So this was an entry in What Makes This Book So Great though as Jo Walton noted, it isn’t usually regarded as a genre book. It is however world famous as the novel that launched the career of Salman Rushdie. The novel is hugely popular, especially in the UK, and won the Best of the Bookers twice. I’d argue however that while it does have ‘genre’ elements, it doesn’t read like one and shouldn’t be properly considered as science-fiction or fantasy.
So Your Name was obviously the big anime hit of 2016 that everyone went to see. This lesser known film was number two in Japan. It did make the news in Malaysia in 2017 when a large cinema screen was forced to pull screenings of it due to the studio’s complaints about rampant piracy in our country. I think that was about when I added it to my watch list as well.
I never got a chance to write about it and I did watch the original Cloverfield and rather liked it. I stayed away from this one at first because horror film sequels never turn out well. But then I heard that this is a sequel in name only and actually does some pretty interesting things so I thought I’d check it out.
We currently watch so many films that occasionally we do forget that we’ve already watched something. This is one of those times. Neither my wife nor myself could remember watching this but it seemed familiar as we started watching it. Oddly enough, I do definitely remember watching the earlier and better known Lost in Beijing by the same director and also starring Fan Bingbing. Still, this must have been before I started writing about films extensively and I like to think that my ability to properly evaluate and appreciate cinema has improved since then so rewatching it was fine.
So I’ve just gotten around to starting Fallout 4. Since this looks like it’s going to take a long time to play, I thought I’d also check out its free to play companion game which was good enough to get some praise on Broken Forum. It plays a lot like those free games on Facebook or whatever, though it’s not too annoying and is charming enough. You can indeed spend real money to speed things but as far as I can tell, everything that you can buy can indeed be obtained in-game so it’s honest in that regard.
So this is another classic that I never got around to properly watching before this. As my wife noted, even if you don’t know this film you definitely will know the score by Ennio Morricone, iconic as it is. This film is officially the final part of the so-called Dollars trilogy directed by Sergio Leone and starring Clint Eastwood. But this is by far the most famous and successful of the three and it’s not as if continuity matters so I picked it to watch first. I definitely will get around to watching at least the first film at some point however.
Every time I feel like I’m getting a handle on world cinema I am chagrined to discover how much I have yet to learn. This was a recommendation by our cinephile friend. It’s made by Hong Sang-soo, an independent South Korean filmmaker who has been around for a while but this is the first time I’ve seen his work.