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Saturday, July 1, 2023

Reading/Watching Log #91

Another month goes bye-bye. The last four weeks have involved me acclimatizing to my new place of work, dealing with the half-hour commute, and trying to read as many library books as possible. I’m slowly but steadily moving through my Slavic Fantasy book pile, can tick off two more Babysitters Club books, and devoured a bunch of graphic novels – and damn there’s some good material coming out of that particular medium.

I finished up with Sailor Moon, which came as something of a relief since now I can finally get to Harley QuinnUnicorn Warriors Eternal and Wizards of Arcadia, and completed two more seasons of Spooks – the end is now in sight! Movie-wise I ended up rewatching some old favourites, which made for a nice change of pace, though the two recent releases (Puss in Boots: The Last Wish and Dungeons and Dragons: Honour Amongst Thieves) ended up being unexpectedly great.

Onwards to July...

Mapmakers and the Lost Magic by Cameron Chittock and Amanda Castillo

Summer camp meets oppressive regime. Yeah, that’s a strange combination. Granted, this story is not actually set a summer camp, but there was something about its aesthetic (the colours, the landscape, the log cabins, the outfits – especially the neckties) that instantly called to mind a classic American summer camp setting, even though that might not have been what they were going for.

In a settlement called Alden, situated within a large valley, friends Alidade and Lewis and their families live under the regime of the Night Coats, who punish anyone who goes past the town limits with manual labour in the brick pits. That’s pretty much all the world-building you’re going to get: as yet there’s no clear understanding of who these two demographics are comprised of, what either of them want, or how life in the valley operates on a day-to-day basis.

But Alidade is determined to leave for greener pastures. While she’s exploring the woods, she happens upon a door in a tree, one that leads her to a magical cabin containing a map of the valley. After accidentally smearing some mud on its surface, a beautiful talking heron emerges from the paper and introduces itself as Blue, a Memris of one of the legendary Mapmakers (at best estimate is what a familiar is for a witch).

A long time ago a sect of people with magical abilities would map the world around them, creating creatures to protect the land and the peace: such were the Mapmakers and their Memris. Now, Blue is distraught at the state of the land around them under the Night Coats, though Alidade only sees the possibility of adventure and escape – so naturally, her training doesn’t go as well as she’d hoped.

Once the Night Coats get wind of what’s going on, they’re determined to put a stop to it. The book’s main antagonist is rather interesting: a woman referred to as Madame Constable, who is not altogether evil – or is at least what we’d call Affably Evil. She’s soft-spoken and reasonable, even providing encouragement to the less confident Lewis a couple of times. Ultimately, she won’t be swayed and rules with a rod of iron – but you don’t often see female characters embody this type of villain.

The artwork is reasonably good, though it works within a very strict colour palette of browns, yellows and greens. On the other hand, there’s no clear grasp of spatiality in the book’s landscapes and setting: the log cabin in particular is difficult to hold in your mind’s eye. Sometimes characters pass through the door in the tree, only for the cabin to spring up around them. Other times they move through a similar doorway that takes them to a tree growing in the middle of the cabin.

It's good enough that I’ll seek out the second book, as I’m curious as to where Alidade and Lewis are off to and what they’ll find there. Still, the project as a whole needed a more grounded approach regarding the world-building and the rules of magic that apply there. As yet, it feels rather arbitrary.

The Legend of Brightblade by Ethan M. Aldridge

I really loved Aldridge’s two Estranged graphic novels, so The Legend of Brightblade was on my holds list as soon as it became available. There are a few key differences: this is set in an entirely fantastic world, as opposed to the underground realm of Faerie, and has a completely different colour palette: bright pinks and electric blues and neon greens instead of the more heraldic reds, blacks and dark tones of the duology.

At some points, it reminded me a little of The Dragon Prince. Years ago, three heroes called Eluvian, Calder and Brightblade defeated a dragon, only to realize that their work in maintaining peace was just beginning. Years later, Brightblade is Queen with three children of her own, but struggles to connect to her youngest, the pink-haired Alto. He’s in line to become a diplomat or some other servant to the crown, though what he really wants is to become a bard and go on adventures like his mother.

Yeah, you’ve heard this one before, but there’s a lot of cool stuff going on in this book. For starters, the use of magic is fantastic. It’s musically-based, and whenever someone with the proper skills starts to play their instrument, magic pours out in order to form energy of varying colours. This can get pretty spectacular when more than one musician is involved, especially if they’re working together in harmony.

There are also some great characters here, from Alto himself, the little pink-haired bard, to Ebbe, a green-skinned, lute-playing troll (you still don’t see many big monster girls in fantasy-fiction) to a range of mentors and allies and enemies, all of whom have a distinct look and carry a deep sense of history between them. Even minor characters are memorable – I loved Alto’s little sister, who is constantly nose-deep in a book.

As in the Estranged books, there are plenty of visual splendours: a spacious caravan pulled by a llama, forests with trees of flaming red leaves, quaint little stone towns, and a detailed map at the beginning of the book that shows where everything is. Who doesn’t love looking at fantasy maps?

There’s a travelling caravan pulled by a llama, and trees with red flaming branches, and a map at the beginning of the book that shows where everything is. Who doesn’t love fantasy maps? There are cities and sunsets, monsters and music-battles, and naturally a mother/son reconciliation by the end of the book – though in a nice touch, Aldridge makes it clear both of them had valid points about duty and responsibility.

I would have liked to have browsed through it for a second time, just to take in the details that I may have missed on my initial read, but it’s already got a long waiting list at the library – so I’m looking forward to Alridge’s next project, which promises to be very different in tone, a Gothic mystery called Deephaven.

Sorceline by Sylvia Douye

The problem with reading a lot of material in one specific genre (even one as broad as speculative fiction) is that eventually everything will remind you of everything else. Sorceline isn’t bad by any means, but it reads like a pastiche of other things: of Harry Potter’s Hogwarts, of Wednesday’s Nevermore Academy, and of Alfea College from Winx – especially in the designs of the characters. It’s also very similar to Grimoire Noir in its artwork and setting, with a dash of Studio Ghibli – that creature on the cover looks exactly like something you’d find in Princess Mononoke.

There’s a creature only our main character can see (which doubles as an omen of doom), characters that go searching for unicorn blood in a dark forest, and a plot-point in which several school students are mysteriously turned to glass – not stone, but they’re still referred to as having been “petrified”. As such, there’s very little here that feels truly unique.  

The story revolves around a group of young people on the Isle of Vorn, a suitably creepy and Gothic locale, to study Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them... no wait, that’s the Harry Potter textbook. They’re actually studying cryptozoology under the tutelage of Professor Archibald Balzar: that is, the study of cryptids, specifically regarding how to care for them when they’re sick or injured.

There are some amazing visuals at work: coracles pulled by giant dragonflies, owls with spotlights for eyes, kappas with indented heads that hold water, little mice in dandelions – every panel is teeming with something interesting to look at. In fact, the illustrations are so detailed that this really needed to be a physically bigger book.

Our protagonist is a girl called Sorceline, who seems to possess the ability to instinctively identify the magical creatures around her, no matter how obscure, in a story comprised of several mini-mysteries that become more connected as the book continues. Sometimes the plotting can get a little too intricate (reminding me of Rick Riordan’s work) in that everything is important somehow – an injured gorgon, pixies acting like zombies, characters who are secretly other things (like a vampire or a sylph) – but not laced together particularly elegantly.

Yet for the most part, it all hangs together. There are a few things out of left-field, such as Sorceline’s sudden concern that she’s adopted (where did that come from?) but I always enjoy mysteries in which several possibilities/theories are considered and then discarded when they turn out to be incorrect. It gives it the feel of a story that’s based in proper logic, no matter how fantastic or magical the components.

Unfortunately, there are a couple of typos in the speech bubbles and the triangular bits often don’t point to the character that’s actually speaking (or which are so tiny that you can’t even see who they’re meant to be pointing to, especially when they’re positioned on the opposite side of the panel to the appropriate character) which is a serious design flaw, and one that requires you to pay close attention to what’s going on. Not a bad read, just inferior when compared to some of the other graphic novels I’ve enjoyed this month.

Wingbearer by Marjorie Liu and Teny Issakhanian

Another stunningly good graphic novel for kids – this genre is on fire! Penned by Marjorie Liu, the author of Monstress and The Night Visitors (neither of which are finished, so I hope she hasn’t bitten off more than she can chew) this is an epic fantasy-adventure that – thanks to Teny Issakhanian’s artwork – feels like an original Disney film from the nineties.

I mean that as a compliment, but you’re feeling anti-Disney at the moment, then Don Bluth will do just as well. There’s just something about this work that calls to mind the 2-D hand-drawn animation of that era: the big eyes, the expressive faces, the bright colours – even the cute animal sidekicks.

