TV Review - Bojack Horseman - Season One

After being prompted by a friend and hearing mixed feelings about the show, I decided I should check out Bojack Horseman, one of Netflix's new original series, an animated show about a washed up 80's actor and his life post-stardom, starring an anthropomorphic horse and a whole star-studded cast of comedy cold.

In the weird world of Bojack Horseman, we follow our title character (voiced by Will Arnett), a delusional ass-hat who starred in a late 80's, early 90's sitcom like a Full House or Step by Step situation, but has been pretty much out of work since, due to his attitude and behavior. We follow Bojack and his friend/unofficial roommate Todd (Aaron Paul) as Bojack puts off writing a book he has promised Penguin Books until they convince him to get a Ghostwriter (voiced by Alison Brie.) From there, the show is watching Ghostwriter Diane try to capture Bojack's life while she befriends him and he continues to be a mess.

Between this we also meet Princess Carolyn, a cat voiced by Amy Sedaris that is both Bojack's agent and his on-again/off-again girlfriend, Pinky Penguin, voiced by Patton Oswalt as his book publishing agent who is in dire need to have Bojack finish his book, and Mr. Peanutbutter, voiced by Paul F. Tompkins, an anthropomorphic dog who starred in a show just like Bojack's that is also dating Diane. The cast is wonderful, the world is weird and it's hard to describe why exactly I liked it.

Thematically, the closest I think you get to a show like Bojack Horseman is like Archer or Bob's Burgers, but it's definitely not the same. While all three shows trade insults and jokes at lightning speed, Bojack is a lot darker than either of those too and takes a different approach to storytelling. Bojack Horseman follows a serialized pattern, meaning after the first couple episodes, they all fall into place with one another to tell one story, and each episode is a continuation of the last. That's one way the show is different from most animated adult shows of it's type, it's trying to tell one singular set of stories episode to episode, instead of each episode being self-contained. Another thing is that it's way more of a drama than a comedy towards the back half of the season, but still contains funny moments.

I think Bojack fits in with the other good matieral Netflix has decided to support, as it's just as hard to classify as one of those things. Take a look at Orange is the New Black, you can't call that show just a Drama, certainly not a Comedy, but it has a mixture of both that probably fits that moniker "Dramedy" as well as switching narratives and episode formats a lot. While Bojack focuses primarily on this one set of characters, it does expand out to tell the stories of other characters as well as telling a serious story with jokes instead of a funny story with some serious moments.

Bojack Horseman is actually fairly bleak. I've head a lot of people have problems getting past the first episode, some people don't get into it until episode 4-5, and that's when the narrative really picks up speed and the show switches up style. While the first four episodes further the overall narrative, they work as standalone episodes of the show that try and contain their whole story arc in 25 minutes. From episode 5-12 however each episode follows the other and ties into this overarching story and I think this is when people get hooked. Starting with episode five we find Bojack falling in love with his ghostwriter Diane, who is dating his longtime rival and Bojack finds out his old best friend is dying of cancer. Two very serious subplots with very serious repercussions.

I'm not going to spoil the show because it's still pretty new and a lot of people haven't seen it yet, but I think what gets people hooked with these subplots is how human they really are. Bojack reacts in an exaggerated yet truthful way to finding out the girl he is in love with is going to get married to a guy he resents and the situation with his old friend dying of cancer is a very believable and true-feeling one.

I think the conceit of Bojack Horseman is that it's telling a very human story through the guise of this cartoon anthropomorphic world so people take it less seriously, but it's darker than most animated shows I have seen, and that is part of what I think makes it so great. There are also great light-hearted moments, like director Cameron Crowe being realized as a Raven that people mistake for a Crow because of his name, or Neal McBeal the Navy Seal (voiced by Patton Oswalt) who called dibs on a box of muffins, which Bojack ignores and it spirals out of control into this idea that Bojack hates the troops because he didn't respect the guy's dibs. I like the animation style, the voice work by Arnett, Paul, Oswalt, Brie and the rest of the crew is exactly what the show needed, and the into song (written by half of The Black Keys) and the outro song are tonally great and fun.

