#37: April Round-Up
Jesus Christ, Sinners, and Baseball.
In April, Christ was risen and I went to the ER (more below), watched half the Minecraft movie (related), generally spent the month navigating our delightfully circuitous medical system (more on that in a future post), celebrated Easter with Adam’s family (fun!) but then the Pope died (sucked).
Also, housekeeping: I’m dropping the “Hoots and Hollers #X” from the titles, as you can see. Not sure why I was doing that in the first place.
Movies
Three 4 J
I thought it would be fun, in the run-up to Easter, to watch a trinity of Jesus movies. Because of my dad’s affection for midcentury Bible epics and my affection for cathedral stained glass/church gift shops/the Catholic man I’m engaged to, I forget I actually have a very loose grasp on the life and times of Jesus Christ. I’m worried Adam is going to pop a blood vessel trying to explain to me why Jesus suddenly took up public ministry at the age of 31 (“he’s God” isn’t as satisfying an answer as Christians think it is, but who am I to begrudge a man a late start a la Julie in The Worst Person in the World). I also don’t get what John the Baptist’s whole deal is.
For the record, I’ve seen The Last Temptation of Christ (all timer ending, distracting accents) and I considered watching Passion of the Christ as… a joke? But didn’t feel like it. Instead we went with:
Pier Paolo Pasolini’s occasionally sublime and surprisingly literal The Gospel According to Saint Matthew, in which Jesus is neorealistically imagined as a 19 year old unibrowed Italian kid standing around on southern Italian rocks quoting direct scripture at the camera. Sure! I loved every striking face in this movie and the music—Missa Luba, a Latin Mass sung in a Congolese musical style1 and a bunch of Bach. Pasolini was a gay Marxist atheist2 and I find it moving that he shot a reverential and straightforward retelling of his chosen gospel (he said John was too mystical, Mark too vulgar, and Luke too sentimental) because he had nostalgia for religion and respect for the great mystery of life. Unsurprisingly, he emphasizes Jesus’s cooler statements about the evils of wealth hoarding and the upsides of mercy. “Blessed are the meek, etc.” goes hard.
Ben-Hur (1959), a rewatch for me, first time for Adam. Ben-Hur, based on the novel Ben-Hur: A Life of Christ, is mostly about a Jewish man named Judah Ben-Hur who is condemned to life as a galley slave by his Roman “best friend” (boyfriend!!3) but quickly rises above this unfortunate new station to become a free charioteer who has vowed vengeance on his betrayer. Ben-Hur is also about a little guy named Jesus Christ, who we see multiple times throughout—giving water to a chained Judah, giving the Sermon on the Mount while Judah walks by—but only ever from behind, sporting perfect, medium-length wavy golden hair. You could remove Jesus entirely and have a riveting, leaner revenge film that ends soon after the famous chariot race and they could have Judah come to some realization about revenge another way. Instead, after the big chariot race there’s 40 extra minutes of leprosy and the Passion and Judah coming to believe in the miracle of Christ/embracing forgiveness. Where Pasolini had humble use of about $26, William Wyler had $15 million at his disposal, the largest budget of its time, and every shot loudly announces “I’ve got $15 million.” I’m not sure Mr. “It’s easier for a camel to go through a needle’s eye than for a rich man to enter heaven” would approve, but god, when it’s fun it’s fun. Besides, Wyler was Jewish.
Look at his nice, shiny hair. Sorry, His nice, shiny hair. credit: MGM Last up was blasphemous rock opera Jesus Christ Superstar. Famously, everything I know about the life of Jesus comes from Jesus Christ Superstar, which is why I know so little outside Passion week but am very familiar with the time Judas got mad at Jesus for buying an expensive ointment. While watching, Adam was like, “oh, this is why you always think Mary Magdalene is going to be more important”4 which is true because in Jesus Christ Superstar, Mary Magdalene is Jesus’s beloved wasian girlfriend and she gets THREE important, classic songs to sing. I also tend to forget about the resurrection because it’s not in this. I’d never actually seen Norman Jewison’s 1973 film adaptation despite having listened to the cast album 3 billion times and it’s basically a funky music video for a musical I love. The great coup here is that Herod & Pontius Pilate are so well cast they transform what are typically the worst songs in the show into the best parts of the movie. This time, Jesus looks like a fuckboy country musician, which is not a look I favor, and Judas is a stressed out hot guy in an embroidered deep v-neck.
I didn’t forget it was Passover by the way, I rewatched The Prince of Egypt.
