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Q3 Media Diet

I’ve been making an effort to blog more, and one thing I want to try out is a Kottke-style media diet, so here it goes! I could call my 2025 Israel Check-in post a mini media diet post too, but that’s got other stuff going on as well.

Anyways, here’s a few things I’ve watched and seen in the last few months:

Movies

Shin Godzilla

This year was the 10th anniversary of 2015’s Shin Godzilla. To be honest, I didn’t know that the movie existed at all! I knew that Toho studios has been in a period of Godzilla revival, and I did enjoy Godzilla Minus One from last year.

Anyways, I saw a post on BlueSky that hooked me, and linked a Washington Post review with more interesting info: what if a Godzilla movie was a dark comedy about bureaucracy? The WaPo article calls it a Veep-Godzilla crossover.

Luckily the Balboa Theater here in SF had a showing! This movie lived up to its expectations! I started out trying to keep up with the movie’s numerous, wordy chyrons with each bureaucrat’s title, but eventually I realized that was part of the gag and it was better to pay attention to the dialogue subtitles. It doesn’t have Veep’s very specific crude humor, but it does have its own subversive streak and its own personality.

It reminded me of my own frustrations working in government where we joked that “government moves at the speed of government” and how so many things are tied down by laws and obscure authorities. But the movie had a happy ending.

Twinless

I missed seeing Twinless during SF’s Frameline LGBTQ+ film festival this June, but luckily this movie had a theatrical release so I was able to see it at my local AMC.

The movie was so incredibly, darkly funny. I’m glad I saw it in a theater because there were audible guffaws and gasps from other audience members that made it feel OK to laugh at what in real life would be such a miserable situation.

The first section in the lead-up to the title card (in a TV show, I’d call it the “cold open” but I’m not sure if that’s what it is in a movie) is eerily long. Then the movie drops a giant plot twist on us (that I am omitting because I don’t want to spoil!).

The acting was great from all the characters, and especially Dylan O’Brien who plays identical twins. Even though I think I’d read it ahead of time, I didn’t put it together until the end that the writer/director James Sweeney also starred as the other lead. Props to James Sweeney, that’s so much energy to pour into one project and it turned out wonderfully.

The movie does a great job layering things on slowly, basically every little character moment comes back to be important later on in the film. It’s a must-see movie this year.

Kiss of the Spider Woman

I wasn’t paying much attention to this year’s Kiss of the Spider Woman remake. I think I saw from a trailer that it had Diego Luna and Jennifer Lopez, and knew it was not connected to Marvel’s Spider-Man. Anyways, some friends wanted to this weekend so I tagged along.

My briefest summary of the movie: I fell asleep for a good 20 minutes in the middle, and I don’t feel like I missed anything.

TV

Star Trek: Deep Space Nine

I’m three seasons into a rewatch of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine (1993-1999). I’d seen various reruns on TV when I was in high school, but I don’t think I ever watched it all the way through consistently. This time around, I’m watching the show keyed by a few reference I’ve read from other folks online:

The Gilded Age (Season 3)

I started watching The Gilded Age a few years ago because a friend recommended it. After a bit of a slow first episode, I got hooked.

I didn’t realize until this season that Nathan Lane’s Ward McAllister was a real person! And that the book he wrote, as shown in this season, was also real!

Anyways the show continues to be fun and I’m looking forward to season 4.

Museum Exhibits

Ruth Asawa: Retrospective

I visited SFMoMA’s Ruth Asawa exhibit this like five times over the past few months and posted about it previously.

Chicago River Architecture Tour

One of the ‘corncob’ buildings visible off of the boat

I was in Chicago for a bachelor weekend in August and we did as many official Chicago things as we could. The River Architecture tour was great! It lives up to the hype.

I did nap for part of it (the sun hit me at just the right angle) but still really enjoyed it!

Art Institute of Chicago

Ink drawing by Wayne Thiebaud

Pixy Liao

On that same Chicago trip, I stopped by the Art Institute of Chicago. Two exhibits really stood out to me:

The drawings exhibit was from one collection and there was an incredible amount of variety.

The Pixy Liao exhibit has lots of photos of Pixy Liao and her partner, and the only way I can describe them intimate but humorous.

fnnch Museum

Just a few of the honey bears

Transparent Bear

San Francisco anonymous street artist fnnch has the fnnch Museum, a free gallery set up in the Pink Painted Lady near Alamo Square with a lot of his art.

I loved the special-edition Transparent Bear that was made to give as a placeholder for people who lent one-of-a-kind posters to the museum for the exhibit.

The placards are ostensibly written in the third person (“fnnch made this bear for so-and-so, he wanted to capture xyz”) but I think it’s pretty clear fnnch wrote these himself. It was interesting to see the placards mention some of the “backlash” that fnnch received around 2020 as he was gaining visibility and popularity.

The venue itself was also a reason to go! The Postcard Row Painted Lady houses are icons, but they’re private homes so they’re not open to the public. I knew that the Pink Painted Lady was purchased by Leah Culver in 2020 or so, she posted a bunch about her plans to document the renovation on Instagram, but the impression I got was that things slowed down or didn’t quite work as planned. But to my knowledge, the house hadn’t resold, so I was really curious how it came to be the fnnch museum. One of the placards inside explained: Leah Culver and fnnch are married! Mystery solved.

Museum of Craft and Design

This quarter, the Museum of Craft and Design has two exhibits:

The stained glass work is very pretty! I liked the structure that lets one person stand inside it at a time.

I didn’t know what to make of the jewelry exhibit at first, I guess it’s not uncommon for a museum exhibit to be from a single collector, just like the exhibit at the Chicago Art Institute? But one I started looking closer at the pieces, it was clear how much whimsy was oozing out of each item, and how much taste (and likely wealth) went into what is clearly only part of a larger collection. Since I went for the members preview night, Susan Beech was there herself, wearing other pieces from her collection that were just as equally extraordinary.