Black Bag
I very rarely go to the movies anymore. They are too expensive. People are obnoxious. They either talk loudly through the film or open their phones to text. I miss the big screens, the big sound systems, and the expansive experience, but I’ve come to love the ability to pause when I want, to wear my pajamas while watching, and to eat popcorn that I didn’t have to take a loan out to purchase.
Buy The Informant! 4K UHDBut now and again I get the craving and the chance to see a new Steven Soderbergh film in the theater proved too big a temptation for me so one weekday afternoon I caught a matinee.
Soderbergh has become the master of relatively low-budget genre films. Here, he’s made an intricately plotted spy film about two married spies (Michael Fassbender and Cate Blanchett) navigating a world where they have to constantly lie to everyone and still maintain a loving relationship.
It starts slow, laying out each piece of the puzzle, but the farther you get into it the more pieces fit together, the more exciting, and interesting it gets. By the end, I was ready to start it all over again.
8 Out of 10 Cats Does Countdown
This British comedy panel show is a mashup of two existing game shows. Countdown is a long-running, afternoon game show in which contestants must solve letters and numbers puzzles. They are given nine random letters and must create the biggest word possible with them, and then they are given six random numbers and must use basic math to get as close to a target number as possible.
8 Out of 10 Cats is a comedy panel show in which comedians try and guess the top answers to various surveys. It is a bit like Family Feud but with better jokes. The first question is almost always what are the top three things the British public is talking about? One panelist will answer and then everybody else riffs on that answer for several minutes. Then they will find out if they are correct or not. It is probably my least favorite panel show mostly because it is very British-specific and I don’t always know the people or events being discussed.
8 Out of 10 Cats Does Countdown has comedians playing Countdown with extra skits thrown in. Hosted by Jimmy Carr two teams of two players each play the games, but first jokes. Carr introduces each player with a put-down. Then he’ll ask the players a leading question that enables them to do a short routine. Then they each have a mascot which is yet another comedic routine.
Regular Countdown is assisted by Susie Dent, a brilliant lexicographer who judges the letters round, and Rachel Riley, a mathematician who handles the numbers. Both are present for the comedy show and they get their own jokes. Sitting alongside Susie Dent is yet another comedian who also does a couple of routines during the show. It takes a good half hour before the contestants play the game. But it doesn’t matter. You’ll be too busy laughing your head off to care about some silly letters and numbers.
Under the Dome
This 2009 novel from Stephen King in some ways encapsulates everything he does, both the good and the bad, in one book. I suspect that most people initially come to King because he tells stories about crazy things happening – killer clowns, vampires in small towns, psychic kids, cemeteries that bring your pets back to life, etc. But fans know that what keeps us coming back is King’s ability to fully ensconce us inside his stories. He can develop his characters and build his worlds like few living writers can.
Buy Under the Dome: A NovelHe is the king of details. Where a normal writer would make a point in a paragraph or two, King takes three or four pages. He supplies more information than you need but in doing this, his worlds feel truly lived in. Sometimes it can be a bit too much.
Under the Dome is about a small Maine town where a mysterious and impervious invisible barrier drops down from the heavens and seals them off from the outside world. That’s the hook, but King barely even seems interested in it. We don’t spend a lot of time watching people try to figure out what the dome is, or how to break through it. Instead, King uses the isolation the dome creates to tell a story about small towns, how people react to extreme situations, and how a megalomaniac big fish in a small pond tries to become even bigger.
There are a lot of characters in the book but the two main ones are Dale Barbara, a former Army Captain who just kind of wandered about aimlessly since quitting the force. He had been in this town for a little while, working as a short-order cook, but was about to leave when the dome came down. He’s our typical King hero – smart, extremely capable, and a bit of a loner. Our villain is Big Jim Rennie, the town’s Second Selectman, who really runs the town while also running a highly lucrative meth business. With the dome down, he realizes there is no one to stop him from becoming essentially a king. These two will quickly become at odds.
There is so much more to it than that. Too much, if I’m being honest. At over 1,000 pages, it could have easily been shortened by a couple hundred and been a much tighter, more successful read. But that’s the thing with King, what makes him so good also makes him a little annoying. Still, I thoroughly enjoyed the book.
Wet Leg – “Catch These Fists”
Wet Leg is a British indie rock group whose songs interweave post-punk and trippy pop with a little bit of New Wave thrown in. They remind me a little of the Riot Grrrl movement of the 1990s with their in-your-face attitude, assertive sexuality, and guitar-heavy music.
Buy Wet Leg – moisturizer CD“Catch These Fists” is the first single off their newest album Moisturizer, and it’s a killer. Its got a great beat, and lyrics that espouse “I Don’t Want Your Love / I Just Want to Fight” and the video features the lead singer wearing short shorts with “Holy Spirit” written on the crotch. What’s not to like?
Hatari!
John Wayne and Howard Hawks made five films together. Four of them were Westerns, and the other one was this African adventure film that finds Wayne playing a wild game catcher chasing down giraffes, monkeys, and rhinos whilst hanging around with an eclectic group of pals and eventually falling in love. There is very little to it plot-wise, and it runs a little too long, but it’s mostly a lot of fun. You can read my review of the new release.
Val Kilmer (1959-2025)
Buy Tombstone Blu-rayEverybody has a favorite Val Kilmer role. Whether it is Ace in Top Gun, or Jim Morrison in The Doors, Chris Sheherlis in Heat, or Doc Holiday in Tombstone (often it is Doc Holiday in Tombstone because that role is beloved), if you like movies there is a Val Kilmer role you just love. He was an everyman actor. A weirdo with matinee-idol looks. He made comedies, dramas, westerns, fantasies, and so much more. Cancer took his voice a few years ago and his stardom took a dip after the 1990s but he never quit making movies or being interesting in them. Just watch him in Spartan, the David Mamet thriller from 2004; or Shane Black’s hilariously funny murder mystery Kiss Kiss Bang Bang from 2005; or Werner Herzog’s dark crime drama Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans and see an artist who never stopped being great.
