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

Shocktober: “Ghosts”

ER – “Ghosts”

Season 3, Episode 5
Original Air Date: October 31, 1996

One of the worst habits I’ve developed over the past few months is wasting time watching clips of TV shows on YouTube. Time that could be spent, at the very least, clearing my backlog of video games, TV shows, movies, and blog posts instead gets taken up mindlessly scrolling through popular moments of, most of the time, show I’ve already watched like New Girl and Scrubs. I guess it doesn’t feel like a waste of time when the clips are usually less than five minutes? Anyway, it all started when I got recommended a scene from ER where one of the doctors finds two other doctors have been stabbed. I had to know more: were they OK? One of them was. Who did the stabbing? David Krumholtz, it turns out. What were the ramifications of this? Hard to say. Thus I was overtaken by a desire to learn just how over-the-top this seemingly respectable show really was.

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Shocktober: Marc Summers’ Mystery Magical Tour

Marc Summers’ Mystery Magical Tour (1988)

Marc Summers’ Mystery Magical Tour, also known as the “Mystery Magical Special,” was a special aired by Nickelodeon in 1988 and then through the mid-nineties. Marc Summers’ popularity is difficult to explain by modern standards, but the important thing to know is that he hosted a game show called Double Dare that helped put Nickelodeon on the map. I guess he was sort of like the Eighties’ equivalent of Scott Rogowsky, if kids were actually interested in his post-HQ Trivia career. But if those kids tuned into Mystery Magical Tour hoping to get their usual dosage of green slime, they were in for a rude awakening.

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Shocktober: Mr. Boogedy

Mr. Boogedy (1986)

After watching the 45-minute Disney Sunday Movie Mr. Boogedy, I hopped online to do a bit of research for this post. One of my favorite resources, Wikipedia, describes the movie as “a 1986 made-for-television family film and failed pilot.” It’s that second part that stood out. I had to look elsewhere to find more details, but it turns out the spark that little the fire that screams boogedy, boogedy, boo was a failed horror parody starring Cheech & Chong. Like, Scary Movie way before Scary Movie. That film fell apart at Columbia but was resurrected by Disney in an attempt to get a series going. Which makes me think the accidental humor in Mr. Boogedy isn’t accidental at all.

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Shocktober: “Catspaw”

Star Trek – “Catspaw”

Season 2, Episode 7
Original Air Date: October 27, 1967

The only holiday special in Star Trek history, “Catspaw” was the first episode of the original series’ second season to be shot, even though it premiered seventh so that it could air close to Halloween. That means it was the first episode to include new series regular Walter Koenig as Pavel Chekov, who, like everyone who isn’t Kirk, Spock, or Bones, doesn’t do a whole lot on this adventure. In fact, if you’re looking for anything else particularly novel about this episode, you’ll probably be disappointed. It turns out that even in a spooky setting, Star Trek‘s gonna Star Trek.

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Criterion Month Day 31: Apur Sansar

Apur Sansar (1959)

It’s been a little more than two years since I watched Pather Panchali, the first film in Satyajit Ray’s Apu Trilogy, and I couldn’t possibly wait another year before wrapping things up. So here’s another bonus review, my 11th exhausting post this Criterion Month.

One thing that I always find amusing reading up on The Apu Trilogy is the exact proportions Wikipedia uses to explain how much of Bibhutibhushan Bandyopadhyay’s two source novels inspired each film. Pather Panchali, the movie, apparently represents only “four fifths” of that book, with sequel Aparajito picking up the last fifth as well as the first third of the second novel, also called Aparajito. This means that Apur Sansar both has the least material to draw from and is the first film in the trilogy not to take its title from one of the books. That title aspect is actually important, as it is reflected in the scope of this picture. Apur Sansar translates to “The World of Apu” and while the first two movies in the trilogy were about a family, the third picture is all about Apu.

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Criterion Month Day 26: The Watermelon Woman

The Watermelon Woman (1996)

Since it’s a word my browser’s spell checker didn’t recognize, I guess I have to start talking about The Watermelon Woman by explaining what intersectionality is. Since this is a movie review, let’s use the film industry as an example. The Nineties were considered a golden era for indie American cinema. Advances in technology meant that the barrier to entry was the lowest it had ever been, and a deluge of creative filmmakers took that chance to change the game. That wave meant there was more space for women, people of color, and queer people to make movies. But each of those groups only got a sliver of that space, and the more of the groups you belonged to, the less opportunity you had. Of the people who broke through, most of the women were white and straight, most of the people of color were straight men, and most of the queer people were white men. That compounding discrimination is called intersectionality. And it’s such a problem that in 1996, Cheryl Dunye was the first African American lesbian to direct a feature film.

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Criterion Month Day 24: Daughters of the Dust

Daughters of the Dust (1991)

Here’s the truth: this is my fifth post this week. We only did our Criterion Month draft a week before this marathon started. I’m lazy (in general, but especially when it comes to watching good, complicated movies). There was basically no chance Daughters of the Dust was going to get anything but one of my signature late night hot take. Which was frustrating when I went to watch it earlier tonight, as I was so hyped up by how often it and producer-writer-director Julie Dash came up in my research into the other movies I covered this month. It became maddening when the credits finally rolled and I discovered this is exactly the type of film that demands you spend some time dwelling on it. But it’s already after midnight and there’s nothing I can do, so here’s my ill-advised first impressions of Daughters of the Dust.

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