Featuring writing by Michael O’Malley, Reid Ramsey, Ash Baker, Nadine Smith, Andrew Swafford, Logan Kenny, Miranda Barnewall, Zach Dennis, Julianna Ramsey, and Lucy Palmer
2020 has been a rough year for movie releases. Release dates have been pushed back indefinitely, productions have been halted, and event titles have unceremoniously shuffled onto VOD platforms, making this feel like a year without movies. So at this mid-point in the year, when many outlets ordinarily release their “best of the year so far” listicles, here at Cinematary we’d like to acknowledge the situation by doing something a bit different: we’ve invited our writers to share one or two pieces of non-film media released in 2020 that they’ve personally found comforting amidst all the uncertainty. Below you’ll find writing on music, sports, workout routines, television, and viral videos, all of which we invite you to enjoy with us.
Fetch the Bolt Cutters by Fiona Apple
In some respects, Fiona Apple has made each one of her albums an event sheerly by nature of their scarcity: this is her first full-length since 2012’s The Idler Wheel... (I’m not going to type out the whole title, which is an entire poem) and only her fifth in her entire 25-year career. But the real magic of a Fiona Apple record is that you don’t (can’t) forget them in the intervening eight years until the next one. The Idler Wheel… was still in heavy rotation for me in spring of this year, an easy contender for album of the previous decade, and when Apple surprise-dropped Fetch the Bolt Cutters in April, it instantly became an album I knew I would still be listening to in 2030, those lyrics whirling around the wrinkles of my brain, the percussive sounds of the music bouncing off my skull like Apple’s hands on the ridiculous array of found objects she bangs to produce these sounds. It’s the kind of album whose influences are infinite but whose sound is singular; it evokes the fierce, cacophonous, primal-scream melodies of Plastic Ono Band and Nina Simone in equal measure and even the kaleidoscopic jazz-confessional songwriting experiments of Joni Mitchell circa The Hissing of Summer Lawns, but name me a single song that sounds specifically like the curling piano autobiography of “Shameika” or the seething multi-part chant of “For Him.” And the words in these songs! Apple has always known how to turn a phrase, but these turn so sharply that they draw blood. It’s a staggering, complex accomplishment from top to bottom, and the fact that I get to listen to this record almost makes up for the lack of movie theaters in my life. Any one part of the record is a universe to explore, and I’ll be exploring for a long time. – Michael O’Malley
The NWSL Challenge Cup
Women’s soccer has one distinction among U.S. based sports currently: it is the first professional sports league to successfully resume play during the pandemic. There are several planned returns for other leagues in the coming weeks, and the qualifier for the word “successful” in that first sentence is that one team, the Orlando Pride, had to drop out prior to the tournament due to an overwhelming number of players and staff testing positive for the virus. Despite that fairly sizable hiccup though, the NWSL Challenge Cup is officially into its second week of play in Utah — complete with stunning, panoramic mountain views beyond the crowd-less stadium.
Soccer, unlike some other sports, is based mostly on monotony. The ball moves side-to-side, up and down the pitch for 90 minutes, and the viewer hopes for at least one instance of something extraordinary happening. Averting your eyes for even a minute could mean missing the one moment that ends up on the score sheet at the end of the game. We come to soccer expecting exactly what we’re used to, but hoping to be blown away and shown something new. The NWSL Challenge Cup has been delivering on both fronts. Of ten matches so far, four have been ties, and one team has been dominant (the twice-defending NWSL Champions North Carolina Courage). Even with those statistics, though, there have been many thrilling moments, including a 3-3 thriller between the Houston Dash and Utah Royals and goals from U.S National team stars like Rose Lavelle (if you haven’t watched Lavelle play soccer, then remedy that now.)
Expect monotony but be pleased when the extraordinary occurs. The NWSL Challenge Cup has been the perfect mid-pandemic return to U.S. sports. – Reid Ramsey
Yoga With Adriene
In November of 2019—without a clue that a pandemic was approaching—I decided 2020 would be the year I started taking care of myself. I turn 25 this year, and on my last birthday I determined not to let my late twenties turn out to be the same shitshow my early twenties have been. My first steps were huge: as a New Year Resolution, I quit cigarettes and alcohol. As of July 6th I’m 207 days (over six months) off them both. However, back in January, I quickly found out that after kicking a habit, you need something to replace it with. That’s how I met Adriene.
