Weekly reading/watching meme
Feb. 7th, 2013 10:13 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
petroniaI was supposed to do this on Monday, wasn't I? Oops.
What are you reading/watching now?
Bentham on Torture. It's kind of dry, so I read other stuff for a while, then came back to it. It's short, though, so am likely to finish it this week.
What did you just finish reading/watching?
F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby. I'm hardly likely to spout forth new insight on this book, but the more I think about it the more I'm aesthetically dissatisfied with the "well turned" ending. It's just so... Saturday Evening Post pot-boiler cum Agatha Christie. They switch cars! They switch drivers! On the other hand, I do very much see the appeal. Furthermore, I can see now why Buhrmann cast Leo -- though I keep circling back to this feeling I have, that it would be more interesting to do a modern-day adaptation with an all-POC cast. Not to come over all SJ; it would just be truer to the actual tensions FSF was trying to work out of himself, rather than 120 minutes of Jazz Age Tumblr/Pinterest visual nostalgia pr0n. Probably my favourite passage is toward the end, when Nick describes his Christmas train rides back to the Midwest.
Joan Didion, The Year of Magical Thinking (halfway -- but since I didn't buy it it's not officially "on the list"). I mentioned at some point that this inspired "A Proof by Contradiction," but of course I didn't mean I read it at the time. I get more writing inspiration from books I don't read -- only half-imagine -- than books I did. It's very good, of course; in a way, a book one reads to educate oneself -- as Didion read others to understand what had been written about grief. I didn't imagine it completely wrong. XD;
JRR Tolkien, Leaf by Niggle. It's just a short story, and someone on Douban had posted the whole thing. It's rather moving, if you know anything about Tolkien; and -- if you share somewhat in Tolkien's creative temperament, which I do -- squirm-inducing, in that way Chesterton did so well. Like the Big Finger came down from the sky and poked you in the shoulder blades.
George Bataille, La Mutilation sacrificielle et l’oreille coupée de Vincent Van Gogh. I forgot to include this bit of frothy fun in the list of books I bought last time, so I ended up reading it first. I find dude's 1930s ethnography fucking dubious, but if the point is simply to point out a common compulsion over time and space (schizoids sacrificing bits of themselves to a solar deity, or some variation thereon) and its greater or lesser acceptance by "normal" society, well... yeah, that's a thing, I guess. And as art criticism it's not bad. Also, while I don't think Bataille was even aiming for prose fiction effects, he works up quite the crawling horrors just by treating the subject matter with a sense of academic intrigue.
The movie guide and art design compendium for The Hobbit (I'm too lazy to look up the actual titles). These are mostly picture books, anyway. I could go on about them but I ought to get off the computer. XD I will say -- because I've been meaning to -- that I tend to use "Peter Jackson" or "PJ & co." as shorthand for the process of collaborative creation behind these movies. Jackson's role is curatorial, often enough: nothing gets into the finished product without a yay/nay from him, but the answer to "who came up with this idea" can be quite different (and to everyone's credit, attributable). It's not at all the same as talking about Moffat, say, or JJ Abrams. The former writes, doesn't direct; I'm not actually certain how much the latter does, beyond the fact that he obviously doesn't have enough hours in the day to micro-manage all the projects he's signed up for. But the shorthand creates unintended implications. For one thing, I feel like people (myself included) talk about these movies without really digesting the fact that they're written by women. Like, do you think Fran Walsh and Philippa Boyens are less card-carrying fangirls than anybody? Like Peter Jackson made Thorin sexy in order to pull some sort of con on the ladies' quadrant? You'd be nuts.
I'm still fantasizing about the LEAPS AND BOUNDS in performance-capture technology that will ensue from this trilogy, insofar as it relates to dragons. By the time Peter Jackson gets around to filming Temeraire they could cast every actor/actress beloved of Tumblr and just shoot them Masterpiece Theatre-style pretending to be dragons, and on the little viewer screen they would be dragons, real time. I have a dream, ok.
FINALLY watched Beasts of the Southern Wild. Liked it, but not as much as I thought I might.
What will you read/watch next?
Kon-Tiki I... guess!? Also, the massive comics backlog. This question has not been a good predictor of my actual future activity.
BONUS QUESTION: what books/movies did you acquire?
Good question! The answer is, aside from the movie guide, a box set of Iain M. Banks' first three Culture novels. I doubt I'll read Consider Phlebas again, but I'm tired of The Player of Games never being in the library. Plus, nice new reissue.
What are you reading/watching now?
Bentham on Torture. It's kind of dry, so I read other stuff for a while, then came back to it. It's short, though, so am likely to finish it this week.
What did you just finish reading/watching?
F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby. I'm hardly likely to spout forth new insight on this book, but the more I think about it the more I'm aesthetically dissatisfied with the "well turned" ending. It's just so... Saturday Evening Post pot-boiler cum Agatha Christie. They switch cars! They switch drivers! On the other hand, I do very much see the appeal. Furthermore, I can see now why Buhrmann cast Leo -- though I keep circling back to this feeling I have, that it would be more interesting to do a modern-day adaptation with an all-POC cast. Not to come over all SJ; it would just be truer to the actual tensions FSF was trying to work out of himself, rather than 120 minutes of Jazz Age Tumblr/Pinterest visual nostalgia pr0n. Probably my favourite passage is toward the end, when Nick describes his Christmas train rides back to the Midwest.
