Month: March 2023

To some, gin has a reputation for being a floral juniper bomb and not much else. People who love gin can’t get enough of it neat, on the rocks, or mixed into a classic gin and tonic, gin gimlet, or myriad other gin-based drinks. They love it for its botanical, floral, and earthy flavors. People who don’t like it think it tastes like someone poured a bowl of grandma’s potpourri into a neutral grain spirit and then shook it up and dumped it into a bottle.

While those rare few are entitled to their opinion, we feel bad for them because they’re missing out on some great, complex, flavorful gins.

Sure, juniper is the first (and sometimes dominant) flavor you’ll notice when you sip any gin. But, depending on the gin, there are seemingly countless other flavors like coriander, angelica root, orris root, licorice, orange peel, ginger, and even strange ingredients like sea kelp and Cascade hops.

The multi-layered, complex nature of a well-made gin got us thinking about the best sip we’ve ever had. And while we could regale you with random artisanal gins we’ve tried along the way, we figured we’d let someone else chime in. We asked a few well-known bartenders to tell us the single best sip of gin they’ve ever had. Keep reading to see what they said.

Whitley Neill Original Dry Gin

Amanda Swanson, USBG president of Philadelphia and bartender at Parc in Philadelphia

ABV: 43%

Average Price: $28

The Gin:

Whitley Neill Original Dry Gin. So, I am actually (mildly) allergic to juniper, so I very seldom taste gins at all, let alone side by side, but a taste that sticks out in my memory was when I tasted Whitley Neill’s dry gin that uses baobab was one of their botanicals.

Tasting Notes:

It was soft and approachable and made me wish I could take a few more sips. Other flavors include lemon peels, orange zest, juniper, and cardamon.

Ewing Young Mianda’s Oregon Summer Gin

Augustina Elizabeth, bartender at SIM Golf in Portland, Oregon

ABV: 42%

Average Price: $38

The Gin:

Mianda’s Gin by Ewing Young Distillery in Oregon. This 84-proof, “western style gin” gets its bright, floral flavors from the addition of Italian juniper, Oregon-sourced hyssop, rosemary from the distillery’s farm, and even Cascade hops.

Tasting Notes:

This gin is floral with hints of orris root, cardamom, and juniper. It’s simply lovely. Perfect for sipping or mixing into your favorite drink.

Hendrick’s Gin

David Miller, beverage director at Pennydrop Bar + Kitchen in St. Louis

ABV: 44%

Average Price: $36

The Gin:

The best sip of gin for me was the sip that opened my mind up to a completely different approach to spirits. It was the early 2000’s and I was in my early 20s still figuring out what I wanted to do with my life. At the not-so-glamorous bar I was working at as a server, we started carrying this new product called Hendrick’s. I didn’t think much of it because, at the time, I had always thought of gin as ‘an old timer’s spirit’ and something that I didn’t particularly care for. We did a tasting, and I was shocked at how different this was than any other gin I had tried before.

Tasting Notes:

The cucumber and rose petals were forward, as the juniper had a more subdued role in the spirit, compared to what I was used to. It was then that I realized that I should be more open to different varieties, brands, and flavor profiles of not only gin but all spirits.

Monkey 47 Schwarzwald Dry Gin

Sean Noddin, principal bartender at JW Marriott Tampa Water Street in Tampa, Florida

ABV: 47%

Average Price: $60

The Gin:

Monkey 47 is an exquisite gin. I fell in love with it at first sip. It hails from Germany’s Black Forest, aged in earthenware casks, and is cut with the Black Forest’s famous water. 47 botanicals including honey pomelo and blackberry? Sign me up.

Tasting Notes:

A bold palate of flavors includes rosemary, juniper berries, spruce tips, and cracked black pepper, among many more aromas and flavors.

