Sunday!
So Tom Cruise hasn’t had a flop in 30 years. Okay, 29.
Like, we’re talking about Legend. Which, if you ask me, didn’t deserve to be a flop. (Also, I don’t know why “Rock of Ages” doesn’t really count as a flop but, hey. Though Wikipedia points out that the reviews of that flop specifically mention Tom Cruise as the best part of the film.)
And I’m looking at the list of films and thinking “holy cow, I even enjoyed most of those.” The Mission Impossibles, Minority Report, Jack Reacher, Oblivion, Edge of Tomorrow… dang. The guy who decides which scripts make it to Tom Cruise’s desk doesn’t get paid enough.
Which makes me figure that I’ll probably end up seeing Rogue Nation and boggling at how, once again, I can’t believe that Tom Cruise is now doing what Schwarzenegger and Stallone were doing in the 80’s except, this time, he’s doing it with halfway decent storylines.
So… what are you reading and/or watching?
(Photo is “Movie Night“, taken by Ginny, used under a creative commons license.)
I went to see Ant-Man and found it underwhelming. The Marvel movies have gotten so tongue-in-cheek about the tropes they’re using and the sillyness of their premises that they lose any real sense of peril or tension. And yet they’re not funny enough to effectively hit the action-comedy niche. (Contrast with Spy, which had a ton of funny moments and still managed to be a fairly effective action movie.) To use a vastly overused term, they’re like hipster action movies – sure, we have action, but we’re doing it ironically, we don’t actually care. Which has the side effect of making me not really care, either.
I don’t want to go see the new Mission Impossible, even though it’s getting good reviews and I like action movies, because I don’t want to give the CoS my money. Inconsistent of me, since I did go to see Edge of Tomorrow.
I’m going to watch Fantastic Four instead, unless it gets absolutely terrible reviews. And maybe even if it does. I’m curious, and I have no attachment to the F4 that would make me bothered by any departures from comics canon. And I liked Trank’s last movie, Chronicle.
Currently reading a book on the history of second-wave feminism, which has been very interesting, and a mix of challenging some of my assumptions and reinforcing other ones.
Also read The Canterbury Tales recently, which may have played a role in inspiring me to buy to book on feminism, because virtually Every. Single. One. of the stories is about one or more men trying to possess a woman. The refined ones are about “courtly love” and desperately needing to marry someone you’ve never spoken too, and the crass ones are about men coming up with creative ways to sleep with other men’s wives, but they are all about competing over who gets to stake their claim to the woman. It got overwhelming by the halfway point. It’s one thing to know a given time period was immersed in sexism, it’s another thing to be hit over the head with it for hundreds of pages.
In other news: I got my first long-term job! A permanent position with Statistics Canada, which seems like it should be very interesting. So I’m moving to Ottawa in a month or two. Extremely happy about this, both because StatsCan is probably on my Top 10 list of organizations I’d like to work for, and because it means that hopefully I will never have to apply for a job again, unless I want to.Report
Congrats on the job!Report
Thanks!Report
hopefully I will never have to apply for a job again
I read this and I sighed a sigh of the deepest envy.
Congrats!Report
Thank you!Report
Congrats on the job!
I give Ant Man a B, but I admit I was grading on the curve of expectations: a lot of my circle, based on the horror stories coming out prior to its release, had assumed that this would be the MCU’s first big strike out. While it was indeed pretty flip it was awfully funny as it went along in its flip manner. The Latino friend character absolutely stole the show whenever he was in a scene and they even managed to make the ants seem generally likable.
I could easily understand people who aren’t as fond of the MCU giving it a much lower grade but I don’t see it getting an F unless it loses Marvel money.Report
Thanks!
I’d give Ant-Man a C. It wasn’t terrible, but there wasn’t anything about it that engaged me either. (I’ve seen all the Marvel movies , and they’re generally in the B-/C+ range for me: middling, serviceable action movies. Avengers and Winter Soldier were the only ones that stood out.)
