Books:
Moonflower Murders (Magpie Murders Book 2) by Anthony Horowitz
This is the second in a series (I guess) about a deceased Agatha Christie-type author leaving real world murder clues in his seemingly unrelated books for his present-tense editor to unravel. The first one was okay - barely - and this one picks up in the aftermath of the plot of the first one. Given that this is a mystery, I’m not going into plot details for spoiler reasons, but there are two basic tracks to both books: the main investigation by the book editor and the book-with-a-book which serves (or is supposed to at any rate) as a mystery within itself as well as giving clues to the present tense mystery since the notion is the book-within-a-book author based his fictional mystery on real events and thus there are clues to be teased out today. The main issue is the actual author wrote a complex structure not a book, i.e. it reads like the early draft of someone translating their notecards into prose meaning episodic and with bluntly drawn characters and then they just published that. There’s no life to this book, just its mechanics and while those mechanics were enough to carry it to the end, not by much actually. You’re basically reading a plot puzzle with a lot of writing filler which, I mean is anyone really looking for that? The first book worked because the plot puzzles in both sections were better laid out, but this one was so insanely overwritten - pages and pages and pages of description and thoughts but absolutely nothing happening with a level of detail normally reserved for the Williams Sonoma Holiday Catalog (a fellow Janice’s favorite annual read and arguably I’d recommend grabbing that instead of this) and all that exposition was the author’s substitute for writing actual characters who had a meaningful life beyond this plot investigation - that I really didn't think I'd make it past the first third and only continued because some reviewer said they had the same problem and swore it got better. It didish, but I can't say it was worth the effort of finishing. The thing is this: if the author had just written an old-fashioned Agatha Christie homage, I probably would've enjoyed it as the book within a book was the strongest element. But the present-tense story was just absurd and painful and really I've given far more words to this book than it deserves though signficantly fewer than it spent on itself. Eminently skippable unless you're just bonkers for the mystery book within a mystery book format (and even then).
TV/Streaming:
Slow Horses (Season 1):
Well despite some initial reservations, I absolutely loved this British spy series about a satellite branch of MI-5 for washed/messed-up spies and what happens when they're dragged into a bigger plot. This is a 6-episode season and the basic setup - without spoilering - involves a kidnapping, right-wing nationalism, racism, and some twistiness with the politics of the main MI-5 branch headed by Kristen Scott Thomas and the slow-horses-of-the-title branch headed by Gary Oldman. There's definitely something fun about a team of spies who run the gamut from lazy to misfit to self-deluded having to pull it together and do actual spycraft all while dealing with the interdepartmental politics (assuming interdepartmental politics encompasses people beating each other up and hacking each other, both to pieces and via computer). There are some plot contrivances and whatnot but it kind of doesn't matter because what makes the show work is a real underlying humor to the character dialogue, not like jokes (this is definitely not a comedy) but a kind of wry banter that keeps it all very entertaining. In other words, it's the spirit of this show rather than its plot particulars that provides the motor. This isn't to say the plot is boring - it's not and there's plenty of action scenes as well to keep it moving - just that this plot with another set of characters wouldn't have been as entertaining. There's a setup for season 2 (plus a trailer for it) and I'm delighted to know there's another one coming because watching these spies who are in many ways extremely amazing at their spycraft but unfortunately have personality characteristics that keep getting in their way and having to kind of "win" the plot despite themselves makes for a series I will happily keep going back to.
The Walking Dead (Season 2):
The tl;dr on this second season of the uber-popular zombie apocalypse show is I didn't DNF, but I don't think anyone including me is counting this as a win. The show is so insanely slow and dumb - though admittedly more slow and less dumb than season 1 - that I watched in part to see if it ever got more interesting and, spoiler alert, it didn't. Basically, this season is entirely about the low budget they clearly got after season 1 (though presumably that budget changes at some point given its success) as the whole thing was basically set on this farm and for the most part nowhere else. I think it was trying to deal with the slow breakdown of human group morality or somesuch as some people were throwing out society rules and others were clinging to them as a source of their humanity. But it was so idiotic, to hardly mention slow (did I mention slow a hundred times already? maybe we need a few more - it's slow) in that the way the writers played it out is you have a group of people from season 1 with this conflict between the two cop alpha males - Shane and Rick - with personal problems between them (like this thing with Rick's wife and an affair with Shane and no that's not a spoiler as it was basically the first episode of season 1) plus this ostensible moral divide of "are we going to become animals" while defining "humanity" in the most blunt way (caring!). But the writers drag out this conflict in which the group is pulled one way or the other and people split and have to think about things all leading up to some mega-showdown, as if they thought they were writing Old Man and the Sea or some other slow mano-a-fisho confrontational epic. It's dumb for 50k reasons - I mean no one's stopping anyone from doing anything so what’s the conflict really - but the main reason has to do with the fact of the abject sexism in that group morality is determined by the two White men. This show is sexist at a level that would make Marvel blush (maybe), like there's a sequence at some point where a bunch of zombies are shuffling towards the group and it's women, children, and the Black guy back to the house and the four armed White men walking in slo-mo towards the zombies as group defenders. It's this way the whole time. Everyone seems to agree that the group is going to be beholden to either Rick or Shane and oh if only they can fight it out and decide, as if no one else has any will or thought whatsoever. It's so weird! Even the characters who are set up as more rebellious/edgy also all magically agree that Rick and Shane need work it out so everyone can decide who they're following. I can't even get into the rest of the stupidity of this show because I'd never stop typing, but... you're a child in a zombie apocalpyse being chased through the woods and the armed police officer who's leading you tells you to hide under a bush while he gets rid of the zombies. Do you (a) hide under a bush while he gets rid of the zombies or (b) do (a) until he's out of sight and then randomly run off for no reason? Or how about the writers writing - and was this racist? - an Asian male adult character who seems to have never heard of anything related to female-specific medicaments in any form whatsoever (because Asian males are also sexless I guess)? I have to stop now or I'll make myself insane. This season is boring and dumb enough that I don't see how so many people made it through this season and agreed to watch another and make it into a megahit. But maybe that happened for the same reason I'm going to watch another, which is to see WTF all the fuss was about, like maybe everyone was bored and then the Nielsens reported that a lot of people were watching but didn't mention they were all bored and then more people watched to see why everyone else was watching and it became kind of like one of those highway traffic jams generated sheerly by everyone rubbernecking to figure out why there was a traffic jam which is the thing that caused the traffic jam. I'm pretty sure that's exactly it, but I'll surely let you know after watching season 3.