Leopold’s Summer Gin

Justin Hay, bar manager at Sky Bar at Stanley Marketplace in Aurora, Colorado

ABV: 47%

Average Price: $40

The Gin:

Leopold’s Summer Gin is hands down my favorite gin to enjoy over rocks. The wild fermentation and blend of botanicals that grow at their facility are fun to see and honestly, the taste speaks for itself.

Tasting Notes:

As it’s not too juniper-forward, yet still contains those flavors. It’s definitely not only an easy gin for beginners, as I think one share will easily convert a newbie, as well as a gin that can still be enjoyed by seasoned drink lovers as well.

Beehive Jackrabbit Gin

Kira Collings, bar manager at Hearth and Hill in Park City, Utah

ABV: 45%

Average Price: $30

The Gin:

Jackrabbit Gin from Utah’s local Beehive Distillery is the best sip of gin I’ve ever had. This gin is made on a small batch, small scale, hand macerated, bottled, and labeled here in Salt Lake City. It also integrates well into cocktails. I love making a lavender gin sour with it.

Tasting Notes:

This gin has classic juniper flavors along with local sage showing off the region’s flavors, with bursts of floral, especially rose.

Gray Whale Gin

Alex Clark, lead bartender at Square 1682 in Philadelphia

ABV: 43%

Average Price: $35

The Gin:

The best sip of gin is Gray Whale gin. Created to pay tribute to the journey the gray whale makes up the Pacific coast. It’s made with ingredients found along this epic 12,000-mile journey.

Tasting Notes:

This gin is infused with botanicals from California and is very citrus-forward. The citrus aspect allows this gin to be smooth and complex at the same time. This product is in the same class as Hendrick’s and The Botanist.

Rabbit Hole Barrel Aged Gin

Andrew Bone, food and beverage manager at Deveraux in Chicago

ABV: 44.5%

Average Price: $33

The Gin:

Rabbit Hole Barrel Aged Gin is aged in rye barrels and is a fun one to try. I recommend it for the whiskey fan that wants to venture out or for a gin lover trying to enjoy a proper old fashion, this does the trick.

Tasting Notes:

It has all the tasting notes of a London dry gin. Particularly lemongrass, but you’ll get a smoother finish from the wood.

Bombay Sapphire Premier Cru Gin

Donny Largotta, beverage director at Gansevoort Meatpacking in New York City

ABV: 47%

Average Price: $33

The Gin:

Bombay Sapphire Premier Cru, hands down, is the best I’ve had. This London dry gin is infused with Spanish Fino lemons, mandarin oranges, and Navel oranges from Murica. It’s a citrus lover’s dream gin.

Tasting Notes:

It has the components of the original soft juniper undertones but with a masterfully balanced citrus that enhances its flavor profile. It’s truly remarkable.

Los Principe los Apostoles Mate Gin

Alex Cuper, beverage director at El Che Steakhouse & Bar in Chicago

ABV: 40%

Average Price: $35

The Gin:

Los Principe los Apostoles Mate Gin is my absolute favorite sip of Gin I have ever had. It is distilled in Buenos Aires, Argentina, and distilled with mate and eucalyptus as the two major botanicals aside from the juniper.

Tasting Notes:

It is bright and refreshing and is so good neat, on the rocks, or simply used as the base for a delicious gin and tonic or any other classic gin-based cocktail.

Wonderbird Spirits Gin No. 61

Garth Poe, bar manager of Easy Bistro & Bar in Chattanooga, Tennessee

ABV: 45%

Average Price: $48

The Gin:

One of my favorite gins that I have tasted in recent years is Wonderbird Spirits Gin No. 61 from Oxford, Mississippi. This gin is a jasmine rice distillate and the texture of it is so velvety and fantastic.

Tasting Notes:

This is subtle gin with soft hints of juniper and tons of brightness. It’s a gin that you should definitely seek out. You’ll be glad you did.

Letherbee Gin

Alex Barbatsis, head bartender at The Whistler in Chicago

ABV: 48%

Average Price: $30

The Gin:

We carry a Chicago-distilled gin called Letherbee that makes amazing martinis and cocktails in general. It’s one of my favorite sips of gin ever. It is non-chill filtered so it has a richer body than some other gins.

