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Category: Essays

Notes on a Multiverse #2: “You ever see that really old movie?” (“Spider-Mania”)

Posted on by Alex Daily

These stories weave through our lives like, well, webs around criminals or flies. We relate to them in different ways on different days. This summer, all eight Spider-Man movies were rereleased to cinemas.

Sunday, June 16th, 2024. We go see 2002’s Spider-Man. Having been on a few field trips with a high school class I student taught, I relate to Peter’s teacher more than I do to Peter. These kids should be more upfront with each other. And less noisy during the Oscorp employee’s presentation, yeesh.

On Thursday I practiced my final presentation, and after the movie we walked through the graduation show. I did this two years ago, and I am, in a way, transported right back there, but I already have the credits for the art bit, so I don’t have to this go around. I don’t miss it — the ideal form for my work is a website or a book, not a wall. I find myself wondering if Stan or Steve would be able to relate.1Stan, no, Steve, probably, but you try getting it out of them from behind their personalities.

It rains the whole way to the cinema, and then the whole way back.

Tuesday, June 18th, 2024. 2004’s Spider-Man 2. We go see 2004’s Spider-Man 2. On Thursday I’m giving my final presentation, so I relate to Otto, who knows he has something, but may or may not come across like Charlie from Always Sunny going the full Pepe Silvia. I relate to Harry, who feels like he’s going insane knowing what is to him a truth.

I realise everyone in these movies has the same arc; where the story is Man vs Monster, the emotional core for everyone is Man vs Self — they all have to be different versions of themselves to reconcile their inner turmoil and become their true selves. If the final presentation is the Monster to slay, was the course as a whole the Self?

Sunday, June 23rd, 2024. We took a break because I had to give my final presentation, successfully wrapping up a 2-year bachelor’s degree in art education with good grades, but we’re back, and go see 2007’s Spider-Man 3.

This morning I threw out my back again. I relate to Pete’s back issues from the last one, and to his being surrounded by way too many villains trying to kill him at once. I relate to Dr Conners never having to be the Lizard. In the Dark Pete segment, where he dances through the streets of New York, I relate to the folks it does kinda work for, actually. I wish I could be timeless like these people.

It’s getting sunnier again. It’ll be 26°C out when I get my diploma. I should get some… hand fans.

Sunday, June 30th, 2024. On Thursday I graduated with good grades. There was a speech. My legal name is late in the alphabet but they went in random order and I got to go first, which was: Nice. On Saturday, after #TARDISclub, we drove to my parents’ house for dinner in my brother’s new, first car.

And then on Sunday, we saw 2012’s The Amazing Spider-Man and 2014’s The Amazing Spider-Man 2.

In my Letterboxd reviews, I defend these movies — I think, removed from the immediacy of, oh, this is what Spider-Man movies are now, they’re good! They’re fun! They mostly work! We’ve been too harsh on them! But sitting down to write this the day after, I realise I don’t relate to them like I did the Raimi ones. Maybe it’s that they’re young people with young problems, and the people who I might relate to more get to sit these one out on the sidelines. Or maybe it’s what the first one explicitly says is the film’s main theme — the question “Who am I?”

Because where that’s something Pete struggles with… I’ve always known exactly who I am.

And that, unfortunately is where this entry has to end. We saw the MCU Spider-Man movies on Thursday, July 11th, Sunday, July 14th, and Wednesday, July 17th, 2024, but I just don’t connect to them in the same way. They diverge from my life a little, but they’re also not really… about anything.

Those movies are about Spider-Man being in the MCU now and, try as I might, I’m not in the MCU, am I.

Have any of you read the new Ultimate Spider-Man? He has a wife and kids and a job. I don’t have any of those things but I relate to him far more than I do the Pete of the MCU.

Time to move on. Such is life.

Earths encountered

  • Earth-One and its various off-shoots, where the ’92 X-Men live.
  • Earth-Two, where the Tobey Maguire Spider-Man lives.
  • Earth-Three, where the Andrew Garfield Spider-Man lives.
  • Earth-Four, the Marvel Cinematic Universe, where the Tom Holland Spider-Man lives.

The oldest draft of this post is dated May 16, 2024. It was written one section at a time between June 17 and June 30, and then got a postscript on September 24, 2024.

  • 1
    Stan, no, Steve, probably, but you try getting it out of them from behind their personalities.

Weird Soda Review: Oreo-flavoured Coke Zero

Posted on by Alex Daily

Rest assured that when I saw these in the soda aisle I immediately alerted every relevant authority, by which I mean Mastodon, David, and the family group chat.

Several cans of Limited Edition Oreo Coke Zero in a supermarket display. The can has a black and white design on it of circular Oreo-like shapes stacked to resemble a Coke bottle. They're 79 cents a can.

The Expectation

What I’m expecting is a take on a vanilla-flavoured cola, something in the cream soda zone, but with Vanilla Coke Zero literally easily available for sale right next to it, I can’t quite picture what will distinguish this from it. The can says it’s “fizzy cookie” flavoured (fizzy “cookie” flavoured?) so presumably the dark biscuit taste of the Oreo comes through in some way.

The Nose

Open, let settle, sniff. Hm. There’s a lightness in the aroma that means I might be close with my vanilla/cream expectation. There’s something else there that I can’t quite identify.

