Books:
A Darker Shade of Magic (Shades of Magic #1) by V.E. Schwab
This first in a fantasy trilogy (I think?) about four connected mid-1800s Londons with decreasing levels of magic in each and a system in which magic is kind of like your gut microbiome, i.e. something extremely useful if you can harness it but is its own thing and can otherwise kill you if it gets out of your control, turned out to be a pretty entertaining read in the what I’d say is the lite-fantasy genre. By which I mean it's more interested in creating a fun romp about the people in the various overlapping worlds with class issues and culture clashes than it is in world-building or complex magic systems and attendant battles. The main characters are the two remaining various-London-travelers one of whom is also royalty in one of the Londons and a scrappy orphan in our (normal) London and the basic plot involves one of the other Londons enacting a domination plan and how our two leads get swept up in the whole thing. I'm not going into much more of the plot for spoiler reasons, but that's the basic setup. You've got your opposites-attract good guys - with maybe a hint of potential romance but I can't really tell (nor does it seem relevant to their relationship) - your powerful nasties, and a magic system which in all honestly I didn't actually understand and couldn't figure out its rules since it's one of those things where it seems like the enemy is always better/stronger but I didn't understand why - better training or something? But this didn't matter really, though I'm hoping it's clearer in future books, as the basic tropes were fun to see played out. The book reads like a standalone in that I wouldn't say it sets up a sequel; however, I can imagine a sequel as there are top-level plot threads left unresolved so perhaps those will be explored more in future books. I'm hoping this isn't reading lukewarm because I genuinely flew through the book, but - and I'm afraid what I'm about to say will be a turnoff for people but it's the source of any hesitation you're reading in my review - it has a YA vibe without actually being YA. Spoiler alert, I hate YA and often feel irritated when I start something and discover it's YA because there's such a sameness in the presentation of the leads as, more or less, variants on self-doubting teens or Mary Sue teens or teens discovering love and themselves for the first time and whatnot and I'm not saying there's not a place for all that, just that I'm never interested in reading about those characters as those discoveries are pretty repetitive to read even if the world and plot are good. To be clear, this book is not YA, but it has a bit of that flavor to it - if you've read Sebastian de Castell (whose Spellslinger series also walked this same line but was very entertaining across its fiveish books) you'll know if this book is for you. If not, it's enjoyable enough that I'd say give it a start and you'll know within the first like 10% if this is your bag or not. It was mine, and I'll definitely be reading the sequels and reporting back.
TV/Streaming:
The Traitors UK (Season 1):
I was 100% inhaled by this Survivor-ish competition reality series though, important note, there are many iterations of this show and I watched the UK one which I'd heard was way better than the US one (no surprise there honestly as I feel like the UK overall does competition reality shows at a level that's far higher than the US versions because the US versions generally contain so much producer contrivance that they feel more like gaming versions of Real Housewives than like real competitions - I'm not saying the UK producers don't interfere (I have no idea if they do or not) just that, if they do, they're so so so much better at it and at making the show look like it's entirely about spontaneous). The essence of this game is like those murder group games people sometimes play at home. A large group of strangers is sent off to a Scottish castle; an unknown 3 of them are chosen to be Traitors and the rest are Faithfuls, and the Faithfuls have to weed out to the Traitors - who commit a "murder" each night, i.e. eliminate someone - during a daily "banishment" in which someone is voted off. During the day they all do group activities to add money to the final pot. The rub is if there are any Traitors left in the group at the end, the Traitor or Traitors get all the money; if the Faithfuls successfully get rid of the Traitors, the remaining Faithfuls split the pot. The show is Survivor-ish in the sense that it completely plays on betrayal and deception and messing with people's heads about who's Faithful and who's not and, as with Survivor, the intensity of the time together forms bonds within the group where these total strangers become tight friends which further messes, not only with everyone's perceptions of the who's a Traitor, but also the Traitors' rising guilt and difficulty of maintaining the deception. It's primarily a social game. The group activities serve as bonding instances because it's in everyone's interest regardless of what side they’re on to get as much money as possible in the final pot. As the season progressed, the show got more and more intense, and by episode four or five I was almost screaming at my screen and by the final episode, a piece of me wanted to FF to the end (I didn't) because I was feeling so tense about how it would all play out and I just wanted the tension to go away. This is a real testament to the entire production team. The show looked great, it played into a kind of Medieval-y death-warrant vibe (they made the Traitors wear hooded costumes during their nightly murder meetings), but mostly it allowed the various personalities and underlying feelings to shine and really made you see how difficult it would be to play this game if it were you. I mean, yeah, the audience knows who the Traitors are, but you can see how planting all these small seeds about other people makes everyone suspicious of everyone else. Also, there was some interesting strategy in the nightly murders about who to knock out of the game and why and then, the next day, all the Traitors being forced to fake surprise and upset while also trying to pin the blame on someone else so some other person would take the hit at that night's banishment. I've used Survivor as a reference touchstone but honestly this show is way better because it's all social game with none of the physical gaming aspects, just people machinating to backstab or unravel the truth plus I thought there was something interesting and even more manipulative about having the whole group being forced to unify every day in order to earn money because that unity ended up messing with all of their heads later in the day. If this kind of series is sounds up your alley, go find the UK version instantly (as usual I have no clue where these things wind up streaming because there are 50 billion streaming options and everything, other than Netflix stuff, seems to constantly move from channel to channel - is channel even the right word these days?) as I believe you'll be totally hooked by it.
