What a strange year…still early to tell if it was a good year or a terrible year. It was something…odd.
The usual weddings and funerals were sandwiched between lockdowns and sports going on hiatus. The commute to work was replaced by a daily constitutional. (Does that phrase mean pooping?)
We ran outta things to talk about because we didn’t do much: nobody travelled (well all that much…) or went to the movies (I did manage to see Tenet: so confusing…) or have celebrity encounters (what is gonna happen to fame in 2021?!).
Lotta times this year was like being at a party where you don’t know anybody and all the talk is small.
Still as almighty American Elvis says: TCB in 2021.
Taking Care of Business…may your schemes and dreams take flight; get others into the limelight and duck should you find yourself in a gun fight.
On To The Next One!
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The Sonic Detective & The Case of The Great White Buffalo
We all have those sonic Great White Buffalos: unknown songs…sound fragments, misheard lyrics that we collect over decades of consuming pop culture. Like that utility drawer in every kitchen: cartoon bursting with…who knows what. Mostly likely dead batteries.
I finally resolved one of those Great White Buffalos today. So glad I got up and out of bed; well that was worth it.
This is Edith Piaf…it’s the classic French/Paris song that plays in every American movie to cue the audience the main characters will now be eating baguettes and watching lovely lithe Parisian girls on bicycles drift by…like wheeled gazelles.
The lyrics for Non, Je Ne Regrette Rien are in French. There was no way I was gonna sing this to google.
Well: I feel like a detective in an 80s TV show…case closed! Until next week…
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p.s. All due respect to Hot Tub Time Machine for the use of Great While Buffalo.
#SetTheVCR: December 27-January 02, 2021
Christmas is over…we’re heading into a bold year with great expectations if not for ourselves than for TV. “Hope is a good thing, maybe the best of things, and no good thing ever dies.” ? Andy Dufresne, Shawshank Redemption
Take a look back at 2020 through a Black Mirror! Producer and Written by Charlie Brooker Death to 2020 stars Samuel L. Jackson, Hugh Grant plus many more: and it’s narrated by Laurence Fishburne. So that’s Neo-oh. Should be good dark black humour fun.
Monday, December 28
Sammy Suggestion: 5 To 7 (Anytime / Hollywood Suite)
A Hollywood Suite Free Preview Recommendation: From 2014: 5 to 7 (director Victor Levin’s film debut). A subtle romantic comedy co-starring Bérénice Marlohe an absolutely gorgeous actress. “An aspiring novelist enters into a relationship with a woman, though there’s just one catch: She’s married and the couple can only meet between the hours of 5 and 7 each evening.” French romance meets New York City writing. A great line from the movie: “Some of the best writing in New York won’t be found in books, or movies, or plays, but on the benches of Central Park. Read the benches, and you understand.” So true! (You got until January 5 to enjoy all these free movies on Hollywood Suite. As I wrote in this space before: “Now this is a holiday tradition I can get into. It’s the annual Hollywood Suite Free Preview for Canadians. This year it runs from December 1 to January 5. Hollywood Suite is a collection of movie channels: one channel is dedicated to the 70s, another to the 80s, 90s and finally 2000s. All uncut and no edits: swears and sex and satire.”)
Gillian Jacobs plays Kate who is getting an F at life. She doesn’t know how to B. But you know who does C her clearly? If you don’t know the beard you know the voice: Jemaine Clement! Like Rodney Dangerfield (Back to School), Melissa McCarthy (Life of the Party) Adam Sandler (Billy Madison)…a few other A+ comics Kate goes back to school to find life. It’s a classic genre even if most of these the movies earn a D eh: so be it. There’s always the other classic school genre: Summer School!!
Following Dark and Into The Night this is my new Netflix Jam! “Equinox tells the story of Astrid, a young woman, whose sister, along with her entire class of graduating students, inexplicably disappeared without a trace when she was only 9 years old in 1999.” YES! 100% Hell Yes. Equinox is a Danish mystery thriller based on the Equinox 1985 podcast. Never listened but that X-Files premise has seduced me. Ok I’m 100% IN.
