I am sure they will remake The Hunger Games at some point in the future… but whatever those reboots and remakes will look like, they will not have Jennifer Lawrence. That’s a strike against.
Joan and I are watching The Hunger Games. I forgot how much I like the 1970’s sci-fi dystopian vibe of the adaptation. It’s in conversation with Logan’s Run and Soylent Green aesthetically in a lot of ways.
I find most modern superhero artwork to be pretty dreary because it strives for photo realism.
Sal Buscema’s 1990’s output is completely proficient on a technical level but also still looks like the kind of art a kid excited from reading a Spider-Man comic could replicate in their school notebooks.
All this is the long way around saying new Simpsons is good. People are dorks.
Now there are some respects where modern Simpsons absolutely suffers compared to the OG stuff… but such is true of most television in general. I appreciated how much “Two Cars/Three Eyes” contained as much quiet as bombast… but again, it’s a show from a different era with different beats.
…and the writing still carried the sharpness and heart I remember from The Simpsons’ golden years… “Parahormonal Activity” especially.
I appreciated each of these eps was special in its own way: the time jump in “Parahormonal”, the retirement of Duffman in “Seperance” and the use of Latin American voice actor Humberto Velez as the voice of Bumblebee Man in “The Fall Guy-Yi-Yi!” were all fun signifiers of the show’s legacy.
The fluidity of animation on these newer episodes is just top shelf, “Parahormonal Activity” especially. I prefer the hand-drawn cel animation of the earlier eras but I cannot deny the show is allowing animators to go for it… here, with Marge’s run-in with Artie Ziff and the smart fridge meltdown.
The last three episodes were all in a classic narrative vein - an episode focused on a main family member (Marge, in “Parahormonal Activity”) one that turned on a member of the extended cast (Bumblebee Man in “The Fall Guy-Yi-Yi!”) and a parody (“Seperance” of… Severence).
While nothing is ever going to beat the love and nostalgia I feel for The Simpsons as it was… I was shocked by how good, funny and heartwarming the newest episodes of The Simpsons were!
I’m right in that demographic where The Simpsons premiered and it blew my young mind… and then it went into syndication and became an obsession. I’m the prime demo to be dismissive of later seasons of the show but I thought it’d be interesting to watch the new stuff laid against the old.
Yesterday I finished up a unit on satire in my 12th grade English class with a viewing of Two Cars in Every Garage, Three Eyes on Every Fish, a classic season 2 episode of The Simpsons
…and then when I came home, I decided to watch the three newest episodes of The Simpsons.
October Road VASTLY improves on that dynamic, providing the main character with a precocious kid… but it gender-swaps the kid and adds an angle where the main character may or may not be that kid’s father.
It makes sense in context but it’s infinitely less gross and toxic.
Probably the most significantly good change that October Road made to the Beautiful Girls formula is the older man/young precocious kid dynamic.
As a reminder, the main relationship in Beautiful Girls hinges on a will they/won’t they between Timothy Hutton’s Willy and a 14 year old Natalie Portman.
First of all, October Road is generally a more successful product than Beautiful Girls insofar as it takes what worked about BG and kept that plate spinning while tweaking and overhauling other aspects that were present in the movie for a satisfying watch in that soap opera genre.
The Beautiful Girls Report for the Week of January 4th, 2026.
It’s been awhile since I’ve done a Beautiful Girls report but this weekend I finished watching October Road, the mid ‘00’s drama that used Beautiful Girls’ narrative conceit for a two-season run on ABC… and I have some thoughts.
Anyone who enjoyed the final season of Stranger Things (narratively or stylistically) won’t be disappointed if they go read The Dark Tower and pay attention the art of Michael Whelan.
If Whelan was inspiration for a lot of the visuals in the back half of ST, it wouldn’t surprise me one bit.
Still, I think I was more successful this time than I have been in previous years!
2025’s Festivus Invite Honorees, RIP:
- Brian Wilson
- George Wendt
- Ozzy Osbourne
- Garth Hudson
- Ace Frehley
- Hulk Hogan
- David Lynch
This is the invite for my friend’s annual Festivus party, full of in-jokes and gags that won’t make any sense to people outside our circle.
Including a handful of notable celebs who died during the year is a challenging aspect to designing these invites. I’m not great on likenessses and caricature.
The Acme Novelty Library collection from Pantheon Books for $11 bucks.
This graphic memoir came out in 2020 and I was otherwise distracted by the end of the world as we knew it. The copy I found still had the signed bookplate.
Some 1980’s glut and 1990’s nonsense.
- Bill Maus is funny if you are familiar with what he’s parodying. I love how there’s essentially NOTHING on the page there.
- Magicman promised a dreary 1980’s style grim reboot with that Vietname tinged cover but no! It’s reprints of 1960’s superhero fluff!
Caliber Comics are always worth a flip through. You either get seasoned vets doing their thing or new talent cuttin’ teeth. This is the latter.
That transition between the cursive and the tree is awkward… but it works. I get what they were going for. I’ve never seen that done in that way in comics.
Some $1 comics (plus 20% off)…
- The X-Files was a big deal comic when I was a kid and I’ve never read any.
- My superdude peeps tell me Zdarsky’s run on Cap is well-worth checking out.
Might’ve passed on this one until I saw it was an ‘06 recipient of a Xeric Grant. Boy I miss the Xeric Grants. Always a marker for interesting comics worth looking at.
I’m a sucker for cheap music on DVD- concerts and ephemeral stuff that’ll no doubt become hard to find in the future due the vagaries of licensing.
I’m especially pumped for the Sammy collection. What does a 2002 era BTS documentary look like giving the tech limitations of the time? We’ll find out!
I’m not going to spoil the third pairing because it’s an aspect of The Paper that unfolds quietly over the first season. I found it to be surprisingly touching reframing of Jim/Pam and one of my favorite aspects of the show so far.
…but Ned and Mare are but one of the many romantic relationships on display taking notes correcting the “sins” of the Jim and Pam pairing.
The Derrick/Nicole arc is steeped in modern “no ties” dating culture but with a clear yearning for more traditional norms.
The carefulness on display as anything besides a course correction and a nod to how the rules have changed since the early 2000’s.
