Dancing Around the Four Sides

Well, back to winter for us. Overcast, grey, dreary, damp, and cold. :-P

Was saddened to open up the Guardian today (it wasn't in the headlines of the Washington Post yet) and see that the great actor Bruno Ganz had passed away. Yes, Downfall was a great film, but I'll always remember him in Wings of Desire, as the angel who wanted to be human, with its gorgeous black-and-white cinematography and vision of public libraries as sacred spaces. I described it last year as exquisite and talky and enthralling and goofy, and I'd still go with that. :-)

I want it to be warm and sunny again. Sigh.

You know how sometimes you catch bits and pieces of a movie over a few months, and then you come in like halfway through and see some more, and then you come in halfway through and get to see the ending, and then FINALLY you get in at the beginning and watch it ALL THE WAY THROUGH and you're like holy shit I've been missing all this the whole time?

Dear Reader, that was me and The Prestige, the movie that the Nolan brothers (Jonathan and Christopher) made before they made Inception, and before one of them (Jonathan) created Person of Interest. This is one amazing movie. It is not a nice movie, not by any means, but good god it is worth watching. All the way through.

Grey, drizzly, dreary, chilly, all the y-words. We turned on the heat for the first time this season yesterday and were treated to that wonderfully autumnal scent of burning dust (ugh). The good thing is the rain and chill seems to have tamped down the mosquito population somewhat. Also I put fleece sheets on the guest bed and flannel sheets on the master, and they are both so nice and cozy (both beds have electric blankets too). (Don't @ me; I get cold at the drop of a hat.)

This is a very cool and amazing article from the Guardian -- Peter Jackson's movie project for the centenary of the end of WWI. He took original film footage and newsreels and basically DID MAGICAL THINGS with them. The trailer for the finished product is included in the article and has to be seen to be believed. They Shall Not Grow Old, article and film trailer.

So. Last night I watched The Shape of Water, the Guillermo del Toro movie with the mute woman and a Fish Guy. And ... I liked it. I liked it a lot. I thought del Toro did an amazing job of bringing time and place to life and got terrific performances out of his cast, especially Richard Jenkins, Octavia Spencer, and Michael Shannon. I did think it was a tiny bit too long (even at 123 minutes) and even though, as I said, I thought Richard Jenkins was excellent I would've cut one of his scenes. And another small problem was that (to me) Michael Stuhlbarg and David Hewlett looked too much alike, and especially when del Toro was setting up the side plots I was confused as to who was involved with what. BUT ANYWAY. I would recommend. Two thumbs up.

Tired and cranky today because apparently my back did not appreciate twisting and turning in order to reach something in the pantry yesterday, and in return graced me with muscle spasms and aches the entire night. Still very achey. Getting old is not for amateurs, chiclets. Good news, though -- had my six-month checkup on Thursday and my A1C was 5.6. Doc said I could probably stop taking metformin and just stay with the Trulicity (once a week) if I wanted. IDK; it's something to consider, but I'm also wary of upsetting the "balance." We'll see.

Here are a few of the books I read recently ...

The Wanderers, by Meg Howrey. Three astronauts train for the first crewed mission to Mars, in a vast Utah simulation. I liked this a lot -- the voices of the astronauts are distinctive, and in some instances, very funny -- but I felt as though the author introduced a Chekhov's gun about halfway through, and then never fired it. Combine that with some nagging questions in my mind about the "simulation," and this book left me feeling dissatisfied. But yes. I liked the astronauts a lot.

Freshwater, by Akwaeke Emezi. This is an amazing book, but potential readers should probably be aware that it comes with a BOATLOAD of warnings -- self-harm, suicidal ideation, rape, mental illness, and probably more. This is the life of Ada, a young Nigerian woman inhabited by Nigerian spirits, some of whom control and speak through her. There's an interview here with the author. It explains a lot about the book, and it's very clear "Ada" is a stand-in for the author's own life. It's a really short book, only about 230 pages, and I think could easily be read in one sitting by a determined reader. Overall, it's a powerful story by an unusual narrator.

The Impossible Lives of Greta Wells, by Andrew Sean Greer. This is an older novel by the guy who wrote Less (which I loved), and I'm sorry to say I didn't find it nearly as good. Time travel, variations on love, variations on death ... it should've worked, but it just didn't. For me, anyway. :D

ANYWAY. As I said yesterday, I'm now on Ron Chernow's Grant, and omg it is good.

Also, here is a short story (and it really is short) by Robert Olen Butler that I read this morning and really liked -- Help Me Find My Spaceman Lover.

Oh, and we watched the new(ish) version of Murder on the Orient Express last night. It wasn't a great film, by any means, but neither was it as bad as the IMDB reviews suggest. We both enjoyed it, and I'd watch it again without any hesitation.

Steamy as hell outside. We've gotten an astonishing amount of August rain. :D

Hot and windy today.

Last night we watched Kingsman: The Golden Circle on HBO, and oh my god it is one big bundle of stupid. There were some good bits (especially the very first Big Fight scene, set in a moving taxi cab and scored to Prince's "Let's Go Crazy"), but overall omg. O_o

Anyway, now reading Hideo Yokoyama's Six Four, which is a fascinating Japanese police procedural. I have to say that so far (I'm a bit more than halfway through) it's all tell and no show, and it took around sixty pages, give or take, for it to click with me. But once it did, it's been an absorbing read.

Nice day here; we have the windows and back door open.

