Tag: Netflix

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Film/TV TV Features

Scavengers Reign

The world of Vesta is endlessly complex. (Photo: Courtesy Netflix)

In writing class, they teach about the different kinds of conflicts a story can center around. Person vs. person is the most common, but there’s also person vs. self, person vs. fate, and person vs. society. Person vs. nature (formerly known as “man vs. nature”) is not nearly as common as it was a hundred years ago, back in the days of frontier and jungle adventure magazines. That’s one of the reasons the sci-fi animated series Scavengers Reign is so refreshing. Its take on the classic story of a shipwrecked crew struggling to survive in a hostile wilderness is simple at first, but becomes more fascinating as complexities emerge. In fact, “emerging complexity” is one of the overarching themes of the 12-episode story. Creators Joseph Bennett and Charles Huettner are fascinated with the interplay of life-forms, both cooperation and conflict, which create a functioning ecosystem. The world they have created is unlike anything you’ve seen.

Scavengers Reign begins with its castaways, survivors from the crew of the cargo ship Demeter 227, already stranded on the planet Vesta. Azi (voiced by Wunmi Mosaku), the capable quartermaster, is paired with her robot Levi (Alia Shawkat). Their escape pod landed safely on open ground, and Azi uses an omniwheel motorcycle to scout the surrounding terrain. When Levi starts acting odd, Azi discovers that a fungus-like alien life-form has been growing on the robot’s circuitry — and the robot likes it.

Photo: Courtesy Netflix

Ursula (Sunita Mani), a biologist, was in the escape pod with Sam (Bob Stephenson), the captain of the Demeter. Their landing was a little rougher, but they have managed to salvage enough gear to communicate with the fatally damaged ship still in orbit. In the pilot episode, “The Signal,” the pair travel to retrieve a battery from another crashed escape pod. Once they get there, they see that the crew have all been killed by some unknown environmental hazard, which they then have to face. But that’s business as usual on this planet.

The occupant of the third escape pod has it the worst. It landed in a tree-like plant hundreds of feet tall, and Kamen (Ted Travelstead) has been trapped inside for weeks. He is finally rescued (if you want to call it that) by a creature he names Hollow. Imagine a cross between a platypus and a koala bear with psychic powers which it uses to dominate other life-forms. Instead of making little green tripod-thingies bring them yummy berry-like spheres, Hollow latches onto the human and demands Kamen hunt for him. In Kamen’s mind, it speaks to him in the form of Fiona (also voiced by Alia Shawkat), Demeter’s robotics engineer. Hollow uses Kamen’s guilt over their dysfunctional relationship against him, and his already fragile psyche slowly crumbles.

Sam and Ursula succeed in contacting the ship, and they manage to activate the automatic landing sequence. At first, they’re worried it might land on top of them. Then they discover they didn’t get that lucky. The Demeter lands many kilometers away from all three parties. The first half of the story is taken up with their increasingly frantic and costly attempts to make it to the ship. Once there, they will find that this world has even more surprises in store. As the show progresses, flashbacks start to fill in the details of how they got here, and who they were before they were lost in space and written off by their employers.

Anime’s dominant visual style has become so pervasive that I hear stories from art teachers about begging their young students to try to draw something else. Scavengers Reign owes a debt to Miyazaki’s sense of grandeur and deliberate pacing, and Akira’s pervasive body horror. But Bennett and Huettner’s aesthetic is more like the French illustrator Moebius. The world of Vesta is endlessly complex, with many animals and plants living in such close symbiosis that it’s hard to tell where one ends and the other begins. Our heroes are constantly dodging predators, both animals and plants. But many of their interactions with the native flora and fauna aren’t so cut and dried. When Ursula is trapped inside a living wall of thorns, Sam freaks out. But Ursula insists she was never in danger, and in fact might have even been communicating with the giant plant-like organism. What were they saying? She doesn’t know. But as the story progresses, the survivors slowly learn to stop trying to conquer nature, and start trying to live in harmony with it. That’s what makes this beautiful and thought-provoking show such a treasure.

Scavengers Reign is streaming on Netflix.

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Film/TV TV Features

The Sandman

Tom Sturridge plays DC’s Dream, who, to repair his kingdom, journeys across different worlds.

Here’s a question: Does Morpheus the Lord of Dreams look like Neil Gaiman, or does Neil Gaiman look like Morpheus?

