What I've been doing lately 1
A strong recommendation for Look Back (2024), thoughts on Ti West's X trilogy, along with a smattering of books/videogames I've been digging into.
I thought I’d create a regular space in between the regular bi-weekly pieces sharing what I’ve recently been watching, reading, and playing. These aren’t polished thoughts, merely me processing all the media streaming into my eyeballs. As my friend Eli has been telling me, the act of writing is thinking. Sometimes it’s okay to lose oneself in aimless thought, it feels like I am sorting my mental cabinets, and, as we know, there is life changing magic in tidying up.
Films
Look Back (2024)
This is the frontrunner for my film of the year and it’s not even long enough to be considered a feature. The linework in this is gorgeous. There’s an elegant simplicity to the montages in this, and its straightforward overall narrative structure. It sings. The music will play you like an instrument. Ready yourself, bring a friend. An easy entry into my Best Friend Cinema Canon, which I’m thinking of going long on here…
Ti West’s X Trilogy
I’ve finally watched all of Ti West’s X trilogy, beginning with X (2022) and then the sequel MaXXXine (2024) in the theatre, before rounding it out with Pearl (2022). They’re definitely trashy movies but there’s some surface level enjoyment here. While I’m all for cinema leaning back into exploitation-esque filmmaking (with all the necessary safety and consent considerations to make them ethically), I’m finding these films pull their punches. They’re not at all lurid or out-there enough to warrant the marketing behind them. It feels like they cosplay the affect of the films they homage but don’t quite understand how those films actually operate, or the cheap pleasures they are trying to evoke. If anything, they should all have been shorter, maybe as a small anthology mini series, because the ideas behind each of the films don’t justify their runtimes.
The Big City (1963)
I recently rewatched Satyajit Ray’s The Big City (1963) on the big screen. As I mentioned in my Letterboxd review, I think the film would be so much more exciting if it were in colour! Lipstick colour plays an important role in the film… and yet we have no colour! Bummer!
Didi (2024)
A fun little watch on premiere day. Joan Chen is luminous as friggin’ always. It’s a solid debut even if it feels like it’s been sanded down a little bit. I think there’s a lot of promise here from first-time director Sean Wang, where he makes some bold, less predictable choices in the way he constructs the narrative, and the tone he’s going for. The era of the early internet is captured authentically here in a way that hits the cringe-nostalgia button really hard. This is a much more emo film than the trailers let on, which I appreciated, because teenage years can be rough and you don’t come out unscathed. Also, saw this in person with Wilson and Eli in Singapore, which was special and we’re planning something special for our Patreon ;)
Twisters (2024)
I had fun with this! I think Lee Isaac Chung does a good job overall with this “90s Hollywood” style in keeping up tension in the action-disaster bits. It’s effective all around with clear story and character motivations.
The Plot (2024)
Oh man this was so self-serious and boring, but I found out after watching it that it’s a remake of Soi Cheang’s Accident (2009), a director whose work I’ve been meaning to catch.
Deadpool and Wolverine (2024)
Yeah, the two characters that can’t die are a great emblem for a franchise that needs to die but just can’t.
Black Dog (2024)
My review here!
Television/Anime
Oshi no Ko Season 2
I started this anime series because of its completely wild premise but am now really digging its exploration of the entertainment industry. Season 2’s first arc is a dive into what acting is all about for theatre (specifically “2.5D theatrical manga adaptations”) and is honestly fascinating in how it explores different acting “styles”. I’m absolutely here for all this behind the curtain theatre drama. Theatre kids need to chill.
Evil Season 4
Everyone is sleeping on this weird ass show about demons coming to New York. It’s off-kilter with demons possessing smart speakers, Large Hadron Colliders, and YouTube, among other things. It’s awkwardly trying to take old fashioned demonic possession and combine it with 21st century elements with sometimes mixed results, and is absolutely charming for its effort. Sometimes it works, sometimes it’s corny as hell (pun intended), but it's still confidently and sincerely done. Nothing like it is airing. It’ll build up plot and drop it immediately in haphazard ways and I honestly have no idea how they’re going to wrap it up in this final season. It’s prestige TV with old-school TV writing bones (monster of the week format), which probably contributes to its odd construction, but it represents an intriguing inflection point in TV writing.