Overall, I really enjoyed Bojack Horseman, and I recommend people who either haven't started it or haven't gone past the first few episodes to make it to episode 5-6 and see if they still don't like it. It seems to be polarizing overall, and I know at least one person who never ended up liking it despite watching all the way through. All I can say is to give it a chance and you might find it as rewarding as I did.

Music Review - Kimbra - The Golden Echo

Kimbra made big impressions in the last few years, with her first album Vows originally coming out in 2011, being spotted on Gotye's Somebody That I Used To Know in 2012, and then having a re-working of Vows come out in 2012, it seemed like she could do anything, so..she did a little of everything on her follow-up The Golden Echo.

The album is a mixture of genres that are unified by a few key ideas, the main one being that Kimbra can pretty much do anything she puts her mind to. While comfortably sitting in a modern Soul/R&B positon, Kimbra also takes on some more Rock-Pop numbers and even the weird genre-bending pop hit 90's Music, a song that's as much of a homage in it's lyrics as it is in style. Kimbra's musical style jumps all over the place, and it's a good thing. You can never peg her down as being just one kind of style, even when she excels at it. The Golden Echo is a collage of styles that do nothing but good things for the young, but very talented Kimbra.

Songs like 90's Music and Miracle sound poised to take the pop charts, while others like As You Are and Love In High Places are like the modern comeback of Soul, like Amy Winehouse or even Adele. While still others like Teen Heat and Madhouse sound like the Funk-induced R&B of the likes of Prince. It's a kaleidoscope of genres flavors that all combine to give you an authentic sense of what Kimbra is capable of, and that you at the same time don't know where she'll go next, whether it's the low-key trap-based Goldmine or the Soul of Waltz Me To The Grave. There are no sour notes on The Golden Echo, there are just different flavors rotating through.

The instrumentation is absolutely delightful. Besides Kimbra's magnificent voice that can hit the lows as well as the highs, you have multiple appearances from accomplished bassist Thundercat, Michael Jackson's drummer John Robinson, and Morris Hayes, a keyboardist for the NPG-era Prince. On 90's Music, Muse's Matt Bellamy plays guitar, Mark Foster from Foster the people makes an appearance, John Legend is on a track, the album really is just a collage of all the things Kimbra likes and wants to incorporate into her work, and it shows. Though instead of being a Hodge-podge mess of styles, The Golden Echo holds together as it's own standalone piece of work, a reflection of who Kimbra is and what she wants to bring to music, and I'm on-board for wherever she wants to take me. 

I will mention that while the vinyl lacks all the bonus songs of the deluxe version, it not only sounds fantastic, but the digital download they include also has the bonus tracks.

Spotify

iTunes

Amazon

TV Rewatch - South Park - Season Eight

So I've given up the idea of catching up with South Park before the new season in a couple weeks, but I will catch up eventually, just on a much slower time table. I've finished Season Eight and decided I should get around to writing about it. While not my favorite season of the show and less funny than the last two, season eight is still a solid effort from Parker and Stone, delivering their now trademark brand of humor to real life current situations.

The first episode of the season Good Times With Weapons was a favorite of mine for it's contrast of humor and serious situation. In the episode, the boys get Japanese weapons and the show uses anime art style conventions to convey when the boys are role-playing with their weapons. Everything is silly and a laugh until they go to fight Anime Butters, when Kenny actually throws his Throwing Star at him and it lands square in his eyeball. Then it cuts back to regular animation to show the severity of what has happened, Butters actually has that Throwing Star stuck right in his eyeball and the rest of the episode is them trying to figure out how to get poor Butters help while not revealing it was their fault. Not the funniest episode of the season, but the combination of an ultra-serious situation with this ridiculous anime schtick thrown on top made me really appreciate it.

