#so many gay moments in one 12 minute ish interview

[josephtrohman]

oh i'm sure...

[weekendwarriorblog]

WHAT TO WATCH THIS WEEKEND April 12, 2019  - HELLBOY, LITTLE, MISSING LINK, AFTER

We’re almost midway through April (already?) but that also means that we’re one week closer to Marvel’s Avengers: Endgame, which is probably the only movie everyone is really waiting for anyway, going by advance ticket sales.

For those who can’t wait for more super-heroics, Mike Mignola’s HELLBOY (Lionsgate) gets another go in theaters, this time played by David Harbour (Stranger Things) and directed by Neil Marshall (Game of Thrones). I wish I could say I was looking forward to seeing this, but frankly, I loved Guillermo del Toro’s Hellboy: The Golden Army, and I have secretly wished for the last ten years that he would be able to continue that story with Ron Perlman, Doug Jones and the rest. This one has some interesting casting including Ian McShane, Milla Jovovich as the main baddie, Sasha Lane and Daniel Dae Kim. I guess with that cast, maybe it won’t be so bad? I expect the movie will be more geared towards the fanboys and girls rather than the mainstream audiences that have been flocking to other comic movies. (My review is now over at The Beat… and I hated it!)

Universal and Will Packer Productions are offering some interesting counter-programming to Hellboy in the comedy remake (of sorts) LITTLE, written and directed by Tina Gordon and starring Regina Hall, Issa Rae and Marsai Martin (from ABC’s Black-ish). This is the type of body-swapping comedy that’s delivered some great laughs in movies like both Freaky Friday, Tom Hanks’ Bigand others like Jennifer Garner’s 13 Going on 30. I mean, there’s still so much that can be done with this sort of thing as seen by Shazam!, and this sort of high-concept premise is also fairly easy to sell audiences. I missed the press screening of this, but if I have a few moments in April (it might happen!) I’d go check it out.

The other movie I saw that’s opening this weekend is LAIKA’s new stop-motion animated film MISSING LINK (Annapurna/UA Releasing), featuring the voices of Hugh Jackman, Zoe Saldana and Zach Galifianakis. I’m not going to review the movie even though I generally liked it, mainly since it’s been a minute since I watched it, but if you like some of LAIKA’s other films (particularly director Chris Butler’s earlier film ParaNorman) then you should enjoy this one, and like with all of LAIKA’s movies, I

Lastly, there’s Aviron’s AFTER, another teen romance drama, this one based on Anna Todd’s fan fiction that pairs Hero Fiennes Tiffin (Ralph’s nephew) and Josephine Langford in the type of Y.A. romantic drama that has had mixed results in recent years. Sure, the recent Five Feet Apartdid fine but others, like last year’s Midnight Sun, released by the defunct Global Road, barely made $10 million. Since I haven’t seen the movie – honestly, I haven’t even watched a trailer -- I’m not really sure what the appeal of this is going to be except that some younger women may not have much interest on other options this weekend.

LIMITED RELEASES

Well, I totally screwed up last week… including one movie that was delayed until this week and neglecting a movie which I thought opened this week. (This is why you need to keep me apprised on date changes, publicists!)

Actor Max Minghella makes his directorial debut with TEEN SPIRIT (Bleecker Street), starring Elle Fanning as Violet, a young woman from the Isle of Wight who hopes to get out of her smalltown blues by performing on a popular talent television show called “Teen Spirit.” Helping her out is the scraggly Vlad (Croatian actor Zlatko Burik, who starred in Nicolas Refn’s Pusher trilogy) who was an opera singer in Croatia and offers to manage Violet and help her get to the finals of the show.  While Elle is no Aretha Franklin, I was truly impressed with her singing voice as well as Minghella’s screenplay and direction of the film which has a distinctive look and tone but is also a movie with quite a lot of mainstream appeal. If you like television shows like The Voice and American Idol, you might be interested in seeing one contestant’s (fictional) journey to get onto one of those shows.

You can read my interview with writer/director Max Minghella over at the Beat.

The movie I left out of last week’s column is HIGH LIFE (A24), the new movie and first in English from French auteur Claire Denis, which stars Robert Pattinson, André Benjamin, Juliette Binoche and Mia Goth. I saw the movie at the New York Film Festival last year, but I guess I never got around to writing about it, but I wish I did. Not that I particularly liked the movie, but if I wrote about it, at least I could remember what it was about. I know it takes place on a spaceship with a bunch of astronauts including Pattinson and his young daughter, all of them trying to survive.

