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Film: Kate

Kate
published by Netflix
2021

Kate is a stylish film about the last day of an American assassin’s life in Japan. It is also one of the few films that properly shows the lead character looking like hell while their health collapses, which is strangely refreshing!

(Note that this is one of those films with nearly all American lead characters set in Japan, in a some combination of cultural fan service and backdrop-exploitation. I like it as fan service, of course. I also like the good guy and bad guy cross-cultural collaboration as an attempt at better cultural engagement to ground the story. (There is a speech within the film that suggests disdain for exploitative foreigners, which implies…. self-awareness, even though the context is different.))

Kate is a skilled assassin living in Japan, working for an American handler at jobs that the local assassins can’t or won’t do for local political reasons. She displays (minimal) ethics by wanting to reschedule an assassination that would happen in front of a child, to let us know that she is a good person. Shortly after telling her boss she wants to get out of the assassination business, Kate suffers a medical incident, learns she has been poisoned, and only has hours to live. How will she spend that time? Identifying her assassin and avenging herself, of course!

This film is tight: the pacing is good, the scenes are stylishly composed, the roving fight scenes are extremely satisfying (room to room, bathhouse to alley, street to restaurant), exposition is limited (guns and swords do the talking), and Mary Elizabeth Winstead is an understated heroine. While the preview has a local ally/frenemy talking Kate up as a badass, there is very little swagger – Kate fights like she means it, not like she wants others to be impressed.

I believe I’ve watched this four times. I would buy this if it were for sale. I’ll watch it again. It’s a well-executed action film.

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Film: The Old Guard

The Old Guard
published by Netflix
2020

This is a fun action film about a group of near-immortals who work as soldiers for hire in the modern world. Charlize Theron shines as Andi, the leader of this group that has come together over centuries after finding each other (often through dreams) and fighting side by side. If practice makes perfect, this army of five is very close to perfect – and almost impossible to kill.

As they take on ethical-yet-violent jobs, they come to the attention of an evil biotech bro who wants to turn what they’ve got into profit – and he isn’t going to wait for them to agree to his invasive study plan.

The backstory flashbacks across time are well done; the settings are good; the fight scenes are well choreographed; the logistics of supporting oneself over centuries are addressed in bite-sized realism; the camaraderie between the near-immortals is adorable. I’ve watched this at least three times, and recommended it strongly when it first came out, to ensure my circle had a chance to see it.

It’s well done American-style action. I’d buy this if it were for sale. I’d watch sequels.

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Life: A Stack of Books

Image of a stack of five books described in further detail in the text
That statistic about ten percent of people buying ninety percent of the books may be about me.

There… was a book sale in a bookshop-turned-different-bookshop (popup, maybe?), and I did not resist. Plus, a special order came in for me at Dog Eared Books, where I shop and take friends visiting from out of town (and where most of my recently reviewed books came from).

I’m currently making very loud, positive sounds while reading Elie Mystal’s Allow Me to Retort. Snyder’s thoughtful and ominous book is too heavy for me this week – I’m too busy being angry about the Supreme Court to cope – but was already growing heavy with ‘bookdarts’ until I switched, as even his introduction brilliantly encapsulates alarmingly relevant ways of viewing our current political crises.

There are more books virtually in this stack: I have a digital stack of purchased audiobooks from libro.fm awaiting my attention also.

Do I have time to read these? No, I don’t even have time to get seven hours of sleep each night, don’t be silly. I will find/make the time, eventually.

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Life: Watercolor paint (and fear of failure)

The last time I made a small watercolor painting, it turned out badly. Like the normal, totally well-adjusted person I am, I decided it turned out badly because I am a terrible painter, no matter how many decent paintings I produced in the past, and so I avoided watercolor painting for several years.

Most of this was based on a misunderstanding.

Back when I was a starving architecture school student, I could only buy small amounts of paint at a time. A tube of transparent watercolor here, another tube there, a lot of skilled mixing, and I could get by. I experimented and made some decent paintings with my mismatched tiny tubes, and I was happy.

My first FULL boxed set of watercolors YEARS later was Holbein’s Iródori Antique Watercolors. I had been a regular user of Holbein’s regular watercolors (they released colors that matched the landscape of my trips to Japan SO PERFECTLY!). I liked colors in traditional paintings, so I thought this was the right choice for me. Yet, my paintings with these colors all… lacked something. I blamed myself, put them away, and moved onto other things (including watercolor pencils, and a travel set of a different brand of watercolors, which I worked more effectively with). Years passed, I brought the set out again, painted a rather muddy painting of a Japanese scene form one of my own photos, blamed myself, and put them away again. I was already so familiar with Holbein, I couldn’t figure out why I’d become so RUSTY.