And again, I’m reminded of a whole host of other things. The goblins, a race to which main character Orien belongs, are gargoyles. As in, Disney’s Gargoyles from the nineties show. There is literally no comparison: the wings, the feet, the horns – he’s a freaking gargoyle! Likewise, bird-companion Frowly is 100% Archimedes from The Sword in the Stone. The design is a tad different, but he’s a grouchy fussbudget who frets too much. There are giant spiders and a dragon living in an underground cave with his treasure and at a critical moment the eagles fly in to save our heroes just as they do in The Lord of the Rings.

But just in case you think it sounds to derivative, we’ve got our protagonist Zuli, who is a revelation. Yes, she’s a typical Disney heroine in a lot of ways: compassionate, naĆÆve, open-hearted, determined – but she’s in a Marjorie Liu story, which means that even though this story is aimed at kids, she’s thrown a lot of metaphysical hardballs.

She’s a foundling child, a jewelled bracelet her only clue as to where she originated from, who has nonetheless enjoyed an idyllic, dreamy childhood under the protection of a tree where the spirits of birds dwell before being reborn back into the world. Between their lifespans, Zuli watches them emerge as leaves that eventually float away on the wind, and though she grows from infancy to young adolescence, this spiritual tree grows outside of time, prolonging her innocence and carefree nature.

Then one day the bird spirits cease to arrive, with the new buds shrivelling on the branches. Naturally, it falls to Zuli to find the source of the affliction, journeying through the barrier into the living world to find out what’s gone wrong. A feast for the eyes awaits, which contains no small amount of danger for her, with Frowly has her only companion – but he has his own links to the mortal plane and finds things oddly familiar.

The colours and composition is gorgeous; you really do feel like an old-school animated film is unfolding before you. I could almost see the figures moving. There are overgrown ruins, ancient forests, sweeping savannahs, underground cave networks and vast skies, all of which are populated by manticores, harpies, griffins, winged serpents, cat-people and goblins (though I’ll never be able to think of them as anything other than gargoyles), all of whom have their own distinctive cultures.

Throughout it all, there are rumours of an all-powerful Witch Queen, and as the adventure continues, you can see the pieces being shifted into place for the climatic reveal (though if Monstress is any indication, the real answers will be a long time coming). Along the way there are mediations on life, death, memory, old age and lost love, not to mention a cliff-hanger finish. It’s amazing – my only real complaint is that it’s going to be such a long wait until the next instalment.

Salt Magic by Hope Larson and Rebecca Mock

And another home run! Seriously, what the heck is in the water in the “children’s graphic novel” development rooms? Because they’re on fire!

This hits the spot of my favourite type of story: the beats of an old dark fairy tale, but in a unique setting and with complex characters. In its folksy horror and fairy tale trappings it reminded me a lot of Cullen Bunn’s Harrow County and Emily Carroll’s Through the Woods – the content is for a far younger audience, but the vibe is exactly the same. I was always going to love this book, and I may just have to buy it.

Set just after WWI in Oklahoma, young Vonceil is delighted when her beloved older brother Elber comes back from the war – though decidedly less so when he proposes to the girl he left behind. Finding his fiancĆ©e as dull as dishwater, and more than a little jealous that the special bond she’s always had with her brother has been usurped by another woman, Vonceil is intrigued when her idea of the type of women her brother should have fallen in love with drives into town.

Garbed all in white, it soon becomes obvious that her brother and this mysterious woman in white shared a history together while he was overseas – and she’s not pleased to discover that he’s now settled down with a baby on the way. The woman demands that he come away with her, but when Elber refuses she somehow turns all the freshwater on the farm salty. Soon after, Elber is struck down by a terrible injury.

Recalling that her crazy Uncle Dell had a bad reaction during Elber’s wedding (calling the white-garbed bride a “white witch”) Vonceil heads off in the middle of the night to try and glean some answers. Sure enough, Dell spins a tale about his youth and the fate of his brother Jesse after the two of them fall in with a woman who bears an uncanny resemblance to the one trying to entrap Elber. Armed with this knowledge, Vonceil sets out to save her home and win back her brother.

It’s such a gorgeous melding of old fairy tales and folklore set in a distinctive period setting. There’s a battle of wits between Vonceil and the Salt Witch (like the one between Coraline and the Other Mother) filled with deals and tricks and spells that require you to give up years of your life. There’s the portrayal of post-war America, in which people buy everything at the general store and life revolves around easy access to a water pump. There are fey creatures that can de-age at will, or change from animals into more humanlike forms. There are creepy dolls and mysterious rocks and eerie ghost towns.

Though we never learn much about her, there are little hints that the woman in white is part of the “old world” of fairy tales, slowly disappearing in the face of America’s modernization. And so many clever little callbacks and details, from a jar of jellybeans to the perfectly bittersweet epilogue. It’s just so, so good.

Mary Anne and the Search for Tigger by Anne M. Martin

We enter the fifth cycle of this series, a formula now operating on a seven-babysitter rota-basis – though you may have noticed something strange about the fourth cycle: it contained two Kristy stories and no Mary Anne. Presumably to make up for it, this next cycle will start with Mary Anne and omit Kristy (likewise, Mary Anne will get a second book to make up her numbers).

I find this sort of thing deeply interesting. Who was making the decisions on what babysitter would get which book in the series? Was it a carefully organized system or did the ghost-writers just do whatever they wanted? Is there any babysitter who misses out on a cycle completely? (I feel that Mallory may fall victim to this).

In any case, this was another of the first Babysitters Club books I ever read, though I’m only now just realizing how awful Mary Anne is. Like, she’s meant to be the shy, unassuming, kind-hearted one, but that’s really not what appears on the page. Logan is pretty terrible in this one too, and the mystery is practically non-existent. Which is to say, the culprit is obvious even before Tigger goes missing (when the text draws heavy attention to a hitherto unmentioned allergy belonging to one of the supporting characters in a story involving a missing cat, then it doesn’t take a genius to see where it’s all headed).

To wit, Mary Anne is playing with Tigger before a meeting of the Babysitters Club. When she returns, Tigger is gone. The book certainly captures the familiar anxiety of any pet-owner when their beloved dog/cat/whatever isn’t where they’re supposed to be, and the bulk of the book is taken up with the babysitters pooling their resources to make posters and organize search parties for the lost kitten (they also offer a reward of thirty dollars, a sum that is met with a sense of awe by all who hear it). Meanwhile, some of the kids in the neighbourhood grow concerned about the safety of their own pets, which provides material for the filler chapters that are always strewn throughout these books.

A few days after the posters go up, Mary Anne finds a ransom note in her mailbox, which demands one hundred dollars be left on a rock in a certain field if she wants her cat back alive. And I have to admit, I love the plans these girls (and Logan) come up with when it comes to this sort of thing – and coincidentally, the last time they got up to shenanigans of this nature was in the last Mary Anne book (Mary Anne’s Bad Luck Mystery).

They stuff an envelope with monopoly money, stake out Brenner Field, and catch the culprit red-handed – and it’s just some punk kid who saw the posters and thought it would be an easy way of getting some money. He has no idea where Tigger is.

But then (SPOILER ALERT, though I’ve no idea why you would care) it turns out that Tigger was being kept at Logan’s house by his little sister Kerry, who wants to prove to her parents that she’s responsible enough to care for a pet (though it’s really just a symptom of her loneliness). Hunter, the third Bruno child, is pretty much allergic to everything, and his non-stop sneezing is what tips Mary Anne off to the fact there’s something in the house that’s setting him off. Just to throw in some last-minute conflict, she convinces herself that Logan knew Kerry had Tigger, which is why he’s been so mean and surly lately. Turns out, he’s just grumpy that he’s about to be dumped from the baseball team, which feels like something he could have just said.

Despite all this, I do have a certain amount of fondness for this one. There are some amusingly weird elements, like – how did the presumed cat-napper know where Mary Anne lived in order to send his ransom note? Why did Claudia draw a sketch of Tigger for the posters instead of them just using a photo? How’d they talk Kristy mother into driving into her place of work on a Saturday night in order to photocopy all those posters?

Out of interest, this is also the book that reveals the results of “The Babysitters Club Super Special Contest” of 1988 to discover who America’s favourite babysitter was. According to the back page: “it was an exciting race, but Stacey’s lead was staggering – she won with more than 8,500 votes.” (Followed by Claudia, Dawn, Mary Anne and Kristy, in that order). Really, America? Really? Okay, I suppose I shouldn’t really be surprised, as I imagine Stacey was the character most readers wanted to be, and they saw voting for her as a way of getting her back into the series as a regular character (I’ve little doubt the results of this competition had a lot to do with Martin’s decision to bring her back permanently in book #28) but still.

Also, Michelle Smith from Massachusetts won a trip to Disney World for her participation in the vote... oh Michelle, I wonder where you are now...

