January has been a month of media consumption in many forms. Somehow without rushing and despite losing most of a week to a head cold, I have as of today read 5 books, seen 16 movies and a TV show, and attended a play. That is a lot for me. Probably in part because I decided to choose relaxation over attempting a third Festivid, and had two bus rides and a snow day last weekend when visiting friend S. in NYC.
For a while there I found myself in a pattern of accidental creepiness. Hugo winner The Three-Body Problem by Liu Cixin (translated by Ken Liu) turned out to have scenes set in this spooky, dreamlike world in a computer game that, while beautiful and fascinating and arguably the most enjoyable parts of the book, were not an excellent choice to read before bed.
Kelly Link's collection Get in Trouble, which, like![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
nightdog_barks, I loved, was advertised as science fiction but really mingled SF with fantasy and horror and magical realism (and modern literary fiction); at least three of the stories involved ghosts or fairy folk that were downright unnerving. Still: a ghost story on a spaceship! That was new and neat.
And then third, although I was braced for difficult material in The Pearl Button (El botón de nácar), Chilean documentarian Patricio Guzmán's (inferior, IMO) follow-up to the beautiful Nostalgia for the Light (Nostalgia de la luz), because it addressed ongoing repercussions of the Pinochet regime, I did not expect the sequences that lingered on photographs of indigenous people of Patagonia lost to history after extermination by Westerners. They were the very definition of haunting, the ghosts of these unnamed people whose faces and bodies were shown in black and white beneath the sound of Guzmán's friend droning a throat-singing tune, and, later, as an elderly woman named Gabriela shared a memory in the nearly extinct Kawéskar language. Some achingly beautiful shots of body paint representing the cosmos—and some f*cking terrifying, hoods with tiny holes for eyes and mouths, still and staring, the meaning of the costumes and rituals now eternally a mystery. I know those images are going to stay with me even longer than the brutal reenactment of Pinochet prisoners' last hours before being dropped into the sea.
.
It hasn't all been creepy. The Diary of a Teenage Girl with Bel Powley, Alexander Skarsgard and Kristen Wiig portrayed adolescent female sexuality in a frank, wry, ebullient way that isn't seen nearly enough in film. I was 100% on board with the unconventional first-time story and the way the beginning of the movie served as an unabashed fantasy fulfilment for any lady-type who's been attracted to ASkars. It's hard to describe the tone and style other than that it's full of unique yet sometimes universal details (which stems from the fact that it's personal/semi-autobiographical), and great fun, and rooted in 70s San Francisco, and it weaves together sexual and artistic and feminist awakenings to great effect. The whole thing felt like Fish Tank and Ghost World in a blender, but that's not giving it enough credit.
I was surprised and delighted to find upon visiting Rotten Tomatoes that the movie wasn't panned by male critics poo-pooing a story about a girl drawing lewd comics and screwing her way around town.
Between that and Carol, I'm wondering if there's been a spate of indie films lately that recall those from the late 90s/early 00s or if I've just been away from them for a while and they've been like this the whole time. It's nice.
For a while there I found myself in a pattern of accidental creepiness. Hugo winner The Three-Body Problem by Liu Cixin (translated by Ken Liu) turned out to have scenes set in this spooky, dreamlike world in a computer game that, while beautiful and fascinating and arguably the most enjoyable parts of the book, were not an excellent choice to read before bed.
Kelly Link's collection Get in Trouble, which, like
nightdog_barks, I loved, was advertised as science fiction but really mingled SF with fantasy and horror and magical realism (and modern literary fiction); at least three of the stories involved ghosts or fairy folk that were downright unnerving. Still: a ghost story on a spaceship! That was new and neat. And then third, although I was braced for difficult material in The Pearl Button (El botón de nácar), Chilean documentarian Patricio Guzmán's (inferior, IMO) follow-up to the beautiful Nostalgia for the Light (Nostalgia de la luz), because it addressed ongoing repercussions of the Pinochet regime, I did not expect the sequences that lingered on photographs of indigenous people of Patagonia lost to history after extermination by Westerners. They were the very definition of haunting, the ghosts of these unnamed people whose faces and bodies were shown in black and white beneath the sound of Guzmán's friend droning a throat-singing tune, and, later, as an elderly woman named Gabriela shared a memory in the nearly extinct Kawéskar language. Some achingly beautiful shots of body paint representing the cosmos—and some f*cking terrifying, hoods with tiny holes for eyes and mouths, still and staring, the meaning of the costumes and rituals now eternally a mystery. I know those images are going to stay with me even longer than the brutal reenactment of Pinochet prisoners' last hours before being dropped into the sea.
.
It hasn't all been creepy. The Diary of a Teenage Girl with Bel Powley, Alexander Skarsgard and Kristen Wiig portrayed adolescent female sexuality in a frank, wry, ebullient way that isn't seen nearly enough in film. I was 100% on board with the unconventional first-time story and the way the beginning of the movie served as an unabashed fantasy fulfilment for any lady-type who's been attracted to ASkars. It's hard to describe the tone and style other than that it's full of unique yet sometimes universal details (which stems from the fact that it's personal/semi-autobiographical), and great fun, and rooted in 70s San Francisco, and it weaves together sexual and artistic and feminist awakenings to great effect. The whole thing felt like Fish Tank and Ghost World in a blender, but that's not giving it enough credit.
I was surprised and delighted to find upon visiting Rotten Tomatoes that the movie wasn't panned by male critics poo-pooing a story about a girl drawing lewd comics and screwing her way around town.
Between that and Carol, I'm wondering if there's been a spate of indie films lately that recall those from the late 90s/early 00s or if I've just been away from them for a while and they've been like this the whole time. It's nice.
