THE GRID - March 7, 2025
Oscars Recap, 2025 First Good Movie, Checking In on Four Shows, Texas Boy Charley Crockett
A Quick Recap of The Oscars
I get it. Enough with this stuff; no one cares. But let me share a few keen observations for the night.
Conan was a great host, if not a little soft.
The Oscars is still the most watched T.V. event that isn’t football. That’s why dedicating large portions of your show to dance numbers is strange. Show clips of performances, celebrate movies. Did we need a Doja Cat off-pitch Bond tribute?
My predictions went decent, maybe even good, but I was proud of nailing the two most interesting things of the night, Mikey Madison upsetting Demi Moore and I’m Still Here taking over as International Winner on the winds of the Emelia Perez controversy.
Anora dominated the night. Sean Baker has more Academy Awards than Q.T., Martin Scorsese, and Steven Spielberg (Baker edits and writes his movies; volume is key!). Look, I’ll never judge someone for what they choose to watch, but there is something so beautiful about a small-budget indie movie winning this award. The same movie I’ve seen scoffed at by some for the glorification of sex work (seriously, is media literacy dead?) while being tarnished by the other side for celebrating the male gaze (ok, it’s dead) and called repressive and backwards. It’s not unusual that great things exist in the margins of our own experiences and values; at least that is how I feel.
The First Good Movie of 2025
My 2025 Movie List has a few Sundance gems and largely bad movies. I am excited to inform the masses that we have our first good 2025 Movie. Mickey 17 (full review), the follow up film from Best Picture/Director/Screenplay winner Bong Joon-ho, follows Mickey Barnes (Robert Pattison), whose life on earth is so bleak, he has no choice but to sign up to be a human guniea pig, or “Expendable”, meaning every time Mickey dies, they re-print another one with all his memories, and around and around we go. Bong Joon-ho doesn’t deal in subtlety, but this film is particularly on the nose, in the best way. Pattison is fantastic in this movie, continuing to make the weirdest choices, almost in the hopes you’ll forget he was once a vampire. Spoiler alert: there are multiple printouts of Mickey, and I had a grin on my face watching Pattison cook between “Nerdy and caring Mickey” and “Vans Warped Tour Mickey”, who was missing his Batman make-up. Mileage will vary here, but if you want to see great performances and surprisingly endearing moments in such a sharp critique of modern capitalism, or Mark Ruffalo and Toni Collete hamming it up as tech billionaires with bad veneers, this movie is for you.
The Stream Team
Paradise (Hulu): I’ve been hard on this show, it’s largely non-sensical and silly. That was until Episode 7 “The Day” which was fantastic. A last day on Earth, environmental apocalypse, all while triggering, and stoking the flames of Denver Airport conspiracy . The visuals were great, on a scale we don’t usually see on streaming. The finale was this Tuesday, and it largely returned to a silly show that broke a few cardinal rules of finale/villain reveals. Episode 7 is enough to give this show a half-hearted salute.
The White Lotus (HBO): No one is doing it like Mike White. This show is messy, hilarious, and right up there with another show as my favorite on right now. This season has started out a little “slower” than other seasons, but all these characters are getting on a yacht this week, let chaos ensue?
Severance (Apple TV+): I don’t want to zag toooo much. I’ve enjoyed this season, and last week’s episode was some of the most delicate filmmaking by Jessica Lee Gagne (good lord, she cooked!). That being said, a show that exists on such a small cast of characters, pausing forward motion in a show this weird for two “bottle episodes” was a creative choice that didn’t land with me. If I had to guess, the penultimate and finale episodes will blow us away.
The Pitt (HBO): There comes a moment in every young man’s life when you realize you’ve become your parents. In this case millennial E.R. is my favorite show on right now? Every story line works, my texts are filled with emotionally ruined watchers, and I’m so damn invested! Noah Wyle may have been put on this earth to be in the E.R.
Steady Radio
Charley Crockett
A south Texas boy. Quite possibly the hardest working man in country music. He puts out so much music that it is hard to keep up. My favorite record of his is still his 2016 release, In The Night. I think it is the perfect representation of his sound - Rio Grande Valley country rhythm and blues. You can hear Freddy Fender’s influence. I love the rhythm of his song “I’m Workin’.” I love it when someone creates a song that is so unique like this one. It’s a country song with an R&B and soul sound and cadence that feels like only Charley can create.
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