If Nova had a throne, she’d sit like this.
Welcome back to Jacob’s Letter, a free pop culture newsletter full of puns and badly-PhotoShopped dog photos. This issue has everything:
Aladdin
Game of Thrones
A review of “High Flying Bird”
More dog content
MTV’s Dan Cortese (just kidding)
Hop on that magic carpet and ride on over to this week’s big news.
Our watch has ended, long live our watch
On Sunday, “Game of Thrones” ended, to much online kvetching and fan anger. I haven’t watched an episode since Season 4, but because of the amount of tweets about it every Sunday night, I feel like I’m all caught up.
With the show’s ending, much has been written about how since “GoT” started before streaming truly took off, it would be “the last show we all watched together” or how there would truly be no more cultural watershed moments.
Come on.
We were all just talking about “Avengers: Endgame” last month, we’re all still talking about “Star Wars,” my Twitter feed has been talking nonstop about “Fleabag” and every time “This Is Us” comes on, I hear about it at a literal water cooler at work the next day.
True, none of those things has dominated cultural conversation in the ways “GoT” has for the last 10 years (except maybe “Star Wars”), but people said the same things about “Mad Men.” They said the same things about “Lost.” And “M*A*S*H” and “Friends” and “The Office.” The zeitgeist is gonna zeitgeist, and it won’t be long until something comes along that gets all of our attention again.
And the streaming giants who are looking to capitalize on HBO’s loss of subscribers who signed up specifically for “GoT” are already lining up what they hope will be The Next Big Thing. HBO has “Succession.” Amazon is planning a “Lord of the Rings” prequel series. Disney+ is planning its “Star Wars” series “Mandalorian.” And that’s not to say an underdog show or film could sweep us all off our feet.
As Todd VanDerWerff puts it in Vox:
But don’t mistake the end of Game of Thrones for the end of a TV monoculture just because it’s the poster series of an industry that will dearly miss the storm of clicks it brings. There will be another TV show. That TV show might even be on the air right now. And when that show ends, we’ll all wonder if we’ll ever have it this good again.
Movie review: The game on top of the game
I love how Steven Soderbergh can make anything into a heist film. Sure, there’s the “Ocean’s 11” franchise, which is literally about stealing money. But then there’s “Logan Lucky,” a heist film that’s as much about stealing money as it is about a group of down-on-their-luck people trying to steal back a shred of dignity from the system that robbed them in the first place. There’s “Unsane,” an iPhone-shot paranoid thriller about a woman trying to steal back her mental stability from a stalker. “Erin Brockovich” is a legal thriller that turns into a portrait of a woman taking back her town from the clutches of corporate greed.
With “High Flying Bird,” Soderbergh’s unnamed target is the NBA. Our entry point into this world is Ray Burke (André Holland, channeling some of the condescension from his “Castle Rock” performance), a high-profile agent trying desperately to end a weeks-old lockout. Ray’s definitely seen “Jerry Maguire,” and the film starts with his Jerry trying to advise his version of Rod Tidwell, a young upstart signed by the New York Knicks (Melvin Gregg, who also played a basketball player in season two of Netflix’s short-lived “American Vandal.”)
As the film goes on and Ray sets a 72-hour plan in motion to manipulate “the game on top of the game” to end the lockout and pay the players more, the audience knows we’re being let in on a conspiratorial heist. It’s not always clear who has the ball. But Soderbergh is an adept manipulator of this genre, so it makes it easy to follow along wherever he takes us. By the end, the film speaks about class, capitalism, sports, the relationship between players and owners (“I love the Lord and all His black people” is the common refrain every time someone compares the player-owner relationship to slavery) and the way the game can and should change in the modern age of social media.
By shooting on the iPhone and releasing this on Netflix, “High Flying Bird” is also Soderbergh’s treatise on moviemaking outside of the Hollywood system.
The iPhone camera works here almost as well as it did in “Unsane.” That film used the claustrophobic nature of the iPhone to mimic being stalked; here, the directorial flourishes in the handheld frames all speak to the limits both Soderbergh and the basketball players face, as well as the ability to excel within confines and the urgency of the narrative.
Holland puts in a great performance, as does Zazie Beetz as his put-upon assistant ready to outgun him at any moment.
It’s so fun to watch, too, with the dialogue crackling in every scene. I loved it. So far, my favorite film of 2019.
My rating: 5 raised fists out of 5
With ‘Aladdin’ remake poised to make $75-$85 million in its opening weekend, the genie is officially out of the bottle
Despite a lackluster-looking trailer, a lifeless-looking musical number and a reported Will Smith/DJ Khaled end-credits rap, box office predictions for Disney’s live-action “Aladdin” remake are still strong. The film opened Thursday night for a huge Memorial Day play in more than 4,400 screens across America, and it’s already made $7 million in Thursday night previews and is on track to make anywhere from $75-$85 million this weekend, according to Box Office Mojo.
