Media Recap 2024

Film & Television

• The Fall
• Arcane
• Other
• Video Essays
• The rest

This year, I watched fewer things—32 movies and 12 tv shows, versus last year’s 44 movies, 15 shows. Half of those movies were rewatches, and I started and dropped a lot of shows.

The Fall

I rewatched The Fall, a cult classic film from 2006 directed by Tarsem Singh. It is, famously, a beautiful movie, known for its landscapes—shot in 28 countries!—as well as the performance of Catinca, its child actress.

In my memory, The Fall is beautiful and sad. When I first watched it maybe a decade ago, I was in a different place and I connected too well with its suicidal protagonist. The scene I remembered the most was not one of the film’s cinematic fantasy sequences but rather one of the hospital scenes.

Ten years later, I am not so affected by that hospital. I enjoy the beautiful landscapes so much more (though the fact that I watched this in a movie theatre rather than a laptop screen helped). And I finally understand what the film is saying: a story lives in both the storyteller and the listener.

In my generation, once you saw a movie, it was really hard to see it again; you had a certain kind of nostalgia. You would think that this movie you saw as a kid was so amazing, but then you sit down as a grown up with your friends and show it to them, and they go, “But this is a piece of shit,” and you go, “Yeah, I kind of agree”—you had changed it in your head. So that was always true about storytelling: you’d change it in your head. This is a phenomenon that I think the newer generation won’t be that familiar with. Now, people can keep looking at film clips on YouTube or whatever, so the film kind of keeps up with how you remember it. But back then, you saw it and as you grew, the story changed and evolved—and you have to walk away for five, ten years at least to have that happen.

—Magical Mystery Tour: Tarsem on “The Fall”

Smarter people than me have written about the film and its meaning. What I didn’t expect, however, was to be so enamoured by the behind-the-scenes story of how it was made. Molly Templeton writes, “This story, like most stories, gets romanticized to varying degrees; this is a movie that almost begs to be mythologized.”

The second story here is of The Fall’s creation: a self-funded labour of love, shot in 28 countries over four years, critically panned, and never widely released or distributed, until this year.

And it happened at the right time. My Italian girlfriend dumped me. I met Catinca, and I’d been looking for the child, boy or girl, for the film for seven years. I thought, We make the movie now, or like my brother used to say, we’ll be two old guys with a lot of money that are talking about a movie that they’ll never make. I told my brother, “Sell everything. I want to have nothing.” I’ll never be in that position again, because now I have a son. You gotta give him something to carry on and carry on. But back then, it was like, “Fuck it, burn the bridges behind me. Let’s go make this.”

—Tarsem Singh in Vulture

How absolutely romantic indeed. He thought about this for years, and made so much money doing commercial work (necessary!), and then spent it all making this. And then no one wanted it, and it had a cult following but no wide streaming or physical release—until 2024. And here we are.

Further reading:

• Ten Years Later, There’s Still Nothing Like Tarsem Singh’s The Fall by Molly Templeton in Reactor
• Lee Pace Always Knew ‘The Fall’ Was Special by Raymond Ang in GQ

Television highlight

Arcane

Arcane is incredible. You already know this! Everything to say about it has already been said (it’s beautiful, stunning, etc.), so what’s left for me is the hyperspecific, nerdy shit:

• The painterly art style is probably my favourite thing about its visuals. In The Art and Making of Arcane, Fortiche talks about how they wanted it to look like concept art for animation:

  […] eventually computer-generated 3-D animation is going to age, ‘Whereas if the image is based on handmade artistic talent, that’s going to perdure.’

  — Jérôme Combe (p.173)

• I love messy textures, visible brushstrokes, and all that jazz. Every frame in Arcane really is—haha—like a painting. I love how they do faces! The highlight on the inner corners!!! Probably my favourite detail, it’s just so satisfying.
• The metallics always look so good, especially golds—just look at Mel, who is the most beautiful character in a series full of beautiful characters. The gold accents on her bottom lids!! And there are the gold accents on Cait’s outfit. The gold on those robots (hello, kintsugi).

• Whenever Fortiche plays with style—what they call music videos, “a musical scene over a song with a distinctive graphic treatment” (p.208)—is so much fun. Like the charcoal drawings in S2E1, the comic book montage of the enforcers (S2E3), the watercolour flashback of Powder & Vi (S2E8). And, of course. That dance scene. I love this kind of style experimentation.
  • “What if the fight was a music video?” they asked about S1E7.
  • What if we borrowed from a different medium? This is really where the magic happens, and it makes my tiny little brain want to explode, knowing that there are infinite creative directions to take something, beyond what’s conventional.

• The music. Ma Meilleure Ennemie is, of course, tragic; The Line for Viktor; Wasteland for Jinx; Remember Me for, well, a lot of people…; Fantastic for Cait and Vi. I haven’t listened to much else than the soundtrack for the past month.
• Other memorable bits: Sevika’s slot machine arm is so fun (they mention in the artbook how the challenge was making it not anatomically accurate!!); that bullet ricochet (oh my god); “[redacted], I don’t fucking care” (oh my god); “only you can show me this” (I am deceased); the entire cosmic plane or whatever it’s called, you know; I’ve already mentioned this, but, the dance. Her eye makeup, in that scene. Pretend like it’s the first time.

I am unwell about it. It’s like how I felt after seeing Spider-Verse last year. I feel like my life is changed. I feel inspired.

