There was a definite theme to this month, and that was female characters that are difficult, complex and/or broken to one extent or another. Whether a shameless gold-digger like Becky Sharpe, a damaged investigative reporter like Camille Preaker, or a sociopathic assassin like Villanelle, this month really proved to me that entertainment in general has moved well past the Madonna/Whore dichotomy and is comfortable letting women be flawed, messy and amoral (that said, Becky Sharpe has been around for a long time now).
It was also Halloween month, so I watched some of my spooky favourites (though I'll write about them in a separate post), and a time for Avatar spin-offs (well sort of – the third part of The Legend of Korra comic books finally arrived, and Aaron Ehasz's new show The Dragon Prince aired).
So let's get to it...
The Legend of Korra: Turf Wars by Michael Dante DiMartino and Irene Koh
I've actually had the first two instalments of this trilogy for the better part of the year, but decided to hold off reviewing the entire thing until I had read the story in its entirety. Picking up right off where the show ended, Korra and Asami have started their vacation in the spirit world, and ... be still my heart. There are some couples that lift you up with their own happiness, and watching these two take the first steps into a romantic relationship brought back all those feelings from 2014 when everyone was so joyfully aghast that Mike and Bryan actually went there.
So their first kiss, their announcement to their friends/family and their first "I love you"s are featured here, though I would have been just as happy with an even slower burn given the patience and subtlety that their relationship was handled with in the show itself.
The cherry on top is that Kya also confirms her sexuality (though this is treated as common knowledge among the characters) and it's strongly hinted that Kyoshi was bisexual (I guess we'll find out when her book is published!)
Oh, and there's a story here as well. It's a nice blend of season one's criminal cartels and season two's spirit world shenanigans (and the dangling thread of that snake/bird-like spirit who refused Korra's plea for help is followed up on) though let's face it – we were all here for the Korrasami.
Murder Most Unladylike by Robin Stevens
Okay, so I'm sure you remember that over the past few months I've been indulging my craving for Enid Blyton mysteries – first through Helen Moss's Adventure Island books, then The Wollstonecraft Detective Agency books by Jordan Stratford, then finally Enid Blyton herself with the Five Find-Outers books.
But there was one last series I wanted to get through, and that was Robin Stevens's Murder Most Unladylike (or in some publications, Wells and Wong mysteries). It's truly delightful, definitely the best of the mystery stories for children that I've read these past months, and doing some genuinely lovely character work with its protagonist: Hazel Wong.
She's a fourteen year old girl from Hong Kong who has been sent to an English boarding school by her Anglophile (and extremely wealthy) father in the 1930s. Faced with xenophobia and baffling English customs (her first experience with hockey is hilarious) Hazel struggles to fit in before finally making friends with Daisy Wells, her opposite in nearly every way.
Where Hazel is quiet, Daisy is bold. Where Hazel is short and plain, Daisy is fair and beautiful. Where Hazel is able to read the nuances of human nature, Daisy is more interested in logic and reasoning. Naturally they make a perfect Holmes and Waston duo when it comes to solving mysteries: at their boarding school, at Daisy's estate, on board the Orient Express, in Cambridge, and finally in Hong Kong.
There are seven books in all (so far) and Stevens excels on pretty much every level: twisty plot, lovable characters, vivid setting and lovely prose – they're all told in Hazel's first-person narrative, and she has one of the clearest and most introspective voices I've ever read.
Most worthy of discussing is Stevens's acute awareness of the fact that Hazel is a Chinese girl in 1930s England. With subtlety and compassion she explores Hazel's feelings of insecurity in the face of the country's micro-aggressions toward her, and – even better – illustrates that not even Hazel's relationship with Daisy is perfect. The friendship starts with Daisy hazing her in quite an unpleasant way, and Hazel is often bossed about or forced to do things she's not comfortable with across the course of their investigations.
And yet Daisy isn't malicious, just self-absorbed (like the fictional detective she most admires) and a key development throughout the books is Hazel learning to assert herself in the face of her friend: or rather, to assert herself when she really needs to, and make peace within herself when she doesn't.
Blue Lily, Lily Blue by Maggie Stiefvater
The third in Maggie Stiefvater's four-part The Raven Cycle, I felt that this was certainly a step-up from The Dream Thieves, though I'm still not totally on board. It's not that the story, characters or ideas are bad, but that it's all wrapped up in prose that's trying way too hard to be clever. I'm not talking about poetic-prose or complex prose, but endlessly witty prose. It actually gets quite exhausting to read.
