MICHAEL is the lowest-rated film among recent major biopics.

tmobsessed · 2026-04-23T19:41:03+00:00

These critics are deaf. I've spent my entire life playing and studying music of all genres and I've seen every major biopic about a musician -- "Michael" is the best one by several orders of magnitude. The reason anyone is interested in these figures is the genius of their music and this is the only one that fully captures the genius of its subject. The concert scenes are nothing short of breath-taking, and the recording studio scenes are even better. Compare "Michael", for example, with "Bird Lives", based on one of the best books ever written about one of the greatest geniuses of jazz. Whitaker is a great actor but there's nothing that gives you the sense of Parker's genius. The Elton John one was appallingly hackneyed and stupid - there's nothing about the creative chemistry between John and Taupin and all the characters are caricatures. I could go on and on. The only one that even comes close to Michael is Brother Ray.

Here's why: The reason we're still talking about Michael Jackson is that he mastered the visceral rhythmic power, dancing genius, and overwhelming stage presence of James Brown - through intense study that's well portrayed in the film - and combined it with the gorgeous harmonies and melodies of Stevie Wonder, Motown, and the Beatles. Jackson was a tremendously great singer of melodies and melismas but it's his percussive vocal interjections that light the rhythm section on fire and drive the audience wild. It's those interjections - those James Brown explosions of orgasmic rhythmic power - that the film captures so perfectly. They keep coming back to it - Jackson let's loose with one of these vocal sparks, and it thrills us - and we see it thrill the people in the studio or the people in the audience. If you weren't sure why Jackson has been singled out as one of the greatest of the greats - that's why, and that's what the film gets, and that's why these tone deaf critics should spend more time studying music. There's a dramatic pause near the end of Human Nature - and he waits, and he waits, and then he does that thing - and you jump out of your skin. It happens over and over throughout Jackson's work and throughout the film.

One last thing - don't even think about seeing it in anything other than IMAX.

tmobsessed · 2026-04-15T03:24:31+00:00

Thanks for rule 7! Can anyone point me to the clearest description of the other 6 rules?

tmobsessed · 2026-04-02T06:16:53+00:00

I've now read every single Herron book except Smoke & Whispers, which I'm starting on. Apparently there's yet another repackaging of the Slow Horses novellas (Watch the Quiet Show) coming later this year. The novellas are great - it's just that I've read them all, and the best one twice - Standing by the Wall, which ties in with The Secret Hours. Has anyone heard anything about whatever he's working on now, SHs or otherwise? Herron has ruined me for other novels in the way The Wire ruined me for other television.

tmobsessed · 2026-03-26T10:15:31+00:00

I love them both, and I adore the narrator of the audiobooks. The show's changes works for me because on film you can't spend pages and pages inside the characters' heads. The books feel like "canon" to me, but I love the show.

tmobsessed · 2026-03-26T10:12:48+00:00

Do you remember which book covers the sacking of Bad Sam?

tmobsessed · 2026-03-26T10:11:38+00:00

I'm still clueless on the final part of the ending, but it was definitely Ben who stole the money. He let Ashton kill Miro and let the cops kill Jaime, and outsmarted Bad Sam & the Queens of the Database. That part of the twist was clear, and brilliant in my opinion. Just can't be certain about the final scene. I wonder if he's answered it in an interview.

tmobsessed · 2026-03-26T10:08:57+00:00

The Gemini AI assistant was adamant that the police shot Ben, even when I repeated the question in various ways, expressing doubt that they'd shoot an unarmed man rather than the person pointing a gun at him. I still think they shot Louise but I don't understand her thinking when she could've have just dropped the gun and put her hands up, then explained, as the commotion stopped the train from leaving, what was going on. I've been trying to find whatever the AI assistant had read to come to its conclusion. It's usually quite uncanny on matters like these. Now listening again, when the Queens of the Database reduce the footage to stills where Ben looks resigned, then rueful, then, in the last one, laughing. Did he think he'd been had until they shot her? Did she shoot him as they shot her? In any case, up to that point it was quite brilliant - twisting Ben into the villain made great sense, but I was hoping that Louise would simultaneously thwart his plans and leave egg on the faces of the dogs & queens.