Claudia and the Sad Goodbye by Anne M. Martin

I was dreading this one, though it’s been foreshadowed for a while now. There’s not a huge amount to say: the health of Claudia’s grandmother Mimi continues to deteriorate, and about halfway through this book, she passes away. Given the somewhat chaotic nature of her health prior to her death (the doctors being unable to discover what’s wrong, a few ambulance rides to the hospital) Claudia finds it difficult to process what’s happening or even understand that she’s gone.

Dealing with grief in children’s books is always a “prestige” topic, but for my money Anne M. Martin handles it pretty well for a story that takes place across only fifteen chapters. We talk a lot about the five stages of grief, but Martin is smart enough to shake things up a bit, with Claudia being comforted by her friends telling Mimi stories before her funeral, but afterwards being reluctant to discuss her in casual conversation. Complex feelings such as feeling mad at the deceased or trying to throw oneself into routine in order to avoid processing the loss are covered, and (if memory serves) future books make clear that grief lingers long after closure is reached.

A subplot involves Claudia and Mary Anne starting an art workshop in Claudia’s basement for some neighbourhood kids, including brand-new character Corrie Addison whose parents are eager to fob her off on other people any chance they can get This is the one part of the story that doesn’t work, as Corrie is so obviously a character designed for this particular story, one has never been seen or mentioned before, and who I’m not sure turns up again.

The deal there is that Claudia and Corrie bond extremely quickly, a rapport that’s based on needing someone in a time of crisis, and which is subsequently rather unhealthily codependent. It wraps up in a rather trite manner (Claudia simply tells Corrie’s mother that her daughter is feeling abandoned and she realizes how wrong she’s been) though it does lead to an interesting moment when Kristy demonstrates an excess of emotional maturity when she points out to Claudia that she might be subconsciously using Corrie to make herself feel better, and that it would be Corrie who suffers when Claudia decides she no longer needs her. As Claudia thoughtfully notes to herself, Kristy understands children better than any of them.

As an aside, something occurred to me for the first time reading these books: how is it that every single babysitter always manages to attend every single Babysitters Club meeting? They take place on Monday, Wednesday and Friday between 5:30 and 6:00, and it seems incredible that this schedule NEVER conflicts with any babysitter jobs. EVER.

Deathless by Catherynne Valente

How do you describe this book? It’s a postmodern fairy tale, it’s magical realism, it’s a mythpunk take on Russian history, literature and folklore. It’s complex and confusing and intoxicating. In many ways it’s impossible to pin down, which makes it classic Catherynne Valente.

Here’s the plot to the best of my ability to summarize it: Marya Morevna is a child living in the ever-changing political landscape of post-Revolutionary Russia. The street she lives on is constantly being renamed, and her sisters are one-by-one taken away by suitors that initially appear to Marya as birds tumbling out of a nearby tree. And then one day, a husband comes for Marya...

Strewn throughout the book are all the familiar faces and places of Russian folklore: Koschei the Deathless and Baba-Yaga with her mortar and pestle, the kidnapped Marya Morevna (or Yelena, or Vasilisa) and the brave Ivan who rescues her. There are firebirds and house leshy, rusalkas and inevitably, a house on chicken legs, but in Valente’s hands they are just as inevitably reshaped and reconfigured into something very different, while remaining deeply resonant with figures in the fairy tales that have been with us for centuries. In other words, all this is totally in Valente’s wheelhouse.

As the fairy tale structure gradually unwinds (expect a lot of things happening in threes) Marya goes from child to bride to wife to... well, something else entirely. The world changes around her as she becomes embroiled in the battle between Koschei, the Tsar of Life, and Viy, the Tsar of Death, who have been waging war against each other for time immemorial. Later still, she finds herself in the middle of the siege of Leningrad, where people die of starvation all around her, and then in a strange village where she rubs shoulders with the likes of Gregory Rasputin and the Romanovs.

It’s the story of a marriage, of life and death, of war and suffering, of the nature of stories and their purpose in one’s life, and it’s still rather indescribable. One has to pay close attention to the prose as it unfolds, for endless spools of meaning and allusion can be found therein – and even then, you may not be entirely sure what any of it means. It’s certainly not going to hold your hand, not even to its conclusion, which is deliberately left open-ended.

For me most of all, it’s a story about stories, and their repetitive nature. To quote: “That's how you get deathless, volchitsa. Walk the same tale over and over, until you wear a groove in the world, until even if you vanished, the tale would keep turning, keep playing, like a phonograph, and you'd have to get up again, even with a bullet through your eye, to play your part and say your lines."

For it to happen the way it always happens [...] The Church always splits. Ukraine always withers in a poison wind [...] You could tell your tale differently this time, I suppose. But you won’t [...] You will always fall in love, and it will always be like having your throat cut, just that fast. You will always run away with her. You will always lose her. You will always be a fool. You will always be dead, in a city of ice, snow falling into your ear. You have already done all of this and will do it again.”

This is the second time I’ve read this book, and surprisingly, I think I enjoyed it more the first time around – there was an element of unpredictability that went well with its familiar narrative cycles. But it’s still a dense and compelling read, and I doubt it’ll be the last time I return to it.

The Midnight Girls by Alicia Jasinska

This is the most YA book I’ve read in a long time. What do I mean by that? Well, it’s difficult to explain without sounding like I’m being disparaging, or accusing the author of “checking off boxes.” But this reads like what one of those A.I. writing prompters would come up with if you fed it the basics of this particular genre.

It’s set in a Slavic-based fantasy world (specifically an alternate-world Poland) starring two monster girls with traumatic childhoods who go from enemies to allies to lovers, eventually striking back against their abusive mothers while getting embroiled in the political intrigues of a kingdom, which largely involve a prince who is in forbidden love with his best friend. There is very little here that you haven’t read a million times since the publication of Shadow and Bone, and even if you haven’t, you’ll have absorbed the beats of the story through pop-culture osmosis.

As in The House with Chicken Legs, this story posits that there is more than one Baba Yaga: in this case Red Jaga, Black Jaga and White Jaga. Each of them has taken a young girl as their apprentice, and these girls have had a rough time of trying to learn their craft and live up to the expectations of their mistresses, relying on unhealthy coping mechanisms to get through each day.

Marynka, Zosia and Beata are regularly tasked by their Jagas to hunt down royal princes and bring back their heart, as devouring it will increase their power and prolong their lives.  A vicious competition exists between Marynka and Zosia to retrieve the most hearts, and Marynka in particular has based her entire identity on getting one-up over Zosia and beating her to the next heart. But Zosia has other plans in mind...

For their latest mission, they’re sent after the Prince of Lechija during the weeks of Karnawal, where they’ll be able to more easily slip in and out of various parties and masked balls without attracting attention. And naturally, you’ll get detailed accounts of all the costumes the girls are wearing.

Yes, I know I sound sardonic. The truth is, this book knows what it wants to be and who its target audience is. And there are parts I enjoyed. Both Marynka and Zosia are reasonably well-developed characters whose thought-processes and justifications match their atrocious upbringings. I liked the story’s backdrop of political turmoil, almost to the point where it felt like the main story was distracting from this more interesting material. The cover art is great.

But there’s an issue with the fact that it’s obvious neither one of the girls is going to successfully kill the prince (who is a major supporting character), leading to a bunch of thwarted attempts that just feel repetitive after a while. And if you were hoping that either character would feel some degree of hesitation about committing cold-blooded murder... nope. This guy is just the latest in a long line of murder victims, which our protagonists don’t feel the slightest bit of remorse over.

Yeah, it’s that bizarre mentality when you’re being asked to feel sorry for characters who have committed heinous crimes, while also being asked to ignore the fact they have committed heinous crimes. I just... please, pick one. Either they’ve done monstrous things and have to grapple with the moral price of that, or they haven’t, and you can tell your comparatively lighter story about Sapphic girl-bosses who are obsessed with each other. Not both.

I am clearly not the target audience of The Midnight Girls, and in a month’s time I’ll have forgotten pretty much everything about this story. Too much is pure YA formula, from the characters to the themes to the setting – though according to some of the reviews I’ve seen on Goodreads, Jasinska did an exceptionally good job of capturing Poland’s culture, cuisine, history and diminutive nicknames, which (as much as I enjoy her work) is more than we can say for Leigh Bardugo.

Uprooted by Naomi Novik

Imagine a delicious meal perfectly calibrated to your personal tastes – with a turd hidden somewhere in the middle. That’s this book. Well, to be fair you might not mind the turd, as a lot of people seem to enjoy “love” stories about ordinary, clumsy teenage girls hooking up with much older men who kidnap them and spend most of their time throwing around vicious insults. She’s slovenly, she’s horse-faced, she’s an imbecile, she’s idiotic – delightful stuff, especially when mid-tantrum over something she’s done wrong, he grabs her roughly and kisses her. Forced kisses from your employer! Every girl’s dream.

