All I really came to say is THANK YOU for being a consistent source of delight and laughter, all while conveying interesting and surprising information. Also, I am with you in your delight about EEAAO. What a well-deserved triumph!
Wow, two separate commentable lines of thought in a single post. I will be back. RE: Plutonium and the confluence of durable filmmaking. The 1983 movie Silkwood brings us Meryl Streep, Nora Ephron and Mike Nicholls together in a substantially true story about the perils of ingesting plutonium. Not a bad old movie especially to see the early talent of the three of them borne out for >40 years.
I think Cher (who many remember as with Sonny) has been such a great actress. Silkwood and Lorenzo's Oil and Moonstruck -- all were GREAT and recency bias no longer applies.
I was just randomly thinking about the movie The Mask that she was in. I saw it many years ago, but I still think about it sometimes. She was great in that.
I love how you took such a RANDOM question and made a delightful post about it. Plus, I have a new "hey I read the other day..." about plutonium for future dinner parties/gatherings. Thanks for finding the magic (and humor) in the mundane :)
Thank you, Lisa! But no credit should go to me and all the credit to Daniel Feldman, whose tweet I embedded up there - he's the one who tipped me off about the whole thing.
I thought it was bad when our dog ate six dark chocolate bars that I had purchased for a friend’s 50th -she is still very much alive, though she will probably not make it to 87. Thanks for this delightful post. I hope you try audio again. I really enjoy listening to you read your writing.
GOOD GRIEF. That is a lucky escape - that's a lot of chocolate for a human, let alone a dog (I know it's super-poisonous unless it's a specifed type of dog chocolate - ditto some types of peanut butter). Glad she was okay - what happened? Did it involve intervention by a vet?
And thank you so much. I just published some more audio in my latest one, and will keep doing so because it's dead fun to do. :) Hope you're having fun with yours too?
I can’t wait to listen. Yes. I’m enjoying the audio too. I wish there was a way I could see how many people listen as opposed to read.
And yes, I caught her chocolate debacle or rather my chocolate debacle within a couple of errors so it was straight to the vet. They induced vomiting and gave her charcoal - she was feeling rough for a few hours but was her normal self by the end of the day- ready to eat six more bars.
Hi Mike, as always I revel in your enthusiasm and I can honestly say that your occasional tardiness is simply part of your charm. I can't relate to people who always manage to do everyting correctly and on time, they make me feel inadequate. You don't do that.
I love that you loved that film and its story; you almost make me wish I could tolerate being in a cinema. The last time I tried (Men in Black 3), I sat with increasing credulity for no less than 40 minutes being blasted with advertising. And when the film started I found the volume almost painful.
I'll watch this one when/if it hits Netflix, but probably not all at once as my attention span is feeble these days.
Wishing you well, and wondering how you find so many mind-blowing things on t'internet. You must barely sleep.
I hear you, Cathy! I have friends who find cinemas unbearable for the same reason - either the audiovisual assault of them, or motion vertigo, or their empathy so turned up to eleven that they become so deeply affected by whatever's happening with the characters on screen that they experience something close to a panic attack. So - you're not alone there.
(And I have a problem with dread films - the ones mislabelled "horror" that actually rely on creeping you out instead of shocking you. Like Dark Water (仄暗い水の底から) from 2002, which I first watched on DVD in a very scattershot fashion: watch for half an hour, find myself so freaked out that I have to stop for a few hours until my heart rate returns to normal, then continue. I started watching late at night, but then finished the film during the daytime, so I could go step outside and calm down in the sunshine...)
Wow, that sounds fairly unpleasant. You could have done a Joey and put the DVD in the freezer. Was it that good a story that you just had to know how it ended?
Yes, it's a really great film! Unexpectedly heartbreaking, with a lot to say about mother-daughter relationships. But also ABSOLUTELY BLOODCURDLING. (It's a ghost film.)
