Weekend Reads (Mar 26): Abbott Elementary, Lenten Movies, YouTube, Satoshi Kon, Choose Your Own Adventure
Recommended weekend reading for March 26, 2022.
Every week, I compile a list of interesting and thought-provoking articles to offer you some enjoyable weekend reading material. But first, a brief announcement…
Earlier this week, I added a new feature to my site: the Cultural Diet. It’s essentially my take on Goodreads and Letterboxd, a way for me to quickly track and rate various cultural experiences, e.g., movies, TV series, books, restaurants. It’s a fun little experiment (read more about the Diet’s design and rationale) that I see as a way to become less dependent on other services.
Now, on to the links…
We’re big fans of ABC’s Abbott Elementary here at Opus HQ; it does a good job of filling the Parks and Recreation-shaped void in our hearts. K. B. Hoyle helps explain what, exactly, makes the show so special.
God did not set us into this world to live and work and die in meaningless and fruitless ways, but to fill the earth and subdue it, and to participate in the work of reconciling all things back to him. We are permanent people in a temporary world, and I think teachers understand that more than most.
YouTube has added thousands of free (with ads) TV episodes to its library.
Google’s popular video platform announced today that users can now stream nearly 4,000 episodes of various TV shows for free with ads. You can browse the full list in the “Free to watch shows” section of the “Movies and shows” category on YouTube. Some of the more popular titles of the 100 or so shows available include Hell’s Kitchen, Andromeda, Heartland, Ascension, and Kitchen Nightmares. Older releases include Unsolved Mysteries, 21 Jump Street, The Carol Burnett Show, The Lone Ranger, Hopalong Cassidy, and The Dick Van Dyke Show.
I know it’s tempting to dismiss YouTube’s offerings because they feature ads, but you can find some gems if you look hard enough — like The Bletchley Circle and The Prisoner for TV shows and The Endless, Hero, and UHF for movies.
YouTube’s move was no doubt driven by announcements like this one: Amazon has acquired MGM Studios for $8.5 billion.
The pact was first announced in May and has been winding its way through the regulatory process. Per Amazon, “The storied, nearly century-old studio — with more than 4,000 film titles, 17,000 TV episodes, 180 Academy Awards, and 100 Emmy Awards — will complement Prime Video and Amazon Studios’ work in delivering a diverse offering of entertainment choices to customers.”
The aspect of this acquisition that’s bound to get the biggest headlines is that Amazon now owns the James Bond franchise, but MGM’s catalog also includes The Handmaid’s Tale, Legally Blonde, Robocop, Rocky, and The Silence of the Lambs.
There’s been a trend on YouTube to upload longer and longer videos, like multiple hours-long breakdowns of Nickelodeon shows like iCarly. Who’s making these videos, and more importantly, why are millions of people watching them?
Hoover says he gets messages from truckers who play his videos to stay awake on long journeys, while other people say they enjoy having them on in the background while doing the dishes. Nicholson points to the subreddit Mealtime Videos, where people share videos to watch while they eat. “I like to watch YouTube while I eat, but I’ll also put it on to fill any silence,” she says, explaining she watches videos when cleaning, exercising, driving, and doing her makeup. “I even get a lot of comments from people saying they’ll put my videos on when they go to bed, because the audio levels are even and they can fall asleep to them.” Remarkably, both Hoover and Nicholson say numerous people left comments on their Victorious and Vampire Diaries videos saying they watched the whole thing despite never having seen the respective shows the videos were about.
If you’re an anime fan, or just a fan of cinema in general, this is wonderful news: Starting today, all four of Satoshi Kon’s films — plus a documentary about his life titled Satoshi Kon: The Illusionist — will be streaming, for free, on Eventive. The films will be available for two weeks, courtesy of the National Museum of Asian Art and the Japan Information & Culture Center.
Related: My reviews of Satoshi Kon’s work and my Satoshi Kon obituary.
Also related: I can’t talk about Satoshi Kon and not share the opening credits for 2006’s Paprika, his final feature. Cinema, animated or otherwise, rarely feels this alive.
Guitarists love vacuum tube amps because of the warm sound they create. But as it turns out, one of the last remaining suppliers of vacuum tubes is located in — you guessed it — Russia. Which means that the invasion of Ukraine could have a significant impact on the future of guitar music.
