Hello hello,
This week my parents came to visit so I got to turn my brain off for a couple of days. We went shopping, saw fun attractions, and ate a lot of food! I didn’t realize it but I am used to eating MUCH less food everyday than I used to. Let’s just say my stomach is… reacting.
Here’s a quick list of the stuff we did:
We went to an amazing Lebanese place where the waiter gate kept the sauce recipe from us.
Saw the Rockefeller tree and 5th ave stuff… along with every other family in the United States and Europe.
Went to the Met
Went to the transit museum which has hello old subway cars and screaming children.
Went to a place Gabby called a tourist trap and was lowkey mid I’m sorry.
Saw “the play that goes wrong” because my dad hates musicals.
Shopping.
Better Man
On Christmas Day, my family pretty much always goes to see a movie. Since I’m already seeing Babygirl with Gabby we had to go see the monkey movie. If you don’t know about this movie, it’s a musician biopic about Robbie Williams. I had no clue who this guy was but apparently he’s super famous in England. The catch of the film is that instead of an actor, Williams is represented by a monkey. Overall, this choice was pretty fun and I got over it fast. Without the monkey, it’s not much different than Rocketman, the Elton Jon biopic that’s also really good. I didn’t mind this though because the music was really good and it was beautifully shot. I just wish… Jon Chu would die in a fire and be replaced by Michael Gracey. The film was amazing, with awesome shots, colors, choreo and everything else. These things were all HEIGHTENED by the director’s choices as opposed to Wicked which only succeeded DESPITE what Jon Chu decided to put on screen.
My favorite part of the movie is this music video style long take of Robbie Williams’ boy band where everything just comes together awesomely. I’m just happy this got made and it can show movie musical fans that color exists in the world again. I honestly think him being a monkey made me like him more and made some of the more serious bits of the film easier to digest (like self-harm and drug abuse). It’s funny though because the monkey thing is explained in the trailer but not the film lmaooo.
Was it completely original? Beyond the monkey bits, no. Was it amazingly made and worth seeing? 100%.
Lastly, no indictment of the 2024 movie musical would be complete without a quick mention of Emilia Perez. I watched this last week and I fear I did not give it the chance it maybe deserved. The problem with Emilia Perez was, from the very beginning, I was bored as fuck. The concept was cool and super unique, the acting was mid, the writing was fine, but the music was some of the worst shit I’ve heard in a while. Not a single banger, over 90% of the cast just could not sing and it was auto-tuned to hell. Made it borderline unwatchable in my opinion. There’s literally a moment where a doctor sings “Do they want a penis or vagina” super auto-tuned and it’s meant to be played seriously. Now obviously there must be something here if it got the Cannes Laurels or whatever, but it also seems like the exact kind of thing a film festival audience would performatively eat up.
And this has nothing to do with the plot sounding like a fake movie in a 30 Rock episode about Liberal Media. I heard it gets a lot of trans procedure stuff wrong… in addition to being bad.
GOTTA GO FAST
Okay, reading that through… perhaps I was a little harsh. I was in a bad mood maybe. This weekend, though, I had the pleasure of hosting Ryan at my place where we lived out our dreams of being 12 years old again. For the entirety of Saturday, we watched every single Sonic the Hedgehog movie, and I gotta say, they were okay.
There were moments I really enjoyed such as Jim Carey’s performance, Ben Schwartz of course, and like some particularly cool action scenes. Mostly though, it was just fine and kind of forgettable. The first one follows Sonic as he leaves his magic world and enters Greenville, Montana (actually filmed in Vancouver, BC you can tell by the dense fern underbrush) where he meets James Marsden and the two of them have to travel to San Francisco in order to get some rings and shit but they’re being pursued by the government and Dr. Robotnik and yadda yadda yadda. Classic human and animated creature flick but it does it pretty well. The second one gets much more complicated as it introduces Tails, Knuckles, and the Chaos Emerald plot line. All I know about the Sonic lore I learned from shitty gaming YouTube when I had unobstructed internet access as an 8-year-old and it scarred me. Ryan was the perfect person to watch this with because he knew much more. I was gonna say the second one focuses on the humans much less, but there’s a fun wedding B plot that goes throughout. That one actor Shemar Moore is in it and you guys should follow him on Instagram he’s an icon. He is the originator of tik tok classics such as “I’m just in a silly goofy mood,” and “Shoutout to all my baby girls, I’m lurking and I’m stalking when you least expect it.”
The third is only in theaters so we took the trek to 19th street AMC to catch it. I feel like an old man saying this but we were in the back and these two teenagers were ROUGHHOUSING during the show! IDK they were like wrestling or kissing or something. I am not a super strict guy about movie etiquette as some are, but you gotta shut the fuck up AT LEAST. At the end of the movie these two people came in to the theater at the credits and immediately asked Ryan to move his stuff from the empty seat next to him. They then asked if the movie had just started or ended… and then if it was good. I just don’t think movies schedule stuff that closely. The movie itself was good, probably the best one! It had Shadow and Jim Carey playing two characters.
The whole experience got me thinking, what makes a family action/comedy like Sonic good? Because it was okay, a good way to spend a Saturday, but it wasn’t the kind of thing I’d watch again. All the actors, who are comedic geniuses in their own rights, seemed subdued. Yes, they all had funny moments of course, but it felt like they were on a leash where mostly semi-funny children’s jokes were promoted. I will go through each of its genres and see where maybe it went wrong. Or.. not wrong but not all the way right.
