On this edition of Afterburner: TV, movies, and music.
That’s the way we do it at Pop Thruster.
Industry and A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms
In the current TV landscape, it’s pretty clear that Netflix is the winner in terms of massive content library (with a goodly dose of high quality stuff), while HBO still dominates in terms of premium offerings.
Therefore, it’s smart that HBO has held on to its mantle of owning Sunday night as the time slot to release new episodes of buzzy shows.
What’s more, Sunday nights now mean we get new episodes of two of the very best shows on television: Industry and the surprisingly delightful new Game of Thrones spin-off, A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms.
Intriguingly, HBO has also slid the second season of The Pitt into Thursday night’s lineup. It’s a “good problem” HBO has here, having more high-quality shows than makes sense to jam into the same nightly slot. And it’s a great strategy, I might add, to hold onto a one-episode-a-week rollout cadence versus Netflix’s typical blitzkrieg-style of dropping entire seasons at the same time.
Tubi deep diving
There’s something weirdly pleasing about sifting through Tubi’s massive catalog, akin to rummaging through dusty record bins at an old school record shop.
Rummage long enough, and eventually you’ll stumble into filmic treasures.
At the moment, I’m toggling between Dog Day Afternoon and Kill the Irishman. I sought out Dog Day specifically as I’ve only seen the iconic 1975 flick just the once, and in preparation for seeing the new stage version in New York City in the spring. I’m quite excited for the play, especially as it stars Jon Bernthal and Ebon Moss-Bachrach.
The movie stars Al Pacino and John Cazale, and it’s a joy to watch this pair and think both about how great they are, and about their on screen dynamic versus The Godfather films.
As for Kill the Irishman, it’s a classic Tubi find as it’s one of those “How did I miss this one back in 2011?” kind of movies. I’m a fan of crime flicks, sure, but the cast in this one is the draw, and it includes Val Kilmer, Christopher Walken, Linda Cardellini, Vincent D’Onofrio, Paul Sorvino, and Ray Stevenson.
I’m mid-way through it, and it’s in that watchable, good-but-not-great territory that pinpoints it as the kind of movie where you’d scroll through the channels back in the day, discover a movie like this, and stick with it because it’s entertaining enough.
Tehran
Over on Apple TV+, I recently bailed on Physical’s third season to start watching the tense spy thriller, Tehran.
I’m about four episodes in now and really like what I’ve seen thus far. Most of all, I like that the mostly takes place in Iran. And because the show is well written and feels grounded and realistic, we get to learn about how three-dimensional Iranian characters would react in a modernizing state that is still under the thumb of a repressive and authoritarian regime.
Thus far, it’s a compelling story about an Israeli spy in Tehran, and I’m excited to see where it goes next.
Black Mirror’s “Playtest”
I’m a massive Black Mirror fan (see where it lands in the latest update of the best 100 TV shows ever), and it’s always fun to revisit how I feel about its growing archive of anthology stories over time (related: check out Pop Thruster’s ranking of every Black Mirror episode).
In rewatching “Playtest” from the latest season, I’m particularly impressed. Sort of set within the same universe as the interactive movie experiment, “Bandersnatch,” this one toggles between a militarized near future and the ‘90s.
I won’t spoil the somewhat complex plot from there, but there’s a deft mix of nostalgia for old school technology and the nasty implications of tech when exploited in the wrong hands going on here.
Oh, and spoiler alert here: the ending implies a Pluribus-like happy apocalypse, perhaps?
Being Dead and the Parquet Courts
Like most people, I’ll get into different moods or grooves when it comes to music. Long established Spotify playlists become a default at times, and at others I’ll simply “lock in” on particular albums and run them through.
This makes sense, I suppose, from the person who recently completed a five-year journey to compile the best 1,000 albums ever.
Lately, I find myself revisiting two albums over and over again. The less “surprising” of these for me is Being Dead’s Eels (#65), which is by far my favorite album of the 2020s. If anything, it’s wild how not sick of this album I am by now as I can play it through again and again joyfully.
Slightly more surprising is how into the Parquet Courts’ Human Performance I’ve become over the last few months. So much so that were I to do a best 1,000 albums revision right now, it would certainly move up substantially from its current position of #722 of the best 1,000 albums ever.
Songs like the bouncy and catchy as hell “Berlin Got Blurry” and the jangly pop of the title track, “Human Performance,” are perfect backdrops for firing up my brain to work or write.