Back in the late 1980s, Gaiman was a budding young writer for hire, having penned a fan-focused biography of Douglas Adams and some comic scripts for DC. It was a period when the comic book industry was in flux. The “Wham!” and “Zing!” era of superhero stories had gone stale, and new writers were elevating the form by ignoring what had come before. Much like Alan Moore had done with Watchmen, Gaiman picked an obscure character from the DC archives and started from a blank slate. Thus, The Sandman, a guy named Wesley Dodds who wore a gas mask and hunted evildoers with the aid of a sleeping gas gun, became Dream of the Endless, an anthropomorphic representation of what happens when you go to sleep.

The Sandman comics, which ran from 1989 to 1996, helped usher in the “graphic novel” era, where readers and critics recognized comics’ potential to tell more serious stories. Gaiman rejected superhero tropes — crossovers with other DC characters (besides the sorcerer John Constantine) were rare — and used Dream as a catalyst for more psychologically complex stories, usually based in his deep knowledge of mythology from many cultures. The Sandman became a cult hit, with Dream’s sister Death, whose look was based on Cinamon Hadly, an American goth girl who was friends with artist Mike Dringenberg, was a breakout character, especially among college-aged women who were picking up comic books for the first time.

As for Dream, he was a pale, skinny guy in a black overcoat who, as drawn by Dave McKean, had a face that kinda looked like the author’s. Soon, Gaiman started wearing all black and adopted the same flyaway haircut. It was partly a branding exercise and partly just a goth living their best life.

After years in development hell, The Sandman finally got a screen adaptation from Netflix in the form of a 10-episode series. It begins, as the comics did, with Dream (Tom Sturridge) imprisoned in a glass sphere by Roderick Burgess (Charles Dance), a 19th century English occultist known as the Magus, whom Morpheus contemptuously calls “an amateur.” He and his son John Dee (played as an adult by David Thewlis) steal Dream’s three magical totems — his gas-mask-like helmet, a bag of magic sand, and a ruby that makes dreams come true — and keep the Lord of Dreams in their basement for more than a century. When he finally escapes, he returns to find his kingdom The Dreaming in tatters, and the humans whose dreams are his charge in not much better shape. Recovering the emblems of his office means a visit to actual, non-development Hell, where he must face off against Lucifer (Gwendoline Christie), and a trip to a small-town diner, where John Dee tries to use stolen dream magic to create a world without lies.

The 10-episode series is devoted to rendering the original stories and art as faithfully as possible. That’s always a tricky proposition because what works in the comics or on the page may not always work on the screen. In this case, the strengths and weaknesses of the series largely flow from the source material. Pains have been taken to recreate frames designed by artists McKean, Dringenberg, and Sam Keith — I have only a passing familiarity with the originals, but I still caught chills from several hauntingly familiar images — but this comes at the expense of expressive camera movement. Some casting choices are inspired, such as Thewlis, who steals the episode “24/7” as the emotionally stunted son of an abusive wizard, and Christie, who plays the devil as a vain and envious fallen angel to absolute perfection. I found Sturridge’s taciturn Morpheus a little off-putting at first, but he grew on me as the show progressed. The only big miss is Patton Oswalt, whose instant recognizability gets in the way of voicing Dream’s sidekick Matthew the Raven.

The Sandman’s deliberate pacing and philosophical tone may not be for everyone, but this faithful adaptation will satisfy legions of Neil Gaiman readers and those fantasy fans who are ready for a new Dream.

The Sandman is streaming on Netflix.

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Film Features Film/TV

The Gray Man

Ryan Gosling plays Sierra Six, a semi-reformed criminal.

What would you do if you had essentially unlimited funds?

If you answered “make a spy movie,” then you have something in common with Anthony and Joe Russo. The brothers who first attracted attention directing episodes of Arrested Development struck it as big as you can possibly strike it with the two-part climax to the Marvel Cinematic Universe, Avengers: Infinity War and Avengers: Endgame. The bladder-busting, superhero punch-a-thons grossed a collective $4.8 billion, with Endgame delivering the most profitable weekend in the 120-year history of the industry.

With no more worlds to conquer, the Russos can write their own ticket. Who wouldn’t say yes to history’s most successful film team? And so, we have The Gray Man, at $200 million, the most expensive film Netflix has ever produced.

