I just finished reading the third and final Fitzcarraldo Editions book that I bought in London last year (after The Observable Universe and Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead). I really like the minimalist cover design and the quality of the paper that they use. The books have heft in my hand, and the pages are sturdy and satisfying to turn. I (and most readers, I’m guessing) don’t normally pay much attention to the physical “style” of a given publisher, so kudos to them for creating such a distinctive ethos.
Fifty Sounds is a memoir by Polly Barton about her experiences as an Englishwoman living in Japan. She’s now known for translating Japanese literature to English, which implies that she’s mastered the language, but as she tells it in this book, there’s a gap that’s essentially impossible to cross for a non-native speaker.
In my last newsletter, I shared my first 1 Second Everyday video. It’s been a fun creative experiment, which continued through the month of April. I’m definitely finding it more difficult to capture clips of “new” things… I don’t lead a wildly adventurous life, and I like my routines. Even so, I like the challenge of composing shots and trying to see familiar things from new and interesting angles.
I don’t feel like I can fairly judge this book because I read it during a difficult time. My dog has been having some medical issues and it’s been an emotional roller-coaster. I found myself unable to really connect with anything I was reading. But even through my own numbness, I admired the author’s work.
All Our Ordinary Stories is a graphic memoir by Chinese-Canadian author Teresa Wong, who attempts to bridge the emotional distance between her and her immigrant parents by exploring their histories. Her parents lived through extreme events, escaping from the Cultural Revolution in China by swimming to Hong Kong. Wong struggles to understand their experiences because they don’t talk about their past. Partly, Chinese culture celebrates stoicism, and encourages them to bottle up their traumas; but also, there’s a language barrier between the generations that makes it hard to have any deep conversations.
I also can’t speak the language of my ancestors very well, but I’m uncomfortable speaking English with my parents because it seems disrespectful somehow. Some scenes in this book capture the communication gap so well that it feels both boring and profound at the same time: boring, because I’ve internalized the experience so much that it’s become run-of-the-mill, ordinary; but profound, because someone else has written it down and aired it out and shown how challenging it really is.
It’s a rare occurrence that a book hits this close to home… I may wish to revisit this book sometime when I’m more able to engage with it, but I’m almost afraid to do so because it may destroy me.
Sadly, this movie only impressed me on the superficial and technical level: the Carpathian scenery is gorgeous, and the practical special effects for bringing the ochi creatures to life are great. I don’t think A24 is big on merchandising1, but the toys would fly off the shelves.
Unfortunately, I had a hard time staying engaged because I found the story to be really thin. The main (human) character, Yuri, decides to help the baby ochi, in spite of her father’s hatred of them… but why? Her father later comes around, and supports her quest to return the baby to its family… but, again, why? The movie doesn’t really offer many answers beyond Well, look at the cute little guy!, and because of that, it feels quite empty.
First, the positives: the visual design and rhythm of this film are full of energy, which makes it fun to watch. It goes really over the top with the gore—I watch everything with subtitles, and I’ve never seen the word squelching used as much as this film does when describing its sound effects—but then I found myself desensitizing to the squirmy discomfort, to the point where I was giggling gleefully at the gruesome moments by the end.
Unfortunately, I found the storytelling to be weak otherwise. The Substance in the film causes the main character Elisabeth (Demi Moore) to “birth” a second, younger version of herself named Sue (Margaret Qualley). The rules that come with the Substance state that they “are one,” and that they must switch every seven days.
After watching the film, I couldn’t help but brainstorm about the possible permutations of the idea. In essence, the movie could have explored the concept in three ways, each with differing psychological consequences on the characters.
I have again procrastinated… it’s been a while since I’ve sent one of these. I thought I would try a new format, which may be conducive to my doing this more regularly…
Pantheon covers a lot of cool sci-fi concepts, the main one being the idea of “Uploaded Intelligence,” i.e. the ability to scan a person’s brain and have them live as a piece of software in the cloud. The conceit is fertile ground for exploring ideas like, what makes a person a person, and what makes this person this specific person? On paper, it’s right up my alley, but I didn’t enjoy the show as much as I expected to.
I think I had trouble connecting with the characters because the animation and voice acting felt a bit flat. The story deals with a lot of heavy emotions, like grief for a departed loved one, and the choice of whether to accept the Uploaded version of that loved one as the same person. But those feelings didn’t come through for me because the animation just didn’t have the same expressiveness as, say, Arcane, or anything from Studio Ghibli.
On the positive side, the action scenes are pretty fun to watch. The various Uploaded characters often “fight” each other in the virtual world. Technically, there shouldn’t be anything to look at, as it’s essentially pieces of software trying to hack into each other’s networks, but the creators of the show chose to visualize it as if the Uploads were superheroes. They fly around and use “powers” against each other… sometimes it feels almost like a Dragon Ball fight.
This Japanese comedy takes place in a spa/hotel in a small town, and follows the staff and guests as they get stuck in a mysterious time loop. A twist on the Groundhog Day formula, with a couple of key differences:
the loop is only 2 minutes long, rather than the whole day, so we can see every iteration in its entirety, in real-time
all of 10 or so characters are experiencing the same thing, which introduces an aspect of project management, as they assign tasks to each other and scramble to complete them within the 2 minutes
The first act is a lot of fun as the characters figure out what’s going on. Seeing how each person reacts is pretty funny… for example, one of the guests is a writer under pressure from his publishers, and he decides to use the time loop as a chance to rest, because it means that his deadlines will never come.
The movie surprised and impressed me with how it used its structure to illuminate emotional truths for some characters. For example, a young couple challenge themselves to escape from the others, by running away as far as they can. At first, it felt silly to me, since they know that they’ll always end up back where they started. But then I realized that the futility of the game was the point, and that it was a way for them to connect with each other, like a series of rapid-fire “dates.”
Along the way, the major characters wonder whether they caused the loop by wishing for time to stop. Everyone has a reason for fearing the future, and the natural response to this fear is wanting to just keep things as they are. The movie has a real “Monkey’s Paw” kind of message: there’s a fine line between staying in our comfort zones, and becoming stuck in a rut. We need time to move forward, even with all the scary uncertainty that progress brings.
Who do I have more of a crush on, Michael Fassbender or Cate Blanchett? I think it’s a tie.
He’s a spy. She’s a spy. They’re married. There’s a mole in the spy agency. He has to find out who it is. It might be her. The other four suspects are conveniently also paired romantically. What are the HR policies like at spy agencies? Emotional attachments are a huge risk to national security. Relationship discord, an equally huge risk. Fassbender and Blanchett, their relationship: solid. The others, not so much. I’m all for workplace romances, but with far-reaching, world-changing stakes like these, I’m not so sure.
He wears cool glasses throughout. I changed my mind. I think he wins.
Here we are, at the end of the original Foundation trilogy. Over the course of reading the three books, I could sense that Isaac Asimov was gaining in confidence and skill. The style of the first novel was somewhat staid and dry, but by this third book, his writing had gained some flourishes, making it more fun to read.
By introducing the Mule and his powers in Foundation and Empire, the series added a new layer to the plotting. Both the Mule and the Second Foundation—a secretive parallel counterpart to the First Foundation that we’ve been following so far—possess mental abilities, which allows them to brainwash and control the actions of ordinary people.
Much of this novel feels like a spy thriller. Characters form alliances, but nobody can be fully trusted, because anyone can be a secret agent under the control of the other side. I don’t want to spoil anything, but the conclusion involves a series of scenes where an answer is revealed, only to be turned around with a twist, and the real answer being revealed… but then there’s another twist, etc. It’s almost comical how many times it undercuts itself, but I had a blast with it.
