I half-joked in my Oppenheimer blurb that I have a long list of history books that also deserve to be turned into IMAX-worthy epics.
Well, Iâm happy to report my favorite author Steven Johnson is also on board with this movementâspecifically for the story of penicillin and other incredible scientific achievements:
If Nolan can create an IMAX blockbuster out of quantum mechanics and Atomic Energy Commission hearings, surely someone could make a compelling film out of this material. Thereâs even a crazy subplotâthat I also wrote about in Extra Lifeâwhere Hitlerâs life is saved by American penicillin after the 1944 Wolfâs Lair assassination attempt. And yet, for some reason, those films just donât seem to get made.
We get endless entertainment offerings about the Apollo missions, but nothing about the global triumph of eradicating smallpox. We get big-budget features following brilliant scientists as they figure out ever-more-effective means of conducting mass slaughter, and not films about brilliant scientists collaborating to keep soldiers and civilians from dying horrifying deaths from sepsis and other infections. Apparently, we like rockets and bombs more than pills and needlesâor at least thatâs what weâre told we like.
Johnsonâs books are great examples of nonfiction page-turners that could easily be movie material, from the pirates of Enemy of All Mankind to the epidemiological murder mystery at the center of The Ghost Map. Not to mention any number of the threads within Extra Life or How We Got to Now that show the unlikely and riveting origins of miraculous innovations we now take for granted.
I brought physical media back into my life not to replace streaming, but to keep streaming in its place.
I heard an audiophile once say that he treated streaming music services (even lossless streaming) like radio. Itâs great for discovering new music and artists, and to play at parties, but itâs not for serious listening. I think thatâs a perfect analogy.
Movies are my physical media collecting medium of choice, but the analogy stands. Streamers are not infinite archivesâthey’re good for conveniently spotlighting new and selected titles for only a certain amount of time.
If you truly love a title, get a physical copy and don’t surrender to the vicissitudes of media conglomerates whose only concern is their bottom line.
Rivaling Winston Churchillâs missive on brevity, this 1944 memo by Maury Maverick is the first known use of the word gobbledygook and dishes out some hard truths about good writing:
Be short and use Plain English.
Memoranda should be as short as clearness will allow. The Naval officer who wired âSighted SubâââSank Sameâ told the whole story.
Put the real subject matterâââthe pointâââand even the conclusion, in the opening paragraph and the whole story on one page. Period! If a lengthy explanation, statistical matter, or such is necessary, use attachments.
Stay off gobbledygook language. It only fouls people up. For the Lordâs sake, be short and say what youâre talking about. Letâs stop âpointing-upâ programs, âfinalizingâ contracts that âstem fromâ district, regional or Washington âlevelsâ. There are no âlevelsââââlocal government is as high as Washington Government. No more patterns, effectuating, dynamics. Anyone using the words âactivationâ or âimplementationâ will be shot.
Itâs hard to even imagine now, but aimlessly browsing bookstores was something I did semi-regularly back in my single and then pre-kid days. One kind of book Iâd always keep an eye out for was (for lack of a better name) word compendiums, an authorâs curated collection of rare, idiosyncratic, or just plain cool words.
Here’s my own collection of these collections, which also includes a few gifted to me:
How could you not love books with ostentatious, tongue-in-cheek titles like The Highly Selective Dictionary for the Extraordinarily Literate that feature antiquated or unusual words like nepheligenous and bavardage that only logophiles like myself appreciate?
I love them because they catalog the kind of two-dollar words I already collect myself. You can find most of those words in any self-respecting unabridged dictionary, but surrounded by thousands of other less-cool words. These compendiums distill the dictionary into its finest, most potent form, and for that they have my deep respectânot to mention a place on my limited bookshelves.
Something I learned a long time ago is that it is a great help to the artist to believe that there are no coincidences. One way to boost your curiosity is to just assume that everything in life is a clue left from the universe for further investigation. Follow the clues the universe drops for you, and you will almost always learn something interesting. Take everything as a sign and youâll be less stumped about what to do next.
Dune: Part Two. I couldnât see Dune on the big screen so I was glad to catch this one. Anytime I can see a big, weird, tactile, religion-infused spectacle like this is a good time for me.
