Sean Lemme

I started blogging as a way to lazily pass my high school senior project and somehow I've kept doing it for more than half my life

Criterion Month Day 10: Mothra vs. Godzilla

Mothra vs. Godzilla (1964)

I honestly didn’t think I’d be stepping into the realm of the kaiju again so soon, but everything changed the day we watched Boiler Room on The Pick. The song that ends that particular early-2000s Ben Affleck movie is Pharoahe Monch’s “Simon Says”, something I definitely haven’t thought of in 20 years (which makes the lyrics “y’all know the name” feel ironic) but absolutely love for its big, phat, nasty hook. Unfortunately for Monch, it samples the theme to Mothra vs. Godzilla without Toho’s permission, which stopped distribution of Monch’s debut album. Fortunately for me, it was enough to get me to reopen my Godzilla box set, since I got to here those bold, brassy horns plenty of times during this movie.

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Oscars Fortnight Day 10: All Quiet on the Western Front (2022)

All Quiet on the Western Front (2022)

95th Academy Awards (2023)
Nominations: 9
Wins: We’ll see…

The most striking differences between the two cinematic adaptations of All Quiet on the Western Front stem from context. The 1930 version came out a long, long time ago. Back when World War I was called The Great War because WWII hadn’t happened yet. The “war epic” genre was not well-worn territory and there weren’t familiar tropes, in fact, All Quiet on the Western Front was the first talkie to win Oscars. On the other hand, the 2022 version is dripping with dramatic irony and historical context. It could crassly be dismissed as the latest attempt to give WWI its Saving Private Ryan, along with films like 1917 and Spielberg’s own War Horse. And it’s tempting to be dismissive of the remake for choosing the very 21st Century choice of playing up gore and omitting characterization. But that’s awfully pretentious and, like I said last time, there’s a war going on in Europe right now. This is important, come and see.

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Oscars Fortnight Day 2: All Quiet on the Western Front (1930)

All Quiet on the Western Front (1930)

3rd Academy Awards (1930)
Nominations: 4
Wins: 2

Like last year, I’m taking advantage of a remake of a best picture winner being nominated for best picture as an opportunity to see both films for the first time. Unlike last year, instead of doing that in one post, I’m planning on doing it in two! That is, unless I find I’ve used up most of what I’ve got to say about this subject here, in which case, don’t worry, I’ve got a backup plan. So then, let us head back in time, nearly a century ago, to the third ever Academy Awards. There, an anti-war film called All Quiet on the Western Front made history as the first ever to win both Best Picture and Best Director, which, by the way, also made its director, Lewis Milestone, the first person to win two Oscars (he also won Best Director – Comedy at the First Academy Awards for Two Arabian Knights). This triumph capped off a whirlwind of success for this story, which began as a novel published in English only a year prior. But does it hold up?

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Sean’s Top 10 Movies of 2022

John wrote about how many great movies there were last year and Colin wrote about getting back into going to the theater and I feel like I’m in the middle of them and need to pick a lane. I wish I took as much advantage of streaming as John does. I wish I went to the movies as often as Colin does. Overall I just wish I could find it within myself to care about media like I did pre-pandemic. This year I did get back into the tradition of seeing movies with my dad on Two-for-one Tuesdays, which enabled me to see the likes of Jurassic World Dominion and Black Adam, but I’ve lost the motivation to go see arthouse movies in theaters. Everything comes to streaming so fast now. And then when they do, I feel no hurry to get up and watch things, even when my friends give them glowing reviews. It’s like life has turned into one long Criterion Month.

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Sean’s Top 10 TV Shows of 2022

Now that TV is like mainly an online content farm, we had more franchise shows than ever in 2022. And of those, so goddman many of them were prequels. From Rings of Power and House of the Dragon to Obi-Wan Kenobi and Star Trek: Strange New Worlds, you couldn’t give a geek a swirly without a prequel gurgling up to the surface. Makes me wanna puke. I have historically been opposed to this approach, deriding these stories as unnecessarily filling in gaps that were better left vacant. But you know what? Far and away my favorite shows from 2022 were prequels. Maybe I’m turning over a new leaf? Or maybe good stories are about the journey and not the destination? Oh, wait, I’ve got it: I’m just a hack shill. Someone’s always playing corporation games and who cares, they’re always changing corporation names.

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Sean’s Top 10 Albums of 2022

One of my annual traditions is to spend the last few weeks of the year taking time off from work and focusing on what really matters: making top 10 lists. Usually, when it comes to music, I re-listen to albums I liked and discover new favorites from other best of the year posts while playing Destiny 2, the alien shooting video game that I really like. But this time, things were different. This year, I decided to get an early start on my New Year’s resolution to stop wasting time and money on live service games by myself (a carefully worded goal that allows a Final Fantasy and Fortnite loophole). So I didn’t get to do mindless gaming mixed with music listening as 2022 burned out of the blue and into the black. Instead, I acted like a real normie and played a bunch of holiday tunes, especially Low’s legendary Christmas EP which has seemed even more essential following Mimi Parker’s death in November. I think we all agree that “Just Like Christmas” is an essential part of the canon now.

All this is to say that I immediately regret my decisions because I both a) miss Destiny and Genshin Impact (which probably means it was a good resolution, but that’s not helping me right now) and b) I sat down to start writing this post with a list of 31 albums to sort through… and probably another 20+ that could have made it if I listened to them more. So forgive me any typos and the inevitable brevity. As this morning gives way to the afternoon and then the evening and likely tomorrow morning and hopefully not tomorrow afternoon, I’m going to have to make some quick, arbitrary calls on what I write about. This is just as important for you to know as it is to Future Sean, who is possibly working on his best of the 2020s list and revisiting this post. To him I say: hey dude, hope things are better. Please go back and look at the spreadsheet we made. There are some really good records on there that we might like even more than the ones I’m about to list below!

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Horrorble: Black Adam

Black Adam

I was never going to hate Black Adam as much as other people do. For one, I like Dwayne Johnson. I think he’s an interesting person, he’s got oodles of charisma, and a fun take on what a modern movie star should be. Also, since I still care a lot about comic book super hero movies but — as unlikely as it sounds — don’t care at all about the DCEU or the Black Adam character, I’m just about as easy to please as any thinking person who saw Black Adam. Which… there must have been at least a few of us, right? It’s been the most popular movie in the world two weeks in a row. Early buzz about Black Adam described its titular antihero as a super hero version of Dirty Harry. That sounds cool, right? Unfortunately, what we got was a lot more The Enforcer than Magnum Force. And if you get that reference, hi dad! Hope you’re having a nice day.

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