Other Film & TV

Look Back

Dir. Kiyotaka Oshiyama — Based on the manga by Tatsuki Fujimoto — 2024

I saw this in theatres not knowing anything about it. It’s delightfully relatable—it captures the energy of being a young, obnoxious artist so well—and then it grabs you by the throat and doesn’t let go. People were crying all over the place. I’m crying again, just writing this.

It asks, why do you draw? The protagonist, Fujino, says that drawing manga is full of awful, hard work, yet she’s done it her entire life. Why does she do it? Why do any of us submit to the mortifying ordeal of creating art?

(We do it for what it’s always about: the rewards of being loved.)

Related listening: the theme Light song by haruka nakamura

Paprika

Dir. Satoshi Kon — 2006

Paprika is known for its surreal visuals. Like with The Fall, I first watched Paprika on a shitty little laptop screen many years ago. Earlier this year, it played in theatres as part of a Satoshi Kon celebration, so I jumped at the chance to see it. It’s really so magical and beautiful.

Related watching:

• The opening credits sequence, to give you an idea of the surrealism of this film, set to the hypnotically sublime track The Girl in Byakkoya by Susumu Hirasawa.
• Satoshi Kon - Editing Space & Time by Every Frame a Painting

The Bear

Seasons 2–3

Season two was perfect: I love character development, and there was so much of it. My favourite episodes were the two standouts: S2E6 Fishes, with its mounting anxiety and chaos, and S2E7 Forks. Richie, that beautiful bastard, has his moment and it feels so earned. The catharsis! I love growth! I love Love Story by Taylor Swift!

Video essays

Ironically, I don’t watch much YouTube. I’m a cranky millennial who hates video, and also I struggle more with processing speech than text, and I prefer the flexibility and efficiency of reading. But I know I’m missing out on a lot of great stuff, so I’m trying to broaden my horizons.

Since this is a new category, there’s some overlap with 2023.

Plagiarism and You(Tube)

By Hbomberguy — December 2, 2023

The four-hour video essay that was so widely talked about that even I sat down to watch it, and then I rewatched it as I was working on this post. It’s an entertaining video, engaging through its entire runtime, and Harry Brewis approaches the topic of plagiarism with a lot of humour. He goes through so many examples of YouTubers plagiarizing their videos, how they did it, why they did it, how they defended themselves…it’s very messy!

But he also takes it seriously: why does it matter that these YouTubers have stolen the work of others? Why is it important for people to be credited and known? It is more than just insular YouTube drama.

Maybe it’s a good idea to have some standards for not stealing. Maybe.

In current discourse, YouTubers simultaneously present as the forefront of a new medium, creative voices that need to be taken seriously as part of the next generation of media. And also uwu small beans little babies who shouldn’t be taken seriously when they rip someone off and make tens of thousands of dollars doing it. (3:36:12)

Related intervew: Hbomberguy Didn’t Want to Make That 4-Hour Plagiarism Video by Rebecca Alter in Vulture

Everything Is Content Now

By Patrick (H) Willems — August 23, 2023

About things like the devaluing of creative labour (this was released during the 2023 WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes) and the flattening of all types of creative work into “content.”

I too have to stop myself from calling things “content” out of convenience. If there’s a more precise word, I’ll use that.

In general, watching Patrick’s channel has also properly shamed me about doing the whole watch-movie-in-the-background thing—in this video, he talks about streaming services wanting “second-screen content” for that exact purpose, which is insulting! I’m trying to be better about it.

Art in the Pre-Apocalypse

By Jacob Geller — September 4, 2023

This is the only Jacob Geller video essay I’ve seen (I’m sorry, I ordered his book, I can’t wait to engage with more of his work) and it’s a really gorgeous meditation on the pre-apocalypse—the before the world ends—as seen in various books, movies, and games.

In his words: “This is an essay about catastrophe and death and despair and hope and two dozen other things.” And hope. It is a hopeful video essay.

Post-apocalypse is easy. When the great defining event of the world is in the rearview mirror, characters in post-apocalyptic stories are free to grapple with smaller, more individual crises. What are they going to do? Unexplode the bombs? Unscorch the Earth?

Setting a story in the pre-apocalypse presents characters with similarly impossible challenges, but this time the stakes are so high that to NOT do anything would be…morally contemptible? Right? Clive [FFXVI] has a moral obligation to stop Zettaflare, doesn’t he? When the alternative is a burned world? (23:07)

Cabel Sasser’s XOXO talk

XOXO Festival — August 2024

I was fortunate to see Cabel Sasser present this at XOXO Festival this year, and it was a whole experience to be in that room. It’s about a McDonald’s mural—“the Sistine Chapel of McDonald’s wall art”—and legacy.

“Appreciate everything endlessly,” he says, and yeah, that’s really the heart of it, isn’t it? And maybe, just maybe, we can all live forever.

And everything else

I watched A Family Affair and Bridesmaids on a bachelorette trip, neither of which I enjoyed, but the communal yelling at the TV was fun; my descent into Batman-related media (more on that in the Books section) included Nolan’s Dark Knight trilogy, Batman: The Animated Series, and Young Justice; other beautiful animation I enjoyed were Suzume and Metropolis; the only show I continue to keep up with is Jet Lag: The Game, which remains impressively entertaining; I finally watched Fight Club, which I had somehow never been spoiled for.