Reading/Watching Log #88

This was a month of FINALLY finishing shows that I started ages ago and then neglected to finish in a timely manner, as well as a slew of children’s books, a trip to the Court Theatre, a couple of graphic novels, and two fantastic, absolutely-recommend movies.

Naturally I’ve seen the second season of Shadow and Bone, but I’ll hold off talking about it until I can write up a proper post in its honour, but believe me when I say I live in fear of it being cancelled. I’ve no idea how confident Eric Heisserer is about his proposed Six of Crows spin-off, but he clearly set up for it in this season (somewhat to its detriment) and adapting the Ice Court heist is blatantly the reason he came on board in the first place. If Netflix doesn’t come through, then I think it’ll be the end of streaming services for me. I’ve been burnt too many times by cancelled and unfinished stories that I just don’t have the energy to care anymore.

Easter is also on the horizon, and I’ve decided to make it Eighties Fantasy month: that means I’ll devote the long weekend to Labyrinth, The Neverending Story, Ladyhawke, Legend, The Princess Bride, and maybe The Dark Crystal – though I’ve been planning to watch that one in the context of all the most recent books, graphic novels, and (cancelled) Netflix show, so we’ll see.

King's Quest: Romancing the Throne

After the success of Quest for the Crown, a sequel was inevitable, and the nature of its quest obvious. Having won the crown and the throne in the previous game, what does a young king need next? A wife and heir, obviously. The magic mirror retrieved during the course of Quest for the Crown is the perfect device with which to introduce Graham to his would-be bride, and the opening act depicts a lonely Graham glimpsing a lovely maiden in the glass.

He's informed by the mirror that her name is Valanice, and that she’s trapped in a quartz tower behind three magical doors located in the nearby land of Kolyma (I’ve no idea how to pronounce that). Exchanging his crown for his adventurer’s cap, he sets off to find her. Because, you know, it’s totally fine for a king to just leave his kingdom to go off and do this sort of thing, and he doesn’t even bother to take any coins from the ever-replenishing chest or the magical shield that can protect him from all harm.

Romancing the Throne (an obvious play on Romancing the Stone) was released in 1985, and uses the same interface, “wrap-around” geography, and AGI game engine as its predecessor. In fact, of all seven games in this series, Quest for the Crown and Romancing the Throne are the most similar: each feature Graham as the protagonist, a threefold quest, villains that are easily evaded by simply not entering the screens they inhabit, a magical fairy helper that gives you a protective spell, and even the use of “Greensleeves” as the opening theme music.

As ever, non-violent solutions garner the player more points than using lethal force (except when a truly evil character needs to be taken out) and hidden treasures can be traded away – along with the points they accrue – in order to advance.  Many of the previous game’s bad guys have relocated to Kolyma, including the dwarf, the sorcerer and the big bad wolf, and there’s a clear narrative continuum between winning a kingdom and finding a bride.

They form a neat two-part story in the wider scope of the series, for starting with the very next game, writer/designer Roberta Williams shakes up the formula considerably, from the nature of the quests to the motivation of the protagonists, to the lack of single-screen villains, miscellaneous treasures, and helpful fairies that provide the player with temporary magical protection.

Woman of the Month: Zoe Reynolds

Zoe Reynolds from Spooks

I’ll admit that it was a bit of struggle to find a Woman of the Month for March. When I started this blog, I told myself I could only chose heroic female characters (no villains) and that I would limit myself to one per book, film or show. I also try to refrain from choosing a character until the entirety of her story is completed – you never know where she’s going to end up, and I've had one too many instances in which I would spotlight a female character right before she came to a sticky end. Occasionally I break these rules, but given that I’m in the middle of finishing or continuing a lot of shows that are well into their collective runs, I find myself scrambling to find a decent candidate.

So, let’s go with Zoe Reynolds. No, I have no idea where her story ends up, and given the nature of the show there’s a good chance it won’t have a happy ending, but I don’t have many options at this exact moment. (I suspect that if I was further along than season two, it would be Ruth Evershed getting profiled here, as I know she sticks around until the final season).

