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Month: October 2023

Month of Sundays #1

Posted on by Alex Daily

New month, new recurring post concept. Happy Halloween.

Movies

  • It’s hard to do an October horror movie thing when you’re already watching horror all the time. On top of that, between the Rings, the Ju-Ons, and the Elm Street and Friday the 13th reboots, it’s been quite a lot of “watching franchises play their opening gambits over and over again” lately. And then Friday the 13th and Halloween also have a bunch of endings, too.
  • I’ll do, I think, the American Ring and Grudge films, and then maybe take a wee break from horror for a bit.
  • Caught up on Hunger Games before the prequel comes out, but I don’t think I’m quite the target audience for these. I think I’m struggling for the exact reason people often struggle with The Matrix, which I love because I can bring the emotional through-line into focus for myself while blurring out the world and the philosophy a little — but with Hunger Games, because I’m not 14, the emotional through-line doesn’t click into place in the same way so all I can see is the idea that this dumb system has been in place for 75 years somehow.
  • Blank Check status report: Finished Tim Burton. Hitting Michael Mann means I’ve also got Waypoint‘s Mannhunting to listen to, but I didn’t really click with Thief, so this one might be a real chore again. But I really should at least get well into Mann before Ferrari comes out.

Bits from Letterboxd

Saw X (2023):

I get why [Jigsaw’s victims] don’t appreciate John Kramer the Maker or John Kramer the Industrial Designer, but they could at least appreciate John Kramer the Puppeteer.

Past Lives (2023):

I know that tension between the past and the present. I know changing your name, I know becoming ungoogleable. I know being somebody else somewhere else. I know all the things that are harder to say in one language than they are in the other. I know translating for a friend. I know wondering. I know not going there.

La Course (1896):

Good to keep a crowd between us and those horses, wouldn’t want them to rush out of the screen like that train.

Killers of the Flower Moon (2023):

an hour in I thought, “really, it’s weird that Jesse Plemons isn’t in this somewhere” and then an hour later there he was

Resident Evil (2002):

this is so 2002

we were always getting stuck in stainless steel laser trap rooms back then

Mac and Me (1988):

at the end the aliens have truly integrated into American society — they’ve gone on a road trip, picked up a few cold ones and a gun, and get shot and blown up by the cops

Dark Water (2002):

quite a strong overlap here with the Koji Suzuki adaptation Hideo Nakata’s best known for, Ring — these huge psychic scars left on the world around a sad death, an intense situation involving a single mother and her daughter, psychic visions, and, of course, they’re both pretty wet films

they’re both also, of course, awfully sad, but Ring gets to be sort of fun, with its over the top silly cursed tape concept, while this one thrives more in its fairly serious depiction of the claustrophobic little world around its urban legend-esque ghost story

an emotionally destructive ending like no other

Television

  • Finished John Wick spinoff The Continental. As we’ve established, it’s mostly bad and boring — on the one hand it sucks that Mel Gibson (boo hiss) is in it, on the other hand it’s nice to see him get shot in the head at the end.
  • If even the Frasier can have a minor queer character casually refer to her wife, there are no excuses left for not having any queer characters on your show.
    Speaking of the Frasier reboot, enjoyed the first two episodes, but it does feel quite a lot like they went “well nobody really wants to come back, so this guy is the new Niles, the new Daphne,” etcetera.
  • Enjoying Goosebumps.
  • The problem with the Jon Hamm character on The Morning Show this year is he’s clearly meant to be Elon Musk/Jeff Bezos, except he’s capable of introspection and change and seems quite nice, and I just don’t think that’s plausible — fundamentally the problem with serialised dramatic storytelling about rich people is that it’s hard to sell them both truly as craven and inhuman AND as rich, developed characters. This is why Succession was so good.
  • Nearly done with The Fall of the House of Usher, whose answer to the above issue is “well, we’ll kill ’em off one by one.”
  • The new Our Flag Means Death suffers a little from everyone involved now knowing what everyone loves about it, but it’s still a lot of fun. I appear to exist in total isolation from its fandom this season, so I’ve no idea how common a theory this is, but: The endgame for all of this is that Ed is “erased” from history and it’s Izzy who becomes the “real” Blackbeard, right? That’s surely where this is going.
  • Wellington Paranormal seems to have aired a full season since I caught up to it. On it. …No, to it. Still a hoot.
  • I’m enough behind on TV that I’m making myself stick strictly (mostly) to broadcast order again — as of this writing it’s Wednesday the 18th in TV land.