The Taste

Pour, let settle, sniff again. No new information. Let’s sip this thing.

Oh, this is really subtle. Sip. No vanilla or cream flavour, really. Sip. No, there’s some of it in here, but not a lot, it’s, somehow, mostly the cookie. Sip. They’ve somehow translated the dark Oreo cookie to the dark soda. Pour some more. Take a bigger sip, hold it in the mouth for a bit. This is weirdly subtle.

The aftertaste is reminiscent of a sweet chocolate, no, not even the aftertaste, the afterfeel, the way it coats the mouth. Yeah, now that it’s settling, what this is a lightly chocolate-flavoured cola.

Conclusion

It’s like somebody left a pile of just the cookie part of the Oreo at the bottom of a vat of cola syrup and then pretended they meant to do that. It’s not bad, it’s just not what I was expecting. I’m not sure I’ll buy these again, because they’re so subtle — I’d rather just buy some Vanilla Coke Zero.

I’m a big fan of these Creations-branded experimental flavours, and I’m glad they’ve figured out a way to do a really nuanced one after a few pretty unsubtle fruity ones.

Notes on a Multiverse #1: “Something Different In Your Genes” (1992’s “X-Men”: Season 1)

Posted on by Alex Daily

I’ve been looking for a way into a big MCU rewatch for some time now. I think I’ve found it — for a long time the thought was, real, proper essays, real, formal writing. Really sit down and write a psychochronography in spandex. But I’m not an essayist, I’m not that kind of writer, not really.1Obviously I do excel in the form when asked to do it, but let’s be honest with ourselves. I’m a cartoonist, I write adventure stories meant to be read in three to seven panels a day. I suppose I’m also: A blogger.

And so I’m gonna blog through it, with a series of pre-written, scheduled blogs inspired by this rewatch. Let’s kick that off with a big idea, a concept adjacent to the idea of canon that I’d like to lay out for you.2If this were an essay I might write up a short history of the idea of canon, shared universes, and my relationship to these ideas. But it’s not an essay! Blogs, baby! My assumed audience here already knows about this stuff!

You’ve heard about canon, now get ready for — Psychocanon.

These are the stories of the Zeitgeist, the stories we’re thinking of, and the other stories the people telling us stories want us to be thinking about.

Psychocanon exists at both a macro and a micro level, an entire franchise can have a psychocanon that overlaps with but does not encompass all of what a single, granular instalment of it has floating around it.

The ’92 X-Men cartoon gets so vigorously invoked by every brief appearance of the X-Men in the MCU now that they’re finally allowed to show up that it’s clearly psychocanonical to the MCU — Disney/Marvel Studios want you to be thinking of it every time the theme tune whispers into your ears, they want you to think of it when Charles Xavier shows up in a ’92-style wheelchair, his ’92-style costume, down to the tie. They’re invoking it at least as much as they are the Fox X-Men movies. They’ve also now just straight up brought it back with X-Men ’97.

On the other hand, take something like the Netflix Marvel shows — clearly nobody making Daredevil really wanted you to be thinking about Agents of SHIELD or Agent Carter, or even Guardians of the Galaxy or Ant-Man. When you’re watching those Netflix shows, they’re in their own little bubble — nothing, except maybe the vague idea that there are Avengers out there somewhere, is truly psychocanonical to them. But in the other direction, they are, by their inclusion of characters from Daredevil, psychocanonical to Spider-Man: No Way Home, Hawkeye, She-Hulk, etcetera. And you can pretend all you like, but clearly Helstrom isn’t psychocanonical to anything at all. 3I haven’t even heard a good case for it being the regular ol’ kind of canonical, frankly. Hi Ti.

A rewatch of the MCU psychocanon would include all the movies, including the Sony and Fox ones, all the Disney+ shows, and Green Lantern, the ’92 X-Men but not more than the first few seasons of Agents of SHIELD, and for all that it’s nice to see Jarvis pop up in Endgame, not Agent Carter, either, not really.4If Agent Carter is in it’s because of Agents of SHIELD, not because of any of the movies. Inhumans? Doesn’t exist. The Princess Bride? A keystone.

For a Doctor Who example: The original Toymaker story is clearly psychocanonical to Doctor Who 60th anniversary special The Giggle, they show clips of it as a flashback, but The Nightmare Fair and Solitaire clearly aren’t — the whole story of The Giggle is that we’re watching the second round of a best of three. Neither, for all that the specials go out of their way to remind you of the Flux and other major elements from the Chibnall era, is The Battle of Ranskoor av Kolos. Nothing that happens in that one matters to the specials, it just doesn’t. The same is true for The Krotons and Planet of Evil and the caveman bits of An Unearthly Child and hundreds of other stories — though Ranskoor av Kolos is clearly just not sticking around in the zeitgeist the way the larger story of Dr Who being adopted is.

Let’s chuck in a second and related idea: Historia.5I’m open to a better word for this idea — the one on the original post-it is “chronicanon,” but that’s clunky, awkward.

Where a canon cares about which stories count, and psychocanon cares about what those stories want you to be thinking about, a historia is concerned with the story of something.

