Erika and Steven catch up with each other about their holidays, including everything they watched, and talk about what TV, movies, music, etc. they’re excited for in 2024. Then they do some personal ins/outs for the new year.
If you want to share any culture you’re excited to experience in 2024 or your ins/outs for this year, email us at whataboutyourfriendspod@gmail.com.
Hosts: Erika Ramirez and Steven Othello Producer: Sasha Ashall
CD Projekt Red fulfilled a five-year promise last week when it added a fully functional metro system to Cyberpunk 2077. While the feature does wonders to make Night City feel more alive, I was surprised to learn just how little California’s public transportation infrastructure has improved in the game’s alternate-reality future.
Cyberpunk 2077 now includes five Night City Area Rapid Transit (NCART) rail lines servicing 19 stations. Every stop still functions as a fast travel point, but players can also use them to hop onto the subway and relocate, in real time, to other parts of the city. As movement is restricted while on the train, this is a mostly visual experience, providing folks with a new perspective on the sprawling mega-city as well as limited opportunities to chat with their fellow riders.
During one trip, I noticed a screen indicating the train’s speed was consistently hovering around 43 mph, which felt awfully slow for futuristic transportation. The average speeds of modern-day heavy-rail systems in the United States range from the high teens to the mid-30s, but they’re capable of reaching much higher maximums. And that’s not even accounting for more developed public transportation in Japan and China, whose magnetic levitation (maglev) bullet trains zoom through major cities at hundreds of miles per hour.
What the heck.Image: CD Projekt Red
This fits with what the first Cyberpunk rulebook had to say about then-future transportation in 1988:
Surprise, surprise. Contrary to expectations, the year 2000 has not yielded any staggering new developments in transportation. Years of economic strife and civil unrest have discouraged research into new ways to travel—in fact, the very act of travel has become very restricted. Expect the world of 2013 to be much like the 20th century—a network of crowded freeways, packed trains, and swarming airports.
A subsequent expansion, Welcome to Night City, indicates light-rail maglev trains with ground speeds of 200 mph existed in the eponymous metropolis as far back as 2013, the year the first Cyberpunk adventures were set. Every book since makes some mention maglev trains as a staple of Night City travel, and 2005’s Cyberpunk V3.0 even noted an improvement in their top speed to 300 mph despite the apparent destruction of the intercontinental maglev line during the Fourth Corporate War (which took place from 2021 to 2025 in-universe) between the world’s ruling megacorps.
(And just to cover my ass, 1990’s updated Cyberpunk 2020 rulebook makes it clear that NCART and the light-rail maglev trains are one and the same.)
It’s here that Cyberpunk 2077 does something clever by expanding the consequences of this conflict. Rather than only putting rail travel between continents in flux, the game describes the Fourth Corporate War as debilitating the entire maglev system, as explained by the following database entry:
Maglev trains cruised at high speeds via tunnels and on the surface thanks to the advent of electrodynamic suspension technology, allowing fast and comfortable travel from Night City to other cities, including Kansas City, St. Louis, Atlanta and Washington D.C. Unfortunately, this new era of transportation didn’t last long. The social unrest and armed conflict of the 4th Corporate War brought with it an economic crisis that soon crippled the entire system. Currently inoperational, the abandoned Maglev tunnels are used by the homeless and various gangs.
The destruction of the maglev system and the slow NCART speeds exhibited in-game lead me to assume the local government was forced to revert to pre-2013 tech to ensure NCART remained operational, a massive downgrade from the bullet trains that once transported residents through Night City and beyond.
Hurry up and wait.Image: CD Projekt Red
While researching this situation, I couldn’t help but see darkly hilarious parallels between the difficulties facing the fictional California depicted in Cyberpunk 2077 and the actual state in which I live.
Despite being one of the largest (both in terms of land and population) and richest states in the union, California has long struggled with plans to build public transportation on par with the bullet trains of eastern Asia. A lot of that is due to politics, as even ostensibly supportive legislators are wary of spending the billions of dollars necessary to complete the project. And let’s face it: Americans are just way too devoted to their cars.
All that said, there’s one very simple explanation for Night City metro’s relatively low speed: The developers didn’t want NCART rides to happen in the blink of an eye. What good would the long-awaited subway experience be if players didn’t actually, you know, experience it?