It is my duty to be skeptical about mega-budget projects as awash in hubris as The Gray Man, but I must point out that it is an adaptation of a book by Memphian Mark Greaney, who spent a decade struggling in the service industry while he worked on his novels. His 2009 book The Gray Man was a sleeper hit with the techno-thriller crowd, and when Tom Clancy passed away, Greaney took over the Jack Ryan franchise, while also producing a hit spy series of his own.

Greaney’s titular hero is Sierra Six (Ryan Gosling), one of a team of semi-reformed criminals recruited by CIA honcho Donald Fitzroy (Billy Bob Thornton) to do stuff that requires both extreme moral flexibility and plausible deniability. But, as scheming CIA analyst Suzanne Brewer (Jessica Henwick) sarcastically points out, you take a group of hardened criminals, give them state-of-the-art weapons and the best training in the world, and something’s bound to go wrong.

The thing that goes wrong arrives in the person of director Denny Carmichael (Regé-Jean Page), who takes over when Fitzroy retires and decides to tie up his predecessor’s loose ends. Six is assigned to do a quiet assassination with a sniper rifle, but when a little girl gets in the way of his target, he can’t take the shot.

Yes, this is the type of movie where square-jawed men unironically bark, “Take the shot!”

Instead, he engages the target hand-to-hand in the middle of a giant fireworks display that cost more than Best Picture-winner Nomadland. And that’s pretty much all you need to know about The Gray Man. It’s a spy story grounded in the real world, so there are no spaceships or interdimensional portals or guys in flying armored suits. Instead, Netflix’s scratch pile funds international travel, sweeping outdoor set-pieces, and meticulously dressed interiors, many of which explode for poorly explained reasons. Psycho superspy antagonist Lloyd Hansen (Chris Evans) swigs Glenlivet while he directs mercenary fireteams from his French chateau HQ. When he gets mad, he doesn’t just flip a desk — he sweeps the best-stocked minibar you’ve ever seen onto the floor and grabs the complimentary bottle of Vicodin on his way out.

Sierra Six is basically 007 without the Cold War baggage. James Bond was an ideological warrior for queen and capital; Six is a gig-economy contractor caught in the breakdown of the nation state’s monopoly on violence. He has as much loyalty to the United States as a DoorDasher has to Applebee’s. He only cares about his partner Dani (Ana de Armas), who’s perpetually saving his life, and Fitzroy’s niece Claire (Julia Butters), whose life he’s perpetually saving.

Evans is delicious playing against type as the heavy. The key to his success is that he’s always having fun doing whatever goofy thing the Russos throw at him. When he drags a distressed damsel into a full-on Shining hedge maze while practically twirling his mustache, vaudeville villain-style, you can’t help but “Hell yeah!” The Gray Man breaks no new ground, but it’s so much fun to watch the Russos burn Netflix’s money, you won’t care. And if the next Ian Fleming is a bartender from Memphis, that’s all the better.

The Gray Man is now playing at multiple locations and streaming on Netflix beginning July 22nd.

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Opinion The Last Word

The Importance of Seeing Yourself on Screen

Man, high school can be hard. Unless you are in that environment, you might forget about it or look back on it with a distorted sense of nostalgia. As a high school teacher of 20 years — and now a mother of a high schooler — I know this firsthand. My school distributed yearbooks last week, and the senior quote of a student with whom I am very close was, “I was supposed to be having the time of my life,” by Sylvia Plath. That really sums it up for some kids. Unless you were super popular, you likely have a story of feeling lonely or misunderstood when you were in high school.

I saw a trailer for a new Netflix show a couple of weeks ago that was so incredibly refreshing. Heartstopper, based on the graphic novels by Alice Oseman, takes you into a world of 10th and 11th graders at both an all-boys and all-girls school in England. Openly gay Charlie Spring is seated next to popular rugby player Nicholas Nelson in form, the English equivalent of homeroom. A new, unlikely friendship blossoms between them as the story begins. It accurately portrays the fears, uncertainties, and self-discoveries that high school students routinely experience. Ultimately, we experience the fear, excitement, confusion, sadness, and happiness that is high school. This is the most relevant show for a high school teacher that I have ever seen. Let me explain why.

