Once again, I had no idea that this was another first book of a trilogy instead of a standalone. In retrospect I guess the titles were an obvious clue. The Fifth Season won the Hugo Award for Best Novel for 2016 and the second book The Obelisk Gate won the same award for 2017. Then again, author N.K. Jemisin is hardly a stranger to the awards circuit. This however is the first book I’ve read by her as I’ve been out of the loop for a while.
This film made the lists of some critics’ most notable films a couple of years ago but I had a very difficult time tracking it down. I think this is at least partially because while it was certainly notable, it wasn’t particularly successful. It’s a Portuguese film by Pedro Costa and one of the main reasons it was notable that it is almost completely indecipherable, being close to an experimental film with hardly any plot.
I remember watching the trailer for this in the cinemas and coming away with the impression that this was fairly generic Disney fare transposed on top of Polynesian mythology. It didn’t help that Dwayne Johnson appeared to be playing a character identical to his real-life persona and I find him annoying. But then months after its release, I noticed a stream of posts on Broken Forum praising it. As it turned out, Johnson does indeed sort of play himself, but the film is smart enough to mock his persona, which makes all the difference.
I’ve tried visual novels before. Needless to say I’m not a big fan of them. I do dig how they sometimes incorporate substantial game mechanics, as in Long Live the Queen, but they mainly seem like a poor man’s adventure game to me, especially since almost all of them are about developing a romantic relationship. This one intrigued me because it has a detective game element build around the visual novel and as far as I know detective games are rather rare.
If you’re anything like me, this film’s title is a subject of some confusion. After all, today when we think of the word ‘network’, we think in terms of computer and communications networks. The last thing that would come to mind is a television network. Yet this is indeed what it’s about and it turns out to be an impressively prescient film by Sidney Lumet who once again blows me away with his acute sense of insightful social commentary.
The only feature film director Fede Álvarez made before this was the reboot of Evil Dead. I noticed that as I’m a big fan of the original one by Sam Raimi but ultimately passed over watching it due to its atrocious ratings. This recent release however gained plenty of attention from critics and has a more than respectable Rotten Tomatoes rating. It even rated a mention in the Crash Course Film History series of videos I’ve been following on YouTube. That’s more than enough to be worth a shot I think.
Asghar Farhadi remains, in my opinion, one of the best currently active directors when it comes to the pure drama of everyday life, and I was immensely pleased that The Salesman duly won the Academy Award for Best Foreign Film. I had not of course watched it yet but regarded the award as an American acknowledgement of his career to date so when I learned that it would be shown in cinemas here in Malaysia made sure to watch it there as a show of support.