Jerry Seinfeld, Marc Maron, Kevin Hart, Donnell Rawlings, Jim Jefferies, Joy Koy…lots more are among the funny folks featured in Best of Stand-Up 2020. A clip show collection: remember when sit coms used to have clip shows? Comedy has suffered greatly in 2020 between the hokey President Trump “jokes” and the pandemic closing venues: comedians have done their best to adapt with uneven results. So as the red light flashes on 2020: “Thanks: that’s my time!” hopefully we make with the funny in 2021.
Netflix and…chill out! Headspace the popular meditating app from Buddhist monk Andy Puddicombe is now on TV. An unusual offering from Netflix though one I hope will become popular because meditation’s benefits empowers us to effectively deal with the Stranger Things in this hectic life. Netflix has strived to become a lifestyle brand: with comic books and podcasts and now meditation. All that’s missing is a vagina scented candle. (This tranquil recommendation most likely pairs well with another decluttering your space documentary: The Minimalists: Less Is Now also on Netflix as of today.)
Lotta people haven’t seen Dark Waters. “A corporate defense attorney takes on an environmental lawsuit against a chemical company that exposes a lengthy history of pollution.” This time your Erin Brockovich is Mark Ruffalo who makes an ideal lawyer: you wouldn’t like him when he’s angry.
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Sammy Younan is the affable host of My Summer Lair: think NPR’s Fresh Air meets Kevin Smith: interviews & impressions on Pop Culture.
Merry Christmas (2020)
So here we are: Merry Christmas. To paraphrase James Gordon: “Because this is the Christmas we got, but not the one we want right now.” Though as you can see the sign by the tree: “Unwrap Infinite Possibilities.” That’s about all you can do each and every day, right? The Choice Is Yours.
Hopefully you get to spend time time and be sarcastic with the ones you love. Because distance doesn’t affect sarcasm.
And if Santa was good to you…well: that’s disappointing.
The coolest people are often on the naughty list. I’m literally hanging out with the wrong people. Sigh.
Guess that’s what New Year’s Resolutions are for…make more friends with the naughty list crew.
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#SetTheVCR: June 2020 Recap & Review
Sammy Younan
Girth Radio Presents…
In a year that was unlike any TV year we’ve had: By the time we got to June it was clear there was nothing jejune about this month on TV.
Read the rest of this page »
#SetTheVCR: 2021 Preview
So rather than subject you to typical TV recommendations for this rather slow week (seriously: on Christmas Eve TBS is running The Christmas Story on a 24 hour loop.) let’s look ahead to 2021 and see what we can expect (we hope!). This is just 5 simple selections…there’s so much more coming in 2021; this is the start of the conversation.
Originally War of the Worlds premiered on October 28, 2019 on MyCanal/Fox in France. America did not get it until February 2020 while Canada waited even longer finally receiving it in October 2020. So my hope is that this is a 2021 show not a 2022 show.
One of my favourite sci-fi shows this past year it transformed H.G. Wells’ seminal story into a Walking Dead style TV show: “In series one of War of the Worlds, an alien attack all but wiped out mankind, with just a handful of humans fighting to survive.” When season 1 concluded there were many unresolved mysteries yet the one glimmer of hope the survivors had was they had developed a way fight back against the alien intruders. How successful they would be in this “war” well that’s where season 2 comes in.
Based on tweets of the those involved season 2 successfully wrapped on October 22nd. So that’s a good sign; editing is easier to do during coronavirus than shooting. Umbrella Academy is fun sci-fi, while Star Trek is space sci-fi: War of the Worlds is dark sci-fi. All the characters are complex capable of oscillating between darkness and light they do what they have to do to survive. We know some of us don’t have the ability or the skills to survive in a zombie apocalypse: I don’t know how many of us could survive a War of the Worlds.
Invincible was an Image comic book by Robert Kirkman and Ryan Ottley: it ran for 144 issues (all written by Kirkman) concluding in early 2018. It was filled with standard Marvel comics joy there were touches of Stan Lee right up to modern style writing. The premise of the comic will also be the premise of the TV show: “Mark Grayson is a normal teenager, except for the fact that his father Nolan is the most powerful superhero on the planet. Shortly after his seventeenth birthday, Mark begins to develop powers of his own and enters into his father’s tutelage.”
A deceptively simple premise (wait for the twist!) meant the comic book became a Spider-Man meets Green Lantern style book: awkward teenage moments in space. Interestingly Amazon is now adapting it into an adult cartoon: expect violence and relationships. Unlike international markets Disney has corrupted the cartoon market here in North America; we don’t generally enjoy many violent adult type cartoons.