Kinda new here. Your writing is FUN. EEAaO was definitely worth watching. It is always fun when some piece of art takes a person over (it sounds like you are in that camp). I remember when the LOTR movies starting emerging. The Academy felt Chicago was the indispensible movie that year (hasn't aged well). Eventually, the groundswell of support coronated the later LOTR films. I am a big believer in recency bias. It is fun to see how a given film holds up with time. I think I will watch it again (EEAaO) as I enjoyed how it gets tied together in the end.
Yes, I am exactly the kind of nerd that gets emotionally possessed by whatever I'm nerding out over. See: well, 90% of this newsletter. 😁But also: how I felt during the first ten minutes of "Fellowship Of The Ring". I remember sitting in the cinema as that sweeping shot showed the armies of Mordor racing towards the lines of elves with their flashing blades, the unbelievable scale of it, and feeling - OMG THEY ACTUALLY DID IT. At that point I'd waited twenty years to see LOTR on the screen and I honestly didn't think it was possible for something to compare with what was in my head since I was a kid. But - suddenly, there it was. THERE IT WAS....
And yes, recency bias could be running rampant here! The Academy Awards is a mixed bag when it comes to predicting what will become a stone-cold classic of modern cinema. Equally problematic but in a different way: box-office takings!
Perhaps there is no formula at work, and so much of it is down to how a piece of Art finds a place in people's lives, which is a deeply mysterious and complicated (and even chaotic, ie. fundamentally unpredictable) process partly due to changing tastes, real-world historical contexts and so on.
(For example: I'm sure the invasion of Ukraine is affecting how people currently feel about the anti-war message of 'All Quiet On The Western Front' which picked up 4 Oscars - but, like LOTR, it's based on a story that goes deep into the popular imagination because it's already been around for decades....)
I post about topics like recency bias all the time. Not something we get to control, its just those pesky self-organizing neurons distorting reality I am afraid. I grew up with Tolkien and was so happy my children grew up when they emerged on the screen. I am heavily involved in a history bookclub. We rate the books we read. It is fun to look back 7+ years and think WTH was I thinking that book from five years ago is WAY OVERRATED :) I think peoplw who''ve been GoodReads'in for a while probably question their old self :)
Hey Mike, I have a thought for you. We did this exercise this weekend in a roomful of adults who like to go to the movies. Other than Everything Everywhere, what are other movies with that many Oscar awards? Now which one of them would you want to see over and over? Titanic and Ben-Hur beat out Everything Everywhere.
Thanks for this, Georgia. I'm not surprised! Those are both superb films. I think I've rewatched Ben-Hur the most number of times, as it was a staple on British TV for decades of Christmasses when I was growing up...
But that's got to be a factor in how everyone feels about these films: how long they've had to appreciate them. Ben-Hur fans have had either 64 years or, well, their entire lives! And Titanic fans have now had 26 years, which is enough time for the film to be shown and shown again on "normal" TV, as well as being available on DVD and Blu-Ray and of course at the cinema.
In comparison, EEAAO is only just out. It's barely *left* the cinema - and even then, it was a muted release (it made $111 million at the box office) compared to Titanic's $2.249 billion to date (which is partly thanks to a number of rereleases at the cinema).
So that's a big time difference. And I bet most people have only seen EEAAO just the once. For some that's enough time to appreciate it, but maybe not to *love* it? Loving a film is a trickier, deeper thing, especially in comparisons - for example, there are films I love which I also think are less well-made or less well-written than other films that I don't love, and I bet that's how a lot of others fall in love with stories as well?
So my thoughts are:
- we'll all have a better idea of what most people feel about EEAAO compared to Ben-Hur in about 62 years
- ...and compared to Titanic in about 24 years!
Also: I remember a lot of articles in blogs and newspapers when Titanic came out, comparing it in lastable quality to older films. And the same happened with Avatar - which has only had just over half the time of Titanic to get people to fall in love with it. And before the recent Avatar sequel came out, the internet was a FRENZY of articles along the lines of "meh, nobody cares, this thing is throwaway rubbish and nobody will watch it and it will bomb"...and yet "Avatar: The Way Of Water" just crossed $2.3 billion worldwide? (Yet of course box office takings are an imprecise indicator of how much people really *care* about a film...)
