Me Consume Stuff #6

What have I been watching? What have I been reading? What have I been playing? Does anyone care?

Me Read Stuff

I like a bit of Kristin Hannah (I thought The Women was very good). This is the story of a couple of sisters in WW2 who, in their different ways, form part of the resistance in occupied France. It’s told in a bit of a Saving Private Ryan direct rip-off of the plot structure and story beats, style, and that works in…sections, but is a bit of a crutch for the book most of the time.

Couple of observations:

1. The first section of this book comes across like ‘allo, ‘allo, which I didn’t think was Hannah’s intention and is unintentionally hilarious. If you haven’t seen ‘Allo, ‘Allo then it’s pretty broad humour from the BBC archives set in occupied France.

2. Have everyone speak in English and assume that the reader understands you are providing a translated version of events. Or have everyone speak in French and provide a translation underneath. Don’t do both: ‘I will meet Henri at the Rue de Montre at eight o’clock. Mon Dieu! C’est trop bondé a huit heure…’ Don’t mix. It’s weird.

3. I liked how the Germans were given a bit of humanity, not just evil dudes with swastikas on their sleeves. I think amongst the fighting troops it was a bit more nuanced than that. Though to be fair there were a great many of them that were evil dudes with swastikas on their sleeves.

So…it was alright. Not terrible but not great either.

Me Watch Stuff

It’s Oscar season (well, it was) so we have been watching some of the runners and riders.

A Complete Unknown

There are definite restrictions when making a biographical film - especially a musical one. Firstly, you are utterly bound to the linear narrative for it to make any sense. You could jump around the timeline but that would just make it annoying. Secondly, the actor that you cast has to - not to simplify the acting process - do an extended impersonation for 2 hours. Finally, the subject of the biography has to be of interest to the audience or the whole thing dies on it’s arse.

Does the linear narrative work? Yes. I still don’t understand the controversy of him going electric, but ho hum. Does Timmy Shally do a good impression of Dylan for 2 + hours? Yes. Yes he does. I gradually forgot he was who he was and believed he was Mr Zimmerman. Is Bob Dylan of interest? Yeah…but maybe not to a younger audience. We listened to a lot of Dylan afterwards and he has quite the back catalogue, though.

I also saw Dylan live back in the ‘90’s. But I was absolutely off my tits so don’t remember much.

Conclave

Blokes in dresses deciding who is going to be the next head bloke in a dress of the blokes in dresses sounds more like Ru Paul’s Drag Race than about the Vatican picking a new pope, but it is strangely compelling stuff.

At times it comes across more as a works conference than a religious rite and the fevered conversations held over coffee stations and snatched meetings in stairwells whilst having a fag with the Arch Bishop of Vietnam (or what-have-you) get across the power plays and politics that go into picking Big G’s right hand man.

It’s a real lifting of the lid of the whole palaver and what I came away with was sets, the costumes, the dialogue all build this amazing picture of the process and the institution. Riveting stuff, I thought and genuinely beautiful to look at.

Me Play Stuff

Sniper Elite 4

I enjoyed SE5 so thought I would kill a few more nazis. This time in Italy. Good food, good wine and mindlessly headshotting The Third Reich sounds like more than a good time to me.

It’s older…so it should be worse? The strange thing is that it’s…better? It has really interesting maps that require some tactical chin scratching to get through without being overwhelmed by Nazis and they look better that SE5…which makes no sense at all. It’s an older game for chrissakes.

But fear not: the voice acting is still daytime TV level and the NPCs are still as dumb as rocks. All good then.

Hitster

Good old fashioned board game - more of a party game than anything else. Each card has a QR code on it that links it to Spotify. You have to put the music in date order. It is so simple but so fun and so addictive. Great party game as you hear some good music and you can explain the rules in seconds - we have played this a lot recently.

Me Listen to Stuff

Absolutely deep diving into The Rest is History.

Just listened to the story of Jesus, which is engrossing and you end up realising that one of the best pool of information for the period was - ironically - the Bible, so finding good source material is tough. They ask whether he was real (the overwhelming evidence says the J-Dog was a real dude), whether he was born in Bethlehem (probably not - Jesus of Nazarath, innit?) and if he was David Blaine (probably not so most likely a fisherman’s tale - he’s about as magic as that fish you get in Christmas crackers). But the overriding idea I got was that he was smart, before his time (intellectually and philosophically), a bit of a rebel and left a bigger impression than all the other dudes claiming they were the son of god (there were a few). He was charismatic, smart and dangerous - pretty potent mix, I suppose.

Also listened to the series of shows on the assassination of JFK (there are 6 I believe). They are very thorough and my key takeaways are:

1. Lee Harvey Oswald assassinated Kennedy. Occam’s Razor and all that.

2. He was a pretty decent shot and top of his class when he was training as a rifleman.

3. JFK had significant health problems and had to wear a back brace most of the time.

4. The JFK film by Oliver Stone is rubbish. Conspiracy theories are just that: theories. There is just too much stuff relying on coincidence, chance and simple blind luck to be an organised operation. Occam’s Razor again.