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Five Updates Make a Post
Jul. 8th, 2020 03:51 pm. My reading lately has been tending toward the light and escapist, although even then there have been pitfalls, like the time I tried a swashbuckling Sabatini novel only to find the characters having the same kind of arguments about abuse of power and the appropriateness of violent protest that I’d been trying to distract myself from. (In retrospect, a novel set in the lead-up to the French Revolution was probably not my best choice.) I’ve been having good luck with novels that have amusing first-person narrators, like Daddy-Long-Legs and The Martian -- does anybody have any recommendations in that vein?
. I’ve only watched one more theatrical stream since last time I posted about it, which was the Shakespeare’s Globe production of The Winter’s Tale. After that I just kind of lost interest, I’m not sure why. Part of it, I think, is that once the novelty wore off the hit rate of the streams I’d watched wasn’t high enough to encourage me to persist. The Winter’s Tale was another disappointing one, solid on the comedic parts but struggling with the more dramatic parts. The rendition of King Leontes had the same problem as the Lear I posted about last time, giving a convincing account of his human frailties and no sense whatever of him as an authority figure accustomed to obedience. All the courtiers had to be weakened to avoid overpowering him (one was played by the same actor as the comic relief shepherd who shows up in the second half, with very little difference in the style of performance). And the actress in the role of Paulina played her like somebody who had been handed Hamlet’s warning against overacting and taken it for a to-do list. The actress playing Hermione was great, though, and gave much-needed emotional weight to every scene she was in.
. Or maybe it’s that any kind of theatrical production requires more emotional investment than I have spare at the moment. I haven’t watched any full-length movies lately, either. Instead I’ve fallen into a Youtube rabbit hole of people filming themselves watching famous movies for the first time and then posting highlight videos of their reactions to the big moments. In this way, I’ve had concentrated doses of The Lord of the Rings, Star Wars, Indiana Jones, and several other favourites. I was interested to discover that the climax of Wreck-It Ralph still makes me cry even without most of the lead-up.
. Since the social distancing restrictions have been relaxed in this part of the world, I’ve had a chance to gather some friends and try out Half Truth, the game I backed on Kickstarter that got delivered when the restrictions were at their height. It’s a quiz game along broadly the same lines as Trivial Pursuit, but designed to try and avoid some of the common problems with that type of game, such as the issue of “Everyone else keeps getting asked the questions I know the answers to”. We all had a good time, and I look forward to playing it again some time.
. The Alto’s Adventure llama situation has had an important development, which I’ve mentioned on Tumblr already but not here yet -- one of the llamas has learned to snowboard:
. I’ve only watched one more theatrical stream since last time I posted about it, which was the Shakespeare’s Globe production of The Winter’s Tale. After that I just kind of lost interest, I’m not sure why. Part of it, I think, is that once the novelty wore off the hit rate of the streams I’d watched wasn’t high enough to encourage me to persist. The Winter’s Tale was another disappointing one, solid on the comedic parts but struggling with the more dramatic parts. The rendition of King Leontes had the same problem as the Lear I posted about last time, giving a convincing account of his human frailties and no sense whatever of him as an authority figure accustomed to obedience. All the courtiers had to be weakened to avoid overpowering him (one was played by the same actor as the comic relief shepherd who shows up in the second half, with very little difference in the style of performance). And the actress in the role of Paulina played her like somebody who had been handed Hamlet’s warning against overacting and taken it for a to-do list. The actress playing Hermione was great, though, and gave much-needed emotional weight to every scene she was in.
. Or maybe it’s that any kind of theatrical production requires more emotional investment than I have spare at the moment. I haven’t watched any full-length movies lately, either. Instead I’ve fallen into a Youtube rabbit hole of people filming themselves watching famous movies for the first time and then posting highlight videos of their reactions to the big moments. In this way, I’ve had concentrated doses of The Lord of the Rings, Star Wars, Indiana Jones, and several other favourites. I was interested to discover that the climax of Wreck-It Ralph still makes me cry even without most of the lead-up.
. Since the social distancing restrictions have been relaxed in this part of the world, I’ve had a chance to gather some friends and try out Half Truth, the game I backed on Kickstarter that got delivered when the restrictions were at their height. It’s a quiz game along broadly the same lines as Trivial Pursuit, but designed to try and avoid some of the common problems with that type of game, such as the issue of “Everyone else keeps getting asked the questions I know the answers to”. We all had a good time, and I look forward to playing it again some time.
. The Alto’s Adventure llama situation has had an important development, which I’ve mentioned on Tumblr already but not here yet -- one of the llamas has learned to snowboard:
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