Parasite!
Happy Thursday. Welcome back to Jacob’s Letter, a free pop culture newsletter full of puns and occasional badly-PhotoShopped dog photos.
Help, we’ve only been watching Fang for like a week and I’ve already given him five nicknames.
As you can see by the photo, we have a big dog staying with us for a bit. His name is Fang and he’s a Great Dane mix. He likes Opal but Opal is indifferent to anyone or anything who’s not me or Taylor. He’s already made himself at home and it’s fun having him around.
This week’s newsletter is late (again) but sometimes that’s the way work sweeps month go. I finally wrote about the Oscars results, got my thoughts down on the new Locke & Key series, and even added some local news to the mix. Read on for more.
Also- you should be able to comment on posts now! Try it out and see if it works.
Parasite wins in an Oscars with no host
Every now and then, the Oscars manage to get it right and actually award the best film that was nominated that year. This year’s Oscars was one of those times. “Parasite,” my favorite film of the year and long-shot candidate for Best Picture, won four out of the six Academy Awards it was nominated for, including Best Picture. The other three awards it won were Best Original Screenplay, Best Director and Best Foreign Language Film.
What’s more, it made history. It was the first non-English language film to win the top prize, and director Bong Joon-ho was the first Korean to win Best Director.
Truly, the Oscars don’t amount to a hill of beans. Art is subjective and many of the films the Academy chooses to reward have no cultural staying power. But every year I get caught up in the statistics of it all and the fun guessing on what could win.
Related: See how I did with my Oscars predictions here
And the Oscars don’t really mean anything except when they do, and I guarantee you they meant a whole lot to South Korea this year. For a film this important, about a subject that impacts everyone, to win the top prize in American film, is huge. For that film to be entirely in Korean is monumental.
It shows that just a year after “Roma” won Best Foreign Film and Best Director but not Best Picture, the Academy is open to recognizing films that are not American. That’s a small thing, but during a ceremony where so many jokes were made about how white the nominees were in an effort to not actually do anything about it, it felt like a step away from unhealthy nationalism.
Bong Joon-ho and crew are the toast of South Korea right now, as they should be. “Parasite” is a fantastic film, the best film of 2019 (not just the best one nominated) and I’ve rarely been this happy for a movie’s success.
Locked potential
The long-awaited TV adaptation of the “Locke and Key” comics hit Netflix earlier this month. The show adapts six graphic novels from Joe Hill and Gabriel Rodriguez about a trio of siblings who discover their dad’s old mansion is haunted and holds a magical secret: It houses a series of powerful keys, like the one in the GIF above that allows the user to literally unlock their own mind and walk around in it. (Much like “Inside Out,” each person’s mind is portrayed in a different, abstract way. For this character, it’s a shopping mall, with different stores for different memory categories.)
The comic is very much “H.P. Lovecraft meets Narnia.” The show is more Narnia, less Lovecraft.
As far as TV adaptations go, it’s not the best. As far as being another entry into Netflix’s ever-growing list of teen dramas, it’s decent. I wanted to love it instead of merely liking it, but I’m happy it finally got a TV series after 10 years of development. Read my full review of the first season at Book & Film Globe here.
That dog DO hunt
You may recall the uproar over Universal/Blumhouse’s “The Hunt,” a social satire film where “deplorables” hunt “elites” for sport in a Purge-like setting. The film’s initial September 2019 release was canceled in August in the wake of three mass shootings in the span of two weeks — A combined dozens dead and more injured in Gilroy, Calif., El Paso, Texas and Dayton, Ohio. I wrote more about that cancelation and the political right’s usage of the movie as a scapegoat for the shootings in the Aug. 12 edition of Jacob’s Letter.
Well, turns out “The Hunt” is back on, with a new Friday, March 13 release date, a new trailer and one hell of a marketing campaign:
In addition to that over-the-top poster, the new trailer features new footage of Hilary Swank’s character saying “You actually thought we were hunting humans for sport?” and “You wanted it to be real, so you decided it was.” This whole thing is one giant troll job.
Subscribe to your local newspaper
The Fort Worth Star-Telegram’s publisher McClatchy filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy last Thursday. It’s but the latest round of bankruptcy filings for a struggling industry that can’t seem to understand its place in a world with the internet.
I love newspapers and I loved working for newspapers, but at what point are publishers going to wake up and start realizing you can’t turn a profit putting out a subpar product made by underpaid, understaffed journalists who are just barely getting by as it is? At what point will the corporations who own publications like the FWST stop laying off key newsroom members and then try to maintain the same level of community involvement?
From WFAA’s coverage of the bankruptcy filing:
McClatchy expects fourth-quarter revenues of $183.9 million, down 14% from a year earlier.
Its 2019 revenue is anticipated to slide 12.1% from the previous year.
The Sacramento-based company estimated its assets were between $500 million and $1 billion, and estimated its liabilities were more than $1 billion but less than $10 billion.
I yell on my soapbox because I care and because almost every newsroom I’ve ever worked in has faced the threat of massive debt and huge layoffs. One way to make sure that your local paper, the one that reports on city council meetings and school board votes and high school sports and community events, stays in business is to subscribe. If you don’t want a physical newspaper, get the e-edition or get an online-only subscription. It’s the cost of a Netflix subscription to subscribe to the FWST and a little bit more for a digital subscription to the Dallas Morning News. It’s probably around that amount for your local paper.
Talk about “fake news” and “enemy of the people” all you want, but the people who work at local papers like the FWST (and stations like WFAA) are the ones who actually live in the communities they cover and just want to see those communities succeed.