Thankfully this is slowly changing so Invincible’s success or breakout could help and ignite a broader appetite for adult cartoons. As for some of the voices: Steven Yeun, J. K. Simmons, Seth Rogen, Zachary Quinto and many, many more.
Yet another adaptation. (Though to be honest I don’t know how much of the stuff we consume anymore is original source material…it’s all hot dogs now.) Y: The Last Man was a Vertigo comic book by Brian K. Vaughan and Pia Guerra; it ran from 2002 to 2008.
Welcome to a post-apocalyptic world in which a cataclysmic event decimates every mammal with a Y chromosome except for one loser and his pet monkey. Why? Or how? And now a society ruled solely by women have to deal with him: some see him as a threat; some see him as a symbol of hope or restoration.
While the obvious clunky analogies of power dynamics deftly lend themselves to typical twitter diatribes and cliched op-eds we get when movies like Wonder Woman open that’s not overly engaging. Rather the engaging aspect is the upending of society. We just saw this with Stephen King’s The Stand over on CBS.
How does a radically gutted society adapt: that’s what makes it so compelling for television because we get to visually see a society being constructed; being arranged like Lord of the Flies but bigger. Filming begins in Mississauga/Toronto on January 25 2021 and based on permits will run until July 05, 2021 (so we probably will not get a trailer for a few more months.).
A pilot has also been shot and finally one last encouraging sign: FX on Hulu has released the title card. We’re at the logo stage. Hopefully, this will be some sort of fall release.
So here’s a whole bunch of Flash Facts. Justice League was a 2017 box office bomb for Warner Bros. It left many nerd-fans upset while for the general public it failed to spark the same passion as the Marvel movies (generally speaking about a large group of individuals). Director Zack Snyder didn’t finish making the movie following the death of his daughter. Lastly?
I’ve often felt that one of the best ways for DC Films to separate themselves from the MCU is to go hard R. Superheroes are all about righting a wrong and so now we find ourselves with Zack Snyder’s Justice League: a 4 part miniseries.
The filmmaker did not pull punches when asked about Whedon’s Justice League version during a virtual convention panel over the summer, saying he would “destroy the movie before I use a single frame that I didn’t photograph. That is a fucking hard fact. I’d blow the fucking thing up.” Yikes! So in March, we find out what all the fuss is about. And that’s the last Flash Fact.
To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before: Part 3! Shut up! Look it’s a teen movie so why not? Teen movies are part of a healthy pop culture media diet. While the second movie 2020’s P.S. I Still Love You wasn’t quite as charming as the first one (all the way back in 2018! That one had the element of surprise) it was still far better than the two Kissing Booth movies combined. (We’re sadly getting a third Kissing Booth movie this year: ugh. I’ll watch but complain about it the whole time.) Well Lana Condor has found limited success in roles such as Deadly Class and movies such as X-Men: Apocalypse here her character Lara Jean Covey empowers her a clumsy sweetness that makes her endearing. It’s fun. So that works fun is good. Shut up!
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Sammy Younan is the affable host of My Summer Lair: think NPR’s Fresh Air meets Kevin Smith: interviews & impressions on Pop Culture.
#SetTheVCR: 2021 Preview
Sammy Younan
Girth Radio Presents…
So rather than subject you to typical TV recommendations for this rather slow week (seriously: on Christmas Eve TBS is running The Christmas Story on a 24 hour loop.) let’s look ahead to 2021 and see what we can expect (we hope!). This is just 5 simple selections…there’s so much more coming in 2021; this is the start of the conversation.
Read the rest of this page »
#SetTheVCR: May 2020 Recap & Review
Sammy Younan
Girth Radio Presents…
In a year that was unlike any TV year we’ve had: May I continue with a 2020 TV Recap?
Read the rest of this page »
#SetTheVCR: April 2020 Recap & Review
Sammy Younan
Girth Radio Presents…
In a year that was unlike any TV year we’ve had: For a month that started with April Fools’ this month was not fooling around and delivered much TV goodness.
Read the rest of this page »
#SetTheVCR: March 2020 Recap & Review
Sammy Younan
Girth Radio Presents…
In a year that was unlike any TV year we’ve had: March was a struggle…for a month known for Spring there was no spring in the TV schedule.