Doctor Who

  • Finished Professor Bernice Summerfield and the Gods of the Underworld. Nothing wrong with it, per se, but it’s a real example of a bog standard Benny archeology adventure full of thinly sketched species and cultures, supported by a cast of unoriginal, uninspired characters nobody will ever give a shit about. The clichés are ripe on the ground here, it’s all war races and Blood Messengers and space gangsters, and references both structural and pop cultural to both Indiana Jones and Star Wars feel tacky in the Year of Luigi 2023 in a way they probably didn’t in 2001.
  • Third Doctor Adventures: Intelligence for War. Like all the recasts Treloar and Ashford needed quite some time to truly come into their own, but here they’re on top form. The “Liz may have done some treason” story never feels like the filler it could easily have felt like, and it captures the Pertwee era so well you actually can picture the quiet Norfolk village it’s happening.
  • Odyssey kicks off the Torchwood range’s Ood trilogy.1Yes, it should’ve been called the Oodbvious thing. Strong performances elevate a solid script, though the end is a little The Satan Pit again. Does this just keep happening to poor Ida Scott?
  • I’ve now listened to the full @60 concert, and god, Russell and Murray are gonna kill me from dehydration come November 25th.
  • Started the Zygon Invasion novelisation. All a little straightforward, hard to imagine it meaningfully adds anything.
  • After lying next to my bed for six months, picked up Legends of Camelot again. Rayner finds a really fun way to do all the classic bits of Arthuriana you want without contradicting previous Doctor Who lore, and it’s a hoot to have Dr Who and Donna running around in it.

Podcasts

  • Cry Havoc! Ask Questions Later seems to have wrapped up its first season. “The Thick of It but in Roman times” is a solid premise that’s easy to fuck up, and they consistently do not fuck it up. Really funny.
  • I’m so close with Blank Check to catching up to where I was with Mobile Suit Gundam and Screen Test of Time, I’m so close.
  • 1
    Yes, it should’ve been called the Oodbvious thing.

Review: “Five Nights at Freddy’s” (2023), or, the Modern Cinematic Experience

Posted on by Alex Daily

Posted a few days after the fact — I saw it 27 October — because I reread it while compiling the first media roundup post and decided I wanted to preserve it in full. Other versions of this post have appeared on Letterboxd and Mastodon.

I have returned from the cinema subscription members only Halloween screening of 2023’s Five Nights at Freddy’s, where there was free Fanta and popcorn, approximately 150 giggling teenagers, and an attempt at an interactive pre-show quiz that just imploded.

Truly, the trinality of cinema.

Let’s do this in reverse order.

The quiz thing is kind of a shame because all the questions glitched past and I think I would’ve known most of them and so could’ve plausibly won something. (Test run these things, y’all.)

The 150 giggling teenagers totally worked for this movie specifically — I can’t help but see all the clichés, I metagame twists, I see story structure before me like it’s the fucking Matrix, but a teenager excited for the movie based on the video game they know from the YouTube videos doesn’t do that, and I think I would’ve enjoyed this a lot less without over the top “oh my god”s and “what the FUCK”s at things I, you know, might make fun of.1I was glad I was sitting front row, though, so I didn’t have to see the teenagers with what I’m sure were one hundred brightly lit cellphones in hand. Also worth nothing, the weirdly huge reaction at a random waiter — that I have now learned was portrayed by one Mr Mat “MatrickPatrick” Pat, who is at least a YouTuber I’ve heard of.

The Fanta2Orange. Both Zero and regular were available. was flowing so freely I came home with a full litre and a half of Fanta, I’m not even fucking kidding.

And the movie: Was good. Fun, solid, balances what I understand is fairly limited game play and deep lore in a way that works as a movie. The comparison to Willy’s Wonderland3I think of myself as on the record as a Willy’s Wonderland enjoyer, but I guess I’ve given it three stars and no review, so it may be due for a rewatch. is fair, but I think they’re doing different enough things that they can religion co-exist dot jpeg.

Anyway.

A perfectly cromulent time at the movies.

  • 1
    I was glad I was sitting front row, though, so I didn’t have to see the teenagers with what I’m sure were one hundred brightly lit cellphones in hand.
  • 2
    Orange. Both Zero and regular were available.
  • 3
    I think of myself as on the record as a Willy’s Wonderland enjoyer, but I guess I’ve given it three stars and no review, so it may be due for a rewatch.

So You Want To Watch The “Ju-On” Movies (Part One, 1998-2003)

Posted on by Alex Daily

I watch a lot of movies. And I’m here to use that tactical advantage to your advantage — and tell you about some more movies.

