I Support the Non-Current Thing (Autumn/Spring 2023)
A look at the past things that I enjoyed this season, from film to books and the Internet that I think are worth checking out.
Welcome to I Support the (non)-Current thing, where I will share the things I recently watched, read or listened to that are not current. All of which I really like, so I explain why you should check them out.
Film
Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans (1927)
Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans was the American film debut of F W Murnau and shows how life can be exciting when you struck a man and a woman together, and they grow old with their hands intact. It brings over the German Expressionism that Murnau was famous for, and combines it with earnest sentimentalism, and it would be the crowdpleaser of 1927. Fun fact: this movie won Best Actress for Janet Gaynor, who plays the wife, at the very first Academy Awards held in 1929. It almost won Best Picture, but has to settle for Most Unique and Artistic Picture, because Howard Hawks’ Wings was the preferred choice.
Harvie Krumpet (2003)
This short film won the Academy Award for Best Animated Short in 2003, and given the country’s cinema being in dire straits, this is one of our national treasures. Adam Elliot creates an immigration story painted in the funniest gallows humor, with the cutesiest claymation that you might find, accompanied by Geoffrey Rush’s droll narration. Twenty years on, Harvie Krumpet still retains much of its charms, possessing a ‘fair go’ mythos that is perpetrated in this country. Adam Elliot followed this up with the much superior Mary and Max and looking back, it was more than fertile ground for his creativity. He has not made a feature since and once he does, I’ll be the first to buy a ticket.
Close Encounter of the Third Kind (1977)
An underappreciated aspect of Steven Spielberg is how he commands mood, and Close Encounter of the Third Kind is an example of that atmosphere being eerie for the bulk of it, while making allowing an incredibly emotional payoff. The five-note theme, which is played with much charm by Francois Truffaut, demonstrates the spiritual journey some of these characters are currently in the midst of. A journey of self-discovery in the modern landscape.
Angel’s Egg (1985)
This OVA from Mamoru Oshii came out during the Golden Age of anime, which witnessed the broadening of what the medium could be. They could look to the power of individual masculinity or the care of one’s environment. One of Oshii’s earliest works Angel’s Egg leans on left-field experimentalism, eschewing plot for a sparser narrative. Some of the greatest anime have an expressive focus on the fragile state of civilisation, and this is no exception. Mamoru Oshii is one of the most influential animators in Japan and he combine the cryptic aesthetics of Neo-Gothic mythology with ideas that value the dignity of life, represented by the egg in the title. What seems like a Macguffin reveals to be something grandeur in its beauty.
Buffalo 66 (1998)
Buffalo 66 is one of the most brutally honest debuts I’ve seen in cinema. And its director and star Vincent Gallo is notoriously blatant about it, going as far as a beef against his co-star Christina Ricci, the same way that their characters yell at each other. This was released in the midst of a boom in American independent cinema during the 1990s, represented by the likes of Soderbergh, Tarantino and Van Sant and Anderson (Paul Thomas and Wes), where it developed a template that carefully studies the alienation of middle-class America. This is no exception, but what Gallo does is portray loneliness as an infliction, ready to be unleashed as an act of desperation against a world that wronged him. And this becomes powerful, when we realize that the isolation is a result of avoidable circumstances.
TV
The Righteous Gemstones
It’s easy to confuse this show with Succession because the layers of plot and characters often overlap. The critical difference is that The Righteous Gemstones, created by Danny McBride has a level of absurdity in its depiction of a family of televangelists, resulting in easy, but rewarding belly laughs. But while the family suffocates in their privilege, moments like the matriarch’s death bring much-needed humanity for them to be lovable assholes. It is also one of the funniest scenes I’ve seen on TV. The third season will be coming up soon. I look forward to watching the third season, which will come out in a couple of weeks.
Books/Manga
The Revolt of the Public by Martin Gurri
If you want a book explaining everything happening for the past few years, Martin Gurri’s The Revolt of the Public is your best bet. The first edition was actually published in 2014 from the former CIA analyst’s blog of the same name but has been met with subsequent editions including the 2nd edition that I read. Gurri’s compelling thesis on how the decline of government and cultural institutions is triggered by the digital divide counts on the intensity of recent events, from Brexit to Donald Trump’s election in 2016. It’s the kind of screed that you may have heard of before, but its claims are backed up with first-rate sources and graphs, making it incredibly convincing.
Chainsaw Man by Tatsuki Fujimoto
I already previewed Chainsaw Man in my last edition, so let me elaborate further on this. It is a manga that is simultaneously horrifying and wholesome. Once I finished the first season, I told myself that if it continues to uphold the high standard in its storytelling, it will become one of the greatest anime of this current century. And so I read the manga to confirm if my expectations were justified and they have been. Tatsuki Fujimoto blows the reader away with arresting acts of violence, but also with very subtle character writing that you wouldn’t find in something aimed at Shounen, a demographic of young men that makes up a large bulk of manga readers and anime watchers. If that’s the case, then I hope this pushes the artistic demand forward for that genre of animation.
