7 Things for Quarantine
Hello friends!
Sorry we haven’t had one of our one-way chats in a while. The past 6 weeks have simultaneously felt like a blur and century. I’m sure it feels like that for you too, so I’ll spare ya the rest of the quarantine comments with a simple “stay safe out there”.
Anyway, I thought I’d recommend a few things to divert your boredom/stress during...ya know. This awful awful time. So here it is! A list of 7 things I like!
1. Dead Eyes
Tom Hanks has had an INSANE career, but more than that, he holds a weird position most celebrities don’t.
You see, people actually like Tom Hanks.
Some call him “this generation’s Jimmy Stewart”. Others say he’s “America’s Dad”. This article calls him “a gold standard of menschiness.” The US just has a love affair with the guy, the whole world really. If they’re not praising his abilities as a performer, it’s his likability as a person.
It’s almost as if we’ve all unconsciously gathered around the dude and said, “yep, that’s last normal person in Hollywood. Kind. Generous. Affable.”
Now. Imagine you’re a young actor who has been given the chance to work with Tom Hanks, but before you make it to set, he fires you.
Actually, he doesn’t just fire you. He mysteriously fires you from a 2 sentence speaking role in the critically acclaimed 2001 HBO mini-series Band of Brothers. You’ve told all your friends. All your relatives. You feel like it’s going to be the first job that leads to all the other jobs, and boom. Fired. And perhaps worst of all, you’re told by an assistant that “America’s Dad” kicked you to the curb because of your “dead eyes.”
On one hand, ouch.
But on the other hand…it’s kinda hilarious.
Thank God Connor Ratliff understands that dichotomy and is willing to capitalize on it. Dead Eyes will likely be in my top 10 media of 2020. It explores turning failure into art, the whispery weird world of entertainment, where everyone acts like they know what they’re doing but rarely do, and it laughs the whole way down.
What could have easily been a bitter tirade by a burned actor is turned into a lovely meditation on resilience that harbors no ill will for the dude who played Mr. Rodgers to perfection.
Ratliff unfolding the mystery behind his firing is presented with an expert narrative focus, the guests have all been incredibly charming (shout out to Jon Hamm, Aimee Mann, and Bobby Moynihan for having rhyming names and being delightful), and I now know more than I ever thought I’d know about Tom Hanks…and that’s weirdly nice.
The most recent episode dove into how Coronavirus affected the show and it truly moved me. Check it out for free on Spotify - https://open.spotify.com/show/5dEsgMhmVy7wK8TSUrVnsQ?si=KyDT4Yl_Rh6WRQPs-Hkn_w
2. Finders Keepers
So you know how social media right now is mostly filled with depression and people talking about Netflix’s Tiger King? Well let me introduce you to a documentary that combats both of those voids.
Finder’s Keepers is about a man named John Wood whose foot is amputated in a plane crash. Wanting to use his own bones to make a tribute to his late father, he bizarrely keeps his own mummified leg in a BBQ grill, and places that grill in a North Carolina storage unit.
I know… but it gets better.
John misses a few payments on the storage unit allowing the contents inside to be sold at auction. Enter Shannon Whisnant, the man who legally buys John’s grill, and therefore leg. What does he invoke?
Finders. Keepers.
Omg.
Hilarious, stupefying, and southern to the core, the tale woven by these 2 men is such a great watch. Thematically it has a lot to say, but I feel like getting too much into it would rob you of the opportunity to be surprised by how much depth can be derived from a man’s litigious foot battle.
Just trust me and give it a watch. It’s not nearly as villainous as Tiger King but just as enthralling, and no animals were harmed in the making.
https://www.amazon.com/Finders-Keepers-John-Wood/dp/B079599877
3. Worthitkids
I found animator Worthitkids after binging one of my all-time favorite internet shows, Monster Factory with Justin and Griffin McElroy.
He had done a fan animation of one of their bits and it turned out MAGNIFICENT! The unique art style, hilarious facial expressions, edited to be short, sweet, and punchy, WOW! Most fan made content is NOT this high quality. Worthitkids was able to take this little moment I had already laughed at and give it a completely new, but still funny as heck, personality.
I became an instant subscriber and was blessed with bits from It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia, The Eric Andre Show, and Good Mythical Morning. Every time a new animation showed up in my inbox, I instantly got excited. They even did a segment of Brockhampton’s song Boogie.
