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Monthly culture: March 2023
02MAR23: The Wedding Party 2 (Akinmolayan, 2018) -- NetflixAccidental marriage proposal, snobby Brits talking about being in the line of succession, nobody talking about money or expense: entertaining, but ended rather than stopped. I hadn't seen the first film so probably missed out on a lot of the humour.
03MAR23: What's Love Got to Do With It (Kapur, 2022) -- PictureHouseSweet, if somewhat cliched, romcom. Kaz is Muslim, and decides to go the arranged-marriage route; his next door neighbour and best friend Zoe is a film-maker, and decides to document Kaz's marriage. I liked the bride, who was not what she seemed and was very honest about it; Zoe's dating strategies (get drunk have sex) annoyed me; Kaz was great. Shazad Latif and Lily James had good chemistry: Zoe's mother (Emma Thompson) stole the show, obviously.
09MAR23: Troll (Uthaug, 2022) -- NetflixNorwegian film, featuring a rag-tag bunch of heroes led by a woman paleontologist, who gets referred to by her surname; a female geek (Sigrid), with stickered laptop; dull weather as an actual plot point; stilted dialogue (but the cast do a great job, considering). Ancient legends, a polite military and a very mundane solution. Great fun.
12MAR23: Orlando (Potter, 1992) + Look at Me (Potter, 2022) + Sally Potter / Tilda Swinton intro -- PictureHouse30th anniversary screening: I hadn't seen Orlando for years, and was surprised at how much I'd forgotten. The introduction by Swinton ('The film is not about gender, it's about not having boundaries') and Potter ('it's about impermanence') was interesting and exuberant, and the main feature was prefaced by a new short by Potter, 'Look at Me', featuring Javier Bardem and Chris Rock. Intriguing but inconclusive.
16MAR23: Okja (Bong Joon Ho, 2017) -- NetflixFrom the director of Parasite, co-written by Jon Ronson (of The Men Who Stare at Goats fame), featuring Tilda Swinton and a giant, genetically-engineered pig (the eponymous Okja), who becomes friends with a girl named Mija (stunning performance by Ahn Seo-hyun). Mija wants to save Okja from being reclaimed by the evil Mirando corporation, who say they will make Okja a star but actually mean they will make her into meat. Luckily the Animal Liberation Front are here to help ... Really moving, beautifully shot, good CGI and great performances.
17MAR23: 65 (Beck & Woods, 2023) -- PictureHouseDinosaurs! But also ugh, subtitles (spoilery ones) in the cinema, where you can't turn them off. This film was better than expected, though my expectations were pretty low and were basically 'Dinosaurs! (and Adam Driver)'. Pilot Mills (Driver) crash-lands on an alien planet. He finds a fellow survivor (Ariana Greenblatt) but they don't speak the same language. Some dinosaurs happen, mostly only partially glimpsed -- a head here, a tail there. (Cue expostulations from me about how anatomy doesn't work like that. The pterosaurs were good, though.) There's a light in the sky. Mills and his new friend escape.
Note that the title is ridiculous, too: it's supposed to evoke '65 million years ago' i.e. the Cretaceous–Tertiary (K–T) extinction event, but the characters are not from Earth so they would neither know nor care whether it is 65 or 65 million or 6.5 local years before or after anything. Also, typical colonial mindset (though to be fair they are not trying to colonise): 'there's something alien out there!'. No, that's a native life form...
Also, the technology had a curiously old-fashionoed feel -- like something from a 1970s TV series.
23MAR23: We Have a Ghost (Landon, 2023) -- NetflixAnthony Mackie as a father with some issues; Jahi Di'Allo Winston stealing every scene as his son, who interacts with, films and befriends the ghost in the attic of the family's new house; David Harbour as the ghost, who has a backstory. There are some female characters who mostly don't get much to do, though there's an entertaining fake psychic. All was fine until the middle where the characters interacted negatively with the local police: haha, see the Black kid run from the white cops! I found this uncomfortable, given recent high-profile cops/Black Americans interactions, and I am not a Black American. Really didn't fit the tone of the rest of the film. And after that it all seemed to fall apart a bit: insufficient foreshadowing, plot elements appearing out of nowhere. Some good elements but didn't cohere.
25MAR23: Ruddigore (Gilbert and Sullivan) -- Wiltons Music HallRidiculous plot (predatory ghosts, curses, professional bridesmaids and slacker aristocrats) delivered with gusto, aplomb and great good cheer. Some familiar tunes, as ever with G&S (though I did not grow up with their music, which my parents abhorred), and some nice modernisations: of the family portraits, lately come to life to berate the current earl, it's said "I shall give them all to the National Gallery and people will throw soup at them". The bridesmaids ('they sing choruses in public!') were especially fab.