I’ve also always found myself drawn to biblical narratives and imagery despite not being personally affiliated or interested in that kind of religiosity in any way. And honestly, I can’t really figure out why. Maybe the cleanliness of absolute immoral evil in fictional narratives feels comforting compared to the moral spaghetti mess we live in.
Books
Sorry I’m Late, I Didn’t Want to Come — Jessica Pan
The author Jessica Pan goes on a journey of deliberate extroversion as a self-professed shy-introvert: she tries standup, improv, networking, all things introverts despise. This was a fun read for a born introvert who has, at various points in my life, taken huge and terrifying steps towards extroversion. Extroversion can be a trained skill, and there are distinct benefits for extroverts in a society that likes gregariousness, performance, and presentation. I recently did an online Big Five test and my extraversion landed solidly on 50%. I have clearly crossed some kind of line because people I’m meeting for the first time seem to flip a coin guessing where I land on the extrovert/introvert dichotomy. And no, I will not be doing improv or doing standup comedy any time soon.
Kafka on the Shore — Haruki Murakami
I understand this is some people’s favourite Murakami novel, but it felt overlong and meandering to me considering the pretty limited set of characters. However, I still enjoy the surreal, mundane worlds Murakami conjures. Maybe the joy of Murakami is in the journey, like a well told shaggy dog story.
Everything is F*cked: A Book About Hope — Mark Manson
I don’t know how people feel about Mark Manson generally, but I do like his perspective on life: a mixture of stoicism and Buddhist philosophy. I feel like he’s able to take difficult existential topics and write them in a digestible layman way. It flips the script on what we think the value of hope is, and that it can only exist when suffering exists. He defines most problems as emotional problems rather than rational ones, and that only in getting a handle on our emotions can we actually solve anything. In the end, I do agree we need to embrace suffering to be happy. He gets a little loopy at the end about embracing our AI overlords (really).
How to Know a Person — David Brooks / Supercommunicators — Charles Duhigg
I’ve been digging into some books about communication, but they tend to cover the same ground. Sometimes they’ll literally be rehashing and quoting from the same landmark books in the field. Manson and Pan’s books above also do. I think these are okay introductions, even if repetitive, but I do like reading different writers repackaging of the same concepts so I keep the concepts fresh in my mind.
Games
Humanity
I’ve finally finished this puzzle game about moving humans from one door to the other. It’s so very Japanese in the kooky meta-narrative about a dog tasked with shepherding humans through doors to finally become whole and fit to be reborn. I think. It’s a modern take on Lemmings. The puzzles are mostly quite solvable but there are a few stumpers here with solutions that tend to be exceedingly simple. I love when a puzzle game can obscure simplicity.
Flock
I spent an afternoon catching birds in this little Annapurna Interactive game. I’m a big fan of the studio/publisher which consistently comes out with novel indie games. This one’s a nice cosy game although it’s a little too aimless for me, so I shelved it after catching most of the birbs.
An Outlier
On the Wings of Hermes
I managed to get into this and it was more entertaining than I expected. These are seven short “films” performed live and shot in a single take on stage for the fashion brand Hermes. It’s extremely extra in having to do everything in camera. My favourite of the seven being an overhead shot that films a couple flying through the sky, in which the sky is projected onto the ground (so they’re lying on the ground) but also being filmed live in the background (see below). The plot is light here, befitting the Hermes theme of “lightness”, but as a seven-piece vibesfest it was a nice way to spend an evening. In the end this was essentially an elaborate puppet show, and I do love me some puppetry.
Notes
I hope this was interesting to read. I’ll see how long I keep this up.