Last week we were kvetching about sequels, so maybe it’s a little hypocritical of Slate to tell you the movie you need to see this weekend is Finding Dory, the follow-up to 2003’s Finding Nemo. But, according to film critic Dana Stevens, Finding Dory rises above the rest of the sequel pack and “goes, if you’ll forgive the maritime metaphor, to a level a few fathoms below the cruising depth of its much-loved predecessor.” There are new characters (Idris Elba and Dominic West play a pair of sea lions) and returning favorites (that surfer-dude sea turtle, not to mention Ellen DeGeneres and Albert Brooks), and best of all, the movie “never loses sight of its emotional center: that deeply human (and, apparently, piscine) desire to understand where one came from and to reunite with the creatures one loves best.”
Going to the movie theater to reunite with Dory and Nemo requires an active choice, but when it comes to the characters we let into our homes every week, sometimes we keep watching just because we’re used to them. Willa Paskin calls this “friend-zone TV” and declares Game of Thrones the chief exemplar of it: “After six seasons, thousands of pages of plot, endless violence, hundreds of zombies, scores of bared bosoms, dozens of reversals of fortune, acres of mud, multiple gods, and three dragons, we know Game of Thrones intimately. We’re way past first impressions. It doesn’t have to win us over each week, and it doesn’t try.” As the show moves past the books on which it was based, Paskin asks, “Can showrunners and authors, the gods and kings of this particular universe, deliver to us the conclusions that we crave, or should they strive to teach us that, in the long view, there is no such thing as a truly satisfying story, let alone resolution?”
In a slightly less bleak part of the TV-verse, Orange Is the New Black is back for Season 4 this weekend, and Willa Paskin was pleased to see that this run of episodes is as good as the show’s ever been: nuanced, complicated, and above all, timely. Paskin was less enthused about BrainDead, a political zombie satire from the creators of The Good Wife that doesn’t feel like a satire at all. Speaking of what’s enthusing us, HBO just announced a ninth season of Curb Your Enthusiasm, air date TBD.
A few more links from the week in culture:
- Tig Notaro on her new memoir, I’m Just a Person
- Kitty Horrorshow, maker of video games with an indie horror-movie sensibility
- James Corden’s “Carpool Karaoke” singing is great, but how’s his driving?
- White Trash, a new history of class in America
- The comedic possibilities of the sharing economy
- Mattel came out with a game developer Barbie that can actually code
- In praise of Tulip, Preacher’s new kind of female badass
- The documentary about “competitive endurance tickling” that’s getting its creators sued
- Why you should care if someone is black, white, green, purple, or yellow
- The birth of Hiddleswift