No list of which Doctor Who stories “count” would include the Peter Cushing films, or Scream of the Shalka6This is how you can tell I wrote this in May., or The Curse of Fatal Death. But if you’re interested not in “watching all of Doctor Who” but in a broader “story of Doctor Who,” these are crucial chapters of that story — the show itself doesn’t capture Dalekmania, most Dalek stories aren’t even that good, but the Daleks were big enough in the culture that they were the main draw of two blockbuster films, Scream of the Shalka was “new Doctor Who” a year and a half before Rose was, and the entire Moffat era is to The Curse of Fatal Death as, in the words of Douglas Adams, “the whole of creation—every Galaxy, every sun, every planet, their orbits, their composition, and their economic and social history” is to “one small piece of fairy cake.”

So what’s “the story of the MCU,” what’s its historia? As I write this, on 5 May, 2024, I haven’t really laid down a roadmap for it yet. I will, and it’ll be the subject of a future post, but I haven’t done it yet. But I know where it starts.

Now, you could go further back than I do. Just writing this, I’ve realised there’s at least one thing I should cover from before where I’ve started. There’s nothing stopping you saying, the historia of the MCU starts at the first performed adaptation of a Marvel comic — the 1944 Captain America serial, where Captain America is a District Attorney called Grant Gardner. Nothing in the MCU, no real part of it, really builds on it, but you could probably make the argument for it.

But the argument I’d like to make is this, and I’m gonna keep this simple. It’s March 1990. Having championed the otherwise unsuccessful Pryde of the X-Men pilot, Margaret Loesch, the head of Fox Children’s Network, commissions thirteen episodes of an X-Men cartoon. It does very well, and inspired by its success, Lauren Schuler Donner at 20th Century Fox buys the film rights, and finally, after decades of various attempts by various studios and filmmakers that all ended in development hell, brings the X-Men to the big screen with 2000’s X-Men. The success of that film convinces Sony the Spider-Man concept can carry a film, which it does, in 2002, after Sony buys the rights for a mere $7 million. The success of these films together — and the… different amount of success enjoyed by films like Hulk and Daredevil — is why Avi Arad goes to Marvel and says, let’s do this properly.

So how does a multiverse start? How does a… good multiverse start? Hell, how do you start a universe. Just a regular one seems to be hard to do on purpose. So how does a multiverse start? Definitely not in a board room that sets out to start a multiverse. That can only lead to disaster. It’s more likely to start by accident. For someone to make one thing that… mutates into another thing. Maybe, just maybe… It starts with a girl’s foster parents calling the authorities on her, and with her wondering how she, dressed the most like a main character anyone has ever dressed, could be so different as to warrant it. Maybe, just maybe… It starts with mutants.

(Thanks, Margaret.)

Earths encountered:

  • Earth-One — The X-Men ’92 home universe.
    • Earth-One-A — Days of Future Past ’92 — X-Men ’92’s Bishop’s home timeline.7Though the Days of Future Past future is usually presented as the future of the universe it’s related to, the story of Days of Future Past is the story of making sure the events we see depicted never happen.
      • Earth-One-A-A — The one Bishop creates by going back to Earth-One from Earth-One-A and saving Senator Kelly, in which Senator Kelly then gets kidnapped, anyway.
        • Earth-One-A-A-A — Only implied so far, Cable’s home timeline, the one Bishop creates by trying again from Earth-One-A-A.

The earliest draft of this post is dated March 8, 2024. 56 words of that first draft have made it to this final 1465-word blog post. It was finished on May 5, 2024, with a final round of edits to prepare it for publication on July 20, 2024.

  • 1
    Obviously I do excel in the form when asked to do it, but let’s be honest with ourselves.
  • 2
    If this were an essay I might write up a short history of the idea of canon, shared universes, and my relationship to these ideas. But it’s not an essay! Blogs, baby! My assumed audience here already knows about this stuff!
  • 3
    I haven’t even heard a good case for it being the regular ol’ kind of canonical, frankly. Hi Ti.
  • 4
    If Agent Carter is in it’s because of Agents of SHIELD, not because of any of the movies.
  • 5
    I’m open to a better word for this idea — the one on the original post-it is “chronicanon,” but that’s clunky, awkward.
  • 6
    This is how you can tell I wrote this in May.
  • 7
    Though the Days of Future Past future is usually presented as the future of the universe it’s related to, the story of Days of Future Past is the story of making sure the events we see depicted never happen.

Review: “Rebel Moon — Part Two: The Scargiver” (2024)

Posted on by Alex Daily

Also on my Letterboxd, and a sequel to my review of the first one.

cover the second half of this film.

Look, I don’t want to accuse Mr Snyder of anything, but if I thought there was any kind of coherent ideology to this beyond “Star Wars and Seven Samurai are cool and Netflix will give me $166 million American dollaridoos to make a 2-part 5-hour remix of them,” I’d be extremely suspicious of a lot of what’s going on here. That the planet is called “Veldt,” for one.

The shift of focus from, in the first one, a competent adult who knows what she needs to do, to, well, the gang she’s assembled just… doing it, really highlights the extent to which this has not a single original idea going for it. Where this could’ve been a take on Luke Skywalker, blazing with righteous fury at the injustices of the world around him, finally doing something about it, instead it all just serves to reinforce the cold, oppressive, authoritarian bleakness Mr Snyder has so consistently forced upon the culture around him. It’s all just unpleasant.