Yoga With Adriene was not my introduction to yoga, but the videos were my first at-home yoga experience. I used to go to yoga and pilates classes with my roommate in college, purely for the workout aspect. I found the atmosphere of these classes to be somewhat competitive—instructors who liked to show off their impressive moves, pupils who were uniquely flexible, or fashionistas with stylish athleisure and matching mats. As silly as it sounds, it was anxiety inducing. I never went without a friend, and our schedules were often so mismatched it was never a regular habit.
There were two things at work the first time I did yoga with Adriene. The first thing: I was alone in my apartment. There was no one to compare myself to, no one there to see me if I screwed up, and no fashionistas (except me 😏). I was completely free of all judgement and all pressure. The second thing was the way Adriene instructs.
On a practical level, Adriene welcomes all levels of yogis by creating a casual, low-stress atmosphere. She’s less coach and more guide—less commands and more encouragement. She gives alternative positions for the tougher poses, so that whether you’re just starting out or have been doing yoga for years, you’ll get the stretch that’s right for you. With Adriene, it’s not about how flexible or fit you are, or whether you can strike every pose perfectly. It’s about finding what feels good (a mantra of Adriene’s, and also yoga & meditation subscription, if the YouTube channel isn’t enough).
During this pandemic season, as I’ve taken to calling it, watching out for my mental health has been top priority, as it has been with many folks. I’ve had mental health issues since junior high, been in and out of talk therapy since high school. Talk therapy never really did the trick, and strangely enough, I never understood why until the Great Corona Quarantine of 2020, when I finally learned that talk therapy isn’t effective for everyone.
One of my first quarantine reads was The Body Keeps the Score by Bessel Van Der Kolk, which details the ways in which trauma is stored in the body. Van Der Kolk lists and describes many effective methods of therapy other than talk therapy, which include (but aren’t limited to—read the book!) yoga, EMDR, and even acting.
That’s the other thing that sets Adriene apart from other yoga instructors I’ve had. Not only is her voice calming and her demeanor welcoming, but she’s aware with the words she says that her almost-8 million subscribers are coming to her videos for different reasons—whether it is purely for the stretch and the balance, pain relief, or if it’s to deal with PTSD or the trauma of a disaster.
I recently posted on my Instagram story that doing yoga with Adriene was what would ultimately get me through the pandemic, and I couldn’t believe how many friends responded to agree. Whether you’ve done yoga but not with Adriene, or if you’ve never done yoga at all, whether you’re looking to clear your head or just stretch out your neck from all those Zoom calls, go visit my friend Adriene and her sleepy dog Benji. – Ash Baker
“Eat Your Ass (And My Neighbor)” by The Gregory Brothers
Very few things have made me laugh during quarantine quite like “Eat Your Ass (And My Neighbor),” a songified Alex Jones rant with production magic by The Gregory Brothers.
It’s still a morbid kind of laughter, as there’s unquestionably something disconcerting about a grown (albeit notoriously delusional) man yelling about being ready to resort to cannibalism in the early stages of the pandemic, back when store shelves were starting to thin out and nobody knew exactly what shape this thing would end up taking. But the original, untouched rant was darkly hilarious, operating on a comedic wavelength all its own as this probably-actually-dangerous man makes a string of threats accidentally sound like a promise to perform anilingus.