We can have all the diversity and inclusion training, and training on how to properly handle bullying that exists, but learning about it and seeing it put into action are two completely different things. In Heartstopper, the art teacher, Mr. Ajayi, expertly portrayed by British actor Fisayo Akinade, offers his classroom as a safe space for Charlie to come at lunchtime. They discuss how he was bullied so badly the previous year when Charlie was publicly outed. Mr. Ajayi, a gay man himself, discusses how terrible school was for him, saying at one point he just had to “suffer.”

Writer and LGBTQ+ activist Alexander Leon said, “Queer people don’t grow up as ourselves, we grow up playing a version of ourselves that sacrifices authenticity to minimise humiliation and prejudice. The massive task of our adult lives is to unpick which parts we’ve created to protect us.” Navigating high school is hard enough. Pretending to be someone you are not out of fear of bullying, not being accepted, or even being kicked out of school in the cases of some religious or private schools, solely based on who you are, is a tremendous weight that many LGBTQ+ students carry.

I have had several students talk to me about the impact Heartstopper has had on them. One former student of mine (they/them) discussed how it made them feel seen and validated to have a positive bisexual character in a show. They said that they never felt more understood. Positive representation of all marginalized groups in film and television is extremely important for this very reason.

Self-identity is a tricky beast, even when sexuality is not involved. I watch kids try to figure out who they are on a daily basis. I remember having those feelings as a teen, wondering where I fit in. Knowing that someone out there understands and accepts you, and having a safe place to go, can make all the difference in the world, especially in the time of book bans and so-called “Don’t Say Gay” and “bathroom” bills restricting the way gay, queer, and trans identities can be expressed in school, the exact place where young people are learning who they are and how to show that true self to the world.

Heartstopper is a stunningly beautiful representation of what it is like for kids in high school these days. I am thrilled that a show like this exists for queer kids to see themselves represented in such a beautiful and positive light. As a teacher, it has pushed me to go a step further in being there for those kids who may be viewed as outcasts or feel like they don’t belong. It has pushed me to educate others about what many of our students face each day. Take the time to watch the show. It is positive, uplifting, and unlike any series I have ever seen. You will laugh, cry, and remember how you felt when you first fell in love. Most importantly, you might reevaluate how you handle situations with students in your classroom.

Melanie W. Morton is a high school Spanish teacher originally from Memphis.

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Film Features Film/TV

Don’t Look Up

Jennifer Lawrence (left) and Leonardo DiCaprio

When Dr. Strangelove, Stanley Kubrick’s satire of the nuclear age, was released in January 1964, it began with a disclaimer: “It is the stated position of the U.S. Air Force that their safeguards would prevent the occurrence of such events as are depicted in this film.”

As journalist Eric Schlosser discovered while researching his book Command and Control, the disclaimer turned out to be wishful thinking. Dr. Strangelove’s central scenario, in which an American general goes murderously insane and orders his bombers to attack the Soviet Union with nuclear weapons, was completely plausible. Kubrick created what is arguably the greatest comedy ever by simply telling the truth.

The key to Dr. Strangelove’s success is Kubrick’s tonal tightrope walk between the hilarious and the terrifying. Now, with Don’t Look Up, it’s Adam McKay’s turn on the tightrope.

Michigan State University Ph.D. student Kate Dibiasky (Jennifer Lawrence) is studying supernovae when she accidentally discovers a new comet inbound from the Oort cloud. Her adviser Dr. Randall Mindy (Leonardo DiCaprio) figures out that Comet Dibiasky is headed directly for Earth. We’ve got six months to stave off utter destruction.

Meryl Streep

Kate and Randall call Dr. Teddy Oglethorpe (Rob Morgan), head of the Planetary Defense Coordination Office (which, the film notes, is a real thing), and they get a meeting with President Janie Orlean (Meryl Streep). To their dismay, the president and her Jared Kushner-esque son Jason (Jonah Hill) are more concerned with the upcoming midterm elections than with saving humanity. When they leak the news to the press, their appearance on a Good Morning America-type TV show hosted by Cate Blanchett and Tyler Perry is overshadowed by celebrity gossip generated by pop singer Riley’s (Ariana Grande) sex life. The end of civilization is just too big a bummer to get traction in today’s competitive media environment.

It’s obvious to anyone with two brain cells to rub together that Don’t Look Up’s comet is an allegory for global warming. McKay, like Kubrick, has been met with some bad reviews, and it’s true that Don’t Look Up lacks the perfection of Dr. Strangelove. The editing is choppy, and the story veers off into useless romantic subplots.