The real Stranger Things were the plot twists along the way
Surprise! We’re getting a fourth (and rumored final) season of “Stranger Things” quicker than we thought. Netflix dropped the above teaser on social media on Valentine’s Day. And as you can tell, it looks like a certain fan-favorite character…is alive! Those sneaky writers. No official release date has been announced for Season 4, but I’ll write about it when it happens.
‘Sonic the Hedgehog’ goes real fast, earns millions of rings
One of the biggest movie surprises of the month is that the Sonic the Hedgehog movie is…good, actually? After a big kerfuffle over how unnatural Sonic looked (see above), Paramount delayed the release of the film so the VFX team could make Sonic look more cartoony.
The work paid off, literally. “Sonic the Hedgehog” had the largest three-day opening weekend for any video game film, at $57 million. That puts it ahead of last year’s “Pokemon Detective Pikachu.” Guess a bunch of irate fans can’t be wrong…
Islands in the Stream
“Islands in the Stream” is where I’ll discuss any and all happenings on the streaming front every week, since there’s so much of it now. While you’re here, read my deep dive for WFAA about how diverse the streaming landscape is becoming and read my in-depth analysis of Disney+.
This week:
Quack! Quack! Quack! The Mighty Ducks are coming to Disney+, and this time, they’re the bad guys. The new 10-episode series will focus on a kid who gets cut from the Ducks squad, which has become rotted by the ultra-competitiveness of youth sports, and starts his own team with the help of his mom (Lauren Graham). Emilio Estevez is confirmed to return as head coach Gordon Bombay, but nothing else is known. Wonder what Charlie Conway thinks about all of this.
In more Disney+ news, Rick Moranis announced last week that he will be stepping out of acting retirement to reprise his role as scientist Wayne Szalinski in “Shrunk,” a sequel series to “Honey, I Shrunk the Kids.” It’s becoming more and more clear that while other streaming services are creating new original content, Disney+ is happy to do what Disney does best: Go back to the well of nostalgia.
Trailer Park
Want more trailer news for all the movies coming out this spring? I have just the thing: Read my spring movie season preview here at jakeharrisblog.com.
“The French Dispatch”
Wes Anderson brings his signature style to the journalism film. At this point, you know what you’re getting when you watch a Wes Anderson film, and you either know if you’re buying in or not. I’m all in, and this look at ex-pat magazine writers in the early 1900s seems like a whole lot of fun. (Also, technically, this is a Disney movie now, which just doesn’t feel right.)
“Spiral: From the Book of Saw”
Here’s the first trailer for the Chris Rock-starring and Chris Rock-produced “Saw” movie, which is just such a fun sentence to type. I’ve only seen the first “Saw” and enjoyed it because it was more of a cop mystery than what the franchise would become. This seems more in that vein, with a chilly “Se7en” vibe. Samuel L. Jackson also shows up to supply some 12-letter cussin’.
“Green Knight”
I went from “Oh, I may see this” to “I NEED to see this” in about 90 seconds. Director David Lowery (“Pete’s Dragon,” “The Old Man and the Gun,” “Ain’t Them Bodies Saints”) went and made an adaptation of the myth of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight with Dev Patel, Alicia Vikander and Joel Edgerton. I didn’t think we needed any more Arthurian myth adaptations, but this looks more interesting than yet another King Arthur tale.
Again, for more tailer news, check out my spring movie preview here.
Letter of Recommendation
What I’m reading:
Speaking of King Arthur, BOOM! Comics’ “Once & Future” is another great riff on the old King Arthur formula. It’s set in present-day England, and a cult of Arthur worshippers are trying to resurrect Arthur to bring Britain back under a king’s rule. Only one man can stop them, and he soon learns his family has been involved with protecting the secret of the Round Table for centuries. It’s half “National Treasure” and half King Arthur and a whole lot of fun.
Friday News Dump
A list of online writing I really liked this week:
If you’ve read even just a little bit of this newsletter you know I champion physical media, in large part because of the bonus features. This column hits on why — I just like learning about all the rare behind-the-scenes stuff so much. (via Brian Collins in Birth.Movies.Death.)
During President Trump’s State of the Union address earlier this month, he surprised a military family in the audience with the news that their father/husband was home, and he was in the room right there. I’m always extremely thankful when a member of our Armed Forces makes it home safe. But that moment felt incredibly calculated and performative to me, and as I watched it I couldn’t help but think of all of the emotions going through the minds of those kids and that woman. The relief that he was alive, the happiness that he was home, the awkwardness of having that very personal moment being broadcast on national television. I hadn’t thought about seeing my dad get off of a plane coming home from a deployment in a long time, but for a moment watching that SOTU address I was 13 again waiting at an airport. I didn’t really know what to think about it all. Then I saw this article about what it’s really like during one of those homecomings and felt seen. (via Rebekah Gleaves Sanderlin in The Atlantic)
If it’s been a while since you read Neil Postman’s “Amusing Ourselves To Death” and forgot how prophetic it was, read this piece about the prospect of a Mike Bloomberg vs. Donald Trump presidential race and be reminded. And if you’ve never read it, do so now and be amazed. (via Will Bunch in the Philadelphia Inquirer)
I downloaded TikTok as a joke to keep up with the #youths, and now I’m helplessly addicted. The 14-year-old creator of The Renegade, one of the most popular dances on the app, says she was never given credit for it. This very fascinating profile looks at how quickly things move on the internet now and examines cultural appropriation and copyright law during a time when everyone’s got a smartphone. (via Taylor Lorenz in the New York Times)
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This newsletter is written by me and edited by my favorite person, Taylor Tompkins. Views expressed here are my own and don’t reflect the opinions of my employer, yadda yadda yadda.
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See you next week,
Jake