Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

People are complicated. Love is not.

Let’s delete this post and never speak of this again.

Good luck with your asparagus.

If you tweet it in all caps, that makes it true!

Proof that we need a blogger ethics panel.

We are builders in a constant struggle with destroyers. let’s win this.

I can’t take this shit today. I just can’t.

Teach a man to fish, and he’ll sit in a boat all day drinking beer.

An almost top 10,000 blog!

A thin legal pretext to veneer over their personal religious and political desires

Balloon Juice has never been a refuge for the linguistically delicate.

I’ve spoken to my cat about this, but it doesn’t seem to do any good.

… riddled with inexplicable and elementary errors of law and fact

The poor and middle-class pay taxes, the rich pay accountants, the wealthy pay politicians.

This fight is for everything.

Our job is not to persuade republicans but to defeat them.

We’ve had enough carrots to last a lifetime. break out the sticks.

Infrastructure week. at last.

It’s been a really long fucking year.

Let me eat cake. The rest of you could stand to lose some weight, frankly.

Technically true, but collectively nonsense

This really is a full service blog.

Wow, you are pre-disappointed. How surprising.

Make the republican party small enough to drown in a bathtub.

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The Americans

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The Americans
THE AMERICANS — “The Magic of David Copperfield V. The Statue of Liberty Disappears” Episode 408 (Airs, Wednesday, May 4, 10:00 pm/ep) — Pictured: (l-r) Matthew Rhys as Philip Jennings, Keri Russell as Elizabeth Jennings. CR: Patrick Harbron/FX

BG is at a neighborhood party, so there is no Medium Cool tonight.  He offered to tee up a post anyway, but Medium Cool without BG just isn’t Medium Cool.  (Maybe lukewarm, but definitely not Medium Cool.)  So I let him off the hook, but BG will be back next week!

Can we talk about The Americans?  At least for a little while?

I hadn’t watched in years – 4 seasons behind! – but recently started watching again.  What a great show.  I am about to start the final season – and I’ll confess that I watched the series finale a couple of days ago.  Sue me.  I wanted to know whether they went back.

SPOILER:

 They went back.  I wanted them to stay in America and live happily ever after.  Are they sociopaths?  One of the reviews of the finale said the Jennings were sociopaths.  The Vietnamese kid Tuan who didn’t give a shit if his buddy died in his strategic suicide attempt as long as it moved the pieces on the board to where they were supposed to go – now he’s a sociopath.

But it seemed to me that there were good people on both sides.  (For real!)  At least some good people, it addition to the awful ones.

I think Stan is a good guy.  Phillip is a good guy.  Oleg is a good guy.  I guess I am using “good guy” is a stand-in for someone with a moral compass.   I was fond of Gabriel by the end.  I feel sorry for *Martha; if I were Martha I would be very bitter.  I hope Phillip and his son get to meet.

So there’s my shallow people-oriented take.

What made this such a great show?  Great writing?  Great acting?  All the disguises?  The sex? Relationships?  Was it a metaphor for all of our lives?  Was it that very few people were all bad or all good?  What about the ending?  I sure as hell wouldn’t want to live in Russia, with all the corruption, living in fear all the time.  Plus it’s really fucking cold.

The one thing that made no sense to me was that Phillip and Elizabeth would want to go back.

So we can start with The Americans, and then talk about whatever comes up.

*Though it looks like Martha might get a child of her own?  So maybe not bitter after all?

 

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Monday Afternoon Open Thread

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This might be what lures me back to a movie theater for the first time in nearly two years:

But maybe not. I really want to see The French Dispatch too but have not so far.

Lots of stuff happening in the news today. That flaming shithead judge in the Rittenhouse trial dismissed the weapons charge for a reason that sounded like bullshit on stilts. Closing arguments are underway.

The judge in the trial for the three-man lynch mob that killed Ahmaud Arbery ripped the defense lawyer for trying to kick Jesse Jackson out of the courtroom.

My guess is the murderous punk Rittenhouse will be acquitted since the judge put his whole dumb cracker ass on the defense side of the scale of justice. But I predict the creeps who killed Arbery will be convicted as they deserve to be.

It’s important to keep in mind that there wouldn’t even be a trial in the Arbery killing if one of the three killers hadn’t been dumb enough to post a video of the murder online. The perps had successfully colluded with the local cops to cover up the crime.

Speaking of unspeakable creeps, a judge ruled in favor of the Sandy Hook families in a case against Alex Jones because Jones and his publisher(s) refused to comply with discovery demands. The entire lot needs to be pauperized, but that probably won’t happen.

As he often does, Insider columnist Josh Barro said something dumb:

I think Klobuchar would make a fine VP (or president), but how many “Sources say enraged Klobuchar hurled spork at White House aide” stories would we have read by now? Come on, man.

And finally, thanks again for your condolences in response to my earlier post. It really is a comfort, and I am sincerely grateful.

Open thread!

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Medium Cool with BGinCHI – Recommendations

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In case you’re new to Medium Cool, BGinCHI is here once a week to offer a thread on culture, mainly film & books, with some TV thrown in.  We’re here at 7 pm on Sunday nights.

Medium Cool with BGinCHI – Recommendations 3

We’re running low on TV series, so let’s make this week’s Medium Cool a survey of what you’re watching. Give us likes, dislikes, near misses for TV and film. If you recommend something, make sure to indicate where it’s streaming, or what channel, etc.

