2008’s Apatow-produced Segel-written Segel-acted adult comedy hit me like a guided missile. In this third calendar year of this podcast I’ve really come to just pick movies that I like and, by golly, do I enjoy this movie. I genuinely think I covered the majority of the ground on this one. No random 15-page notes on this episode. Disappointing even to me. Maybe I’ve turned a corner. In my, simultaneously, disorganized and pedantic mind I do see the web of influence sourced in this movie but it dovetails into the web of influence sourced from Judd Apatow and it may be better to think of it as interference patterns of stones thrown into a still pond. It’s both beautiful and complex once we start thinking about Jason Segel, himself, and Jonah Hill, and Kristen Bell, and Mila Kunis, and Bill Hader, and Nick Stoller, and I’m certain I’ve forgotten someone in this haphazard slapdash excuse for show notes or a show description as I’m watching Gary Whitta play “Among Us” with folks from “The Guild” and “Hello, From The Magic Tavern” who also work at Jackbox Games which is an already surreal matchup but now paired with an incomprehensible arrangement of nouns that could plausibly exist on a space ship. Listen, nothing here is going to reflect on this podcast episode. I think I’ve gotten it all out. It took me three months to watch this movie. I could have but I didn’t track positions in frame or eyelines or blocking. I could have and, in my smooth memory brain, I would guess that Jason Segel is placed in frame on the left looking towards the right in points of optimism (like a lot of scenes where Mila Kunis is around once they’ve established their… whatever it is [labels are so messy]) and on the right looking left in low points (like the breakfast buffet where he sees Kristen Bell and Russel Brand eating breakfast just outside and he sits so close to the buffet). But I didn’t. I did not.
I shall not. Not this time, at any rate. I am however in the process of watching “Dispatches from Elsewhere” and it’s both unusual and unusually charming. There’s definitely a good amount of prior work that could potentially be considered influences on it but that doesn’t take away from it. I watched the first four episodes apparently out of order (based on the order of the titles on the blu-ray and the order that IMDb has them listed) and I actually really liked it that way. The way that the episodes are set up still gets you setups and pay offs but you get them in maybe a different order that is less casual and perhaps intended. I started the fifth episode and now I’m worried that it’s too out of order. But maybe I shouldn’t. Maybe I’m overthinking it. Maybe I should go to sleep.
I will acknowledge that there is some shenanigans with de-breath happening. I need speech coaching or something. The end result is some words will get completely flattened by the de-breath plugin because I’m just a boosted animal and I get tired of listening to my own voice after a point. Keeping these shorter is helpful.
I do have a ridiculous fantasy where I get Jason Segel to play me in a movie and Joe Manganiello to play me in the post-apocalyptic alternate timeline of that movie and then Steve Agee to play me in the alternate alternate timeline. But that’s mostly focused on how these actors are tall and not how they resemble me in any respect.
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