Weeknotes 221

Hello from BST. It was dark this morning. I bet this evening’s going to be impressive when the sun sets after half seven.

2024 progress: ▮▮▮▯▯▯▯▯▯▯▯▯ 25%. RIP Q1. How’s your year going? I’m still rubbing my eyes and blinking.

I had a lazy week off while it rained outside. I more or less did nothing, although I did manage to meet Murray for restorative beers on Tuesday, go to Mukbap for a delicious lunch on Thursday, and have another glacial book-readin’ session at the taproom on Friday, so I’m sort of making the most of my remaining time. ⏳🔜⌛

I was wary about visiting Mukbap because I feared it might be rammed with TikTokers happy slapping each other and saying “I kiss you!” but it was absolutely empty at noon on a rainy weekday, therefore recommended. Everything I tried was great but the sticky black beans were the best surprise.

More hyperlocal vegan food intel: out of curiosity I tried the new tofish cakes from Club Mexicana and they were not good.

I took the opportunity to bake a couple of loaves of sourdough via the usual therapeutic rigmarole, and also tried flatbreads from this recipe which were easy and turned out really well. I get a lot of satisfaction from being able to produce bread.

I’ve been thinking about buying a Blu-ray player for a while because I still have a pile of disks despite no longer owning any device which can play them, but it never seemed worth the expense. An Amazon sale this week finally tricked me into pulling the trigger on a surprisingly dinky model which also supports 4K disks. I don’t prefer physical media but at the moment UHD Blu-ray seems to be the only way to buy TV shows in 4K so I’m resigned to that solution for now.

The player’s pretty good! It’s low-ceremony and the picture & sound are great. Despite me not connecting it to the network it played my Studio Ghibli disks no problem.

Oh yeah, I rewatched some Studio Ghibli films.

Howl’s Moving Castle: wonderfully animated and very charming. The plot goes off the rails a bit in the second half.

My Neighbour Totoro: hadn’t seen this one before. It’s cosy, wholesome and delightfully atmospheric. Nothing happens but that’s what being a kid is like.

Spirited Away: just beautiful, and remains mercifully legible all the way through despite becoming fairly bonkers. I don’t think there’s anything I’d change about it.

Princess Mononoke: in my memory this was my favourite Ghibli film, and the first half is indeed basically perfect, but the second half goes on too long once it shifts focus to the humans and I found myself losing interest in what was happening, to the point where I needed to take a break and come back later to finish it off. It’s still good and has some indelible imagery but it’s clearly not as unimpeachable as Spirited Away.

Okay, look, I’m on holiday so I watched the rest of 3 Body Problem after all.

It didn’t improve. By the end I found it completely unconvincing and nonsensical, subjecting its one-dimensional characters to the lowest emotional stakes imaginable. (I believe it’s physically impossible to care about people ████ a ███ ███ into ███ for no reason.)

There is a really good bit in episode five — reminiscent of the much more entertaining Cube or, well, even Game of Thrones — but it only lasts for three minutes and that’s a pretty meagre return on eight hours of telly.

For some reason I find it hard to accept how incoherent and naff the show is. I know Sturgeon’s law applies but this one worries me. Is this the best that our Most Capable Entertainment People can do? Maybe we really are bugs.

I saw All of Us Strangers and enjoyed it. It’s nicely written & shot, excellently performed, and just overall a very well-made film.

While watching it I kept being distracted by the suspicion that I was meant to be more emotionally affected by it than I was. I found it touching but not actually moving. Believe it or not I’m a bit too young to identify with the film’s retro cultural context — my 80s soundtrack was more I Should Be So Lucky than The Power of Love — so the evocation of that specific period didn’t hit home for me.

It’s quite an abstract story, and film can be brutally literal as a medium. Maybe the novel works better.

I also saw Past Lives which, despite not being a Korean immigrant either, I found more straightforwardly relatable and emotional. It’s so restrained, and its text so plain, that it creates lots of space to think about what the characters are feeling and what it’s like to be them. I loved it. Greta Lee’s excellent isn’t she?

While I wouldn’t say I’m necessarily looking forward to resuming work, I am looking forward to seeing my team again, and that’s a good feeling.

There’s no more cursed email than one which says there’s a document waiting for you. If it was anything good it wouldn’t be in a document, and it’s waiting for you.