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A Raft of Reviews for the New Year!
Jan. 7th, 2019 12:36 pmThe Thief of Bagdad:
The BFI had a showing of this fantasy adventure film from 1940, so my brother and I took a chance and went to see it. It won Oscars for visual effects and cinematography and I can see why as it was quite spectacular in scope and execution and, for the time, the effects were impressive. It was also tremendous fun, both exciting and funny, and a great deal less problematic than I was expecting. There were, of course, white actors playing non-white characters in the central roles, but the young Indian boy who played Abu was excellent and was arguably the hero of the film. The princess also got more to do than I thought she would. She was repeatedly captured and rescued, but showed admirable resistance and did her best to take opportunities to improve her situation under difficult circumstances. The film was clearly a huge inspiration for the animated Disney version of Aladdin - some of the scenes were directly translated and various of the characters and plot points were reused without too much alteration. Overall, I really enjoyed this.
Jaipur:
After the film, we found a table in the South Bank Centre and played this game, which my brother had received for his birthday. It involved collecting sets of resources to sell in the market, with more points being available for early sales, but also for larger sales. There was more strategy than we were expecting, and some of the decisions made were quite tricky. Amusingly, the first round ended in a double draw, with both of us earning 73 points and both of us having 4 bonus tokens (the first tie-break). I won on the second tie-break, with 17 resource tokens to my opponent's 16, so it was incredibly lose. The second round was less so, with me winning 79 points to 74, but it would have been a double draw again if my brother had acquired just one more camel and thus obtained the 5-point camel bonus. A fun and interesting game, made even more entertaining by the closeness of the scores.
James Tiptree Jnr: The Double Life of Alice B Sheldon:
This book by Julie Phillips is a biography of the 60s/70s sci-fi writer, James Tiptree Jnr, who was revealed to be a woman in the early 1980s. Tiptree's short stories got a lot of attention and praise at the time and won multiple awards, and many people carried on close and extensive letter-based friendships with 'him' for years. Alice Sheldon had a rich, varied and fascinating life outside of her literary persona, and the book is extremely interesting. It took me several weeks to read it, but it was well worth the time and effort. It explores all kinds of aspects of Alli's life, psychology, writing process and impact, and is very well written.
A Monster Calls:
My therapy homework for the new year involves exploring my fear of strong emotion. So, as a lifelong teacher's pet, I decided to do things right, and watched A Monster Calls in order to deliberately make myself upset. At first, I didn't think it was going to work. I sympathised with Connor's pain regarding his mother's illness and his intense isolation, but it didn't really affect me at an emotional level. But, once the feelings of the mother and grandmother came into play, I was utterly lost. I find this frequently in stories centering around children or teenagers these days - that I relate far more to the adult characters and am far more invested in what they suffer as the story plays out. I guess that's to be expected, since I have long been an adult myself. And the performances of both Sigourney Weaver and Felicity Jones were excellent. So yes, I cried. A lot. And I shall look forward to finding out from my therapist what purpose this was designed to serve!
Sorry To Bother You:
For a total contrast, last night I saw Sorry To Bother You, which has been on and off my viewing list for weeks. It's very weird and mostly enjoyable, exploring complex themes about the psychology of capitalism in an interesting way. It follows Cassius Green, who gets a commission-only tele-marketing job, and rises up the ranks in spectacular fashion to become very highly paid. But not all is as it seems, and he quickly discovers disturbing things about his biggest client. I think it would have had more impact if I hadn't already been spoilered for the more surprising aspects, but it was a good film and I would recommend it.
The BFI had a showing of this fantasy adventure film from 1940, so my brother and I took a chance and went to see it. It won Oscars for visual effects and cinematography and I can see why as it was quite spectacular in scope and execution and, for the time, the effects were impressive. It was also tremendous fun, both exciting and funny, and a great deal less problematic than I was expecting. There were, of course, white actors playing non-white characters in the central roles, but the young Indian boy who played Abu was excellent and was arguably the hero of the film. The princess also got more to do than I thought she would. She was repeatedly captured and rescued, but showed admirable resistance and did her best to take opportunities to improve her situation under difficult circumstances. The film was clearly a huge inspiration for the animated Disney version of Aladdin - some of the scenes were directly translated and various of the characters and plot points were reused without too much alteration. Overall, I really enjoyed this.
Jaipur:
After the film, we found a table in the South Bank Centre and played this game, which my brother had received for his birthday. It involved collecting sets of resources to sell in the market, with more points being available for early sales, but also for larger sales. There was more strategy than we were expecting, and some of the decisions made were quite tricky. Amusingly, the first round ended in a double draw, with both of us earning 73 points and both of us having 4 bonus tokens (the first tie-break). I won on the second tie-break, with 17 resource tokens to my opponent's 16, so it was incredibly lose. The second round was less so, with me winning 79 points to 74, but it would have been a double draw again if my brother had acquired just one more camel and thus obtained the 5-point camel bonus. A fun and interesting game, made even more entertaining by the closeness of the scores.
James Tiptree Jnr: The Double Life of Alice B Sheldon:
This book by Julie Phillips is a biography of the 60s/70s sci-fi writer, James Tiptree Jnr, who was revealed to be a woman in the early 1980s. Tiptree's short stories got a lot of attention and praise at the time and won multiple awards, and many people carried on close and extensive letter-based friendships with 'him' for years. Alice Sheldon had a rich, varied and fascinating life outside of her literary persona, and the book is extremely interesting. It took me several weeks to read it, but it was well worth the time and effort. It explores all kinds of aspects of Alli's life, psychology, writing process and impact, and is very well written.
A Monster Calls:
My therapy homework for the new year involves exploring my fear of strong emotion. So, as a lifelong teacher's pet, I decided to do things right, and watched A Monster Calls in order to deliberately make myself upset. At first, I didn't think it was going to work. I sympathised with Connor's pain regarding his mother's illness and his intense isolation, but it didn't really affect me at an emotional level. But, once the feelings of the mother and grandmother came into play, I was utterly lost. I find this frequently in stories centering around children or teenagers these days - that I relate far more to the adult characters and am far more invested in what they suffer as the story plays out. I guess that's to be expected, since I have long been an adult myself. And the performances of both Sigourney Weaver and Felicity Jones were excellent. So yes, I cried. A lot. And I shall look forward to finding out from my therapist what purpose this was designed to serve!
Sorry To Bother You:
For a total contrast, last night I saw Sorry To Bother You, which has been on and off my viewing list for weeks. It's very weird and mostly enjoyable, exploring complex themes about the psychology of capitalism in an interesting way. It follows Cassius Green, who gets a commission-only tele-marketing job, and rises up the ranks in spectacular fashion to become very highly paid. But not all is as it seems, and he quickly discovers disturbing things about his biggest client. I think it would have had more impact if I hadn't already been spoilered for the more surprising aspects, but it was a good film and I would recommend it.
