Monthly Archives: March 2025

In re: LANDMAN

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It’s TV mogul Taylor Sheridan‘s latest project — he of YELLOWSTONE, of course, but also a few pretty good films. This time, instead of a grizzled and wise middle-aged dude played by Kevin Costner, our central character is a grizzled and wise middle-aged-dude played by Billy Bob Thornton.

Trouble is, I like Thornton. So I watched all 10 episodes on business travel this week.

It was absolutely a hatewatch.

First, it’s chock full of Taylor Sheridan’s standard validation of reactionary politics by only rebutting basic or simplistic arguments to the contrary. In YELLOWSTONE, it was about conservation efforts other than whatever John Dutton wanted. Here, it’s anything suggesting oil isn’t Right and Just. It’s not that Sheridan is dumb; I’m sure he knows better. It’s craven pandering to an audience that eats this stuff up as validation for their OWN points of view.

Second, it’s grotesquely misogynistic, which is again a Sheridan tradition. There are no fully realized female characters in anything he writes, even in stories notionally centered on women like his films WIND RIVER and SICARIO. His on-and-off-again ex-wife Angela and their daughter Ainsley (a carbon copy of her hypersexual mother) are awful, awful people. Rebecca Falcone, a lawyer brought in after an accident, is a thin Big City Person who must be taught how Things Really Are by the Wise Landman Who Knows Things.

Third, it’s absurdly full of middled-aged-man wish fulfillment. A broken down landman stands up to the cartel! His daughter actually listens to his Sage Advice! He’s rewarded with a promotion for helping to cover up how mismanaged the company’s wells and infrastructure are. He acts like an asshole to everyone around him, but suffers no interpersonal or professional consequences for it. Even the fucking CARTEL boss (and I’m still mad about how wasted Andy Garcia was here) is like “our bad, respect.”

BUT

Goddamn if Thornton isn’t fun to watch. I mean, he’s been fun to watch since SLING BLADE, but he was born to play Tommy.

Ali Larter — whom GenX folks will recall first came to fame as the fictional “it girl” Allegra Coleman in a satiric front-page celeb faux-profile in Esquire back in 1996 — makes an absolute meal of a thin, unbelievable character in ex-wife Angela. I don’t know if I’ve ever seen someone do so well with so little.

Jon Hamm, I think we probably all agree, seems unable to do wrong, and he’s not wrong here as the billionaire owner of the oil company in question. Having Demi Moore as his wife was genius, and while she’s not given much to do she does well doing it.

The supporting roles are generally great, too. I’d single out first Colm Feore as Nate, especially reacting to Ainsley’s antics and also just generally being the guy who gets to react like an actual person in most scenes.

Multi-project Sheridan company member James Jordan is having a HOOT as petroleum engineer Dale. We’ve seen him before as the main bad guy in WIND RIVER, and then again in MAYOR OF KINGSTOWN, and again in 1883, and again as Hendon on YELLOWSTONE, and again in LIONESS as Two Cups, and again in THOSE WHO WISH ME DEAD as Ben. (He, like Sheridan, had a small part on VERONICA MARS, so I reckon that was their initial connection.)

Jacob Lofland as Tommy’s son Cooper doesn’t have much to do early on, but really comes into his own in quiet scenes with Ariana, and in what comes after. However, the writing hurts him — we don’t really see anything at all that suggests he and Ainsley are related, even when they have brief scenes together. It seems obvious he’ll have a bigger role in S2.

Which is where I admit that yeah, I’ll probably hatewatch S2, too.

A couple notes that didn’t fit elsewhere

  • Luring us in with Michael Pena as a seemingly central character that is immediately killed off is some dirty pool.
  • Sheridan is weirdly obsessed with breastfeeding.

The best movie I’ve seen this year

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Granted, it’s March, but it also seems unlikely anything else I see in 2025 will top Hundreds of Beavers.

The argument is this: a wastrel applejack maker has a reversal of fortune and must survive the Wisconsin woods in winter. It is, above all, a cartoon — but a live action one. It’s not silent, but it has no dialog — eidetic sounds abound; characters grunt or otherwise erupt in exclamatory noises. The visual language is rich and consistent. The film’s look is a perfect hybrid of real and unreal, and the filmmakers achieved this miracle for about $150,000. Thus far, it’s made more than 10x that number.

Our hero must eat to survive, obviously, so his initial challenge is to trap a rabbit. The rabbits and all other animals in the story are represented by people in animal costumes; the viewer accepts this immediately.

There’s a tremendous amount of Warner Brothers vibe here, but also Buster Keaton and the Three Stooges. It’s wry and hilarious and smart, but it achieves this without spoken language. There’s a love interest, a protective father, a video-game worthy progression towards a goal, and deeply hilarious revelations about the state of the beaver scientific knowledge.

Absolutely four stars. My god, what a treat.

An interview with the director is here, and worth your time, but maybe watch it first. The film is apparently available at Amazon, Apple, and Tubi. However, we got to see it on the big screen last night over at the River Oaks Theater, a Houston gem we’ll definitely miss once we’re gone.

Dept. of Iconic GenX Motorcycles, Minneapolis Edition

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I found myself wondering what bike Prince rode in Purple Rain, and because it’s 2025 and the Internet exists, it’s easy to find out. The answer was kinda surprising, and kinda not.

What’s not surprising: It was Japanese. In 1985, Harley wasn’t really something most people would’ve noticed or wanted. The investor group led by Willie Davidson had only closed on the purchase from AMF a few years prior, so their recovery was really still a work in progress. The idea of Harley being “back” didn’t really come up until ’90. So: Japan still pretty much owned motorcycling in the US at that time.

What is surprising: What the actual bike was. In the film it’s a bike with a pretty big purple fairing, which gives it the IMPRESSION of being a large machine. Except we all NOW understand that Prince Rogers Nelson was a tiny, tiny man — about 5′ 2″.

Now, in 1984 we didn’t know this. I mean, he obviously wasn’t six foot four or whatever, but exactly how far to the left of the bell curve he fell was definitely not widely understood until much later.

Crucial to maintaining the illusion that one could not steal Prince by stuffing him into a moderate sized dufflebag was avoiding situations where it would be obvious the dude was crazy short, so clearly the producers were not going to put him on, say, a giant Kawasaki like the guys from CHIPS were riding. Having our hero and romantic lead not be able to flat-foot his moto would’ve been a really dumb idea.

So turns out: it’s a heavily customized but very small 1981 Honda CM400A. The big purple fairing was likely made by Honda customization shop Vetter, who were responsible for the original Gold Wing fairings (which were initially only an aftermarket product).

As the name suggests, it’s a 400cc bike. The parallel twin engine made about 27hp, and Honda insists it was technically capable of 85MPH. Even with a tiny, iconic musician driving, that seems optimistic. OTOH, it was 1985, and the 55MPH limit was still the law nationwide. I know from experience that 20HP will handle a double-nickel without complaint, and in the movie Prince uses the bike around town, not for a road trip to Sturgis. “The Kid” in the film is also not rich; a bike like this would’ve been easy to afford, and got excellent mileage to boot.

MORE interesting, though, is that it was equipped with a Hondamatic transmission, not a traditional motorcycle transmission. The rider didn’t have to clutch to shift at all, which is weird as hell. Predictably, the Hondamatic didn’t last long — they were gone by ’83. Interestingly, though, many modern Honda models are available with a true automatic transmission called the DCT. These bikes don’t even HAVE a clutch lever, which is important because it makes it easier for the rest of us to make fun of them. :)