Here Come Your Weekly Recs!
Dear Wag,
If the movies are over, Spider-Man: No Way Home is like those aggro undead thingies from World War Z. You know, it’s not taking morbidity lying down! Spidey is the first Covid Era Blockbuster, raking in more than $700 million, because the creatures who really terrify Hollywood —fleshbots between 18 and 34— braved pestilence to see it! Omicron, the Green Goblin, and Doc Ock (so fun to say!) couldn’t stop the movie from becoming the fourth highest grossing domestic film of all time—behind Star Wars: The Force Awakens, Avengers: End Game, and Avatar. You’ll be scandalized to learn that there isn’t a Bergman movie in the Top 10.
That’s good news, and not just for the prodigiously bendy Tom Holland. Alas, it doesn’t change the fundamentals: Hollywood has a woeful imbalance between behemoths that keep the lights on and all the other product it cranks out nobody stops wordling to see. Habits and distribution channels have changed, and the New Hollywood isn’t really being powered by b.o. anymore (we mean box office! Actual ripeness went out with Easy Rider). But we do miss the crowd pleaser, as opposed to a demographic appeaser or fandom teaser. Wouldn’t it be jolly for some non-franchise rando to come out of the blue and strike a chord with an awesomely diverse, if socially distanced, public? Titanic, made way back in 1997, is the last thing on the Top 10 grossers list that didn’t fall off the back shelf at Forbidden Planet.
Hope springs eternal. Maybe our savior content will come out of the Sundance Film Festival. Maybe it will be the new Bong Joon-ho/Robert Pattinson project. Why, it might even be that flick with Daniel Radcliffe playing Weird Al Yankovic! Point is, we’re starved for new ideas. Use that huge noodle of yours to dream up something original. Before you get on that, here are some more lovely distractions.
Yours Ever,
Series
Ozark (Netflix). Oh, Wendy and Marty Byrde! They hightailed it to Dogpatch to escape big trouble, and became riverboat casino tycoons! Dame Laura Linney, as a very prim underworld don, terrifies us when she says wants to “give back” after raking in a tad more blood money. Duke Jason Bateman, as the schlemiel who got her into this mess, does hanging on by his fingernails better than anybody.
Docu-Whatever
True Story with Ed and Randall (Peacock). Messrs. Randall Park and Ed Helms, who are delightful, talk to everyday folk (who are even more delightful) about their extraordinary real-life stories, then turn them into dramatizations starring Terry Crews, Adam Scheer, Fortune Feimster, Terry Bradshaw, among others. It will remind you that total strangers can be hilarious, resourceful and kind.
Proper Piss-Up
Billions (Showtime). When this show was hatched, billionaires were slightly less reviled than they are today. Get caught up for Season 5, reaffirm that they are all ghastly, and don’t judge crusading prosecutor Chuck Rhoades (Mr. Intensity Paul Giamatti) for his BDSM fetish. The new tycoon in town, played by The Other Mr. Intensity Corey Stoll, isn’t going to country club prison without a scuffle.
With Pippa and Huck
The Book of Boba Fett (Disney+). Why so many arid planets in that galaxy far, far away? We’d fly our X-wing to that ferny place where Ewoks dwell. Brooding Kiwi Temuera Robinson stars as the cool bounty hunter whose name that sounds like a refreshing drink with tapioca pearls. Plus, there’s Dame Ming Na Wen, kicking whatever droids and whatnot have for keisters. Fun for the whole family! —Wu Jing-MeiSubscribe
Fiction
Literary Lioness Hanya Yanagihara paints on a big canvas, and To Paradise is vast in its ambition. It’s actually three novels, set in 1893, 1993, and 2093, starring a Tolstoy-lode of characters, all set in fantasy versions of New York. Grow up and stop running away from big books! At the heart of this doorstop are a trio of gem-like tales, dealing with love, loss, and acceptance. That’s a grand tour worth making.
Nonfiction Bonus
How do you mend a broken heart? Turns out, this more than a poetic exercise. When her marriage broke up, The Indefatigable Florence Williams began investigating how falling out of love not only hurts feelings, but changes biology. The result is Heartbreak; A Personal and Scientific Journey. It’s both a fascinating work of journalism and a tale of healing. You will get through this!
