19 reviews, mostly podcasts.

Literature, etc.

Amanda Hess: “How a Fractious Women’s Movement Came to Lead the Left” — This isn’t just an account of the women’s march on Washington and its various internal controversies; it is also a brief history of conflicts within feminism since the days of the women’s suffrage movement. Extremely edifying.

Movies

13th — This is an intensely powerful film with such a tremendous roster of eloquent interviewees that its lack of narration hardly seems like a stunt. Together, the guests gathered by Ava DuVernay (including Angela Davis and Cory Booker) tell a long, fucked up story about the political processes that led to the staggering rise in incarceration of black people at the end of the 20th century. It leads with the racist myth-making of D.W. Griffith, and traces those myths through the increasingly covert dog whistle rhetoric of “law and order” presidents: Nixon, Reagan, Bush Sr., and Clinton. It isn’t just powerful argumentation, it is deft and irresistible storytelling, even as it becomes increasingly horrifying as it nears the present day. Every talking head is beautifully framed (DuVernay isn’t just a documentarian, after all) and the soundtrack is a brilliant mix of the likes of Nina Simone, Killer Mike and Lawrence Brownlee. (Look him up. Do it.) If the Academy chafes at the nomination of what is definitely a TV show and not a movie for its Documentary Feature award, this would be a stellar alternative to my preferred nominee, O.J.: Made in America. Pick of the week. 

Television

Battlestar Galactica: Season 2, episodes 18-20 — Oh, and they pulled the season together. “Downloaded” is a classic, and the premise of having Caprica Six have her own “Head Baltar” as a reversal of Baltar’s situation with his own hallucinated (?) Six is the best addition to the show since Pegasus. Watching Tricia Helfer and James Callis play the opposite of their usual roles is a delight and demonstrates just how much they’re the best pairing in the show, and two of the most skilled actors it possesses. Grace Park… less so. The finale is a stunner, far exceeding the season one finale with its clever time jump mechanism, but also with one of the most compelling political plotlines the show has done so far. BSG season two is intensely patchy, but when it’s good, it’s staggering.

Music

Philip Glass Ensemble: Einstein on the Beach (1993 recording) — I don’t know why it took me so long to listen to this in its entirety. I have known a few of its more substantial chunks like the back of my hand for a lot of years, but had never made my way through the entire opera. It took Laurie Anderson to make me finally do it. (And hoo boy, does “O Superman” ever borrow liberally from this. In the best way.) This week, Einstein on the Beach accompanied my bus commutes, my writing, my running and my IKEA furniture assembly. (Einstein on the Beach plus IKEA furniture might not be your idea of a Saturday afternoon well spent, but I was happy as a clam.) I think if you’re going to listen to all of Einstein on the Beach, the way to do it is to take it in bits and be otherwise occupied for at least some of it. I can imagine that it would be mentally exhausting to listen to the entire recording — even though it runs a solid hour shorter than actual productions do. But what may be tedious taken all at once is often euphoric when heard in pieces. Some sections are more enticing that others, and since the sections are so long and so repetitive, that means that the lesser ones tend to outstay their welcome. (The “Night Train” scene, with its dated electric piano sound is a particular offender. Why is it that sound gets on my nerves but I’m completely fine with the omnipresent Farfisa organ? We’ll never know.) But the best scenes in this are actually curiously moving, in spite of having virtually no content. The opening and closing “Knee Plays,” where poetry is recited repeatedly alongside a chorus that’s just counting out loud is, I dare say, beautiful. But I’ll be damned if I know why. I’ll be damned if I can figure out what any of this means at all. I’d love to see it, though I halfway think it might be insufferable. The best bits of this are possibly Philip Glass’s finest achievements. Certainly I prefer it to anything he’s written for conventional ensembles of acoustic instruments. I intend to check out the 1978 recording as well, though it is less complete than this second one. Actually, come to think of it, that might be more of a feature than a bug.

Podcasts

Reply All: “Second Language” — Sruthi’s cyborg interview isn’t the real anchor of this episode, which is mostly notable for a Yes Yes No in which I was proud to be a yes while Alex Goldman was a no. But it was about Norm Kelly and I’m Canadian, so it almost doesn’t count.

On the Media: “See You In Court” — This features a useful primer on what exactly a constitutional crisis constitutes, another primer on the differences between conventional liberal values and anti-fascist tactics, and a news consumer’s handbook on coverage of protests. So, it’s meat-and-potatoes On the Media of the sort that I suspect Brooke Gladstone is most in favour of. And, as much as I enjoy Bob Garfield’s impassioned editorials, I confess I’m really still in it for the analysis. This is great. Pick of the week. 

