Weathering the storm
Happy Monday (and also, Happy Back To The Future Day.) Welcome back to Jacob’s Letter, a free pop culture newsletter full of puns and badly-PhotoShopped dog photos.
This week again features no PhotoShop, just a joyous photo of Nova enjoying some cool weather last year.
Zoom zoom zoom
Fall weather has indeed arrived in Dallas, with a cold front bringing thunderstorms and tornadoes to Dallas Sunday night.
We’re OK, and our neighborhood wasn’t hit with anything more than some wind and lots of rain, but many people are displaced and several businesses are destroyed. Click here to learn more about storm damage in the area and how to help. Weather for North Texas this year has been particularly bad, and this was just the latest in a long line of storms that have made life hard for a lot of people.
Anyway, we still have a newsletter this week because my form of recreation is writing this after covering storms for 12 hours, so read more for thoughts on Shea Serrano’s new book, new streaming news and some more pop culture recommendations.
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Old Movies (And Other Things)
In this week’s latest Dumb Online Controversy:
Earlier this month, author, podcaster, national treasure, Big Red and barbacoa connoisseur and favorite son of San Antonio, Shea Serrano, released his third book with illustrator Arturo Torres called “Movies (And Other Things).” It is a very conversationally-written book containing questions and topics one might discuss if you were just sitting around passing the time talking about movies. Questions like, “Who’s the better Tough Guy Movie dog owner?” and “Were the ‘Jurassic Park’ raptors just misunderstood?” Fun stuff. I’m halfway through my copy already.
(But don’t get deceived — The casual writing style Serrano employs is his greatest asset. It makes it easier for him to make larger points about diversity or injustice in America, or heartfelt anecdotes about his family. Reading his writing is like taking part in a conversation, and that’s hard to pull off. Anyway, moving on.)
In an interview for Esquire while promoting the book, Serrano said the following:
I’m not really an Old Movie Guy, and you chose to focus only on movies from the ‘80s—and really the ‘90s—on. Are you like me in that you don’t see a ton of appeal in movies older than that?
I'm with you on that. I watch old movies and I'm like, "No, thanks." They're not fun. It's clear they were still trying to figure out how to do things. Some of them, of course, were undeniable, like a Jaws or Star Wars or Indiana Jones. You watch those and you go, "Oh, I see in this the bones of what eventually became whatever action franchise.” Or Alien. [But mostly], they’re just not that fun to watch.
When I was working on the “Heist” chapter, I was reading best lists of heist movies. One that kept appearing on the list was this movie called Rififi. It's in black and white. Everybody talks about how great it was. They do this really cool trick in there where there's a long stretch of just straight-up silence while they try to break into wherever. I get it. That part was cool, and I imagine, at the time, it was really fun. But you watch it today, and it's just not that great.
Do you think people just get accustomed to a certain [technical] level of moviemaking?
Yeah. The same thing happened when I was researching for the basketball book, and everybody just fawned over the Lakers-Celtics rivalry from the early '80s. I was a baby at the time, but I went back and rewatched it. If you watch a four-minute stretch of any of those games, they're not that great. I'm just like, if I drop a LeBron James in on this game, you all are all f—ing getting murdered.This is crazy.
And then the internet blew up with hatred that someone might possibly have an opinion that he likes movies from one era over another, and Film Twitter did what Film Twitter does and raked him over the coals for it for 48 hours before they moved on to getting mad that another 1970s director hates Marvel films.
Anyway, Serrano comes by it honestly — he admits his tastes in the intro to his book, and he never proclaimed to be the arbiter of film history. The book is just about having fun talking about movies. And he never said he had never seen an old movie, just that he didn’t care for them, so he didn’t write about them.
Film criticism is one of the only mediums where people get visibly upset if you admit you have a blind spot (“What! You haven't seen that?! Go see it now!”). (Note: I have been this person. I am trying to do better.) In my experience, nobody really cares if you admit you don't like older music, or older books. But mention you’ve never seen, or don’t like, “Pulp Fiction” or something, and it’s a blight on your credibility.
That attitude of having to know everything that came before you is gatekeeping, and it’s an attitude employed by older stalwarts of any industry to keep younger (and more diverse) voices out. Nobody was born knowing everything, and everyone has their own tastes. I like old movies, but I’m just now getting to a point where I appreciate them, and some of them make you realize every era had its trash movies and its great movies. Just because one dude says he doesn't watch movies that are more than 30 years old doesn't impune on your right to enjoy them.
Some of this could be because film is one of the youngest entertainment mediums we have, yet its history is already in danger because of streaming services only showing movies from about 1975 onward. But nobody’s stopping you from going to your library to find the classics or looking up old movies if you really want to watch something from the ‘40s.
In conclusion, watch what you want, and encourage more people to get into writing about what they like.
Islands in the Stream
“Islands in the Stream” is a new segment 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.
