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Media This Past Week
Jul. 2nd, 2020 08:11 amWatching: Enjoyed the National Theatre's Midsummer Night's Dream and started a FanFare thread about it.
Leonard and I are now partway through Season 3 of Schitt's Creek. Some thoughts so far:
* I am always surprised by the moment an episode ends and the credits start to roll. It always feels like "oh I guess that 2 out of three of the plots will not be resolved fully". A different rhythm or comedic expectation or something.
* I find it easier to relate to and sympathize with David and Jonny than Alexis and Moira, and I'm reflecting on to what extent that's about the plots and the characters and the actors, and to what extent (if any) that's internalized sexism. Of course I can more easily relate to a goth art nerd and an entrepreneur than to an actress and a carefree socialite. But still.
* There's a moment where Jonny is drunk and walks into a room and in that moment Leonard and I could see how much Eugene Levy does, or can do, an EXCELLENT Peter Falk impression.
* Because Leonard and I saw a season of The Great Canadian Baking Show (in which Daniel Levy co-hosts) before we saw Schitt's Creek, every once in a while we pause and give David a baking-related line.
And I watched an excellent Darius Kazemi talk called "How I Won the Lottery" -- it's in two parts, so if you watch it, note that the first part is not representative of the second.
Listening: The latest "Jedi Mind Tricks" was neat -- I love how Mike puts together a set of stuff that I usually had never heard of that tickles my ears nicely. I got a Laurie Anderson vibe from the Woodkid piece.
Roadhouse 797, "pragmatic optimisim; like things will be okay, even if the reality right now is a little tough", and Roadhouse 798, with Chicago blues.
Playing: You guessed it: Animal Crossing. We are now well-off-enough in Bells that we don't, for instance, pick all our exotic fruit every day to sell, and are adding more stairways and bridges to make it more comfortable to navigate the whole island without needing a ladder or vaulting pole. I hear there's a software update coming that I'm going to like but I have avoided spoilers.
Reading: I finished Servant to the Crown (followup to last week's midweek entry) and will not be reading the rest. A substantial part of the appeal of these books is meant to be that they have realistic fight scenes, and maybe they do. But I need the POV characters in a fighty book to also be fairly wise about whether to get into a fight. Our super-grizzled veteran Gerald is supposedly a solid fighter and sergeant, who knows from experience how things can go down in the city's poorer neighborhoods. So when his young charge, a noblewoman, wants to see the city slums for the first time, he could easily foresee that this might lead to trouble, and he doesn't do any of the preventive things that he ought to. It's like in my review of the technothriller Hackster -- it breaks my suspension of disbelief if I can easily see that a character who is supposed to be an expert is having a hard time with something I know is relatively easy.
I still don't know what caused past Sumana to want to look into those books. Maybe a social media post somewhere.
Zen Cho's The Order of the Pure Moon Reflected in Water! A treat! Like so much of Cho's work -- funny, sweet, fast-moving, characters making realistic decisions and being real with each other. I am cis and I am curious what nonbinary and trans reviewers think of the book, because of the treatment of a trans character -- seemed fine to me but I'd defer to them. And I feel embarrassed to say this, but in this book I felt, more than usual with Cho's work, that I was missing stuff because I'm not Malaysian, both context and "wait does that word mean what I think?"... stuff that it's hard to look up. I feel embarrassed to say this because, like, that's not a problem with the book, Cho should write for her audience and I still had a good time and liked the story and the characters. There's a level of meaning here I can't access and that makes me sad, is all. Like, I did not know, until Cho mentioned it in publicity materials about the book, ANYTHING about the Malayan Emergency, so I'm glad I at least read that Wikipedia page before I started the book, but there's some stuff I know I'm not getting.
Also, more than in, say, Terracotta Bride (her speculative novelette), at the end of the book I really felt a "what happens next?"! urge. Maybe I just feel this way about novellas/novelettes that end in a particular way. The first time I read my husband's piece "Mallory" (about 11,000 words), I came to the ending and I called Leonard and was quite angry with him before I calmed down and said, it's a good story and I like it.
Because of a recommendation by an acquaintance I read The Flatshare by Beth O'Leary. It is a sweet romance of the "no sex on the page" variety. Fun timepass. Content note that one of the point of view characters is dealing with the aftereffects of an abusive ex-boyfriend.
