Saturday, 27 March 2010

Scarlet Thomas - "Popco"

Just like "The End of Mr. Y", this story grabs you along for a fun and wonderful ride. Particularly the first half of it is filled to the top with anecdotes and information without the author trying to show off, making you want to read/watch/learn all of the things she mentions.

Powerful writing.

But, in contrast with "...Mr. Y" the ending of this story is a bit of a let-down. Not exactly deus ex machine, but the rabbit-out-of-the-hat feeling is nagging somewhere at the back of my mind.

What she manages though, is to nag you a little, just enough to make you wonder whether any of what she wrote, might actually be true. What helps are the numerous correct references to existing cryptographic ideas and methods, and the self-referencing of the story is not bad by itself... but somehow, "too sudden"

Still, a wonderful read when you don't want anything difficult.

Natural City (2003)

Cyborg, neural transformation, bad cop trying to safe his cyborg-gf. Good cop trying to put him right. Evil scientist.

Admitted, the first time I stopped watching this film after 20 minutes, simply because I was too tired.

Finished it a day later, but not with great enthousiasm. It was ok, but somehow it seemed the film couldn't decide whether it was an actionfilm, love-story, metaphysical pondering, or... something else.

It was slow. I pride myself on the enjoyment of slow films ("Innocence"!) but this film simply didn't do it for me.

Wednesday, 24 March 2010

Damien Rice & Lisa Hannigan - "9 crimes"

playing it over and over, inbetween Marina & The Diamonds.

"Is that alright, yeah?"

Tuesday, 23 March 2010

Joe Henry - "The Man I Keep Hid"

trumpets, jazzy!

Marina and the Diamonds - "Mowgli's Road"

Already knew her wonderful "I'm not a Robot" (heard it recently @ KinkFM, but I'm sure I stumbled upon it before, though unlikely during the Robot special at V-Radio)

Got link-linked to a clip of her doing "Mowgli's Road". Quite nice as well, has a bite.

Do they really have just one album ("Family Jewels") yet?

Monday, 22 March 2010

Flickan som lekte med elden ("The Girl Who Played With Fire") (2009)

2nd in the adaptation of Stieg Larsson's trilogy.

Nice, but not overwhelmingly so. I wasn't blown away by the first one, but it was quite alright. This one performed slightly less.. You seem to know the drill, the crazy girl's character... so what else?

"just" a whodunnit. but ok.