2021 – Page 16 – PopCult Reviews

TV Review – The Falcon and Winter Soldier

The Falcon and Winter Soldier Episode 2 (Disney+)
Written by Michael Kastelstein
Directed by Kari Skogland

It should be literally impossible to discuss a piece of Captain America media without the conversation becoming political. This is something that’s annoyed me about the candy-consumption of so much fandom is that they want their entertainment divorced entirely from a discussion about current events and the state of the world. That might work to an extent with Guardians of the Galaxy or the Silver Surfer, but when the characters are very much tied to the government and foreign policy, you cannot avoid it. The fundamental nature of Captain America is a product of World War II-era jingoism. That doesn’t mean he hasn’t been used to tell nuanced stories that make critiques of the United States, but we are simply not going to ever get something like that from Marvel. Marvel has repeatedly partnered with the American military-industrial complex to help mythologize “the soldier” in popular culture. In Black Panther, they couldn’t let Wakanda be autonomous; they had to inject a CIA agent in as one of the good guys. So it is literally impossible to talk about this Disney+ series without getting political.

TV Review – Servant Season 2

Servant Season 2 (Apple TV+)
Written by Tony Basgallop, Nina Braddock, and Ishana Night Shyamalan
Directed by Julia Ducournau, Ishana Night Shyamalan, M. Night Shyamalan, Lisa Brühlmann, Isabella Eklöf, and Nimród Antal

Servant is a show that confounds me at times. Its premise is an intriguing one: a married couple hires a nanny to care for a reborn doll and find that their child is suddenly restored to life. Just in that one sentence, we can explore grief, relationships under stress, what it means to be alive, and a big supernatural hook to boot. Yet, I always engage with the show having some hesitation because of M. Night Shyamalan’s involvement. I have a complicated history with the director’s body of work because I started out loving what he was doing only to watch him go off the rails most spectacularly. He’s not the main creative force behind Servant, that would be Tony Basgallop, but there is an evident influence from Shyamalan in the aesthetics and plot beats of each episode.

Weekly Wonderings – March 22nd, 2021

So last week, my wife and I got our first shots of the Pfizer COVID vaccine. She had slightly more side effects in the days that followed than I did, but neither of us felt anything alarming. We both definitely were hit with a wave of pretty profound fatigue and minor shoulder soreness. I have heard the second round hits people harder, but thankfully we’re in a situation where we can take the day off if need be.

TV Review – The Falcon and Winter Solider Episode 1

The Falcon and Winter Soldier Episode 1 (Disney+)
Written by Malcolm Spellman
Directed by Kari Skogland

Wandavision set the bar for Marvel series on Disney+ and we are getting our look at the next one fairly quickly. The Falcon and Winter Soldier directly continues events from Avengers: Endgame, mainly the passing of the torch from Steve Rogers to Sam Wilson. With a Captain America story, the expectations are going to be very different from something like Wandavision. One episode in and it appears the showrunners know the tone and type of story that works best with these characters so we’ll see where things go.

Weekly Wonderings – March 15th, 2021

This week marks the first anniversary of the COVID lockdown beginning for most of us in the United States. I would argue I never left the lockdown, at least in mindset, despite four months being forced to teach virtually from my former school. I also don’t think opening things up right now is the smart move with so little of the population having received vaccinations. As someone who saw how lax adherence to COVID policy was in a school, I don’t have confidence there won’t be another surge of spreads as variants pop up. What’s really going on is the American boredom mindset. They are done thinking about COVID, so they will invent a fantasy in their heads where we are past it.

Documentary Round-Up – March 2021

I Can’t Get You Out Of My Head (2021)
Written & Directed by Adam Curtis
You can watch this series here

I became a huge Adam Curtis fan a couple of years back when I watched his documentary Hypernormalisation. He can articulate the sentiments I feel about humanity’s current state, this looming sense of dread about a very uncertain future. Even better, he can go back in history and outline how we came to be in this state. Hypernormalisation outlined how so much of the world has come to accept capitalism’s sustained misery and just stop believing there can be anything else. I Can’t Get You Out Of My Head, subtitled An Emotional History of the Modern World, expands on that documentary’s ideas. We follow individuals from around the world as their stories reflect more significant movements happening in society.

