Tag: guest contributor

Monday Morning Movie Review: Ponty’s Top Ten Best Films: Hono[u]rable Mentions, Part I

The Portly Politico15 Comments

Ponty’s detailed and impassioned reviews of movies routinely put mine to shame.  By comparison, his are erudite, thorough, and nuanced—and almost always include some great clips.

His honorable mention list is no different.  Indeed, it’s lists, plural, as we’ll be treated to the second half next week.  Rather than running down a bunch of films as I did, Ponty breaks them down into specific categories, featuring foreign films and sci-fi/horror this week.  I completely missed foreign films on my lists and my honorable mentions, which is a major oversight.  I might be a full-throated closed-borders nationalist on some issues, but when it comes to movies, music, and art, I’m an open borders extremist.  Let a thousand Korean flowers bloom!

He also mentions (honorably) quite a few flicks that nearly made my list—several of which would make it on a second go around.

With that, here is the first part of Ponty’s honourable mentions:

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Myersvision: Project Bigfoot

The Portly Politico2 Comments

Good old Audre Myers has been sending me little e-mails each morning for the past few weeks, usually containing sweet little sentiments about the power of music and the like.  These are always a welcome start to my day, and I’m sure she sends similar e-mails to a number of fortunate souls every day.

She’s also been sending me more Bigfoot videos, I suspect because I a.) find them interesting and b.) am sympathetic to the existence of the big lug, even if I remain a bit of a skeptic.

After sending me the draft of last week’s Bigfoot post, Audre sent along a video of thirteen unexplained, alleged Bigfoot encounters.  Included in her e-mail was a rundown of the videos, sometimes with her reflections, sometimes referencing the relative quality of the videos in the compilation to the originals.

This cataloging and breakdown impressed me, and I asked Audre if I could reproduce the e-mail here in full.  She agreed, but offered me a sage warning:  people might start to think I’m a kook for running so many Bigfoot-related pieces.  She pointed out that belief in Bigfoot is still very much outside the mainstream (true), and that the blog could suffer from too much Bigfootiana.

I appreciated her looking out for me and the blog, but here’s thing thing:  I don’t care if people think it’s ridiculous.  As I’ve frequently stated, while I’d like to believe that Bigfoot exists, I’m undecided.

In my mind, the point of this blog—or at least of these Bigfoot posts—is to explore Creation with an open mind and a sense of intellectual curiosity and adventure.  Conventional wisdom is usually quite flawed—at worst, even dangerous—and, at best, boring.  Often boring is good—it’s safe and stable and productive.  Better to be boring and reliable than flamboyant and a flake.

But doesn’t anyone else feel like we’re becoming intellectually ossified?  Maybe cryptozoology isn’t the answer to that ossification, but at least it’s interesting and different and unorthodox.  Life is too short for banality.

Here’s what I wrote in response to Audre’s kind-hearted warning:

Thanks for the warning.  I’m not worried about being ridiculed.  Seriously, I don’t care.  I want to present the interesting, the unusual, the weird, the unorthodox.
There’s too much boring content out there, and too many conventional takes.  I want my blog to be spicy, unusual, and intriguing.  Your Bigfoot posts achieve that.
Like Kierkegaard, I want to embrace the absurd passionately.  Bigfoot may or may not be absurd, but he’s interesting!

We live in a time when the official wisdom is dishonest, debased, and demonic.  It’s time to embrace the absurdity of Reality.  Maybe Bigfoot is a part of that.  It takes a great deal of intellectual humility even to be open to the fact that there are many things we can’t know or understand or comprehend.

With that, here is what I am dubbing the first installment of “Project Bigfoot”:

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Myersvision: My Very Large Friend

The Portly Politico4 Comments

Some of my favorite guest posts on this blog are those from our dear Audre Myers, who always brings a certain wide-eyed innocence coupled with the wisdom of experience.  It’s a curious combination, and one that I respect when it exists, as it is rare.  I admire Audre’s ability to remain excited about learning and the world around her, while still staying rooted in Reality.

But my favorite posts from Audre are the ones she writes about Bigfoot.  I am agnostic on the existence of our hairy friend, but as I tell Audre, “I want to believe.”  

One of my major critiques is that, with all the alleged Bigfoot footage (Bigfootage?) out there, we still haven’t gotten a good look at the big lug.  In our age of hyper-documentation of every bit of life’s minutiae, how have we not caught this beast on camera in glorious hi-def video?  Surely some eccentric, Elon Muskian billionaire could pepper the forests of the world with high-end recording equipment or even non-lethal traps and bag a Bigfoot.