New Releases
Why I went to see an hour or so of A Minecraft Movie, from my own Letterboxd because I’m too lazy to explain again:
i spent like 7 hours in the ER yesterday because i thought i had appendicitis or a ruptured cyst or something that turned out to be... literally nothing identifiable (waiting on blood work) and i spent all day waiting around playing this stupid chicken tetris game on my phone and i forgot to eat so when they finally let me out i got a massive bacon hamburger and a root beer (if whatever i've got turns out to be diet limiting, i'm going to have fun while i can!!) and i just really, really wanted to go to the movies just to sit there and eat some sour gummies i bought in chinatown yesterday and the only movie with a decent showtime was this. adam and i agreed to go in imax and just watch like, half an hour (i think we made it a full hour). he thought it might be fun because reportedly the crowds are kind of wild and they were? i hate being off twitter. anyway jason momoa and jennifer coolidge are genuinely excellent in this. jokes range from pleasantly stupid ("my butt!") to spiritually upsetting ("i'm going to unalive you") but it's a lot more pleasant stupid with that old jared hess flair than you might think. this movie is one billion times better than going to the ER but not so great i felt a strong desire to stick around for the last 40 minutes.
The blood work didn’t reveal anything either. “My butt!” has entered my personal lexicon in a terrible way.
The day I spent in the ER, I was originally supposed to get masa pancakes uptown and then go see Carey Mulligan vehicle The Ballad of Wallis Island, which I managed to catch a few days later. Um, perfect movie alert! Just kidding. But Wallis Island was exactly the kind of pleasant but not too treacly middlebrow British movie I needed badly that week.
Speaking of Carey Mulligan, we saw her big again when we caught the Pride & Prejudice (2005) re-release a week later—masterpiece, duh! Note perfect in every single way (romantic! funny! flawlessly acted! lots of birds and pigs!) except all these years later I still don’t love “Mrs. Darcy Mrs. Darcy Mrs. Darcy.” The goddess line gives me the ick.
And speaking of nice, I saw The Wedding Banquet solo and it wasn’t funny but it sure was nice. I wonder if I should be angrier that nobody can or wants to write a joke anymore, but I can’t help but feel tenderness toward a movie this Asian and this gay. I want Lily Gladstone to have fun! I want Kelly Marie Tran to have fun! It’s okay that I didn’t laugh, because I’d already caught a laugh-a-minute comedy the night before (Pride & Prejudice).
Obviously the best new release of the month is Sinners. Sinners has its flaws—broad characters but also a murky delineation between twins, a lack of trust in the audience to follow plot, a dumb, Marvel-tinged post-credits scene—but what this movie gets right is so thrilling and awesome I don’t really care. That dance scene (you’ll know it when you see it) is breathtakingly audacious and gave me goosebumps and a sense of rare excitement at seeing something I haven’t seen before. I loved the entire party sequence (really, I wish there’d been more party and this had been more like a vampire Lovers Rock, and I wish the party planning bit wasn’t a flashback later on) and the Irish jig (!!!) and the 2 sick minutes of Choctaw vampire hunters and that gut punch of a flash forward ending. Cool cool cool. I’m glad it’s making lots of money! Delroy Lindo Best Supporting Actor campaign starts now.
Repertory
In early April we caught The Elephant Man at IFC, where Lynch still drew a line down the block, and the 1939 Wuthering Heights at the Museum of the Moving Image. I’d never seen it and I was prepared for it to be staid and a bit bad but it was great? I mistakenly thought Laurence Olivier might be too stuffy or posh (sorry I’ve never seen his Shakespeare films, I just knew he has a knighthood!5) to play Heathcliff but he was tortured and horny and awful and Merle Oberon (Wasian alert) was as luminous and horrible as you could hope from a Cathy. They’re so stupid. I adore them!
I’ve been hoping for a Barry Lyndon run for ages because Adam’s never seen it, and IFC finally obliged. Barry Lyndon’s so goddamn funny I may truly read Thackeray’s Vanity Fair this year. I think my favorite bits are the smug way Captain Quin dances with Barry’s cousin and when Barry walks in to meet the Chevalier he’s supposed to undercover spy on, sees a decrepit, eye-patched guy in white powder and a lopsided wig and is so moved by his “splendor and noble manner” that he immediately gives himself up.
Brad and I caught West Side Story (2021) at the United Palace, a 1930s movie palace in Washington Heights that now runs a film series sponsored by Lin Manuel Miranda. Lin himself was there for a Q&A with Ariana DeBose and he made her dance 20 seconds of “Yorktown” from Hamilton and then turned the mic on the crowd and went “sing along!” which, lol. I think I broke the chair I was sitting in and therefore watched the entire movie at an uncomfortable slant. Still a masterpiece!
New To Me
The most major new-to-me movie of the month was baby boomer classic Field of Dreams, in which Kevin Costner builds a baseball diamond for ghosts in his cornfield, because it’s one of those movies that gets referenced so often that it’s cracked open a whole new world of jokes for me. After Adam and I watched Field of Dreams, and both cried, we watched John Mulaney’s Field of Dreams Oscars joke 3 times. It is funnier when you’ve seen it. Field of Dreams is a magic movie that is completely insane, totally sincere and absolutely works. I did not know Costner & wife in this were going to be Berkeley alums, and that their identity as ex-hippies would be very plot important. Go Bears!
We also watched Nobuhiko Obayashi’s Beijing Watermelon, a kind of Japanese grocer It’s a Wonderful Life in which a good hearted man ruins his entire life to offer Chinese students discounted produce. I was too stressed out the entire runtime that he was going to cheat on his wife (he doesn’t, but he isn’t nice to her either). Also, at the strong urging of Adam’s great-aunt, we watched To Sir, With Love, the 1967 Sidney Poitier teacher drama that improves greatly when he stops telling his female students that they’re sluts and starts showing his students how to wrestle and make salad (he gives up pretty immediately on real curriculum in favor of teaching them how to be classy and helpful).
There were days I couldn’t handle anything but mid-tier rom coms of the last ten years, which is why I watched How To Be Single, a dogshit Dakota Johnson star vehicle that does have 1 Leslie Mann/Jake Lacy and 1 Alison Brie/Jason Mantzoukas scene that kind of made it worth watching, and the relatively charming if not super funny Jenny Slate/Charlie Day vehicle I Want You Back. The latter has a scene where Jenny Slate sings “Suddenly, Seymour” in a blonde wig, which is worthwhile.
Rewatches
Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, still too boring, too scary, too racist. Always sucks how much I relate to Willie. I mean, nearly every time she’s screaming her head off, she’s kind of justified. Also when she’s like, “I hate being wet.” I get it.
Made Adam watch Hairspray on one of my worse April days and then my DVD broke right after “Big, Blonde and Beautiful” and I did not take that well, but my dad very kindly sent me a new copy so I was able to show Adam “You Can’t Stop the Beat.” Vital.
Showed Adam my beloved Hester Street, a perfect assimilation dramedy feat. Carol Kane looking like an angel and, I would argue, a hoot and holler punchline ending.
Rewatched Frances Ha. :)
Theater
We went to see Operation Mincemeat over Easter weekend and I think of myself as someone with a high tolerance for Britishness but I really found this… too British? Too panto, too broad? I like my broad in the style of Oh, Mary!—crasser, with more screaming. The entire small cast are straight from the West End, and off-West End before that, and the scrappiness of the production—in which the cast of 5 play about 50 characters total—is charming and clever and sweetly ragtag. It is genuinely amazing how quickly they switched characters and settings, all on the strength of some lighting and a new hat. That said, you do notice the gulf between the ability of an off-West End comedian and a trained Broadway star to enunciate… I did cry though! Jak Malone Tony nom is so deserved.
Books
Speaking of Brits, I zipped through Dolly Alderton’s Good Material, a just okay but immensely readable novel about an insufferable male comedian going through a breakup. The perspective “twist” was evident from a mile away and made me impatient the whole time I was reading.
I also read Dwight Garner’s The Upstairs Delicatessen, an endearing memoir-ish book that charts a life in eating and reading. It’s largely a collection of quotes and scenes about food from all the media Garner has consumed throughout his life as a book critic, and it’s just pleasant to hear from a real eater (he has an iconic Grub Street Diet).
Television
I finished Industry (fine! It’s just worse-Succession) and started The Pitt. I didn’t want to watch The Pitt earlier in the month too close to my ER visit, but I’m over it now and I think it’s important I watch at least one show everyone’s watching a year, to participate in society. Can’t wait to run into someone in the work kitchen and chat about The Pitt.
More importantly, Adam and I started Ken Burns’ Baseball, a 23 hour undertaking that will take us the summer. I was sort of hoping, with how thorough the series will be, that Burns might explain the rules of baseball but you are supposed to know that going in so I’ll be consulting a Youtube video for some specifics. Watching Field of Dreams paid off immediately because Baseball has been teasing the 1919 Black Sox Scandal, which I found out about from Field of Dreams. By the end of this summer, I will go to a baseball game and understand exactly what’s going on. I will feel a true love in my heart for America’s pastime beyond thinking a ball park is a pleasant place to enjoy a hot dog. And I will understand why my dad is still mad at the Dodgers for leaving Brooklyn even though they moved to the other city he’s lived in for 40 years.
Some Recipes I’ve Been Liking At Home
This farro salad I’ve been modifying freely but the important part is cooking the farro in apple cider and it makes it delicous!!!
This Asian-y chicken salad I’ve been adding Trader Joe’s sesame cashews and edamame to.
This granola
This salmon with this coconut rice (I’m finally getting coconut rice right)
I was less taken with the use of Blind Willie Johnson’s “Dark Was the Night, Cold Was the Ground” even though I like the idea in theory?? I just associate it too strongly with Killers of the Flower Moon now and it took me out of the moment.
I’m sorry, is this giving solo poly hijabi amputee. Or “I am homeless I am gay I have AIDS and I’m new in town.”
This and (spoilers for) The Da Vinci Code where she bears Jesus’s son and is buried under the pyramid at the Lourve, obviously.
I looked it up and he was knighted a decade after this movie, so maybe he poshes up later. Or maybe he doesn’t!