That’s the widest release for any of Disney’s live-action remakes, and puts it firmly in the middle for domestic opening weekend haul for those films. That’s good for Disney, since its last live-action remake of “Dumbo” drastically underperformed.
Screenshot from Box Office Mojo.
“Beauty and the Beast” remains the film to beat, taking in almost $175 million in its opening weekend in 2017. And while the reviews for “Aladdin” have been fairly mixed-to-negative, it looks like people will still see it, as evidenced by the sheer number of screens this thing is playing on. The genie’s fully out of the bottle here, and with the upcoming “Lion King” remake arriving this summer (surely to blow every number in the above chart out of the water), there’s no stopping the studio from continuing to remake every animated film they have until they run out of material.
Mornings are for New Coke and brand contemplation
“Stranger Things” is coming back for a third season July 4, and Netflix is hooking up with so many corporate sponsorships to promote it that even the Upside Down will know what’s up.
Starting this week, a limited supply of vintage New Coke was made available due to a “Stranger Things” campaign. New Coke was one of the Coca-Cola Company’s biggest flops in 1985, but Coke is banking on this promotion — as are about 74 other brands that Netflix partnered with for “Stranger Things” merch, according to the New York Times:
Because of the new push, which rivals the campaigns for summertime blockbusters, “Stranger Things” may be hard to avoid in the coming weeks. H&M and other retailers will sell clothes that replicate what the show’s characters wear. Baskin-Robbins will serve new flavors referencing the program’s Scoops Ahoy ice cream parlor.
Unlike Hulu, Netflix doesn’t do ads during its programming. They do, however, go all-out on promotion elsewhere. If you’re a “Stranger Things” fan, when’s the last time you had an Eggo waffle without thinking of Eleven? Exactly.
Trailer Park
Want more trailer news for all the movies coming out this summer? I have just the thing: Read my summer movie preview here at jakeharrisblog.com.
“The Art of Racing in the Rain”
“From the studio that brought you ‘Marley and Me’” was all I needed to see to know that 1) As a shameless dog person, I’ll probably see this and 2) I will most definitely cry whenever the dog inevitably dies. Milo Ventimiglia continues to corner the tearjerker market.
“Terminator: Dark Fate”
The last “Terminator” movie I saw was “Judgement Day.” Actually, I take that back, I did see “Terminator: Salvation” in high school and forgot all about it. This is just a teaser, but bringing back Linda Hamilton as Sarah Connor is a cool move, and I’ll watch Mackenzie Davis in pretty much anything. Bringing back James Cameron sounds like it will help, too.
Letter of Recommendation
Music: Fort Worth country/rock/blues outfit Grady Spencer and the Work are back with a new single, “Living Lies,” and a forthcoming album, “Celebrate.” They also just signed with Red 11 Records, the roster of which boasts Texas legends like Jack Ingram, Jason Boland & The Stragglers, Cody Johnson, Bruce Robison, Shinyribs and Roger Creager, as well as more national outlets like Turnpike Troubadours and American Aquarium. I’m so excited for what’s in store for this band. Check out their stuff in the playlist below.
Book: All this “Aladdin” talk had me thinking about Robin Williams’ Genie, and then I got to thinking about one of the best books I read last year: “Robin,” Dave Itzkoff’s outstanding biography of Williams. I’ve already raved about it before, but if you re-watch the original “Aladdin” this week and want to learn more about the man who brought Genie to life, this is the definitive tome to read.
Friday News Dump
A list of online stuff I really liked this week:
In keeping with all the Aladdin news this week, I loved this video from Lindsay Ellis about how the original film’s Genie-heavy marketing push led to animated movies being sold on celebrity voice talent instead of animation (think “Shrek”) — something Robin Williams definitely didn’t want (via Lindsay Ellis on YouTube)
One more piece of Aladdin #content, because why not: This review of the remake, from my former Statesman editor Eric Webb, is a magic carpet ride full of bon mots (via Eric Webb on Austin360)
A supposedly true-story Twitter thread that went viral earlier this week about a dumbass who unwittingly moved a brick of heroin across the country and then sold a fake brick back to MS-13 years later is the stuff of Elmore Leonard novels. It’s also fake, and said dumbass has now started a GoFundMe to “go into hiding and stay alive long enough for me to make this into a movie.” This all might be fake, too, but the GoFundMe is real: He has raised $140 in 12 hours. Not a good look, chief. (via @IamShaneMorris on Twitter)
Vulcan Video in Austin is in trouble due to rising rent costs, and needs your help. Donate here. (via Joe Gross on Austin360)
In light of the Varsity Blues SAT test/college admissions scandal, the College Board president wrote this op-ed in The Atlantic this week about how there needs to be more to college than just getting into college. Should be required reading. (via David Coleman in The Atlantic)
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See you next week,
Jake