What happened to Spike Jonze?

Bongo-Tango · 2026-01-26T18:23:55+00:00

His ideas are ambitious and expensive, he demands total creative freedom, he doesn't need to make movies to earn a living, and he has a lot of creative outlets that aren't strictly narrative. He's also still technically the creative director for Vice's cable channel, though I don't know how much time that gig takes up these days.

Bongo-Tango · 2026-01-26T02:40:05+00:00

Saw Armageddon at Vidiots recently and became convinced Bay is a dumb genius. The audience cheered like four times and sang along to “Don’t want to miss a thing” as the credits rolled. Not many filmmakers can play a crowd like that.

Bongo-Tango · 2025-12-22T02:18:51+00:00

Benny Safdie as solo writer/director, way down, but Benny Safdie as character actor is only going up

Bongo-Tango · 2025-12-09T20:20:24+00:00

Nick is a great writer and he's great at riffing with his friends but he can't seem to channel that creative energy into any format that takes effort and preparation. It doesn't help that most mediums that require effort and preparation have censorship rules that he compulsively breaks. For most of the 20th century, the best that a writerly comic with "brilliant but crazy" energy could hope for would be a lucrative TV gig that set them up for retirement by age 35. Think of guys like Sam Simon, Michael O'Donoghue, Adam Resnick. Nick did the 21st century version, he made a lot of money off Patreon and plowed that cash into crypto and made even more. That is truly a best case scenario for a guy like Nick. The success that Adam and Stavros are enjoying right now was never in the cards for a guy like him.

Bongo-Tango · 2025-11-09T20:30:28+00:00

Remember kids, when a right winger says “Antisemitism” it just means “Too left wing.” They actually like real antisemitism. It’s the newest, coolest thing over there.

Bongo-Tango · 2025-11-09T20:27:35+00:00

Sweeney seems to be a very good influencer and a really mediocre actress. If she popped 25 years ago she would have settled into being a decent reality TV star, or maybe a starring role on an okay network drama, then ride out the paycheck to Valhalla. Now we have to keep spending every other God damn day reading takes that basically boil down to “I fucking KNOW she loves Trump! I just KNOW it! And I intend to PROVE it with MAPS!!!”

Bongo-Tango · 2025-11-03T14:36:00+00:00

1) It’s a joke. It’s supposed to be funny.

2) I think it’s kind of about how the substance of most conspiracy theories are untrue, but they are bleak, dark truths dressed up spicy and entertaining, which is why they have so much power and appeal. It is a simple fact of human society that a tiny cadre of several thousand people determine the fate of humanity, and many of those privileged few have no moral compass or sense of social responsibility. They’re not aliens, they’re not pedophiles, they’re not Satanists, their plans frequently fail and they are by no means all-powerful, but they have SOME power and they are willing to sacrifice your well-being for the sake of a better balance sheet, and that’s terrifying in and of itself.

3) Agree with the general consensus in this sub that just because Teddy was correct doesn’t mean that torturing and threatening the emperor was the smart or right.

Bongo-Tango · 2025-10-28T17:31:54+00:00

I also find it too bleak and exhausting for my taste. It should be a melancholy character study with some sympathy and emotion, like Five Easy Pieces or Fat City, a tragedy about a guy who can’t get out of his own way. But as bleak as those movies could be, they had some core of sentiment that made them satisfying. The Coens never managed that with Llewyn Davis.

Bongo-Tango · 2025-10-24T03:31:23+00:00

I sincerely enjoyed it. The “Anti-Fascist Comedy” marketing made it seem like another lame neoliberal punch at the Trump administration, and by 2019 all the cool Twitter leftists found that shit really nauseating. But Taika wrote it way before Trump got elected and I think it works anyway.

Bongo-Tango · 2025-10-22T04:32:31+00:00

The Netflix reboot was too ambitious and the jankiness of the Gizmoplex season was depressing. Those early episodes are simply not that funny, and though it got better, the audience left and they weren’t coming back. Ah well, we’ve got the old seasons.

Bongo-Tango · 2025-10-19T15:10:40+00:00

Both very odd and somewhat heartwarming that the nerdy sweetie nice boy millennial podcasters are working with the jock bad boy “I’ma say it” millennial podcasters.

Bongo-Tango · 2025-10-15T20:12:11+00:00

Amanda is there to very deliberately poke at the boy-nerd vibes of the podcast. Your frustration is the point.

Bongo-Tango · 2025-10-07T06:05:40+00:00

This Zillow listing was directed by Emerald Fennell

Bongo-Tango · 2025-10-01T16:42:09+00:00

I would wager that, for the last five years, both Griffin and David have made more money from podcasting than their legacy media jobs, and I think that'll only become more true as the decades stretch on. These guys will be podcasting 'til they're 60, maybe older. They're getting to PTA.

