Derik Badman's Journal2023-03-26T14:23:00.000Zhttps://journal.derikbadman.com/Derik A BadmanCopyright 2023 Derik A Badman2023-03-26 10:232023-03-26T14:23:00.000Zhttps://journal.derikbadman.com/entries/2023-03-26-10:23<p>Just finished watching the Zurcher brothers' <em>The Girl and the Spider</em> which was excellent. It shared a lot of traits with their previous <em>The Strange Little Cat</em> (on which see <a href="/entries/2021-09-27-08:04">2021-09-27T08:04-04:00</a>), not much plot, lots of close ups, most of the action in small apartments, people telling odd little stories, close-ups on objects as transitions, but also, on reading what I said about the earlier film I can see how this one was perhaps a little less obscure in its tension. The narrative takes places across a few days as a young woman is moving out of one apartment into another. The protagonist is the young woman she is leaving behind at the old apartment. It is not entirely clear but they are maybe lovers, or perhaps now ex-lovers. I got that sense from the tension between them, the looks, just some of the mood. The protagonist has these moments where she hurts herself in little ways, or leaves small bits of destruction in her wake (she scratches the counter at the roommates new flat with a screwdriver; the pierces cups from a party with a pencil and let's the liquid spill out on the table). There are a slew of characters surrounding these two, neighbors, friends, guys helping with the mom or helping fix things. The protagonist tells these little stories, she twice says she is a liar, so many of her stories are perhaps untrue and often sound more metaphorical than literal, encoded messages about her feelings. Some of the other characters tell similar little memories or tells.</p>
<p>Almost the whole thing is shot in close ups, lots of heads, with people moving in front or behind, or standing partially obscured in the fore or back ground. It's wonderfully composed and orchestrated. It's sad but also funny (the mom's dog keeps popping into the shot to grab sponges and run off with them). There is little explanatory narration to the film, but you infer what is going on, and the characters all feel like they have histories and feelings and lives outside of what is going in front of you. Really loved it.</p>
2023-03-24 07:272023-03-24T11:27:00.000Zhttps://journal.derikbadman.com/entries/2023-03-24-07:27<ul>
<li>Season 2 of <em>Carnival Row</em> rushed through a plot about revolution that was oh so conservative in outlook. The revolutionaries were Stalinesque monsters mixed with terrorists; the one protagonist failed completely to see how much their leader was lying to her face; the revolutionaries just gave up and went home after their one tough monster thing got killed; and then years later things were so much better for the formerly oppressed fay folk with no indication at all how that was possible. Oh and the asshole cop captain guy somehow gets redeemed. One wonders if at the end they knew they weren't getting more episodes so they just quickly wrapped everything up.</li>
<li>I keep watching it, but season 3 of <em>Star Trek: Picard</em> feels like just an exercise in how to work as many old characters as possible into a plotline. Every episode has at least one sudden reveal of a familiar face now more aged. At this point pretty much all the actors who were in a lot of the TNG series episodes have shown except a few that were in last season. (Oops I see I already commented on this a few weeks ago, it's only gotten worse.) Each character has one little thing about them that's new, there's a scene of everyone greeting each other, and there are some exchanged quips. Then back to the plot. It's a reunion show in the form of a tv season.</li>
<li>Gave up on another fantasy novel. It was doing that thing I hate in fantasy novels where the author over explains stuff. To me it's like the difference between narrating to an outsider and narrating to someone who lives in the same world. With the former you get info dumps and too obvious explanations of everything, with the later you slowly have to infer the events in what to me feels a more natural way. The former method also tends to lead to worse writing because its so focused on explaining things. It's like novel as rpg guidebook.</li>
<li>Also gave up on John Crowley's latest <em>Flint & Mirror</em>, which I picked up at the bookstore last weekend, it was fine, but... just fine. I wasn't invested in it at all.</li>
<li>Lucked out at the used bookstore on a few almost brand new Balzac novels for later.</li>
<li>Started in on Dickens' <em>Our Mutual Friend</em> which I read many many years ago and have no recollection of. So far so good. There's a great at a dinner where he describes all the characters at the table via one of them looking in the big mirror that hangs on the wall. All these sentences that start: "Reflects..." then something about one of the guests.</li>
</ul>
2023-03-17 09:042023-03-17T13:04:00.000Zhttps://journal.derikbadman.com/entries/2023-03-17-09:04<ul>