The musical remix, however, is on another level, with Jones’s repeated promises to “eat my neighbors” and “eat your ass” morphed and looped into an infectious refrain over a genuinely magnificent disco beat. For me, it’s just over a minute of musical-comedy bliss that is both inextricably bound up in our scary cultural moment and a much needed escape to cloud cuckoo land. – Andrew Swafford
WATCH
Samrin Nosrat’s Recipe for Pork Braised with Chilies
Something about simultaneously cooking and watching movies just clicks in my brain. Being able to go back and forth between a film and a pan helps me digest both more easily – one keeps my hands busy and the other keeps my brain busy. Some movies are intertwined with what I’m cooking at the time – like chopping nuts for granola while watching Under The Skin. I've been cooking my way though Samin Nosrat's cookbook Salt Fat Acid Heat during quarantine when I ran up on this recipe for braised pork. The recipe itself is pretty simple. Take about 4 lbs of pork shoulder, an onion, tomatoes, and some chilies and slowly simmer it in some pilsner. The flavor is out of this world amazing. The only problem is it takes 4-5 hours to make. But lucky for you most of the cook time is hands off, and this is a film website with about a million suggestions for what to watch in the meantime. – Julianna Ramsey
Circles by Mac Miller
I remember the day that Mac died clearly. I was on the phone with my ex when I saw the news, and it felt like my heart stopped. I didn’t believe it at first but the reports kept coming in and the acknowledgment that one of the most fundamental musicians of my life was dead just hit me. I’m not sure I’ve ever cried more in front of someone. It was just weeks after his album Swimming had blown me away and become my current favourite of that year. This hopeful record in the aftermath of a break up became something different, an album defined by tragedy. I assumed that there’d never be another Mac project again. So when his estate announced that Jon Brion had helped finish the album he was working on before his death, I was overwhelmed by emotion. I will never forget lying down at midnight on the album’s release date, knowing that this would be the last time I’d get a first listen of a new Mac LP, and having it be everything I could have ever wanted. It is a crushing listen for someone like me who has such an attachment to Mac, going back since I was barely in high school listening to “Watching Movies,” but the consolation of knowing that these final songs of his are here, that they’re here to guide me in my lowest moments, is indescribable. I wouldn’t have been able to get through three months of my girlfriend in hospital without “Once a Day” or “Woods” as my guiding forces. I miss Mac every day and having this exist feels like having one last goodbye with a deceased relative, getting to have a final moment with the ghosts of your past. Only this, you can cling onto forever. – Logan Kenny
The Socially Distanced WWE
I come here not to assess whether or not wrestling should qualify as an “essential business,” as it was deemed by Florida governor Ron DeSantis; in his words, “people have been starved for content,” but Quibi exists, so that shouldn’t be an issue. Then again, we already inhabit a world in which Linda McMahon has served in a federal capacity (and now runs the Trump 2020 Super PAC) and Vince McMahon is a member of the elite cabal Trump (along with other sports entertainment luminaries like Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones, UFC President Dana White, and Mavericks owner/Shark Tank co-host/Magnolia Pictures impresario/producer of Brian De Palma’s Redacted Mark Cuban) was claimed to be consulting about national reopening plans, so perhaps necessity is in the eye of the beholder.
The whole thing, as I’m sure any one of us could have anticipated, seems to have backfired, as a number of members of the WWE roster are alleged to have tested positive for COVID-19, and as many more have been ruthlessly laid off by the perpetually unstable business. Instead of passing judgment, I intend to reflect on the reality of the situation. For good or ill, current social distancing guidelines have forced WWE to do what it almost never does: something new. Enough has already been written about the eeriness of wrestling performed in empty, echoing auditoriums absent the crowds that usually fill them; for me the highlights of the new socially-distanced WWE were two “pre-filmed” matches broadcast at this year’s two-night Wrestlemania 36 mega-event. In what he claims will be his final match, the Undertaker quite literally battled AJ Styles to the death in a graveyard. Though the match itself is a brutal delight to behold, it signifies more in the potential it promised, a glimpse into an alternate future where WWE shoots and edits straight-up movies in lieu of ordinary matches.