YouTube sorted me out. An artist with a shop called Hino Art Materials in Vietnam reviewed Holbein’s new sets of Iródori GOUACHE. Yes, Holbein re-relased the colors as OPAQUE watercolors, to giddiness from YouTube. She recommended not mixing these paints (they are very saturated, and muddy easily) and showed off a lovely gouache painting on a dark blue background. She showed off that some colors have been reformulated, but not all of them. Perhaps my existing set, even before this re-release, could be used like opaque paints?

So today, a precious day off work, I broke out BLACK WATERCOLOR PAPER (a thing that wasn’t available when I first purchased these paints so long ago) and white watercolor paper, and tested the paint out.

Two sheets of watercolor paper, one black, one white, with circles of Holbein Irodori watercolors painted upon them to show saturation and opacity.
Casual testing of Holbein Irodori Antique Watercolor on Clairefontaine mixed media black and Arches hot press white papers.

Oh, YES. So many of these colors are HIGHLY OPAQUE and look great on black paper. The great colors and saturation on white watercolor paper had fooled me! If only I’d had more experience with gouache when I purchased these, I could have put these to better use, and stuck to transparent colors for those other projects. Now that I understand their opacity, I can use them like gouache (and mix them with opaque white as needed when they need an opacity boost), and perhaps resist buying those French and German gouaches a bit longer… And actually get to enjoy these without fear of failure built in.

(Oh, that Antique Bronze Blue in particular is the color of the sky hours after sunset… I could USE that…)

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Language Study Update: 1800 Days

I'm on an 1800 day learning streak with Duolingo (sharing graphic)

I am persistent.

This year it has been all German. I have travel plans that require another language, and my reluctance to study that language has me doubting whether I will really go…

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Film: The Witcher (Seasons 1-3)

The Witcher
published by Netflix
2019 (Season 1), 2021 (Season 2), 2023 (Season 3)

The Witcher is a “fantasy” TV series, set in a ‘feudal Europe-type world’ (kings, queens, elves, fairies) world in which magic and its related technologies are real. Notable characters include Geralt, a feared, modified person with beyond-human abilities capable of defeating monsters; Yennifer, an abused girl who transforms into a powerful mage, and is constantly involved in political mage warfare; and Ciri, a princess who is accidentally tied to Geralt by fate; and a collection of well-dressed villains and allies.

The stakes are survival: humans versus monsters, army versus army, and gloomy empire versus other kingdoms.

The series starts very strong in separate character development for the leads and world-building to establish the forces of mostly-good and mostly-evil. As the series progresses and the lead characters connect and become involved with each other, the emphasis switches to the fight for the continent and the sacrifices each side makes to win the battles. The battles are more visually dramatic and satisfying than the manipulation and politics, but the action-to-exposition ratio is good for much of the series. The first two series were especially clear in narrative.

Geralt and Yennifer are both active, motivated, and interesting characters. Jointly and separately, they have more going for them than Ciri, who is a child struggling with her (really interesting) mothers’ death, the destruction of her hometown, being hunted by obvious villains, abstract prophecies about her role, and trying to grow up in this chaos.

The complexities of mage life were of special interest (flunking out is… pretty dire), and the idea that powerful people with strong rivalries becoming political enemies seems completely plausible. The ethics of creating Witchers are pretty dubious, though the results are compelling!

I enjoyed it, though any additional series will need to offer tighter narrative structure (and perhaps fewer characters?) to satisfy me as much as the first two seasons did.

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Film: Blue Eye Samurai

Blue Eye Samurai
published by Netflix
2023

This is a gorgeous animated drama of a woman seeking revenge.

Mizu is an outcast in feudal Japan , a bi-racial child who narrowly escaped being killed at birth. She grows up determined to avenge her mother against the foreigner who ruined everything, living as a man and training as a warrior to achieve her primary goal: vengeance.

Bonding with other outcasts despite her efforts to remain cold and uncaring, she finds that her non-vengeance attempts at living push her back toward the violence she seeks.

The imagery in this series is strikingly beautiful, and I spoke to the television with delight over countless compositions. The lighting! The buildings! The skies! The waves! The reflections! Yes, this is a supremely violent action series, but it is also one of great beauty.