<li>Finished up <em>Nana</em> which never does get much of a plot beyond the rise and (rather brief) fall of Nana. Most of the chapters are extended scenes (at the theater, two separate parties, a stay in the country, a day at a horse race, etc.) but then the penultimate chapter is a whirlwind of activity as everything falls apart for Nana's lovers. In the end she spends years out of the country and then when she returns to visit her abandoned son she catched small pox from him and dies, a bit reminiscent of Coralie in <em>Lost Illusions</em>. Overall I quite enjoyed it, Zola has a way with describing these scenes that is very engaging.</li>
<li>I got this box set of a collected Le Guin novellas and collection short stories and started in on some of the novellas. A few (like four of the <em>Five Ways to Forgiveness</em> and some others from the collected Hainish volumes) I've read, but amongst then I read <em>Hernes</em> a realist work that follows four generations of women from a small Oregon coastal town, narrating alternately in their own voices. It's a beautiful work, and turned out to be part of a collection <em>Searoad</em> based around the town, which I've also since read and really enjoyed (though the novella is definitely the highlight).</li>
<li>Watched <em>The English</em> on Amazon, a western miniseries. It was mostly nice to look at and well acted but suffered a lot from the writing trying too hard to make things suspenseful and surprising. The writers seemed to think the very interesting relationship between the two protagonists, a British woman seeking revenge for the death of her son and a Pawnee former US army scout, wasn't enough to hold the series. The first few episodes have these scenes in some town that have no obvious bearing on the rest of the narrative until you get a long flashback in episode 4 and most of the surprising revelations coming from the storyline are neither surprising nor particularly helped by having been made mysterious. That stands in contrast to a late story revelation about how the son died and why the mother says she is already dead that is both surprising and affecting. The story in the town and the flashback also involves the protagonists's ex-fiance who left Britain to raise cattle in the U.S. He's in the early scenes and the flashbacks doing not much at all (I think we are to maybe assume he is the father and the man she is after until the episode 4 flashback), then dies off screen and pointlessly in the file episode just before the protagonist arrives. If this were an old school tv series you'd almost think the writers had to write the actor out of the show for some non-diegetic reason. He's just gone and never really plays any part in the story, where it would have been interesting and dramatic to see them meet in the end. The finale also has the two protagonists be forced to separate with very little logic just apparently, so things can be more sad. Oh and the whole series suffers from the modern western cliche where almost literally every person the protagonists meet is trying to murder them.</li>
</ul>
2023-03-05 13:332023-03-05T18:33:00.000Zhttps://journal.derikbadman.com/entries/2023-03-05-13:33<p>Oh what have I read or seen the past 2 weeks...</p>
<ul>
<li><em>Extraordinary People</em> by Joanna Russ, a few short stories that were quite excellent. She never over explains the situations in her work, forcing you to pay attention and make inferences. I really should reread <em>The Female Man</em>.</li>
<li>Probably tried and gave up on more library books...</li>
<li>Read Books 1 and 2 of <em>Monstress</em> and am now rereading (and just got the latest volume 7 which picks up where Book 2 ends) and taking notes for a TCJ review.</li>
<li>Read Books 1 and 3 of the collected <em>Ms. Tree</em>, a pulp detective comic I remember seeing ads for back in the 90s (probably when DC picked it up but maybe from its earlier run with Eclipse and Aardvark Vanaheim). It's decent genre fare but never really gets beyond plot. The art is pretty awful in the early ones (which are collected in book 3), but decent by the time DC picked it up (which are the stories in Book 1). In those stories it's got that great "premium" coloring from the early 90's, a step above traditional 4 color comics, but not yet overwhelmed by gradients and muddiness like modern digital coloring.</li>
<li>Listening to my first Phillies game of the year on the radio while I type this. Got out the radio. I always prefer the radio announcers and something about the way the game sounds are mixed on the radio just sound so much more "in person" than when you watch on tv. Perhaps its just because of the bleed of the crowd and the vendors coming into the announcers box. (Though I guess that could happen in tv too.)</li>
<li>Over halfway through season 2 of <em>Carnival Row</em> which is still decent but never great. It succeeds well at visuals and world building, but the plots often feel rushed and often rely a lot (particularly in the relationship between the two protagonists) on stubborn people being excessively stubborn and not explaining themselves. There's a monster that appears around episode 5 that is just horrific, great design, truly grotesque without also just being over the top.</li>