That promise was fully delivered on the second of Wrestlemania 36 with Bray Wyatt and John Cena’s “Firefly Fun House” match — I’m not at all joking when I say that it’s one of the only things I’ve ever seen on live television that comes close to Twin Peaks: The Return or the final chapters of Neon Genesis Evangelion. Bray “The Fiend” Wyatt invited his archnemesis, the archduke of all things good and wholesome, John Cena, to a demented children’s program, which opened up a portal into WWE’s long, dark past. Over the course of minutes, Cena and Wyatt teleported across iconic eras and locations in wrestling history, embodying different famous characters but also struggling with their own demons. In fact, the Firefly Fun House match demonstrates an even rarer tendency than a stubborn corporation trying out something new. WWE is infamously reticent to reckon with its own history, but for once, the company examined itself and the things its done. Being a WWE fan means being constantly disappointed, so it’s hard to feel too hopeful, but if the WWE can really and truly look at itself, maybe there’s still a chance it can become something better than the problematic pastime it’s always been. – Nadine Smith
“The Bunker Boy” by Randy Rainbow
It's no secret among people who know me that I'm a huge fan of Randy Rainbow's YouTube videos. I discovered his mock interviews with the (then) presidential candidates in 2016 and have been hooked ever since. I find his comedic timing spot on and am a fan of 95% of the songs he parodies. In early June, Randy went past the easily recognizable musical tunes and chose to parody “The Jitterbug,” a number sung by Judy Garland and cut from The Wizard of OZ. The video opens with Randy looking all over for the president ("Have you guys seen the president??”), but where is he? Oh, there he is, in the bunker! It's a punch at how much Donald does not act like a president, but that in itself is not news anymore (it feels like the first wave of BLM protests happened years ago now…). Nevertheless, I find brief relief in Randy's poking and shaming of Trump, and him doing it to the tune of a nixed Wizard of OZ tune makes it even better. I think the last time I listened to “The Jitterbug” was when I was seven years old, dancing around the family room. Oh, the simpler times... In any case, thank the heavens for Randy Rainbow and his videos. I highly recommend you check out his others: special favorites include “Commander of Cheese,” “He's in Love (and We're All Going to Die),” and “The Nasty Woman.” – Miranda Barnewall
WATCH
YTP: This is Deal or No De- Jeopardy!
The scene: my friend and I (both huge Jeopardy fans) laughing so hard we’re gasping for air because some random person on the internet made Alex Trebek say “FUCK players here we go!” – Julianna Ramsey
WATCH
Punisher by Phoebe Bridgers
It has become a cliché of criticism to say a film made you laugh and cry, but the phrase rarely translates to songs, or even albums. Phoebe Bridgers’s latest release, Punisher, demands to be recognized as an exception. There are four or five tracks which jump from wry observations to devastatingly personal insights in a matter of seconds, without losing any of their power. Of course, there’s some overlap with her previous album, Stranger In The Alps, but Punisher feels much more confident in its style, and as a result, far more emotionally complex. The details her tracks are built on become increasingly specific to the extent where whole songs center around unique, individual experiences. On a superficial level, these stories seem impossible to relate to, but the atmosphere this commitment creates is overwhelmingly cohesive.
In many ways, the album is the sonic equivalent to urban photography: the pictures of derelict buildings and abandoned spaces which capture the beauty of decay. It’s an album where everything is constantly collapsing; no emotion is solid, but instead slowly falling apart or breaking up. Her tone is perfectly matched to the insecurities associated with 2020 and so the release of the album couldn’t be more in sync with its context. It’s hard to imagine a time when things have been less secure. The album’s strength is not only an expression of this anxiety, which is common across media, but also the way she documents its intricacies through anecdotes. It doesn’t make broad generalizations about what lockdown means for mankind, and as a consequence, speaks more authentically to the human experience. – Lucy Palmer
The Midnight Gospel
The first note about watching The Midnight Gospel is to not to do so while sober.
The effect of the psychedelic animated series, created in portion by Pendleton Ward of Adventure Time, is less to precisely take in each and every shape passing the front of the screen, but rather to allow the animated images to juxtapose alongside the conversation that Clancy (voiced by co-creator Duncan Trussell) is having with his intergalactic guests and to focus on that attrition between what you’re seeing and the very deep yet probably somewhat obnoxious chat.
It feels like a spin-off of sorts from Trussell’s podcast, The Duncan Trussell Family Hour, where he has in-depth and longform conversations with the range of his friends – including, on multiple occasions, Joe Rogan and Dr. Drew (who also appears as the voice of the guest in the series’ first episode). The podcast also finds guests from different corners with an added focus on spiritualism and various forms of Eastern philosophy.
While I don’t count myself as a fan of Trussell’s podcast or the work of his friends, The Midnight Gospel has been a splendid trip that pairs the comfort of a longform podcast conversation – or really any worthwhile conversation for that matter – with dancing psychedelic images.
