I must admit, when Guillermo del Toro’s Frankenstein was first announced, my heart sank. Do we really need yet another film version of such an iconic story? Like many I’m getting a bit tired of the recycled tat we get in cinemas these days and would rather see a truly original story. Surely AI hasn’t grasped us yet to the point where we can’t come up with new ideas?
Despite being in his eighties, David Cronenberg doesn’t appear to have settled down yet to make family-friendly films. His last film, Crimes of the Future (2022) caused the entire audience to leave my local cinema until I was the only person left in the theatre. I therefore wasn’t expecting an easy ride when embarking on The Shouds, his new venture, knowing it revolves around technology which allows people to watch their loved ones’ bodies decay in their grave. A nice and cheerful film to watch on a rainy Sunday afternoon, right?
I recently spent a weekend on the Norfolk Coast enjoying the beach, the sunshine and copious amounts of ice cream. As usual I spent much of my days (when I was not eating ice cream) on long walks. Norfolk has some great long distance walking paths, with the Norfolk Coast Path a firm favourite of mine, and I find myself returning to the prettiest sections again and again. This time I also explored some terrain more inland and racked up over fifty kilometres over the weekend.
To accompany me I brought a very appropriate book that had caught my eye in the library. Windswept: Why Women Walk by Annabel Abbs is part memoir (about Abbs own mixed feelings about walking) and part biography of several famous women who walked. The rota includes Simone de Beauviour, Gwen John, and Georgia O’Keeffe, and I was curious to find out more about their lives and the role walking played in it.
Wes Anderson’s latest has dropped, and we all know what that means: endless discussions as to whether he’s become a parody of himself, is choosing style over substance, etc, etc, etc.
For people spending their valuable time arguing these points, I have one piece of advice: you don’t need to watch his films. You certainly don’t need to like them. It’s okay. You can go and watch something else.
A 3,5 hour-long film about a Holocaust-surviving architect may not sound like the best way to spend your Saturday evening. Yet The Brutalist captured my imagination in a big way and, almost a week after I saw it, still haunts my memories.
If there’s one horror trope that’s been used to the point of exhaustion, it’s the vampire. It’s hard to imagine how anyone could come up with an original vampire story after Interview with the Vampire, The Lost Boys and, god forbid, Twilight.
Robert Eggers therefore seems to have taken the sensible route of not trying to come up with an original story. As any vampire-afficionado will know, Nosferatu is a reworking of a story that first existed as a silent film, and then as a remake in the 1970s. Even though I wasn’t expecting anything new, I still went to see the film as soon as it came out.
About a year and a half ago I started learning how to code, inspired as I was after meeting some very skilled creative coders. The journey that followed has, so far, been equally exciting and challenging. Unsurprisingly, trying to learn something new and alien can be fiendishly difficult at times, especially when you’re also juggling a full-time job, a martial arts practice, and learning two human languages. Luckily there are some good books around to help you manage the long and winding road.
It’s one of those books everyone knows and many are too scared to actually attempt: Herman Melville’s Moby Dick. Even with an American Studies PhD under my belt I’m not ashamed to admit that I’ve never gotten round to reading it. It’s a very long and very difficult book about whales, after all. Not exactly an easy sell.
But with the nights drawing in and more time on my hands I decided to give it a go.
One of the joys of reading is that there is always more to be discovered. Earlier this week my mum messaged me to ask if I had ever heard of Alfred Wainwright, and if not, that I would probably like his work. She’d heard him mentioned in a TV show she was watching and sent me a link to his Wikipedia entry without further context.
I had never heard of Wainwright, which seems odd given my recurrent interest in nature writing. Wainwright, as I soon discovered, is well known for having written a long list of guides to the Lake District. Perhaps that’s why I didn’t previously know of him. I’ve never been to the Lake District (although, now having read The Eastern Fells, I do want to go there) and as I discovered when I started reading one of his first books, it is not nature writing in the traditional sense.
During a recent spell of bad weather I went into one of my reading frenzies. This time I focused on books about management and coaching, hoping to learn some tricks I could apply at work. While many management books are nothing but self-indulgent waffle, Surrounded by Idiots by Thomas Erikson is a pleasant exception to the rule. It has given me insights I have instantly been able to apply to my job and, dare I say it, have even made said job a little easier.
cococatani 