Category: Longform
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Blue Jean, 2022 - ★★½
In the 1980s, under the fear of the Tory government's Clause 28, a teacher has to keep her sexuality hidden if she wants to keep her job. The arrival of a new student throws things up in the air.
It's pretty good, gives a real sense of how much fear the terrible legislation caused, while also showing how women can support each other — and sometimes fail to do so.
Pain and Glory, 2019 - ★★★
Or Dolor y gloria, to give it its Spanish title.
Pedro Almodóvar's latest, and filled with his colourful imagery. Especially red. Man, that guy loves a bright red. And why not?
As I was watching, I remember thinking, 'This is the most pro-heroin film I've seen since Pulp Fiction.' Which is not to say that's what it's about, at all.
Antonio Banderas plays a successful film director who has mostly retired, largely due to his health problems. He has pain from back problems, and various other things.
In flashbacks (or are they?) we're told of his young life. In the current time, he meets an old colleague who introduces him to heroin, which doesn't seem to help much with his pain, and then an old lover, who had been an addict himself.
Not the most consequential of stories, maybe, but worth a watch.
Punk Publishing: A DIY Guide, by Andy Conway & David Wake (Books 2023, 8) 📚
I bought this on my recent visit to Eastercon, from one of the authors, David Wake.
I hadn’t really thought about the possibility of self-publishing before this, but Wake was on a panel about what to watch out for when you first get a publishing contract (his point: nothing, if you self-publish). He made some good points about the advantages of doing it yourself versus the traditional publishing route. For example, you don’t send your sample chapters and synopsis in then wait two years for someone to decide. And even if they say yes, it could be another two years before your book is published.
I don’t know which way I’ll go with my recently-finished draft, but I thought it was worth spending a fiver on this to check out the possibilities. And it seems a decent guide to how you can approach publishing both ebooks and paperbacks, for minimal outlay.
It doesn’t go into things like cover design and marketing, which, of course, are some of the things that traditional publishers handle.
I might give it a spin, though, with a novella that I’ve got sitting around. We shall see.
Anyway, take a look at this if you’re interested in the possibilities. Their website is here.
Everything Everywhere All at Once, 2022 - ★★★★½
Saw this in Paris on a recent trip. In English, with French subtitles.
The only problem: it's not all in English. So there were a number of scenes where I was relying purely on the visuals and a very hazy understanding of a very few French words.
But I think I got the gist of most of those parts, and I'd have wanted to watch it again anyway.
It is, of course, totally brilliant.
Beyond the Reach of Earth by Ken McLeod (Books 2023, 7) 📚
The sequel to Beyond the Hallowed Sky, which I read at the start of last year.
It’s an excellent followup, with a very good summary of the previous novel at the start, which is useful. Top quality SF with politics. Scotland, and the Union (the EU++), are expanding into interstellar space, joining the other two power blocs.
Like the last, and perhaps even more so, this ends in a place that is quite satisfying. No cliffhangers, and if there were no more books, it wouldn’t matter.
Though at the same time it’ll be great to see what happens in book 3.
A God in Ruins by Kate Atkinson (Books 2023, 6) 📚
Atkinson’s Life After Life was the wonderful story of Ursula Todd, who kept repeating her life, dying in different ways each time. One interpretation or explanation for this strange experience is that she was trying to create (or find, or reach) a version of her life in which her beloved brother Teddy survives the Second World War and lives to grow old.
A God in Ruins is the story of that timeline.
Or maybe a couple of timelines. While this is in most ways a more straightforward tale than its predecessor, we do see two or three possible different endings for Teddy. It’s also about his descendants: his daughter the infuriating Viola, and her two children. It’s kind of a redemption tale for some characters.
I enjoyed the bits about Teddy’s wartime expreiences as a bomber pilot most. Overall it’s not as good as Life After Life, but not bad.
Interzone 294 Edited by Gareth Jelley (Books 2023, 5) 📚
I posted a photo of this when it arrived, to show its new paperback-book format. It’s an issue of Interzone: it’s fine, but nothing in it was particularly outstanding. Several decent stories, an interview with Christopher Priest, the usual book and film reviews and ‘Ansible Link’, the cut-down version of Dave Langford’s Ansible newsletter(the mailing list of which, I realise as I type, I seem to have fallen off; I haven’t seen it in a few months).
Interzone is worth getting to keep up to date with the scene, if nothing else.
That all sounds bad. People worked hard on these stories. I think I just don’t really get on very well with short stories, something I’ve mentioned here before.
Sister Act, 1992 - ★★★
A daft but fun enough romp, in which Whoopi Goldberg is a nightclub singer who has to hide out from the Mob after witnessing a murder. Obviously the safest place to hide her is in a convent where Maggie Smith is the Mother Superior.
Obviously the convent has a terrible choir, so she can whip them into shape. With completely predictable results. But as I say, it's fun. Spawned not one but two sequels, I see.