I Peed on Fellini by David Stratton
I picked up this memoir from Australia’s most famous critic at a book fair and it has some fairly interesting anecdotes that describe the country’s film culture (and it’s not just the title, which yes did happen). David Stratton was the Sydney Film Festival’s director, before becoming a film critic for Variety and hosting with Margaret Pomeranz their own version of Siskel & Ebert. He’s also a crusader for freedom of speech in the arts that the country barely cares about. Perhaps the most interesting, however, is when Stratton gave no stars to Romper Stomper, a film starring Russell Crowe as a neo-nazi, the director threw champagne at him and he was constantly humiliated. But can you blame him, when the critic’s rationalisation was that it will cause violence outside of the movie theatres? That never happens.
Left Hooks, Right Crosses edited by Christopher Hitchens and Christopher Caldwell
I bought this book, only because Hitchens once said that he included Tucker Carlson in it before he pursued television. That piece is about Tucker’s interactions with a telemarketer, and is dry and witty, revealing Carlson to be an incredibly talented magazine writer and someone who didn’t need to play a gormless character for the masses. But beyond that Left Crosses, Right Hooks showcases what an essay collection should do. Have an interesting premise behind these works, and make those chapters tell that story. Hitchens chooses the best of conservative writing, while his right-wing peer Caldwell curates the left. It showcases the discourse of the 1990s, from the reaction towards the Clinton administration’s activities to The Bell Curve debate, as presented by Andrew Sullivan and Adolph Reed Jr. If you want to know what that time capsule looks like, this book is for you.
Pluto by Naoki Urasawa
Pluto is a retelling of Astro Boy’s most famous arc “The Greatest Robot on Earth”, reinventing it into a gritty murder mystery that would make Phillip K Dick blush. Naoki Urasawa’s realist illustrations are in a class of their own, compared to most mangakas. His authorship is ultimately its big attraction, rather than the effort itself; with Pluto, it’s because of his unmatched ability to recreate characters into fully-fledged human beings, some of whom are robots living with the possibility that their lives will become mortal, despite being beloved figures in their environment. An anime will come out soon on Netflix in the Fall/Spring and from the previews, this looks very promising.
Vinland Saga by Makato Yukimura
I have not caught up with the anime's second season, and as I learned, the events that happen before are a prologue for something more insightful. Vinland Saga is a beautiful story about Thorfinn, a boy who survived the bloodshed of the Vikings and attempts to distance themselves from its violence. Makato chooses not to indulge in these conflicts, and instead points to the harsh outcomes affecting Thorfinn, who became involved to avenge the murder of his father Thors by the renegade Askeladd. Afterwards, he reinvents himself into a man of justice, making a new life for himself, and establishing a new settlement in Greenland. Vinland Saga is often attached to Berserk and Vagabond as the big three series in Seinen, which is basically the 18-40-year-old demographic of manga readers. They each possess a dark and gritty outlook of the lone and stoic warrior, struggling to find happiness in the perpetual cycle of violence and war. So it makes sense to associate Vinland Saga with some of the greatest manga of all time because it is definitely one of them.
YouTube/Internet
Coffeezilla
Stephen Findensen is perhaps the most entertaining independent journalist to cover the pitfalls of personal finance influencers, crypto scammers and get-rich-quick schemers. He became more prominent when he interviewed Sam Bankman-Fried, the effective altruist who owned one of the biggest cryptocurrency enterprises before it went bankrupt. His approach reveals a lot more about the gurus running them and recently, Findensen exposed the false NFTs pushed by Logan Paul and how he tried to cover his ass with underqualified experts to add whatever weight these projects need. The greatest part of Coffeezilla is that he doesn’t talk down to you. He has proven to be politically independent and has yet to be prone to any partisanship.
Kraut
Kraut’s YouTube channel focuses on geopolitics, particularly on the European side where the Ukraine conflict is currently being upheld. Well-edited and soothingly narrated, his video “A Critique of Realism” might be the most persuasive pushback towards the doctrine of realism, as pushed by anti-imperialists on the Left and national conservatives on the Right. That the arguments surrounding the conflict - much of which are attempting to be more sympathetic with Putin - are pushed through outdated ideas from the Cold War and a half-baked understanding of geopolitical history is something worth calling out.
Timbah on Toast
I’ve been following this channel for several years now, beginning with his breakdowns of Dave Rubin, Tim Pool and James O’Keefe. His political content is of a left-wing slant, but the beauty is that Timbah is actually open-minded about how his own opponents and subjects think, rather than paint them like malicious, dumb loudmouths that you see on that side of YouTube. However, I think his apolitical content is where the channel shines through, and you can see this in his infectious retrospective of British dubstep, or his long video on James Blake’s roots as one of the scene’s biggest talents before he became a famous singer-songwriter. Much of which made me listen to that scene and I was more than rewarded for it.