Tasting Notes:

When mixed in a drink, you get that slight louche/cloudy effect where you can actually see how rich the gin is. It’s also phenomenal in a gin and tonic.

Last spring brought good news for Adnan Syed, who was convicted in 2000 of a murder he always maintained he didn’t commit: His conviction was vacated after a new investigation turned up evidence that exposed the sloppiness of the original trial. But about half a year after Syed was set free, his conviction has been, perhaps briefly, reinstated.

As per The Washington Post, a Maryland appellate court on Tuesday ordered a do-over of the hearing that set Syed free. The panel ruled that the circuit court judge involved in the hearing had violated the rights of Young Lee, the brother of the victim, Hae Min Lee, that Syed had been convicted of killing.

Young Lee had argued that he was only given less than a day’s warning about the hearing, which didn’t give him enough time to attend. The appellate court panel has now ordered that the circuit court a “new, legally compliant, transparent hearing,” with Young Lee given enough time to make plans to attend in person.

“All they are seeking is what the law requires — a full evidentiary hearing in which they can meaningfully participate and one that makes public the relevant evidence,” said an attorney for the Lee family.

As such, Syed’s conviction has been at least temporarily reinstated until after the hearing. It’s not entirely clear what will happen next, but the panel said the legal teams will be given at least 60 days to prepare for a redo hearing.

Following the news, Syed’s attorney Rabia Chaudry wrote on social media that “we stand by the integrity of the evidence that exonerated Adnan and urge the Baltimore Police and States Attorney’s office to find the source of the DNA on the victims shoes and find Hae Min Lee’s actual killer.” She later added, “Give up’ is not in my lexicon.”

Syed was 17 when he was arrested for the murder of Hae Min Lee and convicted the following year. His representatives spent years battling for his release. His case became national news after it was covered on the podcast Serial, whose team of researchers poked many holes in the case against him. Amy Berg, who directed the HBO doc series The Case Against Adnan Syed, announced last year that she was making another episode covering his release.

(Via The Post)

If you’ve ever traveled or gone out to a party or bar with a group of friends, then you’ve probably experienced the phenomenon of the “friend-parent.” Now, this is a term I totally just made up, but I bet you recognize it. The friend-parent is the one that takes on the responsibility of corralling any stragglers, tossing out drinks that have been left unattended and generally making sure everyone stays safe.

A friend-parent was recently caught on video being an “airport dad” to his group of friends. Usually, you hear about women looking out for other women in a mother-hen sort of way, but this guy group just proved the friend-parent knows no gender. In a TikTok video from Johannes2o that currently has over 8.4 million views, a small group of guys are standing near each other with “POV: our friend is an airport dad” in text on the screen.

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Before the crew heads into the airport, their friend collects everyone’s passports and boarding passes before checking his watch. He checks flight information one last time and then tries to have them all check in but they’re too early. The whole video is playing out to the tune of “Highway to the Danger Zone.”

At one point, the airport dad stands with his hands on his hips seemingly inspecting the plane from the large windows at the gate. If that’s not a dad move, I don’t know what is. One of the best moments that exemplifies “dad mode” is when the friend-parent realizes that one of the guys overpacked and he helps the friend repack while appearing stressed.

The guys had one job and it seems airport dad couldn’t trust them with that either. The overpacker will never live this down, and now weighing and measuring bags will likely become one of airport dad’s self-imposed pre-airport duties.

Watch the unexpectedly cute video below:

@johannes2o

Hes gonna be a great dad💀 #airport #airportdad

Over the last few years, a new Geraldo Rivera has emerged: one not afraid to break the Fox News party line and spout beliefs that make him sound like part of the resistance. He wasn’t afraid to call out Trump’s voter fraud BS. And he hasn’t been afraid to express concern over gun control following mass shootings. After the tragedy in Nashville, which has inspired the usual inaction from the GOP, he was no different.