It’s already made back its budget domestically, and more than twice its budget internationally. There’s no way Marvel is losing money on it.Report
Yeah I’d probably be with you on that C if I was A) an unabashed MCU fanboy and B) warned ahead of time repeatedly that Ant Man would be THE Marvel strikeout.
I’d submit that the supporting characters monologue/stories, however, were probably worth the price of admission by themselves.Report
The End of the Tour (the David Foster Wallace movie) got surprisingly good reviews so my interest has raised. It doesn’t open in SF until next week though.Report
I’ve been backfilling my Kindle with some older books whose paperback/hardback existence I’m terminating. I found a pair of Barbara Hambly trilogies (why aren’t more series/trilogies/etc combined into a single Kindle volume?) and some older Alan Dean Foster.Report
I remember being on the outside looking in at all the Pop Culture Cruise Bashing over the last decade or so. When folks would start into how much they disliked him I’d do what you just did: you didn’t like Risky Business? Top Gun? The Last Samurai? The Firm? Collateral? Jerry Maguire??? “Ok”, those folks would say, “he’s made some pretty good movies.” Damn right he did!
Just finished my second reading of BOTNS, and now I have to back thru the whole dang thing again and try to make sense of the plot given the clues I missed the first time thru and only figured out by the end – like literally, the end – of the second reading. I don’t think I’ve ever read a book of fiction that demands so much of the reader. In fact, at one point, the narrator of the book (Severian) actually says something like “Well, I’m done recounting these events to the best of my ability. Before you, dear reader, think I’ve shortchanged you, tho, go back and read it again.”
Well, I did that and I’m still confused. What makes it particularly difficult to figure out is that Gene Wolfe categorically stated that there’s no magic in that book. Hmmm…. So! Now I’m onto Urth of the New Sun – and then probably a re-re-read of BOTNS to make sense of my new knowledges.Report
I know of critics I otherwise respect who thought Jerry Maguire was overrated schlock. When you hear them talk about it, you can tell they still have a bug up their bntt about it & are still bitter their opinion was so completely consigned to the ash heap for being such an outlier.
By which I refer to Anne Hornaday (movie citric of The Tony Kornheiser Show).Report
…I should say, I understand thinking it’s schlock. I just don’t understand sitting all the way through it and not coming the the conclusion that, while it may be schlock, there’s no getting around that it’s schlock that works.Report
You had me at schlock.Report
I was trading tweets a while back with Russell Saunders about some movie reviewers. He was complaining about a negative review of Inside Out. I shared my experience with the former alt-weekly back home, which found it within itself to trash on Iron Giant.Report
@trumwill
I liked the Iron Giant but I don’t think it got good reviews when it came out. I know it bombed at the Box Office.Report
It bombed at the box office, but was very well received by most critics.Report
Jerry Macguire proves how powerful Tom Cruise’s “picks good films to be in” power is — it overwhelms Cuba Gooding’s “picks rotten films to be in” power.Report
While I am inclined to agree with this, he didn’t just pick this film as a good one that he happened to be in, he also made it a good film. By which I mean that unlike, say, Vanilla Sky, it would not have been a good film without him in it.
(Yeah, I liked Vanilla Sky. You want to make something of it?)Report
{{Just between us, Will, I LOVED Vanilla Sky.}}Report
Yall forgot MAGNOLIA. He earned a lot of uppermiddlebrow goodwill for that.Report
Not to mention EYES WIDE SHUT (even if it was by far Kubrick’s least film).Report
and WAR OF THE WORLDS which was pretty darn terrific and him in itReport
One word: Les Grossman, Tropic Thunder.Report
I still haven’t seen Eyes Wide Shut, but every time someone mentions it I remember I need to go back and listen to Chris Isaak’s Forever Blue, which was a phenomenal CD.Report
eyes wide shut was the worst movie ever.
(well, okay, not really. but it was pretty bad)Report
I HATED HATED HATED Magnolia. Like, I was angry when it ended, and had I not been with someone, I might have walked early.