Masters of the Air. Produced by the same people behind Band of Brothers and The Pacific, this miniseries on Apple TV+ focuses on the airmen of the 100th Bomb Group during World War II and is well worth your time.
Molli and Max in the Future. Delightful revamp of When Harry Met Sally with a sardonic, sci-fi twist.
The Cranes Are Flying. Rather astounding 1957 Soviet movie about the ramifications of war.
A Brief History of Motion: From the Wheel, to the Car, to What Comes Next by Tom Standage. From the author of The Victorian Internet, this hit the spot for millennia-spanning history, trivia, and troublesome truisms about transportation.
As with last yearâs list, I decided to skip the usual pressure to make a top 10 by the end of the year without having seen a bunch of the eligible movies. Instead I took my time, waiting to watch titles as they hit streaming or Blu-ray so Iâd have a better shot at a list that more accurately reflected my favorites from 2023.
There are still several I havenât gotten to yet unfortunately (RIP my moviegoing after child #2). But with the Oscars upon us, I figured now would be the best time to close out another year in movies.
On to my top 10…
10. Please Donât Destroy: The Treasure of Foggy Mountain
Odds are your enjoyment of this will be directly proportional to your enjoyment of the video shorts of Please Don’t Destroy, who wrote and starred in this rather ridiculous romp. Iâm a huge fan, therefore I had a great time with this. Does it suffer from the SNL Movie Syndrome of feeling stretched out beyond its sketch-based form? A little bit. Is it also consistently hilarious? You bet.
9. Still: A Michael J. Fox Movie
If you make a documentary related to Back to the Future, Iâm gonna watch it. This one also happens to be really well done, making creative use of reenactments alongside Foxâs talking heads, memoirs, and TV/movie appearances to tell his life story. And heâs still funny as hell despite the effects of Parkinsonâs. (I had a blast interviewing the movieâs editor and geeking out about all things BTTF.)
8. Poor Things
Thereâs just nothing like a Yorgos Lanthimos movie. And thereâs no one acting quite like Emma Stone these days. Their creative alchemy yielded this deeply weird, dark, funny, and feminist picaresque that had me alternating between âhaâ and âhuh?â quite frequently.
7. Theater Camp
I never cease to marvel at the magic of musical theater, whatever the context. To go from absolutely nothing to a collection of songs, complex choreography, manufactured sets and costumes, all combined into an entertaining story? Sign me up every time. Cheers to this ensemble cast of young performers who managed to do that in this mockumentary while selling both the over-the-top satire of showbiz life and the earnest appreciation of doing what they love.
6. Oppenheimer
Christopher Nolan, call your agent: Iâve got a long list of supposedly âuncinematicâ history books filled with people talking in rooms that Oppenheimer proves should in fact be turned into IMAX-worthy epics.
5. The Killer
WeirdhowDavid Fincher can drop a sleek âThe Bourne Identity meets Adaptationâ gem like this starring A-lister Michael Fassbender and have it feel completely forgotten by yearâs end. (Thatâs the Netflix Effect for you, I guessâŚ) This story of an assassin cleaning up a botched job really opens up when you realize itâs actually a comedy, with said assassin the butt of the joke just as often as he is a savvy operator. More Fassbender/Fincher collabs, please.
4. Reality
Much like Oppenheimer, this is an excellent 2023 movie featuring a government contractor being interrogated for their motivations and questionable conduct related to sensitive national security intelligence. Unlike Oppenheimer, it’s only 82 minutesâyet remains a riveting, slow-burn docudrama with an impressive performance by Sydney Sweeney as Reality Winner.
3. Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret
A great coming of age story, family dramedy, exploration of religion, female-centric story, and year-in-the-life movie all in one. Kudos to writer-director Kelly Fremon Craig for sticking the landing in adapting a legendary story while also launching a career in Abby Ryder Fortson and surrounding her with A+ supporting talent.
2. Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse
Reports about the death of multiverse storytelling have been greatly exaggerated. As a middle sequel continuing the story of its predecessor and setting up the third installment, it has structural limitations that prevent it from hitting the same level as Into the Spider-Verse. But, much like its titular hero Miles Morales, damned if it doesnât overcome the odds to spin an extraordinary web nevertheless.
