I love John Wilson. We were so lucky to show Road to Magnasanti, his amazing short about New York City turning into a real life version of SimCity at the Milan Machinima Festival in 2018. Unsurprisingly, his latest project, How to do With John Wilson is pure genius. It reminds me of the idiosyncratic, highly original, meta-series like Caveh Zahedi's The Show about the Show, which debuted on Brooklyn's BRIC TV. Different Coast, different human types: with Devs, Alex Garland perfectly captured the essence of Silicon Valley currently ruled by a cohort of amoral sociopaths with way too much money, less-than-zero culture, and a God Complex. Basically, Devs is a documentary (the same applies to Silicon Valley, another favorite of mine). Unorthodox feels like an extended version of Heidi Ewing and Rachel Grady's One of Us (2017) and/or Maxime Giroux' Felix and Meira (2014), with obvious references to Fame (the TV series rather than Alan Parker's 1980 masterpiece - this part is completely fictional by the way). Unlike these movies/tv series, Unorthodox takes the fight against the strictures of faith and discrimination outside of North America: the Berlin diaries were truly interesting in depicting ongoing culture and religious wars. The effrondement is a primer in collapsology: more like a realistic preview of things to come than conventional social science fiction. I really need to watch more French productions. Meanwhile, in the UK: Trigonometry is truly dull, but I'd watch anything with (and by) Ariane Labed. It's like ambient television: great for para-social relationships, not so much for narrative. When it comes to I May Destroy You, David Cronenberg could learn one trick or two from that blood clot incident during sexual intercourse in Ostia, Italy. Visceral. Unsettling. Haunting. Body horror reinvented. But the most terrifying part of all is the monstrosity otherwise known as "social" media. Is there anything more corrosive and toxic than Insta? *It* may destroy you indeed. Sam Miller and Michaela Coel beat Black Mirror's Charlie Brooker at his own game. As for Germany... I long gave up trying to make sense of Dark's hyper-convoluted and utterly silly plot: I just enjoy the post-apocalyptic world as an exercise in prefiguration. In this sense, Dark truly works like a time machine. Back in the US of A: Better Things is a matriarchal dystopia feat. three spoiled, entitled Californian teenagers, white privilege like it rains, shopping as an identity-affirming activity, countless first-world problems, and constant conspicuous consumption. It's the standard LA story: meaningless, shallow, but oh-so-well-packaged. Season three climaxed with Vasco Rossi's Albachiara. The latest season was redundant (ditto for Curb Your Enthusiasm, which I watched religiously nonetheless), but often hysterically funny. Behind queefing, farting, barfing etc, Awkawina is Nora from Queens is a penetrating commentary on the failures of the gig economy, Silicon Valley's California Ideology, and various forms of overt and implicit racism in America. Remarkably for a sit-com, AINFQ openly declares that the American Dream is dead. China provides an alternative model: although not perfect, it does highlight the countless flaws of Western neoliberalism.
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