Reading/Watching Log #129

It is finally SPRING. I’m sure we’ll manage a few more miserable days before summer kicks in, but thank goodness we made it through another winter down here in the southern hemisphere. It’s our turn for that heat wave… though I obviously don’t want things to get too dire. (Who am I kidding? I love the sun and we haven’t had a decent summer for the last two years. Bring it on).

The third season of House of the Dragon has recently wrapped up, and it served as an interesting reminder that I’ve spend the last decade or so experiencing Game of Thrones through pop-culture osmosis: never really getting involved, but being interested in how other people respond to the story – a story which in many ways is completely counterintuitive to how fandom operates these days.

One day I’ll hopefully write a longer post about my hypothesis that modern fandom is less interested in a compelling, thought-provoking story as it is about picking a character (or a ship, or a theory) and then gunning for it to “win,” either on moral or aesthetic or “just cos I want it to” grounds. In that sense, it’s understandable why House of the Dragon might be regarded as compatible with fandom, as it quite literally revolves around a competition between two factions (the Blacks and the Greens) to gain control over the Seven Kingdoms.

And yet for anyone actually paying attention, it’s clear the point George R.R. Martin is trying to make is that monarchy is bad, and that everything about it should be burnt down (not literally of course, despite the presence of dragons) in favour of a fairer, more egalitarian system.

The civil war is between a family of inbred, imperial conquerors that nobody actually likes. They’ve just got the equivalent of nuclear weapons, so there’s not a lot the smallfolk can actually do about them (yet – we’ve still got season four to go, wherein the smallfolk do start making some political moves of their own). But this is lost on fandom, who are still arguing about what backside should be sitting on the Iron Throne, as though that’s anything even close to the point that Martin is trying to make.

In the clips I’ve seen, the show is finally starting to lean into the physical and mental toll this is taking on its erstwhile protagonist and queen, Rhaenyra. Having lost two of her sons, struggling with the day-to-day requirements of running a kingdom, and growing increasingly paranoid about the movements of her enemies, her seasonal arc culminates in a scene in which she declares herself “the Prince Who Was Promised,” to a crowd of people who don’t understand what she’s saying, and wouldn’t care in the slightest even if they did.

As usual, great swaths of fandom are focused on the aesthetics of the whole thing – the coolness of her armour, how great she sounds speaking Old Valyrian – without grasping in the slightest what is actually happening here. For the record, I’m not thrilled with yet another story about a woman going mad with power. It’s not off the table when it comes to storytelling choices, as there’s nothing stopping it from being compelling, and it’s clearly being written with more nuance than what happened to Daenerys, but in the broader scheme of things – I’ve had enough of crazy power-hungry women who need to be put down for their own good. The concept just isn’t contributing anything to the growing good of the world, you know?

But what struck me as interesting (and important) about the scene is that Rhaenyra calls upon her knowledge of the Prince Who Was Promised prophecy to justify her claim to the throne. This brought to mind the events of The Mad King, the stage play currently being performed by the Royal Shakespeare Theatre. A huge theme of that production seems to be that those who buy into the prophecy about the Prince (or Azoi Ahai) come to bitterly regret it. Lyanna for example, goes all-in on the prophecy that she interprets as carrying Rhaegar’s child to provide “a third head” for the three-headed dragon – something that starts a civil war, takes the life of her brothers, and eventually claims hers as well.

(Heck, we’ve already seen this theme play out in Game of Thrones, in which Melisandre’s insistence that Stannis is the Chosen One only leads him into darkness and despair).

It’s a fascinating similar note between the two stories despite each playing out in very different mediums, but one that fits with Martin’s general sense of contempt for those that base their decision-making on the amorphous words of prophecy. As Jaime Lannister says: “prophecy is like a half-trained mule. It looks as though it might be useful, but the moment you trust in it, it kicks you in the head.”

Yet muddying the waters is that prophecy and visions and “true dreaming” does have some veracity in the world of Westeros. Various characters have seen glimpses of the future that turn out to be real, not to mention the existence of undead warriors and other mystical creatures. And of course, people who command dragons that can burn down entire settlements with a single word are inevitably going to have dangerous superiority complexes. By simple dint of the fact they can do such things while others cannot indicate there must be SOMETHING special about the Targaryens.