Movies:
The Great Happiness Space: Tale of an Osaka Love Thief - So some Janice recc'ed this documentary about a very specific Japanese subculture of, basically, male hookers. I say basically because that's a reference point but hardly begins to describe it. You may be familiar with Japanese female hostesses at "salary man" bars, i.e. clubs where Japanese white-collar workers go to sit chatting with women and paying for that and, often, having sex with them as well. These things are licensed and legal in Japan so I'm not really sure there's an American equivalent but it's basically people paying by buying drinks and tables and bottle service and whatnot to feel that someone of their preferred gender is focused solely on them. The transaction isn't sex really (though it can be); it's emotions with the full knowledge that those emotions are fake because they're paid for. Only - and this is where it all gets crazy and messy - they sort of sometimes aren't fake because these, in the case of this film, paid boyfriend relationships can go on for years and rack up tens of thousands of dollars (the best paid of these guys make $50k/month). I'm barely touching on the insanity of all this, not that the doc itself is insane but rather all the very well articulated underlying psychology in which the guys are very clear about the nature of the transaction and how they're manipulating the women and how all of that affects them - they do this as a legal job so every night (or at least a lot of them) for 8-12 hours they’re putting on the charm while getting drunk but vomiting in the hopes of not getting too drunk and trying to figure out what each client wants then giving them just enough of it that they'll keep coming back and of course getting them to buy bottle service and who would want any kind of relationship with anyone after that? - as well as the other side, i.e. the women being very articulate about their dual awareness of the transactional nature and how it all affects them emotionally anyway even though they know they're paying to get that emotion. Fascinating right? The documentary itself is short, around 75 minutes, and is more or less people talking to camera and then watching everything in action at the club. There's a reveal I guess you could say (though more of a thematic one) midway through that I'm not going to spoiler, not because it was so shocking or anything but because it adds another layer to the psychology of it all. As with all docs of this sort where it's less about the camera work or a big amazing story and more about the subject matter, your interest in it will be based on your interest in hearing about the above. This particular view of humanity was super interesting to me because the underlying psychology of it all was ultimately strange yet comprehensible and I was totally glued - thanks for the rec, Janice!
Kimi - This was a pretty entertaining thriller in the Rear Window vein about a techy agoraphobe (just go with it) who works as a troubleshooter for a Siri-alike (that would be Kimi), overhears what she thinks is a crime being committed and, for a variety of plot reasons, compels herself to venture out into the world to report it which in turn gets her caught up in it. This is one of those movies where, if you're in a space where you're focusing too much on plausibility you might hate it but that wasn’t my reaction; I won't spoiler but, as is typical in these films, the untrained lead manages to outwit professional baddies in multiple ways, though really that didn't bother me at all because the overall movie, once it revs up, is basically a huge chase and there's some interesting stuff around tech and, to an extent, COVID isolation mirroring agoraphobia. BTW the COVID/agoraphobia wasn't exactly played out but was implied and, I don't know, it added a bit of thematic interest to the story. It's a Steven Soderbergh movie if that matters one way or another to you; it did to me solely because he has enough of a solid track record that I figured the story would be cohesive (check), the visuals interesting (check), and it wouldn't have the multi-year running time of Marvel movies (check). I'm avoiding all further plot description as it can be spoileredish by which I mean you can sort of predict what's coming (though philosophical question: if you know what will happen is it really spoilerable?) but do you really want me to spell your prediction out for you? No, you don't. Suffice to say the predictability doesn't matter. If you like thrillers and are in the mood for some upgraded popcorn, like with real butter rather than hot golden, this is an engrossing bit of fun.