Weekend Reads (December 14): “Tokyo Godfathers,” “Save the Green Planet!,” Chocolate, More Year-End Lists
Recommended weekend reading material for December 14, 2024.
Every week, I compile a list of interesting and thought-provoking articles to offer you some enjoyable weekend reading material.
Noah Oskow makes the case for Satoshi Kon’s Tokyo Godfathers being a modern Christmas classic.
Godfathers shows a grimy reality twinned with a story of lucky breaks, found-family ties; even heroism. Kon perfectly meshes realism and surrealism, human tragedy and zany humor. The universe bends and contorts to draw our down-on-their-luck heroes towards the saving of a single baby, and the redemption of us all. Even the buildings of Tokyo seem to express pleasure and distress at the goings-on.
Satoshi Kon was one of the great animators in recent memory. His work was characterized by vivid imagery, imaginative (if sometimes bizarre) storylines, and masterful artwork and animation. Sadly, he died in 2010 after battling pancreatic cancer; he was only 46 years old.
If you want to know more about Kon, I recommend tracking down and watching Satoshi Kon: The Illusionist, a 2021 documentary about his life and work.
Related: All of my Satoshi Kon-related posts.
Kali Wallace reviews Jang Joon-hwan’s Save the Green Planet! (2003), one of the most madcap and bizarre films I’ve ever seen.
The point is, the premise of Save the Green Planet! is completely nuts. The movie itself is completely nuts. It was Jang’s first feature film; it could so easily have been an embarrassing disaster. But there is a whole lot of skill, boldness, and cleverness in this movie, and the result is something unique, unsettling, and wholly entertaining.
I was fortunate enough to see Save the Green Planet! at the 2003 Toronto International Film Festival as part of the “Midnight Madness” program, and that screening was a riot. The crowd went nuts for the film, myself included. Making the night even more special, the director was in attendance, and it was pretty clear that he was overwhelmed by the enthusiastic response.
Related: My 2003 review of Save the Green Planet!: “This is the sort of film that defines ‘cult cinema,’ a priceless little classic that people track down, regardless of how long it takes or how much it costs, simply because they believe that as many people as possible need to see it.”
Morgan Meis draws some unlikely parallels between an absurd performance of The Cure’s classic “A Forest” and absurd mathematics.
At the root of the word “absurd” is the word “surd.” It’s not a word that you come across very often in everyday speech. Originally it comes from the Latin word surdus, which means deaf, or mute, or unhearing or muffled. If you ever do come across the word “surd” you’ll probably do so in mathematics. Surd came to refer to the square root of a number that cannot be simplified further into a rational number. The surd is, for example, the square root of 2, or √2. You can write that number down, I just did. You can understand, in a sense, the concept. The square root of four, for instance, is two because two times two makes four. Perfectly sensible. So there should also be a square root of two. But what is that number? It should exist, it must exist. But it isn’t a number we can understand like other numbers. It’s an irrational number.
If you’re looking for something to listen to during this Advent season, then Gabriel Oakes suggests mewithoutYou’s apocalyptically minded Pale Horses.
What makes it an Advent album is the wavering, uncertain, frail hope of salvation that threads itself through the whole album. The teasing of threads of hope, of personal stories, of biblical complexity and fear overcome by love, all hint towards God’s coming, God’s grace appearing in human flesh. What points towards Advent is the darkness of the album; the fear and pain and grief that surround the brief bursts of hope, of light. It’s that in the music, we don’t wonder if the apocalypse is coming, we wonder how God will come to us in it. It’s the knowledge of the certainty of death, and the hope in the chance of life. The same wavering, risky, irrational salvation that we look for over the course of Advent; salvation that comes in the oddest form: a weak, tiny baby.
Related: My review of Pale Horses. “It’s a disturbing, troubling album… but it’s a momentous album at the same time, one that feels like a true culmination of every experiment mewithoutYou have thrown themselves into throughout their existence.”
Jill Mapes takes issue Spotify’s annual “Wrapped” feature, which displays a recap of your listening habits for the last year.
Before Spotify existed, and before I lived in a city with local record stores, and before anyone told me about mp3 blogs, I used to buy all my music at a Best Buy next to a Chuck E. Cheese’s. I still remember the layout of this Best Buy, and maybe even hold a fondness for it due to the amount of time I spent lingering at their CD listening stations. Now imagine if Best Buy sent out a little laminated card displaying all the CDs I bought in a given year. Imagine me going to high school in 2004 and showing off my super cool Best Buy card to all my friends, bragging about my favorite music. Not even I was that dorky! Wrapped is even worse, because at least artists were making a decent percentage from all those CD sales.
Leave it to Alan Noble to find some wise words about temptation and infidelity in the midst of the “Muppet History” debacle. (In case you didn’t know, the owner of the “Muppet History” social media accounts was recently caught making unwanted sexual advances.)