29MAR23: Ursula Le Guin's Space Crone: So Mayer, SF Said and Kate Hardie in conversation -- Barbican LibraryInitially novelist Irenosen Okojie was to form part of the discussion, but due to illness we had SF Said (author of Varjak Paw) instead. Neither he nor Kate Hardie had read Le Guin as children.
Topics of discussion included: How Le Guin changed her mind, and how she changed minds; 'not disappearing your mistakes'; S F Said on Le Guin's review of Boneland, 'about a writer rethinking his work -- a thing she was doing herself'; the reminder above her desk, "is it true? is it necessary? is it compassionate?"; 'the radical empathy that only fiction can achieve' (S F Said); 'the humour of her daring' (Kate Hardie, with particular reference to 'Coming of Age in Karhide').
I did not know that Le Guin was at the same school at the same time as PKD - allegedly they never met.
Space Crone (currently only available in paper format) contains a lot of material not currently in print in the UK, mostly non-fiction but a few short stories (including 'Sur').
As a result of this book-group chat I spent a happy afternoon reading Le Guin's blog, with particular reference to her posts about her cat Pard.
30MAR23: Akhenaten (Philip Glass) -- English National OperaSpectacular staging on different levels, like a tomb painting. American countertenor Anthony Roth Constanzo, singing Akhenaten, made his entrance completely nude, and costumes were imposed upon him; formally, ritually dressed in a stately gown reminiscent of Elizabeth I. Other costumes were a blend of historical periods and different cultures -- there was very little that was distinctively 'Egyptian'.
Glass used Victorian translations of the Ancient Egyptian texts: I wonder how the flavour would differ with modern translations? And the music was hypnotic, dramatic, rhythmic (the latter emphasised by the jugglers who appeared again and again, eventually dropping all the balls: a metaphor for our time).
31MAR23: Dungeons and Dragons: Honor Among Thieves (Daley & Goldstein, 2023) -- PictureHouseAn uninspired script made entertaining by some great performances, mostly from Hugh Grant and a gelatinous cube (we saw its insides!). Strong theme of found family; some good one-liners and feisty females; echoes of Thor: Ragnarok, except without a suitable Loki-figure. Or the Led Zep soundtrack promised by the trailers ...
03MAR23: What's Love Got to Do With It (Kapur, 2022) -- PictureHouseSweet, if somewhat cliched, romcom. Kaz is Muslim, and decides to go the arranged-marriage route; his next door neighbour and best friend Zoe is a film-maker, and decides to document Kaz's marriage. I liked the bride, who was not what she seemed and was very honest about it; Zoe's dating strategies (get drunk have sex) annoyed me; Kaz was great. Shazad Latif and Lily James had good chemistry: Zoe's mother (Emma Thompson) stole the show, obviously.
09MAR23: Troll (Uthaug, 2022) -- NetflixNorwegian film, featuring a rag-tag bunch of heroes led by a woman paleontologist, who gets referred to by her surname; a female geek (Sigrid), with stickered laptop; dull weather as an actual plot point; stilted dialogue (but the cast do a great job, considering). Ancient legends, a polite military and a very mundane solution. Great fun.
12MAR23: Orlando (Potter, 1992) + Look at Me (Potter, 2022) + Sally Potter / Tilda Swinton intro -- PictureHouse30th anniversary screening: I hadn't seen Orlando for years, and was surprised at how much I'd forgotten. The introduction by Swinton ('The film is not about gender, it's about not having boundaries') and Potter ('it's about impermanence') was interesting and exuberant, and the main feature was prefaced by a new short by Potter, 'Look at Me', featuring Javier Bardem and Chris Rock. Intriguing but inconclusive.
16MAR23: Okja (Bong Joon Ho, 2017) -- NetflixFrom the director of Parasite, co-written by Jon Ronson (of The Men Who Stare at Goats fame), featuring Tilda Swinton and a giant, genetically-engineered pig (the eponymous Okja), who becomes friends with a girl named Mija (stunning performance by Ahn Seo-hyun). Mija wants to save Okja from being reclaimed by the evil Mirando corporation, who say they will make Okja a star but actually mean they will make her into meat. Luckily the Animal Liberation Front are here to help ... Really moving, beautifully shot, good CGI and great performances.
