tv and movies

You will be better served consuming this particular drivel after reading the "eating" content, but you will probably catch on quickly either way. Most of my opinions on TV and movies will run perpendicular to those of mine on food and restaurants. I appreciate and understand the 'highest' form of food and restaurants in a way that I may never of its equivalent in 'film.' When it comes to movies, I am like the guy who can't possibly comprehend why someone would spend 500 dollars on a meal when they could just eat 3.5 pounds of BBQ and drink 6 beers for 53 bucks.

Every year when I hear about the movies that are up for Best Picture, I have rarely seen any of them. And it's not that I don't watch movies. I watch plenty. These somehow either never reach me or if I had heard about them, they seem totally ridiculous. I have never seen The Shape of Water, mostly because I hadn't heard about it until news about the nominations for Best Picture were making their way to me via social media or however else. But also because I just fucking knew that if it were up for that award and called "The Shape of Water," I would almost assuredly hate it.

Now, this could be entirely related to having given a few of these a chance and those few falling well short of even my hesitant expectations. I watched Her with my family, and I swear when it ended I was stunned. I was doing everything in my power not to be an asshole just in case anyone in my family enjoyed it, but it did absolutely nothing for me. (My Dad loved it by the way.) Boyhood? That one genuinely pissed me off. So they filmed it over the course of the actual lives of the characters, great. Except that this was the most "impressive" thing about the movie. The level of nuance and amount of complexities around the development of a young boy are endless, particularly in the 21st century, and I remember leaving thinking I had just watched someone else's parents' home videos. Cute, but when do we get to the interesting and thought-provoking concepts of boyhood?

I could be wrong about both Her and Boyhood, but I am not brave enough to sit through either again to be sure. I will concede that in the current technological climate, Her might be more interesting, but I'm not doing it. It could just be that these awards, and even the movies themselves, are an opportunity for people to look down upon those of us who don't truly understand the art in film. Hard to say.

All that said, these are generalizations, and we all know how those go. The first movie that came to mind that I knew I liked and figured won some awards - or was at least nominated for them - was Spotlight. That seems to be true, and that was an incredible movie. I do think I have a less hard time with the award winners in TV. In my very deep research for this introduction, I looked all the way back to 2023 or so at some award-winning TV shows, and I liked quite a few of them. Slow Horses was nominated for a bunch of stuff recently, and that is one of my favorite TV shows. Gary Oldman is unbelievably good. At this point, his mere existence in a scene feels well-acted. Which I am sure shows my own biases. I am partial to Billy Bob in any role where he plays a raving cynic, which off the top of my head feels like all of them. If we dig deep enough together, I bet we can connect the dots between my admiration for these actors in those roles and my attacks on the Best Picture movies.

The one thing that I will happily admit is that I have a type, and it is far too specific. If it is about heists or spies, I will watch it, and I will probably like it, if not love it. The "More Like This" section on all the streaming services was designed for me. Wrap up one movie about heists or show about spies and get right into the next one. I will watch the Bourne movies (excluding Legacy, cannot believe they allowed that to even happen) all the way through at least once a year. The Town more like once every couple months. I will never forget my future wife not only agreeing to but encouraging a Bourne day, where we just watched Identity, Supremacy, and Ultimatum back-to-back-to-back. If I wasn't in love already....

I admit all of this because in some ways I do want to be "better." I think it's fine and well for people to stick to what they know and like, but when I give it a chance, I genuinely do enjoy the other stuff. I consume plenty of TV and movies, but I always find myself replaying the hits, rather than just sitting down and watching the stuff in genres to which I gravitate less but often still enjoy. I recently rewatched the Wire for like the 4th time before I was certain that I wanted to watch Task, and Task is well within my genres of interest. I know Pluribus is probably good, but I just haven't been able to turn it on yet. Post-apocalyptic science fiction has just never been my thing. I probably never would have watched Game of Thrones but for losing a bet.

The goal here is mostly to write about the movies and TV shows that I decide to watch at any given time for any given reason, some of which will just be rewatches, but others of which will hopefully be the new stuff. Something seems wrong about reviewing movies and TV shows that have already had dissertations written about them, but I will watch this stuff, and then I will want to write about it. In time, I expect the ratio will become less "old":new and more new:"old."

As evidence that I am actively trying, I recently came up with the idea for that future wife I spoke about and I to do Movie Night with another of our coupled friends. Movie Night was not the big idea, I know those have been around a while. Rather, the plan is that amongst the four of us, we rotate from person to person for who gets to decide the movie for that night, and the only rule is that at least one other person has to have not seen the movie. For my turn, I chose The Town. I know what you're thinking. How had two of the people not already seen The Town? I thought the same. My lucky night. We've also watched Annihilation, Schindler's List, The Phoenician Scheme, and Die Hard. I know my flaws, but for you all, I am attempting to overcome them.

I don't have much else to say here. The above is a taste of how I might talk about TV and movies, but I am not as uncultured or shallow as that all likely reads. You will almost certainly never get passionate writing about the nuance of movies like The Shape of Water, but I'm not just going to ram reviews of all 10 Fast and Furious movies down your throat either. At least that isn't the plan.