But what McKay gets right, he gets really right. The earnestness of the scientists trying to save the world becomes their biggest handicap. Legacy admission Ivy Leaguers in government dismiss the threatening discovery because it came from a state school. The elite news media descend on the subject — until the online engagement metrics fade. Most chilling of all is Mark Rylance as Peter Isherwell, a Steve Jobs-like tech billionaire who discovers precious metals on the comet and decides a couple of billion deaths is a small price to pay for propping up his company’s market capitalization.

Don’t Look Up was written before the pandemic, but if anything, the experience of the last two years has made McKay’s point for him; you could replace “comet” with “coronavirus” and the film would still work. When the comet becomes clearly visible in the night sky, Streep’s Trumpian president exhorts her red-hatted followers, “Don’t look up!” I thought about that scene on January 1st, when Memphis set a new high temperature record of 79 degrees. Crazy weather we’re having, huh?

Don’t Look Up is streaming on Netflix.

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Film/TV TV Features

Bo Burnham: Inside

“I hope this email finds you well.” How many missives started like that in 2020? It was ostensibly expressing a wish that you were not infected with COVID, but it was also about mental health. Whether you were hiding from the virus in quarantine or dodging the maskless in your “essential” job, odds are pretty good you were not well — at least not emotionally. In January, 2020, the US Census reported 11 percent of people surveyed were experiencing depression or anxiety. By December, that number had risen to a whopping 42 percent. 

Among those who were not OK was Bo Burnham. The comedian, musician, and director started out as one of the first teenage YouTube stars before graduating to standup, but he quit performing live after experiencing onstage panic attacks. His retirement from live performance may have been the best thing to happen to him, as he expanded his writing and directing. His 2018 film Eighth Grade is a masterpiece of adolescent comedy; I put it at number 16 in my best of the decade list.

Burnham spent the pandemic locked down in Los Angeles; to pass the time, he decided to film a comedy special, his first in four years. Inside is the product of a one-man band: Burham wrote 20 songs, designed the lighting, ran the cameras, recorded the audio, and did everything else. With the exception of the end, it’s filmed entirely inside a tiny studio apartment. In a sense, it’s him getting back to his YouTube roots, but with much more expensive equipment. 

The 1918 influenza pandemic was a turning point in world history. It hastened the end of World War I, when 900,000 German soldiers came down the flu in a matter of months. But aside from Edvard Munch’s Self Portrait With the Spanish Flu, it produced very little in terms of lasting art. Even Ernest Hemingway’s novels set during the war omit mention of the pandemic that killed at least ten million more people than the conflict. That implies to me that people just wanted to forget about it.

COVID might end up being similarly forgotten by art. But at least we’ll have Inside. And frankly, I can’t think of any better way to record what what it felt like to live through 2020 than what Burnham has accomplished. Some of the songs come across as Tom Lehrer gone synth pop, or maybe something Weird Al would do if he wasn’t parodying other people’s songs. In other words, they’re catchy and funny, like the soon-to-be-immortal ditty “Welcome To The Internet”: “What would you prefer?/ Would you like to fight for civil rights/or tweet a racial slur?/Be Happy/Be horny/Be bursting with rage/We got a million different ways to engage.” 

Like all great comedians, there’s more than just a lust for yuks at work here. Burnham’s lyrics are cutting, but they’re also insightful. He has an internet star’s confessional streak, and by the halfway mark of filming his show more or less in chronological order, his defenses are crumbling. Burnham turned 30 during lockdown, and spends the last minute of his twenties inviting us to join him as he stares bleakly at the clock, waiting for 11:59 PM to change to 12:00 AM. When he tries to record a bit about working on this special for a full year, he falls apart completely, storming off his own set. 

You, like the artists of the Lost Generation, might just want to forget the whole thing (which is still ongoing, by the way) ever happened, but this show is not about wallowing in past pain. Inside is the first time I’ve really felt any kind of catharsis about the annus horribilis. 

Bo Burnham: Inside is streaming on Netflix

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Film/TV TV Features

Life, Death, and Laughs: Buried by the Bernards Premieres on Netflix

Local commercials are a TV genre unto themselves; often low-budget to the point of almost being homemade, and produced without the benefit of ad consultants trying to make it more palatable to suburban masses, they can be cringeworthy and inadvertently hilarious. But they can also be just as memorable as a $1 million Super Bowl ad — and after all, isn’t that the goal? How many Memphians of a certain age remember Memphis preacher Dr. James Salton telling local TV audiences “You’ll never get nowhere smoking the pipe”? It’s the rare advertisement that created such a following that fans made T-shirts devoted to it.