Except my sarcasm belies the fact that some people do, in fact, enjoy these types of romances. For what it’s worth, this dubious love story is only a minor part of the story, which for the most part – is really good! Agnieszka lives a near-idyllic existence in a close-knit village, her life (and the lives of those around her) marked only by the proximity of the Wood. Every now and then terrible things emerge: pestilence that destroys the crops, winds that drive cattle mad, horrifying creatures that drag people into its depths.

If someone disappears into those trees, you’d better hope they never return, as they’d be likely to soon murder their entire family with a smile on their face. The nearby settlements are protected from this existential threat by the local wizard known as the Dragon, who every ten years takes a village girl to live with him in his tower.

No one is quite sure what happens there, only that they return unharmed and usually leave for larger cities soon after, paying their way with the large dowries he provides for their service. But he can be counted on to chose the most attractive girls, which means that Agnieszka’s best friend Kasia has lived her whole life knowing that her fate is to be taken to the tower.

But you don’t need me to tell you that when the day of choosing comes, it’s Agnieszka and not Kasia who is whisked away.

Yet things get really interesting when the story turns to the subject of the Wood. This thing is terrifying, and when Agnieszka gets word that Kasia has disappeared into its depths, she doesn’t hesitate in going after her. What follows is a slow, gradual unravelling of the Wood’s mysteries, culminating in a tension-filled race against time in which the protagonists are forced to flee an onslaught from various quarters, desperately seeking answers while trying to protect those in their care.

The Wood is far and away the most effective part of the story, and some of the stuff Novik does with it is truly ingenious (and horrifying). It reminds me very much of the White Walkers in Game of Thrones, in that half the horror is derived from the fact that you just don’t know what they are or what they want – only that they’re both malevolent and intelligent. The Wood is ancient, unknowable and sentient, which makes it a formidable foe.

At the same time, it’s also a bit like the witch in Salt Magic, in that though it’s a terrifying and seemingly all-powerful opponent, layers are eventually pulled aside in order to reveal something quite different.

Reading this book after The Midnight Girls made for a striking contrast between YA and adult novels – there’s simply no comparison in writing styles. One spells out every thought and feeling, replacing dialogue with witty banter and showcasing big emotions and empowering speeches. The other flows, telling you only what you need to know and letting you infer the rest. It’s subtle, it’s lyrical, it’s lovely to read. However else I felt about certain aspects of the story, Uprooted is beautifully told.

As you know if you’ve read this blog for any length of time, I love puzzle-box plots, in which a mystery is formed out of the world the characters inhabit, where even minor details of the world-building end up being important clues. This is one of those stories, where odd inconsistencies and seeming plot-holes introduced at the start of the story (most obviously, why on earth do so many people live next to a wood that literally eats them?) end up folding into the larger, overarching plot.

And of course, I love a story where the relationship between two women is central. The friendship between Agnieszka and Kasia, which very much forms the backbone of the entire plot, is beautifully portrayed – loving and supportive, but not without its thorns and pitfalls. It’s so much more effective than the “love” story (I can’t even write it without putting it in brackets) that I honestly don’t know why Novik bothered with it. The dynamic between the Dragon and Agnieszka could have been that of a young apprentice/grumpy mentor and it honestly wouldn’t have made the slightest bit of difference to the story.

A Spindle Splintered by Alix E. Harrow

I think I just read my first BookTok. I can’t back that up with any proof since I steer well-clear of TikTok, but from what I gather about that hosting service, this is the sort of thing that it flocks to. It’s a modern subversion of a traditional fairy tale, it’s best described as a novella (long enough to have chapters, short enough to be read in one sitting) and it’s filled with references to memes and pop-culture events, to the point where a punchline is literally someone telling another character: “they’re lesbians, Harald.” I can’t give it too hard a time, as it’s too short to get worked up about, but... yeah, a bit of an experience.

Zinnia Grey has been obsessed with the Sleeping Beauty fairy tale since she was a child, ever since she was diagnosed with a fatal illness that will undoubtedly kill her before her twenty-first birthday. With the big day fast approaching, she’s readying herself for the inevitable, though before she slips away into that long goodnight, her best friend Charm throws her a Sleeping Beauty themed party in the ruins of an old tower on the outskirts of town.

It's there that she plays along with the beats of the old story, and pricks her finger on the spindle of the prop spinning wheel that’s been placed in the corner. But instead of falling into a deep sleep, Zinnia is unexpectedly whisked into a different dimension, where another would-be Sleeping Beauty is trying to escape her near-identical fate. Joining forces, Zinnia and Briar Rose go in search of a cure to their grim destinies, helped along by Charm back in Zinnia’s home dimension (yeah, somehow she still has cell-phone coverage).

Described by the author herself as “Spiderverse but with Sleeping Beauties,” it’s a little heavy-handed at times, but not something you can really complain about given its brevity and general good cheer. I’m always down for a decent fairy tale retelling, and this one had some genuinely good intel on the long tradition of Sleeping Beauty stories (not all of them had a happy ending).

The Sound of Music (1965)

It was movie night at my new place of work and the film was The Sound of Music, one of the seminal movies of my childhood. The amount of times I’ve seen it is probably in the high double-digits by now. If we’re counting only the first half, possibly in the triple-digits (this movie was an odyssey and children bore easily, so I’ve probably seen the beginning substantially more times than its entirety). It’s as intimate as it is epic, and is possibly the epitome of “crowd-pleaser” while still making unexpected and unique creative choices.  

This time around, I did some research. Based on the autobiography by the real Maria von Trapp, turned into a stage musical by Rogers and Hammerstein in 1959, then adapted into this very film, the adaptation game of Chinese Whispers naturally means the final product is a million times removed from the historical record. But what we’re left with is the most famous iteration of this story, the one that’s inspired countless “young woman ends up marrying her boss” romance novels, thousands of parodies, and a story that has clearly stood the test of time.

I’m currently reading a “making of” book on the subject, and though I won’t go into much detail, it makes very clear that a lot of smart decisions were made in the adaptation process. A few of the original songs have been omitted (Baroness Schraeder has a song on the stage, though dropping it helps separate her from the musically-inclined Von Trapps) and others have been rearranged (incredibly, “My Favourite Things” was originally sung in the Abbey between Maria and the Abbess, in a bid to make her feel better after breaking the news that she was being sent away to become a governess. Its placement makes so much more sense in the film).

Director Robert Wise made the most of on-location filming, understanding that expanding the musical from the limitations of the stage to the grandeur and beauty of the Austrian countryside was a no-brainer, and there’s absolutely no understating the importance of Julie Andrews in the role of Maria. If there had been one moment of self-consciousness in her performance, of anything other than complete and utter sincerity, then the whole thing would have fallen apart into unbearable glurge (which some insist it still does).

A novice at a Benedictine convent, Maria’s free-spirited nature makes the other nuns skeptical of her commitment to their way of life. The Mother Abbess decides to send her to fulfil the role of governess at the household of a naval Captain, Georg von Trapp, who rules over his motherless children with an iron fist. They’re seven little troublemakers, but naturally Maria wins them over with her kindness and cheer, and is soon nurturing their singing talents.

It's only a matter of time before the Captain falls under her spell as well, though the long-awaited arrival of Baroness Elsa Schraeder, the woman he intends to marry, only complicates matters. It would all sound very trite were it not for the fact it’s all taking place in the months leading up to the Anschluss, with the threat of the Third Reich constantly encroaching on the edges of this idyllic sentimentality and (comparatively) low-stakes love triangle.

On this latest watch, several years after my last and with reasonably fresh eyes, this angle was more obvious to me than ever, and the slow build-up to the inevitable was expertly done. Early on, we’re witness to a covert interaction between Rolfe and the household butler (“any developments from Berlin?”) which later becomes Rolfe’s flustered Heil Hitler when he’s caught throwing stones at Liesl’s window and the reveal that the butler betrayed the family’s plans to the Nazis (you see him watching from the window as they try to escape the house under the cover of darkness). There’s the tension between Georg and Max regarding the latter’s political apathy, and finally the grand finale, in which the family sing for the last time in an amphitheater filled with Nazis.

And honestly, the final twenty minutes: the family hiding in the Abbey, Rolfe failing his test of character, the “I have sinned” confession from the nuns, and the epic shot of the Von Trapps crossing the Alps... it’s cinematic perfection. I’m always on the edge of my seat, I’m always completely swept up. As stakes go, we’re dealing with just one man being forced to serve the Nazis, just one family that slipped their net – but it’s more than enough to carry the film.

I also never realized until now just how good the script was. You imagine it’s carried by Julie Andrews and the songs, but it’s the sense of humour that also helps alleviate the sentimentality: Max’s witticisms, the housekeeper’s expression at the idea of the Baroness being a mother to the children, even the Baroness herself desperately trying to hide her smile from Georg as the boat carrying Maria and the children capsizes. Even the Abbess gets a few zingers: “The Mistress of Novices and the Mistress of Postulants... were trying to help me by expressing opposite points of view.” Hah! Everyone has a moment.