Like last month’s Camille Bordey, Zoe Reynolds is more of an archetype than a full-formed, three-dimensional character… and that’s okay. The general vibe of Spooks is one of secrecy and professionalism, and we learn very little about the backgrounds of our main cast beyond their basic training and specialized skill-sets. Their lives revolve around their jobs, and they exist almost entirely in the moment. This actually poses something of a challenge for the actors, as they’re required to convey internally complicated people beneath carefully controlled veneers – and for my money, it’s mostly through Zoe that the writers explore the strain between the necessities of the job and the allure of normalcy. Whenever she goes undercover (most notably as a high school teacher) you can tell she enjoys the perks of “civilian” life.

Although she’s a consummate professional, who can keep her head in high-stress situations and never loses sight of long-term objectives, every now and then her cold demeanour gets punctured. When a superior officer she admires is revealed to have been running phantom agents and pocketing the bribe money for herself, she’s distraught. When she learns the man she’s been seeing in a local pub is married, she ends up in tears in an office corridor. At the end of the day, she’s only human.

It’s fun seeing Keely Hawes in one of her first major roles, and I like that she has a short, practical haircut and is allowed to wear non-glamourous clothing to work. Every now and then she’s required to present herself as something of a honey trap, but it’s never gratuitous (*side-eyes Sidney Bristow in Alias, who spent most of her uncover work in a bikini*) and in many ways, she’s the antidote to all those sexy supermodel spies, being more likely to save the day from a boardroom while wearing sensible shoes than doing dangerous field work in an evening dress. Now, here’s hoping she doesn’t meet the same fate as poor Helen Flynn…

Reading/Watching Log #87

Lots of books this month, but only one movie, which surprised me. It’s probably because my weekend viewing has been taken up with my determination to finish several shows that I started a while ago but have yet to finish (Crash Landing on You, The Umbrella Academy, The Crown) and I’ve got at least thirty books out from the library that I’m eager to get through.

As ever, I finished two more Babysitters Club books, as well as two more picture books illustrated by Joe Todd-Stanton, two children’s books by A.M. Howell, two characters called Claudia, and three YA graphic novels. I also got back to Joseph Delaney’s Spook series, and (totally coincidentally) rewatched the very first series of the BBC’s Spooks from 2002. The third season of Sailor Moon is in the bag, and the one movie I did watch was so epic that it was pretty much the equivalent of five movies.

Top Twelve Best Film/Television Moments of 2022

Browsing through my reading/watching logs for 2022, I found myself struck by the fact that this year it was remarkably easy to pull together twelve list-worthy moments featured in film and television, even though few of the things I watched this year really enraptured me. Compare this to 2021, in which I had the exact opposite problem: having to shave the list down to only six entries, but which were comprised of scenes and set-pieces that completely blew me away.

This year’s Fear Street trilogy (by which I mean a project I wasn’t expecting much from, only for it to end up living rent-free in my head for a couple of months) was Andor, the latest entry into Disney’s Star Wars canon, which ended up being so good on so many levels that every other Star Wars project that’s come out of the studio since its acquisition should feel embarrassed.

It also had the side-effect of making other shows, which I probably would have enjoyed just fine otherwise, feel clunky and strained in comparison. House of the Dragon, The Rings of Power, even The Sandman simply did not measure up to the absolute mastery of Andor’s world-building, pacing, dialogue, suspense, and characterization. And unlike the Fear Street trilogy, which does come with my caveat that it’s great for what it is (a YA shlock fest with clever twists and weighty underpinnings), I have no qualms about recommending Andor with the most effusive of praise. It really is that good.

So most of what you’ll find below the cut are impressive scenes within projects that were a tad lacklustre... or at least didn’t engender the powerful response in me that I would have liked. But there was still a lot here to enjoy, much of it based on either grand spectacle or emotional torque, and featuring – as you’d expect – a lot of great female characters.