<li>A few episodes into the last season of <em>Picard</em> which, like previous seasons, is a neverending parade of "oh look we brought back x". This time a lot of the Next Generation cast are showing up and more prominent and even an episode 3 appearance by DS9's changeling (no Odo yet, though he is referenced once). Beyond that, it feels like a lot of plot doing nothing much at all.</li>
<li>We really enjoyed the first season of <em>Extraordinary</em> a british comedy about a powerless young women in a world where everyone has a superpower. It's just really funny, and avoids being too hard on the main characters.</li>
<li>Chippy the chipmunk appeared on the porch today for his first appearance in many months, I guess his winter sleep is over and it's time to refill the stores.</li>
<li>Almost halfway through Zola's <em>Nana</em> which so fare is interestingly plotless. There is a milieu and a great variety of characters, but so far there is no particular throughline I can identify to the events. Two of the chapters were devoted to party scenes which brought to mind Gaddis' great party scenes in <em>The Recognitions</em>.</li>
<li>Started this manga series <em>Frieren: At Journey's End</em> which drew me in on its premise. The story starts at the end of the heroes' epic adventure. The eponymous protagonist is an long lived elf who by chapter 2 is visiting her former companions who are now dead or dying. Curious to see where it goes. So far it has that quietude that reminds me of <em>Aria</em> or <em>Yokohama Kaidashi Kikou</em> but with magic.</li>
<li>Probably watched some movies though I'm blanking on them at the moment...</li>
</ul>
2023-02-23 17:182023-02-23T22:18:00.000Zhttps://journal.derikbadman.com/entries/2023-02-23-17:18<p>Finished up Lucy Ives' <em>Life is Everywhere</em> last night with mixed feelings. While the novel isn't exactly a frame tale filled with... oh no I'm blanking on the term Genette uses for it... intra... narrative... tales... Bleah... Anyway it's not like a brief frame and then stories, but a third or more of the book is taken up by texts that exist within the overarching narrative that the book starts and ends in, especially a large central section that consists of a novella and (short) novel written by the protagonist and a critical study (short) written by one of her professors (the protagonist is a lit student at Columbia, iirc). It's a rare thing for the frame to be more interesting than what is framed, but in this case I was very enthused about the book based on the first 100 pages, but then I hit all these embedded texts and they weren't as well written or as interesting or as dryly funny. The books picks up again with the last ~100 pages when it returns to the protagonist. That section also has some embedded narrative texts but they are shorter and, I think, more interesting. Part of the issue is that I'm not convinced the protagonist's writing was supposed to be good and the professor's definitely wasn't. That's a dangerous move to make in a novel and I think it's where Ives didn't succeed. That said, I really enjoyed the ~200 pages that weren't embedded texts and will look for subsequent work from her.</p>
<p>I've been slowly making my way through all my movie/tv watch lists on various services we subscribe to with an eye towards cancelling some so we can shift around what we have. Even my Criterion Channel list is under 20 and a lot of those are movies I just want to rewatch at some point. Similarly my book lists (amazon, bookshop, the library) have been getting smaller and smaller. I was going to try to reread more books this year (like how I read a lot of super long novels last year) though that's failing a bit since I picked up so many books recently. We were in Doylestown and I picked up a few things at the used bookstore that I had been wanting to read: Zola's <em>The Ladies Paradise</em>, Flaubert's <em>Salammbo</em>, Pynchon's <em>Inherent Vice</em>, and a great find a first edition of Joanna Russ' <em>Extraordinary People</em>. So much of her stuff is not in print, it was exciting to find this one (which includes a story I read for Delany's sci-fi class years ago), the woman at the bookstore even commented about how long it had been on the shelf cause no one knew who Russ was.</p>
2023-02-18 14:322023-02-18T19:32:00.000Zhttps://journal.derikbadman.com/entries/2023-02-18-14:32<p>Can't remember what I was reading before it (nor if I finished any of it) but this morning I finished R.F. Kuang's <em>Babel: Or the Necessity of Violence: An Arcane History of the Oxford Translators' Revolution</em> a interesting alternate history fantasy. It takes place mostly in 19th century Oxford in a world where silver has magical properties when words are engraved on it. The magic works on the idea of translation and the difference lost when one word is translated into another language. It's never clear why silver nor (if I recall correctly) how anyone discovered such a thing, but the concept is quite interesting and leads to a lot of linguistic themes and discussions. The protagonist is a Chinese boy who is taken to England and raised by his British father. It is strongly implied that he basically bred himself with a Chinese woman so as to get a child who grew up thinking in a Chinese language, because the silver magic works best if one can think in the language. That leads to a host of colonialist themes as the boy grows up and goes to Oxford to learn this silver magic.</p>