The film truly never makes a case for her quest, or for anything at all, beyond that that’s simply what you do in one of these. She doesn’t need to learn anything to achieve her goals, she simply knows who to reach out to and does so. Space Nazis line up their Stormtroopers because that’s what they do in Star Wars, her gang trains the people of Veldt because that’s what they do in Seven Samurai. Cary Elwes gets stabbed by two dozen men in togas because he’s supposed to be Ceasar. You’ve seen every part of this before.

And so she plods ever onwards, taking her team back home to her South African-coded home moon — which she and her gang successfully defend, saving the world’s most generic day from the world’s most generic antagonist, generically. What happens next in this world? Is Kora now equipped for future attacks? If Mr Snyder cares, the impression doesn’t come across. I’m baffled by the idea that anyone would want to find out.

Truly, this is Zack Snyder’s Rebel Moon — Part Two: The Scargiver, in which the picture’s equivalent of Luke Skywalker achieves the quest she sets out on, exactly like you expect she will, in the exact ways you know she will. I don’t remember exactly where the first one ended, but let’s just say there’s a reason this kind of story doesn’t usually get split into parts like this.

A mistake George Lucas makes in the 90s is he starts using character tropes from the old film serials he enjoyed in his childhood too uncritically, too un-remixed — the bumbling local, the sniveling merchant, the conniving bankers — and so they end up too close to those originals for comfort, and come across as racist clichés. Mr Snyder, really, makes a very similar mistake. All of these parts work in their obvious primary source, and all of these parts work in other movies all the time. But where with Lucas you can feel the fondness, the admiration, the love — here it feels cynical, cold, calculated. There’s no heart here.

I feel about Mr Snyder’s work like most cats do about going to the vet, every now and then they come out and you can tell it wasn’t that bad, but most of the time they go in reluctantly and come out knowing damn well somebody just did something to their nethers without their consent. And 2024’s Rebel Moon — Part Two: The Scargiver is the exact cultural spaying and neutering it looks like.

A real movie to vacuum during. I mean, I vacuumed earlier, but

Weird Soda Review: Coke Zero “K-Wave”

Posted on by Alex Daily

My hand, holding a can of Coke Zero K-Wave in front of the window for lighting purposes. It's an energy drink-style can, with a pastel purple to green gradient design and Korean characters on it.The problem with finding weird sodas like this is I’m only really looking at the soft drinks aisle when I’m in the mood for something brown and fizzy to drink, so I buy these, put them in the fridge, and end up keeping them in there for a week, not even drinking then when I’m thirsty, because I figure, no, I should do this properly, I should do a review. Such was the case with this can of Coca-Cola Zero Sugar Creations: K-Wave Limited Edition, which makes no big claims on the can itself but is apparently inspired by K-Pop.

Once again, I truly do not know what that could possible mean.

Let’s get to it.

Expectations

I don’t listen to K-Pop — if you say “BTS” to me I will assume you’re talking about a behind-the-scenes featurette of some kind, not four to seven randomly generated young men. If this is meant to taste like that kind of music, or, like the kind of thing a fan of that kind of music would like, well, I’m expecting a flavour that’s bright and loud in front with very, very little depth to it.

So unless it tastes like boys something fruity, I guess.

The Nose

I’ve opened the can and will now take a whiff of it. To enhance the experience, I’ve also popped on some BTS on Spotify. On first sniff, this is different than the 3000, lighter. My first thought is perfume, flower smells. Slightly artificial. All of this not in a nasty way. It sits in the nose pleasantly, but leaves it quickly.

The Taste

Time to sip.

Hm. It’s a more complex blend of fruit flavours — yeah, definitely fruit flavours — that’s a little hard to unpick. My first thought is of the light sourness of apple-flavoured candy, but as it sits in the mouth what comes forward is the flavour of banana candy. That raspberry idea from the 3000 is kind of here, but where that was “the shape of raspberry flavour without raspberry flavour,” here that’s maybe been filled in with, well, apples and bananas.

I take back the thing I said about a lack of depth, there’s a real aftertaste development here. That development is reminiscent of mouthwash more than anything, but still, that’s a layered flavour.

Conclusion

Overall, from flowers to a simple fruit basket to mouthwash, it’s kind of a weird blend. Not unpleasant, and with a sweetness that I suppose fits the K-Pop thing, probably. I wouldn’t know, I’ve clicked through this Spotify playlist looking for something that sounds like music made by people instead of robots and have struggled to find any.

If you liked the 3000, you’ll probably like this one. I’d recommend maybe keeping a taste you like nearby to wash it down with, though. I’m gonna throw back some M&Ms, I think.

Alex Daily votes for the 96th Oscars, Part Two: The Big Six Awards

Posted on by Alex Daily

These are the awards people actually care about. Why are these the awards people actually care about when none of these are worth shit without the contributions from the other branches? I don’t know, and neither do you. Is anyone even reading these intros? Just go reread the one from part one.