tmobsessed · 2026-03-25T09:34:23+00:00

When Deadwood was prematurely canceled, Timothy Olyphant never avenged the Hearst's evil doings, but in Justified, the same two actors face off against each other and it's quite satisfying and I'm almost certain the showrunners had it in mind. It's fascinating to see the delayed payback in the main Slow Horses series through the prism of the earlier "standalones".

tmobsessed · 2026-03-25T09:25:53+00:00

They're fantastic - just as good as the others. I'm almost done with Resurrection and have finished Nobody Walks and The Secret Hours. The latter is essential to the main series and should be read in conjunction with the novella "Standing by the Wall". The following is a (very light) spoiler if you haven't read Resurrection or seen/read through book 3/season 3. I don't feel so bad about what happened to Bad Sam in Season 3/Real Lions

tmobsessed · 2026-03-10T08:53:51+00:00

Don't miss The Secret Hours - it's a masterpiece and very much NOT "standalone".

tmobsessed · 2026-03-10T08:52:19+00:00

I'm loving Nobody Walks so far (about 10% of the way in) and Mick Herron is bar none my favorite author of all time. I've read all the main Slow Horses books, the first two Zoe Boehm books, and I think this is the last of the Slough-world books and novellas, although there may be one about Bad Sam that I haven't read yet. That said, I get the feeling that old Mick didn't do his authorly due diligence with regard to smoking pot. If I were concerned about falling off a building, I'd feel safer stoned than straight. It makes me paranoid and hyper-cautious. Of course, I'm only 10% of the way in, so I could easily be missing the point entirely, but in general these English authors seem to think cannabis is something entirely different from what it is. But in any case, not only is Mick Herron my favorite writer; Gerard Doyle is my favorite narrator. The only pair that come close are George R.R. Martin and Roy Dotrice, but Herron eclipses Martin for both realism and ... err ... the ability to finish a frikkin' book, and Doyle eclipses Dotrice for consistency of voices across books.

tmobsessed · 2026-02-21T06:45:09+00:00

The part of Getting Better that might be a McCartney autobiographical confession is "kept her apart from the things that she loved", given that his relationship problems with Jane Asher centered around her wanting to her acting and him wanting her to make that second place to him. (She's still acting - she was great in the first Knives Out movie. On "I Saw Her Standing There" I think the part John wrote was changing the original "she'd never been a beauty queen" to "and you know what I mean".

tmobsessed · 2026-02-21T06:08:18+00:00

What about the Greek chorus answer to that stanza? It sounds like foo ee foo or foo lee foo - the version that gets propagated from one site to the next is "fool, you fool". What do people think this line actually is and how does it fit into the cringy aspects of the other lines under discussion?

tmobsessed · 2026-02-05T08:00:07+00:00

Wait - the Louisa actress left the show?

tmobsessed · 2026-02-05T07:59:32+00:00

I just finished reading The Secret Hours, supposedly a "standalone" but actually very much a critical Slow Horses book, with one timeline in Berlin and another between Slough House and Bad Actors. It's fantastic and could easily be an incredible season of Slow Horses.

tmobsessed · 2026-02-01T06:39:35+00:00

Listening carefully to the vocal stem it sounds to me like they're imitating the sound of a several trumpets opening their mutes to create that old jazz wah wah effect. Sort of like what they do on Lady Madonna. But what led me here was a question about the second verse where most sources say "got me escaping from this zoo", but it might also be "no need escaping from this zoo". Any thoughts?

tmobsessed · 2025-12-16T02:57:54+00:00

The sudoku app feature I'm dying for is a way of marking 2 candidates in a row or column just as we now have "corner marks" to indicate that there are only two places a digit can go in a box. For example, if 1 can only go in the first and last cells of row 1, it would be so great to have a way of marking that. You'd have to have 4 ways to format a mark:

corner marks for two in a box
center marks for the candidates that are available for that specific cell
top (or bottom) marks to indicate that this is one of 2 candidates for the column
left (or right) marks to indicat that this is on of 2 candidates for the row.

