Projects Projects
Welcome back! As a reminder, this is our last issue before my European vacation. It’ll be a nice break but I look forward to getting back into my projects!
Sort of falling away from noting the date range of these updates… might be cleaner to just present what I have. As always, Projects is a project itself!
Watching
52 Films by 52 Women
Monsoon Wedding (2001) dir. Mira Nair
Zohran’s mom knows how to make a picture, that’s for sure.
Jumpin’ Jack Flash (1986) dir. Penny Marshall
Mostly Whoopi talking to herself to try to understand the plot - she does not succeed! Fun little movie.
Cora Bora (2023) dir. Hannah Pearl Utt
Too Much this is not. Fairly standard low budget cringe. Meg does her best but this script does no one any favors.
Le Bonheur (1965) dir. Agnes Varda
An absolute horror movie. French men are disgusting!!!
Freakier Friday (2025) dir. Nisha Ganatra
Totally fine, a lot of cute moments. Nice to see Lindsay on the big screen. Julia Butters is getting so tall! Had convo with Mary Fran at 5:45am about how sweet it was - I appreciate that this is a legacy sequel where the characters are doing well and not living in a depression hole like Indiana Jones. Unfortunately I did get food poisoning from my Alamo breakfast sandwich so might need to avoid the theater for a bit…
Hmmm… can I finish this project before I head to Europe? Let’s see how it goes!
TV
King of the Hill Season 14 (2025)
Pleasantly surprised by this revival, animation aside (but even that I got used to!). Expected something like the hollow patheticness of Hulu Futurama, but the writing is all there. Sure, Hank says ‘nepobaby’, but the rest of the modern era jokes are deeply character based. Hank and Peggy’s discomfort at retirement is a great basis for their storylines, and they’ve really succeeded with adult Bobby. He’s just like his father in so many ways. The ages maybe don’t make a ton of sense - Bobby should probably be 30, but whatever. It’s good! Did they give this a two season order? How long do we have to wait for cartoons these days?
The Gilded Age Season 3 (2025)
This show is stupid - but I like Tony winners in costume. Fucking sue me.
Anime
Golden Boy (Miniseries) (1995-1996)
Perhaps the only ecchi anime series to actually make me laugh? Kintaro is a noble wandering gooner, a cum ronin, always ready to bust in the service of others. He’s disgusting but also a savant. His mind should be studied.
Reading
Books
The Fantasy and Necessity of Solidarity by Sarah Schulman
An okay read… I love Sarah but she does that thing where she’s like “here’s a reprinted conversation from an event in which I am right” more than once. As always I will appreciate anyone with any influence speaking out about Gaza.
Algospeak: How Social Media is Transforming the Future of Language by Adam Aleksic
The problem with any writing about ‘the modern era’ or ‘the Internet’ is it’s inevitably written by someone entirely enmeshed in the system. Adam Aleksic is a smart guy with a genuine passion for linguistics, but he does have to make TikToks as part of his career and thus can never condemn social media in the way it may deserve. It hurts me to learn how he has to contort his ‘content’ to appease the algorithm. I never want to do that, hence this week’s Projects focusing on Onward.
Lost: Back to the Island by Emily St. James & Noel Murray
As I’ve said before in this very Substack, I owe Emily St. James everything. I read this Lost retrospective book in a day, just diving right into my own nostalgia for one of the best shows to watch week to week in high school. Desmond, love that guy.
Manga
Vinland Saga has ended!
Vinland Saga is one of the best manga I’ve read, and I’m looking forward to doing a start to finish reread when the final volume comes out in English. It’s a beautiful tale of redemption, genuinely interrogating what it means to seek peace and to live a pacifist life. I will not miss waiting for one chapter a month, especially when the mangaka took many (well deserved!) breaks. Momentum killer!
Hank Happenings
We have a Forky situation going on… Hank is obsessed with this damn spoon from Bonchon!!
Pixar Project #021 - ONWARD (2020) dir. Dan Scanlon
Ah, Onward… one of the least movies in the Pixar canon. Not only was it released just one week before COVID lockdowns began in earnest, it’s a deeply bland film with ruinous casting and no new ideas. There are few interesting moments and nothing visually splendid. I like the idea of a fantasy world gaining modern tech, like whatever the Maesters are up to in Westeros, but the throughline isn’t there. Bummer!