Best Supporting Actress

Emily Blunt – Oppenheimer as Katherine “Kitty” Oppenheimer
Danielle Brooks – The Color Purple as Sofia Johnson
America Ferrera – Barbie as Gloria
Jodie Foster – Nyad as Bonnie Stoll
Da’Vine Joy Randolph – The Holdovers as Mary Lamb

I’d love to give this to Danielle Brooks, who is just terrific, but Da’Vine Joy Randolph is utterly the heart of The Holdovers, and key to the film opening up emotionally, while Brooks drives into and then, crucially, out of The Colour Purple. I genuinely don’t think the America Ferrera performance is anything.

My vote: Da’Vine Joy Randolph
My prediction: Emily Blunt

Best Supporting Actor

Sterling K. Brown – American Fiction as Clifford “Cliff” Ellison
Robert De Niro – Killers of the Flower Moon as William King Hale
Robert Downey Jr. – Oppenheimer as Lewis Strauss
Ryan Gosling – Barbie as Ken
Mark Ruffalo – Poor Things as Duncan Wedderburn

I think this is gonna go to Gosling, who is good, but not that good, in a frustrating upholding of the very thing Barbie presents as a problem. But god, that Ruffalo performance is so funny. He’s so distraught. He’s such a snivelling bastard. Just the best.

My vote: Mark Ruffalo
My prediction: Ryan Gosling

Best Actress

Annette Bening – Nyad as Diana Nyad
Lily Gladstone – Killers of the Flower Moon as Mollie Burkhart
Sandra Hüller – Anatomy of a Fall as Sandra Voyter
Carey Mulligan – Maestro as Felicia Montealegre Bernstein
Emma Stone – Poor Things as Bella Baxter / Victoria Blessington

I keep wanting to give this to Sandra Hüller, whose quiet, understated performance is so deep, so rich, but Lily Gladstone delivers such a devastating performance as Mollie Burkhart that I think she deserves this, even if we don’t deserve her. Just fucking incredible. The best to ever do it.

My vote: Lily Gladstone
My prediction: Lily Gladstone

Best Actor

Bradley Cooper – Maestro as Leonard Bernstein
Colman Domingo – Rustin as Bayard Rustin
Paul Giamatti – The Holdovers as Paul Hunham
Cillian Murphy – Oppenheimer as J. Robert Oppenheimer
Jeffrey Wright – American Fiction as Thelonius “Monk” Ellison

It’s gonna be Cillian Murphy, we all know it’s gonna be Cillian Murphy. But that performance is a good steak with an expensive cigar — while Giamatti in The Holdovers is dinner with family. It fills the heart like nothing else.

My vote: Paul Giamatti
My prediction: Cillian Murphy

Best Director

Jonathan Glazer – The Zone of Interest
Yorgos Lanthimos – Poor Things
Christopher Nolan – Oppenheimer
Martin Scorsese – Killers of the Flower Moon
Justine Triet – Anatomy of a Fall

Again, this is Oppenheimer‘s award and we all know it — I’m gonna say that again — but it’s not the choice I would make. While The Zone of Interest may be the least directed movie I’ve ever seen, and Poor Things occasionally makes a big choice that falls flat for me, Scorsese does the best work of his career with Killers of the Flower Moon, and Anatomy of a Fall is perfect. Truly misses no step. Immaculate work.

My vote: Justine Triet for Anatomy of a Fall
My prediction: Christopher Nolan for Oppenheimer

Best Picture

American Fiction
Anatomy of a Fall
Barbie
The Holdovers
Killers of the Flower Moon
Maestro
Oppenheimer
Past Lives
Poor Things
The Zone of Interest

I’ll say it again — this is Oppenheimer‘s award. But it’s Anatomy of a Fall that blew me away.

My vote: Anatomy of a Fall
My prediction: Oppenheimer

This concludes my Oscars post! Did I make any calls or cast any votes you vehemently disagree with?

Alex Daily votes for the 96th Oscars, Part One: The Awards for Good Jobs Done

Posted on by Alex Daily

For the most part, for all the reasons people usually give, I don’t care about awards. But somehow, despite my better instincts, I care about the Oscars. I don’t watch the actual awards show, but the Oscars inform what I think about, what I talk about, and, crucially, what I watch. For the past few years I’ve watched every Best Picture nominee, and I’m in 1940 with watching all of them.

Now, somewhat bafflingly, I am not a member of the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences,1Something about me “not being in the industry” and “how did you get this number, please leave my family alone.” and so I don’t get to vote on them. But this is the internet, so I can pretend! So let’s vote! Let’s pretend I am a member of the Academy, and lay out all my rationales for who and what I’m voting for!

For several categories I’ve watched none or only one or two of the nominees, and I wouldn’t, if this were for realsies, want to vote for things I haven’t seen. So for each category, I’ll list the nominees, with the ones I’ve seen bolded, and then both my own vote and my prediction of what or who will win.

Best Visual Effects

The Creator
Godzilla Minus One
Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3
Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One
Napoleon

The Best Visual Effects category is a classic way to get some genre films in even when the bigger categories seldom acknowledge them. As such, I’m just ruling Napoleon out right away. Similarly, Mission: Impossible looks great, but the effects, of which I’m sure there are many, are simply not as flashy as in the other three films.