But so far, we just have grainy photos.  Even the Bigfoot YouTubers don’t do themselves any favors, padding out their videos with lots of long, boring shots of their own backyards, pointing to broken twigs as some meaningful sign of a disturbance.  No way it could be a wild cat, or a bear, or a stray dog; nope, it’s gotta be Bigfoot.

Yet we’re constantly dredging up horrid monstrosities from the depths of the ocean, the kinds of creatures that we thought only existed in science-fiction stories or in prehistoric times.  The woods are quite as impenetrable as the blackest depths of the murky deep, but there are plenty of forests and hills and dales in the world that are impenetrable to humans.  Perhaps Bigfoot has retreated to his natural, dwindling habitat in these still-inaccessible regions of the globe.

Audre mentioned some Bigfoot books, and I hope she will share some reviews of them in future posts (more homework for her, mwahahahaha!).

With that, here is Audre telling us all about her very large friend:

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Monday Morning Movie Review: Ponty’s Top Ten Best Films: #2: The Truman Show (1998)

The Portly Politico4 Comments

Ponty picked an impressive film for his slot, one that I wish had made it onto my list (it may end up as an honorable mention!).  The Truman Show (1998) is a powerful, surprisingly dark comedy about materialism, consumerism, and mass media, exploring what happens when we take reality television to its logical extreme.  What’s fascinating is that this film largely predates reality television, outside of the trash that aired on MTV at the time.

I won’t spoil Ponty’s review (he considerately offers a spoiler alert, but if you haven’t managed to see this flick in the twenty-five years since its release, you’re way outside of the “no spoilers!” statute of limitations), but he touches upon many of the troubling implications of enslaving an unwitting human in an artificial world and broadcasting the results of this forbidden experiment to the world.  I, too, wonder how Truman would live outside of the show; a part of me suspects he might go back to the only world he’s ever known, though I hope he never did.

With that, here is Ponty’s review of 1998’s The Truman Show:

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Ponty’s Pen: Stranger Things Series Review

The Portly Politico20 Comments

We’re pro-spooky stuff here at The Portly Politico, and perhaps the greatest example of syncretic spookiness is the Netflix series Stranger Things, an amalgamation of 1980s nostalgia, John Carpenter, Stephen King, and every other significant sci-fi horror franchise of that glorious decade (and beyond).

Talk about a lightning-in-a-bottle cultural phenomenon.  The series is the kind that is profoundly a product of the age of streaming, yet it hearkens back to the horror miniseries of the 1980s and 1990s—rich, multi-episode arcs; tight story construction; and satisfying pay-offs that reward loyal viewing.  I also appreciate that the show doesn’t overstay its welcome with bloated seasons.  The Duffer Brothers tell the story they want to tell without stretching their material thin.

Ponty sent me this epic review of the first four seasons of the show (the fifth and, it seems, final season is coming soon), and it’s surely his reviewing magnum opus.  Audre Myers wrote her own review of the series last year, which overlaps somewhat with Ponty’s, but they both bring different insights into the show.

I don’t have much left to add that Ponty hasn’t said better.  With that, here is Ponty’s series review of Stranger Things:

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Myersvision: Theme Music

The Portly Politico23 Comments

This blog is a friend of the arts, especially music, so I was thrilled when Audre Myers submitted a review of various programs’ theme music.

Theme music does a great deal to set the tone and mood for a show; we all instantly recognize the difference between the theme music for, say, a cheesy Eighties family sitcom and a brooding detective serial.

Perhaps the greatest theme music composer of all time is Mike Post, who wrote music for Law and Order, Quantum Leap, Magnum, P.I., and The A-Team, among others.  You’ve never heard of him, but you’ve certainly heard his music:

Audre has quite a few examples for your consideration, and they’re all interesting in their own way.  Even the ones she doesn’t like are, as she acknowledges, fitting to their respective shows.

With that, here is Audre’s overview of theme music:

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Ditch the Cable and Stream Favorite Political Shows for Less

The Portly Politico17 Comments

I cut the cord a long time ago, though I was reluctant to do so.  I was—shamefully!—paying $182 a month for cable television (with a DVR and all the other fixin’s) until I began my journey in extreme budget in 2016 (which, thanks to private music lessons and your subscriptions, I don’t have to be quite so extreme about these days).