Pop Culture Happy Hour: “The LEGO Batman Movie and MasterChef Junior” — I’m inclined to check out both of these things. Hearing Glen Weldon enthuse about The LEGO Batman Movie feels like the culmination of an entire thread of discourse that’s existed in this podcast for years. And MasterChef Junior sounds like just what I need to make myself feel inadequate just as I’m upping my own cooking game. You can’t be too humble.

Radiolab: “Radiolab Presents: Ponzi Supernova” — I’m not sold enough on this to listen to Ponzi Supernova itself, but I’m happy to have heard a bit of this story with interjections from Jad and Robert.

Pop Culture Happy Hour: “Small Batch: The Grammys” — The Grammys are a joke. That is all.

Pop Culture Happy Hour: “Philip Pullman To Follow-Up ‘His Dark Materials’ Trilogy” — I don’t know if I’m happier about the fact that Pullman is writing more His Dark Materials or the fact that Glen Weldon got to talk to the guy who is indirectly responsible for him meeting his husband. Regardless, they are both lovely things.

The Gist: “David Frum Beseeches You To Focus” — The interview with David Frum is well worth your while to hear somebody talk who is smart and involved with supposedly elitist coastal media, but is also Republican. I can’t ever quite like him, but I’m glad that he exists. If only all Republicans were like him.

Chapo Trap House: “The Devil in Mother Jones” — It would have been great to hear them talk to Bauer a bit about his piece on private prisons, but I’ll take right-wing militia infiltration too.

Love and Radio: “How to Argue” — A follow-up to “The Silver Dollar,” a back episode I’m fairly fond of. I’m honestly a bit conflicted on Daryl Davis’s advice about how to talk to horrible people. One of his premises is that everybody deserves to be heard, even if they’re wrong or hateful. Much of the time I’m not convinced of this. But honestly, the thing that I’ve been praising Love and Radio for over the past several months is its ability to present people with whom I disagree in all of their complexity. I’d never say that this show should stop featuring guests that I don’t agree with. So, why do I find Daryl Davis’s radical acceptance of hateful people so hard to accept? I can’t easily answer this. But how like Love and Radio to be troubling, even in a basic, utilitarian discussion of tactics.

On the Media: “Out Like Flynn” — I think the idea that General Flynn’s resignation might have actually thrown the Trump spin machine off kilter is ludicrously optimistic, but that’s just me.

99% Invisible: “Usonia the Beautiful” — I preferred the first part of this story, that detailed the actual development and history of the Usonian homes. But this is interesting for the details about how those homes succeeded and how they failed to live up to their promise, a generation later.

Arts and Ideas: “Rude Valentines. Neil Gaiman, Translating China’s Arts” — Yeah, I can get behind this. This is BBC’s major arts and culture podcast, and it’s as fun and smart as you’d expect. I understand there are Brits who think the BBC is severely wanting, and maybe if I lived there and was more inundated by it (and if I watched their news), maybe I’d see some of the problems. But I more or less think that it’s the platonic ideal of media and that we should all have a licence fee model to pay for a public broadcaster.

Pop Culture Happy Hour: “Legion and Planet Earth II” — I feel that Glen Weldon is overstating the extent to which Planet Earth II anthropomorphizes the animals it features by a smidgen. Linda Holmes is right to point out that it mostly portrays them as wanting to find food and reproduce. I’d add that the farthest David Attenborough goes in his anthropomorphic writing is to portray an animal as making a choice. Which, of course, they do. To what extent is the baby lizard in the now viral clip with the racer snakes anthropomorphized? The film is showing something that is true: the lizard’s life is at risk, and it has to either outrun some snakes or stay perfectly still. Tension can and should be allowed to rest on the decision that the lizard has to make, because it’s a real decision, even if not a conscious one, and it is legitimately high-stakes. I have little to no interest in Legion.

On The Media: “Leak State” — The highlights of this are the segments on why we should be careful with our use of the word “treason,” and why we should be careful when comparing Donald Trump to various other strongman leaders. Basically, the thing to take from this is that the stuff you say means things — specific things, if you’re using language right — so if you’re on TV or writing in a newspaper, you should be aware of the specific things that the stuff you say means. Has this become less than self-evident?

Beef and Dairy Network: “Dr David Pin” — Okay, we’ll see where this goes. I’m aware that this is semi-serialized, so I’m hoping that they can build on the continuity they establish without relying on it too heavily. Because this tiny episode would in itself be a fairly excellent longer segment in a sketch show. But I’m optimistic about this — it is actually produced like the thing it purports to be, thus eliminating the largest problem with the other serialized comedy podcast I listen to (Welcome to Night Vale).