It’s tempting to give it to Godzilla Minus One for how impactful the Ginza sequence is, but it’s hard to overstate just how great the otherwise tepid The Creator looks — by building on top of real spaces and places, the film creates a rich and textured world unlike any other this year. I expect the Academy will agree.

My vote: The Creator
Prediction: The Creator

Best Original Song

“The Fire Inside” from American Symphony
“I’m Just Ken” from Barbie
“It Never Went Away” from Flamin’ Hot
“Wahzhazhe (A Song For My People)” from Killers of the Flower Moon
“What Was I Made For?” from Barbie

Essentially a choice between the two Barbie tracks for me, it’s an easy one — while “I’m Just Ken” is a great showstopper and showpiece for Ryan Gosling, “What Was I Made For?” is a crucial keystone to the film’s climax. If the song in that moment doesn’t work, the whole thing might fall completely apart.

My vote: “What Was I Made For?” from Barbie
Prediction: “I’m Just Ken” from Barbie

Best Original Score

American Fiction – Laura Karpman
Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny – John Williams
Killers of the Flower Moon – Robbie Robertson
Oppenheimer – Ludwig Göransson
Poor Things – Jerskin Fendrix 

Gonna be honest here, not a big scorehead — outside of really iconic stuff, the score of a film rarely sticks with me the way dialogue or story structure do. Speaking of iconic stuff, does John Williams do anything new with his Dial of Destiny score? And for all that Oppenheimer‘s score is terrific, the single most standout moment of that film is the exact moment where it falls away. That leaves two, neither of which I can bring front of mind without listening to them, so let’s do that right now.

These scores do such different things — Göransson’s Killers of the Flower Moon score has to capture a pre-existing world, while Fendrix’s Poor Things has to figure out what a whole person without any precedent for their existence sounds like. Killers is bigger, but the Poor Things score is much more of a precision-engineered music box of madness, and the film would not be the film without it, while Killers you can imagine with a different score just fine.

The Academy hasn’t actually given John Williams a statue since 1994, and with the man only eight years away from his third digit in age, one of these days they’re gonna have to give him this thing for his whole career, so it might as well be this year.

My vote: Poor Things — Jerskin Fendrix
My prediction: Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny — John Williams

Best Sound

The Creator
Maestro
Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One
Oppenheimer
The Zone of Interest

I can’t picture anything about The Creator or Mission: Impossible‘s sound. Maestro captures the Bernstein concerts well, but it’s all delivered so… adequately through Netflix’s compression that it’s hard to take seriously as a nominee here. That leaves Oppenheimer, again most notable for its moment of silence, and Zone of Interest, which is completely made by its extremely oppressive sounds of nearby terror. Tomorrow I might make the other choice, but today the decision is clear in my mind.

My vote: The Zone of Interest
My prediction: Oppenheimer

Best Makeup and Hairstyling

Golda
Maestro
Oppenheimer
Poor Things
Society of the Snow

I’m ruling out Maestro — even setting aside the question of whether it’s offensive, that big fake schnozz on Bradley Cooper has a totally different shine patina than the rest of his face when he sweats. Awful.

Oppenheimer and Poor Things would both basically be “Most Makeup and Hairstyling” votes — Oppenheimer for the sheer number of people, but Poor Things is maximalist in all the ways Oppenheimer is minimalist.

My vote: Poor Things
My prediction: Poor Things

Best Production Design

Barbie
Killers of the Flower Moon
Napoleon
Oppenheimer
Poor Things

Napoleon and Oppenheimer are both in that boat of, I get why they’re nominated, but they’re not really doing anything new in this field, there’s so many other productions that have done similar things very well, while the other three films create worlds we’ve either never seen before or never seen done this well before. Of those, Barbie and Poor Things are perhaps the most creative — but Killers of the Flower Moon‘s world blew me away and made a part of history I never knew about come totally alive.

My vote: Killers of the Flower Moon
My prediction: Barbie

Best Costume Design

Barbie
Killers of the Flower Moon
Napoleon
Oppenheimer
Poor Things

I look at Best Production Design, I look at Best Costume Design, I look at Best Production Design, I look at Best Costume Design. They’re very similar pictures. With Poor Things very much the “Most Costume Design” candidate, I’d like to emphasise again how much the costuming on Killers of the Flower Moon brings the world of it alive. The meticulous research that went into it really shows on screen, and that’s worth rewarding.

My vote: Killers of the Flower Moon
My prediction: Poor Things

Best Film Editing

Anatomy of a Fall
The Holdovers
Killers of the Flower Moon
Oppenheimer
Poor Things 

Simple. The Holdovers for bringing back the slow fade.

My vote: The Holdovers
My prediction: The Holdovers

Best Cinematography

El Conde – Edward Lachman
Killers of the Flower Moon – Rodrigo Prieto
Maestro – Matthew Libatique
Oppenheimer – Hoyte van Hoytema
Poor Things – Robbie Ryan

Gonna be honest here, never been entirely sure exactly what the cinematographer does, so I’m just gonna go by vibes here — Maestro‘s recreation of old styles of screen visuals is meticulous, Poor Things looks very exciting, but I’m gonna have to give this one to Oppenheimer for the bomb sequence.