Joan Didion, The Year of Magical Thinking (halfway -- but since I didn't buy it it's not officially "on the list"). I mentioned at some point that this inspired "A Proof by Contradiction," but of course I didn't mean I read it at the time. I get more writing inspiration from books I don't read -- only half-imagine -- than books I did. It's very good, of course; in a way, a book one reads to educate oneself -- as Didion read others to understand what had been written about grief. I didn't imagine it completely wrong. XD;
JRR Tolkien, Leaf by Niggle. It's just a short story, and someone on Douban had posted the whole thing. It's rather moving, if you know anything about Tolkien; and -- if you share somewhat in Tolkien's creative temperament, which I do -- squirm-inducing, in that way Chesterton did so well. Like the Big Finger came down from the sky and poked you in the shoulder blades.
George Bataille, La Mutilation sacrificielle et l’oreille coupée de Vincent Van Gogh. I forgot to include this bit of frothy fun in the list of books I bought last time, so I ended up reading it first. I find dude's 1930s ethnography fucking dubious, but if the point is simply to point out a common compulsion over time and space (schizoids sacrificing bits of themselves to a solar deity, or some variation thereon) and its greater or lesser acceptance by "normal" society, well... yeah, that's a thing, I guess. And as art criticism it's not bad. Also, while I don't think Bataille was even aiming for prose fiction effects, he works up quite the crawling horrors just by treating the subject matter with a sense of academic intrigue.
The movie guide and art design compendium for The Hobbit (I'm too lazy to look up the actual titles). These are mostly picture books, anyway. I could go on about them but I ought to get off the computer. XD I will say -- because I've been meaning to -- that I tend to use "Peter Jackson" or "PJ & co." as shorthand for the process of collaborative creation behind these movies. Jackson's role is curatorial, often enough: nothing gets into the finished product without a yay/nay from him, but the answer to "who came up with this idea" can be quite different (and to everyone's credit, attributable). It's not at all the same as talking about Moffat, say, or JJ Abrams. The former writes, doesn't direct; I'm not actually certain how much the latter does, beyond the fact that he obviously doesn't have enough hours in the day to micro-manage all the projects he's signed up for. But the shorthand creates unintended implications. For one thing, I feel like people (myself included) talk about these movies without really digesting the fact that they're written by women. Like, do you think Fran Walsh and Philippa Boyens are less card-carrying fangirls than anybody? Like Peter Jackson made Thorin sexy in order to pull some sort of con on the ladies' quadrant? You'd be nuts.
I'm still fantasizing about the LEAPS AND BOUNDS in performance-capture technology that will ensue from this trilogy, insofar as it relates to dragons. By the time Peter Jackson gets around to filming Temeraire they could cast every actor/actress beloved of Tumblr and just shoot them Masterpiece Theatre-style pretending to be dragons, and on the little viewer screen they would be dragons, real time. I have a dream, ok.
FINALLY watched Beasts of the Southern Wild. Liked it, but not as much as I thought I might.
What will you read/watch next?
Kon-Tiki I... guess!? Also, the massive comics backlog. This question has not been a good predictor of my actual future activity.
BONUS QUESTION: what books/movies did you acquire?
Good question! The answer is, aside from the movie guide, a box set of Iain M. Banks' first three Culture novels. I doubt I'll read Consider Phlebas again, but I'm tired of The Player of Games never being in the library. Plus, nice new reissue.
no subject
Date: 2013-02-08 03:58 pm (UTC)For me, my latch-on character/best-liked character was the Owl-Eyed Glasses Man. (And so wrote my student paper about him, damn it. XD) If that's what I liked about it then, well... it wasn't my favorite book, clearly.
I'm debating whether to reread or give the movie a try first. Perhaps after 20 years I might find Nick less annoying? (Maybe not. The rich might be different from you or me, but I still remain rather perplexed by them, judging from my continued reaction to Certain NYTimes Articles.)
no subject
Date: 2013-02-08 04:10 pm (UTC)At this point I'd probably just watch the movie, I think. XD
no subject
Date: 2013-02-08 04:55 pm (UTC)Heh. Immortal unaging Leo for the win, then? XD
no subject
Date: 2013-02-09 02:22 am (UTC)This. This exactly. I think the reason I love the extended makings-of is that I'm really enjoying the idea of PJ being the initiator and head mod of his own massive Tolkien LARP community. I'm sure it's more cohesive and organised than my weak metaphor suggests. Still, I'm fascinated by the collaborative/curatorial methods that the featurettes reveal. (And sick with envy that I didn't get to work on it!)
On a slight tangent, this is also why I joined HitRECord--JGL has enough idea of what he wants to come up with projects that have a specific look and feel, despite thousands of artists all doing different things? I don't know if this is 'the future' of directing but it's certainly one interesting avenue.
no subject
Date: 2013-02-09 04:40 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-02-09 05:01 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-02-09 09:26 am (UTC)I do wonder how the money side of things works, though. XD; Like... it's got to be because the NZers work for cheap compared to Hollywood, right?