If you’re aware of movies at all, you’ll have heard of these by their American title, The Grudge — in the same way that the Ring films are about a young woman’s pain being projected into the world so hard they end up airing on TV, these are about the same thing happening with a house; a pain felt by the cosmos so hard that the place where it happened holds a, well, grudge. These original films are incredibly low-budget — but they pull off some great scares very effectively.

In this first part I’ll cover the following films:

  • The short films 4444444444 and Katasumi
  • The Japanese V-Cinema (straight to video) films Ju-On: The Curse and Ju-On: The Curse 2.
  • The Japanese theatrical films Ju-On: The Grudge and Ju-On: The Grudge 2.

Continue reading “So You Want To Watch The “Ju-On” Movies (Part One, 1998-2003)”

The Pitcairn Review: “In my Sleep” by Nina Maria Kleivan

Posted on by Alex Daily

Being approximately the size of a large shoebox, the Pitcairn Museum for Contemporary Art is, probably, the world’s smallest museum. I walk past it several times a week, and would happily say it’s my favourite museum. But I’ve never seen any kind of serious writing about it, so in the spirit of living the change, I’m going to try to make this a recurring feature.

Let’s, as the Pitcairn asks us to imagine we’re doing, stand in the space for a moment.

A photograph of a large shoebox-sized L-shaped gallery space. From left to right, a white door, a collage piece of a person with black paper cutout tears on their face on a blue and orange background, in a black frame. Then, three black sculptures on white pedestals, the first two in the shape of the tears from the first piece, then the third approximately C-shaped. Behind these sculptures is a poem -- "There are things / I can neither talk /about nor forget. Not even in my sleep. And I realize / that there will be / things in life that / are impossible to / overcome." -- and then on the right wall there is another collage piece, of a person looking at the camera and then a blob of pink paint, all surrounded by cutouts of various unspecific black shapes and various fabrics. It's in a black frame.
Nina Maria Kleivan, In my Sleep, 2023, Pitcairn Museum for Contemporary Art

Right away, and I’m sorry to start this first Pitcairn Review this way, I’m bored. I’m sorry. This is where I admit a personal bias — I’m simply not big on collage.

Continue reading “The Pitcairn Review: “In my Sleep” by Nina Maria Kleivan”

On barnacles

Posted on by Alex Daily

David asked about the Stef Coburn situation — the son of writer Anthony Coburn is claiming his dad had enough of an ownership over the first Doctor Who serial that he, as controller of his estate, now seems to be able to block its re-release1Here’s Gizmodo on the issue. I would recommend strongly against clicking through to Coburn’s Twitter. — and I basically blogged about it in reply.

This is my lightly edited2Coburn doesn’t seem to be particularly litigious towards people writing about this, but for legal reasons I feel slightly less comfortable being very rude here. earnest understanding and assessment of the situation, as I rattled it off at 9:30am this morning after sleeping for twelve hours. I am not a lawyer, and I am not qualified to write about this in any way except that I’m a Doctor Who fan.

Most people writing about this are idiots. I’m probably one of them.

One

Stef Coburn is a misogynist, a conspiracy nutter, a vaccine truther, a racist, a transphobe, an all-round bigot, a typical modern conservative3These are all claims I feel I can back up just by pointing at his Twitter, but rest assured I edited out several things I felt like I couldn’t., who, though I’m sure he hates that Dr Who is played by a Black actor now just by default,4David had linked to a social media post suggesting Coburn was specifically doing this because he was mad Dr Who was Black now. seems to have experienced the show’s very existence as a miserable intrusion upon his awful life, so I think it’s less “Stef is doing this because Ncuti” and more “Stef is doing this because he chooses to,” with a layer of “Stef is doing this now because he knows it’s a time when he’ll get the attention and outrage he seems to crave” — he also tried to claim ownership of the TARDIS using basically the same tricks during the 50th anniversary period.

Personally, I think this kind of thing works best when you get the fandom to rally behind you — I’m generally happy to say, yeah, somebody who made a major contribution early on to something that’s a billion dollar brand now should be recognised beyond what they were paid at the time — but Stef seems to have gone the “I know how to make a stink and I’m gonna make the smell everyone’s problem” route.

