Criterion Month Day 2: The Rules of the Game

The Rules of the Game (1939)

Is it intimidating to write about one of the most critically acclaimed movies of all time after seeing it for the first time? Nah. How many great film critics and historians have already delved into the deepest regions of Jean Renoir’s 1939 classic The Rules of the Game? A lot. So I don’t need to say anything at all. I could easily have read a review by Vincent Canby or Pauline Kael, took their opinions on the film (shared by many) and wrote a review that would be nothing but paragraph after paragraph of agreeing with them. You’d know if I read a Roger Ebert review if I brought up how good the film looks on Laserdisc. But I think I have something unique in my low stakes take on this 20th Century darling. Unique in that I just thought it was good. Not great. Just pretty good. Come at me all you film critic zombies.

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Criterion Month Day 1: The Freshman

The Freshman (1925)

Welcome to Criterion Month! If you are coming into this blog and theme month cold let me give you a quick refresher. For the next thirty-one days, Sean, Colin, and myself will review 31 films in the prestigious Criterion Collection. This is to coincide with Barnes and Noble’s 50% off Criterion sale that happens every July. As a former B&N employee, I can tell you this is a big deal within the film nerd community. Choosing to discuss our selections in chronological order, I present you with this year’s oldest film, the 1925 silent comedy classic The Freshman. Ready, set, FOOTBALL!

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The Best of 2018 So Far…

Before we jump headlong into Criterion month, here’s a look back at the best of pop culture from 2018 so far. Things move fast these days, so if you blink, you might miss a great album or movie or television show, or maybe even a quality video game. Here, John, Sean, and Colin try to catch you up on the best stuff from this year, while making no bones about the fact there’s probably plenty of stuff they just didn’t have time to catch up with. Here’s to more great pop culture to distract us from the interminable hellscape that is 2018!

R.I.P. Harlan Ellison

Harlan Ellison died this week and it’s a drag. Harlan Ellison was a mad genius. We hear the word “Genius” thrown around a lot when great artists and entertainers die but I want to emphasize the “mad” part for Ellison. Harlan Ellison was one of the most gifted speculative fiction writers of the 20th century. He was also batshit insane. This was a guy who mailed bricks and dead gophers to editors that pissed him off. A guy who belittled fans that asked him dumb questions and a guy who would sue at the drop of a hat.

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2018 Music Catch-Up

Let’s face it. These days, there’s a lot of content out there. I can’t say this is the sole reason that there haven’t been a ton of music, TV, and movie reviews this year on Mildly Pleased, but it certainly doesn’t help. So as we reach the mid-year point and an ensuing podcast at the end of this month, I thought I (and maybe Sean and John?) would take a look at the pop culture from this year that we didn’t get around to reviewing, and believe me, there’s a lot.

First off, I’ll take a look back at the music from 2018 that I never got around to reviewing. We usually do year-end wrap-up reviews in December, but I’m sure there are plenty of albums that might not even stick around in my memory long enough to see the light of late 2018. Which is a shame, because there has been a lot of great music in 2018. The stuff I like the most I’ve most likely already reviewed. But there’s still plenty of good stuff that I just never got around to talking about. Until now. Continue reading →

All The Feels

Courtney Barnett – Tell Me How You Really Feel

So far, my reaction to this new Courtney Barnett record has been “this is really good, but not that exciting”. Which is a pretty shitty reaction, considering anything really good should be appreciated at face value for its really good-ness. But, maybe chock it up to the fact that Barnett released an unsurprisingly solid collaboration with Kurt Vile last year, and therefore it feels like it hasn’t been that long since we’ve heard from her, despite the fact that it’s been three years since her tremendous 2015 solo debut. Continue reading →

Retrospecticus: Neko Case

Neko Case is un-fucking-stoppable. In fact, I’m not sure there’s any person in the past 20 years who’s been involved with as much great music as Neko Case. Not only has she had one of the most fruitful, consistently rewarding discographies of any singer-songwriter in recent memory. But in addition, she has been an integral part of Canadian power-pop supergroup, The New Pornographers, who’ve been just as consistent as Case has been in her solo work. Then on top of that, you have projects like 2016’s excellent Case/Lang/Veirs collaboration, as well as the fact that she’s appeared on underrated Northwest classics like Cub’s Betti-Cola or Visqueen’s Message To Garcia.

So needless to say, looking at Case’s discography is not going to be filled with the kinds of weird peaks and valleys that one looks for in a retrospecticus. As I’ve said, she’s been very consistent, an attribute not typically valued in rock and roll, but one that makes sense for an artist that really didn’t come into her own until she was in her thirties. That said, I think despite the fact that most of these albums will hover around 4-stars ratings-wise, each album provides something new about Case’s personality and her music that revels in its bittersweetness. Which I can only assume will continue on her latest album Hell-On, which comes out this week. Continue reading →