I was just overwhelmed with the realization of how fragile we all are, especially when we are given any square inch of power, fame, notoriety, or influence. Even the absurdly petty fame of running the Muppet History account was enough to tempt someone to take advantage of his position to send disgusting messages to women and potentially ruin his marriage. In the past few years we’ve seen it happen to pastors and theologians and apologists and lay Christians who otherwise appear to live righteous, holy lives and who preach the gospel faithfully. It can happen to you and it can happen to me. So what are we to do?
Cole Burgett explores the pagan history of our modern Christmas celebrations.
[H]ow should we engage with a holiday that feels both sacred and suspect? This uncertainty, it seems to me, stems from a mix of incomplete histories, popular misconceptions, and genuine concerns about faithfulness. Is Christmas truly a Christian holiday, or is it just a quaint veneer atop an ancient pagan celebration? Are cherished traditions like evergreen trees, Yule logs, and feasting innocent cultural adaptations or idolatrous compromises? Without clear answers, some choose avoidance, others cling to what feels sacred, and more than a few are left in limbo — celebrating Christmas “just because,” and without fully understanding or appreciating either its origins or implications.
Pantone has picked “Mocha Mousse” as the official color of 2025, claiming that its unpretentious nature highlights our current cultural goals and desires.
The Pantone team said that Mocha Mousse reflects a desire for a neutral colour that is less typical than beige or grey.
“It’s an unpretentious classic,” said Eiseman.
Shoppers, Eiseman explained, are making fewer purchases and focusing on products that are “seasonless, genderless and highly versatile” as a result of rising living costs and an increasing urgency for sustainability.
It also doesn’t hurt that it reminds you of chocolate. Via TLDR Design.
Speaking of chocolate, not all chocolate is equal.
Cocoa content is key in defining chocolate types. Regulations on the cocoa content in chocolates vary by region and type of chocolate. The Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) mandates “Milk Chocolate shall contain, on a dry matter basis, not less than 25% cocoa solids.”
The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) requires milk chocolates to contain at least 10% cocoa solids. Hershey’s KitKat just about meets this benchmark, at 11%.
European chocolates have higher standards, and mandate a minimum of 35% cocoa solids for milk chocolate.
Andrew Amelinckx asks the question that’s been on everyone’s mind: What in the Sam Hill happened to Ponderosa Steakhouse?
Once upon a time, Ponderosa Steakhouse was a powerhouse restaurant chain that stretched across the country and into Canada, with nearly 700 locations at its peak in 1989. It began as a single restaurant in Kokomo, Indiana in 1965. Less than a decade later (1972), after explosive growth, it had become the largest steakhouse chain in the United States. Today, there are only 15 left operating in the country.
I have very fond childhood memories of going to the Ponderosa Steakhouse in Omaha with my extended family for lunch after church. We only did it a handful of times, but it was always a treat. Given my age at the time, though, I was probably much more interested in their dessert selection than their steaks.
More year-end lists have dropped. Kotaku highlights 2024’s best RPGs. The Playlist shares their picks for 2024’s best movies and TV shows. The staff of RogerEbert.com have also shared their list of the year’s best movies while Decider picks the saddest TV cancellations of 2024. And over on The Reveal, Keith Phipps selects the 15 best movie posters of 2024. On a less celebratory note, though, Kotaku also highlights the worst movies of 2024 on Metacritic.
For the more literary minded, Reactor’s reviewers share their picks for 2024’s best sci-fi and fantasy books. And Comic Book Herald, Polygon, and SlashFilm praise the year’s best comic books and graphic novels.
Finally, faster-than-light travel is a sci-fi staple (e.g., Star Trek’s warp drive). In reality, though, traveling at lightspeed is essentially impossible due to the massive energy requirements. But what would happen if you could travel at lightspeed?
Because space-time warps to accommodate the constant speed of light, a person traveling through space at near lightspeed would age more slowly than all the other humans waiting back on Earth. This idea is exemplified in the twin paradox thought experiment. Time dilation, and a change in time at rest relative to a change in time while in motion at a certain velocity, can be precisely calculated.
If you managed to reach 299,792,450 meters per second (i.e. just under lightspeed), two minutes of travel at that speed through space would be equivalent to about six days of time passing on our planet.
Via 1440.
From the Blog
Earlier this month, paid subscribers got an early look at my guide to 2025’s movie season, and now it’s available for everyone (with some updates).
2025 looks to be another great year for movies, with some of my favorite filmmakers returning alongside some of my favorite characters. Of course, each year also comes with plenty of surprises and hidden gems that won’t make it on a list like this — and I look forward to seeing those, as well.
This post is available to everyone (so feel free to share it). However, paying subscribers also get access to exclusives including playlists, podcasts, and sneak previews. If you’d like to receive those exclusives — and support my writing on Opus — then become a paid subscriber today for just $5/month or $50/year.