It continues with the overarching quest of its main characters to find the resting place of the Welsh king Owen Glendower and (having done so) be granted a mystical boon. They're sure the tomb is buried somewhere in the small town of Henrietta, Virginia, and it's become apparent in the previous books that the conjoining of ley-lines below the settlement has made it a magnet for preternatural occurrences.
This book further emphasises that everyone will have a part to play in the discovery: Blue's capacity to intensify the gifts of others, Adam's connection to the ley-line, Ronan's ability to bring tangible objects out of dreams, even the connection between Noah and Gansey's early deaths and resurrections – for the first time I got a sense of the web Stiefvater has woven between her characters, and how they're now being definitively drawn together. And for that reason, I'll be back for the fourth and final book: The Raven King.
The Little Prince (2015)
I read Antoine de Saint-Exupéry's strange little book earlier this year, but it was back in 2015 that I was enchanted by the trailer for the filmic adaptation. Why it took me this long to watch it is anyone's guess, but it made for a mixed-bag of a movie.
Rather than a straightforward retelling of the original tale, which would have clocked in at under half-an-hour, the film frames the stop-motion story of the Little Prince with a more elaborate CGI rendered story of a little girl and her control-freak mother. The aviator of the original story ends up as their elderly neighbour, who soon has the girl enchanted with his stories of adventure in the Sahara desert – particularly his meeting with the mysterious little prince.
It's an odd mish-mash of tales. The Little Prince is a strange and lovely mediation on life and death, love and grief, but the framing device of the girl and her mother carries the more banal message of: "don't get bogged down in too much meaningless work". To see the profound nature of the one story mingled in with the prosaic moral of the other makes for an uneven viewing experience, as they're each about two profoundly different things.
It's not without its nuances; for instance, I appreciated that the strict workaholic mother (who has time-tabled her daughter's every waking moment into a "life plan" that she has to diligently follow while she's at work) isn't a monster, but a good person who demonstrates care and affection to her daughter.
It's worth seeing, for its technical beauty if nothing else – but like I said, it's an odd duck.
The Girl King (2016)
You would think the true story of a Swedish lesbian princess raised as a boy would make for fascinating stuff, and yet so much of The Girl King is a snooze. It's a fairly straightforward biopic about the education, sexuality and life-choices of Christina of Sweden (who ruled as queen from age six before abdicating at twenty-eight), and though it sheds light on a figure who I had no idea even existed before discovering this film, I never felt hugely invested in her story.
Some parts of it are so incredible that they just have to be true (such as Christina's mother keeping her dead husband's heart in a casket) and so it paints an interesting portrait of a particular time and place that doesn't get depicted in film very often. It just would have been nice to have had a stronger story and characterization to go with it.
Isle of Dogs (2018)
Taken out of context, the plot of Isle of Dogs could be a treacly Disney affair: a young boy searches for his beloved dog Spots after canine flu sees all the dogs of Japan exiled to a trash-covered island.
But since it's in Wes Anderson's hands, it becomes something quite different. The man is practically his own genre now, and you watch with a sort of tolerated bemusement at the symmetrical layouts, the orange-tinted colour palette, the deadpan deliveries of the actors, and the occasional dive into absurdist sentimentality.
The story is pretty straightforward and the characters (and their voice actors) all familiar Wes Anderson archetypes. But the stop-motion is beautifully rendered, and though it takes a particular type of humour to laugh at a small grey pug solemnly intone: "it may snow tonight" in Tilda Swinton's voice, there's something about the whole thing that cracks me up every time:
The Dragon Prince: Season 1 (2018)
Given that Aaron Ehasz was a head writer and director on Avatar: The Last Airbender (and widely, though a little dubiously, credited as the true genius behind the show) as well as co-creator of The Dragon Prince, the comparisons between the two are inevitable.
There are child protagonists (initially made up of two guys and a girl) on a secret quest, magic based on the elements, a racially/gender diverse cast, fantasy animals, a quirky sense of humour, the voice of Jack de Sena – even the episodes are called "chapters" in a remarkably similar font. (And tell me your mind didn't immediately think "Zuko" when you heard the words The Dragon Prince).
As with Avatar, it even starts with the words "long ago", but whereas Avatar was a master-class of spooling out exposition in timely portions, the opening intro of The Dragon Prince gives us a lengthy run-down of the countries, historical conflict, species involved, types of magic and overarching plot involving a missing dragon's egg.
So no, it's not as good as Avatar: The Last Airbender. Perhaps it's a little unfair to say that, as a lot of things aren't as good as Avatar – they just don't immediately demand a direct comparison to it (at one point a character reads a book clearly titled "Love in the Time of Dragons", so you can't tell me the show doesn't want to piggy-back just a little on the popularity of Avatar).
