Alan & Jono's Watching/Reading List: February 2023

Alan:

Good morning (or evening? Day?) Heroes!

February has come. And with it, the malaise of why-isn’t-winter-over-yet?

What I’m reading!

• More for Christmas! Megan also got me The Complete Making of Indiana Jones by J.W. Rinzler. He passed away from pancreatic cancer (F*%^ Cancer!) almost 2 years ago, which is a tragedy, because he wrote the most complete Making Of books you can buy. Packed to the brim with behind the scenes photos, and with detailed breakdowns of the production, going back to the Production Reports to list things as they happened, then filling in detail with many exhaustive interviews. Can’t recommend them highly enough. (Star Wars, Indy, Alien and Aliens. Many others.)

What I’m watching!

• Still watching The Last of Us (HBOMax). It’s still incredible. Everybody (rightly) talks about how incredible and important episode 3 is, but people are sleeping on the fact that the bad episodes of this show so far have been better than just about any television I’ve watched in the last several years. This is going to go down as one of the all-time great shows. I’m gonna try to get Craig Mazin to come on Cinema Therapy to talk about it, but since they just got renewed for S2, I don’t know when that will be possible.
• Shrinking (Apple TV+) is also very good. I’ve been planning to binge Ted Lasso again with Jono when S3 comes out. (We’ll likely do several episodes on it.) But we’re also almost certainly going to talk about Shrinking a lot on the channel. It’s just sooooo good.
• We watched Luck (Apple TV+) as a family the other night, and my kids absolutely adored it. Megan and I were more lukewarm on it. The concept for the story was really great, and the design of the world was stellar! Seriously, top-notch. But the actual storytelling was oddly paced and unsatisfying. The voice performances were mediocre to bad, but by far the most disappointing part for me was that the performance by Simon Pegg, one of my acting heroes, was just… meh. And he was possibly the best performance in the whole show. Luck felt like a missed opportunity, but again, my kids adored it, so there’s that.

What I’m playing!

• So… I’m only slightly-more-than-a-decade behind: I’m playing Skyrim. And guess what? It’s good. Like, really really good. And big. I can’t imagine the amount of writing, design, level-building, and voice recording that went into a game that size. Just makes me itchy to think about it. Anyway, I’m playing a Nord (of course) basically a Paladin. Two-handed weapons, heavy armor, Destruction and Restoration. Also trying to level my speechcraft, lock-picking and thieving. So a Paladin/Rogue?

And…

Watch Movies! (And television, and read books, and play video games)

Jono:

What's up, Heroes? This month I've been reading Real Love and Post-Childhood Stress Disorder by Dr. Greg Baer. PCSD is not a formal diagnosis; it's a construct used to describe the results of shaming, distant behaviors and relationships of caregivers towards children. It's a healing, nonjudgmental, insightful book and I'm enjoying it very much.

As for what I'm watching, I'm very psyched to check out Creed III next week. I've been getting absorbed in Bridgerton; I'm way late to the party on that one, but I find it to be intelligent, passionate, and sweet. I find its portrayal of family and marriage to be simultaneously progressive and old-fashioned in a compelling way. I'm also watching Agent Carter WAY after the fact but I'm really digging its 1940s vibe and production design, along with Hayley Atwell being a delight.

What have you been watching and reading this month?