As per Mediaite, Rivera was a guest on Tuesday’s installment of The Story, where he had it out with Brian Kilmeade, who was horrified that people are once more talking about restricting access to assault-style weapons after a bunch of people were senselessly murdered by them.

“Here we are again,” Kilmeade cried. “And within minutes, we’re hearing about, ‘The guns are the problem, assault weapons. Go to your corner and let’s play politics before we even knew the facts.’”

He went on: “For you to have seven guns and be that obviously unhinged and unbalanced and have these murderous capabilities and you’re gonna allow these people out and about, I really don’t think we should be debating gun laws.”

Rivera butted in to say he disagreed. “What about Tennessee, with the constitutional carry [law]. This person could legally assemble that arsenal of seven weapons, including two AR-15s and a sawed-off shotgun,” he said. “If the Second Amendment shines on this person accumulating that arsenal, then shame on the Second Amendment!”

Kilmeade then expressed concern over all the responsible gun owners who might have to forfeit assault-style weapons that can mow down many people in seconds. Rivera simply reminded him, “There’s been 130 mass shootings this year, Brian.”

Kilmeade then tried to blame the parents of the Nashville shooter, claiming it shouldn’t be the fault of “legal gun owners,” even though the latest shooter was a legal gun owner. But Rivera had another idea of who to blame.

“How about the gun store salesperson,” Rivera saud. “If you’re going to the shop and you’re buying an AR-15 and then the next day another AR-15, then the sawn-off shotgun, then the pistols. At some point, there is a responsibility. These are not cartons of milk you’re selling. These are weapons of destruction.”

Rivera added, “We need to wake up as a nation.”

So kudos, once again, to Geraldo Rivera for being brave enough to praise gun control on Fox News. Of course every now and then he still spouts nonsense, as if to make sure he keeps getting invited back.

You can watch the exchange over at Mediaite.

Damian Lillard’s 2022-23 campaign appears to be over. According to Chris Haynes of Bleacher Report, the team has made the decision to shut Lillard down with seven games left in the remainder of the year as he deals with a calf injury.

Lillard has, per usual, been excellent this season, as he was named an All-Star and has put forth a strong case to make an All-NBA team for the seventh time in his career. After playing in only 29 games last year due to injuries, Lillard bounced back in a big way, averaging a career-high 32.2 points, 7.3 assists, and 4.8 rebounds in 36.3 minutes per game while connection on 46.3 percent of his attempts from the field and 37.1 percent of his tries from behind the three-point line.

The decision comes as the Blazers are on the verge of being eliminated from play-in contention. The team is currently 32-43, which puts them in 13th place in the Western Conference. As of Tuesday, Portland sits five games back of the Oklahoma City Thunder, which currently have the 10-seed and the final spot in the play-in. While the team is not mathematically eliminated from having a shot to make it to the playoffs, Tuesday’s news makes it even more likely that the team will miss out for the second year in a row.

Even though you’ve probably seen John Wick Chapter 4 in theaters three or four times by now (you’re only human) you might be looking for a way to enjoy Keanu Reeves in your own home. While a lot of movies have been experimenting with simultaneous theatrical and streaming releases, John Wick Chapter 4 is a good, old-fashioned action movie in the sense that you have to actually go to the theater to watch it. It’s so retro!

Unlike some of last year’s big blockbusters, John Wick comes from Lionsgate, so it probably won’t end up on HBO Max. If you’d like to eventually stream the fourth installment in the Wick-verse, then you’ll have to subscribe to Starz, which currently costs $20 for six months. After streaming there exclusively, the movie will eventually make its way onto Peacock, where the rest of the franchise is available for streaming.

As for when you’ll be able to watch, it’s up for debate. Wick just crashed into theaters last week, so it will probably be some time until it’s available online. For reference, The Unbearable Weight Of Massive Talent didn’t head to streaming until six months after its theatrical release.