Memphis’ Bernard Funeral Services scored a viral hit with a 2018 ad wherein the deceased is so shocked by their low prices, he sits up in the coffin and demands to be taken there.

The Bernards’ 2018 TV ad was their first claim to fame

The Bernards were, at the time, relative newcomers to the industry, says family matriarch Debbie Bernard. “My brother and I used to talk about the mortuary business, maybe 10, 15 years ago. We would just talk about it, but we never really did anything about it. As time progressed and we started doing other things, we put it on the back burner. Then we pulled it up to the front burner.”

Now they’re about to be on the Netflix front burner in a new reality series called Buried by the Bernards. Life comes at you fast.

Kevin and Debbie of the new Netflix show Buried by the Bernards

A close-knit family with roots in Memphis that go back generations, the Bernards all pitched in on the new business endeavor, says Debbie. “Everybody had something that they had to contribute. Ryan’s was the biggest, actually. He had to go to class, go to mortuary school, take the mortuary test and everything. My assignment was ‘research and development.’ Regan was gonna work on the website. So collectively we got all together and our Bernard Funeral Services was born.”

Ryan Bernard says his mortuary science training was “an eye-opening experience. You know about death. It’s natural to life. But to actually go to school and learn the ins and outs of it, it’s almost like going to doctor school. You have to learn everything about the body and the nervous system. It’s also like being a psychiatrist, a grief counselor. You have to deal with many aspects of death, and grieving families.”

What first attracted public attention was probably the building Debbie chose for the new business: a former Union Planters bank at Lamar and Pendleton in Orange Mound. The location was perfect, and the building had a drive-through window, so they decided to make the most of it and offer drive-through funeral services. Before the pandemic, comedians thought this was hilarious. Debbie heard all the jokes. “Can I have two orders of fries and a milkshake with that?”

Ryan was booked on national talk shows. “They had me on The Steve Harvey Show trying to make a joke about it. I had to go defend the operation and let them know what the real was. Now, fast-forward two years down the road, the drive-through has been helping us out, especially with COVID. And it’s been helping out families, too.”

The TV exposure started the phones ringing. “We were just coming out the gate. We were trying to focus on building our brand and building our business,” says Debbie. “The people who called, some of them were just saying ‘Ryan needs a wife. Can I speak to him?’ We ain’t got time for that lane.”

One of the people who called was reality show producer Warren D. Robinson. At first, Debbie didn’t take his pitch seriously. “We said the ‘D’ stood for ‘Don’t call here no more!'”

But Robinson persisted. Ryan says he didn’t think his jovial family would make for good reality show fodder. “People want to watch drama and stuff, you know? I was also thinking, how could we make a good reality show but then still maintain a professional, serious business? We don’t want people to take us as a joke. They told us it would be very family-oriented, and they could make it a comedy, and there wouldn’t be any drama, and it wouldn’t be anything that would jeopardize and take away from my profession. Obviously, my uncle Kevin and my mama, they can act a fool. They gonna do that anyway.”

Kevin Miller says the humor in Buried by the Bernards comes naturally to everyone involved. “They looked at us as characters, but that’s just us every day around the funeral home.”

The show was filmed from January to March 2020, wrapping right before the COVID pandemic hit. When it debuts on Netflix on Friday, February 12th, the Bernards will suddenly reach an international audience. “I’m shocked,” says Ryan. “This thing is going to be in 191 countries! It just doesn’t feel real to me.”

Buried by the Bernards premieres on Netflix Feb. 12.

Categories
Opinion The Last Word

Disconnected: Don’t Make Me Pull This TV Over

CREDIT: Seanlockephotography | Dreamstime.com

It’s hard to pin down exactly when it happened, but at some point my wife and I stopped doing whatever new thing everybody else is doing. We’re in our late fifties — our very late fifties — and maybe there just came a point where we no longer had the energy to learn how to operate new gizmos. We are, after all, in the generation that still uses words like “gizmo.”