A trip taken at 300 mph wouldn’t provide any time to people watch Night City’s eccentric residents or take in the view of skyscrapers surrounding the bay outside the train’s windows. The entire point of the subway system — and a big part of why folks clamored for its inclusion all these years — is to give players new opportunities to role-play and experience the visual splendor of Cyberpunk 2077’s setting and its over-the-top aesthetics.
I find it hard to fault CD Projekt Red for playing a little loose with established Cyberpunk history if it makes for a better game in the end.
Movies inspired by H.P. Lovecraft’s writing are often so oppressive that they can be exhausting. Lovecraft’s most central theme (apart from the virulent racism and all) was the idea that we live in a howling, empty void — a cosmos that’s indifferent to humanity at absolute best, and so inimical at worst that even a glimpse at the true horrors of the universe would drive most people insane.
And yet a handful of filmmakers have found the wry humor in Lovecraft’s stories — sometimes for satiricalpurposes, but sometimes without losing the sense of cosmic horror at the heart of his work. Chief among the Lovecraft horror-comedy directors is Stuart Gordon, whose Re-Animator, From Beyond, and Dagon all lend a certain amount of goofiness to Lovecraftian horror. With the gleefully gory new movie Suitable Flesh, Mayhem and Knights of Badassdom director Joe Lynch is openly operating in Stuart Gordon mode. He has the best assistance possible: screenwriter Dennis Paoli, who wrote all three of those Gordon films, and is in his element here, loosely adapting Lovecraft’s 1937 short story “The Thing on the Doorstep.”
It’d be easy for impatient streamers who’ve never seen From Beyond in particular to miss the tone Lynch and Paoli are going for with Suitable Flesh. They might turn it off early, thinking it looks too cheap, flat, and glossy to feel convincing, that the acting is too broad, or that the emotions on display feel too fervent. Those are all no-nos in an era of oppressively realistic horror settings. But early quitters will miss out; by the time Suitable Flesh hits its peak and fully reveals its creators’ intentions, it’s a wild bacchanalia of violence, over-the-top humor, and authentic cosmic terror.
Photo: RLJE Films/Shudder
Heather Graham stars as Elizabeth Derby, a psychiatrist navigating the usual ailment of psychiatrists in horror movies. Faced with events the average horror movie character would quickly accept as supernatural, if only to move the story forward, Elizabeth keeps looking for rational psychological explanations. And even when she starts to accept that she can’t rationally explain the things she’s experiencing, her colleagues keep trying to pathologize her, slapping reductive scientific labels on every earth-shattering event she experiences. (See also: Rose Cotter in Smile, a much less funny, much less Lovecraftian horror movie that’d still make for a perfect double bill with Suitable Flesh.)
Elizabeth’s latest patient, Asa (Judah Lewis), is an emotionally ragged young man who’s frantic to get someone to listen to him, even if most of what he’s saying doesn’t make sense. His attempts to explain his anxieties are woefully unclear: When he talks about his father, Ephraim (Bruce Davison), trying to take his body, he could be talking about anything from sexual molestation to paranoid schizophrenic delusion. Elizabeth initially assumes the latter, especially after seeing Asa undergo a surprisingly violent process that winds up with him adopting a completely different personality. She immediately decides he’s suffering from dissociative identity disorder — which in no way limits her completely inappropriate attraction to him.
What follows between them starts out as half body-snatcher horror, half ludicrous erotic thriller, complete with a panting Cinemax-era softcore sex scene that’s a little too ridiculous even for something openly meant as satire. But the balance shifts sharply toward the body-snatcher end when Ephraim decides he wouldn’t mind claiming Elizabeth’s body in multiple ways. When Elizabeth finds out that Asa’s father really can use occult powers to force body swaps — the first few of them temporary, leading up to a permanent one — she only has a few chances to stop him before she ends up trapped in someone else’s far-less-suitable flesh.
Suitable Flesh is an intensely messy movie. It moves breathlessly from solidly plotted psychological thriller to almost Army of Darkness levels of slapstick violence — including a scene involving a van’s backup camera that’s a must-see for every true fan of grisly horror movie effects. Its broadest structure is classic horror, as Elizabeth tries to overcome her own doubts about what she’s experiencing, then tries to convince other people that she isn’t just having a psychotic break. And the entire time, she’s facing a confident, competent foe who knows far more than she does, and is almost always three steps ahead of her. (Purely in terms of plotting, this film would also make a solid double feature with the original Nightmare on Elm Street.) But on a scene-for-scene basis, it’s all over the place tonally, as Lynch and Paoli keep shifting their intentions.