But Cruise was still good in it.Report
Only that it’s awful in more ways than any film I can think of offhand. It started with Jason Lee in one of the least convincing performances in the history of the big screen (he was a writer like Mitzi Kapture was a cop) and went downhill from there.Report
I think some of the critical vitriol directed against Aloha was a result of seething resentment that Jerry Maguire is so highly regarded by so many. I didn’t see Aloha and probably won’t bother. I suspect it is not a very good movie. But the savagery with which some critics attacked it seemed all out of proportion to how bad it could possibly be.Report
I have pivoted away from audiobooks, after having finished Secret Prey (which was one of the best of the Prey series), and am now listening to Revenge for the last half-season of the show’s run. I find that listening to TV isn’t agreeing with me right now, so I think I may go back to audiobooks next. Probably Asimov.Report
True Detective S2 has gotten a lot of criticism, but I thought the episode last week was strong, with the climactic sequence (Bezzarides’ Escape) bearing up well on a second viewing, even if the insertion of a molestation flashback raised the lurid exploitation quotient to what should have been intolerable levels.
So, am looking forward to the new episode leading off my customary quasi-autoerotic vicariously sadomasochistic Sunday night orgy of borderline pornographic apocalyptic neo-pulp: THE STRAIN, FALLING SKIES, THE LAST SHIP, HUMANS, TRUE DETECTIVE. If they don’t quite rise to GAME OF THRONES, THE WALKING DEAD, and PENNY DREADFUL tele-cinematically, where they’re not downright terrible, they make up the quality deficit in volume. (On the other hand, I do have standards for this kind of thing: I found THE BRINK and BALLERS pretty much unwatchable, the former having had “pathetically unfunny Jack Black/Tim Robbins vanity project” overdone and underthought all over and under it – YMMV.)
Yeah, I know it’s mostly not great, and too much for a single evening, but that’s why the Good Lord gave us DVRs.Report
(TD S2 spoilers): I thought that the score during Bezzerides’ escape was awful, very intrusive, particularly when the others were sneaking around outside; and so was the rocking tune as they all hightailed it down the highway in their car, implying some sort of cheesy action movie triumph rather than the considerably-darker more ambiguous outcome of their undercover operation. The molestation flashback wasn’t awful to me, necessarily, even if it spelled out some things that might have best been left implied; perhaps I forgive it because it was basically TD paying homage to Twin Peaks, with its very own version of BOB there at the party.
The Strain is epically stupid, yet I can’t seem to quit it. I seem to have one show at a time like this, and since Walking Dead has been off, it was Wayward Pines and now this. It has a few good and/or entertaining performances in it, and some of the cinematography is nice, but the writing is just awful, as is the kid who is the. Absolute. Worst.Report
Felt exactly the opposite way about the score. True, I’ve always been a sucker for those early-Schoenberg style strings – would have been happy to listen to them without the show on – but I thought they helped build a queasy yet portentous atmosphere that suited the character’s addled/perilous situation, and the rocking finale charging away under the carefully foreshadowed Full Moon was just the kind of pathetic fallacy I want from Sunday night quasi-porn . (TRANSFIGURED NIGHT was one of my favorite psychoactive listens once upon a time.)
But my sentiments exactly on THE STRAIN (except for the TWD diss).Report
I think the thing that is so frustrating about both Strain and Walking Dead is that there are occasional glimpses of a much better show in there trying to get out. I could be wrong, because it might be impossible to sustain over a series-length rather than a two-hour-movie-length (and/or it might hemorrhage viewers, like Hannibal), but I almost feel they should largely jettison plot, character and dialogue almost entirely, and go instead with what they are sometimes good at, which is action and cool visuals. TWD has occasionally done episodes that are almost like this, hallucinatory tone poems.
It’s like they need a Michael Mann to come in and Miami Vice/MTV it up, or a George Miller to see exactly how far a Fury Road can run.Report
Though Strain already has a Del Toro, so it should be fine. It’s weird how inconsistent the monster quality is – the Master mostly looks ridiculous, and the season premiere flashback to the Master’s origin had a vampire with a clearly-visible bodysuit – but I think Kelly looks appropriately creepy/gross (the red eyes), and ditto for the Feelers.
Eichorst is terrific, since he’s essentially one of The Gentlemen from Buffy.Report
I’m not going to try to make TWD out to be the greatest thing since the meatball, but I do think it’s a couple leagues of congealed meat product above THE STRAIN. Considering the former’s success over the course of years, saying so wouldn’t really be a big knock on a series in its second season – if only it wasn’t, as you said, epically stupid, and consistently inconsistent. And, on TWD specifically, I’m also not sure that there really is a better zombie epic to be done. (I thought the genre might already be done when TWD’s first season started… but it keeps on shambling on.)Report
I agree that TWD is better than Strain, since it has achieved decency multiple episodes in a row more than once, and has had a few more reasonably-convincing characters who you could care about over its run. And like I said, there have been individual episodes that were actually quite good IMO.Report
Another strong TD2 episode – liked every plot thread. Am wondering if Vince and our two surviving heroes end up shoulder to shoulder or back to back. Seems like a natural possibility. Am assuming at this point that Vince is probably going to die, somehow redemptively, while taking a lot of foreign language speakers with him – not sure about the Missus. It’d be OK with me if Rachel and Colin ride off into the sunset together because I’m just a sentimental ol cuss.Report
I think it was stronger than the last one, but there was still some bad mixed in with the good. I’ll start with
SPOILERS FOLLOW (I’ll go ahead and rot13, because for some reason the spoiler tags aren’t working quite right for me).
The Bad:
B1: “Everything is f*cking”. groan
O2: Ubj qvq gung bar qhqr xabj jung rkvg Jbbqehtu jbhyq pbzr bhg? Jbbqehtu geniryrq dhvgr n jnlf qbja gur genpx (naq pbhyq unir tbar gur bgure, fb gurer jrer ng yrnfg 2 bccbfvgr irpgbef ur pbhyq unir orra geniryvat), pyvzorq n ynqqre, naq rkvgrq n (oybpxrq/ybpxrq) qbbe – jul jbhyq fbzrbar unir orra ylvat va jnvg, jvgu n trgnjnl pne, evtug ng GUNG (ntnva, oybpxrq/ybpxrq) rkvg cbvag, whfg va pnfr Jbbqehtu fbzrubj znantrq gb qrsrng NYY uvf nggnpxref naq oernx uvf jnl bhg gurer? (Nyfb, vs V jrer Jbbqehtu’f xvyyre, V’q’ir fanttrq uvf jnyyrg/onqtr va nqqvgvba gb uvf cubar, fvapr rira n oevrs qrynl va VQ’vat n pbc’f fynva obql pbhyq ohl lbh fbzr znarhirevat gvzr, naq znlor vg’q ybbx yvxr n eboorel/qeht qrny tbar onq).
O3: Gurer jrer n pbhcyr bs jrveq rqvgvat pubvprf jurer gurl uryq ba n fprar whfg n orng ybatre guna lbh’q rkcrpg orsber phggvat, naq vg gvygrq gur zbzragf sebz tenivgnf gb tbbsl. V qba’g unir n fcrpvsvp rknzcyr, ohg vg jnf whfg fbzrguvat V abgvprq.
O4: Guvf znl whfg or n shapgvba bs fgergpuvat bhg jung vf rffragvnyyl n abve-glcr fgbel (jvgu vgf olmnagvar bireynccvat cybg guernqf) gb frevrf yratgu, ohg gur vasbqhzcf gb rkcynva nyy gur fgbel pbaarpgvbaf vf…n yvggyr uneq gb sbyybj. Gura ntnva, V’ir frra Znygrfr Snypba zhygvcyr gvzrf, naq vs lbh nfxrq zr gb fhzznevmr gur cybg evtug abj V’q or fghpx – fb n 8 + ubhe Znygrfr Snypba jbhyq cerfhznoyl or avtu-vapbzcerurafvoyr.
Gur Tbbq:
T1: V yvxrq gur fpber n YBG zber guna ynfg jrrx’f. Irel rssrpgvir V gubhtug. V guvax ynfg jrrx gurl jrer tbvat sbe n Xhoevpxl-Ylapul guvat jvgu gubfr fgevatf, ohg nf V fnvq vg whfg qvq abg jbex sbe zr bhgfvqr gur ubhfr ng nyy.
T2: N irel fjrrg erirefny sbe Ormmrevqrf’ qnq’f punenpgre, jubz jr unq orra yrq gb fhfcrpg zvtug or fbzr xvaq bs perrc; lrf, ur znl unir unq fbzr erfcbafvovyvgl sbe jung unccrarq gb Nav nf n puvyq orpnhfr bs uvf lbhgushy vqrnyvfz, ohg ur jnf njner bs vg, naq unq ab qbhog orra chavfuvat uvzfrys sbe vg uvf ragver yvsr. Fhqqrayl uvf jrveqyl oyrnxyl-avuvyvfgvp lbtn yrffba va gung rneyl rcvfbqr znxrf n ybg zber frafr.
T3: Ivapr Inhtuna SVANYYL frrzrq ng ubzr va uvf punenpgre. Jurgure gung’f orpnhfr ur jnf tvira yrff checyr cuvybfbcuvmvat sbe uvf qvnybthr, be jurgure vg’f orpnhfr jr ner ergebnpgviryl zrnag gb haqrefgnaq gung GUNG qvnybthr jnf ARIRE Frzlba – gung jnf n tnatfgre, gelvat gb cergraq ur jnf n pvivyvmrq zna naq zbhguvat jbeqf ur qvqa’g shyyl haqrefgnaq, naq abj nf n pbearerq navzny ur vf “serr” gb or shyyl onpx va uvf angheny ryrzrag – rvgure jnl, V obhtug sbe gur svefg gvzr gung ur jnf ab bar gb or zrffrq jvgu.
T4: Ormmrevqrf naq Irypbeb qb unir terng purzvfgel, naq gurve fprarf gbtrgure jrer avpr (“Lbh’er abg n onq zna.” “Lrf….V nz”). Chggvat gurz va gung jrveqyl nepunvp zbgry ebbz tnir gur rssrpg bs gurz orvat na byq pbhcyr, gvzryrff naq fheebhaqrq ol ynpr qbvyvrf va gurve pnova be fbzrguvat. Fb gurl ner cebonoyl qbbzrq.Report
Hey @ck-macleod – any idea why the spoil function is stopping before it should? Does the presence of other html tags confuse it? I checked and it looked like I closed all mine but maybe I missed one?Report
It’s probably because CK is a damn busy worker.Report
It can’t be just the presence of other HTML tags by themselves, they worked fine in an earlier comment. So I suspect I either left one open or it’s something else…Report
Oh, I have no idea. I just wanted to use it as an opportunity to make it look like I’d called CK something awful when I really hadn’t.Report
Hey @glyph , for now, you’ll want to spoil paragraph by paragraph instead of trying to spoil a long multi-paragraph text with a single click. I’ll leave further comments until I’ve had a chance to examine some alternatives.Report
Ah, I didn’t realize we had to do para by para. Thanks.Report
Shoulda mentioned it previously. Will want to make it more user-friendly especially in the author’s/post-editing implementation, where multi-paragraph spoils would be more common. While I’m at it, will throw in some coloring options! But have to map out some alternative ways to go on it…Report
Eh – one never knows for sure what tactical info a guy’s had access to. Could be the next exit was several blocks or miles away. Could be the tactical plan had already been to flush him out through that exit. The killer may or may not know that the other four guys are wasted.
Didn’t notice. Did notice a point where a reaction shot was reacting to a missing reaction (between the B sisters), but I think was intended to be that way.
Eh, I just go with it. Did you ever see the Bogart/Bacall THE BIG SLEEP? Was widely considered to be a self-deconstructive parody with a plot intentionally impossible to follow. What matters is that a bunch of people get angry and betrayed and kill each other and stuff.
The Good:
Can’t see anyone’s experience getting spoiled by that, so’m leaving un-spoiled. I liked the score last week. Liked it this week, but wasn’t as foregroundy: HEY! Did you notice that they switched up on the title song? Ended on a different verse. Almost missed it because I habitually fast forward through openings.
Yeah. Also part of the exploded “true history of California” aspect of this season’s tale. If people hadn’t been so busy nit-picking dialogue and wishing that Woody and Buzz I mean Matthew were back for a 2nd season, and weren’t still correcting for overpraising season 1, and dealing with other unanswered and behind-the-scenes questions, there might have been broader discussion of what S2 is trying to say.
Re-spoiling it even tho I don’t think it’s terribly spoiling. I think the problem for VV is that he’s more memorably a comedic character actor than a dramatic lead. His shtick is more neurotic than psychotic. Whenever I see him, I’m waiting for him to go into the guy from MR AND MRS SMITH (one of the classics, of course) or SWINGERS (his breakthrough). But I like what he’s trying to do and what they’ve been trying to do with him even if I’m not ever really quite sold on it.
As are we all.Report
I did notice they switched up the opening song verses, but I didn’t go back and play it again to see if the new verses were commenting on where the story is now. I usually let the opening credits play since I like Cohen (though last season’s opening music *was* a little better, IMO).Report
Wrote a bit about the opening song for TD1 here: http://wp.me/p4h0Xw-bSn
TD2 clearly is examining that other mode of annihilation of the human, but I’ve not yet taken a close look at the title song. It seems to tell a story that doesn’t quite fit any of the characters, so that makes me think it may be more a thematic statement. Also may work as a statement by Pizzolato about himself or what he sees himself as doing – it’s easy to exchange “entertainment industry” for “California society,” for instance.Report
If this was included (I think it was):
You turned me in
At least you tried
You side with them
Whom you despise
Could be referring to Woodrugh’s agreement (or temporary ruse) to sell out Bezzerides and Velcoro.
And this:
You serve them well
I’m not surprised
You’re of their kin
You’re of their kind
Could be about Blake.Report
I think it’s more thematic and generalized, but this episode did include even more than the usual betrayal-related plot points or betrayal-sub-plot payoffs.
Research suggests this isn’t the first time that TD2 swtiched up athe lyric selections. I think I noticed before but didn’t care enough to nail down the impression. The length of the original song creates lots of opportunities.
If the whole thing was just a bit more compelling, I might go back through the DVR and track the changes. Maybe the finale or discussion of it will provide the motivation. Not expecting it to.Report
@glyph
[redact-blocks color=BlanchedAlmond]
Finger crossed this one works.
Have a “redact multiple blocks” addition just about ready to add here – not sure if I’ll make it available in the comments by “button, but it should work if you use WordPress shortcode, like I’ve done here.
You can also choose the color – the default is “black” – but you can use any hexadecimal color or one of the long list of named colors. http://www.w3schools.com/cssref/css_colornames.asp
[/redact-blocks]
OOPS! Forgot about it showing up in State of Discussion. So it kind of works. Not sure it’s worth further futzing up SOD to make it work for the rare instances of lazy commenter wanting to multi-block spoil… who could just as well use the “inline”/sub-block version.
Then there’s also the question of link handling…/format overriding… will be other exceptions to consider…Report
@ck-macleod (and anyone else caught up on True Detective, because SPOILERS) – Slate ran a pretty handy summary of WTH is going on in TD2:
http://www.slate.com/blogs/browbeat/2015/08/03/true_detective_season_two_a_guide_to_the_plot_of_this_confusing_season.htmlReport
That’s a good summary. I think I kind of understood most of the plot anyway, or the most significant parts of it, but I’m still not settled on how important it is to have a perfectly coherent and sensible or mostly sensible or credible plot. Sometimes, all that really matters is that there’s a red harvest.
@glyphReport
We’ve binge watched Mr Robot, and I’m watching Death in Paradise, which is cheesy, but in the Caribbean (Guadalupe), so who cares?Report
I want to check Mr. Robot out, but I want to get caught up on Humans first, and Wet Hot American Summer is out on Netflix, so…Report
I hadn’t heard it, but I’m really enjoying it. I imagine it’ll drive people who actually know stuff about computers crazy, as hacking always does on TV and movies always does, but for me it’s tense and fun.
And surprisingly dark.Report
Let me add that I think it does depression and social anxiety pretty well.Report
I watched the pilot this past Saturday. Understanding that it’d be really boring tv to show someone poring over system logs to find the source of a data breach, I thought the show did a pretty decent job.Report
Been rereading Jack O’Connell’s novels, so waist deep in an orgy of critical theory inflected, post literary, deconstructive crime pulp.Report
http://amzn.to/1LZ9N1zReport
This is a wildly original novel, part hard-boiled crime novel, part literary thriller, and part postapocalyptic cartoon. Scenes, characters, and the locale of Quinsigamond, a failed industrial city west of Boston, conjure echoes of the ever-nocturnal Gotham City from Tim Burton’s Batman films. Into this seething netherworld of competing ethnic gangs, cabalists, defrocked Jesuits, crooked rare-book dealers, sweatshops that produce forged comic books, and a beautiful librarian obsessed by a 200-year-old murderer, the author has placed Gilrein, a cop turned cabbie. He is being menaced by August Kroger, a Bohemian crime czar and rare-book freak, and his “meatboys,” but Gilrein doesn’t know why. The byzantine plot is secondary here, though; the bizarre milieu, O’Connell’s gracefully orotund narrative style, and his mode of explication are the reasons readers should follow Gilrein into the dark night of Quinsigamond. Thomas GaughanReport
added to my list!Report
I may have asked this before, but have you read any of Tom McCarthy’s now four novels?Report
No, I hadn’t even heard of him. Looking over his works, right up my alley. And the Tintin book looks wonderful.Report
Reading your description of the book above, I thought he might be. I haven’t read his latest, which was published this year, but it is sitting on my desk, so soon.
Remainder is painfully odd, Men in Space is just plain odd, and C. is wonderfully odd. All quick reads worth reading. My understanding is that Satin Island is the oddest yes.Report
Started a new computer game on Steam called “Infinifactory”
(I like puzzle games. so there.)Report
Binge-watched Series 8 of “Only Connect” on youtube – working my way back in time from the current series… Highest possible recommendation if it’s your type of thing. The type of thing it is is basically a pub quiz, only objectively harder than College Bowl (from personal experience, I’ve competed in both). Since it’s a British production, some of the questions are obviously going to be impossible (“the fourth-to-most-recent Home Secretary?”), but there are a surprising number that are America-based, which still flummoxes the natives (albeit significantly less than the reverse). Punishingly hard, but that’s paradoxically what makes it uniquely good. Even with Jeopardy, you sometimes feel like you really should have run the table – on this show, just getting one right each round feels like a triumph, and delivers a surprising rush…
On that topic, for Lois McMaster Bujold fans, the hair is all wrong, but in all other ways the host, Victoria Coren Mitchell, is now how I personally envision Laisa Toscane. Sharp, quick on the uptake, edgy when appropriate and self-deprecating when appropriate, and fits the body type exactly – which you don’t see that often on TV these days. Somewhat ironic, since her real-life husband is very unlike Laisa’s husband Gregor…Report
I stumbled across an explaination of Mulholland Drive sometime last week and decided to watch it again yesterday. My only other viewing of the movie was probably a at least a decade ago, so I don’t remember how much I understood back then, other than a typcial Lynchian WTF feeling. I’m sure it made more sense this go around, aided by the interpretations of others, than I was able to puzzle out on my own.Report
Mulholland Drive is a great film, but a terrible movie.Report
I enjoyed MD greatly. I can’t remember who said that it is a film better experienced than watched, but it fits.Report