“If anyone’s read and liked China Miéville’s The City and the City”
Wow, I’m surprised someone else here read that.
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Haven’t gotten around to The City and the city, but The Scar is amazing.
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You did read Perdido Street Station first, right? I liked both novels a lot, but preferred the first in the series, and especially loved how a couple hundred pages in the author apparently decided “Eh, I’m going to totally change genres now, hope you don’t mind.” Best Dickensian steampunk eldritch horror Marxist sci-fi I’ve ever read, and you just know that’s a genre with lots of competition!
Still haven’t read Iron Council.
The City and the City is also really good, but, oof, analogies with Miéville are hard. Um … Dickens : Perdido Street Station = Le Carre : The City and the City? But 100% less eldritch horror. Or mutants.
Ha. Yup, that was deserved, now that we’re well into book recommendations based on a recommendation of a TV show. That’s at least two levels of off-topic.
More than one book thread, actually.
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On-topic: watched Wolfwalkers the other night - already recommended upthread, so I’m fourthing or fifthing the endorsement. Absolutely loved it. These days there are maybe two or three “styles” of animation, and almost all films fall in one of those categories - Wolfwalkers looks utterly, fantastically different. Visually incredible. 1h43m in length but it took me over two hours for all the pauses I was doing to look at the scenes. Dark Escher-like stuff in the town, mad spirals and arcs in the forest - brilliant.
Story level, good but not great. Take Game of Thrones Season 1 Ned (literally, the father is voiced by Sean Bean) & Arya Stark and drop them into something like the moral world of Princess Mononoke. And then give it (mild spoilers for tone but not content) an ending with too-tidy a Disney-style wrap-up. Especially at the beginning, I felt it was a little too derivative of Princess Mononoke, but nothing wrong with drawing from one of the best.
Heavier spoilers for the end: heck, full-on Inglourious Basterds ending. They killed off Oliver Cromwell, so we’re well into alternate history now.
It’s on Apple TV Plus, which means it’s probably harder to watch, but if you bought an Apple device in the past year you should still have a free subscription and can probably watch it on your computer. Definitely on your iPhone. But don’t watch it on your iPhone. This would be one of the worst movies ever to watch on a small screen.
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you had me at
not that I’m back seat moderating!
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Oh, wait, that reminds me of the clothing chain Hot Topic! Do they have branches in Taiwan?
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close enough?
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Newer than not yet released, “Coming soon, available Mar 23, 2021”?!
EDIT: do these Criterion Blu-Ray box sets show up in Taipei stores, like the older Criterion stuff once did in eslite? If they did, I’d think more seriously about getting a Blu-Ray player, but when I look at add-on delivery charges for discs from overseas … oof, too expensive.
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oh ok sorry
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If you are willing to deal with the Amazon devils, they have free shipping for all orders over 75 usd.
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Do it. Very unconventional the whole mix of “high” fantasy and anarchosyndicalist ideology. More so than in Perdido.
And who knows, with the “unfilmable” Preacher and The Boys having hit the screens, perhaps one day it is time for Mieville (never saw the BBC The City, but reviews were not great).
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Oh cool. I did not know that. Thanks! Argh, damn, now I’m going off-topic again …
Also, at least pre-pandemic (then things got messed up) getting blurays from Australia was pretty affordable. Great selection if your player can deal with the region.
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Yeah, I’ve already got an in-retrospect-foolishly-large collection of DVDs from multiple regions, but my multi-region DVD player is near death and I’m not sure if getting a new one is still even possible - plus the DVDs don’t look that good anyway on a newer 55" TV!
The combination of obsolescence of my old DVD collection + region compatibility nonsense had me swear off buying physical media again - but argh, the film catalogue selection online, from streaming services or the iTunes Store, is awful.
Really I just want the Criterion Channel to stream here. Yeah, I know I could probably make it work with a VPN, but by the time the added cost and hassle are factored in, I don’t think it’s worth it to me.
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If you are more then averagely interested in film, the streaming culture won’t cut it. It is like having only fast food joints around and no proper restaurants.
Anything older than 10 years might as well not exist (apart from the most commercially successful). So for me blurays are essential. Also, luckily at least in Taipei there are some art house cinema options.
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Just saw Monster Hunters on the big screen with the fam. For a video game rip off this wasn’t half bad, especially in the cinema.
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