That the theme of “don’t trust prophecy” is mingled with genuine displays of mystical power is confusing, as is the question of where exactly their prophetic dreams and visions originate from. Who or what is pulling the strings here? It’s here of course, we all walk into a brick wall, because we cannot properly examine this theme or what it means or how it’s going to play out without having access to the end of the story to lend it clarity. And George R.R. Martin certainly isn’t in a hurry to tell us.

The simple point I’m trying to make is that I found it immensely interesting that the stage play and the prequel series would strike a similar note on this issue, as (presuming that they have added intel provided by George R.R. Martin himself – which we know they do, as House of the Dragon revealed that Aegon’s Conquest was instigated by a dream that foretold of the Long Night and the coming of the White Walkers) provides direction on how A Song of Fire and Ice might conclude.

If, of course, it ever gets finished. Which it won’t.

Okay, so getting back to the reading/watching log… it seems like rather slim pickings this month, but I’ve got three weeks of leave coming up, so you can bet I’m going to be filling it with as many books and films as I can.

Reading/Watching Log #128

Well, no prizes for guessing what the theme of this month is. With the release of Enola Holmes 3 on the first of July, it pretty much chose itself, and way back in September 2024 I mentioned wanting to watch some of the other Sherlock Holmes adaptations that were floating around on YouTube.

The thing I found most interesting in watching so many in quick succession is the way they speak to each other across the years; how they’ve inspired and influenced each other. You can clearly see the shift from Watson as a doddering sidekick to a more respected partner, or the change in how subjects like colonialism and the British Empire are treated, or even the presence of the supernatural and its veracity.

For instance, it’s tempting to wonder if 1985’s Young Sherlock Holmes inspired the 2009 Robert Downey Jr film in its use of an occult-tinged mystery. What’s more, the former’s use of colonization as a plot-point has profoundly changed by the time we get to 2026. Back then it was used to justify the existence of a creepy Egyptian cult in London and give the villains a sad backstory that is promptly ignored due to their habitual practice of sacrificing virgins. Fast-forward four decades and the British Empire’s treatment of its colonies makes for largely sympathetic “villains” in both Enola Holmes 3 and this year’s Young Sherlock series.

It’s just fascinating the way these stories reach back and forth the way they do, providing a linked chain across the years.

Also, I saw a record three live performances this month, largely thanks to the fact it was the school holidays and I am determined to instill a love of theatre into my little nephew. As well as that, two Babysitters Club books, the second instalments of trilogies from Philip Pullman, Scott Westerfeld and Philip Reeve, and a few Victorian-era Gaslamp period dramas. They went hand-in-glove with Sherlock Holmes.

Reading/Watching Log #127

I’m swallowing my superhero fatigue in a desperate bid to clean out my hard-drive and make room for all the stuff I want to watch in the not-too-distant future – which means that June is superhero month!

Either way, it’s long past time for me to wrap up the Arrowverse, of which there are still half-a-dozen shows I haven’t finished yet. By my reckoning I have one season of Supergirl, one of Black Lightning, two of Batwoman, three of Legends of Tomorrow and three of The Flash left to go. Oh, and the entirety of Superman and Lois. And was Stargirl ever part of this continuity?

When things end before you’re given the chance to catch up with them, you inevitably lose a degree of investment, but I’m nothing if not a completist.

I also tackled the DC Animated Movie Universe, which is quite a mouthful, so we’ll go with DCAMU henceforth. Thankfully there were only four more films to watch before their conclusion.

And yet while watching Superman getting killed by Doomsday for the third time, and Clark admit his true identity to Lois for what felt like the millionth, and watch Nightwing come out of the Lazarus Pit not once but twice (if I had a nickel, weird that it happened twice and all that) I realized that these types of stories are most akin to the King Arthur and Robin Hood legends in how they’ve been retold and reshaped over the years. The origins of superhero stories are obviously not as ambiguous as those of Robin and Arthur, but we’re still dealing with characters who have set personalities and familiar stories that are adapted, readapted, rebooted and changed around until certain elements feel set in stone.

Any Robin Hood retelling will almost certainly involve an archery contest, the quarterstaff fight on the bridge, saving the poacher from losing a hand, and rescuing someone from the gallows in the same way that an X-Men adaptation will have Wolverine struggle to remember his past, Jean Grey becoming the Phoenix, a time traveller returning to the past from a dystopian future, and Xavier’s School for Gifted Children getting blown up.

