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Update 17/03
I've been working too hard! A big project kicked off at work this month, and I'm having to remind myself how to work effectively & well on something complex & important without dragging out my office hours too late and wiping out all the energy I need for the rest of my life. Right now, I'm just too tired.
I've bought a few things that I hope will last me a good long while: a new holdall, and a couple of merino tops that can work as base layers or just on their own. I also cleared out my wardrobe (and actually took the bag of discarded things out, rather than leaving it to gather dust in the hallway!), so it feels a bit less overstuffed (although there are still a looot of T-shirts I suspect I don't wear; I've done the "turn the hangers around" thing to see what actually gets use this year).
Film
As is the theme for 2023, I've been watching films in fits and starts: three in a day, nothing for two weeks, two in a day, and so on. Very much as the mood takes me! Since the start of February, I've been through:
Victim (1961) - a key film in British queer history, notable in its time for portraying gay people in a sympathetic light. It holds up pretty well to a modern viewing, and I'm willing to forgive it tilting a little into lecture mode at times.
The Birdcage (1996) - I didn't get on with this as well as I hoped to! I couldn't hang with the characters spending so much of the film asking Albert to, well, "not", and then never really properly apologising for it.
Rope (1948) - enjoyed this one. One of those where you can tell it's adapted from a play because the action never really leaves one room; but I have a soft spot for that sort of adaptation, because they show that films can be really gripping even with just the very basics of the format.
All About Eve (1950) - I enjoyed this! But I can't remember much more of what I thought about it when I saw it (a month ago), so I suppose it may have been just okay (and that's fine!).
The Rocky Horror Picture Show (1975) - I've seen this before, of course! This was my first time seeing it in a cinema at an audience-participation-encouraged screening, and it was a lot of fun.
Niagara (1953) - an early Marilyn Monroe film, but not an amazing one. It can't decide whether it's Monroe's story or Peters', and it suffers as a result.
The Celluloid Closet (1995) - thoroughly interesting, and I'll be mining this for more films to watch in the future. I'm also doing my best to get hold of a copy of the book it's based on, which is sadly out of print and not available as an eBook. I think I've found one on eBay that won't have to ship from the US, though!
The Manchurian Candidate (1962) - not as good as I was expecting, from a "classic thriller"! It kept setting things up and forgetting to pick them up again later, and some key characters were lacking in plausible motivation. That said...
The Manchurian Candidate (2004) - made me wonder if I was too hard on the original! Somehow in the remake they managed to tie up half the problems I had with the original, and then invent a whole new set of their own. Truly a film that Just Kept Going (and I could definitely have done without quite so much mid-00s-style "wooaaah creepy images and paranoia and madness" filler).
65 (2023) - a film from this decade, nay, this year! It's rare that I catch films when they come out, but at the start of this year I looked up expected 2023 releases and made a note of ones that sounded interesting. This was billed as "Alien meets Jurassic Park", but in reality it was just a fine-but-unmemorable action thriller. Much less intense than the "Alien" part of "Alien meets Jurassic Park" makes it sound - it's a 12A - but Adam Driver sure did shoot some dinosaurs I guess. Clocks in at a nice tight 90 minutes at least, thanks to some incredibly, uh, "efficient" plot beats.
Reading
In an attempt to make a bit of a dent in my gargantuan TBR pile, I decided to tackle the Ancillary series. I read Ancillary Justice a couple of summers ago, and it blew me away; I reread it to remind myself of the detail, and it's still incredible! But sadly when I went on to Ancillary Sword, I found a bunch of the same issues I had with another of Leckie's books, Provenance - and as a result, didn't enjoy it very much. I still want to read Ancillary Mercy, for completeness' sake, and because it's apparently slightly better than the middle book, but I'm sadly concluding that Justice may have been a bit of an exception to the rule, which is a shame.
In my bag to go away this weekend: Ancillary Mercy, and Fair Play by Tove Jansson, which I picked up on a whim in a bookshop the other week (which is how the TBR pile keeps growing...).
TV
I'm not normally much of a TV person. I'm quite resistant to starting series of things, whether from my horrible knee-jerk reaction to people gushing over something ("well I am not watching it then!" - I'm trying to be less of This Person...) or from a dislike of being dragged along by emotional cliffhangers for 6+ hours. But I have been watching some TV recently!
I caught up with the most recent series of The Great Pottery Throwdown just in time to watch the final as it aired. I love the magic in transforming a pile of special mud into creative ceramics! And this programme always feels like everyone on it is having a fantastic time.
The best news in TV is: I finally got around to watching Ghosts (the BBC original)! A friend put on a few episodes from the start of Series 2 when we went away together a couple of years ago, and that made me realise that I would actually like it, but it took me until a few weeks ago to actually start watching it myself. I was planning to pace myself, since there are not many episodes, but of course I ended up running through them at high speed, because they are amazing! They're awesomely funny (thanks I'm sure to the chemistry of a well-established creative team - the writers and actors behind Horrible Histories, which was sadly just slightly too late for me), and they also make me cry (in a good way, here and there). Series 5 is due this year - I can't wait!
After running out of Ghosts, I picked up Derry Girls, another sitcom from the last 5 years that I just never really got around to. I'm not quite as hooked as I was with Ghosts, but it's very funny (and not too cringeworthy, which I was worried it would be); plus, the soundtrack is packed with bangers from the 90s.
