The FAR has discovered this magical thing called the Internet! You can use it to deal with grief, learn about obscure Eastern European movie productions, or reassess music! We think it could catch on, and see no downsides from here.
Thanks to Miller and Rosy Fingers for contributing this week, may their hashtags trend ever upward. Send articles throughout the next week to ploughmanplods [at] gmail, post articles from the past week below, and Have a Happy Friday!
There was an outpouring of grief following the unexpected death of Chadwick Boseman. In The Washington Post Black Panther:
Marvel initially thought that the accents would be “too much.” “I felt the exact opposite — like, if I speak with a British accent, what’s gonna happen when I go home? It felt to me like a deal-breaker,” he said. “I was like, ‘No, this is such an important factor that if we lose this right now, what else are we gonna throw away for the sake of making people feel comfortable?”
For The Ringer, Brian Rafferty uncovers the cursed production and mythical afterlife of the Clooney-starring, Hungary-set, money-laundering Grizzly II:
The film was titled Grizzly II. Or maybe it was The Predator (accounts from the time vary). Its setting was Northern California—unless it was actually Wyoming. And the script followed a vengeful “devil-bear” that stalks a massive, drama-stricken electro-rock festival. Grizzly II was a little bit Jaws, a little bit All That Jazz, and a whole lot of maxed-out ’80s grandiosity. And it would all climax with a massive concert held deep in the woods of communist Hungary, where a (very fake) Western synth-pop act would entertain nearly 50,000 (very real) Eastern European music fans.
For The New Yorker, Elif Batuman profiles Theater of War Productions using Zoom to continue their live performances of Greek tragedies for audiences dealing with trauma:
“Children of Thebes, why are you here?” Oscar Isaac asked. His face filled the monitor on my dining table. (It was my partner’s turn to use the desk.) We were a couple of months into lockdown, just past seven in the evening, and a few straggling cheers for essential workers came in through the window. Isaac was looking smoldery with a quarantine beard, a gold chain, an Airpod, and a black T-shirt. His display name was set to “Oedipus.”
Fresh off of analyzing the Boss, Steve Hyden revisits the maligned Goat’s Head Soup and tries to consider it without the baggage of its time:
I imagine that was particularly galling for boomers, the most Peter Pan-obsessed of all generations. It was just easier to dismiss Goats Head Soup as a “safe” retreat than to contend with their super-human decadent princes staggering fearfully into adulthood. But in its own way, a song like “100 Years Ago” is risky, because Jagger admits that he’s no longer a young man and wishes he still was: “Sometimes it’s wise not to grow up,” he sighs. And yet you have no choice but to do it. Goats Head Soup is where they finally accepted this.
And in self-perpetuating Internet #content news, we have two items: Twitter sensation Pixelated Boat finds 10 things on the internet that are good, including a revision that improves Whiplash immeasurably:
“This joke isn’t for everyone. To enjoy this you have to be familiar with the movie Whiplash, and the soundtrack of the game F-Zero, and think combining the two is funny. How many people fall into that category? It turns out it’s at least 9400. Without the internet it just wouldn’t be possible for a joke like this to be seen by the exact 9400 people who would enjoy it.”
…and the ‘Net rejoices in the (maybe?) return of Crazy Frog:
There is simply no other contemporary musician with a profile to equal the Frog. He might be best known for his song ‘Axel F’, dubbed by its own music video “the most annoying thing in the world.” […] So, is new Frog music coming? Who knows. And, ultimately, who cares?