Action: Making a good action film is something I’m not an expert in. But you always know it when you see it. You know instinctively when an action movie has you on the edge of your seat versus when it has you bored and confused. These are basically Superhero movies, so they will be compared as such.
Sonic has an interesting power, super speed, but it’s only really used in an interesting way once or twice in the whole franchise. The one that comes to mind is in the first film when they do a copy of the Quicksilver scene from X-men: Days of Future Past (if you don’t know that reference, please educate yourself). Other than that Sonic just runs across a landscape shot a lot. IN ADDITION to that he is often running from or after something that is JUST AS FAST AS HE IS. All of Eggman’s ships are as fast as he is, then when they introduce Knuckles and Tails they can go that quickly?? And don’t even get me started on Shadow, who seems even faster?? Like he’s supposed to be the fastest thing alive? If you compare this to something like The Boys, which uses people’s powers in really interesting and visually engaging ways, it doesn’t really hold a candle. When watching that show, I often was on the edge of my seat saying “OH SHIT.” There were almost no “oh shit” moments in this franchise. I think that “oh shit” factor can be defined as “giving characters very clearly defined abilities and surroundings and then using those in interesting or unexpected ways.” I said to Ryan at another time, it feels like Marvel movies haven’t revolved around anything tangible and real in a long time. Let people do things in action movies that make me say “Oh shit” again.
Comedy: As I said before, it kind of lacks a comedic bite that fun things have. I don't have nearly enough time or finger strength to type out my philosophies on what comedy is and what it should be, but I feel like there needs to be a sort of unexpected nature to it. Every Time there was the chance to use a tired cliche they took it without subverting it. Sonic is kind of a sarcastic character but oftentimes he was tame… maybe to be more digestible to kids. Don’t get me wrong it was funny and often Jim Carey brought the thunder, but it wasn’t often, and many jokes felt like I was watching a Mr. Beast video. And lastly for the family aspect, kids are smart and you can make smarter jokes!
White Elephant
I want to make a public service announcement, White Elephant is an inherently FUNNY gift exchange!!! If it's a serious gift that is just SECRET SANTA!!!!! You don’t know the amount of times I went to one and someone was upset because they brought a starbucks gift card or skincare set and ended up with a minion mug. The METAPHOR of the white elephant refers to something USELESS and BURDENSOME TO POSSESS. The goal of White Elephant is not to gain something good, but end up with the least bad thing. Anyway, Charlotte was holding a white elephant party and said “kind of good gifts people would want”. You best believe I let her have it.
The party ended up just being Casey, Gabby, Charlotte and I… and I had no idea what to get. I ended up going for a Barnes and Noble National Parks adult coloring book and sticker sheet because that seemed fun (and it was on sale). We did the whole thing and I was last. Casey had these branded glasses from a band I had never heard of, Gabby had a hat from the show Teeth about the vagina with fangs, and Charlotte had a Matcha bowl and whisk (obviously the best thing.) Everyone was afraid to take my gift because it was probably the worst (they’re right) so it was the only one left. I took Casey’s mugs because I felt bad taking the matcha because Charlotte loved it so much. I advocated for the first person to have a chance to steal at the end which is the RULE but it was a mistake… because Casey just took the mugs back rather than brave my gift… meaning I ended up with the coloring book… I could have just saved $20. Pissed me off. They asked at the end “Who did you have in mind with that present.” I don’t know guys, everyone kind of likes nature? I was out of my element because I’m used to getting things people won’t want. Isn’t my life so hard?
P.S. If anyone is in the market for a brand new National Parks Coloring book and sticker sheet, let me know!
Serious inquiries only.
Notebook LM
I was searching through Google’s new AI applications because it’s lowkey my job and I stumbled on this new one called Notebook LM. It’s a research tool, so Princeton people listen up but it’s kind of crazy. You can paste up to 50 sources, of ANY kind, videos, articles, pdfs, etc., and it will immediately summarize them all, create a briefing document for them, and answer any questions you have about the sources. The weirdest thing it does is generate realistic podcasts summarizing all of the information you put in. The podcasts are realistic with uhms and breathing and snarky little jokes as well. I’ve been playing around putting famous movie scripts in there and getting it to do podcast analyses of them. I am generally anti-AI and it is making people dumber, but when this service is out of beta I think this type of shit really does have a future in making us more productive. Most of my job is summarizing articles and doing research… Idk I have a lot of thoughts on this but it’s wild. Here is the google AI podcast about my blog so far:
Also, this shit must be a bubble that’ll pop soon, right? Sam Altman of OpenAI just said they needed even more money to be profitable after like a $160 billion fundraising round. Like “please bro… I promise ai is reinventing business I just need $200 billion first please bro believe me.”
2025 Ins and Outs:
In:
Making $37,000 a year… and making it look good.
Dos Toros
Bringing a thermos to work for coffee.
Biking
Increasingly frightening natural disasters
Tik Tok (never left but it won’t get banned)
Looney Tunes
Beards
Dunkin Donuts
Baseball
Pinterest
Out:
The high stock valuation of AI products and services, potentially leading to a market crash.
Human Rights
America’s support for the Ukrainian war
Chipotle
Returning to Princeton’s campus multiple times a semester
Blue Sky
The tech right’s dominance over the Republican party
Liberal television news (CNN will die)
Birthright trips to Israel
Starbucks
The NBA
Happy New year,
Daniel (DDrizzler) Drake
Good stuff.