<p>Finished up watching all of <em>NYPD Blue</em> which was less interestingly written once Milch left the show. I couldn't watch it without seeing all the critiques of policing come into play. Sometimes the show would briefly actually do some critiquing but it is always in the context of outerliers, "bad cops", and the like. The detectives are always lying to people to get confessions, convincing them not to get lawyers, and the like, none of which the show doesn't show as a good. They almost always solve the crimes the same day, and they never drag confessions from people who are innocent.</p>
<p>Oh yes I read (some of it rereading) Book 1 of <em>Monstress</em>, a fantasy comic that I started reading in single digital issues years ago but for some reason stopped following serially. Thinking of writing about it for TCJ after I read Book 2.</p>
2023-02-05 15:012023-02-05T20:01:00.000Zhttps://journal.derikbadman.com/entries/2023-02-05-15:01<p>Enjoyed Balzac's <em>A Harlot High and Low</em> quite a bit. Was going to read each book (there are 4) of it separately with a break for another book in between but ended up reading books 2-4 all in a row. It works as an interesting sequel to <em>Lost Illusions</em> since Lucien Chardon (protagonist of the latter) is an important character in the former, but not the protagonist nor the primary narrative focalizer. It is much more about the criminal Jacques Collin (who goes by a few names) and his scheming. There is a lot about the police and judicial system of the time in Paris and scheming criminals and scheming special police. In my middle age I guess I'm picking up a taste for 19th century novels, between the Balzac and the Zola and the Dickens reading in the past year. I already have a copy of Zola's <em>Nana</em> to read and have been eying a reread of Dickens' <em>Our Mutual Friend</em> which I read years and years ago.</p>
<p>Gave up on more library books... gave up on quite a few movies. Have forgotten some of the movies I finished... <em>Broken Lance</em> was a not very good (but not bad) western that really underused Richard Widmark. <em>The Tarnished Angels</em>, Sirk movie I've been wanting to see for awhile, had a ton of beautiful shots in it, but was fairly lackluster as a script (very curious about the Faulkner story/novel it's based on). Another Carlos Saura film <em>Cria Cuervos</em> which again featured Geraldine Chaplin, who I just read is Charlie Chaplin's daughter. This again had elements of fantasy and doubling of characters. There's a great scene the protagonist (a young girl) and her sisters are playing dressup, she is the mother (long dead) and her older sister is the father (who dies at the start of the film), and they play out this scene that is clearly what they overheard their parents saying about the husband staying out late and such. It's a really powerful way to show both the parent's issues and how it effected the children. It reminded me of the scene in Sciamma's <em>Petite Maman</em> where the two girls play dress up but the that they are clearly working off of imagination and the influential of dramatic stories (probably tv/movies).</p>
<p>Started to plan for my next run at GMing our regular game (Ian is DMing now), so I sent this list of ideas:</p>
<ul>
<li>Mythic Bastionland (knights, arthuriana type deal)</li>
<li>We're all in the thieves guild.</li>
<li>Mage school
<ul>
<li>maybe too harry potter-y, though maybe not since I've never read/seen it</li>
</ul>
</li>
<li>Viking settlers</li>
<li>Prehistoric wandering tribe</li>
<li>Old west town
<ul>
<li>I think only I am interested in westerns, but I could make it fantasy, edge of the empire type thing</li>
</ul>
</li>
<li>High school (or college) mystery (a la veronica mars) (this is <em>We Used to Be Friends</em>)</li>
</ul>
2023-01-29 15:432023-01-29T20:43:00.000Zhttps://journal.derikbadman.com/entries/2023-01-29-15:43<ul>
<li><em>The Shortcut</em> by Emily Hall was an intriguing short novel about a woman walking to a meeting with a gallerist. Her narrational style is digressive, circling back to a few scenes and narrating a lot of what Genette would call the iterative, events that occur multiple times like "on Mondays I took a walk to the park" (not a quote from the book, just an example). The woman is an artist trying to get at what her work is. It's an unusual book that I feel I need to revisit to understand it better.</li>
<li>Gave up on <em>Panthers and the Museum of Fire</em> by Jen Craig which was another book about a woman walking with a digressive narration. This one I did not finish, over 50 pages in (of a short novel) I just couldn't grasp what the book was even about. Something just didn't click in it with me.</li>
<li>Zoe Thorogood's <em>It's Lonely at the Centre of the Earth</em> has it moments but felt too scattered for me. Parts of it had a really nice realistic style but more of it had this cartoony style where the narrator/protagonist/author had a head kind of like Charlie Brown and other characters had animal heads for some reason and it really didn't work for me.</li>