Photo: RLJE Films/Everett Collection
Suitable Flesh is a “yes, and” movie that just keeps taking on new baggage. It’s a cosmic horror movie that respects the intentions and anxieties in Lovecraft’s “Thing on the Doorstep.” It’s a satire of that classic age of steamy potboiler erotic dramas, at least for a few scenes. It’s a cat-and-mouse thriller between two unmatched adversaries. It’s a giddy chase movie that pushes its physical confrontations far enough that even dedicated gorehounds may feel like they’re watching the horror-movie equivalent of Sideshow Bob stepping on the rakes in The Simpsons. And it’s an occult mystery with a little ’80s throwback style and a little for-the-fandom nodding to Lovecraft references. (“Filmed in Cthuluscope,” a label on the film proudly declares.)
It’s a lot to take in, and it doesn’t always work together, the way a more tonally consistent and coherent movie would. The shifts don’t always serve Graham well, either — it’s sometimes hard to buy her as the same character from scene to scene, because those scenes put her in such different mental and emotional places, some of which she’s better equipped for as an actor than others.
All of that stops mattering by the final climax, which locks in on that “serious situation, slightly silly execution” that serves Re-Animator and From Beyond so well. For a movie with such a cluttered, kitchen-sink ramp-up, Suitable Flesh charges to a memorable conclusion that’s perfect for celebratory group viewing, whether at the local multiplex with other die-hard horror fans seeking a seasonal thrill, or at home with a group of friends and a stack of Stuart Gordon DVDs as follow-up.
Lynch and Paoli are openly aiming this one at audiences who love Lovecraft-derived work, but don’t take him so seriously that they need to come away from every Lovecraft movie feeling depressed and oppressed. And they’re purposefully pouring this one out for every Stuart Gordon fan who worried no one else would ever make movies quite like he did. His legacy is in good hands.
Suitable Flesh is in theaters and is available for rental or purchase on Amazon, Vudu, and other digital platforms.
SEATTLE — A judge in Washington state has temporarily blocked Albertsons from paying a $4 billion dividend to investors as part of the grocery retailer’s proposed merger with rival Kroger.
On Thursday, King County Superior Court Commissioner Henry Judson approved a motion by state Attorney General Bob Ferguson to temporarily block the dividend until the court can more fully consider whether the payment violates antitrust laws, The Seattle Times reported.
The dividend was scheduled to be paid Monday.
The proposed merger would combine two of the nation’s largest grocery chains. Some critics worry that could mean reduced competition, higher food prices and the closure of under-performing locations, including some in Washington state. Albertsons, which owns Safeway, and Kroger, which owns QFC and Fred Meyer, are among the biggest players in Washington.
“Putting the brakes on this $4 billion payment is a huge win for consumers nationwide,” Ferguson said Thursday afternoon on Twitter.
Next Thursday, King County Superior Court Judge Ken Schubert is scheduled to more closely review arguments in the case.
“There is obviously further information and evidence that needs to be presented,” Judson noted.
In a lawsuit filed Tuesday, Ferguson argues the dividend is illegal because it potentially undercuts the ability of Albertsons to keep all its locations open in the several years needed to complete the merger.
Those arguments were echoed by attorneys general in Illinois, California and the District of Columbia, which on Wednesday jointly sued to block the dividend in federal court in Washington, D.C.
Boise, Idaho-based Albertsons said this week that both lawsuits are without merit.
One major concern of the dividend is the potential impact of such a large payment on Albertsons. To win regulatory approval for the merger, Albertsons and Kroger must sell hundreds of locations in areas where they have too much market overlap. So-called divestiture could have a major impact in Seattle and throughout Washington, where Kroger and Albertsons collectively have about 350 locations.
Kroger and Albertsons have agreed to put the divested locations in a standalone company, managed by Albertsons, and then sell them to a competing retailer or retailers as part of the approval process.
However, some antitrust and business experts question whether locations chosen for divesture might already be struggling financially. They worry that a cash-strapped Albertsons might fail to keep all those locations open while it finds a willing buyer and that some divested stores could close, as happened after the 2015 merger between Albertsons and Safeway.
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