I love everything but the very end, though I understand it has been renewed, so the finality I seek (setting aside Mizu’s motivations) may yet be delivered in more gorgeous episodes.

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Film: Foundation – Seasons 1 & 2

In early 2022, I wrote out a retrospective of what I had been watching, and I feel like it is time to do that again.

Foundation
published by Apple TV+
2021 (Season 1) & 2023 (Season 2)

These are the first two seasons (20 episodes total) of a series based on Isaac Asimov’s books about a galactic empire, and the organization set up by a mathematician to cushion that empire’s fall.

There are several stories overlapping across these series. Key figures include Hari Seldon, the mathematician who predicts the fall of the empire; Gaal, the mathematician who leaves her anti-knowledge planet and is immediately at risk of execution for associating with Hari; the Brothers Dawn, Day, and Dusk, genetic emperor clones who rule as a set in staggered life stages, decanted whenever one of them needs to be replaced; Demerzel, the last survivor of the empire’s attack on her kind, who is a ruthless and eternal enforcer of the empire’s rule; and the people who follow Hari, who appear to pose an existential threat to the empire.

Elements I enjoyed about it, that kept me eager for new episodes:

  • a high-stakes story about the future of humanity and its variations on thousands of worlds
  • scientists as leading figures within the story, including women of African ancestry in key science and leadership roles, in a ‘diverse’ future that looks like my port-city culture NOW
  • pleasant futuristic design of objects, grand spaces, technology, and mathematical displays, but with grubby and worn elements (away from the wealthy) adding realism (including truly remarkable interstellar ship life/suspension pods)
  • the character variations of Brother Day, as played by Lee Pace, who seems to enjoy the role, especially the Season 2 version of him I described to a friend as “louche” (which Google/Oxford describe as “disreputable or sordid in a rakish or appealing way”).
  • the general lack of warp-speed travel for most people, meaning that going to sleep in a suspended-aging pod and leaving your planet for a long trip meant everyone you knew would be dead long before you reached your destination
  • the display of the dirty elements of empires, such as genocide, prison camps, slavery, exploitation, obligations to provide young people as tribute to the ruling class, and so on
  • the disappointing persistence of anti-knowledge religions, and anti-knowledge repression, which I appreciate because it is entirely too realistic
  • Good pacing.

Foundation is enjoyable sci-fi / drama, and I look forward to future seasons.

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Book (Manhwa): Not Your Typical Reincarnation Story by Lemon Frog , A-jin

Not Your Typical Reincarnation Story
by Lemon Frog , A-jin
published by Webtoon (55 chapters, ongoing)
2023 – present

Cover for Not Your Typical Reincarnation Story by Lemon Frog , A-jin

Dislcosure: it is a reincarnation story, if you were wondering. But it’s an interesting one.

Suna Choi gets murdered in the contemporary/real world, and wakes up as a villainess in a novel she read before she died. While Edith Rigelhof as a villainess is glamorous, seductive, and famous redhead, Suna realizes that Edith is also completely doomed. No one is on her side. She has no friends, no support, and is unlikely to survive the well-intentioned character’s shoddy investigations into things she is accused of. As so many contemporary heroines do, Suna decides she will take control of the story by turning Edith’s life around, and will live to have a happy ending.

In these respects, this story DOES have much in common with other reincarnation manhwa.

Yet… Suna/Edith can’t tell the other characters how badly Edith is abused at home. She can’t reveal any of her secrets or plans, or she loses consciousness. Also, she learns in flashbacks to a place between her world and that of the novel that she is the 13th Edith to try to fix this narrative! (I would likely have called this novel Edith the Thirteenth.)

Worse: she isn’t just in a fully written book: she is in a hellish afterlife in which the author of the novel can (and will) intervene to make the story turn out the way THEY want. They are determined to kill off Edith, and give the blonde princess the best of everything.

Can Suna/Edith beat the author and survive? Or will the author/deity of this world keep pressing the other characters to hate / blame / attempt to kill Edith, despite her best efforts?

I appreciate that Suna, who was so broke and miserable in her modern life, really APPRECIATES the good things in her new life. Also, unlike countless other stories, she gets to enjoy her hot husband – she isn’t a child, she is having a grown up relationship! What Edith wants for him is better than what the author wants, and he is willing to become a better person to pitch in, as he should. Also: she gets to go to the gay fashion designer for her gowns, and I wish this for all good characters!

I’m rooting for abuse survivor Edith the 13th and her hot husband to defeat the author/deity who is conspiring against them.

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