Not Just Books: June 2021

While we do love us some books, believe it not, we do have a life outside of reading. So to highlight our other pop culture interests, on the last Monday of each month, we each will highlight three other “happenings” from the last month. Big events on favorite TV shows, new movies we’ve watched, old movies we’ve “discovered,” etc. Pretty much whatever we found of particular interest outside of the book world during the last month. Share your own favorite things in the comments!

Serena’s Picks

TV Show: “Lucifer”

I’ve highlighted this one before, but it finally, finally, dropped the second half of episodes for its two-part fifth season. I was particularly excited for the musical episode that had been promised in the promotions, and boy, did it deliver! The show came up with a clever excuse for this sort of episode and it, of course, played perfectly to Tom Ellis’s strengths as a singer. My favorite song was his spectacular rendition of “I Dreamed a Dream.” As a whole, I’m still enjoying the heck out of this show. It’s been particularly good in recent seasons as it has embraced the supernatural aspects of its concept and moved further and further away from its strictly procedural beginning. The sixth season has already been filmed, so I’m hopeful that the wait won’t be as long before we get our next set of episodes!

Documentary: “This is a Robbery: The World’s Greatest Art Heist”

My husband and I took a break from watching documentaries about bombers and instead dived into this interesting piece about a robbery that took place in 1990 at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston. Neither of us had even heard about this robbery, but the documentary is quick to point out that, by price, it was the largest art theft to have ever taken place (a bigger one happened only in 2019). There are many curious events all wrapped up in this robbery, from the strange selection of pieces that were taken to the baffling fact that none have been recovered in thirty years, despite massive rewards being continuously posted. I don’t have any unique interest in art theft, so it speaks to the quality of this documentary that I was completely absorbed by the story and still think about it fairly often. Definitely check it out if you’re looking for an interesting documentary series that isn’t focused on a serial killer!

TV Show: “The 12 Monkeys”

I never watched the 90s movie “The 12 Monkeys.” For some reason, I had it in my head that it was a horror movie? Thusly, when I saw that there was a tv show inspired by it, I assumed that, also, was horror. Well, I randomly looked into it a bit more recently and discovered, nope, it’s pretty much just a straight up time-travel/post-apocalyptic story, the exact kind of thing that’s right up my alley. So far, I’ve really been enjoying it. The best that can be said is that the show is entertaining enough that I’m not getting too caught up in the mechanics of time travel, something that is always the biggest challenge for any story featuring that device. Instead, the use of time travel so far has been very clever and interesting. We’ll see how it resolves in the end, though, since I think that’s always the biggest challenge with time travel: how do you finally close the loop?

Kate’s Picks

TV Show: “Loki”

I’m definitely not at all caught up when it comes to the MCU, and I’m not really in a hurry to be (my one regret: I still haven’t watched “Wandavision” and I know I need to!). But I’ve always had a soft spot for Loki, and I DEFINITELY have a thing for Tom Hiddleston, so I bumped the new TV series “Loki” to the top of my MCU priority list. Am I a little lost? Sure. But it doesn’t matter! It’s still fun! Loki has found himself detained by The Time Variant Authority, a bureaucratic organization that monitors the Timeline to make sure nothing messes it up. Which Loki has. Now he has to work with them to stop a more dangerous time ‘variant’, and perhaps earn his freedom. Hiddleston is great, and the show is both really funny, and also a snappy crime thriller procedural. And Owen Wilson is a fun TVA agent named Mobius who is a mentor to Loki, and is utterly not phased by his histrionics.

Film: “The Conjuring 3: The Devil Made Me Do It“

This selection is partially about the film itself, but partially about the context in which I watched this film. I have vaguely mixed feelings about “The Conjuring” franchise, as while I really love Patrick Wilson and Vera Farmiga as Ed and Lorraine Warren, the real life Warrens were manipulative, overzealous con artists. I also have a really hard time with the fact that these films are, in a lot of ways, Evangelical Conservative propaganda. BUT ALL THAT SAID, they’re pretty fun as well as kinda gross. And my friends in my Terror Tuesday horror movie club decided that we should get together in my backyard to watch it so some of us could meet in person for the first time. In this one, Ed and Lorraine investigate the case of a man who is accused of murder, and claims that he is possessed and the demon was the one who killed his victim. It has some fun scares, and some creepy content. So “The Conjuring 3: The Devil Made Me Do It” was not only a fun film, horror movie wise, but also it was a wonderful time with dear friends who could finally get together and see each other.

Film: “Moana”

This is definitely not a ‘new to me’ film, as I have loved “Moana” since around the time that it came out. It is making this list because my kid just discovered it, and therefore we have been watching it almost every day together. But as I’ve been watching it, again and again (and again and again) it hasn’t lost any of it’s shine or charm. I really love the story of Moana, the daughter of an island leader who is chosen by the ocean to return a magical stone to a goddess. For if she doesn’t, the entire world, including her island, will fall to waste and rot. The songs are phenomenal, the main character is well drawn out, and Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson is always a joy, this time as Maui, the demi-God who inadvertently set off the chain of events. I suppose I’m lucky that my kid’s obsession is a movie that holds up after repeated viewings. Because I have a feeling this is going to be a thing for awhile…