So - yeah. Complicated.
But I think the main takeaway should be: everyone who watched EEAAO should *also* watch Titanic and Ben-Hur. :)
i loved EEAAO so much and love that you’ve written about it with love. How refreshing to see creativity and bonkersness and acting and thought in a movie. The google eyes! my goodness i loved it. and i loved reading your posts about it.
Thank you, Freya! And it surprises me not at all that you love it for all the same reasons I do. :) It does feel like a film to bring all the good people together round the fire to discuss it excitedly...
All of them, all the speeches, get to me with this thing. So much emotion and genuine gratitude struggling to express itself adequately. But in particular, Ke Huy Quan seems such a lovely bloke, and everyone seems to wish him the absolute world. (Looking forward to seeing him next in Loki Season 2).
That carved table is...(speechless awe)
Mad as a bucket of clowns. I totally agree, Gregg.
NOW I HAVE AN INSATIABLE DESIRE TO TASTE PLUTONIUM AND IT'S YOUR FAULT!!!
Okay, I don't really. Just looking for a reason to type in all caps. But I'm really glad that fellow lived to be 87.
And that table? That truly is amazing....
NOBODY SHOULD NEED AN EXCUSE TO TYPE IN ALL CAPS. IT'S A VALID FORM OF EXPRESSION. JUST ASK TERRY PRATCHETT'S "DEATH".
(Interestingly, this style is apparently known as "Small Caps": https://www.paretoguide.com/blog/2018/4/16/terry-pratchetts-death-by-small-caps )
I'm pretty sure that's a constitutionally protected right. Somewhere...
All I really came to say is THANK YOU for being a consistent source of delight and laughter, all while conveying interesting and surprising information. Also, I am with you in your delight about EEAAO. What a well-deserved triumph!
You are the nicest. THE NICEST OF THE NICEST. And I always appreciate the kindness in your comments and in your newsletters.
Scientific fact: the world needs more Asha.
Wow, two separate commentable lines of thought in a single post. I will be back. RE: Plutonium and the confluence of durable filmmaking. The 1983 movie Silkwood brings us Meryl Streep, Nora Ephron and Mike Nicholls together in a substantially true story about the perils of ingesting plutonium. Not a bad old movie especially to see the early talent of the three of them borne out for >40 years.
Oh! Good catch - you're so right, Mark. I had totally forgotten. And it's based on the true story of Karen Silkwood: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karen_Silkwood
I think Cher (who many remember as with Sonny) has been such a great actress. Silkwood and Lorenzo's Oil and Moonstruck -- all were GREAT and recency bias no longer applies.
I was just randomly thinking about the movie The Mask that she was in. I saw it many years ago, but I still think about it sometimes. She was great in that.
The era where everyone was subsumed by Jim Carrey
I love how you took such a RANDOM question and made a delightful post about it. Plus, I have a new "hey I read the other day..." about plutonium for future dinner parties/gatherings. Thanks for finding the magic (and humor) in the mundane :)
Thank you, Lisa! But no credit should go to me and all the credit to Daniel Feldman, whose tweet I embedded up there - he's the one who tipped me off about the whole thing.
Thanks for your kind words. 🙏
I thought it was bad when our dog ate six dark chocolate bars that I had purchased for a friend’s 50th -she is still very much alive, though she will probably not make it to 87. Thanks for this delightful post. I hope you try audio again. I really enjoy listening to you read your writing.
GOOD GRIEF. That is a lucky escape - that's a lot of chocolate for a human, let alone a dog (I know it's super-poisonous unless it's a specifed type of dog chocolate - ditto some types of peanut butter). Glad she was okay - what happened? Did it involve intervention by a vet?