<li>Reread all of Moore and Burrows <em>Providence</em>, which remains a mixed bag. Burrows art is better here than in <em>Neonomicon</em> but it still suffers from stiffness and a lack of variety in the characters. A section in one of the last issues has a sequence where each panel seems to be following up on characters from the story (and some real life authors associated with Lovecraft) and it's real hard to tell them all apart and figure out who is who. The mix between the drawn sequences and the journal pages works well to showcase the external versus internal of the progatonist and how he sublimates all the crazy things that happen to him. Something about the ending feels incomplete to me.</li>
</ul>
2023-01-22 11:322023-01-22T16:32:00.000Zhttps://journal.derikbadman.com/entries/2023-01-22-11:32<p>Followed up the novel with Lee Konstantinou's <em>The Last Samurai Reread</em> which is a general overview of the novel and the background behind it (he talked to DeWitt, her publisher, etc.). Not sure it gave me much new to think about in re the novel, but then again I've read it a lot of times now.</p>
<p>Gave up on more books... about 100 pages into Balzac's <em>A Harlot High and Low</em> now, which I picked up as a next Balzac since it follows chronologically from <em>Lost Illusions</em> which I read last year. Also just a few chapters into rereading Moore's <em>Providence</em>.</p>
2023-01-16 14:302023-01-16T19:30:00.000Zhttps://journal.derikbadman.com/entries/2023-01-16-14:30<p>Just finished rereading <em>The Last Samurai</em> in a few days. Ended up just sitting reading on the couch for quite awhile both yesterday and today. I'd been struggling a bit with my reading choices lately and rereading a book I love so much was so wonderful and refreshing. I ended up rewatchin <em>Seven Samurai</em> yesterday too to go along, also have a book called <em>The Last Samurai Reread</em> to start now, which is (obviously I guess) a book about the novel. After last year's really long books theme (I did ended up reading at least 12 really long books as I planned though it ended up rather front loaded on the year), I'm thinking a theme or rereading would be good for this year.</p>
<p>Lianne found two cases worth of old barrister bookshelves nearby for us, and we spent Saturday installing them and filling them with all our fiction (minus the comics upstairs). I kept thinking "I should reread this" as I reshelved (a few "I should finally read this" too). Plenty of novels I can pull off the shelf and know I'll really enjoy. Might help slow down the new book acquisition too (especially if I keep up with my library borrowings in lieu of purchases).</p>
2023-01-08 11:432023-01-08T16:43:00.000Zhttps://journal.derikbadman.com/entries/2023-01-08-11:43<ul>
<li><em>The Tale of King Crab</em> is beautifully shot and the first half (called "Chapter 1") is engaging and slow, but not too slow. In early 19th century Italy, the son of a doctor is a drunk, in love with a shepherd's daughter, and angry that the local prince has shut off a door in his castle (?) walls that the shepherd uses a shortcut for pasturing his sheep. When he decides to burn down the door (with a molotov) and ends up burning the castle and killing the daughter (who may or may not have been assaulted by the prince's guards) who he didn't know was inside, he ends up being sent out of the country. "Chapter 2" finds him disguised as a priest in far southern Argentine looking for hidden treasure. What follows is fairly banal treasure hunt with unscrupulous treasure hunters... It felt so distant from the beginning. It comes back around right at the end to connect to some earlier moments, but mostly the treasure hunting part felt unnecessary.</li>
<li><em>Awake</em> by Harald Voetmann is short novel about Pliny the Elder. Excerpts from his <em>Natural History</em> are accompanied by monologues of the elder, his nephew (Pliny the Younger), his slave, as well as a few more omniscient scene settings. I'm not sure yet what to make of it. Keeping it around to reread.</li>
<li>Started and gave up on a whole slew of books (mostly from the library) that failed to keep my interest. I probably should list them so I can remember later (and not get them a second time), but I can't now be bothered to look up the names. I went on a book request spree at the library and I don't think I finished any of them.</li>
<li>Midway through <em>The Camera: Essence and Apparatus</em> a collection of essays by Victor Burgin. At times it is very heavy on psychoanalytic theory early on, but I think that lessens as it goes (I've read two of the later essays elsewhere).</li>
<li>Saw <em>Bringing Up Baby</em> for maybe the first time the other night. I've seen so many of those screwball comedies but that is one I missed (I think cause it's not a favorite of Lianne's). And... it wasn't that great. At times funny, but it seems to much a series of comedy bits without a great sense of the two leads interest in each other. For one of Cavell's "comedy of remarriage" examples, I never get the "re" part out of it. The leads aren't together in the beginning (or previous to the beginning) and there's never really a break up. Much happier watching <em>The Lady Eve</em>, <em>The Awful Truth</em> or the like.</li>
