Well I get a little scared
Oct. 31st, 2020 06:21 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
dolorosa_12And, like much of the rest of Europe, back we go into lockdown. To be honest, given I've been working from home throughout the entire period in which the lockdown was supposedly lifted, and barely left the house, not much in my immediate life will change. What's more worrying is that this second lockdown is happening without the furlough scheme. Don't get me wrong, we absolutely need to go into lockdown — there were more than 20,000 new cases in the past twenty-four hours — but we can't just close the entire retail and hospitality sector with a shrug of the shoulders. (Edited to add that it looks like the furlough scheme is being relaunched for workers in the affected industries, so that's at least one positive.)
I've spent most of this morning prodding at my Yuletide assignment. I think I've written about a third of it, although I was focusing more on just vomiting words out onto the page, so what exists will need substantial editing. I always find it easier to just write as quickly as possible, and focus on the editing later, though, so I feel like I'm moving at exactly the right speed.
In terms of a media roundup for this month, I've not finished very much in the way of TV — just two shows (although Matthias and I have a lot of ongoing series on the go at the moment).
The first show in question was Lovecraft Country, which in general I thought was excellent — a great cast, mostly well crafted, and completely unsubtle about its central concept (namely, that no supernatural horror threat can come close to approaching the real-world horror that is being Black in the United States). It also told an interesting story about the corrosive effect of violence within families, and was rare in being one of the few American-made shows I've seen that was actually prepared to depict the US military in a bad light — specifically to puncture the myth of the military as a positive presence occupying foreign countries out of concern for the wellbeing of their citizens. While I was mostly happy about how the show concluded its various narrative threads, I feel in one way that its final act undermined the point it was trying to make. But I found it one of the best TV series I've watched this year, I'm hopeful for its second season, and I'm pleased to see that AO3 shares my taste in OTP for the fandom.
The other show was a miniseries called The Sister, starring Russell Tovey as a man haunted by a terrible secret he's hiding from his wife. The show was created by the creator of the Luther series, and it shares a lot of the former's darkness, and emphasis on guilt and secrecy. I ultimately felt that some of the revelations degenerated into silly melodrama (although that, too, is a characteristic shared with Luther), but it felt seasonally appropriate, and I'm glad I watched it.
One of the books I read in the wake of my search for an elusive work of historical fiction, set in Al-Andalus, was Sultana, by Lisa J. Yarde. (It was not the book for which I'm searching, but it came up in my fruitless Googling to track that book down.) I'll read pretty much anything set in this place and time period, but suffice it to say that this one was adequate rather than groundbreaking.
And now, a couple of links. I'm pleased to see that Gavia Baker-Whitelaw (![[twitter.com profile]](https://p.dreamwidth.org/e0caa790ec10/-/twitter.com/favicon.ico)
Hello_Tailor) has set up a Youtube channel focusing on Hollywood film costuming. I'm not someone particularly drawn to Youtube video essays as a medium — I generally feel that it's a poor format for conveying information, and always wish that the essayists would just write a blog post instead! But Baker-Whitelaw's channel avoids most of the common Youtuber pitfalls, and makes the best use of the medium: her first video is less than ten minutes long but says all it needs to say, and it uses Youtube's functionality to best effect, i.e. to illustrate points that can only be shown visually, rather than explained in words.
And, best of all, this first video is about my favourite film of all time, Mad Max: Fury Road.
Via Matthias, another bizarre real estate listing. If you've got a spare £2 million lying around, you could be the proud owner of a property which would give you the address '1, The Thames'. Yes, they mean the river.
I hope everyone's being kind to themselves in these darkening days.
I've spent most of this morning prodding at my Yuletide assignment. I think I've written about a third of it, although I was focusing more on just vomiting words out onto the page, so what exists will need substantial editing. I always find it easier to just write as quickly as possible, and focus on the editing later, though, so I feel like I'm moving at exactly the right speed.
In terms of a media roundup for this month, I've not finished very much in the way of TV — just two shows (although Matthias and I have a lot of ongoing series on the go at the moment).
The first show in question was Lovecraft Country, which in general I thought was excellent — a great cast, mostly well crafted, and completely unsubtle about its central concept (namely, that no supernatural horror threat can come close to approaching the real-world horror that is being Black in the United States). It also told an interesting story about the corrosive effect of violence within families, and was rare in being one of the few American-made shows I've seen that was actually prepared to depict the US military in a bad light — specifically to puncture the myth of the military as a positive presence occupying foreign countries out of concern for the wellbeing of their citizens. While I was mostly happy about how the show concluded its various narrative threads, I feel in one way that its final act undermined the point it was trying to make. But I found it one of the best TV series I've watched this year, I'm hopeful for its second season, and I'm pleased to see that AO3 shares my taste in OTP for the fandom.
The other show was a miniseries called The Sister, starring Russell Tovey as a man haunted by a terrible secret he's hiding from his wife. The show was created by the creator of the Luther series, and it shares a lot of the former's darkness, and emphasis on guilt and secrecy. I ultimately felt that some of the revelations degenerated into silly melodrama (although that, too, is a characteristic shared with Luther), but it felt seasonally appropriate, and I'm glad I watched it.
One of the books I read in the wake of my search for an elusive work of historical fiction, set in Al-Andalus, was Sultana, by Lisa J. Yarde. (It was not the book for which I'm searching, but it came up in my fruitless Googling to track that book down.) I'll read pretty much anything set in this place and time period, but suffice it to say that this one was adequate rather than groundbreaking.
And now, a couple of links. I'm pleased to see that Gavia Baker-Whitelaw (
And, best of all, this first video is about my favourite film of all time, Mad Max: Fury Road.
Via Matthias, another bizarre real estate listing. If you've got a spare £2 million lying around, you could be the proud owner of a property which would give you the address '1, The Thames'. Yes, they mean the river.
I hope everyone's being kind to themselves in these darkening days.
no subject
Date: 2020-11-01 11:36 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-11-01 12:04 pm (UTC)