Films:
- Eddie The Eagle: watched this at Mum & Dad’s when I was with them in September. Really nice, feel good film. (Dexter Fletcher directing again – I loved Sunshine on Leith, too)
- A Walk Among The Tombstones: I hadn’t realized that this was a Matt Scudder film, based on Lawrence Block’s books (which I like). Pretty good downbeat private eye film.
- Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children: Meh. Atmospheric, but lacklustre performances from everyone involved. It felt very long.
- The Secret Life of Pets: The trailer has all the good bits.
- Room: AMAZING
- Dr. Strange: It was fine, I suppose. It’s a door into the magical aspects of the Marvel universe, but I’ve never been very interested in that part. Narratively and thematically, the film offers nothing new. Visually, Christopher Nolan did all of this in Inception already.
Books & comics:
- The Signal and the Noise by Nate Silver: Very readable account of forecasting and predictions, and the statistics involved. I feel like I should spend more time getting to grips with Bayesian statistics, because my maths and science background was 95% frequentist.
- Scarlet Witch vol1: Witches’ Road by James Robinson et al. Didn’t really like this. See notes on Dr. Strange above.
- The Sheriff of Babylon vol 1 by Tom King and Mitch Gerads. Was chatting to the staff at Forbidden Planet in Glasgow, and they recommended this to me because I liked the new Vision story (also written by Tom King). The Sheriff of Babylon is a military detective story set in post-war Baghdad. Very intense, very good.
- Mockingbird vol 1 – I Can Explain by Chelsea Cain, Kate Niemczyk et al.: Great. Thrilling and funny non-linear narrative around another great female Marvel hero. She-Hulk, Squirrel Girl, Ms. Marvel, Captain Marvel, Silk, Hellcat, Mockingbird – Marvel has a ton of fabulous books on the go right now with women heroes. I hope the cinematic universe catches up.
A few weeks ago I watched season 6 of The Walking Dead to cheer myself up. It’s been that kind of month. And that was before the US election. Also season 1 of Agent Carter. I wanted to like it more than I actually did.
Music:
I mentioned in a couple of earlier posts that I’ve been listening to quite a bit of The Lumineers and 65daysofstatic. The new album by The Naked And Famous, Simple Forms has also been in heavy rotation. I’ve got a ticket to see them in Utrecht next year. ?? Deacon Blue’s new disc, Believers hasn’t caught fire for me yet. A Tribe Called Quest’s latest (and final) album, We got it from Here… Thank You 4 Your service sounds promising and worth more listening.