Here, in no particular order, are my personal top twelve film and television moments from 2022:

Woman of the Month: Camille Bordey

Camille Bordey from Death in Paradise

I finally got around to watching the first season of Death in Paradise to find it’s an extremely formulaic police procedural, albeit one set on the Caribbean Island of Saint Marie. But sometimes that’s exactly what the doctor ordered: a chance to switch your brain off (or at least put it on low-power) and enjoy the lovely scenery while some entertaining characters solve a murder.

Annoyingly, the twist regarding Camille Bordey’s character is spoiled in the opening credits of the very first episode: although she’s initially introduced as the major suspect in a murder case, it turns out she’s working undercover in a drug-smuggling ring – something any viewer could easily deduce since she’d hardly feature in the opening credits if she wasn’t going to be a recurring character.

Like everyone else on the show, she’s a fairly stock character: the easy-going cop to contrast the uptight, fish-out-of-water Richard Poole, who struggles to acclimatize to the culture, temperature, wildlife and very different way of doing police work on the island. Camille’s role is largely to provide local context to the newcomer, but for what it’s worth, I think the show mostly side-steps the bad optics of Camille having to play second fiddle to an Englishman, since she’s a talented investigator in her own right and doesn’t suffer fools – particularly Poole – lightly.

It's hardly a deep character study, but Camille is competent, intelligent and quick on her feet – and like I said, sometimes that’s all you need to enjoy a show (or a female character).

Reading/Watching Log #86

So that was January, which always feels like the shortest month. It involved a lot of drama this side of the hemisphere, what with the arrival of torrential flooding in Auckland and the resignation of Jacinda Ardern as Prime Minister. Regarding the former – well, it’s climate change. Get used to it. As for the second, I’m extremely happy for her. I actually felt a great wash of relief when I heard. The past few months have seen an increase is misogynist rhetoric and she’s been the subject of death threats, harassment campaigns and everything else under the sun.

The feeble-minded conspiracy theorists and right-wing nutjobs are “celebrating” (at least, the ones that aren’t busy dying of Covid) but you can tell there’s an existential crisis to their behaviour: now that the villain of their deranged narrative is leaving the stage, they’re starting to look around and realize there’s no one left to blame all their problems on. Whether they’ll transfer it to another person or whether the poisonous online misinformation machine will simply peter out without its main target remains to be seen.

She leaves with her dignity intact, knowing that she never sunk to the level of her detractors (though that would be quite a feat considering one of these clowns is spending the next three years in prison for trying and failing to sabotage the Auckland power grid, and another has well and truly dived off the deep-end by trying to prevent a baby from getting a life-saving blood transfusion, complaining about it on Alex Jones’s show, and claiming Ardern is personally trying to kill her. We’re talking the very bottom of the intellectual/moral barrel here).

But Ardern knows the best way to win is to simply leave the playing field, and that’s what she’s done: she’s secured her legacy, will be remembered fondly by history, made friends in the international community, and best of all, denied anyone the chance to vote her out. She can get married and raise her daughter and hopefully go on a long, relaxing holiday.

But you’re not here for that, you’re here to see what I’ve been reading/watching this past month. It involves checking off another of the shows from my Ten Pilots, One Day project, making a dent in my never-ending pile of library books, watching several of the films I was meaning to watch in the final months of 2022, and a surprising amount of Hannah Waddington cameos (well, two – but you know that saying about getting two nickels and how it’s strange it happened twice).

Speaking of my Ten Pilots, One Day post, I’ve moved onto Interview with the Vampire, after which I have only Vampire Academy and Wednesday left. The former has already been cancelled so there’s no real incentive to continue with it, and I’ll probably hold off on the latter until October, seeing as it’s perfect Halloween viewing. Right now I want to dive back into Legend of the Seeker and the third season of His Dark Materials, and the long weekend seems a perfect opportunity for catching up.

Oh, and hopefully I’ll get my Top Twelve Television/Film Moments of 2022 posted soon as well.