Max and Elsa were more interesting this time around as well. For the first time I realized that although the children call him “Uncle” Max, he’s not actually related to the family at all – just a long-time friend, and his aforementioned political apathy very much undermines his jovial attitude. A fun man to hang out with in the good times, and even one that will come through in a pinch, but ultimately a weak one who will collaborate with (or at least, not condemn) evil if it doesn’t affect him personally.

Eleanor Parker also does some great work in the thankless role of Disposable FiancĆ©, giving depths to what could have been a very one-note performance. Yes, Baroness Schraeder pegs Maria as a threat, and yes, she effortlessly manipulates her into returning to the Abbey, but she never does anything I’d describe as truly cruel, and when she realizes Georg’s heart is elsewhere she bows out gracefully. Of course we’re rooting for Maria the whole time, but Elsa remains a class act.

There’s also some subtext that wasn’t apparent to me as a child, from the pink lemonade to Liesl being the more aggressive of the two would-lovers while singing a song that’s meant to be about how naĆÆve and innocent she is. In hindsight, it clearly demonstrates their incompatibility, as Liesl is already far more mature and worldly than Rolfe could ever be, though his later betrayal still hurts like hell.

Anyway, this film is one of a few engraved that are in my soul: I’ve known it my whole life and cannot remember a time when I didn’t. Watching it again after so long, I was curious if I could recall any of my first impressions – and I simply don’t. I watched it too early to even form coherent thoughts about it.

Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981)

In the lead-up to the fifth and final Indiana Jones adventure, I’m rewatching the entire series from the start. (And yes, I’m one of those annoying nit-pickers that refuses to put “Indiana Jones and the” before the title of this film. Indiana himself is one of the titular raiders, and that a Not So Different correlation is drawn between himself and Belloq (another raider) is an intrinsic theme of the film).

First, a confession: I’m not completely enamoured by this movie. I appreciate it and enjoy it, but that some people describe it as the best action-adventure film of all time... is a bit lost on me. Yes, I know that’s considered hubris among film buffs and fandom circles, but my favourite movie in the franchise remains The Last Crusade by a considerable margin.

Here’s the thing – if you’re not on the ground floor for cult classics, watching them at the time of their release and growing up with them in your formative years, then coming to them as adults can be a bit bewildering. I’ve seen this happen most often with The Goonies. If you saw it as a kid in the eighties, you’ll love it. If you’re an adult watching it for the first time today, there’s a good chance you’ll hate it. I recall watching Raiders for the first time and thinking: “is that it?” and it’s certainly not a coincidence that Last Crusade was the first Indy film I ever saw, at a much earlier age.

Which is not to say that I didn’t enjoy it: the acting, the characters, the set-pieces... there’s nothing here that doesn’t work, and even its most discussed “flaw” is the deliberate and consistent decision to make Indiana something of a failure. It’s well discussed (such as in this episode of The Big Bang Theory) that Indiana Jones pretty much fails throughout this story. He loses the golden statue to Belloq, he loses the Ark to the Nazis, he fails to save Marion from her kidnappers – he even fails to get what he wants at the film’s denouement, after the Ark is handed over to the government.

In fact, you could even argue that he makes things worse. Without his involvement, the Nazis never would have found the Ark in the first place. If he hadn't continued to pursue them, they probably would have gone with their original plan to fly the Ark straight to Berlin, where exactly the same thing that happened on the island would have occurred, save that it probably would have killed even more Nazis, including Hitler.

Indiana Jones ultimately doesn’t affect the outcome of the story at all. The only difference he really makes is that Marion probably would have been killed in Napal if not for his presence (which is why the final scene between the two of them: “I know what I’ve got right here” is so important, and why her character being dropped from the next two films is so disappointing. Getting the girl is his only win).

And yet this is a feature, not a bug. I’ve no doubt it was one that was carefully considered and discussed, since because the MacGuffin is the Ark of the Covenant – essentially God Himself – it would have been a tinge blasphemous for any mere human to assist in any way. As such, the whole point of the movie is that no matter how brave or resourceful, a mortal man is still utterly powerless in the face of the Almighty. The Nazis don’t stand a chance, but then neither does Indy – the best he can do is close his eyes.

In short, to say Indy does nothing across the course of the film is an extremely annoying complaint, up there with “why didn’t they ride eagles to Mount Doom?”

But given my ability to appreciate and defend this unique creative choice in regards to its protagonist, why doesn’t the film work its magic on me? It’s difficult to explain, even to myself, though I suppose Marion is a sticking-point for me. She’s tough and likeable, but also contributes very little to the plot. She saves Indy’s life in Napal and later takes out some Nazis from the cockpit of the grounded plane, but apart from that...? She’s mostly just there. Even the scene when she takes matters into her own hands and prepares to drink Belloq under the table goes nowhere, despite the perfect setup in her very first scene that established she can hold her liquor.

(And I’m not even touching the questionable history that George Lucas came up with for them – reading between the lines, it’s relatively clear that they had a sexual relationship while she was still a minor. When confronted with this fact, Indy remarks: “you knew what you were doing.” Oof).

That she disappears for the next two films pretty much says it all: she’s not Princess Leia, she’s a Bond Girl. I also don’t find Belloq to be a particularly compelling or threatening nemesis, and you simply cannot deny the racist undertones to... pretty much everything, from the superstitious natives in the opening sequence to the casting of John Rhys Davies as an Arab man.

But there are plenty of details that I enjoy. The rapport between the two American agents, with one being highly cynical and the other a wide-eyed believer is great. They’re not in it much, but they’re both so vividly drawn. I love the gorgeous sequence in the Well of Souls, when the music soars and you get shivers even though Indy is just standing there with a rod. And of course, that unforgettable opening sequence in the Peruvian temple.

It's a movie that I can’t quite get my head around, for reasons that I can’t even explain. Ah well, on to Temple of Doom.

Wolfwalkers (2020)

I have already talked extensively about this film (and its two predecessors) so I won’t repeat myself, only direct you to my original post. I rewatched this at my friend’s place, and was struck all over again by just how good it is. Beautiful animation, strong characters, gorgeous music, solid plot... what a gift.

And one of the things I liked most about it was that it was an entirely original story. Not a remake or a reboot or a sequel or even something adapted from a book or stage musical. It exists entirely unto itself. For that reason, it’s even more special that the two protagonists are both female (which wasn’t always the case – in early stages of development, Robyn was a boy).

If I put it another way, it’s not that I’m ever against Distaff Counterpart retellings of usually male-dominated IPs, which range from “sure, that was fun” (GhostbustersOcean’s Eight) to “holy shit, that was incredible!” (Mad Max: Fury Road). But in all cases, you can’t quite shake the feeling that you’re getting warmed-up leftovers, that the story was better the first time around, when the ideas behind it were still fresh and unique. And of course, there are always going to be the usual creeps railing against whatever they deem a threat to their masculinity.

But with Wolfwalkers you get a movie that belongs entirely to itself. There is nothing to compare it to, there is nothing that preceded it. It’s blissfully free of any fandom baggage or tedious culture wars. It’s proof that beautiful, affecting, heart-rending films can exist with female characters at their core right from the word go, and whose gender is an intrinsic part of the story, even as it has no bearing on the plot (things would have unfolded exactly the same way if Robyn had been a boy, but something tangible would have been lost in the nature of the character and her dynamic with Mebh if she had been).

This is a difficult thing to articulate, so hopefully you get my meaning. And if you haven’t already, please watch Cartoon Saloon’s Irish triptych: The Secret of KellsSong of the Sea, and this.  

Fear Street: 1994, 1978, 1666 (2021)

As with Wolfwalkers, I’ve already devoted an embarrassingly long blog post to how much I adore this trilogy, so I’ll keep this one short. Provided you’re okay with horror, suspense and a reasonable amount of gore, you should watch these films immediately. It’s so much better than it had any right to be, and like Wolfwalkers, ensures that its female (and queer!) protagonists are intrinsic to how the story plays out. 

As annoying as the accusation always is, sometimes tokenism is a thing that happens, and both Fear Street and Wolfwalkers avoid it with flying colours – by simply being really freaking goodYou can’t cry “pandering!” when the entire crux of the story hinges on the fact they’re gay. The fact that this is my fourth time watching this trilogy should tell you everything, as for the most part, I just don’t have time to rewatch things.

SPOILERS

For those who have already seen it (hopefully at my recommendation) then I noticed something interesting this time around which hadn’t been apparent before. Across the course of the trilogy, there are two distinct types of mass-murders. The usual one is when a Goode man gives a name to the devil, after which this this unfortunate individual is possessed and starts killing indiscriminately. But the second type is when someone gets too close to finding out the truth about Sarah Fier, after which all the possessed killers (or at least the most dangerous ones) emerge from the tunnels beneath the town to eliminate them, and thus uphold the status quo.

