No. 66 - Asteroid City
I go over Wes Anderson's strange new addition to he oeuvre and rattle off some of the other works I've been enjoying.
The New Wes Anderson Movie
While a lot of media is referred to as “content” and “product”, Asteroid City (like Wes’s The French Dispatch before it) emphasizes the authors, artists, and minds behind the work. There’s a reason why people say they’re going to see “a Wes Anderson movie” and not “that movie about the people in that southwest town with a big crater.” Anderson has established himself as a distinct artistic voice, so much so that people resort to using AI to try to replicate the look of his films. What’s missing from soulless novelties like those is exactly what Asteroid City depicts, creators of varying backgrounds coming together to make a work of art.
If you’ve seen the trailers, there may be some confusion as to how a Wes Anderson movie about a collection of people stuck in a southwest town that an alien pays a visit to relates to the creative process. That’s because that story isn’t real. That story isn’t happening. That story is a production put on by actors, crew members, and whatnot. I don’t mean writers Wes Anderson and Roman Copolla or actors Jason Schwartzman, Scarlett Johansson, and Tom Hanks. I mean that Asteroid City is a fictional play put on by Jones Hall (Jason Schwartzman), Mercedes Ford (Scarlett Johansson), and many others that depicts the cosmic event that happens in the small southwest town of Asteroid City.
Most of the film is dedicated to the play within the movie, the story of a father, Augie Steenbeck, (Jason Schwartzman) as he finds himself stuck in Asteroid City. This little town is known for two things: the large crater created by a meteorite thousands of years ago and the research station located there dedicated to the study of the stars. Augie is there to celebrate his brainiac son’s achievement with the other Junior Stargazers when an alien visitor makes an appearance. This forces the military to place the eclectic cast of characters under military enforced quarantine.
Throughout the story, we are reminded that it is one. We are reminded of its “story-ness”. Cards in between scenes clarify which act and scene we are in and, occasionally, we are shown some of the behind-the-scenes drama. Audiences are introduced to the playwright of Asteroid City, Conrad Earp (Edward Norton), the director of the play Schubert Green (Adrien Brody), and many many others. Audiences are offered glimpses into the individuals orbiting the cast and crew’s personal lives. While the off-stage drama appears almost like it exists on a different planet than the on-stage drama, thematic parallels between the cast and crew’s personal lives and the play become clear. There is something personal that is inseparable from a work art, even if the artist is dead. Like a long dead star, the light still reaches us now and can be etched into our vision of the world.
Asteroid City is in theaters now.
Quick Thoughts
Longer than a stray observation, but not long enough for a full feature. I figuredI’d include some quick thoughts on some works I have been enjoying lately.
Past Lives (2023)
Evoking Wong Kar Wai’s romantic films, Richard Linklater’s Before Trilogy, and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Celine Song’s debut film Past Lives tells a story about fate bringing together two people at the wrong time. Nora and Hae Sung grew up together in Korea until Nora and her family emigrated to Canada. Years later they reconnect and find a spark between them, but a multitude factors keep them apart. Rather than thinking “maybe in another life,” the two invoke the idea of past lives in the form of “in-yeon.” The Korean concept of in-yeon suggests that every interaction two people have, no matter how brief, means they knew each other in a past life and that lovers are people who have had in-yeon countless times in the past. The two leads, Greta Lee and Yoo Teo have a stifled intimacy between each other that makes every scene they have together have a sense of longing and yearning, but it’s implied the cultural difference caused by their physical distance has put an unfortunate divide between them. Past Lives is a lovely film that is expertly and subtly crafted and is one of the best films of the year.
Past Lives is in theaters now.
The Venture Bros. (2003-2018)
I started watching The Venture Bros. earlier this year and it felt long overdue. Being a teenager I was transfixed by a lot of the sort of imagery The Venture Bros. lampooned or paid homage to. I was obsessed with superheroes, science fiction, horror, and fantasy and I recall seeing nonstop chatter about The Venture Bros. in the online circles I ran in. This was before superheroes dominated the cultural conversation and the interest was regarded as pretty niche. The show follows the legacy of a Johnny Quest-style boy adventurer into his middle age, the complexities of supervillain bureaucracy, and the wacky hijinks two teenage boys who have seemingly unlimited resources in this fantastical comic book world. It can feel overstuffed once it pivots from a silly episodic comedy show into a complex web of characters, layered narratives, and implied lore. The storytelling feels akin to something like a Dungeons & Dragons campaign that starts out with joke characters and one-off adventures that goes on long enough that those joke characters become more complex and interesting, but remain funny.
Excitingly enough for me, I have finished catching up with the show just in time. The Venture Bros. left off on a cliffhanger at the end of season seven back in 2018, but it will continue with a feature length film this July. In typical Venture fashion, the film’s outlandish title is The Venture Bros.: Radiant Is the Blood of the Baboon Heart.
