Fran Magazine: Sunday Dispatch, assorted May

Beethoven, Mission Impossible, The Rehearsal, and Lady Gaga

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Sun out

The best part of the weather warming up — outside of the obvious: more daylight, fun clothes, the loose promise of beach days — is that I can finally put my plants outside. I like taking care of them in the home, but there’s nothing like surrendering them to the elements. Every year I think that the mere act of putting my plants and produce outside will inevitably kill one or all of them — this has never been the case. Yes, Challengers-esque wind took out my sugar snap peas last year, but only after six weeks of harvest. Usually the plants go out much much earlier than they have this year, but when I woke up to the sunshine this morning, I knew they had to get out there. Pray for my pepper plants — I really want it to be jalapeño summer.

A few good treats of late: the fernet espresso ice cream at Morgensterns, homemade apple crumble with French vanilla Breyers, matcha-flavored, custard-filled taiyaki in K-town, a vanilla Mister Softee cone with chocolate sprinkles.

I will spare Fran Magazine readers the details but Bandit caught a mouse this week. It was insane/horrifying/funny. We’re of course proud of him, however the event has sparked a newfound interest in him pouncing on our legs while we sleep.

I spent a lot of the last two weeks working on this big ol’ blog for Vulture’s New Media Circuit package: a fantasy press tour explainer, looking at what kind of celeb goes where and why. I tried to think like a publicist — people who are constantly mad at me — and consider what, if anything, works in getting people to see movies and watch TV. The answer is: basically none of this, most of the time. Congrats to Lilo & Stitch’s second week at the box office.

Tornado, John Maclean (2025)

Watched at IFC. John Maclean’s 2015 film Slow West is the ideal 80 minute movie to watch at the Music Box in Chicago when you are 24 years old and have no thoughts. That film — a Western with mostly Scottish people set in the States — plays like a parable about a lovesick teenager who crosses the country to get back in touch with his childhood crush. This was back when people cared what Michael Fassbender was up to, and if nothing else, it’s a movie where Ben Mendelsohn wears a big coat. I was excited for Tornado — Maclean’s sophomore film and his first in a decade — starring Mr. Saoirse Ronan Jack Lowden and Tim Roth as bandits pursuing a young, Japanese puppeteer and her ex-samurai father across the Scottish highlands. Sadly, Maclean has basically just remade Slow West in a number of ways, zapped of significant budget and weighed down by a bizarre structure (the opening in medias res gives way to an overlong flashback that is essentially the movie’s missing first act). At just over 90 minutes, the film felt like a slog. I wondered — not necessarily derisively — if the whole thing would have made a better video game.

Mission: Impossible - The Final Reckoning, Christopher McQuarrie (2025)

Watched at Regal Essex. Dead Reckoning pissed me off so much that I felt primed to like anything that followed more. I was relieved to discover this is (mostly) a more playful entry in series — I like the submarine and the biplane stuff — though certainly burdened with its “oops all caves” settings and reminders of what is going on and who everyone is. I am surprised that people think that Rogue Nation and Fallout are “serious” compared to the Reckonings: I found the self-importance of these last two pretty absurd. Rogue Nation — movie where Tom Hollander is the Prime Minister — and Fallout — Henry Cavill — are basically comedies about wanting to die. Relieved these are over until Cruise’s next two films flop and he goes back for one more ride in 2033. I’d like to see Simon Pegg in a different type of movie sometime before then.

Jane Austen Wrecked My Life, Laura Piani (2025)

Watched at Village East. Platonic ideal of a mid-afternoon movie where you are one of the youngest people in the theater. Lots of just nice stuff in here. Fundamentally understands that what’s fun in romcoms is when the characters are all kind of losers — Bridget Jones-verse understands this also. Midway through watching a different love triangle movie I’m withholding my opinion about, I thought: is my favorite movie of the year the Bridget Jones sequel where she dates a 27 year old? No, it’s Caught by the Tides — but it’s possible Jones is in second. I wish a movie about an Austen fan had slightly more, uh, Austen to it, but oh well. Vivian Gornick mentioned — that’s not nothing. As far as “having a bad/good time on residency” movies go, it’s no Bergman Island, but what is?

Donnie Darko, Richard Kelly (2001)

Watched on Criterion Channel. Loomed large over my later high school/early college days but had somehow never seen this outside of memes and gifsets on Tumblr. Very sad movie — I found Donnie’s plight and eventual descent to be quite tragic. The world-building here is quite phenomenal and captures something that feels somewhat authentically teenage in both mentality and feel. Drew Barrymore and Noah Wyle — now that’s a fun fictional couple. Why did Wyle skip Drew Barrymore show on his Pitt circuit? It’s a question we’re all asking.

The Rehearsal

I consider myself kind of a Nathan hater — to come of age in comedy (horrible start to any phrase) during height of Nathan For You was a terrible time. I tried and failed with the first season of The Rehearsal. Everything I heard about The Curse pissed me off. But I am just fearful enough of getting on a commercial plane to make what he’s doing in The Rehearsal’s second season compelling. I’m not totally recanting my disdain, but I found this season of TV to be so, so funny and entertaining and sharp.

Taskmaster

Sometimes it takes me half a season to warm up to a Taskmaster cast; sometimes it’s clear there’s magic from the jump. This is an especially good season of wackos with many distinctly cruel (endorsement) tasks. The most recent episode that aired on Friday features some all-timer moments. I really laughed and laughed. I got a chance to talk to Jason Mantzoukas about his time on the show for Vulture. I’m a longtime fan of his work and found him totally wonderful to talk to about this show and how panel shows fit into the general comedy economy.

I saw Lady Gaga

Work sent me to the YouTube Upfronts to report on Mr. Beast and Brittany Broski and the “future of YouTube,” which YouTube claims is watching YouTube on your TV and not your phone. The other reason I went is because all the press said “an appearance by Lady Gaga.” I thought: that’s not right. I thought: Lady Gaga is too famous for this. Wrong: Lady Gaga was there. She performed five songs — four off Mayhem and “Shallow” (yay). I’ve never seen her live before, despite loving her music for a long, long time, and could not have predicted seeing her live at Lincoln Center with a budget of advertising executives. A very weird night. I love “Shallow.”

I also saw Beethoven’s 9th

Last weekend I dipped down to Philly to see their orchestra do Beethoven’s 9th Symphony with

Emma

. I have been trying to chip away at seeing all of Beethoven’s symphonies live because it felt like a feasible goal when it came to live classical music performance. Even if you’re like, “I have no idea what Beethoven’s 9th is,” you actually do: it’s “Ode to Joy.”

It felt odd and thrilling to engage as an audience member with something so iconic and well-known: the symphony almost seems to pre-suppose itself. There is something legendary about the sound of it that feels as though it’s the last gasp of when music was this communicative bridge between humans and a higher power. In college, my professor kind of implied that writing this saved Beethoven from the brink of personal collapse, but it doesn’t really sound that way live. In person, there’s a surprising amount of delicacy to listening. The lightness threatens to fall into itself, giving way to ruin.

It was also great to finally see Bradley Cooper’s friend Yannick Nèzet-Sèguin.

Lonesome Dove, Larry McMurtry (1985)

FINISHED.

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It’s been a minute! How are you? What are you watching and reading and listening to? Should I have included the five hour video about climbing Mount Everest that I’ve been watching eight minutes at a time? What is your go-to Mister Softee truck order?