Here's the thing I don’t think most people realize: Nick Goode (who experiences two of the second type of single-target killings) is not responsible for them. In fact, he actually seems a little bewildered both times as to what exactly is going on. This makes sense on a number of levels, first as a red herring to make him appear more innocent in the eyes of the audience (finding Ruby’s locket on the road, delivering the warning note through the slot in Ziggy’s door) and secondly because it demonstrates he’s in far less control over the situation than he thinks he is.

The person calling the shots on the whole “send serial killers out to get rid of whoever is close to figuring out Sarah Fier’s secret” is the devil himself, and the whole thing works almost as a failsafe to protect the curse and its origins. Heck, it might even be an automated programme, as the killers in this state mindlessly follow the blood of the person they’re targeting.

I can understand why it would be a bit tricky to discern, as when the “hit” on Sam doesn’t work, Nick goes to Plan B of his own volition and offers up her name, thereby eliminating her as a threat by having her as the next Shadyside killer. So at some point he must have realized what was happening (and why it was happening) and taken steps to protect himself. Likewise, after saving Ziggy’s life at Camp Nightwing, he’s careful to deny her version of events, though he still cares enough about her to send her a note saying “it’s happening again.” That is, the resurrection of all the killers is happening again, not just a run-of-the-mill Shadyside massacre.

Of course, why the devil doesn’t realize that both these girls have survived his attempt to kill them remains a bit of a mystery, but it works as a nice bit of misdirection and a secondary layer to what exactly is going on. Like how the first time you watch The Sixth Sense, the big reveal is that Bruce Willis was dead the whole time. The second time you watch it, you realize that Hayley Joel Osmond knew this from the moment they met.

Puss in Boots: The Last Wish (2022)

It’s important to note that however much I might complain about reboots and sequels and live-action remakes and legacy-quels and the like, they are not in and of themselves, bad things. It’s just that more often than not they’re clearly designed as a cash-grab, and the poor quality of the finished product speaks for itself. They could have been good, but there’s a much greater chance that they won’t be.

Until a film like Puss in Boots: The Last Wish comes along. First introduced way back in 2004’s Shrek 2, the character of Puss essentially stole the whole movie, despite not having much of a narrative purpose – a problem that was only exacerbated in the next two Shrek sequels. This was resolved with the inevitable release of a spin-off film starring Puss, in which the absolute perfection of the character’s premise and design (the cuteness juxtaposed with lethalness, the running Puppy-Dog Eyes gag, the amusing reminders that he’s literally a cat, the inspiration taken from the Zorro character – all the more amusing due to the fact he’s voiced by Antonio Banderas) were finally given a proper showcase.

Puss in Boots is easily my favourite of all the Shrek-adjacent films, though a quick Google search tells me he’s also featured in a not-very-good animated series which nonetheless managed to last six seasons.  That ended in 2018, after which the whole franchise went quiet for a while. On hearing a Puss in Boots sequel was in development, I recall assuming that the whole thing would be a quick cash-grab, capitalizing on a dead franchise’s Ensemble Darkhorse.

And then word of mouth began to spread – that The Last Wish was... good, actually. I caught it on the very last day of May, when there wasn’t enough time to include it in that month’s watching log, but the rumours are true: this is a genuinely delightful film.

Picking up several years after the last movie (and presumably the Netflix show) Puss is living it up to the best of his ability: singing, dancing, throwing parties and slaying monsters. Except that he’s been rather careless in keeping track of his nine lives. After an accident involving a giant and a church bell, he’s horrified to realize that he’s down to his final life.

What’s even more horrifying is that he’s now being stalked by a Big Bad Wolf bounty hunter, who heralds his arrival with a low, mocking whistle, and is clearly more than what he seems. Okay, you probably already know the true identity of this character, but I’m still not going to spoil it for you.

While hiding out in a cat retirement home, Puss meets a cheerful little Chihuahua disguised as a cat, but makes a break for it when he’s approached by crime-family Goldilocks and the Three Bears, who want his help in stealing a map that leads to the location of the Wishing Star. Realizing that this could be his chance to restore his former eight lives, and still terrified of the bounty hunter on his tail, Puss attempts the theft of the map from the home of Jack Horner, a corrupt businessman.

It's there he crosses paths with Kitty Softpaws (once more voiced by Salma Hayek, which made me happy as she was a little ill-served in the original Puss in Boots film) who agrees to team up with him and Perrito in order to find the Wishing Star – despite her less-than-amicable breakup with Puss some years ago.

Goldilocks and the Three Bears are on their tail, as is Jack Horner and his retinue, not to mention the mysterious bounty hunter, all while Puss grapples with the fact he’s on this mission under false pretences. It sounds like quite a chaotic film, and yet everything moves along with clarity and precision, going to some pretty heavy places along the way. Puss is essentially working his way through an existential crisis and his fear of impending death, and even supporting characters such as Goldilocks and Perrito have serious arcs concerning family and identity.

Which is to say, it’s easily the best entry in the Shrek franchise. Who could have seen that coming? It tells an original story that could not have existed without the groundwork laid in prior films, explores the depths of Puss’s character (that is, a middle-aged man facing retirement age), and does what I’ve always enjoyed most about this franchise: taking familiar fairy tale characters and giving them a comedic, modern spin. In this case, Goldilocks and the Big Bad Wolf are explored from fascinating new angles, and the “Ethical Bug” is a real hoot. It’s not just an empty parody of fairy tales and pop-culture, which is what the original Shrek movies turned into.

I have a few nitpicks: technically the Three Bears have already featured in this franchise (with Mama Bear coming to a rather tragic end on Lord Farquaad’s floor) so it’s unclear how they’re connected to this film’s trio of characters (though I suppose they did the same with Rumpelstiltskin in Shrek 3 and 4, who looks and acts completely different from one to the next) and I was disappointed that Humpty Dumpty didn’t feature in the sequence where Puss’s life flashes before his eyes (Shrek and Donkey make the cut, but not Puss’s own brother? C’mon!)

Also, just one controversial take: I wasn’t hugely fond of the change in animation style. Not because it didn’t look great, but because I’m a stickler for continuity, and didn’t really feel like such a drastic change was even needed. It was clearly inspired by Spiderman: Into the Spiderverse, but I’ve always liked the animation in Shrek for its colourful, plasticine-like, illustrations-in-a-children’s-book quality.

It ends with what feels like a setup for Shrek 5, though it’s hard to imagine how that movie will top this one. I mean, I guess they’ll work with the fact that Shrek’s triplets will be teenagers now, and I suppose Kitty and Perrito will be incorporated into the story as well, but I’m drawing a blank on what the plot could possibly be about. It was already running on fumes with its last two instalments.

Dungeons and Dragons: Honour Amongst Thieves (2023)

The very definition of “a romp.” I’ll admit my familiarity with Dungeons and Dragons is VERY limited: I watched the cartoon as a kid (and thank you Honest Trailers for making me feel old), my dad had some manuals that I browsed through once or twice, and I know the gist of how it’s played by watching stuff like Stranger Things and Onwards. And yeah, I think I saw the 2000 movie back in the day. What the heck was that about?

The great thing about this film is that you don’t need to know a damn thing about the game to understand the story presented here. Like, I could tell on some level that it was filled with references and in-jokes, but it mercifully had no impact on the plot itself, and nothing grinds to a halt so that the gamers in the audience can coo over a prop or cameo appearance.

Instead, it just takes the premise and world-building of D&D and tells a fairly straightforward story that exists in one small(ish) corner of it. The stakes are low but personal, the characters are strongly drawn, and all the jokes land. There are some cool effects and neat set-pieces, and everyone plays to their strengths: Chris Pine is a world-weary decent everyman, Michelle Rodriguez is a tough girl with a heart of gold, Hugh Grant is a slimy and charming narcissist, Justice Smith is a nerdy wizard, and RegĆ©-Jean Page damn near steals the show as Xenk, the deadly-serious and dramatically righteous paladin. In short, everyone understands the assignment.

And there’s just expected cleverness in the way things play out. Like, it’s initially very funny that Rodriguez’s character was once in a romantic relationship with a man half her size (played by Bradley Cooper!) but the scene soon veers into a genuinely sad conversation about how they lost each other. RegĆ©-Jean Page is a scene-stealer who plays everything completely, absurdly straight, but the movie is smart enough to keep him around only for as long as he’s needed. Pine and Rodriguez’s characters are co-parenting the former’s young daughter, but their relationship stays strictly platonic despite their obvious love and respect for each other. The heist sequences are fun and imaginative, and they didn’t go overboard with the CGI (I’m pretty sure Jarnathan was a practical effect). It’s like watching something deeply familiar, but with just enough tweaks on the familiar tropes that it feels fresh and new.

I recommend as a fun, light, breezy Saturday night movie.