And thank you so much. I just published some more audio in my latest one, and will keep doing so because it's dead fun to do. :) Hope you're having fun with yours too?
I can’t wait to listen. Yes. I’m enjoying the audio too. I wish there was a way I could see how many people listen as opposed to read.
And yes, I caught her chocolate debacle or rather my chocolate debacle within a couple of errors so it was straight to the vet. They induced vomiting and gave her charcoal - she was feeling rough for a few hours but was her normal self by the end of the day- ready to eat six more bars.
Hi Mike, as always I revel in your enthusiasm and I can honestly say that your occasional tardiness is simply part of your charm. I can't relate to people who always manage to do everyting correctly and on time, they make me feel inadequate. You don't do that.
I love that you loved that film and its story; you almost make me wish I could tolerate being in a cinema. The last time I tried (Men in Black 3), I sat with increasing credulity for no less than 40 minutes being blasted with advertising. And when the film started I found the volume almost painful.
I'll watch this one when/if it hits Netflix, but probably not all at once as my attention span is feeble these days.
Wishing you well, and wondering how you find so many mind-blowing things on t'internet. You must barely sleep.
I hear you, Cathy! I have friends who find cinemas unbearable for the same reason - either the audiovisual assault of them, or motion vertigo, or their empathy so turned up to eleven that they become so deeply affected by whatever's happening with the characters on screen that they experience something close to a panic attack. So - you're not alone there.
(And I have a problem with dread films - the ones mislabelled "horror" that actually rely on creeping you out instead of shocking you. Like Dark Water (仄暗い水の底から) from 2002, which I first watched on DVD in a very scattershot fashion: watch for half an hour, find myself so freaked out that I have to stop for a few hours until my heart rate returns to normal, then continue. I started watching late at night, but then finished the film during the daytime, so I could go step outside and calm down in the sunshine...)
Wow, that sounds fairly unpleasant. You could have done a Joey and put the DVD in the freezer. Was it that good a story that you just had to know how it ended?
Yes, it's a really great film! Unexpectedly heartbreaking, with a lot to say about mother-daughter relationships. But also ABSOLUTELY BLOODCURDLING. (It's a ghost film.)
I'll give it a go if I come across it, thanks!
I'm in Australia and it's not netflix now, so it might be worth a search? I'm sure they'll be advertising it pretty heavily now.
Thank you, will do as I have just finished Orange is the New Black and am feeling bereft.
Table - that I would dust.
The way you phrase this is almost racy.
Not racy, lazy. Goes to show what a special piece it is that I would wield a duster over it. My husband understood.
Now - we're talkin reality
Kinda new here. Your writing is FUN. EEAaO was definitely worth watching. It is always fun when some piece of art takes a person over (it sounds like you are in that camp). I remember when the LOTR movies starting emerging. The Academy felt Chicago was the indispensible movie that year (hasn't aged well). Eventually, the groundswell of support coronated the later LOTR films. I am a big believer in recency bias. It is fun to see how a given film holds up with time. I think I will watch it again (EEAaO) as I enjoyed how it gets tied together in the end.
Thank you, Mark!
Yes, I am exactly the kind of nerd that gets emotionally possessed by whatever I'm nerding out over. See: well, 90% of this newsletter. 😁But also: how I felt during the first ten minutes of "Fellowship Of The Ring". I remember sitting in the cinema as that sweeping shot showed the armies of Mordor racing towards the lines of elves with their flashing blades, the unbelievable scale of it, and feeling - OMG THEY ACTUALLY DID IT. At that point I'd waited twenty years to see LOTR on the screen and I honestly didn't think it was possible for something to compare with what was in my head since I was a kid. But - suddenly, there it was. THERE IT WAS....
And yes, recency bias could be running rampant here! The Academy Awards is a mixed bag when it comes to predicting what will become a stone-cold classic of modern cinema. Equally problematic but in a different way: box-office takings!