Two

The contract situation on old Doctor Who is messy. The rule, generally, is, if something was invented by somebody on BBC payroll, it belongs to the show, and if it was invented by a freelancer, they have some amount of legal ownership over the concept. Terry Nation fully owned the Daleks, now his estate does, and for much of the 60s and 70s he tried to make a standalone Dalek show — typically a 60s-style sci-fi space police thing — happen.5A pilot script was adapted for audio by Big Finish in 2010 as The Destroyers. Bob Baker and Dave Martin owned K9,6See: The relationship between K9 mostly being absent in The Sarah Jane Adventures and the existence of Disney XD’s K9 series. And the perpetually definitely-happening K9: TimeQuake. the Brig has his own long-running military sci-fi novel series fully licensed from the Haisman and Lincoln estates that the BBC has no involvement in7From Candy Jar Books. I like these, but they only did audiobooks for the first few seasons., etcetera.

Some version of this is still happening, even — we know legally RTD invented Captain Jack even though Steven Moffat wrote his first appearance, meaning RTD essentially owns Torchwood, and Moffat seems to have retained some amount of control over the Paternoster Gang concept in the years between Big Finish getting the modern license and them getting to do Paternoster Gang stories of their own. Note also who and what get “created by” credits when in the modern show.

(This is even more of a thing in the various book ranges, where a lot of the ownership of the text has fully reverted back to the authors, and you’ll sometimes see whole books reprinted as self-published versions with the Doctor Who bits stripped out.)

Three

Stef’s TARDIS case a decade ago never went anywhere because when Anthony Coburn contributed the idea of the police box shape for the TARDIS’ interior he was on BBC payroll, a staff writer.8The general concept of the TARDIS was invented by, well, probably Verity Lambert or Sydney Newman or somebody else, look it up yourself. Either way, the BBC has pretty cleanly owned the police box shape since 2002. Coburn was also on payroll when he first conceived of the caveman story he would go on to write, and when he was first commissioned to write it, but then the BBC’s general Script Department was dissolved, and he was re-commissioned to write it as a freelancer. That, ultimately, is where the issue seems to lie.

But: Loads of Doctor Who scripts were written by freelancers, and even when they own their concepts or even everything that happens in the story — the Haisman and Lincoln estates are able to license out the events of Web of Fear to such an extent that the Brigadier in those books is allowed to acknowledge everything that happened except that the people involved were called “the Doctor,” “Jamie McCrimmon,” or “Victoria Waterfield”9They become “the Cosmic Hobo,” “the Scottish lad,” and “the girl with the queen’s name.” — that doesn’t seem to mean the BBC doesn’t own enough of the rights to keep rereleasing them on DVD, Blu-Ray, audiobooks of novelisations, etcetera.

So the big part I’m personally unclear about is — is this situation different in some way I can’t see? Or is this just the first real instance of an estate being controlled by somebody who’s not just happy to cooperate, who’s not just happy to take the occasional licensing paycheck, but is choosing to play nasty? Could they all have been playing nasty this whole time?  Either way, the BBC seem to believe there’s something here. I thought they were just playing it safe when they offered to pay him off — £20k, according to Stef, which he seems to have turned down because he’s being normal about Gary Lineker, I think? — but then yesterday a BBC rep explicitly said they don’t own all the relevant rights10From the Radio Times: “A spokesperson for the BBC said: “This massive iPlayer back catalogue will be home to over 800 hours of Doctor Who content, making it the biggest ever collection of Doctor Who programming in one place but will not include the first four episodes as we do not have all the rights to those.””, which surprised me.

So that’s where this situation is right now. I don’t know how it’s gonna evolve, but I suppose it either ends in the BBC being willing to match Stef’s (undoubtedly very high) asking price, or it going to court. Would court go how Stef wants? I’d imagine he’d rather avoid finding out.

  • 1
    Here’s Gizmodo on the issue. I would recommend strongly against clicking through to Coburn’s Twitter.
  • 2
    Coburn doesn’t seem to be particularly litigious towards people writing about this, but for legal reasons I feel slightly less comfortable being very rude here.
  • 3
    These are all claims I feel I can back up just by pointing at his Twitter, but rest assured I edited out several things I felt like I couldn’t.
  • 4
    David had linked to a social media post suggesting Coburn was specifically doing this because he was mad Dr Who was Black now.
  • 5
    A pilot script was adapted for audio by Big Finish in 2010 as The Destroyers.
  • 6
    See: The relationship between K9 mostly being absent in The Sarah Jane Adventures and the existence of Disney XD’s K9 series. And the perpetually definitely-happening K9: TimeQuake.
  • 7
    From Candy Jar Books. I like these, but they only did audiobooks for the first few seasons.
  • 8
    The general concept of the TARDIS was invented by, well, probably Verity Lambert or Sydney Newman or somebody else, look it up yourself. Either way, the BBC has pretty cleanly owned the police box shape since 2002.
  • 9
    They become “the Cosmic Hobo,” “the Scottish lad,” and “the girl with the queen’s name.”
  • 10
    From the Radio Times: “A spokesperson for the BBC said: “This massive iPlayer back catalogue will be home to over 800 hours of Doctor Who content, making it the biggest ever collection of Doctor Who programming in one place but will not include the first four episodes as we do not have all the rights to those.””