Sailor Moon: Season 5 (1996 – 1997)

I did it. I finished all five seasons of Sailor Moon (apparently there are some tie-in movies as well, but they’re not essential to the show’s continuity, they’re entirely standalone, and I’m Sailor Mooned out at this point). It was altogether an odd viewing experience in a way, as the first two seasons were very much a part of my early adolescence (I have a vivid memory of some of the girls at intermediate school singing the theme song in front of the class) but the final three didn’t even air on New Zealand television. It’s like enjoying nostalgia derived from brand-new material... a strange sensation.

In any case, season five was a mixed bag. It hits the ground running, and I was genuinely excited by what I was watching. Turns out that Queen Nehelenia wasn’t entirely defeated by the end of the fourth season, and so it’s all hands on deck as the Sailor Scouts and their allies come together to finish the job once and for all.

Naturally our five main characters are involved, along with Mamoru, Chibiusa, Luna, Artemis and their daughter Diana, but also Sailors Uranus, Neptune, Pluto and (surprise!) Saturn, who is aged up quickly from her reincarnated state and given all her memories back. And it’s all on! Every last one of the Sailor Scouts are transported into a mirror dimension, divided into interesting pairings (Mars and Neptune, Pluto and Venus, etc) and forced to work together in order to survive.

There’s no lengthy setup, no tired formula, no lines or waiting – just pure plot. I was reminded of Hans Christian Anderson’s The Snow Queen, as there are plot-points involving a mirror that gets shattered and people turning into dark versions of themselves if a shard gets in their eye, and a scene in which Usagi regains her memories after seeing Sailor Jupiter’s rose earring (much like Gerda remembered who she was after the roses spring up from the ground). It could have been a coincidence, but it lent this particular arc a fairy tale quality that suited the source material.

I was having a great time. Was the entire season going to be like this?

Alas, no. It turns out that the material revolving around Queen Nehelenia is a coda to the end of last season. The Scouts have dealt with her by episode six, and the status quo is restored. A different arc kicks off and – you guessed it – we’re back to the same old formula. A bad guy is targeting random people for their “Star Seeds,” which is just another way of saying their energy, or their dreams, or any of the other MacGuffins that villains have been after from the inception of the show, and which can only be acquired by sending monsters after ordinary citizens. They just can’t let go of them, can they.

Also on hand are three new characters known as the Three Lights, a band of hugely popular singers who are covertly Sailor Scouts looking for their missing queen (in a nice twist, this individual does not end up being Sailor Moon). They’re also disguised as men... I think. Okay, I’m not entirely sure what’s going on here. When they transform into their Scout personas, they are obviously women (and wearing actual bondage gear) but everyone treats them like they’re men in the “real world”. Like, at one point a character exclaims: “wait, they’re women?” like that’s something meant to be a revelation instead of something patently obvious from the get-go.

Are they meant to be androgynous, maybe? Or genderfluid? And one of them gets the hot for Usagi, who remains oblivious. All of which is great (as well as amazing for the nineties) but a little more clarity would have gone a long way. In another twist on expectations, a second little girl with a resemblance to Usagi turns up out of nowhere, who is referred to as Chibi Chibi. The Scouts naturally ponder the possibility that she’s another daughter of Usagi that has arrived from the future, though she’s like a PokĆ©mon in that the only word she’s capable of saying is her own name.

It ends with a suitably epic few episodes, and full credit to Usagi for defeating her enemy while completely naked (yes, really) but it’s not the greatest ending to the show that I could have foreseen. They reveal that the Big Bad was herself once a Sailor Guardian, but unfortunately don’t do anything interesting with this development, and it’s a shame that most of the Muggle supporting cast has been jettisoned: Usagi’s parents and brother, Rei’s grandfather and Yuuichirou, Motoki and Unazuki, and the likes of Naru and Umino at the high school.

Even weirder, Chibiusa and Diana just disappear without explanation. Not that I was entirely sorry to see Chibiusa go, as she was annoying as heck and in serious danger of eating the show, but heck – at least give her a proper sendoff! And if there was any point to Diana, I’m afraid I missed it. She arrives from the future, hangs out for a bit, and then leaves again, without making any sort of impact on her future parents or even explaining why she turned up in the first place.

Also missing in action is Mamoru, who it turns out was kidnapped by Sailor Galaxia on his way to an overseas school. Despite not being able to get in contact with him for days on end, Usagi believes he’s ghosting her, as opposed to realizing he’s in some kind of trouble. You’d think after four years of a relationship and their future daughter running around, she would have more faith in him.

I did love that after inflicting a brand-new theme song on us for the duration of this season that isn’t catchy at all, the final episode slam-cuts to the blare of its original theme music playing over the credits, along with portraits of all the girls and their adventures together. It pays to remember that this show aired back in the nineties, when girl-centric cartoons were still something of a rarity, and likes of Usagi, Rei, Ami, Mako and Minako depicted a range of personalities and dynamics (though obviously, not body types) within a group of all-female main characters.

I have to admit, I’m glad to see my watch come to an end, as there’s only so much you can handle of such formulaic episodes in close succession, but it was an enlightening ride.

Spooks: Season 6 (2007)

Serialized storytelling finally catches up with Spooks – for a little while at least, as I’ve no idea whether the rest of the show follows this format. Although most of these episodes still contain a singular goal or mission that the team must attain/complete, it’s all part of an overarching narrative that connects the entire season together.

Essentially, MI-5 is caught between the machinations of Iran and America, in which the former is attempting to secure nuclear power, and the latter is feeding the Brits false information to trick them into doing their dirty work in preventing this deal from going forward. A dozen or so different agendas and stratagems are up in the air, leaving the current iteration of the team scrambling to keep up. It’s a twisty-turny plot, but surprisingly manages to remain relatively coherent.

On a personal level, they’ve completely scrapped the “Adam has a spiralling case of PTSD in the wake of his wife’s death” angle that was the focus of season 5, and we can only assume he received extensive therapy in the interim. It’s replaced it with the philosophical theme/ethical debate of how much MI-5 agents have to sacrifice in the name of the greater good. It’s easy to commit yourself to a cause and tell yourself that duty must take precedence in theory, but when it comes to leaving behind your teammates in order to complete a mission... well, that takes its toll.  

Across the course of this season, Adam is forced to abandon both Zaf and Jo for the sake of the greater good, and the writing doesn’t shy away from the emotional/mental fallout of these decisions. Since the inception of the show, there has usually always been a core trio of agents that comprise the main cast. For the last couple of seasons it’s been Adam, Zaf and Jo, though here we lose Zaf early on (that is, in the first episode) in a way that’s as cruel as it is confusing.

Basically, he’s taken hostage by mercenaries and never seen again. For the longest time there’s no confirmation of death, and it’s easy to suppose that eventually the team will discover his location and mount a rescue mission. Nope, they barely mention him after he disappears. Eventually (in the second to last episode of the season) a body is found, so badly disfigured that they have to rely on dental records to identify it, and the team discovers that Zaf was tortured to death by professional interrogators. We never really discover what happened to him, and get no closure on his death (the team aren’t even allowed to attend his funeral).

It's an exceptionally brutal way of farewelling this character, even by the standards of this show, and the length of time between his disappearance and the discovery of his body makes me wonder if perhaps there was some behind-the-scenes drama surrounding actor Raza Jaffrey.

Like, remember in Downton Abbey when Edith’s fiancĆ© went missing and it was so long before his body was finally found and identified? That was because of scheduling conflicts with the actor, leading to Julian Fellowes desperately trying to delay confirmation of his death in the hopes that he could eventually bring the character back, only to finally give up and announce his death in what was (in hindsight) a bizarrely anticlimactic and drawn-out way.

It feels like a similar thing may have happened here, especially when you take into account that Zaf’s obvious replacement (a journalist called Ben who is also played by a POC) doesn’t appear until the very end of the season, just as Zaf’s death is confirmed. Usually the arrival of a Suspiciously Similar Substitute is a herald of impending death for one of the regular characters, which can often take place in the same episode.

In any case, Zaf’s death does tie into the overarching theme of this particular storyline, which is the difficulty in balancing the nebulous concept of the greater good against the very tangible bonds you have with your colleagues – those in whom you entrust your very life. In the final episode Jo is taken captive by the same men who tortured Zaf to death, and in a rather harrowing sequence begs Adam to mercy-kill her in order to spare her from any (further) rape and torture. It ends on a cliff-hanger, and I don’t mind telling you that I immediately looked up whether or not she survived the ordeal – after what they did to Zaf, I would have been furious if Jo had been taken out like that.

All that aside, this is essentially the Adam and Rosaline show: their fraught relationship is very much the emotional centre of the story, and they dominate most of its screentime. Rosaline in particular continues to be awesome: at the end of the opening episode she appears out of nowhere when all hope seems lost in order to casually disarm a terrorist and take back the suitcase containing a life-saving vaccine that’s just been ripped out of an exhausted Adam’s hands, and later she watches a woman get shot in front of her while strapped to a polygraph device. The needle registers no difference in her heart rate, revealing that she’s been effortlessly lying through her teeth to her captors the whole time.