The Holy Grail was nowhere to be seen in the earliest King Arthur stories, yet is now an essential part of any retelling. But is Percival the knight who finds it? Or Galahad? Or Bors? Different writers told different versions, and later versions handle the discrepancies by having all of them go on the Grail Quest.

This is type of storytelling is unique only to legends and comic book adaptations, and it’s quite fascinating to witness. It’s the same story with the same characters every time… only not.

On an unrelated note, this month made me realize I’m not hugely emotionally attached to superheroes. They were present in my childhood, but like The Wizard of Oz, were so American in nature that I never really felt a deep kinship. This meant I wasn’t that phased about Zack Snyder’s dark-n-edgy take on the material, as they were just another variation on the old stories – though I could understand why those closer to the material were upset. But as I said about Peter Pan in April, at some point you have to do something different, or else we’re just going to end up with twenty thousand identical adaptations.

(Though having said that, I watched Justice League Dark: Apokolips this month and was not ready for how grim that was gonna get. Watching iconic superheroes get slaughtered was more disconcerting than I thought it would be).

Reading/Watching Log #126

As well as continuing with my-read through all the most significant children’s classics (this month it’s Winnie the Pooh) I also had a very important goal: to watch as many movies as I could that I only want to see once before deleting them from my hard-drive to make more room on it.

As such, this month’s viewing/reading material is very scattershot, with no unifying theme. And if it feels like I didn’t do a whole lot of reading, I’ve actually gotten though two and half books in Katherine Woodfine’s Taylor and Rose quartet (the follow-up to The Sinclair’s Mysteries). I’ll just wait until next month, and the completion of the final book Nightfall in New York, to discuss them all together. After that, I’m looking forward to tackling Eoin Colfer’s Artemis Fowl series.

Reading/Watching Log #125

To the northern hemisphere, April means springtime and sunshine. For us in Aotearoa, it’s the start of the grim march into the depths of winter. And though I’m fully acclimatized to Christmas being a summer holiday and can handle Halloween taking place while the buds are blooming, there’s something about Easter that demands daffodils and baby chicks, none of which are anywhere to be seen at the moment. In fact, this display at the mall caught my eye, demonstrating the incongruity of the season with the holiday’s symbols:

Pastel bunnies and autumn leaves? It just doesn’t work.

I’ve finally reached the end of watching Peter Pan, The Wizard of Oz and Alice in Wonderland adaptations, having completed the last three this month – including the famous MGM film, which capped the whole thing off. I’ll continue with Baum’s books, as there are still plenty of Oz stories left to be read, but I’ve since moved onto a reread of Ursula le Guin’s Earthsea books. I’ve never read the very last one in the series, though for now I’m sticking to the original trilogy.

Another theme for April is Shakespeare and Oscar Wilde. Having seen both The Importance of Being Earnest and a Macbeth-inspired ballet at the theatre last month, I naturally had to seek out more performances and adaptations – plus, I dearly wanted to see Hamnet, especially after Jessie Buckley’s win at the Oscars.

Reading/Watching Log #124

Autumn again. It feels we’ve had two weeks of summer and six months of winter, and now things are cycling back into cold and darkness. Still, there’s a beauty to fall, especially in clear weather. I was walking through the park in the sunshine the other day and was struck by the ambiance: there’s a strange sort of darkness to the light, the shadows feel deeper, and the leaves are just beginning to turn even though the sky was solid blue.

I’m still seeking out variations on the stories of L.F. Baum, J.M. Barrie and Lewis Carroll, and in doing so it was interesting to note that Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and The Wizard of Oz each have definitive versions (obviously, the Disney and MGM films). And yet that’s not quite the case for Peter Pan, even though he has far more adaptations of his story than the other two – by quite a far margin. I suppose that makes sense; if you’ve got what’s considered the iconic version of something, nobody else wants to compete with it.

More to the point when it comes to the multitude of adaptations, Peter Pan has been staged and retold so many times that many of the latest versions are aware of their predecessors, and so end up musing on the nature of the story itself and its history.