Back then, it was much simpler—there were only a handful of streaming services, and they tended to offer a pretty broad selection of television series and films.  There were quite a few shows on Fox that I enjoyed watching regularly, so I went with Hulu, as they would stream episodes of shows that had aired the previous night.  Otherwise, the options were pretty much Netflix and YouTube and… I’m not even sure what else.  It was a brave new world for home entertainment—the wild west.

Now there’s a streaming service for every subgenre, and nearly for every intellectual property.  In order to get everything (or nearly everything), you’d end up paying more than my shameful pre-2016 cable bill.

Of course, when we had everything on cable, we didn’t watch but a small fraction of it.  So streaming still offers a far better alternative, as consumers can largely choose the basket of programming they prefer from one or two streaming services, rather than paying a hefty premium for thousands of channels and shows they’ll never watch.

With that here is “Ditch the Cable and Stream Favorite Political Shows for Less”:

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Ponty’s Pen: Road Trips in the USA

The Portly Politico10 Comments

Every now and then we get something for Christmas that really sparks our imaginations, allowing them to run—or, in this case, drive—wildly to other lands.  For a young Portly, it was receiving a copy of Sid Meier’s Civilization II from my aunt one Christmas.  That game opened up vast new worlds and incredible historical “what-ifs,” and was partially responsible for my decision to study and teach history for a living.

For Ponty, it’s an annual copy of Fodor’s Best Road Trips in the USA.

Travel guides have always been one of my favorite genres, too.  Sure, travelogues are more engaging and adventurous, but travel guides let us learn about places without a great deal of authorial embellishment.  We get the basics about an area, and then can put ourselves immediately into those places, imagining visiting the great sites and destinations—or the backwater burgs and forgotten byways—of the world.

Ponty captures that spirit of adventure and fun in this touching, personal, and engaging little piece about his imaginary—and, let us hope, someday real!—travels around the United States.

With that, here’s Ponty with some reflections on Christmas and road trips:

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Myersvision: Shaun of the Dead (2004)

The Portly Politico13 Comments

Audre Myers is offering up an unusual-for-her pick in this week’s edition of Myersvision—a comedy horror flick!  Given the time of year, it’s even more unusual, but who says yuletide can’t become ghoultide? [I originally had this review scheduled for the week leading up to Christmas, but pushed it to January due to the various Christmas movie reviews Audre, Ponty, and I wrote in December.  I liked my “ghoultide” pun too much to revise it, and it is technically still the Christmas season through 6 January 2023, Epiphany (and Audre’s birthday!). —TPP]

Ponty picked Shaun of the Dead (2004) as his Number 9 Best Film, so it’s interesting to compare his review to Audre’s.  Ponty (and myself, I should add) loves this film; Audre’s take is altogether different.

I don’t want to spoil too much of her—let’s call it “scathing”—review, but I’m going to chalk up the difference of opinion to the generation and gender gaps.  While I have known plenty of women who enjoyed Shaun of the Dead, it definitely has more of a “guy” vibe to it.  I find Pegg and Wright’s antics hilarious, and am a big fan of their so-called Cornetto Trilogy, of which Shaun is the first installment.

I also think that the title character does show some growth and transformation, going from being little more than a shuffling zombie himself to rising to the occasion to help save his friends.  The duress of a zombie outbreak forces this loser to change his ways to protect himself and his loved ones, even if he makes mistakes and reverts to old habits along the way.

But I digress.  Audre offers up a good counterbalance to the fanboyish enthusiasm of Ponty and myself.

With that, here is Audre’s review of 2004’s Shaun of the Dead:

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Monday Morning Movie Review: Ponty’s Top Ten Best Films: #5: Rear Window (1954)

The Portly Politico4 Comments

It’s hard to believe that it’s been nearly two months since Ponty’s #6 pick in our countdown of the Top Ten Best Films.  A combination of Thanksgiving, Cyber Monday, and Ponty struggling through a gnarly sinus infection pushed back our foray into the halfway mark of his reviews until now.  We also went into reviews of two classic Christmas films across three different authors, but now we’re back!

I grew up in a house full of Alfred Hitchcock.  My mom has always been a big fan of the portly director, and issues of Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine still clutter bookshelves and spare crannies all over my parents’ Queen Anne-style home (built in 1901!).

It’s a tad remarkable, then, that I have not (yet) considered any of the director’s films in my own list.  That is a massive oversight on my part.  Thanks for Ponty for expanding beyond my 1980s myopia with a classic Hitchcock gem.

As always, he delivers.  Just reading his review reminds me of how intense this thriller is—and makes me eager to watch it again.

With that, here is Ponty’s review of 1954’s Rear Window:

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