If the timeline is the same, we will get John Wick Chapter 4 on Starz just in time for your annual autumnal rewatch of John Wick sometime in September. It’s always Wick season!

(Via ScreenRant)

There was a time, if you can believe it, where there were multiple monster-of-the-week shows out there dominating television, and X-Files was one of those rare shows that could portray complex interpersonal relationships while also very seriously investigating a life-size parasitic worm. The other show to do this was Buffy, obviously.

Even though we now have some hit shows revolving around giant dragons and undead fungi-infected humans (not zombies), there is one key demographic not getting enough TV air time lately: aliens and anything in the “other” category of weird creepy threats. Luckily, Black Panther director Ryan Coogler may have seen the gap in the critter market and is reportedly working on a new reboot of The X-Files.

The X-Files creator Chris Carter spoke to Gloria Macranko to celebrate the 30th anniversary of the series on the On The Coast podcast, when he let it slip that there is a fresh take on the series coming from Coogler. “I just spoke to a young man, Ryan Coogler, who is going to remount The X-Files with a diverse cast,” Carter said.

While he didn’t give any more info, Coogler has been on a hot streak lately. In the past year alone, Coogler co-wrote and directed both Black Panther: Wakanda Forever and Creed III. He recently began venturing into television with the upcoming MCU series Ironheart.

The X-Files ran for nine seasons from 1993 to 2002 before getting two more seasons in 2017 and 2018, on top of the two theatrical releases. Despite whatever new treatment the show gets, Carter is happy about the legacy of the show. “It was special. It was an amazing time,” Carter said of the iconic series. “We made really good television, and we made a lot of it.” Now would be a perfect time to make even more of it, jsut for old times’ sake!

(Via The Verge)

We’re right in the middle of a changing of the guard with some of HBO’s most reliably brilliant and critically beloved shows starting to shuffle off this mortal coil (they’ll be okay, they’ve still got dragons and clickers). But is Curb Your Enthusiasm joining Succession and Barry?

That’s a big question mark in longtime Curb producer/director Robert Weide’s tweet from the final days of shooting on season 12 for the show that debuted 25 years ago, an immense amount of time marked by Weide (and the fact that the show was actually released on VHS after it aired). And look at Larry David, practically unchanged over a quarter century. That’s the benefit of never holding in your annoyances.

There’s more evidence that this might be it for Curb coming from producer Jon Hayman, who tweeted a behind-the-scenes look at what he termed the final shot of the final season. Ain’t no question marks there, friends.

https://twitter.com/Jon_Hayman/status/1640748913497088005

Occasional co-star Richard Lewis was also feeling nostalgic in a recent tweet, though he didn’t indicate that the end of the show was near. Regardless, I’m a twist of emotions, how about you?

Curb has been thought complete a few times before only to come back and continue clearing a high bar. There was the six-year hiatus from 2011 and the three-year one from 2017. Maybe LD just needs another little break. Still, at 75 and with two of TV’s greatest comedies under his belt (counting Seinfeld, which David co-created, of course), maybe the chances are prettay, prettay, good that this new season will be the last, leaving an unbelievable treasure trove of memorable moments and a legacy of turning pettiness into an art form.

Earlier this week, on March 25, Donald Trump hosted a rally for his 2024 presidential campaign in Waco, Texas. At the event, “Justice For All,” a song by Trump and a group called the J6 Prison Choir, was played. The track was released earlier this month and it features Trump and a group of men who were arrested during the January 6 United States Capitol attack (the J6 Prison Choir). On the track, the choir sings the “Star-Spangled Banner” and the song goes back and forth between that and Trump reciting the Pledge Of Allegiance.

Believe it or not, by some metrics, the song has actually performed well, even topping pop stars like Taylor Swift on recognizable charts. This all, of course, has Trump pretty excited.

