Books and Movies and Music, Oh My
Recent-ish media consumption
I do promise some pop-culture content in the tagline for this blog, but for one reason or another I’ve been kind of out of the loop for a while now. I’ve actually managed to take in a few recent examples, though, and for lack of a better idea for a blog post here are some quick comments about new-ish pop culture that I’ve gone through:
Book:
Polostan, by Neal Stephenson: I’ve joked in the past that Stephenson needs to transition to writing plotless modernist novels, because he really excels at describing mundane activities in an entertaining manner, but isn’t all that great when it comes to, you know, plot. Particularly endings, he’s just plain bad at those.
This is the first book in a new series, a near-past historical epic, and as the first book it kind of gets a pass for not having an ending. It’s set in the run-up to WWII, partly in the US and partly in the USSR, following the activities of a young woman named either Dawn or Aurora, who was born in the the American West, spent formative years in the nascent Soviet Union, and then returned to the US as a Communist agent for several years before having to flee back to the USSR.
This features a lot of both Stephenson’s strengths (minutely detailed descriptions of life in and around historical events like the Bonus Army march of 1932 and the 1933 Chicago World’s Fair, and what it’s like to live with Communists) and the weaknesses of the historical genre (Dawn ends up having significant interactions with a bunch of important political and scientific figures on both sides of the proto-Cold-War, which always makes me a little eye-rolly). It doesn’t reach an ending so much as just stop, so it’s kind of impossible to give it a sensible review; I’ll read more whenever he gets around to the next volume, because I read all his stuff, but I can’t say I was wowed by it thus far.
New Movie:
The Wild Robot (2024): This is an actual! new! movie! that The Pip and I fired up for Movie Night a few weeks ago. It’s an animated film, based on a book by Peter Brown that I haven’t read. This has gotten some positive mentions on the movie podcast that I listen to, so when it popped up in the Amazon Prime recommendations, I jumped on it.
This is the story of an all-purpose service robot who ends up marooned on a remote island. After being accidentally activated, it learns to communicate with the various animal inhabitants of the island, and ends up becoming a foster parent of sorts for a young goose who was orphaned by the robot crashing through his nest.
This is a charming bit of work about friendship and found family and all that sort of thing. There isn’t really anything in its plot or overall message that’s at all surprising, but the animation and voice performances are charming. It’s worth checking out.
Music:
Chromakopia by Tyler the Creator: One of two recent records enthusiastically recommended by The Pip, who is way into rap. Weirdly, this is also a hit with SteelyKid, whose tastes run more to musical theater and heavy metal. Anyway, I try to keep up with the Kids These Days and their musics, so I streamed this for a while at work.
On listening to it, it makes a bit more sense that both kids like this, because there’s definitely a bit of a theatrical affect to this. It’s very concerned with Tyler’s family history and personal identity, and encompasses a wide range of musical styles. It’s a lot more elaborate than most of the rap that gets pushed into my streaming recommendations, in both music and lyrical content, and I generally liked it.
GNX by Kendrick Lamar: This was a surprise album drop on Friday last week, and The Pip was super fired up about it. I’ve been getting regular reports on the beef between Kendrick Lamar and Drake on car rides for months now, but the idea of new music that wasn’t just that was really exciting for him.
I listened to this in the car on the way down to my parents’ this past weekend to retrieve a powered treadmill that they’ve had in their basement for years that The Pip has been eyeing, and then streamed it a few times in my office while writing this. I’m going to go out on a limb here, and say that I think Mr. Lamar seems kind of angry…
I realize I do this all the time when I review stuff, but it’s honestly my actual reaction: this album is an excellent example of the thing that it is, but the thing that it is is not a thing I particularly want. There’s a good deal of variety in the production, which is nice, and he varies his rapping quite a bit to match. But there’s a little too much here about his personal awesomeness and his irritation with those who don’t sufficiently acknowledge it for me; a little of that goes a very long way. Also, I find a couple of his vocal modes annoying.
And, not to put too fine a point on it, both of these records rely very heavily on language that, as a fifty-something white dude who works on a college campus, I wouldn’t be comfortable saying out loud behind closed doors in my own house. That sort of limits my enthusiasm for engaging more deeply with the material, as it were. Chromakopia gets by a little better because of the more personally vulnerable bits, but GNX is just a little too much of a muchness for me.
Old Movies:
The Godfather, The Godfather Part II, Apocalypse Now:
We ended up doing a bit of a Francis Ford Coppola film festival over the last few weekends. The Pip and I have watched a bunch of crime movies on streaming services, so The Godfather has been popping up in my Amazon recommendations for a while, and he specifically asked for it a couple of weeks ago. This past weekend he asked for the second Godfather on Friday night, and then after rejecting a couple of other options on Saturday accepted my offer of “A fucked-up Vietnam movie by the guy who directed The Godfather.”
These are all, oddly, movies I watched for classes in college. I haven’t seen any of them straight through in at least twenty years (though I’ve caught bits and pieces of all of them on TV at various points). I’m actually not 100% sure I technically watched The Godfather Part II straight through ever— I think we had it on a VHS tape and split it over two nights because there was a party happening the first night. I had definitely seen all of it, but some of it maybe out of order because I was a little surprised at some of the sequencing.
Anyway, these are all still great. The Godfather is probably my favorite of the lot; Part II has a few too many balls in the air, and Apocalypse Now gets a little draggy toward the end. The first one, though, manages to be both sprawling and tightly plotted, and the baptism scene remains amazing.
So, there you go. If you want more takes at this level, here’s a button:
And if you want to recommend other stuff or call me an idiot for any of these takes, the comments will be open: