What I watched: Marlowe. A 2023 rendition of the classic detective with Liam Neeson in the title role. Neeson is good as always. The writing was very noir. Although the plot was a bit convoluted and hard to follow.
What I read: Ringworld’s Children by Larry Niven. This is the last book in the series and the most interesting and best written. Crazy shit happens on the Ringworld, and even more insane shit happens with Louis Wu. That’s all you get.
What I listened to: North Mississippi Allstars – Hernando.
This is my last one, Deadsplinters. I need to take a step back, so one of you needs to step up. Please contact Ellie.
Liam Neeson has a particular set of skills.
I saw the Doctor Who Christmas show, which was another fun episode.
There is a lot of travel through time and space so of course it doesn’t really make a lot of sense, but Ncuti Gatwa as the Doctor is great at forging ahead anyway. It’s clever and touching too.
Took advantage of some Apple TV bargains and stocked up.
Watched Dune and hopefully today, if I’m not too busy blowing my nose, Dune 2. I’m really looking forward to it. Dennis Villeneuve did a marvelous job of not trying to cram all of Dune into one movie thus fast forwarding things. Rebecca Ferguson is my new Hollywood crush.
I suspect Alejandro Jodorowsky wasn’t far off with his 14 hour (!) adaptation. Would have been weird like most of his films.
Also watched the last season of Robot Chicken because I’m a teenager who enjoys stop motion toys doing sick/violent things to each other. It’s not bad but not as biting as the earlier seasons for me considering I had to look up a few of the references (anything past 2012, I’m not all that great with.)
…forget which streaming thing offers it but “sunny” with rashida jones was good & somewhat a break from the same old, same old…bit hard to explain without spoilers but worth checking out to decide if you might enjoy it?
…likewise a…30-odd year old book called china mountain zhang…after which I expect I’ll get around to the…fifth installment of brandon sanderson’s way of kings series
…& at some point the christmas outing of wallace & gromit…because those are fun but one of the people I was with for christmas can’t abide them…for reasons I confess I don’t grasp
Apple Tv cancelled it after 1 season
Also saw an older movie (1999) The Corruptor starring Chow-Yun Fat and Marky Mark Wallberg.
It’s not a bad movie, but it’s pretty fucking stupid at points like the main car chase thru parts of downtown NYC and Toronto (a lot of fast clip editing to confuse viewers.) A vicious gunfight in the middle of downtown with bystanders getting mowed down would have brought down the entire police force and caused traffic chaos for hours. About the only realistic thing is that bystanders were getting shot.
Not exactly a flattering portrayal of Asian females either.
Ironic considering Mark Wahlberg’s history with Asian folks.
One of the few reasons I enjoyed the movie was that it didn’t make the white guy the typical savior of us Asian people.
…that reminds me of something fogettable I watched with a black-ops assissin type who turns out not to working for who he thought…it never entirely became clear if the gy he thought he was working with/for shifted into killing for profit & politics or if they got sidelined by the people who were into that but at some point the latter group attack an old…maybe monastery…the other guy has holed up in…lots of heavy masonry about & they come in to the front courtyard in a tight bunch all kitted up in flack jackets with machine guns…& the defending parties…don’t blow them up with grenades & haven’t mined the thing…because then there wouldn’t be a prolonged fight…ok…dramatic license…sure…but then the defending lot don’t huddle behind the huge bits of stone…they run forward into ongoing automatic gunfire…repeatedly…well, once each…but they don’t think “that idea sucked, let’s do something else” at any point…& that did rather fuck with my suspension of disbelief?
The cannon fodder aspect always drains me in these movies.
If it’s a movie set in Napoleonic times when huge masses are drilled for stupid slaughter you can sort of buy it. And if it’s simple martial arts fight where the price someone pays is only getting knocked out, sure.
But it gets harder to take when teams of trained killers keep doing it and get shot to pieces.
I sort of expect them to be thinking “Wait a second, I took out $250,000 in student loans to get a Masters in Assassin degree, and the boss wants me to blow off my skills and just run straight at the guy and get a bullet in the eye?”
…I’m considerably more forgiving if it’s something that can be explained by…forget what tv tropes calls it but we called it the inverse square law of ninja?
…it doesn’t make it less dumb…but the purpose of a massive bunch of ninja in dramatic terms is to get their asses kicked…a lone ninja on the other hand…has about as much plot armour as any character can lay claim to
…it’s like how you don’t want to be the flunky that gets killed just to prove how evil the bad guy is when their plans are thwarted…but you never get the scene where HR has to offer insane signing bonuses to get any decent henchmen?
That was before John Wick.
The Gray Man was exactly how you described as it seemed every CIA affiliated hitman, merc and their cousin was willing to get shredded in Prague by Ryan Gosling. Even Ian Flemming kept SIS/MI-6 00 branch at a number between 1-9 as those kind of assets (despite being frowned upon by the pols/public) are few and far between and not casually thrown into a meat grinder.
We watched The Woman in the Wall, about the Irish Magdalene laundries and Mother and Baby Homes. It was a tough watch, but we liked it.
I got bad gasoline in a BP station in Hernando, Mississippi.
Watched The 6888 on Netflix about the first battalion of black women in the army and the work they did in WW2.
It annoyed me that it was only released on Netflix, it is a really good movie and deserves a theater run.
I wouldn’t necessarily think of streaming only movies as akin to old style DTV. They’re competing with the theaters to a certain degree.
courtesy of all the seasonal stuff (and my distractable nature) i still havent got around to watching or reading much of anything
i did find myself slackers : carts of glory to play tho
you are out of beer…take this shopping cart down a steep hill to get more
no brakes…ragdoll physics…and a catchy little soundtrack… whats not to like?
(tbh…is a simple concept…but the controls feel pretty good…makes it not feel frustrating to crash often….)
(okay me being 12 and giggling when i ragdoll my dude into several cars and streetsigns also helps it not feel frustrating)
READ
The Stones, the Crows, the Grass, the Moon by Walter Kirn: Really interesting (to me) shortish story about Kirn’s association with a Native American holy site in the Bighorn Mountains — the Medicine Wheel. I’ve been to the site and found it very compelling, and this is the first time I’ve read about someone else’s experience with it. Highly recommended.
LISTENED
Running through a couple all-time favorites this past week or so.
Buffalo Tom – Big Red Letter Day
Ben Folds Five – Ben Folds Five
WATCHED