On March 11, the song was No. 1 on the iTunes sales chart. It also debuted on top of the Billboard Digital Song Sales chart dated March 25, thanks to 33,000 downloads sold between March 10 and 16. However, given that paid downloads, as Variety phrased it, “now represent a minuscule fraction of the music market,” the song’s placement on these ranks isn’t necessarily indicative of significant widespread popularity within the music industry at large. It recently debuted at No. 4 on the Billboard Bubbling Under Hot 100 chart, meaning despite its success with downloads, it did not rank on the Hot 100 chart.

Trump spoke about the song in a recent Fox News interview after Sean Hannity brought it up, saying, “The J6 is beating Taylor Swift. It’s Donald Trump and the J6 Prisoners on iTunes and on Amazon and on Billboard, which is the big deal. No. 1, Donald Trump, so now I feel like Elvis, because now we’ve done The Apprentice — that was a great success. We did… now I’ve done… now I’ve done a recording or whatever you call it. But no, it was No. 1. And you know what this is? That’s a tribute to the fact that people feel the J6 people have been very unfairly treated.”

“Justice For All” can be heard here.

Tetris, which lands on AppleTV+ March 31st, purports to tell the origin story for the famous block-stacking game we Gen Y-ers* remember so fondly, using the self-starting schemer and dreamer who “brought it to America” as its main character. That’s a fairly straightforward pop-movie pitch, and Tetris takes pains to camouflage itself as that pop movie. Yet it’s clear midway through that all the stylistic tricks in the world aren’t going to turn this into Eddie The Eagle.

(*I do not use the term “elder millennial.” If you learned to masturbate via analog methods, you are not a millennial. We are Gen Y — after X, before millennial.)

Every character in this story is much weirder and far more complicated than the format seems to allow for. Disguising something strange as something familiar is a classic artist’s trick, but there are times you wonder how much director Jon S. Baird and writer Noah Pink are deliberately Trojan Horseing and how much they’ve been Trojan Horsed themselves. To their credit, they’ve managed to make a fairly entertaining movie out of what is essentially a games licensing battle, a dull and granular branch of business law, even for business law. In order to do that, they turned their hero’s story into a video game quest, complete with 8-bit graphics as chapter markers. They gain a product, but maybe at the expense of a soul. Which is, admittedly, pretty apt.

Taron Egerton plays Henk Rogers, a Ted Lasso optimistic dreamer-style guy with a Vh-1 I Love The 80s mustache. The hypercolor, commercialized eighties we sell in 2023 has now completely subsumed the actual 1980s, but Tetris is nothing if not conspicuously stylized, so it’s of a piece. Henk is a Dutch-born American expat living in Japan** but we don’t know that at first. We just know that his last videogame flopped, and he thinks he’s found the next big thing when he sees Tetris at a trade show. He uses his last proverbial dime to buy the console and arcade rights to it in Japan, and offers up his house as collateral to a banker while begging for an even bigger loan to help him produce all the games he’s promised to his new partners at Nintendo.

(** Trying to pin down even one aspect of Tetris‘s story is like trying to squish a watermelon seed with your finger. It just squirts off somewhere else. Every character in the story is like this if you dig even a little.)

When those Nintendo boys show Henk the prototype for the Gameboy, he knows this simple block game is the perfect fit for its 8-bit, black-and-white graphics. It’s a potential goldmine, he just has to secure the handheld rights from their current owner — the USSR’s software publishing body, Elektronorgtechnica, aka ELORG, who in turn took them over from Tetris’ actual inventor, Alexey Pajitnov (Nikita Efremov), who stands to gain nothing other than patriotic pride.

Henk, being the dreamer that he is, just shows up at ELORG unannounced and on a tourist visa, at which point he learns from the ELORG director that the games he’s been making are basically bootlegs, on account of the guy he bought the rights from never had the rights to them in the first place. This is due to a complicated series of events that saw a shady fixer named Robert Stein (Toby Jones), “discover” the game behind the iron curtain. He then sold/promised its worldwide rights to Mirrorsoft, a company owned by British business tycoon Robert Maxwell (Roger Allam), and run like a make-work program for Robert’s desperate-to-prove-himself silver spoon son, Kevin (Anthony Boyle). As the movie tells it, Kevin keeps trying to negotiate Legitimate Business while his evil father constantly undercuts him by doing corruption, the father leaning on his personal friendship with Mikhail Gorbachev for leverage.