It could have been Facebook, at least for me. When Facebook initially showed up, I did participate. Well, about as passively as I could. What I did was accept every single friend request I got. It was fun to see how many people were interested in being my friend. Then I realized that they didn’t want friends, they wanted an audience. People I deliberately didn’t stay in touch with from school suddenly wanted to include me in their lives. If I had at any point been interested in what Kip Miller is up to, I would’ve picked up the phone and asked him. If I had the tiniest bit of interest in my long-lost acquaintances’ grandchildren … You know, I’m not even going to finish that sentence. There was never, ever going to be a point where I was interested in anyone’s grandchildren.

Seanlockephotography | Dreamstime.com

Turn down, tune out

Now I look at Facebook about once a year to see which of my so-called friends could muster up enough enthusiasm about our relationship to bother clicking on the notification that it’s my birthday and go to the smallest amount of effort to write two words. As for other people’s political opinions, it would be almost impossible to calculate how little I want to read those. If you don’t agree with me on the issues of the day, you’re an idiot and I refuse to devote one second of my remaining time on Earth getting worked up about how stupid you are.

We have never streamed. When the topic of conversation winds its way to the latest installment of a show on Netflix, we’re those people — you know, the codgers who can’t figure out where exactly on our television is the access point to streaming services. It could be that our television is older than my friends’ grandchildren I don’t care about. Many of our younger friends have proudly announced that they have cut the cord and dropped cable in favor of this or that streaming service, or they’ve gotten some kind of stick that you plug into your TV. A few months ago I did force myself to spend three minutes looking at our TV to see if I could find the place where a stick would be plugged in, but I got nowhere, other than realizing how badly our entertainment center needed to be dusted. To a guy my age, there is great comfort in flipping around cable, something that streaming services don’t seem to provide. At this point, I’m so calcified in my habits I would rather settle on a rerun of a police procedural I’ve seen seven times than jump through whatever hoops are involved in being able to watch a brand-spanking-new episode of The Mandalorian, whatever that is.

While I have a smartphone, it is, if anything, even more obsolete than our TV. Yes, I have all the apps, at least the ones that came with the phone, but it seems that the social media apps are even more ego-driven than Facebook. Why on Earth would I post pictures of my life online for people to judge? It’s been about a year since people stopped contradicting me when I say I’m losing my hair. The last thing in the world I want to do is document the process for the whole world to see.

Some people may say that I’m being cynical in assuming that people out there would be judging me, but I know the few times I’ve looked at Snapchat all I’ve done is judge people. To be honest, that part was kind of fun. For some reason, a lot of people I know don’t seem to have noticed that they’ve put on a lot of weight since high school.

Maybe it’s a lack of energy, or maybe it’s just a defense mechanism triggered by age. Accepting new things is a young person’s game. Which is exactly why I have to get one of my friends’ stupid grandkids to come by my house and remind me of how to operate my DVD player. Of course, they’ve probably never even seen a DVD player.

Dennis Phillippi is a writer, comedian, actor, and unemployed radio personality.

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Food & Drink Hungry Memphis

Cookston to Judge American Barbecue Showdown on Netflix

CREDIT: Melissa Cookston

Melissa Cookston

Mid-South barbecue celebrity Melissa Cookston will judge a Netflix food competition called American Barbecue Showdown, which airs September 18th.

Cookston is the owner of Memphis BBQ Company in Horn Lake, Mississippi and Dunwoody, Georgia. She’s the author of two cookbooks, Smokin’ In the Boy’s Room and Smokin’ Hot in the South. Her wins on the competitive barbecue circuit have earned her the title as the “Winningest Woman in Barbecue.”

Judging the competition with Cookston is Kevin Bludso, founder of Bludso’s BBQ in Los Angeles. The show is hosted by AP Bio star Lyric Lewis and Floor is Lava host Rutledge Wood. Melissa Cookston

Each episode has Cookston and Bludso tasking the contestants — “the best backyard smokers” — with a challenge that will test their barbecue skills “in ways they couldn’t possibly imagine,” reads a news release. “The contestants will have to prove they have the skills to smoke another day while navigating obstacles such as unique meats and old school techniques.” The winner will be dubbed American Barbecue Champion.

“I am thrilled to be a judge on American Barbecue Showdown on Netflix working alongside Kevin Bludso, Lyric Lewis, and Rutledge Wood,” said Cookston. “The contestants were all great and we had so much fun! We can’t wait to watch it when it launches on September 18th”
Melissa Cookston

John Hesling, president of Maverick TV USA, one of the producers of the show, said, “distinct flavors, techniques, creativity, and humor are all on display as our barbecue competitors are put to the test in the hottest battle they’ve ever faced in American Barbecue Showdown.”