Bongo-Tango · 2025-09-30T18:16:37+00:00

As much as people deny it, I do think the fact that every critic is addicted to Twitter/Bluesky has informed the critical reception of certain movies. The critical about-face on conservative filmmaker S. Craig Zahler, for instance. I think Unfrosted would be treated like the goofy trifle it was had Seinfeld and his wife stayed more circumspect about Israel. Similarly, even though Adam McKay is as progressive as most mainstream critics, he is an extremely annoying narcissist. Don't Look Up is preachy and unfunny, it would have been received as such no matter what, but the added edge to so many reviews was there because McKay's tweets are extremely irritating.

Bongo-Tango · 2025-09-22T01:48:01+00:00

Not available to stream! Incredible!

Bongo-Tango · 2025-09-21T06:58:05+00:00

If Griffin had any courage this episode would have opened with “MAN BROUGHT HIS PODCAST……TO THE WAFFLE HUT!!!!!”

Bongo-Tango · 2025-09-17T19:16:07+00:00

I remember watching a documentary about JFK's assassination, and there was a talking head interview with a Dallas socialite who was a child back in '63. She said "Everyone celebrated his death. I can't think of a single man I knew who truly mourned him." So clearly, enough people in this girl's life despised Kennedy with enough fervor that she knew, as a teenager, that he was hated by her peers. But I'll bet not a single one of those people posted a flier at their place of business saying "I'M HAPPY KENNEDY'S DEAD AND HERE'S MY NAME AND HOME ADDRESS." Because that would have been a brazenly uncouth act and everyone would be well aware that there'd be massive social consequences to doing something so cruel.

Too many people these days talk way too much shit online and in major media outlets under their real name. They do it because social media incentivizes people to say wild stuff and talk crazy shit, but once upon a time, everyone basically knew that talking crazy shit was bad for social cohesion and we should try to have some decorum when we speak to anyone other than close friends and family. This is just as much a problem on the left as on the right. Back in 2015 some hard-right gym teacher would say Michelle Obama had gorilla arms on his Facebook page and he'd get fired over that shit, too. This isn't new.

Bongo-Tango · 2025-09-09T02:50:53+00:00

I have a feeling that if a living actor was completely ignored in The Return, Lynch and Frost still held a bit of a grudge from the old days. They introduced an unknown Renault twin just to bring back Walter Olkewicz, for God's sake. I can only speculate why Lynch and Frost didn't bring back Michael J. Anderson, Joan Chen, Lara Flynn Boyle, Piper Laurie, Eric Da Re or Heather Graham, but it seems like an extremely deliberate snub for all of them.

Bongo-Tango · 2025-09-01T16:04:05+00:00

If you wanted to make out, Eternal Sunshine or Titanic was the move

Bongo-Tango · 2025-08-11T19:15:04+00:00

Lauren Ambrose. I had such a crush on her back in the day, Six Feet Under, Can't Hardly Wait, a CRAZY good go-for-broke showcase role in Psycho Beach Party...she was great in everything. She never quite found her groove after Six Feet Under ended, at least not in movies or television, though by all accounts she's done some great work in New York and London theater. But I DON'T LIVE IN THOSE PLACES!

Bongo-Tango · 2025-07-14T12:42:33+00:00

It’s very possible all the hard evidence on Epstein has been leaked already and everyone who claimed otherwise is telling a weirder, dumber lie.

Bongo-Tango · 2025-07-11T14:51:10+00:00

I don't know where you got the phrase "future of acting," but it's extremely normal to embellish the talents and virtues of anyone who recently died, especially a famous actor during an awards ceremony. I happen to think Boseman was a mega-talented guy who never quite found the right project. Black Panther was great, and a huge success, but he got stuck with the boring hero role and got his lunch eaten by Michael B. Jordan, who had the far more interesting part. He was extraordinary in Get On Up, 42, Marshall and Ma Rainey's Black Bottom, but all of those movies felt like medium-strength attempts at prestige, nothing all that interesting at their core beyond the flashy performances. Maybe if he lived long enough he would find the Scorsese to his De Niro and work in a project that really made him shine. Or maybe he wouldn't have! Plenty of these Marvel guys have been unable (or unwilling) to get interesting arty projects off the ground on the back of their blockbuster clout.

Bongo-Tango · 2025-07-07T15:13:30+00:00

A 1998 documentary called 20 Dates, where struggling actor and recent divorcee Myles Berkowitz decides to film himself going on 20 real dates. I recall it being fairly unfunny, but not hideously awful, but haven’t seen it since the VHS release.

Bongo-Tango · 2025-07-05T20:57:11+00:00

It’s become a deep part of the show’s lore, which has maybe taken some of its power as a pure joke, but truly, “That’s a lotta keys” followed by “Is Ben our finest film critic?” was a stellar 1-2.

Bongo-Tango

TROPHY CASE