Category: Media

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Taskmaster is Wonderful

Erin and I have been binging Taskmaster on YouTube. It’s an absolutely delightful show full of British humour1[sic] and absurd feats of… wit? Orthogonal thought? The show has remained precisely itself for years, yet each series is fresh; tasks are never repeated, and the new crop of contestants creates a different dynamic.

The brain behind the show, Alex Horne, has managed to craft hundreds of unique challenges. Of course, there are recurring task types—Do the most “adjective” thing with this object is one of my favorites—but the combination of Alex’s inventive approach and the comedians actually performing the tasks ensures that you can always expect the unexpected.

Most impressive is that Taskmaster has held true to its vaguely arbitrary scoring system overseen by the Taskmaster, Greg Davies. There’s a balance between speed-based and entirely subjective tasks, giving Greg wide latitude to adjust points as he sees fit. The fictional context of the show is that Greg is assigning these tasks and shall lay equal parts judgment and reward according to his whims. He maintains that character perfectly, getting angry and flustered and disappointed and gleeful and charmed all as appropriate. It isn’t mean-spirited in the least, but there are still incredible insults that are uniquely British.

It’s available on YouTube in the United States. Give it a whirl.

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The Mouse and the Motorcycle

Last week I was talking with Erin on our way to a coffee shop, and I had a sudden memory of a movie where a mouse needed to scurry about to find medicine to save a young boy who had quite a dastardly fever. Naturally I thought it was a Stuart Little movie, somewhere along the series, but that didn’t feel quite right.

Luckily, the subreddit /r/TipOfMyTongue had me covered, when someone asked about this exact movie two years ago. It’s called The Mouse and the Motorcycle, and has a runtime of only 42 minutes. I haven’t rewatched it quite yet, but I was delighted to find the answer.

After finding this via a Google search, “movie with mouse needing to find fever medicine reddit”, I decided to check whether any of ChatGPT, Claude, or Gemini could come up with an answer. They all failed in similar ways, though Gemini ended up being helpful despite not finding the correct answer.

I wrote the same prompt to all three of them: “I’m thinking of a movie where a mouse needs to find fever medicine to save a boy who is sick in bed.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​”

Claude suggested The Rescuers Down Under, and invented a scene that didn’t exist to match my description. When I told it about its error, and clarified that the movie I wanted was not animated, it suggested Mousehunt, which it did mention has no scene specifically matching what I wrote in.

Gemini initally suggested The Rescuers, with more complete information including scenes that plausibly match the kind of scene I was describing but without the specifics. “There’s a scene where Bernard needs to find a specific item (a diamond) to bribe a cat guard. This might be getting mixed up with the medicine element you remember.” I thought that was clever. When I followed up, it didn’t give any other movies. Instead, it gave me suggestions for what search terms I could try, and specifically mentioned using either the Tip of My Tongue subreddit, or the IMDB forums. That’s a decent failure experience.

ChatGPT was the worst at this. It confidently stated “The movie you’re referring to is The Secret of NIMH.” While the other two assistants gave wiggle room in their answers, ChatGPT assumed it was correct. Its second guess was one called The Witches, in which a boy gets turned into a mouse. 

I found this illuminating. These assistants are getting better, and I’m becoming more willing to use them, but they still have blindspots and should be considered, at best, a jumping-off point.

But also, The Mouse and the Motorcycle is killer based on my memory of it from twenty years ago.

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A Little Rain Never Hurt Anyone – Joel Haver

I wrote about Joel Haver some time ago. He has a second channel, Joel Talks About Movies, which is focused on his ideas about movies and life rather than actual short films he produces for his main channel.

His most recent video on that second channel, a little rain never hurt anybody, was a lovely take on an idea I’ve tried to embody as I grow older. The thesis—which operates as both a direct idea and a metaphor—is to stop worrying about getting wet from the rain. If you get caught in some rain, the worst thing that happens is you get wet and you’ll be dry sometime later.

Why not have the same outlook on taking chances in life?

Joel has a particular style of rambling that I find engaging and endearing, so I recommend watching the video and seeing if it resonates. He exudes a calm demeanor and is always working towards enjoying life, whatever that life is. It’s fantastic.

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Anthologies

I’ve been reading How High We Go in the Dark by Sequoia Nagamatsu. Unlike other apocalyptic fiction I’ve consumed over the years, this is written as an anthology of short stories giving snippets of life over the course of time without any stated connection between the characters beyond their shared experience of something rather awful going on. I’m always drawn to anthologies, whether they’re a book or TV show, because I get a wealth of “experience” in the world.

Part of my draw to them may be a simple change of pace: I like to toss in some non-fiction books among the majority fiction that I read, and filling in the gaps of powerful narrative stories with these world-building styles give me a fresh perspective on how to construct and present information in an interesting way. Even then, I’ve always admired short stories. I’ve seen comments by some writers who don’t appreciate the power of a concise story, and the care that goes into crafting them. They’re delicate and sharp, and a book made entirely of them to tell a broader story is a fascinating concept.