What I'm Watching: Ted Lasso, Triangle of Sadness, Oscar-Nominated Docs, and More

Salik Rehman, All That Breathes, Sideshow/Submarine Deluxe

Here’s everything I watched (and read, and listened to) this week, and what I thought about it:

The shows:

• The first season of Poker Face ended this week, and I remain convinced that it’s just breathtakingly awesome television. If you haven’t caught it yet, bump it up your list, because who knows how long Peacock will even stick around.
• I’m starting to get into a little sitcom called The Mary Tyler Moore Show. Anyone heard of it? I kid, but I’m still too early in season one to have much to say about this one except that it’s a charmer.
• I finally finished my complete watch-through of The Office, so now I finally understand 80% of the dating app profiles out there! It’s a much less consistent show than I expected, but boy, it sure has some golden seasons that hit the spot in terms of comedy, romance, and character development. I kind of hated this show back when I had only caught stray episodes, but after watching it all, I’ll admit I’m a convert.
• I clicked on the Miley Cyrus: Endless Summer Vacation Backyard Sessions pretty much at random yesterday (to drown out the noise the maintenance guy was making), but ended up really loving her new album!
• I’m less in love with Ted Lasso season three, I’m sorry to say. Critics have only screened the first four episodes so I wrote my review for Film School Rejects based on those, but judging by its first third, the potential final season is a disappointing step down in both comedy and character development.

The movies:

• I’m covering the Oscars tonight at /Film, so I finally caught up on a few nominees I’d missed. My favorite of the bunch was All That Breathes, a masterfully made documentary about a trio of men who work tirelessly to rescue and rehabilitate birds in a polluted, politically fraught area of India. It’s a visually and emotionally powerful movie about obsessively doing the best you can while the world comes down around you.
• I’m usually frustrated by the Oscars’ documentary picks, but this year has a surprisingly strong slate. I also liked another one I just caught, A House Made of Splinters. You could say the theme mentioned above applies here too, but this one’s about a Ukranian shelter where kids are cared for when their parents (many of them alcoholics impacted by war) can’t look after them. I know everyone calls this one a heartbreaker, but I was most struck by the love and care on display here.
• I also caught up on the last few best picture nominees I hadn’t seen, including Triangle of Sadness. Ruben Östlund’s satire seems like an extremely random award-season choice, and parts of it are painfully on the nose, but I was definitely engrossed by all the details of its strange story of a luxury cruise gone wrong.
• All Quiet On The Western Front is a striking and harrowing anti-war film about the front lines of WWI. Awards season conversations have a tendency to minimize movies’ importance for the sake of conversational shorthand, but this is definitely a film that deserves to be talked about in its own sentence. Is it totally unique? Maybe not. Is it well-made and brutally effective? Definitely.
• I took a break from Oscar stuff to pick a movie from my mug and ended up checking out last year’s Vietnamese Horror Story, a three-tale anthology about Vietnamese urban legends. I liked it a lot: the stories were unlike any I’ve heard, and some of the imagery was unforgettably creepy.
• Avatar: The Way of Water was my least favorite of the best picture nominees. With respect to my colleagues, I think critics who reviewed this should have been forced to watch it on a small screen so they could actually be certain they weren’t fawning over it based solely on the overwhelming power of its visuals. Those pretty effects aside, I’m convinced this movie really has very little going for it on a plot, script, or acting level.

The reads:

• After a long week, I spent most of the weekend reading graphic novels, a pastime I highly recommend. I can’t say enough good things about Be Gay, Do Comics. The anthology from The Nib features dozens of mostly-short comics about gender and sexuality, and the range of perspectives included here is truly impressive. Queer and straight readers alike will definitely learn something from the book, which includes some funny stuff but also niche history lessons and educational pieces, poignant memoir, and more.
• While we’re on the topic, did y’all read about how leaked emails obtained by Mother Jones indicate that bigoted religious groups have been working directly with lawmakers to push anti-trans propaganda and legislature in a coordinated plan that has nothing to do with science, choice, or kids’ safety? Hopefully none of you have been falling for all the recent bullshit, but still, this feels like something everyone should know.
• Okay, back to books. Another great illustrated collection is Deer Woman: An Anthology. It’s a work that puts together art and narratives from Indigenous women centered around the tale of the deer woman – a spiritual figure who protects and avenges women and children.
• Finally, I checked out volume one of James Tynion IV’s Something Is Killing The Children, a horror comic that seems to have been really popular in recent years. I wasn’t that into it (the title’s better than the story), and am debating even continuing on, so if anyone out there loves this one and wants to vouch for it, speak now!

Odds and ends:

• The first season of the podcast Bear Brook is very disturbing, so if you’re not a true crime person, you can skip this recommendation, but I do think it does a great job demonstrating the deep need for non-police-related resources to solve crimes. This 30+-year-old cold case was fumbled repeatedly by law enforcement but pieced together at every turn by genealogists (some of them amateur) and everyday people who decided to pore over message boards and go through data to try to bring justice to a whole family of Jane Does.
• Admissible: Shreds of Evidence is another podcast that asks listeners to reconsider a major aspect of the criminal justice system. In this case, the pod (which has an unusually skeptical tone but is otherwise good) is working to expose alleged mishandling of evidence and worse by a serologist who’s famous for being on the forefront of forensic science.
• I haven’t been able to read the entire thing yet for fear of dissolving into dust out of sheer embarrassment, but I do love that Allison Picurro’s Boy Movies put together an oral history of The Social Network fandom, of which I am a veteran. This piece is a lot of fun, and it also confirms my long-held suspicion that a lot of us from TSN Tumblr went on to  work in media and journalism.
• Since I’m posting this earlier than usual, I don’t have any of my writing about The Last Of Us season finale to share yet, but rest assured, I’ll have a lot of thoughts in next week’s newsletter. If anyone wants to check out my finale commentary sooner, keep an eye on /Film’s website or my social media. In the meantime, here’s one more (very bleak) piece about last week’s episode.

Okay, now your turn: what are you watching lately? Did anyone else do last-minute Oscar catch-up this week? Whether you’re watching the telecast, the finale of The Last Of Us, or something (or nothing) else entirely tonight, I hope each of you has a lovely, scaries-free Sunday.