The Monthly Review, May and June '24
The skip was intentional this time, promise
04 Jul 2024
Okay so elephant in the room - yeah it’s another double month Monthly Review. But I actually meant to do it this time around! At the end of May, I didn’t really have anything I wanted to talk about except one album. On the gaming side of things, I had spent my time replaying long-ish games (Fallout: New Vegas and Digimon World DS) and movie wise, nothing felt right for a more longer form review that I didn’t cover on my Letterboxd account. So I decided to do another double month feature! I hope you enjoy the Maune Monthly Review!
Childish Gambino - Atavista 🎧
Release Year: 2024, Genre: R&B, Hip Hop/Rap
I think it’s fair to say I’m a pretty big Childish Gambino guy. I suffered through his I Am Just A Rapper mixtapes, I’ve read that Because The Internet screenplay more than once, I went through the effort of flipping the STN MTN/Kauai album art in iTunes for that ✨ authentic ✨ experience. All this is to say whenever he releases new music, I get pretty excited and I’m probably going to enjoy it.
So when 3.15.20 first dropped in early 2020, imagine my surprise when I didn’t really vibe with it much. At the time, it was hard figuring out why exactly I didn’t like it. It didn’t have any track titles, some tracks I was really hoping to hear officially released weren’t on it (Saturday my beloved one day I will get a real release), it didn’t feel like it was the ending to the era he was on with This Is America and Guava Island. Production wise it sounded rough and unpolished, and it was hard to figure out if that was intentional especially because the album itself had some great flow with tracks blending into each other in a cool way. Since it dropped I came back to it a few times and feel like I always walked away going “That was better than I remember it.”
Maybe we’ll get you on Bando Stone, Saturday
Now in 2024, Gambino has released an updated version of 3.15.20 under the title Atavista. In the lead up to the re-release, he’s talked about how the original version was unfinished but he put it out for the sake of putting out there since it was the pandemic and he wasn’t sure how everything was going to pan out. So now we get to find out what the album was going to actually sound like - and it’s a mixed bag of changes.
On a production level it sounds a lot better to me. I always hate talking about this type of thing because I’m no expert on it but the vocals sound better and overall the mixing just hits my ears better. Gambino also took this as a chance to add two new features with Young Nudy on Little Foot Big Foot and Summer Walker on Sweet Thang, which are a bit jarring and a great addition respectively.
When it comes to the track list, everything now has names which is definitely an improvement. There have been some changes which aren’t all for the best. Human Sacrifice, previously a bit of a grail for Gambino fans after it was used in a Pixel ad and then never released fully until now, is the best addition and fits the vibe well. But I lament the losses more than the additions. A couple of the more instrumental tracks were cut/replaced, and the small interludes between tracks which blended them together are either gone or in the particular case of Psilocybae (Millennial Love) into To Be Hunted, one half is left in but the other isn’t.
A quick comparison of what the transitions were and what it’s like now that they’re gone
3.15.20 was a rough gem, but this new version has removed what felt like one of it’s most defining features with the changes. It’s still a great listen and I enjoy Atavista more than I do 3.15.20 but it’s hard not to wish to see a version that takes the cohesiveness of the original with the updated production of the re-release. And maybe also gets rid of that Young Nudy feature.
Platform 8 🎮
Release Year: 2024, Genre: Horror/Puzzle, Platform: PC
I’ll be honest, I didn’t think I’d be talking about Platform 8 for a Monthly Review. I’ve been playing a bunch of games lately but it’s been a lot of replays and Indie Game Book Club games which I’ve got a soft rule against covering for Monthly Review. I want to keep this fresh and talk about only new stuff I’ve watched/played/listened, and I also don’t want to give any spoilers about IGBC stuff before meetings. I know it’s all arbitrary and I’ve already broken the rule of keeping this monthly so like who cares? I do, I care.
Anyway, Platform 8 is a pretty solid horror puzzle game! You’re stuck on a seemingly endlessly looping train and you have to navigate your way through spooky “anomalies” to try and get out of it. I don’t want to give a way too much in terms of what these anomalies are specifically because that’s the entire game, but gameplay wise it’s all about trying to figure out what the gimmick is and then deal with it.
They’re all fun to experience but my biggest problem with the game is that it more often than not tells you what you have to do. What could have been a great series of “a ha!” moments instead becomes seeing the hint for what you need to do and just doing it. Not all of the anomalies are like that, and the developer’s previous game The Exit 8 was all about spotting anomalies without any assistance, so I’m left scratching my head as to why they’ve done it this way. It’s still fun to see what puzzles and scary shit the developer’s put into the game, and I’m excited to see whatever next game they put out since so far they’re 2 for 2 on solid horror puzzle games.
12 Angry Men 🎬
Release Year: 1957, Genre: Legal Drama
There’s a whole genre of media that can be best defined as “had to interact with this in school and now I hate it”. It’s usually because you’re have to do a lot of critical thinking about something that was forced on you, and then you’re graded on it which makes it ten times worse. The best example of this for me was The Truman Show, which I had to watch for Year 9 English and boy did that make me hate that movie. When I came back to it as an adult on my own terms, I was able to appreciate it a lot more and take in a lot of the visual metaphors that I had to bullshit about in an essay 10+ years ago.
12 Angry Men was another one of those movies for me. I had vague memories of watching it during an end of term class and it felt so boring to watch. I don’t even know if we finished watching it or not. It stayed in my head as movie I didn’t like for years until recently when it came up on one of my social feeds being discussed as one of the best movies of all time. I decided to give it a second try now that I’m older and actually interested in it, and boy let me tell you, it’s a really, really good movie.
I adore everything about this movie. I love that every character is defined perfectly pretty much immediately but you’re still left wondering when or why they’ll switch their vote to Not Guilty. There are so many moments and monologues that are so memorable, like Juror 8’s speech about how it’s not easy to vote Not Guilty when everyone else is voting Guilty, or Juror 9’s musings on the old man who probably just wants attention.
If there was ever a time for me to try and talk about mise-en-scène, it’s with this movie. The jury room starts as an small but open feeling room, but as the film progresses, it starts feeling more and more enclosed. People become sweaty, the windows are closed, everyone feels more cramped together, to the point that they’re always in each other’s shots. The vote goes from the zoomed out hands raised at the start to cutting to each person directly, singling them out. It becomes almost claustrophobic even though the room hasn’t changed in size.
I’m so glad I came back to 12 Angry Men. It’s inspired me to return to other movies in the “had to interact with this in school and now I hate it” genre, but also look at other movies from that era just to see if they also had this much sauce.