Now a little ditty to celebrate the return of Doctor Who.
(He pronounces his name “shoo-tee”.)
Ncuti Gatwa
Would you take me by the hand
Ncuti Gatwa
Would you take me by the hand
Can you hear me
Riff on Steely Dan
Play it on your juke box
Can you hear me
Ncuti Gatwa
Ncuti Gatwa
I’m among those who saw the early trailer for and the new extended look at James Gunn’s upcoming Superman and wondered just why so much time was spent on a bloodied, battered Man of Steel.
Of course, I thrilled at the brief glimpses of him being heroic — flying with purpose
and protecting a child. And I get wanting to showcase Krypto; I do have concerns about the film, but not that shaggy fella beyond my perennial problem buying even the most impressive CGI.
One week after his 25-hour speech on the Senate floor began, Cory Booker spoke to Stephen Colbert on The Late Show with familiar eloquence.
“You and I are people of faith,” Booker told the host near the end of the conversation, “but there is a Civic Gospel in this country that we need more than ever.” He noted that the Declaration of Independence from a kingdom overseas was a declaration of interdependence among the people of this emerging nation as well. An extended version of the interview is now up on YouTube.
ABC will air Paradise, which bowed in January on its sister platform Hulu, over eight Mondays starting tonight at 10 p.m. ET.
I’m not sure I recommend it even to those who love everything in the pilot because,
for me, it all falls apart too much as the season concludes.
The series has a big twist at the end of its first episode that reviewers have rightly if sometimes backhandedly praised for at least not coming halfway through the season or more. A number of recent shows have belated reveals that reframe their plot or their very premise — for example, 2023’s miniseries The Crowded Room (which I’ve not seen) and the first season of 2024’s Sugar (which I have and I still might write about), both from Apple TV+. Game-changing information can undoubtedly blow a viewer’s mind while blowing up the heretofore perceived status quo in exciting ways: see USA’s Mr. Robot early on, HBO’s Westworld maybe, and for sure NBC’s The Good Place in the hands-down best rule-breaking “Holy shirt!” cliffhanger ever cliffhung on a half-hour comedy. Yet when you take so long to get to a twist, or in another recent trend use most or all of your first season just to set up the actual series premise, you risk not only turning away viewers before they experience full-on the show you ostensibly wanted to make but possibly alienating viewers who enjoyed the series they were watching prior to the colossal switcheroo.
I’ve mentioned before on the blog — 15 years ago, granted — how much I loved Shazam!, Filmation’s live-action series based on the original Captain Marvel that aired Saturday mornings on CBS in the mid ’70s.
Not very long ago it was incorporated into a dream of mine. An immortal Elder from the show appeared to me but (a) he looked more like Batman foe Maxie Zeus as drawn by the great Don Newton than Zeus himself or any of the other legendary figures making up the acronym that is Billy Batson’s magic word — yet still in the style used to illustrate those figures in the ethereal vision sequences in which they appeared, unmoving — and (2) he freaked me out by lifting his arms up instead of remaining static. I think he was giving me a mission that had something to do with cats.
I’d really been hoping to announce on the blog’s birthday a couple of weeks back
that it would finally be returning to a regular flow of content.
That last word has devolved into a rather hollow one, with page impressions crucial
to ad revenue and much of social media — be it a business model unto itself or engagement in support of personal or corporate branding — driven by a mantra of continuing to feed the beast lest attention slip. I remember when it was a marker of value and productivity: “This boxed set / omnibus / deluxe edition is chock full of great bonus content!” I’m optimistic that the aggregated material here provides value to anyone who stops by and pokes around even if my productivity took a serious dive
years ago.
I recently got back to cleaning up old entries and lining up enough new ones that it made sense to me to celebrate at least a soft revival in some retrospective posts. You can guess how that went by my tone right now. Which doesn’t mean the aforementioned stuff won’t see the virtual light of day once I’ve proven to myself that a reliable, consistent schedule can be achieved. I hain’t given up yet.
Related: Welcome • The Slog • Blest of the Bog
Here, appropriately enough for the day, is a labor of Questlove that opened his excellent documentary about Saturday Night Live’s musical legacy. You can watch the mashup montage directly in his Instagram post or as embedded a couple of paragraphs into an article on the NBC website. The entirety of Ladies and Gentlemen… 50 Years of SNL Music re-airs tomorrow night, Feb. 15th, from 8 to 11 p.m. ET on the network and is streamable on Peacock.
John MacDonald is credited as editor of the montage, and Oz Rodríguez as co-
director on the special. Questlove’s 2021 doc Summer of Soul, about the 1969 Harlem Cultural Festival, is for my money one of the best films of the decade, period, and not just because I hadn’t seen Marilyn McCoo in too long; you can watch it on Hulu.
Peacock debuted four 1-hour chapters of a documentary series marking Saturday
Night Live’s 50th in January, with a concert featuring many past musical guests streaming tonight. SNL’s entire catalog of nearly 1,000 episodes is on the service as well. The anniversary special is set to air live on NBC Sunday night, Feb. 16th, at 8 p.m. ET, preceded by a red-carpet show at 7.
Don’t sleep on Ladies and Gentlemen… even if you’re far more interested in SNL’s comedic heritage than its musical guests. Music as part of that comedic heritage is also deftly explored, from sketch jingles and The Lonely Island shorts to celebrity impressions and musicians as hosts.
Related: Mad Mix • Swift Kicks • My Other Saturday Notes
I did the absolute bare minimum in support of our democracy on January 6th,
2021: I bore witness. Sat down in front of my TV set to experience what’s supposed to be a mere, if potent, formality and stayed there all day long. I could hardly believe my eyes and ears.
How anyone watching footage of the assault then or now can honestly describe it as a peaceful expression of free speech is beyond me.
I and every other American would have been collateral damage if the rioters who overran the Capitol had successfully forced the United States Congress to halt its proceedings in some indefinite fashion. The people actually placing their lives on the line, however, were both those like the police who chose a career that puts them in a position to run towards danger, or stand as a bulwark against it, and citizens such as the Congressional staffers whose job it is to keep the cogs of government moving as smoothly as possible. We owe it to them and ourselves to never let what truly, clearly happened be forgotten, and so I do this; I share these words, reeling with turmoil over the knowledge that consequences have been avoided by too many who belittled, distorted, and outright lied about the horrific events of that day, but hoping that with enough of us speaking up and simply pointing to what the cameras saw history will get it right.