The Venture Bros. is streaming on MAX (formally known as HBO Max)
Cinema Speculation by Quentin Tarantino (2022)
Last year I was gifted Cinema Speculation, a book by acclaimed writer/director Quentin Tarantino, and I resolved to read it a very specific way. Nearly every essay collected in Cinema Speculation was centered around a specific movie, so I would watch that movie before reading each chapter. The book ended up being a wonderful guide through the monumental changes in Hollywood in the 1970s, but it also gave particular insight into Tarantino’s upbringing. Many of the films he writes about were released during a very formative time in his life: his teens. Tarantino looks back on these films with a particularly fond sense as he not only gives historical context but personal context too. He tells about what was going on in his home life when he saw it, how it influenced his writing, and the audiences response in the 70s (his essay about Taxi Driver emphasizes how much the crowds he saw it with laughed throughout the film). Its a really fun read because Tarantino’s voice comes through loud and clear as he goes on crazy tangents, encyclopedic info dumps that are littered with personal biases, and a copious use of the word “fuck.”
Xavier: Renegade Angel (2007-2009)
I had been rewatching clips of the absolute oddity of a show Xavier Renegade Angel before knuckling down and rewatching several episodes. It had been almost a decade since I’ve seen full episodes of the insane Adult Swim show, but I am still unprepared to totally handle the nonsensical saga of Xavier, a mutant spiritualist, as he “rambles the world.” Xavier constantly spews a soup of double entendres, malapropism, and mixed metaphors he tries to reach ann enlightenment that always seems just out of reach. Instead, he usually causes some kind of violent end to the lost souls who cross his path. There was a major part of me that thought that maybe Xavier was maybe ahead of it’s time and that it’s absurdity and clever wordplay would be easier to digest after my near decade long diet of more and more absurdist comedy, both online and on television.
No such case.
Xavier is aggressive in its strangeness, its non-stop barrage of jokes, and its hostility toward every possible philosophy. It makes it feel like an attempted transmission from an alien world that’s only seen our memes, but a whole lot funnier.
Xavier: Renegade Angel is streaming on MAX (formally known as HBO Max)
Stray Observations
GQ recently published an article titled “Tim Robinson Broke My Boyfriend’s Brain.” The article outlines the writer’s frustration with the fact that since the release of the latest season of Tim Robinson’s sketch comedy show, I Think You Should Leave, her boyfriend speaks in quotes from the show. Amusing to her for a little bit, but she’d like to talk about other things too. The article is funny enough, expressing the viewpoint that some friends of mine have held when me and other ITYSL fans get going quoting our favorite bits. Its when the article assigns it as a gendered practice. The author suggests that this “broken brain” only affects straight men which is silly because 1/2 of the people I talk to about ITYSL are women. The show may be popular with the straight male demographic, but every social group has stories and art that they consistently share with each other. Communicating a shared love for a work is just a part of how people communicate.
Polite Society is now streaming on Peacock and I loved it. Similar to Past Lives, Polite Society explores the idea of missed opportunities in a completely different way. Polite Society shows the existential terror how one can lose access to different possibilities in life as one gets older, but as an highly choreographed action-comedy. Other critics have compared the highly stylized story of a teenager trying to stop her sister from giving up her dreams as an artist and getting married to Edgar Wright films (specifically Scott Pilgrim) and the comparison is sound! Polite Society is an outrageous, silly, and over-the-top adventure with top notch gags and fight sequences.
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I leave you with some words writer and film critic Jessica Ritchey tweeted earlier this week that really resonated with me and made me think about the media and art we consume.
I'm not saying adults insisting they only need to read YA and watch children's cartoons is leading to this culture wide phobia of sex which in turn is becoming a useful vector for the increasing spread of fascism except that is exactly what I'm saying.
It's why the insistence on "cozy" being applied to every genre is worrying. It's an insistence on consumption without consequences. Friendship but no romance, and even friendship without platonic love, but the friendly anonymity of co-workers.
So much YA and children's cartoons, and adult Gogurt content like the MCU movies, is about making good soldiers of neoliberalism. This is the best things can be. Don't look to change vastly unjust systems, just figure out how to throw an afghan and mug of tea over them.
And love can be a radical act. Love is inherently an anti-capitalist act, it's given freely and expects nothing in return. And sex can be a profound part of that, either in committed relationships or in sheer pleasure which is a worthy end it itself.
Neoliberalism always needs to justify things for profit. "Why is this here? This doesn't serve the plot." Neoliberalism is terrified of pleasure for pleasure's sake. The idea that you have a sex scene because it's hot. Because you have a right to pleasure.
I don't know how you fix the march away from joy and pleasure. The greatest trick late capitalism pulled is convincing people corporations were their friends and artists were their enemies.