No more sundays

Posted on by Alex Daily

Just a quick little note today —

The Sunday format isn’t quite working for me — the mix of journal and media diet post doesn’t really work to begin with, nobody needs weekly updates on where I’m at with a book, and in the journal bit I keep complaining about my Mondays on my Sundays, which, you know, they do dominate the week, but also perpetuates a downwards spiral.

I also don’t like the way they highlight that I haven’t posted in a bit, but that’s a separate thing.

So, going forward:

  • One, if I have something to say I’ll just say it.1This was another problem with the journal bit — do I hold back something I could say earlier, or do I write something I wouldn’t otherwise be writing?
  • Two, monthly media posts. I think that’s a better pace that allows me more time to actually find things to say.
    • The Bits from Letterboxd section will survive in some fashion, either in those posts or on its own, which, you know, my original plan for this blog was to just syndicate what I was doing elsewhere, and I think it’s very funny that that almost fully has not happened and it’s almost all been original material.
    • I’ve considered whether I should Do The Letterboxd Thing on other sites for other media, but I don’t want to be on More Silos, and I don’t see myself having the relationship with those I have with Letterboxd, anyway.

That is all. The river flows the way the river flows.

  • 1
    This was another problem with the journal bit — do I hold back something I could say earlier, or do I write something I wouldn’t otherwise be writing?

Inktober 2023: Annietober (Week One)

Posted on by Alex Daily

Originally posted to Mastodon.

Having a go at Inktober this year. My self-enforced theme, ahead of actually showing you all Annie Forever, is, well, Annie. So here’s the first week of of Annietober.

Always to the best of my ability, with what whatever I had to hand.

A digital illustration of Annie, asleep, translucent, on a train. The ocean view outside is impossibly curved. A pen and ink illustration in a sketchbook of Annie using a magnifying glass to investigate a cute lil' spider. A digital illustration of Annie, wearing a tunic of some sort, and holding a long stick and a shield, looking up at a sky, in which we see a crashing plane, and the silhouette of Warbucks' head, surrounded by sparkling lights or stars. It's an ominous, heavy scene. A digital illustration of Annie walking along a grassy path. A bee flies past her face. A digital illustration of Annie falling behind a wagon, like how Calvin and Hobbes sometimes do. She's holding a map and reading it attentively, almost like she hasn't noticed she's falling. A digital illustration, on a black background, of Annie falling into or through a big set of teeth, the corners of which are sharp and made of gold. A digital illustration of a wee speedboat racing up a stream of water coming from a faucet. If you zoomed in you'd see the captain of the speedboat is Annie.

Sunday #6: Oof Edition

Posted on by Alex Daily

Sunday, Sunday, Sunday.

First two Real Classes under the belt. It’s remarkable, one, how far I’ve come that I’m able to do this, and two, how much the human body will sweat suppressing a fight-or-flight response. Oof. They say you could smell me on the other side of the Forum.

Blogging has been defeated by school, but I do have eleven drafts sitting around, at various levels between “basically a post-it note” and “the first thousand words are done, now I just need to write the other thousand words.”

Below the fold: The usual.

Continue reading “Sunday #6: Oof Edition”

What the fuck is this little thingy? (Solved. Thanks, Reddit.)

Posted on by Alex Daily

Pictured, from the back and front, laying on a pink post-it note: A small, plastic thingamabob, of, in the front, two horizontal bars connected by a circular hole, and in the front, one horizontal bar through which the aforementioned circular hole goes. On the back it's also sort of a gear thing? It's holding two small metal wheels, keeping them in place with the little speedbumps that are on the back horizontal bar. Image descriptions are hard.

I’ve found at least one of these before, and last week I found this one between the shoe store and the gym. I’ve no idea what it is or what it could possibly be part of.

As far as I can tell, the plastic is all one piece. The metal wheels are easily removable by just peeling back the back bar a little. The vibe is more “RC car” than “serious equipment.”

UPDATE: Reddit got it instantaneously.

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