Movies: As noted previously, over the years my appetite for movies has lessened quite a bit. There was a time in my youth where I practically saw a movie a day—any movie, thanks to a membership at the Museum of Modern Art. Their daily 5:30 showing meshed perfectly with my 9-5 job in midtown. NYC in the 70s was movie theaters on every street corner, with all sorts of revivals and double features and foreign films: a cinema buff’s paradise. I was there for all of it. So what happened? Age, I guess. And not a lot of movies calling to me to leave home and go through the bother. And when I am at home, there’s plenty of reliable TV fare that as often as not is more engaging than the latest features. So it goes.
That said, two movies got me to leave home recently. First, Project Hail Mary. Loved the book, enjoyed the movie. Not much more to say, except that I did recommend it for my nine-year-old granddaughter. Second, The Christophers. I saw this at the local arthouse, based on a critic’s choice review from the NY Times. It’s a Soderbergh film, and quite good, with two excellent core performances by Ian McKellen and Michaela Coel. I did not know Coel prior to this, but she manages to stand up majestically to McKellen, which is no easy feat for any actor. Highly recommended.
And then, with a free night at home, I watched Sinners. I didn’t really know what to expect aside from vampires, which honestly is not that great a magnet for me; I’m not exactly a horror movie fan. All the accolades nevertheless convinced me to give it a try. And, well, if you’ve seen this movie, you know that it’s in no way a silly horror movie. The first half of the film, culminating in a magical/phenomenal musical sequence at the juke joint, is something you haven’t seen before and won’t forget. And the vampires, when it comes to it, have something more to say than just, “May I come in.” No wonder this movie received so many accolades. I loved it.
I also watched the final Downton Abbey movie. I mean, why not? It's like the TV show, only longer, with Granny gone, and everyone retiring at the end. Downton was always one step down from the gold standard of Upstairs, Downstairs but it was nevertheless watchable. So are the movies. And, finally, there won't be any more of them and we can get on with our lives.
Books: On paper—all right, Kindle—I got to the last of Kate Atkinson’s Jackson Brodie books. All of them are great, but I would definitely recommend reading them in order. After that, another of my favorite authors is Connie Willis, and I went for her first novel, Lincoln’s Dreams. This is an oddball book, genre-busting if you will. It’s not my favorite of hers—that distinction goes to the Oxford time travel series—but I certainly learned more about Robert E. Lee than I was expecting. If you’re new to her, the starting point would be The Doomsday Book. If you don’t like that one, you and I are done.
And on the audio front, a woman who is swiftly joining the ranks of my favorites is H.G. Parry. I finished The Scholar and the Last Faerie Door, and loved it. There’s something about a good away-at-school book that can really grab you. Who doesn’t mix in the narrative fiction with the narrative reality of one’s own school days, somehow wishing that the real had been more like the fictional, which in fact it somehow becomes? I was not a fan of her historical rights-of-magicians stories, The Shadow Histories, but there’s plenty more where that came from. She’s a New Zealander, by the way, and I would expect she has lots more books in her.
Alan Moore's The Great When, on the other hand, was an almost impossible listen. The problem was that the style of the writing requires serious attention that is impossible to give to an audiobook. I gave up after a couple of hours of not really following it. I might try to read it on paper some day. It is not the first book that I've come across on my headphones that just doesn't work as an audio, including most indicatively Mrs. Dalloway and its stream of consciousness. Oh well...
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