In Up The Down Steroid, Timmy and Jimmy are training for the Special Olympics, and Jimmy takes steroids to try and give himself the edge. The episode plays off the tropes of what happens to those who take steroids to get ahead in sports but places it in context of disabled people. At the same time, once he finds out there is a cash prize, Cartman decides he will disguise himself as developmentally disabled to win. What I love most about the episode, besides Jimmy's end rant on how using steroids are unfair to competition, is that Cartman's plan backfires epically when he spends all his time training and researching how to be believably disabled and not training to win the Olympics themselves and falls last in every single competition.

Other highlights include You Got F'd In the A, a You Got Served parody, Awesom-O, when Cartman disguises himself as a robot as a prank on Butters and ends up on a hijinks-filled adventure, The Jeffersons, when Parker and Stone point out what was wrong with how Michael Jackson lived his life and the corruption of cops, Goobacks, where Parker and Stone tackle immigration issues, Quest For Ratings that talks about the real-life problems with making tv shows and movies in this day and age, Stupid Spoiled Whore Video Playset, that talks about the true-to-life and still on-going problem of having socialites like Paris Hilton be role models for young girls and Woodland Critter Christmas, in which Rankin/Bass looking animals are preparing for the birth of their lord and savior, the anti-Christ...the animals are all followers of Satan.

As you can see, a lot of good episodes in Season 8, but it just didn't feel as funny to me as the last couple were. Season 8 was notoriously difficult to make, as yet again it was a season made at the same time as Parker and Stone made a movie, this time being Team America World Police. They felt like they were hitting a wall trying to write episodes, and although it feels like they pulled through and did a good job, it also feels like they could have done better had it been their main project.

Movie Review - Chef

So I finally got a chance to watch Chef last week, and I absolutely loved it. While not a perfect movie, it's a passionate movie about somebody's passion for the things in his life, and it was an incredibly enjoyable experience.

The basic story is that actor/director/writer Jon Favreau stars as our main character, Carl Casper, a well respected Chef working in an upscale restaurant. While Carl is shown to be passionate about the food he makes and wanting to take things in new directions, the owner of the restaurant is constantly stifling him. This all comes to a head when a famous food critic is going to come into the restaurant and the owner forces Carl to stick to old standards instead of doing anything new, which leads to a disparaging review from the food critic. After an altercation at the restaurant because of this, Carl decides to leave, and the rest of the movie is about him re-discovering what he wants in life. I'm trying not to give much away because even though it's a predictable movie, I still liked not knowing every detail before I went it to the film.

What I found surprising about the movie was that despite it's name, the movie isn't really about food, or being a chef. Instead, the movie is about a man's journey to find himself after spending years doing things just for other people. It's about his relationship with his estranged wife and especially his son, who he is always blowing off for work. Surprisingly, it's also just as much about social media and the power it has in this day and age. It just so happens that the medium for this story is about a chef and his number one passion is food, but otherwise this film could have been told with any artistic  profession.

One of the reasons people are really positive about this movie is that it mirrors, most would say intentionally, the professional life of Jon Favreau. He started off as a very well recieved indie director who kept getting bigger and bigger. Then he was picked up by Marvel, and as stories over the last couple years have shown, Marvel was the one calling the shots ultimately on those movies, as evidenced by Iron Man 2, a movie that got a lot of flack for how messy it was. Then he got Cowboys Vs. Aliens, a superstar sci-fi spectacular that just bombed. After that, Favreau disappeared from the spotlight. He directed a couple episodes of TV and had producer credits on some things, but then came back with Chef, a movie he wrote, directed and starred in about a man quitting a high-profile restaurant where he had no control to re-discover his roots and what was important to him. It's a film that is beautifully shot, well acted and what I will assume is a small budget. It's Jon Favreau going back to what he became famous for, well shot and written character pieces.

Like I said, the film isn't perfect. The movie's last 15 minutes kind of feel rushed and aren't as fleshed out as the rest of the film, but it's the kind of movie where you don't need like every single detail as to how something happens, the joy is in the journey, and once our charcters learn their lesson the movie goes out on a high note. Ultimately it's a feel good comedy that will make you hungry, especially for some Cuban sandwiches.