w/e 2024-12-22

Home alone for most of the week and not much in the way of events to report.

I spent a lot of time on my sporadic re-playing of Red Dead Redemption 2 which is a great way to avoid the real world and not think about anything except what’s happening on the screen. And what was happening on the screen was mostly me walking or riding around in circles trying to find a specific animal in “perfect” condition so that I could kill it for its skin to make a special satchel or some inconsequential item for the gang’s camp. A largely pointless, and often frustrating, way to spend hours and hours, but still enjoyable.

§ If you’re feeling pretty down, what’s the best kind of film to watch? A comedy? An absorbing action movie? Or Satantango Béla Tarr’s seven hour black-and-white tale about a declining and very muddy Hungarian village? Exactly!

Unfortunately I reckoned without the flakiness of BFI Player. There’s no Roku app but the first evening I coaxed the iPad app into streaming to the TV via Apple Airplay and watched the first 2¼ hours. The second evening I spent half an hour battling various errors before giving up.

A shame, because what I saw was great. Very, very, very slow but it still somehow captured my attention, which isn’t easy at home when various Internet-connected devices are within reach. And it didn’t feel too slow. Shots were held for as long as things took. Of course they were that long!

So, instead, that second night I watched Fly Me to the Moon (Greg Berlanti, 2024) which suffered by comparison. (Has anyone else compared this rom-com to Béla Tarr?) Scarlett Johansson carried it but at over two hours it was far too drawn out. It should have been short and snappy.

The next night I watched Frank Borzage’s 1932 version of A Farewell to Arms. At 89 minutes it was almost too rapid, and it was interesting how much happened between scenes. e.g. the leads have their first hesitant kiss, and next thing they’re deeply in love and talking about marriage. There’s a good montage of World War I action that got a lot of atmosphere and events over with rapidly.

Oh, and somewhere among all that I also watched Tom playing Astro Bot: Winter Wonder and Still Wakes the Deep which were both fun. A cute 3D platformer compared to a grim 1970s sweary Scottish oil rig horror is probably a similar jump as that between Fly Me to the Moon and Satantango.

§ This week I finished reading The New House by David Leo Rice, which I got based on this recommendation by James A. Reeves. It was very good, and consistent – it’s well written but it wasn’t like there were a few turns of phrase or sentences that jumped out at me because it was all good and kept on going. A boy raised by two isolated Jewish zealots – who once had something unspecified go very wrong for them in “the Art World” – and him finding his individuality and art in a small weird town. Which makes it sound more normal than it is.

§ That’s all. Have a good whatever you yourself call this week.