I saw this at a press screening at the end of February 2020, where Ty Burr had a mysterious cold… I did not rewatch again until this project, where I watched it on a discounted 4K I got off eBay. My feelings have not changed - I still get nothing out of the film. It’s just a generic fantasy world becoming generic 1980s/’90s America, starring a drip of an elf poorly voiced by Tom Holland. Chris Pratt is his boisterous older brother in a role that was clearly meant for Jack Black. Julia Louis-Dreyfus, noted Pixar alum, knows how to handle this ‘cool single mom’ role, but she’s also saddled with the biggest Pixar mom butt this side of that one short on the beach. Do you know which one I’m talking about? Octavia Spencer is also here as the Manticore, and she’s having fun, but the character is basically nothing. None of them are.
Ian Lightfoot (Tom Holland) is a regular elf kid living in a world where magic once existed, but has mostly died out since the introduction of modern conveniences. He and his older brother Barley (Chris Pratt) live with their movie Laurel (Julia Louis-Dreyfus), who is dating a centaur cop (Mel Rodriguez). Barely is obsessed with wizards and ancient magic, always playing a tabletop game called ‘Quests of Yore’, which I guess would be historically accurate D&D. Their father died when they were young, and Ian has no real memory of the man, clinging onto any shred of his father he can find. There’s a moment early on where Ian runs into a college friend of his dad’s, who mentions he would always wear wild purple socks. Ian is stunned to learn something new about his dad and starts hounding this stranger for more. This is the only honest feeling moment until the film’s conclusion.
Laurel gives Ian a special present his dad wanted him to have on his sixteenth birthday: a magical staff. With the help of a resurrections spell and a Phoenix gem, Ian manages to conjure his father from beyond the grave… or at least, his bottom half. Dad’s legs are running around1, and the brothers must find a new Phoenix gem to get the rest of him before the spell wears off and Dad goes back to hell. The film moves in one direction here on out. There is not insignificant time spent walking through a field. The ticking clock doesn’t even feel consequential.
I’ve grown tired of protagonists who are insecure losers. Ian spends the entire film hemming and hawing about doing magic, leaving the house, really participating in the narrative at all. He sucks, and Tom Holland is at his whiniest. I can handle a loser protagonist if there’s something really wrong with them, like Flik or Barry Lyndon, but this elf kid has nothing. And the character designs are bad too - when they’re in a dark cave, they just look like white people. There’s the iconic lesbian cyclops cop voiced by noted demon Lena Waithe, but she looks like shit. Is that the film’s only lasting resonance? Terrible gay representation?
There can always be more sibling movies, the foundation of great cinema2, but Onward isn’t high on the list. The film’s ending works for me, with Ian giving up his chance to talk to his dad so his brother can finally say goodbye, but a meaningful climax alone does not a memorable film make.
Onward: One out of five bouncing lamps.
From the archives
Some real shit went down on my Letterboxd review… I’ve still never understood why.
Also, the trash cans in Allston featured Onward ads deep into the pandemic. It was upsetting!
Mary Fran Corner
There are strange Pixar plots, and then there’s Onward. I honestly want to know how this movie got greenlit—but I refuse to Google it in case the real story is disappointing. The film follows two elf brothers who try to bring their dead dad back for 24 hours… but it only half works. Literally. Their dad comes back as a pair of pants.
The brothers—Barley, the loud, chaotic older one, and Ian, the shy, awkward younger one—already have a rocky relationship. Things get even rockier when Barley barges in while Ian is casting the spell to resurrect their father and ruins the gem needed to complete it, hence their late father returning as a pair of pants. So of course, the pair embark on a quest to replace the gem and complete the spell before the 24 hours are up.
This movie is weird. But I liked it when I first saw it, and even though I didn’t really need a second viewing, it was still fine this time around. And somehow, amidst all the absurdity, it genuinely moves me. Ian had never met his father and was eager to finally get the opportunity to. But by the end, Ian realizes that Barley has been his father figure all along, and that Barley deserves the chance to say goodbye to his father (he had been too afraid to do so when his father was on his death bed). In one of the more selfless moments in Pixar history, Ian lets Barley have the final goodbye while he, you know, fights a dragon. (Long story).
The ending works because it hits a truth about grief that’s hard to put into words—you can’t fully get back what you’ve lost. Sometimes all you can do is appreciate the time you have and the people still here. So I have to admit, as bizarre as I find this movie, I also find it quite touching.
Links and Recommendations
A discussion of anime review psychosis - relevant to my own experiences with my Onward review!
Justice for Park Chan-wook! And Don McKellar I guess but he seems less pressed!
See you when I get back from Europe!
It would be really funny if they brought him back and he was still dying of cancer.
You Can Count on Me, The Savages, Nope, E.T., Grave of the Fireflies… the list goes on and on!