But my absolutely favorite new movie of the weekend is Alex Ross Perry’s HER SMELL (Gunpowder and Sky), starring Elisabeth Moss as Becky Something, the lead singer of an all-girl punk band who have hit the big time but are about to implode due to Becky’s addictions and eccentricities. Becky also has a baby daughter who she is constantly neglecting and her bandmates (Agyness Deyn, Gayle Rankin) and everyone is worried about her. I’ve liked some of Perry’s past work, but something about this one really connected, maybe because I spent a couple decades working in the music business, so I can relate to the frustrated engineer in the recording studio section of the film.  Moss, obviously, is amazing as Becky, a role that puts her through all the highs and lows of success and fame, but I also liked the cast around her, actors like Cara Delevigne and Amber Heard who I barely could recognize in their respective wigs. I actually saw this at the New York Film Festival, and I liked it even more when I watched it again recently.  It opens in New York on Friday and in L.A. and other cities next Friday, and I hope to have an interview with Perry, probably over at NextBigPicture by next week some time.

A movie that I hoped would play the Toronto Film Festival in 2017, but instead got up in the Harvey Weinstein scandal was Garth Davis’ MARY MAGDALENE  (IFC Films), the follow-up to his Oscar-nominated film Lion.  It stars Rooney Mara as the title character and her real-life boyfriend Joaquin Phoenix as Jesus… and just hat last part gets me worried just because I remember Rodrigo Garcia’s Last Days in the Desert a few years back, starring Ewan McGregor as Jesus. This is being released this weekend into about 50 theaters in select cities after playing in just about every other country in the world last year as it sought out a new U.S. distributor.

Italian filmmaker Matteo Garrone of Gamorrah fame returns with DOGMAN (Magnolia), a crime thriller set in a small seaside village where a dog groomer named Marcello (Marcello Fonte) is being coerced into committing petty crimes by an ex-boxer bully named Simoncino. Apparently, this is based on true events, and I generally liked it, particularly the performance of Fonte. It opens at the Film Forum and at the Film Society of Lincoln Center Friday, as well as the Landmark Nuart in L.A. It will expand to more California theaters on April 19.

Martial arts fans will want to check out master fight choreographer Yuen Woo-Ping’s latest The Ip Man Legacy: Master Z (Well GO USA), starring Max Zhang as Cheung Tin Chi, who is trying to make a life in Hong Kong with his young son after being defeated by Master Ip.  The movie also stars the legendary Michelle Yeoh (in a great sequence with Zhang), Tony Jaa (ditto) and Dave Bautista… yeah, well I guess two out of three isn’t bad, but Bautista is pretty terrible, and the movie is disjointed in its storytelling. But the action is cool, so there’s that! It opens in select theaters this weekend.

Eva Husson’s Girls of the Sun (Cohen Media Group) stars Golshifteh Farahan (Pasterson) as Bahar, commander of the “Girls of the Sun” battalion, who are set to free their hometown from extremists, while also freeing her son. Emmanuelle Bercot (My King) plays a French journalist who is embedded with the warriors during the mission. Husson’s film opens at the Quad,Landmark 57and the FIAF Florence Gould Hall (now showing first-run films) on Friday, as well as the Laemmle Monica Film Center in L.A.

A movie I sadly had to miss at this year’s Oxford Film Festival is V. Scott Balcerek’s doc Satan & Adam (Cargo), a movie that took twenty years to make, as Balcerek pulls together two decades of documentary footage of the blues duo that were a fixture in Harlem in the late ‘80s and early ‘90s. “Satan” is Sterling Magee, who played with so many greats but felt exploited so he walked away from the music scene, before being joined by Adam Gussow, an Ivy league scholar…but then Magee vanished, and the film follows what happened after that.

I had heard great things about Kaili Blues director BiGan’s Long Day’s Journey into Night  (Kino Lorber), when it played a number of film festivals last year. It follows a man, played by Huang Jue, who is haunted by a woman from his post who he goes looking for her. And it includes a substantial single shot in 3D… for no particular reason that I could ascertain. To call the movie a “slog” would be an insult to actual slogs, and I barely could stay awake while watching it. It’s playing at the Metrograph and Film Society of Lincoln Center starting Friday.

