I’ve been trying to be more up to date on current science-fiction books and this is one of the most talked about ones recently. It is the debut novel of its author, Rivers Solomon, who self-identifies using the pronoun they and them, and indeed many of the characters in it have atypical genders. I was also attracted to its premise of reimagining the scenario of black slaves in the America South on board a generation ship. In the end however I didn’t like it as much as I thought I would as it leans so heavily on its inspirational sources that it’s barely much of a story on its own.
So I finally got around to watching this because, hey, it was directed by Michael Mann. This turned out to be a disaster that is completely unindicative of the work that he is capable of. I was never a fan of the television show this was based on but from what I know this film has no relationship with the show beyond the shared name. I really do not understand what Mann thought he was doing with this film.
This is a rather obscure film, set in Norway and with dialogue in English, Norwegian and a smattering each of Mandarin and German. Yet the director Rob Tregenza is American. It’s also meant as a showcase for the poetry of Norwegian poet Tarjei Vesaas which limits its potential audience even more. Though it’s a beautiful film and I’m receptive to its message, my unfamiliarity with the poetry makes it difficult to forge a strong emotional connection with it.
This is of course the 2013 reboot of the franchise that was distributed for free not too long ago. I rarely bother to claim all those free games nowadays as I know I won’t have the time to play them. But I had never actually played a single game in this series before so I thought why not. Plus something straightforward and relatively easy to play after how intense and demanding Il-2 Sturmovik is. I’m actually still playing that a little every day as I slowly work through the Stalingrad and getting a little better every time.
Martin Scorsese keeps making these insanely long epics. I understand that his latest The Irishman is three and a half hours long. I will have to watch it eventually but the length is just so daunting. This one is a more modest three hours and while we did watch it over two days, it proved to be a slick, fast-paced watch because it’s packed full of details about how the Las Vegas casino scene in the 1970s really worked.
This is another film by Thailand’s most celebrated filmmaker Apichatpong Weerasethakul thought it predates the other two we’ve already watched. It consists of two distinct halves, one seemingly set in the past in rural Thailand and the other in the present in Bangkok. Some characters and situations recur but there doesn’t otherwise seem to be any connection. Unfortunately while I liked the cinematography and the atmosphere, I couldn’t really make head or tails of what the director was trying to do here.
