What?! Another one so soon?! Yesss! I reserve thesedigests for discussing books and TV shows I’ll probably never complete, or cultural artefacts which, while I can’t summon up much to say about, feel they are still worthy of note. Plus I’ve been sober for, like, two weeks now, so I’m actually getting stuff done. Not important stuff, like getting my life together, but stuff all the same.
So, on we go with some… erm… stuff!
JAWS
No, not the 1974 film that reshaped Hollywood’s release schedule, but Peter Benchley’s original novel. The audiobook is currently included with my Audible membership, which I am not being paid to promote. I just love it so! Anyway, I was curious to see how the source material compares to the film, which I’ve always assumed was a Touch of Evil/Alien/English Patient-type situation, where a slice of pulp fiction or a b-movie script is elevated by a talented director with a vision. The first scene is pretty much as it is in the movie, except the two lovers go swimming from a shared holiday house, rather than a hippie-dippy campfire. I’ll try and listen to some more tonight, if my stomach is strong enough! The film is usually too icky for me to watch. I mean, a little boy gets turned into a blood volcano FFS. Not. Nice. Oh I have an old hardcopy edition of Benchley’s The Deep somewhere. I wonder if it’s a first edition. It could pay for may way out of this hellhole! The Deep though.... hmmm.
THE COMPLETE WORKS OF WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
I bought the boxset of this in CD format a few years ago for a whopping £193.08, which was a massive pain-in-the-arse to rip onto an MP3 player. Then, the other day, I found it for just £7.99 digitally. Now don’t I feel like a fucking idiot?! Oh well, life and all that, huh? It’s always bothered me that these Marlowe Company performances don’t include stage directions, which are a delight in themselves, as you’re not always sure which characters are talking, where they are, or what’s going on around them. But it’s fine. Shakespeare just helps me relax and get to sleep sometimes.
PLAYSTATION 5 (continued)
I’ve certainly settled into the swing of this console, with features I appreciate and features I most certainly do not. The main thing I like is the multi-layered zoom/magnifier, which also lets you control what’s happening onscreen while still zoomed in. Crazy! That certainly wasn’t the case with the PS4, as far as I could tell. The features I don’t like are the lack of customisation options in Settlings and the piss-poor or complete lack of a Home Button menu. I’m even still having to think before I take any action when not playing a game/viewing a media app. What on Earth were they thinking?! Urgh, oh well, apart from all that it’s still fine. Just… fine.
FLASHBACK 2
The original, a potentially copyright-infringing mix of They Live! and Total Recall, still is one of my favourite video games of all time. I spent a great deal of the late-90s scrambling around its 2D platform beauty. In fact, the Death Tower level is something I could play over and over again as its own Downwell-style mini-game. Well, how shocked was I when I discovered, purely by accident, that there was a sequel?! I don’t buy games full priced usually, but I made a rare exception for this. It’s cute that it begins in relative-2D, so as not to jar fans of the original, but then opens up into a more-3D environment quite organically. I’m not sure how well I’ll get on with it, to be honest, as my incurable, hereditary, degenerative eye disease takes exception to its small characters, even smaller items, and busy frame, but I’ll certainly give it “the old college try” as they say in the colonies.
GHOST IN THE SHELL 3
Or, to use its awkward full title, Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex -Solid State Society. Phew! I can’t believe I’ve been knocking about for sixteen years without knowing this existed. I know it’s technically a made-for-TV feature based on a spinoff television series, but all the old players are there: Major Kusanagi, Batou, Togusa, Chief Aramaki, Ishikawa, and a plot involving cyber terrorists manipulating robots or humans with robot parts or both. So, hey, why not Ghost in the Shell 3?! There does seem to be a formula to this now, so they make sure to give us: Kusanagi rappelling off a skyscraper; a fight with a hulking machine in a large, enclosed space; an outdoor chase with a villain wearing a cloaking device; and a tense mind-meld between Kusanagi and a character with the word “puppet” in its name. Hmmm. You could almost accuse this of being a grossly-unnecessary remake, but let’s not and say we did. There are some unintentional laugh-out-loud moments, thanks in most part to the English dub. Well, I assume. And there’s one hilarious moment where a character saves someone at the last minute, then feels the need to awkwardly explain why they waited until the last minute. No need, we know you were just creating tension, don’t worry. I like that this one is missing Mamoru Oshii’s usual eye-rolling pretension, even infusing some of the original manga’s bubblegum camp into it, so I may actually watch this one more than the claustrophobically-dour Ghost in the Shell 2: Innocence. We shall see.
BLACK SABBATH
Once upon a time, long before Ozzy Osborne brought down the standard of television with his obnoxious family, he was actually in a pretty good rock band. I’ve given Black Sabbath a whirl every now and then over the years, but nothing’s really stuck. Until now! Suddenly, out of nowhere, I’ve actually started to find their plodding sound strangely relaxing. I’m choosing to experience their albums as flamboyant rock operas, rather than downbeat goth bollocks, which adds an endearingly theatrical element that certainly was not intended. At least I assume it wasn’t. Having also seen the making of the album Paranoid recently, they actually all seem like pretty nice chaps, so I don’t mind giving them some money or streaming statistics or however it all fucking works in this exhausting digital age we find ourselves in.
Righty-ho, that’s all my wittering done for one evening. I’m trying to sort out a short story for Halloween, so I best get cracking on that. Oh and I have three more damned Friday the 13th movies to suffer through. Life, huh?! Maybe I should just go out for a swim and get eaten by a shark. I’m sure it’d be a more merciful death.
Do stay in touch, darlings.
Toodles!
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