Also now playing at Film Forum is Camille Vidal-Naquet’s debut feature drama Sauvage/Wild (Strand Releasing) following a gay sex worker, played by Felix Maritaud from BPM (Beats Per Minute).

Tim Disney’s William, opening at New York’s Cinema Village and L.A.’s Laemmle Monica Film Center, is a love story between two scientists who fall in love while trying to clone a Neanderthal from ancient DNA creating William, the first Neanderthal to walk the earth in 35,000 years. The film stars Will Brittain, Waleed Zuaiter, Maria Dizzia and Beth Grant.

Gilles de Maistre’s Mia and the White Lion (Ledafilms Entertainment Group) is an ambitious film about a ten-year-old named Mia whose family moves to Africa to manage a lion farm, bonding with a white lion she names Charlie. The film was shot over three years, so that the film’s young starsDaniah De Villiers and Ryan Mac Lennan could bond with their lion co-stars. The film also stars Melanie Laurent and Langley Kirkood, and it opens in select cities.

LOCAL FESTIVALS

I’m finally shifting my gaze over to Chicago where the 21stAnnual EBERTFEST kicked off yesterday with Alan Elliot’s Aretha Franklin concert film Amazing Grace, as well as a special showing of the Wachowski’s Bound with special guests Jennifer Tilly and Gena Gershon. It continues through the weekend with showings of recent and older movies, including Cameron Crowe’s Almost Famous, Jonathan Demme’s Rachel Getting Married and more.

REPERTORY

METROGRAPH (NYC):

Late Nites at Metrographwill screen Werner Herzog’s Bad Liuetenant: Port of Call New Orleans, starring the inimitable Nicolas Cage, while the Playtime: Family Matineesthis weekend is Danny Kaye as Hans Christian Anderson. Although I forgot to include it last week, Michael Blackwood’s 1968 docs Monk and Monk in Europe(as in Thelonious Monk) will continue for the next week, as does King Hu’s The Fate of Lee Khan from 1973. This Saturday night, the Metrograph is presenting a cast and crew reunion for Sidney Lumet’s 1988 movie Running on Emptywith Christine Lahti, screenwriter Naomi Foner and producers Amy Robinson and Griffin Dunne

THE NEW BEVERLY (L.A.):

L.A.’s hottest newish rep theater will show Michael Ritchie’s 1975 film Smile as well as his 1992 film Diggstownon Weds and Thursday (and apparently, Bruce Dern appeared in person on Weds!), Friday and Saturday are Clint Eastwood’s Dirty Harry  (1971) and Escape from Alcatraz  (1978), while Sunday and Monday screens David Lean’s The Bridge on the River Kwai  (1957). This weekend’s KIDDEE MATINEE is Steven Spielberg’s Jurassic Park, while the midnight offerings are The Hateful Eight on Friday and The Blues Brothers (1980) on Saturday. On Monday afternoon, there’s a screening Stanley Kubrick’s Eyes Wide Shut, starring Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman.

FILM FORUM (NYC):

On Saturday, Film Forum will screen Jaime Chávarri’s 1976 documentary El Desecanto, introduced by author Aaron Shulman, who wrote a book about the Spanish literary family, the Paneros, on which the movie is based. (FYI, Chávarri’s film was never released in the States, and there is only one screening on Saturday.) Charlie Chaplin’s Modern Times (1936) will screen Saturday and Sunday as part of Film Forum Jr, and Francesco Rossi’s 1973 film Lucky Lucianowill screen a 4k restoration for a single screening on Sunday afternoon.

AERO  (LA):

The late Luke Perry gets a tribute with Buffy the Vampire Slayer (1992) shown on Thursday, and then the Aero is doing its own Claire Denis tribute (cause everyone else is doing i!) with Salt, Sweat and Sunshine: The Cinema of Claire Denis with a double feature of her debut Chocolat  (1988) and White Material  (2009) on Friday, a screening of Beau Travail (1999) on Saturday, Nenette and Boni (1996) and 35 Shots of Rum (2008) on Saturday, and then Trouble Every Day  (2001)and Let the Sunshine In (2017) on Sunday. Most of those will be showing on 35mm and Denis will be there, at least for the first two nights.