Perhaps there is no formula at work, and so much of it is down to how a piece of Art finds a place in people's lives, which is a deeply mysterious and complicated (and even chaotic, ie. fundamentally unpredictable) process partly due to changing tastes, real-world historical contexts and so on.
(For example: I'm sure the invasion of Ukraine is affecting how people currently feel about the anti-war message of 'All Quiet On The Western Front' which picked up 4 Oscars - but, like LOTR, it's based on a story that goes deep into the popular imagination because it's already been around for decades....)
I post about topics like recency bias all the time. Not something we get to control, its just those pesky self-organizing neurons distorting reality I am afraid. I grew up with Tolkien and was so happy my children grew up when they emerged on the screen. I am heavily involved in a history bookclub. We rate the books we read. It is fun to look back 7+ years and think WTH was I thinking that book from five years ago is WAY OVERRATED :) I think peoplw who''ve been GoodReads'in for a while probably question their old self :)
Hey Mike, I have a thought for you. We did this exercise this weekend in a roomful of adults who like to go to the movies. Other than Everything Everywhere, what are other movies with that many Oscar awards? Now which one of them would you want to see over and over? Titanic and Ben-Hur beat out Everything Everywhere.
Thanks for this, Georgia. I'm not surprised! Those are both superb films. I think I've rewatched Ben-Hur the most number of times, as it was a staple on British TV for decades of Christmasses when I was growing up...
But that's got to be a factor in how everyone feels about these films: how long they've had to appreciate them. Ben-Hur fans have had either 64 years or, well, their entire lives! And Titanic fans have now had 26 years, which is enough time for the film to be shown and shown again on "normal" TV, as well as being available on DVD and Blu-Ray and of course at the cinema.
In comparison, EEAAO is only just out. It's barely *left* the cinema - and even then, it was a muted release (it made $111 million at the box office) compared to Titanic's $2.249 billion to date (which is partly thanks to a number of rereleases at the cinema).
So that's a big time difference. And I bet most people have only seen EEAAO just the once. For some that's enough time to appreciate it, but maybe not to *love* it? Loving a film is a trickier, deeper thing, especially in comparisons - for example, there are films I love which I also think are less well-made or less well-written than other films that I don't love, and I bet that's how a lot of others fall in love with stories as well?
So my thoughts are:
- we'll all have a better idea of what most people feel about EEAAO compared to Ben-Hur in about 62 years
- ...and compared to Titanic in about 24 years!
Also: I remember a lot of articles in blogs and newspapers when Titanic came out, comparing it in lastable quality to older films. And the same happened with Avatar - which has only had just over half the time of Titanic to get people to fall in love with it. And before the recent Avatar sequel came out, the internet was a FRENZY of articles along the lines of "meh, nobody cares, this thing is throwaway rubbish and nobody will watch it and it will bomb"...and yet "Avatar: The Way Of Water" just crossed $2.3 billion worldwide? (Yet of course box office takings are an imprecise indicator of how much people really *care* about a film...)
So - yeah. Complicated.
But I think the main takeaway should be: everyone who watched EEAAO should *also* watch Titanic and Ben-Hur. :)
i loved EEAAO so much and love that you’ve written about it with love. How refreshing to see creativity and bonkersness and acting and thought in a movie. The google eyes! my goodness i loved it. and i loved reading your posts about it.
Thank you, Freya! And it surprises me not at all that you love it for all the same reasons I do. :) It does feel like a film to bring all the good people together round the fire to discuss it excitedly...
Fun and interesting, Mike.
Thanks, Mike! Appreciate you saying that.
I've watched that speech a few times now, and it makes my eyes water every time.
All of them, all the speeches, get to me with this thing. So much emotion and genuine gratitude struggling to express itself adequately. But in particular, Ke Huy Quan seems such a lovely bloke, and everyone seems to wish him the absolute world. (Looking forward to seeing him next in Loki Season 2).
Agreed!
That beautiful carving to me is a three dimensional glimpse of what it's like to evolve spiritually