Below is your food. Eat up, little chud. I only ask that you wash your own plate in the aftermath.

MEDIA ROUNDUP #3 - BERG

Contents

Spoilers for all of these to follow.

1. Berg, Ann Quin

2. Things I Don’t Want to Know, Deborah Levy

3. Hokum

4. The Drama

5. Lee Cronin’s The Mummy

Books

1. Berg, Ann Quin

Berg is a comedic retelling of the classic oedipal drama - Ali Berg, hearing that his absent father is alive, and living with a mistress in Brighton, sets off to exact his revenge. Like Hamlet, Ali Berg is stuck in a contemplative impotence, rationalising time and time again his inertia, never quite succeeding in delivering the fatal confrontation his journey is oriented around. Berg’s prose is experimental, and asks the reader to be an active participant on Alistair’s journey; deconstructing and rebuilding much of the story, turning yourself into the impotent son.

2. Things I Don’t Want to Know, Deborah Levy

   

TIDWTK is a biography that uses George Orwell’s Why I Write as a springboard for exploring a life in writing. It’s structurally challenging, and the writing is really lyrical, especially for a biography. It’s one of a trilogy of ‘Living Autobiographies’, Levy’s attempt to broadcast her life’s work and career in a much more vivid, classically narrative form. It’s just really well written - That spring when my life was very hard and I was at war with my lot and simply couldn't see where there was to get to, I seemed to cry most on escalators at train stations. It’s one hell of an opening line.

3. I went to the worst of bars hoping to get killed, but all I could do was to get drunk again, Ciáran Óg Arnold

this is a photography book, but the title is too good to pass over. It’s taken from a Charles Bukowski poem, the suicide kid. The photographs are cool, very grungy and grainy and thematically consistent. I think.

Movies

1. Hokum

A really pissy, skeptic writer ends up in a haunted hotel, a classic whodunnit with a spiritual aftertaste. The characters are somewhat caricature-like; the moody intellectual, the brutish older brother, the dweeby bellboy with a masterminding subconscious. It has a Scooby-doo like reveal, and some of the script is cringeworthy, but there’s legitimate jump-scares and a creepy overtone to the whole thing. It’s fine, it’s nothing special, but the cinematography certainly outdoes the premise.

2. The Drama

Film of the year, at least so far. It’s so paranoid, so tense, so hard to watch at times. It’s wonderfully tragic; a failure of communication, of being able to convince your partner than you’re not the monster in their head without any evidence. Equally, the tragedy of forming that opinion, birthing that monster off the back of a preconceived set of notions and aesthetics around terribly Bad Acts, without the time or space for nuance. Tragic and beautiful and romantic and grotesque. Never guessed so many plot twists utterly incorrectly before, either. Didn’t want it to end, and didn’t particularly like the ending, but an incredibly successful film, and a completely coherent vision and identity. A really maturely-done film.

3. Lee Cronin’s The Mummy

A classic, no-frills horror film. Just scary, nothing more to it. Not particularly well-shot, or well-written, or clever. None of these are criticisms, because it wasn’t trying to do any of those things. It was trying to be fucking scary, and it was. Like an updated version of The Exorcist or something. Just all-round scary, jumpscare-scary and creepy-scary. I have a real thing about evil old women and religious perversions in horror movies. Fuck. A great horror movie, but a really mid film.

Music

DRAKEDRAKEDRAKEDRAKEDRAKEDRAKEDRAKEDRAKEDRAKE

I was never the biggest Drake fan, but sitting through Iceman felt a bit like what I imagine watching a 42-year old Jonah Hill in a Superbad sequel would feel like. You’re forty years old, give it a rest. It’s kind of sad, pathetic even, to be rapping about hoes and money and drugs and internet beef at prime mortgage age. The other two albums, Maid of Honour and Habibti, were even bleaker. He’s not the LeBron of the rap game, he’s Uncle Mike Conley, giving you a solid 10 and 5 a night, but really, it’s time to lace them up.

Two genuinely fantastic songs from the Juno soundtrack. There’s someone from Superbad doing it right.

Art

The Dories, Ogunquit, Edward Hopper

Untitled, Bob Dylan

Are you full, little chud? Did that satisfy your pitiful cravings? Good. I’ll be here when you get hungry again, hours into the future. SMACK! Now, waddle off to bed like the satisfied chud that you are, undulating fat swinging from your stained t-shirt. Until next feeding.

the curtain twitches. more darkness. fidgety now, almost panicking. then it falls, all at once the house of cards collapses and you can see now and its bright and beautiful. a drum roll, a jaunty tune, an 80’s late-night talk show announcer spins on stage, flirting with the mic stand, and you’re hopeful again. the neon banner descends, and you gaze up, ecstatic now, triumphant, omnipotent, and the whole world fades away around you until your entire vision is taken up only with the great luminescent letters before you, and you’re laughing now and crying uncontrollably, and all your emotions are clambering on top of one another, and the sign reads:

MEDIA ROUNDUP #2 - INSIDE AMERICAN PIE

liftoff.