My vote: Oppenheimer
My prediction: Oppenheimer

These next few are… a little less thorough just because I haven’t, uhhhhhh, seen any but two of the films from the first five of the next eight categories. International, short, and documentary categories are big blindspots for me, something I should really work on. There’s three more awards I actually have opinions about at the end, though.

Best Animated Short Film

Letter to a Pig
Ninety-Five Senses
Our Uniform
Pachyderme
War Is Over!

Only heard anything at all about War Is Over!. Do people still love John Lennon?

My prediction: War Is Over!

Best Live Action Short Film

The After
Invincible
Knight of Fortune
Red, White and Blue
The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar

A beloved feature director showing up in the shorts is, perhaps, unfair. But this seems like an easy call.

My vote: The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar
My prediction: The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar

Best Documentary Short Film

The ABCs of Book Banning
The Barber of Little Rock
Island in Between
The Last Repair Shop
Nǎi Nai & Wài Pó

Only heard anything at all about The ABCs of Book Banning and The Last Repair Shop, and the former seems like the one people will vote for just based on the subject matter.

My prediction: The ABCs of Book Banning

Best Documentary Feature Film

Bobi Wine: The People’s President
The Eternal Memory
Four Daughters
To Kill a Tiger
20 Days in Mariupol

Genuinely not heard anything about any of these.

Best International Feature Film

Io Capitano (Italy)
Perfect Days (Japan)
Society of the Snow (Spain)
The Teachers’ Lounge (Germany)
The Zone of Interest (United Kingdom)

I’ve only seen The Zone of Interest, though I’ve also heard good things about The Teachers’ Lounge and Society of the Snow.

My vote: The Zone of Interest
My prediction: The Zone of Interest

Best Animated Feature

The Boy and the Heron
Elemental
Nimona
Robot Dreams
Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse

Finally, another real category. Spider-Verse was half a film, and Elemental was a nothingburger. But I can not begin to tell you how much I adored Nimona. My sweet, precious, biting child Nimona. Hard to imagine it’ll win, but my vote is my vote.

I think if Miyazaki had actually committed to retiring, I’d feel more confident predicting Boy and the Heron, but I don’t think the Academy will care about it more than it will care about Spider-V2rse.

My vote: Nimona
My prediction: Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse

Best Adapted Screenplay

American Fiction – Cord Jefferson; based on the novel by Percival Everett
Barbie – Greta Gerwig and Noah Baumbach; based on characters created by Ruth Handler
Oppenheimer – Christopher Nolan; based on the biography by Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin
Poor Things – Tony McNamara; based on the novel by Alisdair Gray
The Zone of Interest – Jonathan Glazer; based on the novel by Martin Amis

How do you judge adaptation? Barbie squeezes so much out of its source material that you start to wonder what they make those dolls out of, Oppenheimer mixes the strict fact of its source material with openly admitted fiction, for all that you can’t do many of the literary devices of the novel, Poor Things seems like it’s as fairly straight an adaptation of the source material’s raw story as you could make with Lanthimos’ sensibilities, while The Zone of Interest more just kinda does its own thing with it. I don’t know.

My vote: Oppenheimer
My prediction: Barbie

Best Original Screenplay

Anatomy of a Fall – Justine Triet and Arthur Harari
The Holdovers – David Hemingson
Maestro – Bradley Cooper and Josh Singer
May December – Samy Burch
Past Lives – Celine Song

I love three of the four of these I’ve seen, but what do I actually love about them? So much of it is in the performances, so much of it is in how it all comes together. But I always bring up the ambiguity of Anatomy of a Fall before I bring up Sandra Hüller, so let’s give it to it for its immaculate structure.

People seem to think May December was largely snubbed, so I can see that feeling coming together into votes here.

My vote: Anatomy of a Fall
My prediction: May December

To be continued! This is part one of two. Part two, out tomorrow, will cover the big six.

  • 1
    Something about me “not being in the industry” and “how did you get this number, please leave my family alone.”

On very busy men

Posted on by Alex Daily

(Game of Thrones 1×05: The Wolf and the Lion)

1 The King…

“I thought being king meant I could do whatever I wanted.”

We’re all subject to something, someone. At King Robert’s level, he’s subject to the office, and as much to the people as the people are to him. Many of these characters are subject to their families, to systems that keep them in check, to traditions that none can conceive of dying. Anyone who might consider themselves free in this world would also have few meaningful connections, few ways to connect to society.

More loredumping — Bran is tasked by Maester Luwin with reciting the names and mottos of various Houses. What is a family motto if not being subject even to your dead ancestors?

2

Sky cells! Yikes!

3

Sansa and Arya both fight for the respect they crave, though they’re different respects. Sansa wants to be like her mother, and Arya like her brothers. One imagines Arya would be perfectly happy with Jon Snow’s life.

It’s a queer story, that. But the faux-medieval thing of it all is an extremely limiting factor to that ever going anywhere. Even with Ser Loras and his freshly-shaven boyfriend around, queerness here is about what people want, not who they are. And I hate to imagine what any of the many aggressively heterosexual shitheads in this show would say if they knew about them.

