March Media Diet

TV

The Last of Us - HBO | I was skeptical at first about a prestige HBO Sunday night drama based on a video game, but this was very entertaining. Great story, solid acting, and real emotional weight. Turns out Pedro Pascal is more than just beautiful behind a beskar mask.

Jack Ryan, S3 - Amazon Prime | Perhaps because there were so many pandemic years between season 2 and this season, I didn’t find myself that invested in this one. The plot was similar to classic Tom Clancy, like his novel Red Storm Rising. Basically, a few Russians would like their geopolitical power back. Enter Jim from “The Office,” er, John Krasinski, who is the only intelligence office smart enough to figure it all out.

Dear Edward - Apple TV | A little melodramatic for my taste, but it was nice to see Taylor Schilling from “Orange is the New Black” again. And all-timer Connie Britton, who Carey and I have both loved since “Friday Night Lights.” The interconnected plots revolve around one pre-teen New Yorker who is the sole survivor of a passenger plane crash in Colorado and the family members/friends of the victims. Based on a bestselling 2020 Ann Napolitano novel.

Books

The Flag, the Cross, and the Station Wagon by Bill McKibben | Somehow missed this memoir from 2022 until I saw it on Sara’s bookshelf, put there by Dad after he finished reading it in Rye, I guess. It’s a sharp look at how in the author’s lifetime he went from believing America truly was the greatest country on Earth to a nation that elected an autocrat, mostly stopped believing in God, and is blithely destroying the planet. Some good news? He thinks his generation and Americans older than him have a role to play in changing things instead of always deferring to the energy and activism of youth.

Hang the Moon by Jeanette Walls | I actually worked with this author at MSNBC in the early aughts when she was a lowly “gossip” columnist and I was trying to convince Tom Brokaw the Internet was going to be a big deal. Her 2005 memoir, “The Glass Castle,” about growing up poor and mostly homeless spent more than 8 years on NYT bestseller lists and now she writes fiction full time. I liked the pacing of this book and the attitude of the narrator, a young woman who inherits her late Daddy’s bootlegging business in southern Virginia after the First World War, but it’s not going to win any awards. | Read my AP review.

LeBron by Jeff Benedict | More ink has been spilled over LeBron James than any other athlete in history, I imagine, except maybe Tiger Woods or Michael Jordan. Certainly James was in the public eye from a younger age. Anybody else remember the 2002 Sports Illustrated cover anointing him “The Chosen One” when he was just 17? Blasphemous headlines aside, he has had a remarkable career, guided by his own instincts and friends he’s had since high school. All the more remarkable because he hasn’t done anything scandalous and in fact has managed to help a great many people with his charitable efforts. Still, this book is more hagiography than biography, but it’s a good addition to the historical record for casual sports fans who don’t know already know the beats of LeBron James’ life so far. | Read my AP review.

Movies

All Quiet on the Western Front - Netflix | In case you needed reminding that war is hell, this Oscar-winning film (Cinematography and Best International Feature, we don’t call them “Foreign Films” anymore) serves up a hefty amount of in-your-face trench warfare and all its associated horrors. But it also does a good job of making you care about the German soldiers even though you know very little about them. Turns out HBO can’t trademark the phrase, “Band of Brothers.”

Everything Everywhere All at Once - SHOWTIME | We signed up for a 10-day free trial of SHOWTIME so we could watch this before the Oscars, and, well, I’m glad I didn’t spend any money on it. I just don’t think it held together very well. I didn’t care enough about the pivotal mother-daughter relationship to ground my entire appreciation of the film in that, and the rest of it, with hot dog hands and black hole bagels, just seemed superfluous. Way more questions than answers: Why are some people “jumping ‘verses” while the rest of us live in one reality? If I get one of those vintage Bluetooth earpieces, I just think of any skill I want to possess, then blink and it’s uploaded to me? And apparently every version of me across the universes feels what’s happening to every other one?

The Fabelmans - Rental | In contrast to “Everything Everywhere…,” I really enjoyed this traditional movie memoir from the legendary Steven Spielberg. Probably 20 minutes too long, but it had it all: Conflict, laughs, drama, and a message — that art, in this case movies, can help both artists and audiences understand the world.  

Top Gun: Maverick - Amazon Prime | Sara hadn’t seen it and overnighted with us after dropping Max off following Hamilton’s spring break, so Carey, Greta and me watched it again. I actually think it was much better the second time around, even on a 55” TV! The ending is too hokey — ejecting behind enemy lines and escaping with one’s life can’t ever really be that easy — but the soundtrack, the flying visuals, the one-liners, and all those shirtless (mostly) dudes playing beach football — it’s pure cinematic fun.