Win(e)dow to the Future: Season 2 Coming Next Week!
A special Superbowl season premiere plus shout outs to the movies, comics, books, and wines of the week!
Welcome to Win(e)dow, an occassional feature that will act as a rundown of the things that we believe are worth shouting out and will (likely) make an appearance on our podcast or in a full substack write-up later down the line.
First up, Season 2 of our flagship podcast drops next week! We’re doing a special SUPERBOWL episode with a very special guest - none other than Jen Wall, the winemaker for the official wine sponsor of the Superbowl, Barefoot Wine!
We’ll be chatting with Jen about her time at Barefoot, how the Superbowl partnership came to be, the best Superbowl food and Barefoot wine pairings (plus the strangest!) and of course we’re going to pair the wines with our favorite football movies.
I have a really fun anecdote about a Barefoot wine that took me by surprise during my WSET 3 prep, something that had me then jump at the chance to interview Jen!
The week after that will be a special Valentine Day’s episode featuring Dallas and myself’s two favorite romantic films. This is gonna be fun year, y’all.
Wine Conversations
Our first “Wine Conversation” is in full swing! This is a new feature where we tackle a topic across multiple Substack wine writers. The first 5 of this month’s topic have been posted, with 2 more dropping soon from
and ! Conversation rules.Wine Conversations: How Do We Get More People Interested in Wine? (I)
Welcome to our very first "Wine Conversations", a new feature spotlighting a wine-related topic and transforming it into an evolving conversation between multiple wine writers across the whole of Substack.
Movies of the Week
YOUR MONSTER (2024)
Speaking of romantic films, I had a little downtime last night, so thought I’d knock something off my neverending watchlist. But of course the modern day equivalent of procrastination is to completely ignore your watchlist and just go where the winds of Roku remote clicking takes you and I stumbled upon this absolute gem on HBO Max (eat me, HBO, you’re still HBO.)
This was a much more easily entertaining, rom com version of BLACK SWAN and I was all there for it. The first half is fluffy stuff, but the second half surprises and delivers the goods, with a full-blown musical finale with more than a hint of the sinister.
Directorial debut of Caroline Lindy, based on her short of the same name, and the Monster is played by Tommy Dewey, same actor as the short (and an actor I was unfamiliar with until now.) Huge props to Melissa Barrera for a wild, spot-on performance equal parts satirical and serious. This was aparently shot in only 20 days and that is astounding for how polished it plays.
Dragon Lord (1982)
The absolute best Jackie Chan movie, hands down, and likely you’ve never seen it.
After his star-making hits with Yuen Woo-Ping and his early directorial efforts, Jackie was ready to break from the usual kung fu shennanigans and do something different: something more in line with the silent film comedians he was most inflienced by, Buster Keaton, Charlie Chaplin, and the like.
But he went stupid over-budget, over-time, and audiences didn’t appreciate the final effort. Because people are ****ing idiots.
There is so much creativity on display in this movie. We get:
An entire soccer match where they don't use a soccer ball but a goddman shuttlecock. Yeah, that thing you hit in badminton. Here, all players have to hackey sack de s-cock using anything but their hands, never let it touch the ground, and somehow knock it into the goal. This is an EPIC 12-minute sequence of shockingly long takes that has never been seen before or since. It took over a month to film this one scene.
A rooftop sequence where enemies jab spears upward through the roof while Jackie tries to get across it. That sounds simple and Looney Tunes-ish but trust me, it is and it isn't. This 6-minute sequence must have taken an insane amount of time to plan and coordinate.
The hand-down best Jackie Chan finale before Drunken Master II came to be. This was the first time Jackie didn't fight someone in an open field, but instead has it take place in a barn with multiple floors and using the scenery in utterly jaw-dropping ways. Korean bad-ass Hwang In-shik (who's still kickin' it at 84 years of age today!) is imo the best Jackie villain to ever be. He far outdoes his own performance in YOUNG MASTER here. The stunts that are peppered into the fighting are some of the most visceral Jackie has ever done.
A full 12 minutes of movie AFTER the finale! What is this avant garde shit?!?? There's a lengthy 7 minute post-finale setpiece that instead of a riff on soccer/footbal it switches to a riff on American football, with no-holds-barred tackling. It's unique and bizarre and absolutely wild and even though it was weird to jump to this after the finale, man, you don't mind it at all, it's so insane to behold.
This doesn’t even get into the comedy routines, the odd stuntwork throughout, and Jackie’s own stunt double, Mars, who gets to co-lead with Jackie and is even the third player in the finale. He even performs TWO of the film’s most cringe-inducing stunts, and you quickly see why he was the stunt double of Jackie freakin’ Chan.
