So if you’ve watched the Starz Spartacus series, well, this is basically the video game adaptation. Sure it isn’t officially licensed, its scope is limited to the arena so no rebellion for you and it only has pixel graphics, but everything about it is clearly inspired by the show. I heard about it on Broken Forum where it was quite a hit. It is a rather short however once you understand its mechanics and it’s possible to win a full game in only a few hours.
It’s purely by coincidence that we watched two films with such similar titles in the same week. I don’t really read serious literature and even less poetry but if I can be said to like any poet, it should be Emily Dickinson. Since my wife usually likes biographies of writers, especially female ones, I thought this would be a good bet for both of us. Unfortunately even the prose of the ordinary dialogue in here might as well be the English equivalent of Classical Chinese and I’m afraid my wife got very little out of this film.
This was directed by the same person who made Our Little Sister, Hirokazu Kore-eda, apparently at the same time as well during breaks in the production of the better known film. Unlike it however this was not adapted from a manga but was written by the director himself based on his own mother. I would consider it a more mature, more serious work.
We went to the cinema for this on the strength of recommendations on Broken Forum and its high Rotten Tomatoes rating. Also, I suppose it’s amusing that it was made by the husband and wife team of John Krasinski and Emily Blunt. I expected it to be a horror film, but it’s also something of a science-fiction post-apocalyptic film. While it’s competently made and has a well developed atmosphere, it’s many flaws prevent me from being truly a fan.
So Iain Banks has been dead for a few years now and I’ve only now gotten around to reading this, considered the first book of his Culture series. I’ve read short stories set in this universe before but never any of the novels. I always knew I was going to have to read this one day and perhaps it is appropriate to do so now as this novel is apparently going to be adapted for television.
I added this to the list after being blown away by Paul Newman’s performance in Cool Hand Luke. It made me realize that I’ve never really watched any of the work by the legendary actor. This pick has the added benefit that it’s quite a famous film and even stars Robert Redford in his prime as well. I thought that having these actors side by side would make for a fantastic combination and I wasn’t disappointed.
A while back I wanted to watch a Israeli television series, Srugim, after reading a lot of discussion about it but ran into trouble getting good English subtitles for it. I suppose it’s more readily available now that it’s more well known. In any case, Jewish media seems popular in the US recently and this film has been getting plenty of praise. It counts as an American film but is entirely in Yiddish, being about a community of Hasidic Jews who live in New York.