<li>We followed it up with rewatching <em>The Philadelphia Story</em> for the umpteenth time. Always funny and enjoyable. I'm always impressed by Ruth Hussey as Liz the photographer, who (I looked it up) didn't have much of a film career (she was more on stage). She's in the background a lot in the movie but her delivery and expression is always great.</li>
<li>Reread Alan Moore's <em>Neonomicon</em> because I plan on rereading <em>Providence</em> (having recently reread <em>From Hell</em> and <em>Promethea</em>) and it's a kind of prequel/sequel to the latter (I'm forgetting exactly the relationship). Burrows' artwork is soooo stiff in the earlier work (iirc he's better in the latter, I guess those extra 5 years of practice paid off). It's all a little too awful content-wise, but I guess that is kind of the point.</li>
</ul>
2023-01-01 15:152023-01-01T20:15:00.000Zhttps://journal.derikbadman.com/entries/2023-01-01-15:15<p>Rewatched Hong's <em>The Woman Who Ran</em> and then finally watched <em>In Front of Your Face</em>. Both are narratively less adventurous than many of his movies (no repetitions, no sense of irreality). The former is tripartite, and each section features as a kind of final stage a man behaving badly, inconsiderately. The latter, unusually for Hong, has the occasional voiceover by the protagonist as she creates these small prayers or mantras, trying to appreciate what's in front of her as she faces death.</p>
<p>I went into Noah Baumbach's <em>White Noise</em> not expecting to love it, and I came out of it let down on even that lowered expectation. It seemed all... too much... a little too fast, a little too big, a little too much effects, a little too much cleverness. It's been more than a decade since I read the novel (I recall liking it), so I can't compare, as such, but it just felt like maybe Baumbach was not the right person for the job. I'll reread the novel sometime this year.</p>
2022-12-22 09:102022-12-22T14:10:00.000Zhttps://journal.derikbadman.com/entries/2022-12-22-09:10<ul>
<li>Finished up <em>Promethea</em> with mixed feelings. It feels a lot like Moore wanting to not be writing a superhero comic but stuck using the genre so it fit with the other titles he was working on. The whole thing could have worked as a more magical/spiritual fantasy thing without all the superheroes/villains that are all side characters anyway. Despite my issues with the layouts, the art does heavy lifting through stylistic changes (though never too far from a "superhero standard").</li>
<li><em>I Feel My Pain Interests You</em> by Stephanie LaCava made me thing of a joke I heard long ago about putting the "emPHAsis" on the wrong "sylLAble". The books starts with the protagonist narrator flying to Montana, then spends half the book going back to tell her life story and how she ended up going to Montana, and then gets into this weird relationship, and learn that she has some kind of condition where she doesn't feel pain (that somehow she got into her 20s without noticing?). The relationship at the end is heavily obscured and then the book ends without... really getting anywhere. Yet I did finish it, it kept me interested, which is more than I can say for a lot of other books I started lately.</li>
<li>Why am I still occasionally typing away at these entries? In some sense I just want to have a list of things I've read or watched, but I haven't even managed to keep up with that. As of right now I haven't updated the web version since mid-July and there are less than 20 entries unpublished.</li>
</ul>
2022-12-12 08:552022-12-12T13:55:00.000Zhttps://journal.derikbadman.com/entries/2022-12-12-08:55<ul>
<li><em>League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: Black Dossier</em> I keep coming back to this series, though this is the first time I've read this volume, and always come back to a) O'Neill's artwork does not appeal to me, too angular b) Moore's pastiche text pieces are hard to read in large page format and often just boring.</li>
<li>Bordwell's <em>Perplexing Plots</em> not finished with this yet, enjoying it, but also feeling like it's a lot of just "x author/novel did this, y novel/author did this" in a long line about narrative time, point of view, and "block" construction. It kind of feels stretched out, though I guess a lot of it is gathered from differing essays.</li>
<li>A few issues into rereading <em>Promethea</em>... J.H. Williams artwork often feels like the overall page layout stuff, is hiding how bad some of the individual drawings actually are, and how often those page layouts are hard to navigate panel to panel. Sometimes you have to read verso then recto, sometimes you have to read across the spread, and if even I, a very experienced comic reader often found myself halfway through before I realized I was doing it wrong, then that's a problem with the design. I'm still early on, but it still feels like the extra superhero stuff is just there to make it fit more in with the other America's Best series.</li>
<li>Into the latter part of <em>NYPD Blue</em> Season 2 and enjoying it more than I expected. It's no Deadwood but it's smartly written and often quite funny. That the younger, prettier lead always gets top billing (Caruso, then Smitts, then I guess someone else) seems like a studio thing where Dennis Franz didn't have the looks and his character was too abrasive to be considered the lead.</li>