MOMA (NYC):

Modern Matinees: B is for Bacall continues with 1948’s Key Largo on Thursday and Jonathan Glazer’s Birth (2004) on Friday. The What Price Hollywood series will screen George Cukor’s Sylvia Scarlett (1935) and John Waters’ Female Trouble (1974) on Thursday, Nicholas Ray’s In a Lonely Place  (1950) and Bill Gunn’s Ganja & Hess  (1973) on Friday, Mitchell Leisen’s Midnight  (1939), Clarence Brown’s 1931 film A Free Soul and George Cukor’s What Price Hollywood  (1932) on Saturday and Fritz Lang’s Clash By Night  (1952) and Joseph Lewis’ Gun Crazy  (1950) on Sunday.

QUAD CINEMA (NYC):

The Quad begins its new series Wild Things: The Ferocious Films of Nelly Kaplan, a tribute retrospective to a pivotal filmmaker in the French New Wave, which I know next to nothing about, so I won’t even try. Just click on the title to see the movies playing.

BAM CINEMATEK (NYC):

This week’s series is The Anarchic Cinema of Věra Chytilová, a celebration of the filmmaker who emerged during the Czech New Wave, which I know even less about than the French New Wave. Just click on the link if you know who she is.

LANDMARK THEATRES NUART  (LA):

This Friday’s midnight screening is the ‘70s classic Dirty Mary Crazy Larry (1974), starring Peter Fonda and Susan George. I’m not sure when was the last time I had a chance to see this movie but if I were in L.A., this is where I would be on Friday night.

STREAMING AND CABLE

Streaming on Netflix starting Wednesday is THE SILENCE, the new apocalyptic thriller from director John R. Leonetti  (Annabelle), starring Stanley Tucci, Kiernan Shipka and Miranda Otto. In this twist on Netflix’s hit Bird Box (and rip-off of A Quiet Place?), this one involves a world being terrorized by primeval beings with acute hearing and a family trying to survive. Also streaming Friday is the high concept teen rom-com The Perfect Date, starring Noah Centineo as a guy who is payed to take a friend’s cousin to the prom.

Next week, another horror movie in New Line’s The Curse of La Llorona, plus the faith-based drama Breakthrough from Fox and DisneyNature’s Penguins.

[stokan]

The 20 Best Things of 2016

Fun fact: Many good things actually happened in the year 2016. It’s true! It wasn't all death and Trump, although as you’ll see, those two factors hang heavy over even the best of things. But just like every year, 2016 still managed to produce its fair share of great art, cultural triumphs, and viral delights. Leaving out, obviously, things from 2016 that it seems like I’ll probably love but have yet to experience (OJ: Made in America, Search Party, 20th Century Women, Fences, etc.), and TV shows I’ve already written about in years past (OITNB, Transparent, You're the Worst, Veep, etc) here are my top 20 favorite things from 2016, listed in no particular order:

1. Beyonce - “Formation” video

How upset old white people were about this should give you some idea of just how great it is.

When I was growing up, the biggest music video from the biggest female pop star of the day involved her dancing around suggestively in a Catholic school girl outfit. Trump may have won the election, but progress still remains undefeated.

2. Kendrick Lamar’s Grammys Performance

(Of course this isn't anywhere on the internet for me to link to. Because Neil Portnow.)

Kendrick’s performance was the performance that Kayne always thinks he is giving. It’s a performance that made everyone else who took the stage on Music’s Biggest Night seem like talent show contestants.

I don’t want to tell artists how to use their fame, but this is how they should use their fame.

3. Last Week Tonight - #MakeDonaldDrumpfAgain

SPOILER ALERT: He didn't make Donald Drumpf again. In fact the viral success of this piece and lack of any resultant effect on Trump whatsoever does raise some big questions about the effectiveness of comedy in actually changing anyone’s mind about anything in 2016. But yet, like death from a thousand paper cuts, it definitely drew a little blood. And even though I really wish John Oliver had stuck with guns and only referred to Trump as Drumpf for the rest of the year, it was still a more thorough and effective attack ad than anything the Clinton campaign managed to put together, and that was basically their whole job. John Oliver can never be president, but the world is going to be a better place as long as he keeps trying to help decide who will be.

Also, says everything about 2016 that this piece now feels like it came out ten thousand years ago.

