Monday, July 31, 2017

Other People's Writing

That Jenny Slate/worst date item ended up morphing into an entire stand-alone post, so we're overdue for a proper Other People's Writing.

* The Ringer’s Katie Baker pays tribute to A League Of Their Own, easily one of the best sports movies ever made.  The real controversy of the 1992 Best Supporting Actress race wasn’t that Marisa Tomei won, but that ALOTO didn’t score at least two nominations.  (Lori Petty for sure, and flip a coin between Madonna and Rosie…if you could nominate a tandem act for one nomination, both of them).  Also, LOL at Debra Winger’s terrible reasoning for passing on the movie.

* A superb profile of Ted Leo by Stereogum’s Michael Tedder.  It’s the kind of profile that makes you absolutely root for Ted Leo and gives you a full and complete portrait of his life and career even if you (like me) know virtually nothing about his music.  I vaguely recall playing a couple of Pharmacists songs on my old campus radio show but no more.

* Vulture ranks all 213 Beatles songs, which I don’t really understand since I did the definitive ranking of the top 83 five years ago.  Doesn’t everyone take my posts as gospel??  Notable discrepancies between the two lists include No Reply (#74 me, #173 Vulture), Don’t Pass Me By (#31 me, #192 Vulture), Rocky Racoon (#38 me, #168 Vulture), Free As A Bird (#68 me, #206 Vulture) and The Ballad Of John And Yoko (#24 me, #179 Vulture).  Oh, plus there’s the fact that my favourite Beatles song, I’ve Just Seen A Face, clocks in at a mediocre 115th on Vulture’s list.  Infuriatingly, Vulture puts my favourite one spot below the melodic eyesore (earsore?) that was Revolution 9.  None of my top six songs even crack their top 35.  Why am I even highlighting this link?

* Vulture redeems itself with Boris Kachka’s look at the filming and creation of the Leftovers’ series finale, one of the greatest episodes within one of the greatest seasons of television ever made. 

* And just in case you think that’s it for the Leftovers material, you’re wrong!  I haven’t been able to get this show out of my mind for weeks, and probably never will, so these pieces from Alan Sepinwall still seem timeless.  Sepinwall, one of the show’s biggest critical champions, had loads of tremendous coverage ready to go immediately after the finale, including a great encapsulation of the episode itself, an interview with Carrie Coon, The Best Actress On Television (as is her legal name at this point) as well as an interview with showrunner Damon Lindelof.  The show ended perfectly, though I won’t lie, Lindelof’s casual mention of an alternate idea about the device being a Guilty Remnant hoax would’ve been pretty amazing.

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