This is the thousandth time Hook and Peter have crossed swords, the millionth that Peter and Wendy have said goodbye to each other. She can’t go and he can’t stay, and the legacy of that is a bit like the underlying theme of Hadestown. The story has taken on a life and tragedy of its own, and so every time we tell it again, we hope it might turn out differently. But no, Peter Pan is still out there somewhere, as young as he ever was.

There’s no understating how deeply these stories have soaked into our culture. Remember when Neo followed the White Rabbit at the beginning of The Matrix? Or when Ofelia wore an Alice dress and pinafore in Pan’s Labyrinth? Or that a vampire movie could be called The Lost Boys and everyone would know the reference it’s trying to make? Likewise, we all know the connotations Kingo is making when he calls Sprite “Tinker Bell” in The Eternals – not just her eternal youth, but her unrequited love for Ikaris. The term “flying monkeys” is a recognizable term to describe people who submit to narcissists and do their bidding. Then there’s Michael Jackson’s Neverland Ranch, which exists in a much more tragic context. These stories are everywhere.

Finally, I told myself that I would try and cut down on the length of these blog posts, as they’re getting increasingly long despite my lack of free time to actually write them. Then of course, I end up writing what amounts to three giant essays on Peter Pan. But for April, I really am truly going to try and cut back…

Reading/Watching Log #123

February has come and gone, and I’ve continued my foray into the worlds of Wonderland, Neverland and Oz, which I think of as the Big Three of children’s literature. Perhaps the most interesting thing about reading the original stories concerning these worlds is how much of what we think we know about them is based on adaptative material with no basis in the actual books. For instance, Neverland is always referred to as the Neverland in J.M. Barrie’s text, and before his transformation, the Tin Man was initially called Nick Chopper – not Boq, though there is an unrelated Munchkin that goes by that name.

There’s also a lot of material that never made it into any adaptation: for example, I’m sorry that Baum’s delightful Queen of the Field Mice never made it onto the screen, though I can obviously understand the limitations there back in 1939.

Likewise, there’s a lot more emphasis on the weird and wonderful events being framed as dreams in the adaptations, even though Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland is the only one that actually used this framing device in a book. MGM’s The Wizard of Oz famously made Dorothy’s adventures a prolonged dream, with actors playing characters both in the real world and their fantasy counterparts in Oz, something that wasn’t an aspect of Baum’s book at all. Yet the concept became so pervasive that Return to Oz used it too.

They also hinted at it in Disney’s animated Peter Pan, which ends with the Darling parents returning home to find Wendy asleep by the window, the implication being that she dreamt it all (unlike the book, where the three children are gone for a long time). Likewise, the 2003 film leans into the double casting of Jason Isaacs as Captain Hook and Mr Darling, providing a degree of commentary on Wendy’s relationship with each one.

More than that, the concept of madness barely figures into the books, but has since become an intrinsic part of these stories, with the mental facilities of the girls being called into question much more than in the books themselves. ABC’s Once Upon a Time spin-off starts with Alice in a sanatorium, with doctors trying to convince her that her adventures were a hallucination. Return to Oz starts with Dorothy (nearly) receiving electric-shock therapy, and the facility staff becoming the villains she faces in Oz. And Andy Weir’s Cheshire Crossing is a crossover graphic novel in which Alice, Dorothy and Wendy all meet at a remote research facility and sanatorium. 

It’s interesting the way these components have soaked into our understanding of the stories, becoming an intrinsic part of retellings, despite that subtext not appearing in the original texts. Sometimes these adaptations even borrow from each other: Dorothy in Return to Oz has a scene in which she appears to do some slow-motion rabbit-hole falling.

And for the record, Peter Pan is by far the best book of the three. You get the definite sense that Baum and Carroll were simply making things up as they went along, writing as the mood struck them, and though a lot of people have put a lot of effort into trying to understand or cross-examine Alice’s Adventures and The Wizard of Oz, by each author’s own admission they exist mainly to entertain. As such, they generally come across as completely random.

Baum is probably the least sophisticated of the three authors, though I still think it’s fascinating that he almost didn’t seem to understand a lot of what he was writing. There are clear feminist undertones at work (his mother was a suffragette, so this was no doubt on purpose) but although he claims to have written: “a modernized fairy tale, in which the wonderment and joy are retained and the heartaches and nightmares are left out,” it certainly didn’t pan out that way.