4. La La Land

Hey, remember joy? And love? And having hopes and dreams? Well La La Land sure does! The best and worst thing you can say about it is that it’s a pre-Trump movie. Maybe the last one ever in fact. But for my money, Damien Chazelle’s quest to Make Musicals Great Again is exactly the tonic we need right now. And it seems fitting the Oscars after the death of Debbie Reynolds are going to be headlined by a colorful and happiness-inducing musical about show business, complete with its own dream ballet. Sometimes the best way to reinvent an art form is to just do it the same way its always been done, only better and at the right time.

5. Olympic Swimming

When the Olympics began I barely cared. I was raised on the Olympics, but in 2016 there’s so much else going on it felt like maybe time has passed the Olympics by. And then the swimming started. And Ledecky destroyed all challengers. And Phelps proved that calling him the greatest swimmer of all time is still underrating him. And Simone Manuel made history. And Lochte Lochted. And Anthony Ervin spun an all-time Olympic athlete backstory into Olympic gold. And for a week there was nothing in the world more compelling than watch people swim laps in a pool.

So turns out the Olympics are the Michael Phelps of sporting events - the second you think they’ve slipped a bit is when they have you right where they want you.

6. LVL Up - “Pain”

Point: Rock and roll is dead

Counterpoint: “Pain” by LVL Up

7. Stranger Things

I hate the 80s. I hate supernatural shows and horror-based shows and “genre” shows in general. I hate homage as the starting place for a work of art. I hate culture’s obsession with nostalgia and youth. And yet I loved Stranger Things. It felt like nothing else on TV while feeling like so many other things all at once. It’s the show Lost wishes it could have been, and what JJ Abrams wishes he had made instead of Super 8.

Also: I hate that there’s going to be a season two. I hate that dialogue around the show seemed so #TeamBarb when clearly any sane right-thinking person is #TeamNancy all the way. I preemptively hate all the imitators Stranger Things is going to spawn. And I hate the Stranger Things backlash that’s inevitably coming and coming hard. But right now, in this moment, let’s all embrace a wonderful television ride and not worry about the demigorgons in the woods coming to put slugs in its mouth.

#KeepHawkinsWeird

8. Flossie Dickey

Sometimes you find true love where you least expect it. Like in an interview with a 110-year woman at a nursing home.

9. Sam Donsky on The Ringer

(Speaking of soul mates…)

In the age of Trump it’s more important than ever that we have writers brave enough to ask the tough questions. Like: Who would win the Oscar for Best Baby? What is the best night any celebrity has ever had at Madison Square Garden? And why does David Benioff always thank his wife by her full name?

From analyzing the Kim/Kayne/Taylor tapes like they're the Zapruder film, to asking 74 questions about a film no one saw or liked, 2016 was the year Sam Donsky officially made himself into this generation’s Woodward and Bernstein, if Woodward and Bernstein were mostly known for dissecting dumb pop culture on the internet. We may never fully understand why Trump won, but, also, what’s up with Chris Pratt’s vests?

10. Black-ish - “Hope”

A perfect piece of writing and a perfect argument for the continued existence of network TV.

That being said though, 40 years ago this would be a classic TV episode people would talk about for generations. Now, it didn't even get nominated for an Emmy. Maybe network TV is just beyond saving.

11. The People vs. OJ Simpson

It’s almost a cliche at this point to point out how many societal issues the OJ Simpson case touched on, but watching this miniseries unfold was a great reminder that looking at the the past is usually the best vehicle for exploring the present. To choose just one example, the scene where the jurors argue over what to watch on TV is a perfect encapsulation of how something like a Trump victory could some day be possible. And if Marcia Clark isn't a perfect Hillary Clinton avatar then I don’t know who is. My only complaints about a perfect eight hours of television are that it wasn't longer and that Sarah Paulson and Courtney B. Vance aren't eligible for Oscars.

12. Samantha Bee’s Donald Trump Conspiracy Theory

Look, I don't want to say that Full Frontal with Samantha Bee is the best and most important show on TV. That is has the best joke writers in the business. That it has the righteous anger and indignation that this year called for. That it’s going to be our guiding light for the next four years. And that it’s proof that giving The Daily Show to Trevor Noah was one of the dumbest decisions in recent television history. All I’m saying is that some people are saying that, and who am I to disagree? If I was going to make claims that outlandish, I guess the first pieces of evidence I would direct you to are this already iconic Donald Trump conspiracy and the show’s Harriet Tubman segment. But I’m not one to make accusations about things using facts and evidence. I’m no expert; I’m just a guy. A guy standing in front of samanthabee.com asking it to to love him.