I've bought a few things that I hope will last me a good long while: a new holdall, and a couple of merino tops that can work as base layers or just on their own. I also cleared out my wardrobe (and actually took the bag of discarded things out, rather than leaving it to gather dust in the hallway!), so it feels a bit less overstuffed (although there are still a looot of T-shirts I suspect I don't wear; I've done the "turn the hangers around" thing to see what actually gets use this year).
Film
As is the theme for 2023, I've been watching films in fits and starts: three in a day, nothing for two weeks, two in a day, and so on. Very much as the mood takes me! Since the start of February, I've been through:
Victim (1961) - a key film in British queer history, notable in its time for portraying gay people in a sympathetic light. It holds up pretty well to a modern viewing, and I'm willing to forgive it tilting a little into lecture mode at times.
The Birdcage (1996) - I didn't get on with this as well as I hoped to! I couldn't hang with the characters spending so much of the film asking Albert to, well, "not", and then never really properly apologising for it.
Rope (1948) - enjoyed this one. One of those where you can tell it's adapted from a play because the action never really leaves one room; but I have a soft spot for that sort of adaptation, because they show that films can be really gripping even with just the very basics of the format.
All About Eve (1950) - I enjoyed this! But I can't remember much more of what I thought about it when I saw it (a month ago), so I suppose it may have been just okay (and that's fine!).
The Rocky Horror Picture Show (1975) - I've seen this before, of course! This was my first time seeing it in a cinema at an audience-participation-encouraged screening, and it was a lot of fun.
Niagara (1953) - an early Marilyn Monroe film, but not an amazing one. It can't decide whether it's Monroe's story or Peters', and it suffers as a result.
The Celluloid Closet (1995) - thoroughly interesting, and I'll be mining this for more films to watch in the future. I'm also doing my best to get hold of a copy of the book it's based on, which is sadly out of print and not available as an eBook. I think I've found one on eBay that won't have to ship from the US, though!
The Manchurian Candidate (1962) - not as good as I was expecting, from a "classic thriller"! It kept setting things up and forgetting to pick them up again later, and some key characters were lacking in plausible motivation. That said...
The Manchurian Candidate (2004) - made me wonder if I was too hard on the original! Somehow in the remake they managed to tie up half the problems I had with the original, and then invent a whole new set of their own. Truly a film that Just Kept Going (and I could definitely have done without quite so much mid-00s-style "wooaaah creepy images and paranoia and madness" filler).
65 (2023) - a film from this decade, nay, this year! It's rare that I catch films when they come out, but at the start of this year I looked up expected 2023 releases and made a note of ones that sounded interesting. This was billed as "Alien meets Jurassic Park", but in reality it was just a fine-but-unmemorable action thriller. Much less intense than the "Alien" part of "Alien meets Jurassic Park" makes it sound - it's a 12A - but Adam Driver sure did shoot some dinosaurs I guess. Clocks in at a nice tight 90 minutes at least, thanks to some incredibly, uh, "efficient" plot beats.
Reading
In an attempt to make a bit of a dent in my gargantuan TBR pile, I decided to tackle the Ancillary series. I read Ancillary Justice a couple of summers ago, and it blew me away; I reread it to remind myself of the detail, and it's still incredible! But sadly when I went on to Ancillary Sword, I found a bunch of the same issues I had with another of Leckie's books, Provenance - and as a result, didn't enjoy it very much. I still want to read Ancillary Mercy, for completeness' sake, and because it's apparently slightly better than the middle book, but I'm sadly concluding that Justice may have been a bit of an exception to the rule, which is a shame.
In my bag to go away this weekend: Ancillary Mercy, and Fair Play by Tove Jansson, which I picked up on a whim in a bookshop the other week (which is how the TBR pile keeps growing...).
TV
I'm not normally much of a TV person. I'm quite resistant to starting series of things, whether from my horrible knee-jerk reaction to people gushing over something ("well I am not watching it then!" - I'm trying to be less of This Person...) or from a dislike of being dragged along by emotional cliffhangers for 6+ hours. But I have been watching some TV recently!
I caught up with the most recent series of The Great Pottery Throwdown just in time to watch the final as it aired. I love the magic in transforming a pile of special mud into creative ceramics! And this programme always feels like everyone on it is having a fantastic time.
The best news in TV is: I finally got around to watching Ghosts (the BBC original)! A friend put on a few episodes from the start of Series 2 when we went away together a couple of years ago, and that made me realise that I would actually like it, but it took me until a few weeks ago to actually start watching it myself. I was planning to pace myself, since there are not many episodes, but of course I ended up running through them at high speed, because they are amazing! They're awesomely funny (thanks I'm sure to the chemistry of a well-established creative team - the writers and actors behind Horrible Histories, which was sadly just slightly too late for me), and they also make me cry (in a good way, here and there). Series 5 is due this year - I can't wait!
After running out of Ghosts, I picked up Derry Girls, another sitcom from the last 5 years that I just never really got around to. I'm not quite as hooked as I was with Ghosts, but it's very funny (and not too cringeworthy, which I was worried it would be); plus, the soundtrack is packed with bangers from the 90s.