The conversations feel like they’ve only been 70% recorded prior to the animation cycle – the other 30% coming from the guests them reacting to the bizarre worlds illustrated around them – and the dialogue constantly feels at odds with what is happening around it. In the second episode of the series, Clancy is transported to a world where he ends up impaled by a hippo-like creature that has antlers like a deer. The predicament lends itself to a guest for the intergalactic podcast host and he begins to have a conversation with the creature (voiced by progressive activist and writer Anne Lamott) about death and how we receive the end – all while the creature and Clancy are careening towards their own demise, though Clancy is unable to feel the effect, as he is only experiencing this world through an avatar-like being that sends him home when trouble gets overwhelming.
The conversations have the ability to work on some (clearly I’m one of them) and be meaningless drivel for others. It seems widely unlikely that this would find mass appeal, as the friction between the absurd imagery and the often frank, honest conversations between the characters acts as a recipe for dismissal by a large population.
In the end for me, I found them to be the typical high conversations one has – a tinge of pseudo-philosophy and honest acceptance. But they are also something wild, generally fun and a welcome drug-induced thought experiment.
Again, I can’t recommend more watching this not sober. – Zach Dennis
Three ambient tracks from the Kentucky Route Zero soundtrack by Ben Babbitt
Kentucky Route Zero is a somewhat indescribable video game that has been on its long journey to a full release for seven years now, finally releasing its last installment in January of this year. And with that last episode came a new wave of gorgeous ambient music by composer Ben Babbitt, who has made some of his best work here in a string of three interrelated tracks called “The Arrival,” “The Library,” and “5 Dogwood Drive” – all three of which can be heard on Bandcamp. The final track in this sequence is named after the game’s mysterious and foreboding MacGuffin, a locale finally arrived at in a shockingly elegiac fashion as these three ambient tracks guide the player’s emotional response.
Their instrumentation is slow and gorgeous in a way I don’t fully have the words for: the opening evokes imagery of shimmering light; rumbling clouds hanging in the back of the mix; soft jet streams occasionally zoom past overhead; breathy resonance eventually fills the soundscape. All three tracks share a common approach, in which distant sounds grow close and then quickly recede only to circle back around again, ultimately creating a louder unified whole when the disparate parts eventually cascade into each other to create one overlapping harmony.
But the most captivating quality of these recordings, to me, is their texture. As someone who had made a fair bit of ambient music, I can speak from experience that it is fairly easy to smooth out a sound into something frictionless – you minimize attack, you sustain your notes, you add reverb, you stack layers, etc. – but it takes far more ingenuity to create texture. The sounds here are highly tactile, with each instrument feeling like its covered with innumerable layers of dust. It’s as if these sounds have been sitting, untouched, in an attic somewhere for god knows how long, and we’re hearing them by running our fingers over their surfaces while the first beams of light stream in. – Andrew Swafford
“hangman is a weird game” by jan Misali
Ah, Hangman. Perhaps quarantine and the endless ambiguity of social distancing have you pining for those simpler days when you could gather 20-30 children in a room and get them all to yell a jumbled alphabet at an image of a person being executed. Or maybe in your household’s own social isolation, you and your family have taken to this schoolroom, time-killing, stickman-killing ritual yourselves to keep the cabin fever at bay. Perhaps something like this is what inspired YouTuber jan Misali to make his nearly 20-minute analysis of Hangman, which he calls a “two-player asymmetric adversarial pencil and paper word guessing game.” Quarantine does weird things to you. Misali, whose channel is normally devoted to his “Conlang Critic” project (in which he analyzes and reviews constructed languages like Klingon and Na’vi), takes a very deep dive into the mechanics of Hangman. It’s a lot more fun and accessible than it sounds. I love this movie, and I’ve been proselytizing on its behalf since I saw it. I even got my family to watch it. Misali is wryly hilarious, and his simple drawings and onscreen text are a perfect pair with the game in question. Moreover, his analysis of the game is erudite and legitimately fascinating. Hangman’s status as basically a folk game passed on by oral tradition makes for a lot of surprising implications, and Misali is especially great at poking at the unstated expectations that hold the game together, revealing the somewhat surprising extent to which Hangman depends on a delicate web of social contracts, which gives this video a weird metaphorical significance in 2020. No better time than during a global pandemic to find all the invisible social contracts that hold things together, huh? – Michael O’Malley