This is the Way Recommends...
Prey, NOPE and an exceptional podcast
Friends! Here is the second installment of This Is The Way Recommends. You can plan for me to go deeper in the coming weeks on the first recommended piece of culture, cause there is a lot there to mine for insights on life and conquering adversity.
Before you dig in, I took a leap and submitted by speech “Life, Liberty and Darth Vader” (YouTube) to SXSW for consideration for the 2023 conference. They have a voting system called PanelPicker where folks vote on panels and public speakers.
Would you back me by going to the website and voting? It’ll take just 2 minutes and a quick sign up to SXSW for voting. You do that here.
Thanks for the support y’all. Here’s some recommended entertainment/enlightenment for you this week.
“Prey” on Hulu
The fifth film within the Predator franchise went direct to streaming with Hulu, and surprise…it’s great! This series was kicked off in the 1980s as an Arnold Schwarzenegger macho-action flick and has spawned a number of sequels and spin-offs. Mostly all garbage. Prey, however, is grounded, down to earth and just fun. You’ll follow an 18th-century Comanche tribe girl who (not shocking) wants to do what the boys do. She wants to hunt, not forage. Your curator thinks this theme of rejecting duty for self-satisfaction and transgression has become a little tiresome but putting that aside, this is a hella’ fun action movie. Cleaner language than most action films, because of the time period, and a damn solid message about overcoming obstacles by turning them upside down (or inside out). We all need to be reminded periodically to think outside the box, be dogged in our determination and shown how to be cool under pressure. This movie delivers that.
“NOPE” by Jordan Peele
It is the latest horror-thriller for the director and writer of Get Out and Us. This time with an M Night Shyamalan, sci-fi, UFOs bit of shine. As far as original films go, this is fresh and something you’ll walk away feeling like you’ve never seen something quite like it. That’s always nice in an era defined by the mega film franchise. There’s an interesting message too, just beneath the surface.
Which brings me to…..
Ezra Klein Podcast ft. Sean Illing of Vox on Mass Media and the 20th century intellectuals who saw our societal meltdown coming
This podcast conversation is really fascinating. If you look at the cable news, Twitter-reaction media climate we live in with a sense of horror, as I do, this podcast will explain how it happened and why. It has so much less to do with ill intent and the machinations of evil geniuses and more to do with human nature and the kind of machines we want to build. Even when they are not good for us. In this interview, you’ll learn a lot about Neil Postman and from the lips of two progressives on the show, hear about why the common narrative of “progress” being constant is probably a delusion. Moving forward for the sake of moving forward does not mean the move was good.
This connects straight to the message of NOPE and they really enrich one another.
Do good things this week. This is the way.