There’s some genuinely scary stuff in these books, and despite the Americanization of certain archetypes (switching out the kings, carriages, knights and heraldry for tin men, scarecrows, hucksters and cornfields) he couldn’t help but retain some of the underlying components of our oldest stories (as in Coraline and Labyrinth, the conclusion of Ozma of Oz features a competition against an ancient being with impossibly high stakes).

He also manages a few nuggets of wisdom, like this from the Scarecrow: “I am convinced that the only people worthy of consideration in this world are the unusual ones. For the common folks are like the leaves of a tree, and live and die unnoticed,” or this from the Hungry Tiger: “It isn’t what we are, but what folks think we are, that counts in this world.”

For the most part though, his stories (like Carroll’s) come across as pretty random. In comparison, Barrie has something important to say about the nature of childhood, the passage of time, and the realities of growing up. Peter Pan is an inherently bittersweet story, one in which its grand adventure is bookended by the anguish of parenthood and the cost of never achieving maturity.

Going forward into March, I’m leaving Wonderland and Neverland behind, but the Yellow Brick Road is stretching on for a while longer. Baum wrote a lot of these books.

Reading/Watching Log: #122

To kickstart this year, I decided to revisit some of the seminal classics of early children’s literature: Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, The Wizard of Oz, and Peter Pan, along with some of their assorted television/filmic adaptations.

It intrigues me greatly that three touchstones of early children’s literature involve little girls navigating semi-dangerous fantasy lands, and as a result there’s something about the characters of Alice, Dorothy and Wendy that just go together somehow.

(I’ve always felt there should be a second-tier trio to this very specific type of young heroine, but all I can come up with is Clara from The Nutcracker and Gerda from The Snow Queen – there must be a third girl out there somewhere to complete the set, but who? Pippi Longstocking? Ronja the Robber’s Daughter? No, they don’t quite fit into the same dreamlike fantasy-scape as the others. I’ll think of her one day…)

Also interesting is that two famous adaptations of these stories adopt an All Just a Dream framing device that was only ever present in one of the original books. MGM’s The Wizard of Oz is a famous example of its heroine waking up from an extended dream, but Disney’s Peter Pan ends with the Darling parents arriving home to find Wendy sleeping by the open window, also suggesting the adventures might have all been the work of her subconscious. Neither book used this conceit, but it would seem the precedent set by Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland loomed large in the imaginations that followed it. 

Likewise, a preoccupation with insanity as it pertains to young women specifically has emerged around these stories, almost without anyone realizing. In Return to Oz, Dorothy is taken to a clinic where she faces electric shock treatment to help her with her “delusions” of Oz, while Once Upon a Time in Wonderland begins with Alice locked up in an asylum after she refuses to renounce the adventures she’s had.

A lot of this might just be the natural conclusion of retelling stories that are so inherently bizarre and random, but I do wonder if this theme would be quite as pronounced if the main characters of these books had been boys.

That little girls are so often traversing fantasy lands on vague journeys of empowerment and self-actualization makes it tempting to ponder if there’s a line that can be drawn between these early nineteenth century texts and the recent proliferation of romantasy, but that might have to be a longer post for another day…

(And don’t worry, across my exploration of various adaptations, I’ve spared myself Spielberg’s Hook and James Franco’s Oz the Great and Powerful. Never again!)

Reading/Watching Log #121

No prizes for guessing what this month’s theme was: I have been very into Christmas ghost stories since October, and was looking forward to diving back into the vibe – even though here in Aotearoa, we’re facing high twenty-degree weather. I’m sure something atmospheric is lost given that there’s no snow or darkness outside, but perhaps one day in years to come, I’ll be able to revisit all this material in its rightful setting.

I also took a mad dash to squeeze in as many of this year’s most prominent genre films (Sinners, Weapons, Wake Up Dead Man, K-Pop Demon Hunters) since I need some material for my annual “Best Moments of Film and Television” list. The last Babysitters Club books of 2025, more Magical Girls and the final season of Doctor Who for the foreseeable future, and the year ended on a relative high.

I dearly wanted to see the Twelfth Night adaptation that played recently at the Delacourte Theatre in New York, but unfortunately PBS didn’t allow for international viewing – given that I started this year with Twelfth Night, it would have been nice to finish with it too, but I had to contend with some clips and the hope it’ll turn up available in due course.