Leonard and I are now partway through Season 3 of Schitt's Creek. Some thoughts so far:
* I am always surprised by the moment an episode ends and the credits start to roll. It always feels like "oh I guess that 2 out of three of the plots will not be resolved fully". A different rhythm or comedic expectation or something.
* I find it easier to relate to and sympathize with David and Jonny than Alexis and Moira, and I'm reflecting on to what extent that's about the plots and the characters and the actors, and to what extent (if any) that's internalized sexism. Of course I can more easily relate to a goth art nerd and an entrepreneur than to an actress and a carefree socialite. But still.
* There's a moment where Jonny is drunk and walks into a room and in that moment Leonard and I could see how much Eugene Levy does, or can do, an EXCELLENT Peter Falk impression.
* Because Leonard and I saw a season of The Great Canadian Baking Show (in which Daniel Levy co-hosts) before we saw Schitt's Creek, every once in a while we pause and give David a baking-related line.
And I watched an excellent Darius Kazemi talk called "How I Won the Lottery" -- it's in two parts, so if you watch it, note that the first part is not representative of the second.
Listening: The latest "Jedi Mind Tricks" was neat -- I love how Mike puts together a set of stuff that I usually had never heard of that tickles my ears nicely. I got a Laurie Anderson vibe from the Woodkid piece.
Roadhouse 797, "pragmatic optimisim; like things will be okay, even if the reality right now is a little tough", and Roadhouse 798, with Chicago blues.
Playing: You guessed it: Animal Crossing. We are now well-off-enough in Bells that we don't, for instance, pick all our exotic fruit every day to sell, and are adding more stairways and bridges to make it more comfortable to navigate the whole island without needing a ladder or vaulting pole. I hear there's a software update coming that I'm going to like but I have avoided spoilers.
Reading: I finished Servant to the Crown (followup to last week's midweek entry) and will not be reading the rest. A substantial part of the appeal of these books is meant to be that they have realistic fight scenes, and maybe they do. But I need the POV characters in a fighty book to also be fairly wise about whether to get into a fight. Our super-grizzled veteran Gerald is supposedly a solid fighter and sergeant, who knows from experience how things can go down in the city's poorer neighborhoods. So when his young charge, a noblewoman, wants to see the city slums for the first time, he could easily foresee that this might lead to trouble, and he doesn't do any of the preventive things that he ought to. It's like in my review of the technothriller Hackster -- it breaks my suspension of disbelief if I can easily see that a character who is supposed to be an expert is having a hard time with something I know is relatively easy.
I still don't know what caused past Sumana to want to look into those books. Maybe a social media post somewhere.
Zen Cho's The Order of the Pure Moon Reflected in Water! A treat! Like so much of Cho's work -- funny, sweet, fast-moving, characters making realistic decisions and being real with each other. I am cis and I am curious what nonbinary and trans reviewers think of the book, because of the treatment of a trans character -- seemed fine to me but I'd defer to them. And I feel embarrassed to say this, but in this book I felt, more than usual with Cho's work, that I was missing stuff because I'm not Malaysian, both context and "wait does that word mean what I think?"... stuff that it's hard to look up. I feel embarrassed to say this because, like, that's not a problem with the book, Cho should write for her audience and I still had a good time and liked the story and the characters. There's a level of meaning here I can't access and that makes me sad, is all. Like, I did not know, until Cho mentioned it in publicity materials about the book, ANYTHING about the Malayan Emergency, so I'm glad I at least read that Wikipedia page before I started the book, but there's some stuff I know I'm not getting.
Also, more than in, say, Terracotta Bride (her speculative novelette), at the end of the book I really felt a "what happens next?"! urge. Maybe I just feel this way about novellas/novelettes that end in a particular way. The first time I read my husband's piece "Mallory" (about 11,000 words), I came to the ending and I called Leonard and was quite angry with him before I calmed down and said, it's a good story and I like it.
Because of a recommendation by an acquaintance I read The Flatshare by Beth O'Leary. It is a sweet romance of the "no sex on the page" variety. Fun timepass. Content note that one of the point of view characters is dealing with the aftereffects of an abusive ex-boyfriend.
