All posts by Marisa

Marisa
Gripes

There Are ‘No Exit’ Triangles Everywhere for Those With Eyes to See

Or at least I just like thinking about No Exit triangles.

The last one I was able to diagram was about Halt and Catch Fire. That turned into more of a parallelogram as Donna (rightfully) started playing a bigger role in the proceedings.

This time I was thinking about Challengers.  In our Best Movies of 2024 podcast, it came up that Tashi was sort of a thwarted character, because she lost her ability to play early on in the movie. But that’s what makes a No Exit triangle great — everyone has something that they want that one of the other points of the triangle has, and everyone has something themselves that the other points of the triangle want.

So I mapped it out, and here’s how it worked out this time.

How Tashi, Art and Patrick map out onto the qualities of ability to play, killer instinct, material comfort and love of a partner

Does this translate into a satisfying narrative arc for every point on the triangle? Hey, I just make the graphs.

The SportsAlcohol.com Podcast: Top Summer Movies of 1984

SportsAlcohol.com belatedly ventures into a brand-new, way-old decade for summer movie nostalgia. Having conquered the 1990s, and while continuing to make our way through the 2000s, we’ve added a new set of anniversary years into the rotation, examining summer movies from 40 years ago. For this summer (or for this year, anyway; technical difficulties delayed release), that meant exploring a different world, where gremlins, ghosts, jocks, breakdancers, and nerds all jostled for mass-cult attention.

Stop Trying to Make My Kid Cry!

Listen, I get it. I think back on some of my favorite childhood movies, and there’s a darkness there.  I’m part of the generation that watched Dorothy get shock-treatment at the beginning of Return to Oz, saw Artax sink into the Swamp of Sadness in The NeverEnding Story, and realized that, even if Inigo Montoya got his revenge in The Princess Bride, he’d never get his father back — and I emerged a mostly functional adult. So yes, I understand that kids can handle tough emotions in media. And that it’s probably healthy for them to experience those feelings in small doses in a  controlled, safe environment, where they can build up some resilience they can draw upon and use in other, real-life situations.

But seriously, you have to quit it. Stop trying to make my kid cry at the movies.

Continue reading Stop Trying to Make My Kid Cry!

The SportsAlcohol.com Podcast: Top Summer Movies of 2004

Remember 2004? Remember the summer? Remember the summer movies you saw and how maybe only one starred a superhero because you didn’t see Catwoman? Remember Tom Cruise going gray? Remember seeing the new M. Night Shyamalan movie at the Ziegfeld in Manhattan, your first time there since Brother Bear? Remember the IMAX in Nyack where you saw the new Harry Potter movie and how it was demonstrably better than its predecessors within about 15 seconds? Remember that you found out that real IMAX screen closed a few years ago? Remember Uncle Rico? Remember the Shins and Natalie Portman and Natalie Portman telling you to listen to the Shins? Remember that she was recommending stuff off of Oh, Inverted World even though Chutes Too Narrow was already out? Remember when Hugh Jackman wanted more than Wolverine? Remember animated prequels to Universal franchise-starters that didn’t start?

Remember Riddick?

SportsAlcohol.com remembers. And we’re ready to help you remember, too, with this action-packed look back at the summer movies of 2004!

This is the latest in a series and if you want the other 2000s-era installments in the series, here they are:

2000
2001
2002
2003

The SportsAlcohol.com Podcast: Oscar Special 2024

In the spirit of the Oscars’ natural excess, your friends at SportsAlcohol.com have prepared not one but TWO podcast episodes for you ahead of this weekend’s 96th Annual Academy Awards! In the first episode, Sara, Jeremy, Ben, Jesse, and Marisa go through the eight biggest categories with our predictions, preferences, and lists of SNUBS! In the second, we get a bit more granular on this year’s Oscars, covering categories related to animation, music, international film, and more!

You can stream both episodes below, or download them, or find us on Apple or whatever; we’re not picky.

The SportsAlcohol.com Podcast: The Best Movies of 2023

Once again, SportsAlcohol.com has assembled a crew of movie experts/fans/nerds to talk about the best movies of the year, for our Best Movies of 2023 podcast episode. Nathaniel, Jeremy, Sara, Jesse, Marisa, Becca, and Ben all submitted lists of their best movies of 2023, which were then aggregated into a master list for a lengthy discussion. Indies, blockbusters, auteurs, Godzillas; it’s all here in our Best Movies of 2023 extravaganza! Listen, download, whatever you want, using the player below. And scroll past if you want to go directly to our list and a little bit of contextual discussion outside of our audio joshing.