</ul>
2022-12-11 12:372022-12-11T17:37:00.000Zhttps://journal.derikbadman.com/entries/2022-12-11-12:37<p>Two movies in the past few weeks by Carlos Saura, <em>Peppermint Frappe</em> and <em>Cousin Angelica</em>, both about (the former more subtly) fascism in Spain, the latter touching more on the war specifically. He made them both during Franco's reign so they are allegorical, but apparently the latter was overt enough to cause right wing protests. The former is maybe a riff on <em>Vertigo</em>, with 1 actress playing 2 parts, and the protagonist sort of making the second woman into an image of the first woman when she rejects him (and then he kills her and her husband). The latter movie is about a man who returns to his Aunt's home where he spend time during the civil war. Throughout his memories are evoked and the film slips from the present into the past, but leaving the adult actor playing himself as a child, which can get a little weird in the scenes with the cousin he is in love with, but also really maintains the sense of the present man looking back on past events. At times it's almost hard to tell when the memory comes into play, and the scenes never return from the revery back to the same scene in the present, they always end and then there is a cut to another scene further along in time. Most of the other actors of the present day characters play characters from the past but in age appropriate roles (so the daughter of his cousin, plays the cousin as a child, the cousin as an adult plays the aunt in the past). This is particularly effective with the daughter and esp. the cousin's husband who plays the cousin's father (a nationalist soldier). The family is strongly Catholic and nationalist, while the protagonist's father (who we barely see) is on the republican side. I'm going to watch more from Saura (there's a whole program on Criterion right now), as I've found both of these films really interesting and well made.</p>
<p>Gave in last week to... lack of knowing what to do with myself, and bought the Lego Star Wars game on Playstation. It's mostly mindless fun, but not so engaging that I find myself playing too much. Playing the part for the the third of the latest movie trilogy, I realized I got so fed up with the second movie that I never even saw the third one. The whole plot (filtered into Lego game) was new to me, but predictably (and the reason I gave up at the second one) just felt like a rehash of the older movies.</p>
<p>Construction continues in our house, which has been low key stressful, more so when Buddy decides he has to freak out about being locked up in the office with me.</p>
2022-11-30 07:512022-11-30T12:51:00.000Zhttps://journal.derikbadman.com/entries/2022-11-30-07:51<p>Reread all the Jaime Hernandez <em>Locas</em> stories over the past couple weekends. The way that really compresses time was interesting, moving through decades of comics, which was decades of the characters' lives. At times I'd read a story that still felt "new" to me and I'd look at the date and it'd be like 2002, 20 years ago. The more recent stories, ones I am probably reading for only the second time, were a lot easier to piece together when read in succession rather than at the correct publication clip of about 2 issues a year.</p>
<p>How Jaime progresses the characters over the years, decades is such a strength of his, it never feels forced or abrupt (one exception may be Hopey's change at one point, but that is also after what feels like a long time having passed since we saw her). You get to the most recent issues and can almost forget how different they look from the earliest ones.</p>
2022-11-19 08:092022-11-19T13:09:00.000Zhttps://journal.derikbadman.com/entries/2022-11-19-08:09<p>One week into our construction, and we are adapting. The makeshift shower I made in the basement is not the best but it seems to be working well enough for a few weeks. Buddy has been very good about being locked up in the office all day. After Monday, he just followed me up there in the morning, I didn't even have to coax him. He seems a little freaked out by the goings on and even when I do let him out he's staying upstairs a lot on the bed. The construction has been at times loud, but it hasn't been too much of a distraction to work, and so far I'm impressed with how well they've been controlling the dust. They demo'd the bathroom, framed in the new closet, and some smaller walls, and have the rough plumbing in. Next week is electric and dry wall will start, but it's only 2 days of work because of the holiday. For the first time in a long while we won't be home for Thanksgiving because it's rather chaotic here, so Beth is going to host at her place since there won't be too many of us around.</p>
<p>Gave up on <em>2666</em>, it just wasn't holding my attention. Reading some Balzac short stories now (slowly). In between I read the David Milch memoir <em>Life's Work</em> which I quite enjoyed, though after reading the long first part of Matt Zoller Seitz's <em>The Deadwood Bible</em> not much the biographical part felt new. Watched a few episodes of <em>Les Vampires</em> but gave up on them, I just can't get into silent movies, they intermittently intrigue and annoy, but the pacing of it makes me feel bored. It's not that I can't handle slow movies, but all the extra work that has to go into getting around people just saying something really makes some scenes feel so long.</p>