1. Four Daughters
This documentary follows a Tunisian family whose two eldest daughters succumbed to fundamentalism and joined ISIS, with the spin that the director (Kaouther Ben Hania) has hired actors to play the disappeared daughters and recreate scenes from the family’s history along with the remaining sisters and mother. This unique approach leads to some stunning emotional moments, not to mention a complicated and cathartic journey for the real family as they try to make sense of the ineffable with humanity, gravity, and even comedy. (Another riveting documentaryâand favorite of 2021âI had top of mind while watching this was Netflixâs Procession, which also featured real survivors of a different sort reckoning with their trauma through artifice.)
Still haven’t seen:American Fiction, The Zone of Interest, Anatomy of a Fall, The Taste of Things, Perfect Days
In January, my Cinema Sugar compadre Kevin and I went on the Babyâs First Watchlist podcast to talk all things WALL-E as a tie-in with Animation Month. It was my first time as a podcast guest and was a lot of fun.
They pulled out a few clips to share on social media that included thoughts from yours truly:
Today I was in the backyard playing tag with our freshly minted 5 year old. He likes when I zig-zag around while he tries to catch me, something he indicated he couldnât do himself thusly:
âI can only do the zig, not the zag.â
Itâs a great line, but it also make me think of another similar iconic quote:
Nick Wolterstorff on the purpose of art (via Alan Jacobs):
What then is art for? What purpose underlies this human universal?
One of my fundamental theses is that this question, so often posed, must be rejected rather than answered. The question assumes that there is such a thing as the purpose of art. That assumption is false. There is no purpose which art serves, nor any which it is intended to serve. Art plays and is meant to play an enormous diversity of roles in human life. Works of art are instruments by which we perform such diverse actions as praising our great men and expressing our grief, evoking emotion and communicating knowledge. Works of art are objects of such actions as contemplation for the sake of delight. Works of art are accompaniments for such actions as hoeing cotton and rocking infants. Works of art are background for such actions as eating meals and walking through airports.
Works of art equip us for action. And the range of actions for which they equip us is very nearly as broad as the range of human action itself. The purposes of art are the purposes of life.Â
The 4 year old and I were drawing shapes on our whiteboard, and he told me to draw a beehive. I guess it wasnât up to his standards because he said âthis is not artâ and drew a red circle and slash over it:
I agree it wasnât my best work but still⌠harsh.
Raffi. His greatest hits have been on heavy rotation as it seems to be the only music that calms down our 8 month old when heâs upset, which is often.
Hamster maze videos on YouTube. The 4 year old is delighted by these. Random but could be a lot worse.
Who Smarted? A fun and educational podcast for kids about all kinds of topics.
Toniebox. As audio players for kids go, weâve hitherto been a hardcore Yoto family. But several characters the 4 year old loves are only available as Tonies (Wild Kratts among them), so he got several for Christmas. Itâs nice to have more variety for listening, even if the overall experience is less ideal than Yoto.
Mr. Men and Little Miss. The 4 year old has been on a kick with this book series. We own an old copy of Little Miss Scatterbrain but we got more of them from the library and he just loves them. He especially loves looking at the grid of characters on the back covers and asking us what each of their names are.
I read 15 books in 2023, which is the lowest number since I started keeping track in 2010. A few factors contributed to this, including having a second baby in May and opting more often to watch movies in my free time.
So it goes. Iâll get back on the reading train in 2024. Until then, here are the books I did manage to read and enjoy last year.
Blankets by Craig Thompson
The Art and Science of Arrival by Tanya Lapointe
Opposable Thumbs: How Siskel & Ebert Changed Movies by Matt Singer
MCU: The Reign of Marvel Studios by Joanna Robinson, Dave Gonzales, Gavin Edwards (including an interview with the authors)
The Wager: A Tale of Shipwreck, Mutiny and Murder by David Grann
The President Is A Sick Man by Matthew Algeo
The Church of Baseball: The Making of Bull Durham by Ron Shelton (including an interview with Shelton)
Ducks: Two Years in the Oil Sands by Kate Beaton
Oscar Wars: A History of Hollywood in Gold, Sweat, and Tears by Michael Schulman (including an interview with Michael)