The Cavalcade of Stars
Famouses who must write books should attempt good ones. Here are three: As a tot, Dame Sharon Gless dreamed of wining an Oscar. That hasn’t happened (yet). But so much else has: She was last studio contract player and went on to star in Cagney & Lacey, which was groundbreaking and had the jazziest theme song ever. Apparently There Were Complaints is a very good title for a very good memoir…Kal Penn’s guidance counselor told him he couldn’t have his cake and eat it too. Luckily he ignored that buzzkill. You Can’t Be Serious is proof you can star in stoner comedies and be a White House advisor…Carl Bernstein was once a boy wonder with groovy hair, getting scoops for the Washington Star. Chasing History is his fond look back at coming up in the glory days of newspapers. Oh, to have them back. —Carolyn Abbott
Without fantasy, there is nothing, said Siegfried Fischbacher. Or maybe that was Roy Horn. Here’s the thing: Siegfried & Roy were a strange, singular fusion. For decades, the Teutonic magicians were the toast of Vegas, dazzling audiences with over-the-top illusions and a menagerie of big cats. Michael Jackson even wrote them a theme song! But in 2003, Montecore, one of their beloved white tigers, attacked and nearly killed Roy. And that might be the least interesting thing about the saga. In Wild Things, Spellbinding Steven Leckart charts S&R’s rise to fame, exhumes their secrets, and mines every detail of a mauling that made global headlines. Oh, and Roy totally forgave Montecore.—Rupert Angier
You need a big, top-down-driving-through-the-Mojave rock song. Spoon delivers it in Wild, in which guitars, pianos, and drums pulse to a roar. I looked full over all the lies and/Appealing to me, advertising/And I was living tight every night, growls frontman Britt Daniel. And the world, still so wild, called to me. You’ll hear that call, too.
Cat Power, a.k.a. Chan Marshall, doesn’t cover songs, she strips them down and totally rebuilds them. Her take on Bob Seger’s Against the Wind takes its sweet time and becomes a ghostly, poignant, and totally different tune. Covers, her third album of musical makeovers, is full of such treasures. —Mac Sledge
When Wag first encountered Richard Rushfield, it was the 1940s, and he was getting the skinny on the Black Dahlia case. OK, it hasn’t been that long. Point is, our Richard knows Hollywood! Now he’s the editorial genius behind The Ankler, the sharpest and most fearsome industry read (subscribe). We squeezed into his Brown Derby booth to extract three of his creative inspirations.
- PG Wodehouse. The pinnacle of the English language, and English storytelling. Reading him is like pure, uncut comedy being injected into your veins. When this world gets to be too much, there is no greater cure for what ails you than stepping away into Wodehouse’s Elysian fields of half-witted dandies, omniscient butlers, blundering earls, terrorizing aunts and cantankerous groundskeepers.
- Dinah Washington. Listening to the Queen of the Blues, you immediately feel, smarter, deeper, more sophisticated and emotionally richer than you imagined you could ever be. In her songs, you hold the whole of human experience in the palm of your hand. The saddest happy songs, the most joyful laments. Everything you need to know, you can learn from Dinah Washington.
- The LA Explained Instagram. As a native Angeleno, I find nothing more incredible than the reminders that everything we see around us was just orange fields and sagebrush barely a few blinks of the eye ago. This Instagram account brilliantly curates a stream of incredible pictures of LA as it came together in the most off-hand, ramshackle manner you can imagine. It also is a bittersweet reminder of the glamour and fun of LA as it grew up, the playful adventurousness of local architecture and fashion before it succumbed to the cookie-cutter look of industrial luxury that hangs over the city today like a cloud of chloroform.
The so-called Woman’s Picture—female driven narratives with strong women characters—reached its zenith in 1940s Hollywood, as women took on unprecedented new roles during World War II. The term was old-fashioned by the 1960s, but the movies made during the genre’s peak, and their stars, are eternal. Some of the most famous examples of the genre are melodramas centering on fears of male infidelity. Joseph L. Mankiewicz’s A Letter to Three Wives (1949) stars Jeanne Crain, Linda Darnell and Ann Sothern as the titular women. The gals receive a letter from a frenemy (wickedly voiced by Celeste Holm), telling them she’s skipped town with one of their husbands. Each flashes back on her bad marriage to search for clues. Off-camera things were nearly as dramatic. Adapted from a novel featuring five wives, the studio initially whittled the cast down to four actresses but ultimately cut Ann Baxter’s part. It worked out: Mankiewicz went on to win Oscars for Best Director and Best Adapted Screenplay, and cast Baxter in his next picture, All About Eve, for which she was nominated for Best Actress. He repeated his double Academy Award victory for that movie, too. (Catch A Letter to Three Wives this week on TCM) —Karen Richards
July 13, 2024
