The Digest FINALLY Catches Up with #16
Disney, Sheldon, Arrows, Moon 2, Fury Road PLUS Bonus Furiosa Thoughts
This is the delayed sixteenth issue of what is typically an ongoing monthly-ish series that I like to call Mikhail’s Textual Variations Digest, aka MTVD, for short. It includes links to my recent posts, as well as some additional and related thoughts or notes.
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April 16
A spur-of-the-moment-type post that I came up with after discovering what I believe is an amazing deal for anybody with a student account. The DuluMax Bundle or Hulu getting fully dissolved as an individual platform might eventually make it obsolete.
So, I say, get it while it lasts, folks!
April 23
A short little post I wanted to get out there to celebrate one of my favorite sitcoms.
Though I still think the series should’ve had a full 22-episode final season, I loved how it ended and am looking forward to the Georgie and Mandy spinoff show, though I’m hearing that it’s a multi-camera series, which is a bit of a letdown.
I’d written this initially as a section in a VARIATIONS article but ultimately decided it would work best as its own standalone little post.
Which, now that I think about it, means it’s a spinoff article about a spinoff!
April 30
Another guest post, this one by . It’s a nice medium-sized post about the TV series “Slings and Arrows.” I had only seen one season of it previously but I really liked it and I remember it being highly rated on A.V. Club.
May 14
I wanted to write a new VARIATIONS post.
I like these as they allow me to gather a bunch of different mini-articles together into a proper ‘newsletter’ without having to needing to delve too deeply into any single topic.
Having had thoughts about the negative reception of Rebel Moon Part 2, I decided to use that as the headliner. This allowed me to plug in a brief section about the Scott Pilgrim anime that I’d written previously, but couldn’t find a place for until now.
May 22
I wasn’t initially planning to write about Mad Max, at least not for this month.
But then I saw Jonas Ussing’s excellent video series about how studios basically lie about their movies not having CGI and became aware that Furiosa, a movie I eagerly anticipated, was being unfairly pre-maligned about its VFX quality in no small part due to the false perception that its predecessor was almost completely CGI-less.
As I started to delve into the subject, especially the claim about Fury Road having “90 percent practical FX,” this extended post took shape.
My research in turn inspired me to look back at some of my unpublished material on the role of digital effects in film alteration. I got into it so much, I mapped out a whole series of articles that I hope publish here in the future, likely next year.
Bonus Material: More Thoughts on 'Furiosa'Now that I have actually seen Furiosa in theaters, I want to add that the film to me didn’t have any CGI issues. Perhaps there were shots where it was more noticeable or ‘lower quality’ but if so, I never noticed them. The film always kept me immersed in its story and nothing I saw onscreen was distracting.
Visually, Furiosa is stunning. Polished and beautiful yet also weird and gritty in a way that is true to its origins as low-budget exploitation cinema. It is very much an arthouse block-buster, a bold and confident auteur film made with a huge budget on a massive scale.
Look, I could complain about the fact that it seems to completely skip over a crucial plot point or two (like how Furiosa is actually accepted into the role of Praetorian), but otherwise, this is an excellent picture and possibly the best prequel ever made, a rank previously held by Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (1984).
I love how effortlessly it segues into the events of Fury, essentially reframing the first movie as an extended payoff to the narrative setup of Furiosa. And if Miller indeed manages to make Mad Max: The Wasteland, then he may very well have re-framed it again as a big crossover movie where the two main leads team up after going on solo adventures.
Please go out and see it in a theater.
I know we’re in a period of inflation, and there is less disposable income, and theaters are less attractive due to streaming or other things to worry about, and post-Covid anxiety, etc., etc.
BUT: we need more movies like this, more big budget studio films willing to take legitimate risks and not play it safe. And for that, they need to make money. Okay, PSA over.
If you have seen it and have thoughts to share, then please…
P.S. A friendly reminder that T.V. is switching to a bi-weekly publishing schedule, so the next post should arrive on June 11. In turn, this means that the next Digest will arrive in two months or so, after I will have published four more articles.
At least, that’s the plan for now. These things are always subject to change.