end of summer media diet: 🐴 odyssey 🕷️spiderman 👠 the red shoes ☄️your name 🚮 throwing away books

Happy end of summer! My daughter's back in school and I'm back to my routine, which I'm happy and sad about at the same time. We decided to go out with a bang by bingeing as many movies as possible, preferably in theaters. (More thoughts on movies, icymi.)

First was Spiderman: Brand New Day, which was about as solidly entertaining as a movie can get. My uber comic nerd friend Patrick (founder of the fantastic comics publisher Pulp Explosion) called it the closest Hollywood's gotten to replicating the experience of reading a stack of comic books for the first time. Spiderman's universal insecurities make him a truly timeless hero. I also felt myself really needing his strong moral compass right about now (gee, wonder why). I mean, he feels bad about accidentally injuring a cop. Compare that with the gory nihilism of Invincible, or the exploitation and abuse of The Boys.

Literally the next day we saw The Odyssey, which lived up to all the hype and, despite being almost three hours, didn't feel long at all. (Nice to see Spiderman, Punisher, and MJ reunited again in ancient Greece!) Ingenious to reframe the Trojan Horse myth as a betrayal of the Law of Zeus, which says to treat strangers with the same hospitality they would you. Defy the law, and community and civic norms breaks down, resulting in suffering and exile. Feels like a metaphor for something. 🤪 Can't put my finger on what. 🫠

Also finally saw Your Name. Despite having lived in Japan for 4 years (more on this in another newsletter), I don't really like manga or anime. But I knew this movie was a massive hit in 2016 (and virtually unknown in the US), so on this 10th anniversary I knew I had to see it in the theater. And it was freakin' great. I love a time travel romance. And an apocalyptic scenario. I also loved anime doing what anime seems to do best: celebrate the contemporary, down to every last beautifully drawn detail. Making magic out of the everyday world. And the food! No one draws food better than Japanese folks.

Finally, my daughter, who is hooked on Letterboxd (the social network for people who actually want to talk about stuff, and not just sit around nit-picking each other), read something about The Red Shoes, a 1948 MGM ballet backstage drama that is about—and tragically mirrors—the curse of the Hans Christian Andersen fable of the same name. So we watched it. It's a gorgeous film, back from the era where stupendously talented actors had no other choice but to dance and sing for realisies without CGI or wires or AI. Every now and then my daughter would whisper, Technicolor, so pretty, like a painting. The girl gives her dad hope, I tell ya.

That's it for now. Hope your summer was awesome!

👋 dave