17MAR23: 65 (Beck & Woods, 2023) -- PictureHouseDinosaurs! But also ugh, subtitles (spoilery ones) in the cinema, where you can't turn them off. This film was better than expected, though my expectations were pretty low and were basically 'Dinosaurs! (and Adam Driver)'. Pilot Mills (Driver) crash-lands on an alien planet. He finds a fellow survivor (Ariana Greenblatt) but they don't speak the same language. Some dinosaurs happen, mostly only partially glimpsed -- a head here, a tail there. (Cue expostulations from me about how anatomy doesn't work like that. The pterosaurs were good, though.) There's a light in the sky. Mills and his new friend escape.
Note that the title is ridiculous, too: it's supposed to evoke '65 million years ago' i.e. the Cretaceous–Tertiary (K–T) extinction event, but the characters are not from Earth so they would neither know nor care whether it is 65 or 65 million or 6.5 local years before or after anything. Also, typical colonial mindset (though to be fair they are not trying to colonise): 'there's something alien out there!'. No, that's a native life form...
Also, the technology had a curiously old-fashionoed feel -- like something from a 1970s TV series.
23MAR23: We Have a Ghost (Landon, 2023) -- NetflixAnthony Mackie as a father with some issues; Jahi Di'Allo Winston stealing every scene as his son, who interacts with, films and befriends the ghost in the attic of the family's new house; David Harbour as the ghost, who has a backstory. There are some female characters who mostly don't get much to do, though there's an entertaining fake psychic. All was fine until the middle where the characters interacted negatively with the local police: haha, see the Black kid run from the white cops! I found this uncomfortable, given recent high-profile cops/Black Americans interactions, and I am not a Black American. Really didn't fit the tone of the rest of the film. And after that it all seemed to fall apart a bit: insufficient foreshadowing, plot elements appearing out of nowhere. Some good elements but didn't cohere.
25MAR23: Ruddigore (Gilbert and Sullivan) -- Wiltons Music HallRidiculous plot (predatory ghosts, curses, professional bridesmaids and slacker aristocrats) delivered with gusto, aplomb and great good cheer. Some familiar tunes, as ever with G&S (though I did not grow up with their music, which my parents abhorred), and some nice modernisations: of the family portraits, lately come to life to berate the current earl, it's said "I shall give them all to the National Gallery and people will throw soup at them". The bridesmaids ('they sing choruses in public!') were especially fab.
29MAR23: Ursula Le Guin's Space Crone: So Mayer, SF Said and Kate Hardie in conversation -- Barbican LibraryInitially novelist Irenosen Okojie was to form part of the discussion, but due to illness we had SF Said (author of Varjak Paw) instead. Neither he nor Kate Hardie had read Le Guin as children.
Topics of discussion included: How Le Guin changed her mind, and how she changed minds; 'not disappearing your mistakes'; S F Said on Le Guin's review of Boneland, 'about a writer rethinking his work -- a thing she was doing herself'; the reminder above her desk, "is it true? is it necessary? is it compassionate?"; 'the radical empathy that only fiction can achieve' (S F Said); 'the humour of her daring' (Kate Hardie, with particular reference to 'Coming of Age in Karhide').
I did not know that Le Guin was at the same school at the same time as PKD - allegedly they never met.
Space Crone (currently only available in paper format) contains a lot of material not currently in print in the UK, mostly non-fiction but a few short stories (including 'Sur').
As a result of this book-group chat I spent a happy afternoon reading Le Guin's blog, with particular reference to her posts about her cat Pard.
30MAR23: Akhenaten (Philip Glass) -- English National OperaSpectacular staging on different levels, like a tomb painting. American countertenor Anthony Roth Constanzo, singing Akhenaten, made his entrance completely nude, and costumes were imposed upon him; formally, ritually dressed in a stately gown reminiscent of Elizabeth I. Other costumes were a blend of historical periods and different cultures -- there was very little that was distinctively 'Egyptian'.
Glass used Victorian translations of the Ancient Egyptian texts: I wonder how the flavour would differ with modern translations? And the music was hypnotic, dramatic, rhythmic (the latter emphasised by the jugglers who appeared again and again, eventually dropping all the balls: a metaphor for our time).
31MAR23: Dungeons and Dragons: Honor Among Thieves (Daley & Goldstein, 2023) -- PictureHouseAn uninspired script made entertaining by some great performances, mostly from Hugh Grant and a gelatinous cube (we saw its insides!). Strong theme of found family; some good one-liners and feisty females; echoes of Thor: Ragnarok, except without a suitable Loki-figure. Or the Led Zep soundtrack promised by the trailers ...