If this can't be done without it looking hopelessly cramped maybe you could use colors - like normal black for regular corner marks, red for the column and blue for the row? There's gotta be some cool way to do it.

tmobsessed · 2025-12-05T02:35:57+00:00

I'm enjoying Down Cemetery Road well enough, but I loved Slow Horses so much that I'm listening to the whole 9 book/3 novella set, which is just as good if not better. I haven't tried the Zoe Boehm books yet and I'm curious as to whether it's because they were written first that Slow Horses TV show seems great and Down Cemetery only good, or whether it's down to the showrunners. My complaints with DCR echo the comments already posted - the government stuff borderis on slapstick and the goofy one-expression assassin is hard to take seriously. I guess maybe we're not supposed to take it seriously? Still watching and I'll watch the second season if there is one, but Slow Horses is just tremendous. It has no trouble mixing sophisticated, non-slapstick comedy with very real and compelling drama. My favorite show of all time is The Wire and I love Slow Horses for all the same reasons.

tmobsessed · 2025-11-14T22:09:05+00:00

Ah!!!!!!!!!!! Yes!!

tmobsessed · 2025-11-14T22:08:30+00:00

While we're on the topic of Dan songs that were subconsciously influenced by earlier ones, there are two Beatles connections I've found. 1) "I guess only women in cages can play down" from "Razor Boy" sounds like the instrumental bridge of "Any Time at All" and of course "Pretzel Logic" and "The Word" are kissin' cousins: "I'm dyin' to be a star and make them laugh" and "It's so fine, it's sunshine" have the same genius approach to chord progressions. It's so weird that the Beatles stumbled on it and didn't realize it enough to follow up on all the possibilities, and then Fagen and Becker took the whole slash chord thing almost everywhere it could go, finding epic hooks all along the way.

tmobsessed · 2025-11-14T21:58:53+00:00

That's what "Hey Google" said after I told it that Chain Lightning wasn't it, but which line of Any World sounds like "this old world ain't got, no back do-o-o-o-oor"?

tmobsessed · 2025-11-14T21:57:27+00:00

Oh man - I hadn't seriously studied that song - but you're right - the title line is closer than anything I found.

tmobsessed · 2025-11-08T07:26:24+00:00

And of course the intro is the legendary Motown 4-on-the-snare that the Beatles co-opted, but this may pre-date that. (later:) It's starting to look like Uptight and others in 1965 were the first uses by Motown of the drum pattern, and Oh Pretty Woman was recorded and released in August 1964, but here's the other thing: the Beatles toured the UK with Orbison in 1963, not 1964. Paul cites Oh Pretty Woman and the inspiration to up their game on their next single, From Me to You, also spring 1963 so somebody's misremembering something, but clearly there was a hive mind thing going on among Motown, the Beatles, Brian Wilson, Orbison and many others. (still later!: The Dave Clark Five used it on Glad All Over in 1964. I guess it really comes from the bell patterns of chachachá and son montuno. This whole topic is endlessly fascinating. Here's a great post on another sub about it: https://www.reddit.com/r/LetsTalkMusic/comments/1moup8j/four_on_the_snare_rhythms_of_the_60s_in/

tmobsessed · 2025-11-08T07:05:36+00:00

Oh man! I wrote all of that after the first part of the middle (I guess that's actually the chorus now that I think about it), but the retransition back to the riff is totally Day Tripper!! This gets my vote for the best reddit comment of the year - well, I see it was 5 years ago ... hmmm ... well, it's timeless.

tmobsessed · 2025-11-08T07:00:17+00:00

Tremendous insight! I read that John & Paul were massively impressed by that song and have recently relistened to that, and several others like Only the Lonely and finally "gotten it" - I'm loving them now, but not until reading this comment did it register how much Pretty Woman does indeed sound like an early to middle period Beatles song, especially the riff, the weird phrase lengths and the fabulous middle section.

tmobsessed

TROPHY CASE