Entry tags:
Media Roundup, end-July
When the Angels Left the Old Country, by Sacha Lamb: An angel and a demon who've been studying Talmud together in their tiny shtetl for centuries leave for America in the early 1900s. This has made its way through my flist for the last year to rousing reviews; I definitely enjoyed it, but I think my expectations had been set sky high and that was a bit unfair to it. Things I really liked: very good at explaining concepts without going into overexplaining territory; fun characters -- especially loved the confused baby lesbian and also the confused angel; excellent pacing; the consistent narrative voice which was invoking Yiddish grammatical influence. I did feel like the overall plot was a bit pat and that the characters never were really in trouble, even when they were stuck in Ellis Island and also confronting murderers! Overall, I enjoyed the first half more than the second, but I would still recommend it if historical fantasy is your jam.
The Fabric of Civilization: How Textiles Made the World, by Virginia Postrel: As it says on the tin! From![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
chestnut_pod's rec. I felt like this was strongest when it was being a pop history book: she does not have the gift for describing technical details via text and so those sections were sometimes bogged down (when we got to how industrial looms worked, I gave up). It's always interesting to me that in books like this that cover computing and chemistry for popular audiences that the computing is usually okay, but the chemistry often has slightly to the left descriptions. ("Fibroin has an unusual chemical property. It contains some protein sequences that love water and some that hate it." When explaining hydrolysis: "Along with the polyesters, the reactions produced water. Maybe its components were bonding with parts of the polyester chains, breaking them apart to re-create acids and alcohols. They needed to get rid of every bit of the water." These aren't like, wrong, they're just kind of weird ways to say things???) Anyway, I did feel like her analysis was sometimes superficial and even though an effort was made to fill out the 'world' part of the title, it was still most in depth for European regions. But it WAS great for pulling together all this information about textiles in a well paced form and filled in a few holes in my knowledge about how historical societies treated textiles.
Some Desperate Glory, by Emily Tesh: A girl raised in a small, fascist space station to take revenge for the destruction of the Earth discovers the deep flaws in her society and confronts ...utilitarianism via all-powerful AI. This book inevitably calls to the tumblr "humans are weird to aliens thing" and the twitter "wiseposting" memes in ways I found slightly distracting aha. The character work is great! The protagonist sure is a baby fascist and a bully at the beginning and she ends up a better person without being a different person. However, it was really thin in culture of anywhere other than the station (given a pass because the protagonist is from a ostensibly uniform society and not very curious when encountering others) and was a bit great man theory re: the villain. Ultimately, it worked best for me when tightly focused on the fascist station's effects on its children and when the wider world intrudes (including in the timeline shenanigans), it doesn't always follow through. I enjoyed it, and read it all in one sitting, but it wasn't as meaty as I hoped it would be. (PS: the protagonist is supposed to be a heavily muscular girl, so the cover bothers me.)
Snow Man Live Tour 2022 Labo (Concert DVD): The sets were so good! The screens were nice, and I loved the slides incorporated into the choreo. This was fun to watch party! IDK if I'd like, watch the whole thing in one go by MYSELF but it was fun as a group.
Oh No! Here Comes Trouble (不良执念清除师): After waking up from a coma, Pu Yiyong discovers he can see the supernatural and his calligraphy has gained magical powers. Now, he must deal with the spirits bothering him, with the help of Chen Chuying, a young and kind of stupid cop, and Cao Guangyan, his old school nemesis. Ultimately, the show is about the arc of Pu Yiyong grieving his dad and grandpa, with a B plot of PYY developing his emotional capacity and learning to speak with the victims. So even though it's hinting at the PYY/CGY couple, with amusement park dates and all, that's very much not the focus of the plot. I really love PYY's mom and her relationship with him: she's such a teasing and loving parent (and they killed off the dad instead!). While making the cop incompetent is sure a strategy, it's annoying because she's The Girl Cop (and also generally kind of annoying haha). The mystery of the cases is usually besides the point (lots of convenient evidence finding), subsumed in the emotions of the people involved, and there's a good balance between the overall emotional plot arc and the cases. It's a show with good comedic timings and the pacing is overall decent. (The pleasure in this show is situated in the emotional journey and so dwells on them a little longer.) I thought this was a very solid watch, and told a nice full story in its 12 episodes.
Barbie (2023): The hype around the movie was more fun than the movie itself, which might be expected. The outfits were sooo good, and I loved the mom-tween interactions (the reveal of the mom did make me tear up a little bit). But the plot was kind of whatever and the Kens and Mattel executives overstayed their welcome. A fun summer blockbuster, but not more than that.