Recently Worthitkids has been creating completely original content and it’s fantastic. Wholesome, creative, silly, I’m in love. Witches on Tinder, Frasier and Niles Become Demon Lords, and Palpatine's Journey, all are very very good and I’ve watched them multiple times. His newest short, Xylophone, is CRIMINALLY UNDER VIEWED! So be sure to click the link and support a great artist doing great work.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ou7GZDeOp3g
4. Snowpiercer
Snowpiercer is an English language adaptation, of a French graphic novel, from a Korean producing and directing team, staring a slew of Americans, and the Canadian drummer from Scott Pilgrim vs the World.
In the movie, about a thousand survivors live through the new global ice age on a superfast sci-fi train while being separated into a harsh caste system. Poor in the back. Rich in the front. A war is brewing between the both ends, and we get to see the fallout.
You may have heard of this film recently as director Bong Joon-Ho just won multiple Oscars for Parasite, a feature I absolutely loved and talked about in this video. That said, Snowpiercer is on another level entirely. Performance, sound design, plot, it all just clicks. Not a pebble out of place. It almost feels like a Christopher Nolan project in that way. Detailed. Precise. I could watch it 20 times in a row and still be finding new things.
What stood out the most for me on this watch was the cinematography and art direction. It just builds and builds and builds, until there’s this fully realized world, and I’m standing right there in it with the characters.
AND THEN THE AXE SCENE COMES IN AND I LOSE MY GOSH DANG MARBLES!!!!
Unfortunately, Harvey Weinstein buried the film’s North American debut because he is a petty, rotten, bag of vomit. Which is probably a statement unfair to vomit. There’s no doubt in my mind that if we had gotten the Snowpiercer we deserved in 2013, the entire cinematic landscape would look totally different. Oh well, at least Bong Joon-Ho is doing alright now and we still got this masterpiece to watch after the fact.
https://www.netflix.com/title/70270364
5. Cells at Work
When I was a kid I almost exclusively consumed edu-tainment. Stuff meant to delight, but with the added bonus of learning. There was Cyberchase, The Magic School Bus, and The Crocodile Hunter when it came to TV. Putt-Putt Adventures, Math Blasters, and The Oregon Trail for the PC. The Magic Tree House books, A Series of Unfortunate Events, and The Percy Jackson saga when I went to the library. All that stuff hits me right in the nostalgia and I’m so grateful for it.
Funny thing is, there’s not really an adult equivalent for any of these things. We have trivia shows and a couple of charming British narrators to tell us when the birds migrate, but that’s it…
Or so I thought.
Cells at Work is Osmosis Jones but get rid of the Bill Murray garbage and crank up the violence rating to SUPER-GORE. It’s silly, it’s smart, it’s a million things I didn’t even know I wanted.
Set in the miraculous world of the human body, we follow a clumsy red blood cell and a deadly Neutrophil (white blood cell) as they go about their daily struggle and keep the body healthy. Fighting ailments, joining forces with weirdos, navigating the insane maze that is the circulatory system, how are you not sold on this premise already?
The show is at its best when it comes to character design, incorporating actual cell structure into the human-ified counterparts. Platelets are all toddlers that carry construction tools and white baseball caps as they’re tiny white cells used to repair tissue. Macrophage’s have giant dresses and carry meat cleavers as they are amorphously shaped and protect the body from infection. Red blood cells get fun little mail carrier hats and carry oxygen canisters and picnic baskets throughout the body. Brilliant!
Cells at Work Blood vessel depiction
Image I found from a doctor-y website
It’s amazing what writer/illustrator Akane Shimizu was able to pull off with the rest of the anime team. The kind of amazing you don’t even recognize until you take a step back and think, oh yeah, this didn’t just come out of someone’s head fully formed. People had to MAKE this. Think about the best fighting style to give Streptococcus Pyogenes? What does the lymphatic vessel look like as a building? How do you go about adding sound effects without making everything disgusting? The team answers all these questions with effortless creativity and it makes for great tv.
https://www.netflix.com/title/81028791
6. Over the Garden Wall
So, some backstory.
About a week ago I felt the sudden urge to listen through the back catalog of my friend Joseph Ruddleston. He’s a singer/songwriter I met through Hitrecord.org who makes some STELLAR indie folk music. Go check out his Spotify or his band O, Memorie. Great stuff.
Anyway, I was re-listening through his catalog and came across the song Ghost Mind. I had heard it before at least a dozen times, but this time I ACTUALLY listened to it. My full attention. No distractions. No nothing.
I cried.
And then when I was done crying I remembered this beautiful cartoon mini-series called Over the Garden Wall. And I rewatched that. And I cried again. And I bought the dvd. And I bought the vinyl version of the soundtrack.
