Canadian cowboy and country music singer Corb Lund just released an album of covers called “Cover Your Tracks,” and it’s a great time. I especially liked his cover of Billy Joel’s “It’s Still Rock and Roll to Me.”
TV: 2019 has proven to be a great year for sketch shows not named “Saturday Night Live.” In fact, “A Black Lady Sketch Show” routinely covers topics that would get cut on “SNL,” with absurdist takes that highlight the lack of diversity shown on typical sketch shows. Specifically, the “Invisible Spy” sketch that shows the invisibility many black women feel in the workplace is a highlight. All six episodes are available to stream on HBO NOW.
Book: I’ll have a review coming soon at Book & Film Globe (ETA: It’s published here)but “Trick Mirror,” writer Jia Tolentino’s first collection of essays, is a marvelous feat of examination that manages to investigate the way living online has impacted all manners of life offline while celebrating both. All of the essays are master classes in reconciling two points of view. It’s available now at your local bookstore.
Board Game: OK, so this is more of a card game, but it was the only game we played at game night on Friday, so it’s a lot of fun. “Cinephile” is a crowd-funded card game for movie nerds that forces you to make associations between actors and movies. Each card has an actor’s portrait on it along with a movie they’ve been in.
There are several kinds of play, but the one we played the most was “Actor”/”Movie,” where one person says an actor, another person says a movie that actor was in, and another person says another actor from that movie, and so on. So you can start with Matthew McConaughey, then go to “Dazed and Confused,” then go to Ben Affleck, then go to “Armageddon,” and so on down the rabbit hole. This game feels made for me, and I love it.
Friday News Dump
A list of online stuff I really liked this week:
Reading this Texas Monthly piece about the Midland-based band Explosions in the Sky, who soundtracked the “Friday Night Lights” movie and show, was a welcome balm after covering the shootings in Midland and Odessa earlier this month. Listen to their “The Earth Is Not a Cold Dead Place” while reading this. (via Joe Levin in Texas Monthly)
Today I Learned Jennifer Lopez is the reason Google Image Search exists. (via Aly Weisman in Business Insider)
VeggieTales is coming back, and its creator says it should have more Gospel stories and fewer morality tales. (via Kara Bettis in Christianity Today)
It’s been 25 years since “Friends” debuted, and in those 25 years we never really learned what Chandler did for a job. This article goes into how that tidbit foreshadows today’s work culture that simultaneously romanticizes and distrusts work. (via Megan Garber in The Atlantic)
A plug for another newsletter I read: Extra Points with Matt Brown is a twice-weekly newsletter from SB Nation writer Matt Brown about all the ways college football impacts America. This week’s first edition is all about the decline in high school football participation. (via Extra Points with Matt Brown)
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See you next week,
Jake