The Fabric of Civilization: How Textiles Made the World, by Virginia Postrel: As it says on the tin! From
chestnut_pod's rec. I felt like this was strongest when it was being a pop history book: she does not have the gift for describing technical details via text and so those sections were sometimes bogged down (when we got to how industrial looms worked, I gave up). It's always interesting to me that in books like this that cover computing and chemistry for popular audiences that the computing is usually okay, but the chemistry often has slightly to the left descriptions. ("Fibroin has an unusual chemical property. It contains some protein sequences that love water and some that hate it." When explaining hydrolysis: "Along with the polyesters, the reactions produced water. Maybe its components were bonding with parts of the polyester chains, breaking them apart to re-create acids and alcohols. They needed to get rid of every bit of the water." These aren't like, wrong, they're just kind of weird ways to say things???) Anyway, I did feel like her analysis was sometimes superficial and even though an effort was made to fill out the 'world' part of the title, it was still most in depth for European regions. But it WAS great for pulling together all this information about textiles in a well paced form and filled in a few holes in my knowledge about how historical societies treated textiles. Some Desperate Glory, by Emily Tesh: A girl raised in a small, fascist space station to take revenge for the destruction of the Earth discovers the deep flaws in her society and confronts ...utilitarianism via all-powerful AI. This book inevitably calls to the tumblr "humans are weird to aliens thing" and the twitter "wiseposting" memes in ways I found slightly distracting aha. The character work is great! The protagonist sure is a baby fascist and a bully at the beginning and she ends up a better person without being a different person. However, it was really thin in culture of anywhere other than the station (given a pass because the protagonist is from a ostensibly uniform society and not very curious when encountering others) and was a bit great man theory re: the villain. Ultimately, it worked best for me when tightly focused on the fascist station's effects on its children and when the wider world intrudes (including in the timeline shenanigans), it doesn't always follow through. I enjoyed it, and read it all in one sitting, but it wasn't as meaty as I hoped it would be. (PS: the protagonist is supposed to be a heavily muscular girl, so the cover bothers me.)
Snow Man Live Tour 2022 Labo (Concert DVD): The sets were so good! The screens were nice, and I loved the slides incorporated into the choreo. This was fun to watch party! IDK if I'd like, watch the whole thing in one go by MYSELF but it was fun as a group.
Oh No! Here Comes Trouble (不良执念清除师): After waking up from a coma, Pu Yiyong discovers he can see the supernatural and his calligraphy has gained magical powers. Now, he must deal with the spirits bothering him, with the help of Chen Chuying, a young and kind of stupid cop, and Cao Guangyan, his old school nemesis. Ultimately, the show is about the arc of Pu Yiyong grieving his dad and grandpa, with a B plot of PYY developing his emotional capacity and learning to speak with the victims. So even though it's hinting at the PYY/CGY couple, with amusement park dates and all, that's very much not the focus of the plot. I really love PYY's mom and her relationship with him: she's such a teasing and loving parent (and they killed off the dad instead!). While making the cop incompetent is sure a strategy, it's annoying because she's The Girl Cop (and also generally kind of annoying haha). The mystery of the cases is usually besides the point (lots of convenient evidence finding), subsumed in the emotions of the people involved, and there's a good balance between the overall emotional plot arc and the cases. It's a show with good comedic timings and the pacing is overall decent. (The pleasure in this show is situated in the emotional journey and so dwells on them a little longer.) I thought this was a very solid watch, and told a nice full story in its 12 episodes.
Barbie (2023): The hype around the movie was more fun than the movie itself, which might be expected. The outfits were sooo good, and I loved the mom-tween interactions (the reveal of the mom did make me tear up a little bit). But the plot was kind of whatever and the Kens and Mattel executives overstayed their welcome. A fun summer blockbuster, but not more than that.
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It's funny because it's true...
Barbie struck me as one of those "trying to appeal to everyone, so it didn't appeal to me" kind of movies, which is fine. It was still great eye candy with high production values and a nice central character. And the actual movie was more fun than the discourse around it. XD
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I enjoyed everyone being so excited for it!
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I pretty much agree with your thoughts on Barbie too. It was a lot of fun and made me tear up a bit at some moments and I loved the visuals and the soundtrack, but as a whole I wouldn't call the movie anywhere near as phenomenal as its marketing and surrounding hype.
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But what successful marketing it was!
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And I felt just the same way about Angels -- a really fun, pleasant, enjoyable book that probably couldn't ever have lived up to my sky-high hopes and dreams for it, but which nonetheless I'm very happy exists.
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I was okay until the industrial looms, at which point I definitely needed more diagrams!
It was a good book! My expectations had been raised altogether too high, but it was still good!
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re: barbie, the mattel executives i definitely could've used less of, but i truly loved all the kenanigans so i was more than happy to watch those parts 🤣 i just can't say no to ryan gosling-led dance numbers, i guess! i was talking to cait about this on twitter, but i also felt like - i don't personally need a message like america ferrara's monologue anymore at my age, but i can see why it's affecting for other people, so in that sense i'm glad it got made. conceptually i liked the reluctant pinnochio storyline a lot and i thought margot knocked it out of the park so overall i'm pleased it's getting its flowers
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See, I had seen the cut of the I'm Just Ken number, and I was excited for it -- but then in context I felt like it went on too long?? Maybe I just didn't find the concept of the Kens as charming. But yeah, I like that it was a summer blockbuster that was unashamed of itself!
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ahh, that's totally fair! my investment in the kens mostly stems from wanting them all to make out with each other, so you know, business as usual 😆