This week:
Netflix released some (self-reported) data from its third quarter earnings call. Highlights include the third season of “Stranger Things” pulling in the most viewers of any Netflix show ever, with 64 million member households watching the show. It had previously stated that 40.7 million accounts watched the show in the first four days of its season 3 debut, a record.
Other numbers of note: The limited, ripped-from-the-headlines series “Unbelievable” was watched by 32 million member households in its first 28 days, while “Tall Girl,” a YA drama about the pains of being…a tall girl, was viewed by 41 million households in the first 28 days.
It’s important to note that these numbers aren’t independently verifiable because Netflix only releases numbers when it wants to, and a “view” just means that one account watched just 70 percent of one episode of a show. Even still, those numbers are pretty big. Read the full report here.
Last week I recommended “Kiki’s Delivery Service,” a Studio Ghibli film. Studio Ghibli films have long been distributed by Disney in America, but none of the studio’s films were on the massive Disney+ library list released last week. At first, I thought that was because Ghibli has famously declined to stream its films anywhere. But this week, in an unpredicted move, HBO Max announced that it would stream the entire Ghibli catalog (including those originally distributed in the States by Disney) upon its launch next year.
AMC is starting to compete with streaming by launching its own VOD service. AMC Theatres On Demand launched last Tuesday, and it offers about 2,000 films for sale or rent after their theatrical runs, like the iTunes store or Amazon Prime. Studios like Disney, Warner Bros., Universal, Sony and Paramount have already inked deals to get their movies on the new service. Price points are between $3 to $5.99 to rent and $9.99 to $19.99 to buy, and people can earn AMC Stubs points when they use the service.
I was wondering when something like this would happen ever since I interviewed some folks from a Calif. startup a few years ago that wanted to put same-day theatrical release films in people’s homes. That still may happen in the future. What a time that would be.
More: California startup XCINEX is betting on moviegoers staying at home
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.
Before we get into the two trailers I want to talk about, I’m trying something different this week. Stay tuned for later tonight, when I’ll have another newsletter about the most anticipated trailer of the year…the final spot for “Star Wars: Episode IX — The Rise of Skywalker.” It’ll air on ESPN (not ABC as I previously wrote…that shows you how long it’s been since I’ve regularly watched MNF) during halftime of tonight’s Monday Night Football matchup between the New England Patriots and the New York Jets.
“The Outsider”
“The Outsider,” Stephen King’s last novel, seemed destined for a film or TV adaptation from the get-go. Its themes of duality, truth and fake news are very of-the-times, and the writing is King at his most accessible. This trailer for the HBO limited series debuts some inspired casting choices (namely, Ben Mendelsohn and Cynthia Erivo as two detectives) and looks creepy without being too scary.
More: In Stephen King’s ‘The Outsider,’ the light’s winning — barely
“Bombshell”
Give the makeup team an Oscar already. Director Jay Roach has a track record with handling political and controversial material, like with “Trumbo,” “All the Way,” “Recount” and “Game Change.” This boasts a strong cast and a lot of blink-and-you’ll-miss-it cameos, and I hope the finished product is written and directed as well as it’s acted. This could potentially be 2019’s “Vice” — a politically charged, well-acted movie with great makeup effects that gets mixed reviews.
On another note, I still can’t tell if scoring this trailer to Billie Elish’s “bad guy” is inspired or way too on-the-nose.
Letter of Recommendation
Movie: If you, like me, are in the mood to just shut off your brain and enjoy a monster movie that is exactly as advertised: Get thee to your local Redbox and rent “Crawl,” a taut, sub-90-minute thrill ride about a woman who must get her injured dad out of his flooded Florida home during a Category 5 hurricane. The only problem? They must evade two alligators that have posted up in the house and want to kill them.
Roger Ebert always said that you should judge a movie based on its merits and whether or not it succeeds at doing what it set out to do. So instead of comparing something like “Citizen Kane” to “Jaws,” you can accept that both are great movies doing very different things. In that regard, “Crawl” is a five-star monster movie masterpiece.
Music: I found the latest album from “Monster Rally” this week on Spotify while I was looking for some good music to have on in the background while I work. From what I can tell, it’s a one-man band made up of a guy who takes old surf-rock and psychedelic instrumental music and remixes it with hip-hop beats. So, basically, my aloha shirt aesthetic set to music.
It’s very soothing and makes me feel like I’m on my own private island even when I’m working on breaking news.
Podcast: Comedian Pete Holmes always broaches a lot of different topics on his “You Made It Weird” podcast. The recent one he did with 21st-century Stoic ambassador Ryan Holiday touches on everything from writing to comedy to religion to being present in everyday life. A great conversation. You can listen to it here.
Friday News Dump
A list of online stuff I really liked this week:
David Harbour as Grouch is the gritty reboot you didn’t know you needed:
And this tweet made me cackle so hard I watched it on a loop for a minute straight:
That’s all, folks. If you liked what you saw here, click that subscribe button (promise I won’t send any annoying emails) and tell all your friends!
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