13. David Bowie - “Lazarus” video

The ultimate mic drop.

They say Native Americans used to make use of every part of the buffalo. David Bowie was like that, only the buffalo was his life.

14. SNL

“Farewell Mr. Bunting”

Having enough trust in your audience and your vision to attempt this sketch is super inspiring. Getting people in 2016 to wait through two and a half minutes of build up in a viral video before it pays off feels like a miracle. And getting the feeling back in my face when I finally finish laughing at this is going to be really great.

“Black Jeopardy” This is what comedy can do when its at it’s best. It cuts to truths about America more clearly and cleanly than 1,000 think pieces ever could. Are comedy sketches eligible for the Nobel Prize in Literature now?

“Hillary Clinton/Hallelujah” And this is what comedy can do when it’s not comedy at all. When historians 200 years from now want to know what the days just after the election of Donald Trump felt like all they need to do is watch this. The best thing SNL has ever done.

15. Songs That Made Me Unsure Whether I Should Be Sad, Dance, Or Both

Christine and the Queens - “iT”

I have absolutely no idea what this song is about. All I know is it sounds like the feeling of being alive. Between this song and Marion Cotillard’s eyes the French really continue to have the whole beautiful sadness thing figured out.

Eleanor Freiberger - “My Mistakes” The best Rilo Kiley song of 2016. The world can change however it wants; as long as it keeps giving me new versions of the exact song I’m totally good.

Mike Posner - “Took a Pill in Ibiza” The exact opposite of me is an EDM-influenced song about taking drugs in a nightclub in Ibiza. Yet here we are. Turns out that existential melancholy translated into Douche from the original Neurotic Intellectual is still pretty damn relatable. And yes I realize this song came out in 2015, but this will always be the sound of 2016 to me.

16. Moonlight

Moonlight feels like a miracle. That a serious drama without any name stars about a poor, gay, black man coming of age could be made at all, yet alone breakthrough into the popular consciousness. That a cast this natural and flawless could be found, like an album where every song that comes on makes you go “no THIS one is my favorite!”. That there are two different sets of three actors so similar and so good that when I see them together doing press it hurts my brain because I can’t process that they were not ACTUALLY the same person at three different ages. That two people making small talk at a table in a diner could have a whole audience on the edge of their seats. That a no-name director with one prior little-seen credit could create the most powerful and well-made movie of the year. None of these things seems possible or plausible, and yet they're all true. This movie is a miracle. And its success gives me hope. To quote critic Dana Stevens, in the pitch-black year of Trump, Moonlight was a “crack in the wall that allowed light to shine through”.

17. Atlanta

In 2016, what even is TV? It’s basically anything now. And it’s everything. It’s whatever it wants to be. And no artist has yet risen to meet the challenge and possibility of our post-Louie world better than Donald Glover has. In 2016 Atlanta is TV, and TV is Atlanta. There are no rules. There is only what you can dream up.

What will season two of Atlanta be? It could be literally anything and no one would bat an eye.

18. Chance the Rapper - Coloring Book

Chance the Rapper is so millennial it hurts. Chance the Rapper definitely has strong feelings about safe spaces and Bernie Sanders. Chance the Rapper has never even considered doing something ironically. Chance the Rapper makes Lin-Manuel Miranda look like a cynical pessimist. Hell, Chance the Rapper named himself Chance the Rapper. And as a millennial, Chance the Rapper is the future.

And the future sounds amazing.

The future is like if Old Kanye had been raised on new Kanye and was actually good at rapping. (As the old saying goes: every generation gets the Late Registration it deserves) The future is like if Picasso painted with emojis. The future is earnestness being the new aggression. The future is Future being the past.

Hip-hop is dead, long live hip-hop.

19. “A Closer Look” on Late Night With Seth Meyers

I almost left this reoccurring segment off my list of the best of 2016 because it’s become such a constant part of my life that I assumed it had been around longer than just this year. Who knew when Jon Stewart retired that the new iteration of The Daily Show would be called Late Night With Seth Meyers? Or as I call it: Essential.

20. Revisionist History Podcast

Facts and knowledge really took a beating in 2016, but turns out both are still great if you just re-examine them rather then throw them out all together. Perhaps looking more deeply into our assumptions about the world can help us better understand human nature and the reality we all share. Who knew?

Of everything I experienced in 2016 this podcast is the thing I reference most frequently. I’m fun at parties.