Continue reading The SportsAlcohol.com Podcast: The Best Movies of 2023

The SportsAlcohol.com Podcast: Best Music of 2023

Just in time to miss the Grammys entirely, and following a three-year hiatus, the SportsAlcohol.com music enjoyers are back to talk about how they experienced the best music of 2023, whether that’s through indie rock, pop, old favorites, new discoveries, streaming or old-fashioned LPs. Sara, Marisa, Rob, Jeremy, and Jesse are all on hand to chat about trends and antitrends in the year’s music, including thoughts on Boygenius, The National, Caroline Polachek, Olivia Rodrigo, Belle & Sebastian, Blondshell, The Hold Steady, ancient legacy acts, the best shows and albums and singles of the year, and, of course, Joe Jackson.

You can listen or — if you still have a device that plays mp3s — download using the player below. Better yet, you can download the mp3, break it into two parts, and burn it onto a pair of CDs to make the double-album podcast of your dreams!

The SportsAlcohol.com Podcast: Labor Day Special

Happy Labor day from your pals at SportsAlcohol.com! We got you a podcast episode! Earlier this summer, Ben convened a small panel of labor experts (by which we mean Marisa, Jeremy, and Jesse) to talk about the bumper crop of movies about companies making products. Air, Blackberry, Flamin’ Hot, and Tetris all came out within months of each other — what gives? In this episode, led by a bona fide MBA, we talk about each movie, which ones (if any) appealed to us and why, and the greater meaning of this trend. (We recorded this episode before The Beanie Bubble dropped but you know what? It’s barely worth discussing anyway!) Please, spend your hard-earned Labor Day with us! Download link available on the embedded player below!

The SportsAlcohol.com Podcast: Top Summer Movies of 2003

Remember 2003? Remember the summer? Remember the summer movies of 2003? Remember Hulkmania? Remember how The Matrix Reloaded was going to blow everyone’s mind? Remember just whatever random cop movies making $125 million? Remember the X-Men starring in what was considered the best superhero movie ever made? Remember going to see 2 Fast 2 Furious by yourself, maybe sneaking in as part of a double feature with maybe Wrong Turn? Remember the Pirates defeating the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen? Remember going full throttle? Remember that weirdo sitting next to you at Bruce Almighty who was visibly and vocally moved by the film? Remember how Seabiscuit was nominated for Best Picture? Remember Eddie Murphy doing uninspired family comedies that you’d skip and they’d make $100 million anyway? Remember sequels, sequels, sequels? Remember when sequels took over and never relinquished their grip? Remember?!?!?

SportsAlcohol.com remembers. We remember everything! So here, continuing our look at the biggest summer movies of the 2000s, is our look back at summer movies of 2003. Most of us were in our twenties. One of us was younger. Jesse, Marisa, Jeremy, Ben, and Becca assemble to talk about our memories of the summer movies of 2003, our new observations from fresh watches and rewatches,

In case you’re collecting SportsAlcohol.com podcasts about 2000s summer movies, here’s the complete set so far:

2000
2001
2002

And here’s the latest and greatest, including a download link if you need it:

The SportsAlcohol.com Podcast: Best Movies of 2022

Movies! Now more than ever! For this late-but-not-that-late episode on the Best Movies of 2022, the SportsAlcohol.com movie core of Marisa, Sara, Jeremy, Jesse, and Nathaniel each submitted a list of, yes, their 20 favorite and/or best movies of 2022, aggregated into a single list. Four of us then run through those collective choices in this loose countdown, which means talking about movies that are and are not actually about the magic of cinema. Musicals, multiverses, Hitchcockian thrillers, dark comedies, and emotional devastation… this year’s best movies of 2022 had it all! Along with our group’s consensus choices, we offer occasional dissent with each other’s picks, plus a quartet of outliers that only made certain individual lists. There’s a lot to enjoy here, so get to listening!

We are now up to SIX (6) different ways to listen to a SportsAlcohol podcast: