From the Couch Hole: Twistin’ Like a Flame in a Slow Dance

Previously on FTCH, there was vengeance most fowl in the meaning of dreams. The flow of friendship described in the memoir of a snail was similar to orange cream soda. This week we started summer and then went into hurricane-wind mode. My Reading Nook is finished, and I’ve done extra reading this past week. March Madness is almost upon us. This week the fire woman gave us some sweet vitriol in Section 31. We live in a time where all we imagine as light is to get our banana fudge ice cream back. Remember, ask your doctor if FTCH is right for you.

Pop Culture Ephemera

• Star Trek: Section 31 (2025) (Directed by Olatunde Osunsanmi): “I’m not feeling motivated to be valuable to anyone but myself.” – Philippa Georgiou. I’ll admit it here. I got got by the trailer monster. I was fooled by an action-packed trailer with Michelle Yeoh and the Star Trek franchise in the title. This is terrible. It’s a derivative film of Serenity, The Fifth Element, and Battlestar Galactica. You’ll notice that it doesn’t have those same links to a Star Trek series. Truth be told, I’m not familiar with Section 31 from Deep Space Nine and I don’t know Michelle Yeoh’s Philippa character from Star Trek: Discovery. This film throws in all kinds of concepts in creating an action team and giving them a reason to solve a mystery. It’s ten hours of ideas in less than two hours of screen time. I was fooled. The worst part of the whole thing is that it ends with a tacked on scene that feels like the introduction to an ongoing series. This isn’t the Star Trek that I thought I was getting.

Buy Star Trek: Discovery – Season One Blu-ray

• Severance – “Sweet Vitriol” (2025) (S.2 E.8) (AppleTV+): “What have you done, little mouse?” – Sissy. The first thing that came to mind as Harmony pulled into the bleak Newfoundland town (I’m not sure if it’s Newfoundland in the show because they never make their geography clear) was that it’s an interesting editorial choice to tell a Gemma story then follow it with a Harmony story and leave out our main plot for a second week in a row. I half expected a “Dedicated to the memory of David Lynch” at the end of this episode. Harmony is a familiar character but none of the other characters meant anything to the previous plot. It’s like a different show crossing over with Severance. Is there significance to learning that Lumon uses child labor or the big reveal of the episode regarding Harmony that I won’t spoil here. It was an interesting episode, but I don’t think it was a necessary one. Many shows have started downhill by trying to explain their backstory. Please move forward.

Buy The Cult – Sonic Temple CD

• The Cult – “Fire Woman” (1989) (from Sonic Temple): “I was thinking / What I’ve been missing”. From the first licks of “She Sells Sanctuary” off of Love in 1985 through the release of this album, I was a top tier fan of this band. This song comes from a specific era where I assume 68% of the guitar rock songs were written about and/or for strippers. Bill Duffy’s guitar is carrying this song, and very well, I must say. It could be a Def Leppard song, and that’s probably the problem for 1989 as grunge was taking over and groups like Alice in Chains were going to find a way to fill this role into the ’90s.

• We Live in Time (2024) (Directed by John Crowley): “Because I’m worried that’s there’s a very distinct and real possibility that I am about to fall in love with you.” – Tobias. The story of Tobias (Andrew Garfield) and Almut (Florence Pugh) falls squarely in the tragic-romance genre. This one succeeds firstly because the two lead actors are at the top of their games and completely believable in their roles. The randomizer version of editing scenes together is something that I rarely recommend for a film. More movies have been wrecked by telling their story out of order than have benefited from it. The film plays out in basically four timelines – when they first meet; her first bout with cancer; when she’s pregnant, very pregnant; and then the cooking competition she competes in after the cancer returns. There’s not a storytelling or “big reveal” reason to tell it like this. Where the benefit comes is that they can relieve the tension from certain very emotional moments. Ultimately, these films work only if we cheer for the couple. I’ve never been considered a romantic, but I wanted these two to succeed even though we know the ending from the very beginning. This film has a fresh feeling.

Buy We Live In Time Blu-ray

• All We Imagine As Light (2024) (Directed by Payal Kapadia): “You might think you know someone, but they can also become strangers.” – Prabha. File this under my “Not For Everyone” genre of films. The story features three nurses, Prabha (middle-aged), Anu (younger), and Parvaty (older), at different points in their lives, but all of them leading lonely lives in Mumbai. The title is about the journey that each takes from their darkness to the light as they travel to a seaside village to help Parvaty move as she is evicted from her shantytown apartment.
  
  The “Imagine” of the title is important. Each woman needs to find her own path out of the dark, rainy, loud city of loneliness to the bright sunshine of the seaside. The interweaving of the stories of each woman gives a great picture of a singular female experience at all ages. The movie is beautifully filmed. The city is full of shadows, sounds (it’s always either raining or on the verge of raining), and dilapidated buildings. There is always activity, but there isn’t any connection happening. It’s easy to read this as all negative, but the women are the light in each scene. It’s easy to imagine the viewers who watch this only because it won Cannes and was nominated for an Oscar to say that it’s slow and nothing happens. If you are willing to allow yourself to just watch and listen, you will be rewarded.

Best of the Rest

• I don’t follow the F-1 series, but I am well aware that Lewis Hamilton is a huge star and that he’s moving to Ferrari this season. To celebrate that with a crossover with Ferris Bueller’s Day Off (1986) and a dash of Edward Norton is inspired at the very least. I hope there are more creative ads like this ahead for us in 2025.

• Entertainment Weekly (3/28/97): “Best Commercials of All-Time” #30: Coke “Max/Interview” (1987): There was no subtlety in the Coke vs. Pepsi Cola Wars of the late ’80s. Max Headroom was already a known entity, with a talk show on the air. This commercial probably did more for his popularity than actually having a television show. The campaign with Max would go on for a couple of years, and they are entertaining more for nostalgia than comedy these days. I don’t think I’d make it the #30 best commercial of all-time.

• What is happening over there in the world of 7-Up? A brand that has been happy just to be a solid mixer for cocktails and saved for days when your tummy just isn’t feeling up to par. It sits at the end of the soda aisle just chillin’ with lemon-lime goodness. Last year, we got a Shirley Temple flavor and just recently they went Tropical. The year of 7-Up becomes the Endless Summer of 7-Up with the release of two new flavors this spring. They are diving back into Strawberry and Watermelon. They’ve had a few strawberry releases over the years, and in general, they do it well. The watermelon gives me more pause because it’s too often overly sweet like watermelon candy. This is a solid brand, and I’m happy to give them some love.

Sunday Morning Tuneage Flashback

• On the Sunday Morning Tuneage from 6/4/2007 to 7/12/2009, I ranked my 100 Favorite Films of All-Time. I did one per week with the arbitrary rule that they had to air on television that upcoming week. It ended up being a pretty representative list in retrospect. A few were ranked out of order, but I stick with that list for that point in my life. The 2009 stats check out.
  
  6 – Alfred Hitchcock films.
  5 – Steven Spielberg films.
  4 – Stanley Kubrick films.
  4 – Billy Wilder films.
  
  I’m going to attempt the impossible over the next 20 weeks. I’m going to use that old list as a template and rank five films a week, without planning it all out ahead of time. Remember, these are “favorite” and not necessarily “best” movies. Enjoy critiquing me along the way.
  
  2025 Running Stats (#61-100)
  • 2 – Directed by John Hughes
  • 2 – Directed by Quentin Tarantino
  • 2 – Directed by David Yates
  • 2 – 1920’s
  • 1 – 1940’s
  • 1 – 1950’s
  • 4 – 1960’s
  • 10 – 1970’s
  • 6 – 1980’s
  • 10 – 1990’s
  • 4 – 2000’s
  • 1 – 2010’s
  • 1 – 2020’s
    
• FAVORITE MOVIES OF ALL-TIME (2009)
  • 65. Shane (1953)
  • 64. 12 Angry Men (1957)
  • 63. The Shining (1980)
  • 62. Bridge on the River Kwai (1957)
  • 61. Bringing up Baby (1938)
    
• FAVORITE MOVIES OF ALL-TIME (2025)
  • 65. Donnie Darko (2001) (Directed by Richard Kelly): This film has really grown on me as one of the first “science fiction meets teen” stories. It flipped our expectations of both and launched the appropriate angst of the new Millennium.
  • 64. Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977) (Directed by Steven Spielberg): My relationship to this Spielberg film is interesting. I love so much about it, but I don’t like to watch it at home. Every few years it rolls through the cinema and it plays so well on the big screen that I can’t resist going out to see it.
  • 63. Star Wars: A New Hope (1977) (Directed by George Lucas): There were decades of my life when I would have considered this to be my #1 film for the influence it has had on my life in so many areas. It affected the films I love, the books I read, and the hobbies I pursued. Over the years, the amount of films and shows have diluted the appeal of this original to me. That said, it’s groundbreaking, and it’s not like I ever turn it off.
  • 62. Groundhog Day (1993) (Directed by Harold Ramis): Like the premise of the film, I can watch this over and over. Bill Murray is perfectly cast in a way that Ramis hadn’t used him in previous films.
  • 61. The General (1926) (Directed by Buster Keaton): Hollywood royalty. Keaton helms and stars in one of the most expensive silent comedies of all-time. Based upon a true story allows Keaton to get away with not condemning the Confederacy. Essentially two long chases, this film is entry level into silent-film fandom.

Buy Star Wars: A New Hope Blu-ray

1975 in Review

• March – Incredible Hulk #185 (Marvel): Cover and interior art by Herb Trimpe. Written by Len Wein. “Doesn’t anyone give a damn about Bruce Banner anymore?” – Bruce Banner. The Hulk and General Ross are fighting and Betty gets in between them. Not pushing any boundaries here. Gerald Ford is acknowledged as the President which always feels like an oddity when they don’t take liberties with the office.
• March 17 – Television Electronic Disc (TeD) is released in West Germany. Each 8-inch disc could hold about 10 minutes of programming. With emerging technologies like VHS and Beta, this wouldn’t catch on, and it would be fully replaced by VHS in 1978.
• March 16 – The NASL has an indoor tournament in the winter to offset their spring/summer outdoor season. The San Francisco Earthquakes defeated the Tampa Bay Rowdies in the first championship at the Cow Palace in San Francisco, led by Paul Child who would help the Earthquakes to 1st place in the 1975 season. For the first years of the NASL, the Tampa Bay Rowdies were consistently good and probably the most recognizable franchise from the league.

What the Hell Did I Put in My Mouth?

“Well, shake it up, you’re to blame, got me swayin’ little honey
My heart’s a ball of burnin’ flame
Oh, yes it is
Prancing like a cat on a hot tin shack
Lord, have mercy
Come on little sister
Come on and shake it” – The Cult