Doom Patrol (Season 1):
I'm simultaneously well aware that this misfit superhero show is tonally goofy and maybe kinda dumb but I 100% didn't care and was entertained from start to finish and will happily be watching the subsequent seasons. I'd say this show is in the Umbrella Academy grouping of superhero shows, i.e. one with a lot of superhero angst/reluctance combined with a certain amount of ridiculousness combined with some self-awareness around that combined with underlying legitimate personal and relationship issues that offer some character growth and depth to what would otherwise be sheer silliness. With this show it's people who got transformed with weird superhero powers in ways I won't spoiler and who find themselves outcast from society and slowly forming a kind of bond with each other while dealing with a much bigger big-bad as well as some other baddies along the way. What I liked about this show though was that it was really into the psychological aspects of feeling like something terrible had been stolen when they became superheroes - a relationship to humanity - and replaced with something none of them wanted. Like in more typical superhero stuff, there's some kind of inherent heroism (which in Marvel manifests as fascist patriarchy) or, in shows like The Boys, a commentary (in its mind) on the tradeoff between power and capitalism and morality, but this show deals with a sense of self-worthlessness across all the characters in a way I haven't really seen before and, without spoilering, I'll just say that those psychological issues and the manipulation of those issues form the backbone of the entire season. Your enjoyment of the show will really depend on the extent to which you find the tone bothersome because it is definitely an in-your-face, not-remotely-subtle sarcastic-y flavor which, combined with the self-doubt and OTT subplots, could definitely be totally unappealing if that's not your vibe. Perhaps a decent metric, if you've seen it, is Everything Everywhere All At Once (review here) which also had a similar goofiness (e,g, butt plugs) combined with an underlying psychological issue (teen hopelessness) so if you were meh on that movie then this might be background noise at best for you. For me what made the whole thing work, aside from all the gummies, was its consistency in that it is what it is and it's that the whole time which made me feel like the writers knew what they wanted to do and that they weren't going to let me down at the end because they were clear to themselves about what they were trying to achieve. So there you go, if the prospect of a superhero show with an overarching comic (or not, taste depending) tone sounds up your alley, I thought this was solidly entertaining.
Movies:
She Will - This is one of those incredibly deadly serious while also lethally nonsensical, dumb, and boring horror movies that thinks it's using the genre to talk about issues of some kind but is actually just an idiotic snooze. The basic setup: an older actress who just had a mastectomy arrives, along with her aide, at some hotel deep in the Scottish highlands where she's going to recuperate only ancient witchy burning possession - I believe this would be the theme part, some hazy anti-misongyny/female-revenge power thing but I have no idea - shows up too. The context, I think (again, it's all so dumb and boring that I may have zoned out), is that the actress had made a movie directed by Malcolm McDowell (he's still alive (or was whenever this movie came out)!) when she was a kid and I guess he abused her which is her connection to the witchiness since witches, female power, misogyny, burning, yawn, etc. I believe the notion is the actress - Alice Krige - is supposed to sink into this power and spiritually/magically reap revenge at a distance (Malcolm McDowell is in London or something promo-ing the re-release of the movie) and somehow that's her real recovery. I guess. There's also something with the aide, some abrasiveness on the part of Alice Krige that softens and something with the aide and some dude and he gets aggressive and well witchy mud things happen. I don't know if it was actively going for the vibe of a '70s Karen Black movie but that's the vibe it had. Unfortunately, if that is what it was going for (and I really don't know - that reference may be only in my head), it lacked any sense of irony about it and, let's face it, if you even know Karen Black '70s horror movies it's solely because at some point in your post-'70s existence you watched them high and giggled your ass off at how hilariously self-obliviously bad they were, a genius of its own kind but one infused with self-important ridiculousness - if you haven't seen these, by all means go hunt down Trilogy of Terror or Burnt Offerings, grab a gummy, and enjoy. Anyway this movie is unironically all that, by which I mean Alice Krige thought she'd have the place to herself only it turns out there are other people there - a meaningless point btw, one that's pounded in at beginning then never mentioned again - inhabited by some pushy guests (as noted by their moving too close to camera - oh the crowding, get away, get away! look at us cinematically in Alice Krige's head!) - plus random cutting throughout the movie to some Asian lady doing liturgical dances around a wooden plinth and with lots of Bollywood finger/thumb extensions, an ominous sky in the background, and maybe some crows. Honestly I wish this movie had been good/bad in the Karen Black vein but it was all just so turgid. I don't even know why I finished it (it's like 90 minutes and I think I took three or four days to get through it), but I did, and now you don't have to.