Weekly Wonderings – March 8th, 2021

Time keeps on moving. I feel like I am doing a very good job of keeping myself busy most times during this unemployment period. I’ve made a few hundred dollars off work I’m creating for Teachers Pay Teachers, which feels good. We’ve also already started clearing out things that won’t be making our next move with us. There’s a local used media store that we’ve made two trips to and come out with around $250. I’ve also sold a board game on eBay, but I find the online marketplace environment, whether it’s there or Craigslist is slow and filled with idiots trying to rip you off. Within our first week of selling an exercise bike, someone tried to dupe us into this cashier’s check scam. They asked us to pay a person they had hired to come to pick it up, which was really odd. It felt off, but I didn’t know why so I just googled the elements of this sale and found out it’s a fairly common thing. Funny, when we started asking more detailed questions, we never heard from them again. I feel like most of my adulthood, I’ve done a pretty job of smelling a scam when I see one. So far, so good, crossing my fingers.

The newest episode of the podcast is up with all the reviews from last week. I am sketching out plans for something that isn’t so redundant, with me actually on the microphone. Look for that by at least the end of March. I already know what I’ll be talking about in the first one, just a matter of outlining everything.

TV Review – Wandavision Episode 9

Wandavision Episode 9 (Disney+)
Written by Jac Schaeffer
Directed by Matt Shakman

So the first of the Marvel series has come to an end in rather a standard way. All of the grand fan theories really didn’t add up to much, with the writers choosing to not go too deep into the next phase of the MCU. There’s an exact resolution for Wanda here, the story told over these episodes comes to a definite ending, but we see a new path opened up for her leading into the next Doctor Strange film. The same can be said for Vision, who has a new lease on life. I’m not sure if we will see him again when Wanda returns, but I am sure there are plans for a reunion somewhere down the line.

Movie Review – Saint Maud

Saint Maud (2021)
Written & Directed by Rose Glass

Religion and horror seemed tied together since the very beginning. Christianity has its fair share of dark & horrific elements. Just sit down and read through the Old Testament, and you’ll come across multiple gruesome stories about the wrath of God. Religious dogma in the hands of mentally unstable people can be a volatile combination. You can look across the American landscape and see a little under half the population caught up in a fervor fueled by a distorted understanding of the Bible. While filmmaker Rose Glass may not be living in the heart of the United States’s current madness, she certainly shows an understanding of how this particular poison can be so enticing to a person who is alone and unstable.

Weekly Wonderings – March 1, 2021

We start a brand-new month today, with February being another tumultuous one in the middle of this pandemic. As I posted late last week, we had to put our dog Clyde to sleep. This came just six months after our other dog, Lily suddenly passed away. We spent the last couple of weeks nursing Clyde, and he showed improvement but then would slip backward. It certainly tore us up at the moment the immediate days following, but I am starting to be honest with myself that he was given the relief he deserved. We have plenty of photos and videos of them both, so I plan on making sure those are backed up all over the internet, so we always have them to go to when we need them. They won’t be our last dogs, but it will be a little while before we’re ready to bring in a new family member.

This week also saw me roll out a very simple PopCult Podcast. WordPress is partnered with Anchor, a site that lets you convert posts into computer-read segments. You can add backing music, transitions, etc. It’s free, and it is pretty cool that I can make my blog in an audio form for people that want to listen rather than read off the screen. I would like to explore podcasting this year, but I am definitely taking my time with it. My plan would be to have this computer-read weekly podcast and then, every couple of weeks, do something like PopCult Plus, which would be me on the mic, maybe doing some fiction readings, exclusive review content, eventually having guests maybe. Taking that slow, especially with a big move planned for some time this year, I don’t want to get too deep into the podcast world. Anchor just made it incredibly easy to lay a music track behind the audio, and that little touch makes things sound so much more professional, in my opinion.