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Film Features Film/TV

Tiger King Holds Up a Mirror to a Dysfunctional America

Joe Exotic, the Tiger King

There’s nothing like being in the right place at the right time.

If you’ve been on social media lately, you’ve probably seen the words “Tiger King.” I don’t know when I’ve seen a show go so viral so quickly. The reason for this is probably the virus.

Tiger King: Murder, Mayhem and Madness is a Netflix true-crime documentary that follows the now-familiar beats of the genre. In fact, there’s nothing in directors’ Eric Goode and Rebecca Chaiklin’s seven-episode documentary series that would look out of place in American Vandal, the definitive true-crime documentary parody. Except Tiger King is real.

Or maybe it’s more accurate to say it’s hyper-real.

Tiger King is ostensibly the story of Joe Schreibvogel, aka Joe Exotic, the owner and operator of G.W. Zoo in Oklahoma. But it’s the breadth of the cast of weird characters that makes it the show so compelling to watch. Apparently, everyone involved in the business of preserving, showing, and breeding big cats in America is insane — and they all know each other.

There’s Joe, who is some kind of avatar of ultimate redneck energy. He’s got a stringy mullet right out of 1987 and a .357 magnum on his hip. He’s also got dozens of tigers in cages in his roadside attraction, and that infuriates Carole Baskin, the proprietor of Big Cat Rescue in Florida. Baskin’s stated mission is to get the tigers and lions (and the occasional liger) who circulate in the black market and give them a safe retirement. Or so she says.

The epic rivalry between the two feline enthusiasts forms the narrative backbone of Tiger King. From the beginning, when Joe Exotic calls in from prison, we know it ends badly for at least one party. But as the story progresses, the question arises of how much is real and how much is fake? Baskin’s social media empire relies on having an enemy to fight and animals to rescue, and Joe, who has more than 220 tigers in his sketchy park, presents a big target. But Joe becomes obsessed with the conflict, even as the lawsuits pile up and his livelihood dries up.

Joe’s mentor is Bhagavan “Doc” Antle. But just what kind of doctor is he? A doctor of “the mystical arts,” says one of his followers. Antle has his own exotic animal park in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, and trains animals for Hollywood productions. He’s also got a Charles Manson-level cult of personality going, with a harem of “wives” who work the teeming crowds at his park and live on the property. “You can’t get into my complex lifestyle,” he says at one point. “It’s not ready for prime time.”

Bhagavan “Doc” Antle

Joe tries, to emulate his hero, but fails. His cult of personality is smaller, but not for lack of trying. Joe is flamboyantly gay and has two husbands, both of whom come to bad ends. In fact, very few people who cross Joe’s path come out whole. There are a lot of people in Tiger King missing limbs. “A lot of people think tigers took my legs. Actually, it was a zipline accident,” becomes a laugh line.

Every documentary is judged by its subject, and this one has great subjects. But another crucial factor is how much footage exists of the events of the story. In this case, it’s a perfect storm of footage. Everyone involved is a relentless self-promoter. They all envy Baskin because she jumped on the social media cyber-hustling video bandwagon first. Joe had a minor country music career, complete with music videos, and filmed 60 videos for social media about the feud with Baskin that ultimately became his undoing. He was also filming a reality television series with a producer whose ethics are questionable at best. But it’s hard to say any of the productions involved exploited these people, since they’re all so dedicated to exploiting themselves.

Carole Baskin, the proprietor of Big Cat Rescue in Florida

Tiger King is made competently enough, but its runaway success is the direct result of the timing of its release. It hit Netflix on March 20th, right when COVID-19 quarantines and shelter-in-place edicts were forcing people indoors. With no sports to compete with for eyeballs, Tiger King captured millions of viewers.

It’s tempting to read something about the current sorry state of the United States in this saga, a collision of Trumpian egos and drummed-up psychodrama, designed and presented at every turn to capture social media clicks. America has always been a land that breeds excellent weirdos, but only now can delusions of grandeur play out on such a public scale. If there’s one moment in Tiger King that sums ups the zeitgeist, it’s when Joe Exotic looks at the chaotic, dangerous, and unsustainable shambles that used to be his life, and says, “This is my way of living, and no one is going to tell me another way.”