Over the Garden Wall is probably the best thing Cartoon Network has ever produced. Steven Universe is rad, Craig of the Creek is underrated, Star Wars the Clone Wars is better than I remembered, The Amazing World of Gumball is a visual feast, and Regular Show is top tier, but Over the Garden Wall outranks them all.
The show is about 2 half-brothers who get lost in an enchanted forest called The Unknown. Looking to find their way home, they come across a talking blue bird, an ominous woodsman, and a host of other creepy characters…like this pumpkin guy.
Elijah Wood, Christopher Lloyd, and Tim Curry, all star in the series and voice their parts to perfection. While Grammy winner Jack Jones, 80s crooner Chris Isaak, and opera legend Samuel Ramey, head up a superb soundtrack produced by The Blasting Company. When I think about the casting choices there’s such a vision behind everything. Such purpose. Melanie Lynskey is the perfect sarcastic blue bird. Choosing child actor Collin Dean to play the youngest sibling balances every moment and brings a sense of authenticity that I didn’t expect. John Cleese NAILS eccentric billionaire living in a haunted mansion.
It really feels like the big wigs put a lot of trust in Patrick McHale on this one, and I’m so glad they did because we haven’t seen much like it since.
The aesthetics will remind you of a blustery Autumn day or an old painting found the 50% off bin at your local 2nd hand shop, but the end result is far from cold or dusty. When it comes to world building the show draws heavily from 19th century American folk tales, but it still manages to plant itself firmly in the modern era with absurdist humor and complex character work. The tone can be almost melancholic at times, but there’s a hope beneath it all that’s powerfully encouraging. The duality here, the balance, it’s something rarely found in media of any kind, much less animation.
Much like the song Ghost Mind, Over the Garden Wall hits me in a very real way most stuff dosen’t. Go check it out.
https://www.hulu.com/series/over-the-garden-wall-7955110c-56cb-45b1-9eae-68550344128b
7. Sherlock Holmes (2009) and Sherlock Holmes: Game of Shadows
After the ABYSMAL final season of BBC’s Benedict Cumberbatch series, and re-watching these two films at home over the past week and half, the clouds have parted and I see the light: Robert Downey Jr. is the best Sherlock Holmes.
The slow motion punches, pithy jokes, and decently written mysteries accumulate to 2 beautiful distractions. Especially that first installment, I mean, are you kidding me with this scene? This is EXACTLY what I want right now.
I’ve been a Holmes fan ever since I read the little kid version of Hound of the Baskervilles back in the 6th grade, and these Guy Ritchie flicks know PRECISELY how to capitalize on what got me invested as a 12 year old: unlikely best friends navigating high stress situations together.
RDJ plays his part wonderfully manic. He’s a man of the people, but also hates everyone. He’s dirty and grimy, but understands refinement. There’s a calm brilliance that’s easy to root for, but he’s also a bit of a douche. Then you have Jude Law come in with some surprisingly genuine chemistry, doing exactly what Watson does best: grounding the narrative. What a winning combination! It’s classic, it’s fun, and again, it’s exactly what I want right now.
Other interpretations may have given these characters more dimension, but throwing emotionally complicated angles on things doesn’t always make your media better. Sometimes ya gotta Marie Kondo that shazz. Find what that sparks the most joy and focus on that.
And my joy gets sparked every time RDJ slow motion punches another man in the face while monologuing strategic nonsense.
Speaking of sparking joy, the villain characters are so well constructed in these movies! In the first film Mark Strong tears into some occult spirituality and offers a great yang to Holmes “science” yin. Finding a thematic match like that is hard, and even harder to do well, but in my opinion the whole thing goes off without a hitch. It feels like they did their 20th century homework too, pushing that PG-13 rating pretty far with a few spooky sacrifice scenes I had totally forgot existed.
In the second flick Jared Harris plays a hammer of a Moriarty: brainy but obsessed with power. He’s threatening in way you don’t see often, brutish but distinguished at the same time. They tried to get there with Bane in the last Batman movie, but flubbed it in the 3rd act (imho). And ya know, I gotta say, the 3rd act of Game of Shadows is BOMB DIGGITY.
Top this franchise off with 2 fantastic scores by Hans Zimmer, an exciting steampunk setting that’s used well, and even more slow motion punching?
*chef’s kiss* can’t go wrong.
https://www.netflix.com/title/70110558
Thanks for reading through my list! Let me know what your favorite Quarantine distractions are in the comments section, I love finding new things! :D