Astute readers may be realizing now something that took most of a movie to dawn on me: “Robert Maxwell” isn’t just some rich British guy. He’s Ghislaine Maxwell’s father. The one who died under incredibly shady circumstances, supposedly drowning near his yacht, “The Lady Ghislaine,” right after defaulting on £50 million in loans from Goldman Sachs. He actually wasn’t even originally British, having been born Ján Ludvík Hyman Binyamin Hoch in Czechoslovakia before fighting in the resistance and eventually getting naturalized. Kevin is Ghislaine’s brother.

The movie never mentions any of this, not even in the epilogue text, and I suppose that’s understandable, given the Jeffrey Epstein connection being an uncloseable can of worms that would hijack the story were it to be breached.

That spicy a-meat-a-ball of a factoid aside, the parties maneuvering for the Tetris rights are: the Maxwells, Robert Stein, Henk, ELORG, Pajitnov, and a Communist party official named Trifonov (Igor Grabuzov), a sneering, greasy-haired, ostrich-eyed villain in a turtleneck who would’ve been over-the-top in Rocky IV (my God, just look at this dude’s face, the greasy hair and turtleneck are practically redundant). At first I took Trifonov to be warmed over Cold War propaganda, the True Believer Communist who will stop at nothing to prevent evil western-style freedom from corrupting the citizens with cheap Pepsi and exposed bosoms.

Trifonov is not a true believer, however, but a skeptic who senses the impending collapse of the Soviet Union and wants to secure his bag at the expense of his country. This in opposition to the True Russian Patriots like Pajitnov and ELORG’s manager. Yes, there is a very corny scene in which Pajitnov takes Henk to a secret Russian rock n’ roll rave party set in a graffiti-strewn brutalist parking garage, where proto-dissidents scream about wanting Levis and dance to “The Final Countdown.” But Trifonov, in colluding with the Maxwells, seems meant to represent not the Communist state, but the collusion between self-interested Russians and predatory capitalists, which characterized the coming Yeltsin-gangsters-oligarchs period of Russia in the 90s. (Putin’s popularity stems largely from clamping down on the chaos of that era, even though it birthed him).

If the villains in Tetris are the “bad” capitalists, it’s a bit of an open question what makes Henk a “good” one. Is it because he has a nice mustache? Is it because he bet his actual house and took a risk? To paraphrase William Wallace, the tycoon who bleeds on his yacht after defaulting on a 50 million pound loan, does he not also risk?

What’s objectively clear is that Henk did what everyone else did in this story: smelled a big opportunity and rushed in to try to get his beak wet, even though he didn’t actually invent shit. Certainly, he befriends Pajitnov and bonds with him (they like the same programming languages, awww!), but it’s hard to say whether this actually represents Henk fighting for the real inventor or just doing a more elegant job getting Pajitnov to relax his proverbial anus before screwing him.

Tetris is cheeky on every level, and maybe we’re supposed to apply a jaundiced eye to this story about the triumph of “nice” capitalism. But even the most charitable read holds that the more interesting exploration of who could and should own which IP gets subsumed by the hero’s journey structure. This arcane battle over rights eventually devolves, Argo-like, into an actual car chase which is believable on exactly zero levels.

Maybe Henk Rogers really was the “good guy” in all this — which doesn’t sound like a hard thing to be compared to Robert Maxwell and various shady fixers — but with an ending as outlandish as Tetris‘s, it’s impossible to know which parts we’re supposed to take at face value. Tetris is mostly entertaining and simplifies an impossibly complex story admirably, but it also loses some its most important themes in the process.

‘Tetris’ streams March 31st, only on Apple TV+. Vince Mancini is on Twitter. You can read more of his reviews here.