It's the story of a divided continent, in which elves and humans parted ways after the latter began to experiment with dark magic, culminating in the destruction of a precious dragon egg. Years later, a team of elf assassins have crossed the border looking for revenge, but one of their number – Rayla –ends up allied to two human princes – Callum and Ezran – when they discover that the dragon egg was not destroyed but stolen.
All unsure of their role in the conflict, the trio decide to return the egg to the remaining dragons in order to prevent the brewing war.
Ultimately there's a lot to like about The Dragon Prince. The characters are vivid and strongly designed, there's a dollop of ambiguous morality when it comes to characters like Soren and Claudia (the children of the show's Big Bad who are seemingly unaware of their father's villainy) and once you get used to the animation, it's pretty to look at as well.
Killing Eve: Season 1 (2018)
This is best compared to The Fall: a moody European crime thriller in which a cat-and-mouse game takes place between a brilliant female investigator and a good-looking psychopath who relies as much on charm as kill to get away with murder – though there are a few key differences.
Two in fact: firstly that it takes place between two women (clever but hapless Eve Polastri and sociopathic though glamourous Villanelle) and secondly that it's filled with dark British comedy. Sandra Oh as Eve is brilliant, and Jodie Comer manages to keep Villanelle entertaining without letting anyone forget that she's also truly monstrous. Fiona Shaw is also worth the watch as enigmatic MI5 director Carolyn Martens.
It's suspenseful and darkly amusing, though grows considerably more ludicrous as the episodes go on (honestly, if you know that a psychopathic killer knows your home address – LEAVE).
Sharp Objects (2018)
Sharp Objects is much like Killing Eve in one respect – the ending doesn't match the beginning in terms of quality. In fact, it's best described as a slow-burning atmospheric psychological thriller which in its final moments (literally its final moments) ends with a shlocky horror GOTCHA! moment.
So much time is spent on setting the mood and exploring the trauma of our main character (and hoo boy is there trauma: gang rape, a dead little sister, a narcissist mother, a drinking habit, a cutting problem) that the whole meat of the plot: the murder of two young girls in the sweltering dead-end town of Wind Gap, Missouri – almost becomes an afterthought. (Again, literally. The reveal of the murderer is depicted halfway through the ending credits. This show made some weird creative decisions).
That said, I appreciated it without necessarily enjoying it. The three main actresses (Amy Adams, Patricia Clarkson, Eliza Scanlen) are in top form, with a dizzingly complex psychological bond that's worth picking apart.
Vanity Fair (2018)
I read Vanity Fair back in university and enjoyed it, though most adaptations certainly take the bite out of William Makepeace Thackeray's ice-cold satire. In this case the script explicitly makes Becky Sharpe a self-proclaimed "survivor" (of the same kind as Scarlett O'Hara) who defends her life choices by insisting she had to fight for herself every step of the way, and who you feel a grudging respect for in her single-minded determination to thrive by any means necessary.
None of this is untrue per say, except that it leaves out the part that what Becky is striving for is prestige and riches (not simple survival) and that she hurts countless people along the way. It's illustrated perfectly in the opening chapter – we like Becky for throwing the dictionary out the carriage at snotty Miss Pinkerton – but sober when we realize that the kind-hearted Miss Jemima went to considerable pains to make sure she got this parting gift, same as the other girls.
In almost every case, the characters and their situations are softened – so much so you can tell the script is having trouble lining itself up with the events of Thackeray's plot. So it cannot help but give Rawdon a degree of closure when in the book he dies ignominiously off-screen, Dobbin's devotion to Amelia is treated as romantic instead of just a little creepy, and even George himself is given a degree of honour he didn't otherwise possess.
But any adaptation of English literature always seems to go for simplicity over complexity, and it's hilarious to compare Jane Sheepshanks in both this and the 2008 version. In the Reese Witherspoon film she's a paragon of gentle kindness; the only true-hearted person in the whole story, whereas in this version she's the thoroughly unpleasant embodiment of self-righteous meanness – quite possibly the worst person in the entire story. How can two such profoundly different versions exist of the same character?
Because both ignore the characterization Thackeray lays out: Jane Sheepshanks is self-righteous and moralistic, and this is precisely what makes her such a decent human being (much to the discomfort of the reader). Alas, this nuance is lost on most screenwriters.
Still, Vanity Fair isn't adapted as often as it should be (certainly not as much as Dickens or Austen) so it's worth a watch simply for the novelty of seeing the story play out on-screen.
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