4 …and below

Who is most looked down upon in Westeros? There’s Tyrion, who is mocked and ignored, respected in this episode really by Ros the sex worker, and by Catelyn Stark and her entourage, for what he’s capable of, not for who he is. But he still has the ear of characters above him, could still get things done if need be. There’s Bran, whose disability and age put him in a similar place, without even the respect for what he can do.

I’m thinking also of the White Walkers, who are, at least, humanoid, but not even thought of as people.

“I’m the same as you”

Posted on by Alex Daily

(Game of Thrones 1×04)

1 Spring

There should not be more than a month between me watching ones of these — the break strikes me as not particularly conducive to keeping up with yer who’s whos and what’s wheres and all that. Who was that prince again? Who’s fucking who again? I suppose for this one I’m Sam — who I like — on account of I, too, am new here.

2 A long time ago

People love to tell each other history in this show. When did people do what with dragons, who built the throne, who built the room, what made who legendary.

Do we do that in real life? Do we go on and on about what people did five hundred years ago? I feel like when we do it tops out at the edge of human memory — an American might reference Lyndon B Johnson, Brits might talk about the Blitz. But we don’t go much further back than that. As a cartoonist, the history of my field doesn’t stretch that far back, as a Dutch person the history of my country is fractured and divided. What emperor Karel V got up to on these lands in the year 1514 is functionally irrelevant to my life, and–

Wait, fuck, I teach art history, I do actually bring up 16th century artist Albrecht Dürer all the time.

Fuck.

3 Summer

I like Sam. But I especially like what his presence at the Wall tells us about the people around him. He’s not the fastest, the strongest, the hardest, or the best at anything. Their boss goes on and on about this, how Sam is soft and useless, about how he eager he’d be to eat him in a Donner Party situation. But Sam is kind and nice, qualities in short supply at the wall. And so, we must notice, who does and doesn’t value him and include him, who does and doesn’t see that he might not be all of those things everyone else has to be at the Wall, but that he is still there, with the rest of them, at the Wall?

“I’m the same as you,” Jon tells him. They’re talking about virginity, and bonding about both having been somewhat unlucky in the relevant regards. But they were both essentially sent there to get out of other people’s ways, they’re both at the edge of the world they know. They’re both there.

4 Winter

Tyrion: “I must say I received a slightly warmer welcome on my last visit.”

Well, yes. Winter is coming, after all.

Things That Are Coming

  1. Winter, still.
  2. A war of some kind.
  3. Bran’s testimony, though he supposedly has no memory of the accident.
  4. White Walkers.

The Pitcairn Review: “Contemporary View,” by Maze de Boer

Posted on by Alex Daily

Being approximately the size of a large shoebox, the Pitcairn Museum for Contemporary Art is, probably, the world’s smallest museum. I walk past it several times a week, and would happily say it’s my favourite museum. But I’ve never seen any kind of serious writing about it, so in the spirit of living the change, enjoy this recurring feature.

The Pitcairn typically asks you to imagine standing in the space it presents, but for Maze de Boer’s Contemporary View, no imagination is necessary, because we’re already standing in the space. In fact, from this side of the fourth wall, we appear to be the art.

A photograph of the exhibit described in this review. We see the back of what is, relative to the scale of the space, a large canvas, and, in the corner, a tiny fire extinguisher.
“Contemporary View,” by Maze de Boer.

Or, in other words: Ah, a meta one.

From Exhibition Continues Upstairs by Gerbrand Burger and No Show by Maurice Bogeart, which play with the gallery’s implied but non-existent space, to Michell Bows’ Sorry for the Inconvenience, in which the lack of exhibit becomes the exhibit, the meta exhibit is, at this point, a standing tradition at the Pitcairn. Even the fourth wall break of the art gazing back upon you is nothing new, with Jelte van Lente’s Kijkers previously having taken a much more literal approach.

But what we have here is much more pared down than those. There’s no stairwell, no mirror1Unless you count your own reflection in the glass., nothing looking at you. The only things in the space are a large2Relatively speaking. canvas, visible only from behind, a bench, a fire extinguisher, and, in the very back of the space, a sign.3I need to remember to transcribe the text from a better picture.

A lightly blurry photograph of the sign in the back of the space. The text on it can't be made out.

Mostly, I’m bored here. So bored that this review has been sitting here unfinished for four months. The next exhibit will have gone the way of the courier service back to where it came from by the time this review goes up.

So let’s just turn it around. If we are the art… what are tiny visitors to the tiny museum seeing through the fourth wall? Or, well, what did they see, back in November?

A photograph of the street as seen from in front of the Pitcairn Museum.

I walk past there three times a week. Maybe parked vehicles, the top bit of a trash can, and ugly construction fences are inspiring to you, but they’ve lost a little of their luster to me.

The Pitcairn does not publish images of its full exhibits until they’re already gone, but with limited local exceptions, I’m writing for a global audience here. To publish without an image of the full exhibit robs that international audience of context, and to publish with full images spoils the full exhibition for people who might still want to go see it. As a compromise, these reviews run one week before the exhibit closes or, uh, much later.

Some of my photographs of the space have been lightly modified only to obscure my reflection in them.

  • 1
    Unless you count your own reflection in the glass.
  • 2
    Relatively speaking.
  • 3
    I need to remember to transcribe the text from a better picture.
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