If you’ve never seen this one, or it’s been a while, it’s time to dive in. It’s not an “action movie”, though it has an action finale. Go in ready to have a fun time, a very non-serious time, and man does this movie deliver.
SHAKE, RATTLE, AND ROCK (1994)
A remake of an older 50’s movie of the same name, this one is notable only because the director just called me out on Letterboxd for my shit take review, ha ha!
Starring Renee Zellweger, the music is fun and boppy, the set and costumes equally so, the story/script (which I gave props to) is admittedly a good update for a modern audience in terms of generational and sexual politics. But eek, I could not abide the direction.
Anywho, director Allan Arkush smacked me upside the head with his film criticism textbook, which he uses to teach at the AFI Institute, so you can read my review, his response, and my repsonse to him all at Letterboxd. And this doubles as a public service reminder that creators may just read your writing someday so maybe be mildly diplomatic with your word choice, even if you stand by the essence of your criticism.
Comic of the Week
IMMORTAL SEARGENT by Joe Kelly and Ken Niimura
From the guy who put DEADPOOL on the map with unqeustionably the best take on that character to date (and a huge influence on the movies), here Joe Kelly re-teams with artist Ken Niimura (they both did I KILL GIANTS together - another comic they made a movie out of!)
But Immortal Seargent is a whole new beast - Ken’s art is tweaked to something ultra-minimalist, and the story is one close to Joe’s personal life, working out his own complicated feelings with his father, who was a policeman and did not understand his artsy fartsy son.
The comic was like nothing I expected, and took me very much by surprise. (Though I can see an excellent indie film being made from this. One that fully explores the roles of cops, the reality of most criminals, and what this cycle of cops-and-robbers does even to the cop’s family.) Expect a full write up dropping Thursday for this one!
Book of the Week - AMBER REVOLUTION by Simon J. Woolf
I finally got my hands on a copy! Whooo! I’ve already plowed in and I’m loving it.
Author
writes and if you’re into minimal / low intervention wines (aka Natural, Biodynamic, Organic, and many additional “Fine” wines fit into that category) Simon has long focused on the topic.For myself, I’ve read umerous online articles but have never truly deep dived into a full book on the topic of Orange wines, so it was time. The books seems to start with the 90’s re-emergence of the style, and when I’m done with this I have to see if anyone has truly tracked Orange wine (aka macerated whites) history prior to the World Wars and the rising popularity of non-macerated whites.
(Also, just throwing this out there: while Orange wine was plainly a missing category in the “color designations” of wine styles, I suspect we may eventually need the Orange equivalent of “rose”, which is just an extreme end of the red maceration spectrum. So possibly Orange requires the same, to distinguish between hours vs. weeks of maceration.)
Wine of the Week
2023 Trivento White Malbec Reserve, Mendoza, Argentina
Man oh man, this White Malbec is really messing with my head! I did my best to put together an aroma/flavor profile, but had to really reach for decriptors I don't normally use.
Aromas/Flavors: Celery, skinned red apple, white mulberry, green pear, wet stone/salinity
Medium Acidity, Medium Body
Ever-so-slight pinkish-ness to an otherwise clear, white wine.
I think I’d recommend, though it’s an odd duck for sure.
Has anyone else ever had a “White” version of a red grape wine that isn’t a sparkling that they enjoyed? This is a first for me!
Also shout out to
who writes (go check it out) and offered to send me his WHITE CAB FRANC!!! Which…I cannot begin to tell you how excited I am to try that. Look for our take on that and unquestionably a movie, tv show, book, album, and/or comic to pair with it in the very near future!
A’ight, folks, that’s all for this week. Look for our Immortal Seargent write up on Thursday, the final two Wine Conversation posts for this month’s topic in the coming week, and our podcast’s Season 2 Superbowl-themed Premiere next week!
Chickety Ciao!
I have so much to say about all this! Very intrigued by your Barefoot connection (I myself have drunk far more Barefoot Chardonnay than I care to admit as it's my sister-in-law's tipple of choice). I STILL don't have a copy of Amber Revolution - despite Simon living just down the road from me - and I really must rectify that. Curious to hear what you think of the book. And finally: on the red/white grapes thing - do you mean a blanc de noirs (as in, a white wine made from black grapes) or do you mean a white grape that's more commonly known for its black counterpart (e.g. Garnacha Blanca as opposed to regular red Garnacha)?
Thanks for the shout out! Looking forward to your reaction to our Cab Franc Blanc!