2022-11-13 16:212022-11-13T21:21:00.000Zhttps://journal.derikbadman.com/entries/2022-11-13-16:21<p>Rewatched the <em>Irma Vep</em> mini-series this week and enjoyed it a lot more the second time through. Maybe I was just paying attention more, or maybe watching in closer succession made it easier to draw the connections between the episodes. Perhaps it is better as a 6 hours movie than an 8 episode series. Alicia Vikander is really great in it, she does a lot of heavy lifting in the show and is continually showing off different aspects of her characters, besides having to play an actor acting and sometimes a different actor acting. Assayas seems to put a lot of his thoughts about movies and art into it, it's hard <em>not</em> to see the director character as some kind of analog, he has, after all, previous made an <em>Irma Vep</em> movie with a Chinese actress that he later married and divorced. There's some irony to the way many of the characters make critical comments about superhero blockbusters, but then Mira (Vikander's character) kind of becomes a superhero (of a sort) by putting on the Irma Vep cat suit and being inhabited by the "spirit" of the character. That is such a superhero origin story. Part Miss Fury, part... one of those occult DC heroes.</p>
<p>Construction starts tomorrow, and I have been perhaps successful in setting up a makeshift shower in our basement. We had a utility sink installed to which I attached a long shower hose/head, there's a dog pool, and shower curtains hanging from the ceiling. The sketchiest part is the water transfer pump which does not do as good a job as I would like draining the pool of water. Can we manage for a few weeks that way? We'll see. Can I manage locked up in my office with Buddy all day while the contractors are here? We'll see.</p>
<p>Took a walk early this morning around the block... I got more than three quarters around before I saw a single person or moving car, once I noticed it started feeling like some kind of alternate reality, or a post-apocalyptic video game or something, as if I were just strolling through an abandoned town, I was actually getting a little creeped out about it.</p>
<p>Been reading Bolano's <em>2666</em> but am getting tired of the long section that has an excess of description of women being murdered in Santa Teresa, Mexico. I just... can't keep reading that. I started skimming looking for the sections that follow some ongoing characters, though I'm still not sure where that is going. I'm curious about the last section of the book, as it seems to return back to the subject of the first part, but I'm still not sure how it all fits together with the other sections.</p>
2022-11-07 07:402022-11-07T12:40:00.000Zhttps://journal.derikbadman.com/entries/2022-11-07-07:40<ul>
<li><em>The Glass Key</em> rewatch, enjoyable</li>
<li><em>Thieves' Highway</em>, another Jules Dassin noir that I don't think I've seen before. Interesting, but the protagonist is hard to like at all (and is often stupid), and the ending resolution seemingly comes out of nowhere.</li>
<li><em>Star Trek: The Motion Picture</em>, very <em>2001</em>, the beginning has a ridiculously long shuttle ride fly-by of the Enterprise, despite the narrative haste the characters are supposed to be in, yet later the ending happens so fast you barely get a denouement.</li>
<li>Rereading <em>Locas</em> the past few days. The earliest stories are a bit hard to get through these days, but after 200 pages or so Jaime really starts coming into his own. Always forget how little we actually see of Maggie and Hopey as a couple. In the earliest ones Maggie is often away on her adventures, then not too long after Hopey goes away on her tour (and iirc they never really get back together as such).</li>
<li>We were watching a lot of baseball the past 2 weeks, since the Phillies were in the play-offs (fair weather fans). A number of exciting games, though the World Series ending games were a big thud.</li>
<li>Bathroom renovation starts next week, and I've been slowly organizing a temporary shower set-up for our basement. I'm still not sure it will all actually work or if it does how awkward it's going to be to use for... a few weeks.</li>
</ul>
2022-10-27 09:102022-10-27T13:10:00.000Zhttps://journal.derikbadman.com/entries/2022-10-27-09:10<ul>
<li><em>Andor</em> is nicely sort of non-star wars star wars though suffers I think from lack of depth to characters</li>
<li>Alan Moore's <em>Illuminations</em> collection was a disappointment, I haven't even finished it</li>
<li>Enjoyed <em>Jane B par Agnes G</em> quite a bit. Can't remember why Birkin sounded so familiar to me.</li>
<li>Rewatched Malick's <em>The New World</em> which is often lovely to look at</li>
<li>Started in on Bolano's <em>2066</em> which I am quite enjoying.</li>
<li>Lynda Barry's <em>Come Over Come Over</em> was enjoyable and nostalgic on multiple levels (I do remember reading her strips in the City Paper or Philadelphia Weekly back in the 90s).</li>
</ul>