Tag Archives: I Saw the TV Glow

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Song of the Day #6,082: ‘Big Glow’ – Bartees Strange

Concluding my countdown of last year’s best films…

Best Films of 2024
#1. I Saw the TV Glow

The first time I saw writer/director Jane Schoenbrun’s I Saw the TV Glow, I wasn’t sure what I thought of it. I knew its story and images had affected me deeply, and that it was one of the most original visions I’d seen in years. But I couldn’t intellectualize my visceral response.

I later learned that Schoenbrun is trans, and they conceived the film as a metaphor for the “egg crack” moment trans people feel when they realize they’re living in the wrong body. And that opened the film up for me in a whole new way.

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Song of the Day #6,052: ‘Starburned and Unkissed’ – Caroline Polachek

I’ll have a lot more to say about I Saw the TV Glow in a couple of weeks, so today I’ll just note that it has one of the year’s best soundtracks.

Consisting of both music written for the film and deep cut alternative rock songs, it lives in the same uneasy emotional space as the film itself. Writer/director Jane Schoenbrun said they wanted the soundtrack to be a “teen angst classic” and, well, mission accomplished.

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Song of the Day #5,962: ‘Claw Machine’ – Sloppy Jane feat. Phoebe Bridgers

One of the main reasons I’ve come to love horror movies is that, for all of their lowbrow pleasures, they so often are high art. Horror directors play with style, form, and technique with a freedom and fervor you don’t find as consistently in other genres.

I think part of that has to do with budgets. Horror films are famously low-budget affairs, which benefits them in a couple of ways. First, it forces filmmakers to innovate, whether it’s using practical effects or utilizing camera movement and editing to generate suspense. The most famous example is probably Jaws, in which Steven Spielberg came up with his shark’s-eye view because his mechanical shark wasn’t working.

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