Contents

spoilers for all below to follow:

• Project Hail Mary

• Ready or Not / Ready or Not 2: Here I Come

Books

How To Travel With A Salmon, Umberto Eco

i’ve said already how unbearably pretentious this guy is; the Italian Ethan Hawk. it’s undeniably good, and some of the stories are funny, even relatable. but the whole thing has this underlying air of trying; trying to impress me, trying to woo me, trying to seduce me with flowery language and niche references. I told you already Umberto. I’m not gonna kiss you, not on the first date anyway. leave me alone.

The Wretched of The Earth, Franz Fanon

a sprawling, comprehensive look at the things that people do to each other in times of war and under colonial pressures. often, these things are no different from what people do to each other outside of war, only exacerbated. some case studies and character evaluations that are shocking, traumatising. wouldn’t read if u wanna believe people are fundamentally good. the French ruin everything.

Movies

Project Hail Mary

oh man. I entered the cinema a sceptical, moody adolescent and left a joyous child, the whole world shimmering and gold and sweet. the greatest Rocky character in fiction; I love rocks. I love dancing rocks. this is the best film of the year and it has dancing rocks.

okay it’s not technically perfect and yeah the editing is this or that and shut up. just shut up have a heart it’s not trying to compete with Bergman. No one’s making you put it in your letterboxd top 4. you’re allowed to enjoy a childish, slightly cringy, fun film without worrying about the mise-en-scene. it’s a perfect movie its gorgeous. you’re mise-ra-ble.

Ready Or Not / Ready Or Not 2: Here I Come

firstly, I think watching any sequel immediately after rewatching the original makes the entire thing better, but Ready or Not is a genuinely good horror franchise in its own right. feels like it pulls a lot from Knives Out, but it has one of those rare sequels that does the typical sequel thing - bigger, stronger, longer, international - and actually sticks the landing. A really impressive sequel, though the first is still probably more fun. surprisingly powerful on the big screen; holds its own.

Music

INSIDE AMERICAN PIE, CURVE THEATRE, MIKE ROSS & CO

okay.

a totalising, glorious tour through the lyrics and musical context of Don McLean’s masterpiece. four Canadians from PEI serendipitously ended up playing the curve theatre in Leicester, where my girlfriend and I were the youngest in attendance by at least 60 years. the best thing i’ve ever been a part of. put my own interpretation (below)

to shame.

no other musical notes. nothing could compare. nothing will compare.

Art

Untitled, Pauline Mauruschat

We Folk, Isabella Cotier.

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Spoilers for all of these to follow.

1. Ted Hughes’ Difficulties of a Bridegroom.

2. Nico Walker’s Cherry

3. The Moment, Aidan Zamiri

4. Wuthering Heights, Emerald Fennel

Books

1. Ted Hughes’ Difficulties of a Bridegroom.

Recently finished reading. A dynamic collection of the former Poet Laureate’s short stories with a very insightful foreword. Difficulties deals with themes of violence, estrangement, and isolation. Though there’s overlap with his collection “Wodwo”, many of these works are debuted here, despite Hughes’ prolific publishing career, spanning over 40 years of writing.

2. Nico Walker’s Cherry

Cherry is a raw, powerful semi-autobiographical account of the life of a young man (probably Walker with the names changed) who spirals from lacklustre college student to army medic in Iraq and, ultimately, to opioid addict and bank robber.

Drawing heavily on Walker’s own experiences, and written while serving time in prison, the novel’s prose feels brutally honest and almost conversational, capturing both the absurdity of war and the numbing despair of addiction. Though its style can be abrasive, I think that bluntness is precisely what makes Cherry stick the landing—proving it to be a gripping portrait of a lost generation searching for meaning in the wreckage of modern America.

Movies

1. The Moment, Aidan Zamiri

   

   The BRAT film. Shot and edited surprisingly well, and surprisingly maturely, given the subject matter. Better than the majority of tour movies, despite lacking a central plot. Things kind of just happen to her? And why was Kylie Jenner in it? Some pretty gaping holes aside, it looked good. And it held our attention well, and the first ten minutes really would kill a grandpa.

   There genuinely wasn’t very much of BRAT in it though.

2. Wuthering Heights, Emerald Fennel

   

A serious departure from the source text, and I’m not convinced that it did it justice. But then, I don’t think it was trying to. A salacious, provocative reinterpretation of Bronte’s classic, Fennel’s film replaces the pivotal death with pregnancy - for this Heathcliff, the woman of his desire, impregnated by another man, is as good as dead.

Music

From 1970’s New Morning record, Dylan’s folky, bluesy iconic sound.

I made my dad listen to this in the car the other day, and it prompted me to return to it a few more times. Obviously, a great poem, but an interesting study in how the form impacts the narrative.

Not music, but a huge fan of Tetragrammaton and this particular conversation with OpenAI founder and part-time exile Greg Brockman was fascinating.

Art

Charlotte Salomon, Untitled

Edvard Munch, Sailors in the Snow

Marianne von Werefkin, At the Cafe