Pitchfork published a list of their most anticipated albums of 2022, including new releases from Arcade Fire, Belle and Sebastian, Bloc Party, Kendrick Lamar, and Spiritualized.
Speaking of Arcade Fire, they recently released a video for “The Lightning I, II,” the first single from their upcoming album, titled WE. Watch the video below:
It took Jeffrey Overstreet awhile to finalize his favorite music of 2021, but it was worth the wait. Here’s part one, part two, and part three. His list is pretty eclectic, as expected, running from Sufjan Stevens to Billy Bragg, from Sault to Nick Cave and Warren Ellis.
Overstreet has also begun sharing his favorite films of 2021. Here’s part one and part two of his recaps.
I love this idea: Simcha Fisher is watching movies with her family for Lent and most recently, they watched Fiddler on the Roof and The Scarlet and the Black. From her review of Fiddler on the Roof:
The kids were resistant to watching this movie because they remember it as a huge downer, but it truly isn’t. It doesn’t shy away from tragedy, but it’s also extremely funny, and tender, and sweet, and it ends, improbably, with hope. My Lenten wish for you is that you watch this movie.
Just how, exactly, did Superman become a bad guy? By fighting Batman, argues Susana Polo.
[I]f Batman and Superman have a history of famous clashes, and those clashes are mostly told from a Batman-y point of view, it’s going to lead to the perception that Superman makes a better wall than a climber, a better Goliath than a fellow David. It leads to the perception that the out of touch, kind-of-frighteningly-powerful Superman is the Thinking Man’s version, maybe even the more “standard” version. And for the “cynicism is sophistication” crowd, it hands them the false epiphany of “Superman isn’t worthy to wield the power he holds” all tied up in a nice little bow, ready to be trotted out in the ice cold take of “if Superman was real he would be a tyrant.”
If a hope-filled and inspirational Superman (like this guy) ever showed up in a movie, would people even recognize him?
Shoji Morimoto makes a living by doing nothing, i.e., offering himself as a silent companion for people.
He charges 10,000 yen (about £64) per session, and is most frequently hired to accompany people who are at a turning point in life, or want to rewrite traumatic memories, or are facing a vulnerable moment that they feel uncomfortable sharing with friends or family. He’ll just be there, with no judgement, and away from their personal space.
One woman hired him to accompany her as she filed her divorce papers. He once sat with a client for a haemorrhoid surgery consultation — with plenty of graphic photos. Someone hired him for a dramatic farewell as they boarded a bullet train to move from Tokyo to Osaka; he showed up and waved goodbye.
Morimoto, who goes by the nickname “Rental-san,” has inspired a TV series and several books.
Finally, Stephen Wilhite, who created the GIF image format back in 1987 while working for CompuServe, died last week from COVID. He was 74 years old.
Although GIFs are synonymous with animated internet memes these days, that wasn’t the reason Wilhite created the format. CompuServe introduced them in the late 1980s as a way to distribute “high-quality, high-resolution graphics” in color at a time when internet speeds were glacial compared to what they are today. “He invented GIF all by himself — he actually did that at home and brought it into work after he perfected it,” Kathaleen said. “He would figure out everything privately in his head and then go to town programming it on the computer.”
Wilhite ignited a minor internet controversy back in 2013 when he insisted that the proper pronunciation of GIF was “jif,” with a soft “G.”
From the Blog
Revisiting beloved childhood icons is always a risky venture. The nostalgic memories can easily turn out to be way better than the reality. But I was pleasantly surprised that the Choose Your Own Adventure books that I loved back in grade school were still pretty fun to read even now, as an adult. And they raise some intriguing questions.
I do wonder how these books shaped me as a child, though. What role did they play in me becoming who I am today? There are obvious parallels between their non-linear storytelling and the nature of the Web, so perhaps they helped prepare me to become a web developer.
And what of the endings, specifically the “bad” ones? Reading them now, they seem so contra to what’s usually deemed “acceptable” for kids. How did reading subversive, or even just dark, endings like those in Your Code Name Is Jonah color my adult perspective? Do they help explain why I’m drawn to dark humor or appreciate art that isn’t afraid to verge on the transgressive?
I bought all of my Choose Your Own Adventure books through Thriftbooks, one of our favorite online booksellers. (And yes, that’s an affiliate link. You can buy some cheap books and support Opus at the same time. It’s a win-win.)
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