Monthly Consumption: January 2016

I thought it might be a good idea, for the benefit of the people writing my biography in the future, to keep a note of the stories I experience each month. As last month was January, I will begin there.

Watchables

Whiplash
The silly-fast drum solos were irritating and the protagonist, suffering from the kind of arrogance that makes gentle flowers turn violent, couldn’t stop the film from absorbing my attention. I’m not decided if the scenes were extremely well written or whether the performance of J K Simmons (AKA the IBS man in The Ladykillers) carried the film along; his furious reactions to incompetence almost left me whimpering in the corner, wondering whether I was the one who was out of tune.

Birdman
I was looking forward to watching this for a long time. The film has the feeling of one of those experimental short stories that has no punctuation and the sentences run on and on, endlessly — but without the confusion.

American Beauty
Great, now I’ll have to find room in my list of favourite films. Thanks a lot, American Beauty. I think there’s a lot to analyse in the story. It’s tragic that most people are trying to portray themselves as someone other people, as they imagine, want them to be.

My Neighbour the Yamadas and Pom Poko (+The Tale of The Princess Kaguya)
The Yamadas is fun and has one of the best English dubs in a Japanese animation. I appreciated the simplistic art style, though it seemed a bit too washed out sometimes. And I’m not sure film was the best medium for this; it might have worked better as a TV series or short YouTube videos. The concept for Pom Poko was clever, and the first half of the film was great, but it started to chug along from the mid-point on as the pacing slowed down and the scenes became irrelevant to the plot. As for Kaguya, that was a bore from start to finish.

Readables

Donald Duck – A Christmas for Shacktown
These Donald Duck comics are the best thing from January. They remind me more of the 90s Simpsons episodes than the Disney cartoons. Carl Barks was probably one of the best cartoonists; great storyteller, expressive characters and staging, and quite funny too.

Mickey Mouse – Vol.1 Race to Death Valley
Mickey, but not as anyone remembers him. I admire how Floyd Gottfredson managed to keep up long story arcs while only publishing four panels a day.

Short Stories
I set myself a task in January to read as many short stories, from as many different authors, from as many different continents, as I possibly could. I ended up reading lots of stories, but only remember these two:

The Landlady by Roald Dahl
This is a story about a 17 year old looking for a room to rent in Bath. I read it a couple of years ago, but rereading it now, having room-hunting experience, I’m able to appreciate the subtle, creepy atmosphere of the story.

Sansho the Steward  by Mori Ogai
A tragic story about human trafficking and child slavery in 19th century Japan. Tragic, tragic, tragic.

Playables

Since I sometimes review video games, and having been gifted a PS4 console recently, I played through a couple of games in January: Dragon Quest Heroes and Infamous Second Son. It was the first time I experienced the new generation of consoles (though they’re two years old now), and I’m actually quite impressed how far the technology has come.

The Dragon Quest Heroes story isn’t worth mentioning, as it’s a very simple good vs evil plot. The game was quite fun at times, a bit repetitive at others. The voice acting was surprisingly good, with accents from all over the UK, which were unusually accurate for something made abroad.

Infamous is like a superhero TV series or hollywood film, which is actually a compliment for a video game. It’s hard for a story about superpowers to be good, so it wouldn’t be fair to expect too much from Infamous. That said, it is a good example of how the storytelling standards are improving in video games, especially with the acting and character animations. The game itself is fun, sometimes repetitive, and the world is enormous and alive. The best thing about it was finding a Korean restaurant!