The new format of the show means there are less one-shot guest stars, which in turn means there are less familiar faces. Indeed, the only one I spotted was reliable old John Lynch as an ex-IRA member, though Gemma Jones ends up joining the cast as a regular after Harry pulls her out of retirement. Always nice to see Gemma Jones.

Spooks: Season 7 (2008)

It’s the beginning of the end. For the first time since the second season, the amount of episodes drops from ten to eight. The premiere of season seven also sees the end of Rupert Penry-Jones’s Adam Carter, the longest running protagonist of the show (barring only Peter Firth’s Harry Pearce who is the only character that appears in every episode) and the arrival of the third and final male lead: Richard Armitage’s Lucas North.

It feels like the end of an era, for although this show is renowned for its frequent cast turnover, the dream-team of Adam, Rosaline, Zaf and Jo have been the stalwarts for some time now, and I’m not sure any other iteration of the team will recapture that magic.

For now, we have Rosaline taking over as team leader, Jo struggling through her PTSD, Lucas readapting to life in England after eight years in a Russian prison, and newcomer Ben quickly learning the ropes of his new role in MI-5 (though the training of any new recruit always occurs entirely off-screen). Gemma Jones also sticks around as Connie James, though she goes through a pretty profound fall from grace toward the end.

Having faked her death midway through last season, Rosaline is called back into the line of duty, and no one demonstrates any surprise that she’s still alive, or any qualms concerning her safety once she starts openly working in London. Um, are they not concerned that the people who “killed” her will return to finish the job?

The Big Bad of this season is Russia, which seems oddly prescient, especially when a guest character remarks on how the biggest threat to democracy is the spread of misinformation. YIKES. It's much less serialized than last season, though there is an underlying arc that involves Harry searching for a high-ranking mole that has leaked information about Sugar Horse, an operation that has placed several assets among the Russian government. It leads to some great sequences, most obviously one in which Rosaline and Lucas are hunted by Russian agents through the abandoned subway tunnels... only for them to get a call from their superiors and start working together, just moments after were firing shots at each other.

Watching a show that spanned a decade over the course of several weeks makes for an amusing portrait of evolving technology: we’re reached flip-phones and flash-drives (though a few CD-ROMS are still lurking about) and there are mentions of the Queen and of Prince Harry being in Afghanistan. When it comes to familiar faces, I recognized the likes of Selina Cadell, Jill Baker and Anastasia Hille, but the real coup is... baby Jacob Anderson! Pre-Game of Thrones, pre-Interview with the Vampire, he plays a teenage punk who ends up stealing from the wrong guy.

We’re inching toward the endgame now, and sadly I know about the big twist regarding Lucas North (though I’ve no idea how it’s going to play out) but it’s been a great ride!

Bluey: Season 2 (2020)

Okay, remember back in 2009 when there were all those reports of people feeling depressed because they went to see Avatar and wanted to live on Pandora so badly that real life seemed meaningless? Sometimes I wonder how those people are doing, though for the first time I can kind of understand where they were coming from. Not to anywhere near the same extent – for the most part, I enjoy my life – but watching this show creates a sense of yearning for something that’s now impossible for me to reattain: the most idyllic childhood imaginable.

It's probably not a good thing to feel a vague sense of wistfulness toward two anthropomorphic cartoon dogs, but are Bluey and Bingo aware of how lucky they are? Thankfully, I’m not a parent, otherwise I’d have inadequacy syndrome to go with that deep-seated sense of longing.

Speaking of inadequacy, one of these episodes actually deals with the frequent complain lobbed at the show from viewers declaring that Bandit makes them feel like a crummy parent. “Octopus” features a friend of Bluey expressing disappointment that her father (more introverted and fact-driven than Bandit) can’t play Octopus with the same intensity or enthusiasm. Both feel bad about it, until he finds a way to make the game work on their terms, which involves learning more about how octopi live in the first place.

Other notable episodes include “Dad Baby” in which Bandit pretends to be pregnant and give birth to Bingo (this was banned on Disney+), “Trains”, in which the entire family stays in-character for one of their immersive imaginary games, “Movies”, in which Bluey is apprehensive about seeing her first film, “Baby Race”, a flashback episode in which Chilli reminisces about Bluey’s first steps, and anything involving Muffin, the girls’ chaotic little cousin. She’s hilarious.

Then there’s “Sleepytime.” I mean, damn. This is an episode that could have won an Oscar for Best Short Feature. Basically, Bingo is having trouble staying in her own bed, but drifts off to her mother’s words: “I’ll always be here, even if you can’t see me.” In her dream, she floats through space, interacting with planets and toy rabbits and comets, coinciding with her and her family’s constant movement from one room (and bed) to the other. Finally, Bingle reaches the sun, which is so immense that its mass stretches out past the corners of the screen. She basks in its warmth and light, and then the story cuts back to her dream’s real-world equivalent: her mother has gotten into bed with her.

I got a little choked up, because we never see a mother’s love depicted in this way; they’re either dead or taken for granted or given only a small role in favour of the father (even in this show). But for a child to subconsciously imagine her mother as the sun, the centre of the solar system, the source of all light, with a love so vast it takes up the whole screen – it’s the greatest tribute to mothers I’ve ever seen in my life. Oh, and the whole thing is set to Gustav Holst’s “Jupiter.” It’s insane.

Queen Charlotte: A Bridgerton Story (2023)

When you start churning out spin-offs, you know you’ve got a franchise on your hands. In all honesty, I don’t love Bridgerton, but it’s candy-coated fluff that’s the equivalent of lollies that have never been your favourite and which you know you shouldn’t eat, but find addictive anyway.

This limited series purports to be a prequel in that explores the early marriage of Queen Charlotte of Mecklenburg-Strelitz to King George III, though there are “contemporary” scenes strewn throughout that feature the show’s three matrons: Lady Bridgerton, Lady Danbury and Queen Charlotte, as played by Ruth Gemmell, Adjoa Andoh and Golda Rosheuvel (whose younger counterparts all feature in the flashbacks). These sequences are established as taking place after season two, as it’s mentioned that Anthony and Kate are on their honeymoon.

We first meet young Charlotte in the wake of her brother’s marriage negotiations on her behalf, and she puts up the usual “I am but chattel” protestations with a side-helping of that old “corsets are a symbol of the restrictions placed upon me” chestnut. Yes, I realize that lip-service objections are a staple part of this genre in order to establish our protagonist’s spunkiness and relatability, but can we not mix it up a little? Imagine for a moment a period-piece heroine who understood (as she would have been raised to do so) what her station and society expected of her. She could still be apprehensive about marriage to a stranger, but she’d face it with a degree of preparation and acceptance. Just for a change!

On the day of the ceremony she’s about to bolt over the garden wall when George appears and is charming enough for her to change her mind and make the walk down the aisle. Unfortunately, it’s not happily ever after – that night George decides to drop her off at her new palace... while he retreats to his own. Charlotte is not completely clear about the mysteries of the wedding night, but knows enough to realize it doesn’t involve the newlyweds sleeping in entirely separate locations.

As we know from the main show, George suffers from a mental malady (today it’s widely believed to haven been bipolar disorder) and though the older Queen Charlotte is resigned to his madness and acts seemingly cold toward him, the flashbacks demonstrate a real love grew between them.

Due to the nature of the prequel, the story can really only trail to a stop without any real closure or resolution. They attempt to provide a framework in which Charlotte grapples with a potential succession crisis, in which she had fifteen children and yet not one living, legitimate grandchild to inherit the throne (true to life!) but it’s resolved fairly casually when one of her newlywed sons discloses that his wife is pregnant.

As subplots, we see a young Lady Danbury’s struggles with being married to an indifferent husband (her older self’s caustic attitude now makes a lot more sense) and the brief affair she enjoyed with an even younger Violet’s father (who begins to have her suspicions about them in the framing device).

Arsema Thomas is stunning as young Lady Danbury (definitely keep your eyes on her burgeoning career), I recognized Tunji Kasim (Charlotte’s brother) from Nancy Drew, where he plays Ned Nickerson, and Michelle Fairley naturally nails it as the Dowager Princess Augusta – though I fear playing Caitlyn Stark has left her typecast in these prim, disapproving Apron Matron roles. She brings nuance and wit to the role, but she’s largely cast as the antagonist of the piece.

But the heart of the enterprise is very much India Ria Amarteifio, who manages to capture the mannerisms and speech inflections of Golda Rosheuvel while depicting a young woman maturing through adversary and grief. Ultimately, her happily ever after is in remembering the good times – which really, is all that any of us get.  

There’s strong acting all-round, high production values, bittersweet themes and fancy costumes – you can’t complain. It also opens up the possibility of more spin-offs. Will we get Violet’s early courtship with her (now) late husband? The chance for Edwina Sharma to find love with Prince Friedrich? Maybe something with the Featherington girls?

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