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Open Thread: The ‘Magic’ of Movies

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Here’s hoping, per Variety:

… Seven Bucks Productions, founded by Johnson and his longtime business partner Dany Garcia, is behind some of the most lucrative films in recent years, from “Jumanji” to “Jungle Cruise,” to “Hobbs and Shaw” and the upcoming “Black Adam.” Johnson is not just one of the most famous people in the world, but also one of the most respected and beloved figures in the business, who carries a lot of weight and brings mega-bucks to the box office. In other words, Johnson’s endorsement to end the use of real firearms can kick-off a domino effect of safe decision-making across Hollywood productions…

Rust numbers, per a new story from Yahoo Entertainment:

Producers on Rust, including Alec Baldwin, have come under fire over reports of chaotic working conditions in the wake of Halyna Hutchins’s death. The Hollywood Reporter obtained a draft of the production budget which sheds light on where money was allocated on the independent Western movie.

Baldwin was set to earn $150,000 as lead actor and $100,000 as producer, according to the new report. Hutchins, an up-and-coming cinematographer, would have earned $48,945, while armorer Hannah Gutierrez-Reed, one of two people at the center of the investigation, was set to be paid $7,913. Producers budgeted $7,469 for “armorer crew,” $17,500 for the rental of weapons and $5,000 for rounds. Dave Halls, first assistant director who handed the prop gun to Baldwin, was to earn $52,830. While the draft confirms the low-budget nature of the film, which was slated to cost $7,279,305, experts tell THR the numbers are not unusual…

Smart, scary thread from someone who’s been in the business all her life:

… When you produce an indie, money is gathered slowly, painfully; I’d say you chip away at the amount you need like a sculptor working some marble, but imagine if while the sculptor delineated a leg, a bunch of marble sometimes grew back. Money gets promised, not always delivered.

At some point, you have to start moving forward as if the project is going to go, at least in part to get people you want to work with to block out the time you’ll need them on your schedule. Every day, you get closer to shooting. Every day, money waffles.

Making a movie outside of a studio system is objectively terrifying.

(Making a movie within the system is no pastoral idyll either, but that’s another Small Story)

Everything is on the line. Sometimes, literally; I personally know people who mortgaged houses to make a movie.

Not all of them kept their house.

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Medium Cool with BGinCHI – Dune

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In case you’re new to Medium Cool, BGinCHI is here once a week to offer a thread on culture, mainly film & books, with some TV thrown in.  We’re here at 7 pm on Sunday nights.

Medium Cool with BGinCHI – Dune 1

I know it’s Halloween, but for this week’s Medium Cool let’s talk about Dune.

As I mentioned in last week’s thread, I’d just seen Villeneuve’s film and I was gobsmacked. It’s a tremendous accomplishment, and only covers the first part of the novel. So let’s talk about that film. But also the Frank Herbert novel, David Lynch’s 1984 film, and Alejandro Jodorowsky’s aborted version (if anyone’s game).

 

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Did anyone watch the Emmys?

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There wasn’t a thread on it, but we can’t expect Anne Laurie to hold up the entire world, now can we? Anyhoo, I did not watch the Emmys, but I did see a few clips of my favorites’ speeches over coffee early this morning.

I was pleased that Kate Winslet and Julianne Nicholson both won awards for their work in “Mare of Easttown,” which I highly recommend. It was also gratifying that the excellent Jean Smart (also in “Mare”) won an award for her role as the hilarious Vegas comedy diva in “Hacks” (also highly recommended) and that Evan Peters also picked up an award for his stand-out performance as Detective Zabel in “Mare.”

Weirdly, I couldn’t find a decent Emmys highlights clip on YouTube (now I’m starting to wonder — did it even happen?), but here’s something kind of related that is fascinating (to me, at least) — it’s about dialect coaches and how their role in TV and film has grown in importance over the decades:

The segment suggests that Meryl Streep’s performance in “Sophie’s Choice” in the 1980s sparked a golden age of dialect coaches and that they should maybe be recognized as essential to show design, as are costume designers, etc. Interesting idea!

Tangentially, I’ve often wondered why some folks find it so easy to imitate accents, whereas it is completely beyond the linguistic capabilities of others. I am firmly in the latter category and have often wished I could do a passable Scottish brogue, if only to better tell that joke with the punchline “But ye fuck ONE goat…”

Anyhoo, you can find a complete list of nominees and winners courtesy of CBS News here. Looks like “The Crown” and “Ted Lasso” cleaned up. I haven’t seen “Lasso” yet but will do a free trial of Apple TV one day and binge it. (I can’t justify another subscription at present.)

I’m a fan of “The Crown” and thought Olivia Colman was terrific as the Queen. Josh O’Connor — who portrayed Prince Charles with a convincing stoop-shouldered mixture of hauteur, misery and awkwardness — also took home an award, as did Gillian Anderson for her performance as Maggie Thatcher. I thought Anderson nailed Thatcher’s speech patterns, but a British friend tells me I am SO wrong about that, so I probably am.

I was sorry there weren’t two outstanding lead actress awards to give out because Anya Taylor-Joy deserved one for “The Queen’s Gambit” too. I’ve heard that Michaela Coel’s performance in “I May Destroy You” was also off-the-charts great, but I haven’t had the courage to watch that show yet. Same with Elizabeth Olsen in “WandaVision,” which I also haven’t seen but intend to eventually.

Opinions on who got robbed, who’s overrated, etc.? Otherwise, open thread.

CAUTION: Thread may contain spoilers, and that’s A-OK with me. Avoid it if spoilers piss you off! (BTW, we need an entirely new spoiler etiquette for the streaming age, but I am not the gal to write it.)

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