TCM was showing The Swimmer (1968) last night, and while I didn't set out to watch the whole thing, that's what I ended up doing. I had seen it once before, years and years ago. I remember it felt to me then like a super-extended Twilight Zone episode, and yep, that's still what it feels like.

Burt Lancaster is terrific as the guy who decides, one fine spring day, to swim across the county in one day, back to his house, using the swimming pools of his neighbors as "stepping stones." As the film progresses, it becomes clear that Something is Very Wrong -- the people he encounters seem to remember the past couple of years differently than him, folks who were formerly friendly now order him off their property, cutting remarks are made about unpaid bills and strained family relationships. A day that started out as spring is autumn by the end. As for the ending ... well, let's just echo Talking Heads and say, "This is not my beautiful house!"

( Read more... )

So, anyway. Good movie with a flawed score, very much worth watching.

Just outside, refilling the sunflower seed bird feeder, and omg it is so MILD out. Weather site says it is 68 degrees (20 Celsius), and I believe it.

Watched the middle and end of the movie Nocturnal Animals the other night. Have any of you guys seen this? It's Jake Gyllenhaal and Amy Adams as this married couple, and then she dumps him and he writes a book and sends her the manuscript, and as she reads the manuscript the movie starts to follow both Jake and Amy's story AND the story of the couple in the book manuscript (Jake (in a double role) and another actress named Isla Fisher). AND! The book manuscript story is DARK and VIOLENT and GRIM, and oh did I mention it was DARK AND VIOLENT holy shit. Anyway, there's that, and a few other things, and then it was over and I was sitting there like WTF DID I JUST WATCH. It does have Michael Shannon in it (as a hard-bitten Texas lawman) so there is that. Also it was directed by Tom Ford, so parts of it are very ... arty, and there is at least one legitimately terrifying "jump scare" involving a cell phone.

In other news, I am a bit more than three-quarters of the way through the Laura Ingalls Wilder bio. It is a long book, chiclets. A long book.

1) Beautiful here today -- bright blue sky with not a cloud to be seen. It was like this yesterday too, so I took the violas (Johnny-jump-ups) and a small French lavender that I had bought and potted and watered them. Layla helped by trying to eat the potting soil. :D

2) Watched the first episode of Counterpart on Starz and liked it a lot. Stories like this, of parallel worlds right next to ours, inevitably remind me of China Miéville's The City & the City (I thought the same thing about the movie Midnight Special). I always enjoy seeing J.K. Simmons, but I thought Harry Lloyd was also terrific as the bureaucrat Mr. Quayle. Looking forward to the next episode.

3) Watched the first episode of The Alienist on TNT and ... was not impressed. I thought it was okay, and I'll watch the next one, but I didn't think the characters of Kreizler and John Moore (Daniel Brühl and Luke Evans) had any chemistry to speak of and were bouncing off each other instead of meshing. I mean, according to the show's exposition, they're supposed to be friends, or at least acquaintances, and I just didn't get that feeling at all. I was also fairly unimpressed by the guy playing Theodore Roosevelt (Brian Geraghty), although apparently he's been very good in other stuff so IDK. Otherwise, this was a big meh for me.

4) Watched Wings of Desire on Turner Classic Movies the other night for the first time in years, and it was just as exquisite and talky and enthralling and goofy as I'd remembered. So much love for the angels in their big woolen overcoats! I know now that this film was the source for my idea that public libraries are sacred spaces, which I later used in the WIP of a post-apocalypse Housefic in which people worship inside the ruins of an abandoned library. It also intrigued me that Wim Wenders (and Peter Handke) were asking the same questions Terrence Malick is asking today in his films --

Why am I me, and why not you? Why am I here, and why not there? When did time begin, and where does space end? Isn't life under the sun just a dream? Isn't what I see, hear, and smell just the mirage of a world before the world? Does evil actually exist, and are there people who are really evil? How can it be that I, who am I, wasn't before I was, and that sometime I, the one I am, no longer will be the one I am?

5) And I was going to say that I'm three-quarters of the way through The Nix, but I think that quote is a good place to end. Five things make a post. :D

But it's unclear if we'll get anything -- rain, sleet, or snow -- out of it. It was so bright and sunny this morning, and now it's just ... dark. I refilled both bird feeders and hung a third suet basket; Layla helped by running around and barking at things. She was three years old last November, and I noticed the other day that she's finally starting to fill out a little in the chest and look more like a Black Lab (according to her DNA test, she's half Golden Retriever).

Watched The Fate of the Furious on HBO the other night, and omg it is big and dumb and noisy. I do like seeing Jason Statham, though, and it was a nice surprise to see Helen Mirren (!) pop up in an unexpected guest role. :D

Currently reading Ashley Hay's The Body in the Clouds, which is about the building of the Sydney Harbour Bridge and which reminds me quite a bit of a David Mitchell novel (something like Ghostwritten or Cloud Atlas), because it follows the intersections of three characters throughout different periods in time. I will probably finish it tonight -- not sure what's next up.

Good football yesterday ... we would've liked to have seen New Orleans win, but oh well. I was telling friends later that I was lying awake last night thinking about Why I Don't Like Some Football Teams, and the list was like -- this team has a rapist QB, that team has a psychotic narcissist owner, this other team has a rapist QB, that team over there's owner is a big buddy of Potatohead McBumblefuck ... UGH THIS IS WHY WE CAN'T HAVE NICE THINGS. :D