sulkyblueblog | 3 months or reading, watching and writing (Reply)

Last year I managed monthly updates, this year appears to be more like quarterly. Oops.

Films
After last year's Oscar project, I was sort of happy that I'd actually seen this year's winner at the cinema before it won, except unfortunately, I really didn't think much of The Artist. Fine, so it's black-and-white and silent, but it's also dull and predictable. It is beautifully shot, I'll give it that, but I'm not sure a film that relies so heavily on a cute dog should really be winning Oscars. There were far better films that didn't even get nominated, the traumatic but brilliant Tyrannosaur, the chilling Awakening and Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy although to be honest, I didn't like that one a massive amount on first viewing either, although I suspect a second viewing will improve my opinion. I would even say that The Muppets deserved a nomination for it's pitch perfect update, I can't remember a more joyful, entertaining film.

I've been on a bit of a mini-quest to clear the relevant character films before The Avengers comes out and have therefore sat through the massively ridiculous Thor and the far more entertaining and well put together Captain America. I have no idea how all these characters can possibly exist on the same screen, but I'm looking forward to finding out. In other comic book movie news, X-Men: First Class was awful, a bad idea from the get go, badly cast and badly written.

Other films of note - Easy-A because it was hilarious, bright and fresh, Micmacs à tire-larigot because it's charming and weird and Tangled - because it really felt like all the best things of old school Disney mixed with modern writing . On the flip side The Princess and the Frog was dull and incomprehensible, Tamara Drewe was a funny trailer which turned into stupidity when pushed to full length, Brideshead Revisited (2008) was dull, sanctimonious and too obvious and Bedtime Stories was so awful it got the lowest score I've ever given a film.

I saw The Hunger Games last week (which I paid an astronomical £15.60 to see in Leicester Square!) and was really relieved that it turned out to be a brilliant adaptation of the book and had enough directorial flare that I wasn't bored like I was in some of the Harry Potter films. While I won't be going to see either Wrath of the Titans (the first one was cataclysmically awful) or John Carter ~~of Mars~~ (sorry, but the trailer was enough to put me off even before the miserable reviews and stupid marketing choices), and there's no way in hell that I'd go and see Titanic, there's still a few films that will lure me to the overpriced mediocre experience that is the cinema these days. April's a superb month to be a Joss Whedon fan, with Cabin in the Woods is FINALLY out on the 13th and the aforementioned Avengers (or Avengers Assemble as it's apparently called in the UK) on the 26th. I also find myself rather tempted by the utterly ridiculous looking Battleship, is that bad of me?

Television
Busy couple of months at Narrative Devices. Pilot reviews of GCB (enjoyable but awful), Touch (poor pilot but has potential), Luck (incomprehensible but beautifully shot), Smash (problematic but fun), House of Lies (good but bad?), New Girl (funny but I didn't stick around for more episodes) and Alcatraz (nice idea but badly written).

There are full season reviews of Borgen: Season 1 (which also has a pilot review), Terra Nova: Season 1, Merlin: Season 4, Sherlock: Season 2, Case Histories, The Cafe: Season 1 and American Horror Story: Season 1

I also did a little Battle of the Shows, based on my irritation at someone else's version whereby they made lots of wrong decisions - it starts here

Books
My new year's resolution to read more seems to be doing pretty well, averaging out over the first three months of the year I've been reading 51.3 pages a day, so just over the target of 50, although I've only actually read 50 pages plus on 77% of the days, so I tend to be a bit more boom and bust. January was the worst month, partly because I missed three days at the start before I'd actually committed to it. Here have a graph!

So what's the effect, a quarter of the way through the year and I've read 14 books, comparing to 8.5, 8.25, 11.25 and 7.75 for previous years quarterly averages. So I'm well up on previous years. Eight fiction books:

Before I Go To Sleep by S.J. Watson - not a particularly original story, but very well told

Keeping it Real by Justina Robson - too much going on

Rules of Civility by Amor Towles - an enjoyable read, shame about the lack of plot

The Inimitable Jeeves by P.G. Wodehouse - entertaining

Death and the Penguin by Andrey Kurkov - simple but complex, really very good

Midnight Fugue by Reginald Hill - an enjoyable mystery

The Martian Ambassador by Alan K. Baker - weirdly unimaginative, overcrowded with ideas

The Somnambulist by Essie Fox - utterly unmemorable 2 weeks later

I've also read more non-fiction as I've been tending to have two books on the go at a time, one non-fiction for commuting, and one fiction for evenings, so I've read 6 non-fictions, already equalling 2011's total for the whole year! Anybody got any recommendations for non-fiction?