Another glorious month on piss island gone by, technically shorter as February’s are want to, but coincidentally a lean month for me too. I finished a few games, watched a few films, listened to a few new albums but really I spent most of this month falling back on old comforts, watching huge amounts of Bob’s Burgers, New Girl and this Youtube Channel I recently discovered called Curious Archive (it’s really good, lore videos for made up worlds - you can check out their work here). Beyond this, here are some of the things I engaged with this month that I think are worthy of your attention.
Films
Decision to Leave
The last Park Chan Wook film I saw was Oldboy, and that was probably way back in 2006, so it’s been fascinating side-stepping the evolution of his body of work to go straight to his latest, a slick, stylish and wonderfully macabre detective thriller that preys upon it’s audience’s expectations of how these films are supposed to flow.
It's central mystery isn't much of a mystery, it's more of a vibes based experience and the vibes are beautifully rotten. Smoking two cigarettes at once, staring pensively at the ocean, eating your dinner in front of a wall plastered with gory pictures of the long dead. It's a smouldering noir diorama that ends with the kind of fabulously grim finale that Park Chan Wook is famous for.
Really bloody good.
Babylon
Technically I watched this at the end of January but i’m counting it here anyway because it’s such a wonderfully deranged film. Parallels with La La Land are inevitable, it sort of feels like that film’s Wario but strangely enough the thing it reminded me of the most was Boogie Nights.
It’s less a love letter to cinema and more a damning indigtment of the sacrifices artists demand of others in order to achieve their creative goals as well as a soliloquy on how hollywood demands this Kafkaesque metamorphosis of it’s stars, sanding off all the coarse edges and ultimately robbing them of their own reality to sell something manufactured and crass.
It’s a messy film. I kind of loved it and hated it. In places sublime, others disjointed and almost frightening. It’s that kind of project, one that fully saturates itself in its own indulgence while ultimately telling a story already well worn. It opens with a close up shot of an elephant’s anus. You shouldn’t take it too seriously.
The Girl Who Played With Fire
The original adaptation of The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo was a hard watch. It presented a completely mask off world full of some of the nastiest people you will ever lay eyes upon. Graphic simulations of sexual assault and murder abound. This sequel is a little less grim by comparison, but only just.
An interesting continuation of Lisbeth Salander’s story as she gets embroiled in series of murders that hit a little too close to home. Noomi Rapace is brilliant as ever, an expressive, angry performance that doesn’t shy away or downplay the events of the first film without lingering on them.
I did find the film’s antagonists a bit too ridiculous for my liking, however. They feel like Bond villains. A giant eastern european man who can’t feel any pain? Half expected him to hurl a bowler hat at Lisbeth. It loses some of the terror of the original film’s deeply unsettling central monster as a result, but overall I thought it was a great follow up to a film I really liked.
Games
HiFi Rush
Tango Gameworks, of Evil Within and Ghostwire Tokyo fame, shadow dropping a bright, dumb, himbo-starring character action game during the bluest months of the year is such incredibly good praxis. I loved this. Total style over substance but the style is so intricately designed that it deserves an award all by itself.
I normally don't like character action games, but I found HiFi Rush really compelling from start to finish. It has really great characters, even if the accents are a little dodgy from time to time, and the integration of it’s licensced tracks is done so beautifully that it feels like you’re constantly under siege from needle drops.
A really fun thing. I hope more studios branch out like this. Remember when Ryu ga Gotoku studios made a bonkers sci fi shooter that was really good? That kind of stuff just makes my soul sing.
Professor Layton and Pandora’s Box
The rational part of my brain is forever fucked off with Professor Layton since I feel like it's puzzles are frequently very badly explained, occasionally outright horseshit and for the rest I'm usually too stupid to figure them out by myself. However, the presentation of the Layton series is so good that I once again find myself pinned to my 3DS for hours scouting every nook and cranny of its luscious world.
This sequel to Curious Village doesn't quite have the tightness of its progenitor, taking place over multiple locations and with a plot that ties its loose ends rather clumsily but I can't say I had a bad time with it.
Birth
I don’t have enough to say about Birth to build a full Static Canvas video around it but needless to say this game really hit the spot for me. One from my games to look forward to list, Birth is a really touching, odd and macabre puzzle game that has you collecting body parts to build a companion, but in a world where that's a normal thing to do.
The soft pastel aesthetic and muzak inspired soundtrack make this very much a 'wholesome' game, a subgenre ever growing in popularity, and there's no real point to it beyond a soliloquy about the alienation of contemporary urban living but it's a great thing to just pick at.
The way the puzzles interact with one another, the sense of excitement that comes with entering a new part of the city. What it reminded me of the most is an old CD ROM I used to love as a child, an interactive picture book adaptation of The Fish Who Could Wish. You would click on bits of the art and little animations or jingles would play. That's what games should be, beyond anything else. Never mind challenge, just jangle some keys in front of me. I'm baby.
Music
Infinite Space - SÍOMHA
This was a random recommendation on my Spotify home page and I'm glad I jumped in, a really wonderful collection of tunes largely sung in Gaelic. It’s folksy, but the kind of folksy you’d imagine people from the future listening to. A time capsule cut in half elements of past and present combining to create something really great.
Invaders Must Die - Prodigy
I've listened to this many times before but HiFi Rush reminded me how much of a fucking banger this album is. Some of my favourite Drum & Bass anthems designed to absolutely blow your dick off, now with the added visual element of having battered dozens of robots in a cafeteria to the beat of the title track.
Red Sky - Moon Hooch
I've come to the realisation recently that more than the totality of true love and unfiltered artistic expression what I really want out of life is really filthy Saxophone music. Moon Hooch is exactly that, similar set up to perennial show offs Too Many Zooz (who I also love) but with a greater emphasis on harmonies and just some absolutely ripping tunes. Two saxophones and drums is an absolutely outrageous set up for a band and they’re right to do it this way.