Merry Christmas, and Happy New Year. If possible.

Reading/Watching Log #120

There goes November, and now Christmas is just around the corner. There’s no real theme to this month’s reading/watching log – I just went with the flow and did whatever I wanted. Most of my free time is currently being taken up with festive-related activities, and my nephew/niece are fully into the Christmas spirit at this point (we’re taking them to the markets this Sunday, in which they’ll be able to see Santa go punting on the Avon).

Having taken it a bit easier this month, I’m going to have to start cramming if I’m going to get all the books/films/shows I wanted to finish this year done with. Sinners, Weapons, K-Pop Demon Hunters, Wake Up Dead Man, Philip Pullman’s The Secret Commonwealth re-read, Scott Westerfeld’s Behemoth… I’ll have to offset it all with the slightly more holiday-appropriate Ghost Stories for Christmas. But here’s November…

Reading/Watching Log #119

The theme for this year’s October turned out to be Folk Horror. Yes, this was a bit of a surprise to me too, as last year it was vampires, and the year before that, werewolves. Something like witches or ghosts would seem the next obvious choice, but I had a ton of shows and films in the Folk Horror genre that I wanted to revisit, so Folk Horror it turned out to be…

When I think about that particular genre, it’s the atmosphere more than anything that springs to mind. Damp autumn leaves, mist-soaked fields, eerie forests, abandoned graveyards… there are plenty of exceptions of course, though to my mind any self-respecting Folk Horror story has to establish a strong ambiance. From that starting point, you can establish the weird cults, creepy neighbours, ancient beliefs, and highly ambiguous endings.

(In fact, given my excitement over the upcoming Robin Hood series on MGM, and the fact that a substantial amount of that story takes place in a forest, I found myself wondering what a Folk Horror take on Robin Hood would look like…)

Although I didn’t watch what’s referred to as the “unholy trinity” of Folk Horror films, there’s been something of a resurgence of the genre in recent years (The Witch, Midsomer), to the point where something like Starve Acre can just sort of fly under the radar a bit. This also means there’s plenty to choose from if you’re in the mood for something dark and unsettling for the spooky season, though living in Aotearoa means we’re enjoying longer evenings instead of the onset of winter.

I hope you all had an exciting and/or uneventful Halloween (depending on your preferences) and can start looking forward to Christmas with optimism in your heart. All things pass.

Reading/Watching Log #118

This month can best be described as a one-thing-leading-to-another month. I wanted to finish the second season of Atlantis, and that reminded me of 2012’s Sinbad. Having watched that, I naturally had to watch the animated movie of the same name from DreamWorks, which lead me to their other early animated projects. That meant rewatching The Prince of Egypt, which in turn put me in mind of other Biblical retellings, like Samson and Delilah. And so on and so forth.

It reminded me of just how connected our multitude of stories are; how one can inform another; how it all trickles down, like streaks of rain on a windowpane. Superman’s origins are just a variation of Moses in the Bulrushes, while his superstrength is matched in that of Samson’s. Then there’s the progression of Moses’s story, in which he learns a devastating truth, runs away, and returns a changed person who has been charged with righting a great wrong. It forms the backbone of so many modern stories.

Meanwhile, so many of our Femme Fatales are the progeny of Delilah, while the star-crossed element of her love affair with Samson (she’s Philistine, he’s of the tribe of Dan) reminded me a little of what they’re going for in the upcoming Robin Hood, in which Robin and Marian are Saxon and Norman respectively. Atlantis is filled with ancient tropes that are all muddled up in order to create a new story, while Sinbad’s best episode involves a run-in with the personification of death, who has been promised a young woman as a bride, but is ultimately outwitted out of his prize. How many times have we seen that one before?

Anyways, I just find it fascinating to join the dots between narratives, and this was a good month for doing so. 

Reading/Watching Log #117

It is the first day of spring in the southern hemisphere, and I reach it like a castaway washing onto an island full of fresh water and fruit. Damn, that was a gruelling winter. I hate the cold and the dark at the best of times, but there was something in the air this year that made absolutely everyone sick – continuously and relentlessly.

I suspect I caught more than one thing at once, which ended up playing havoc on my immune system, and after five whole weeks of feeling like absolute crap, my doctor finally prescribed me some antibiotics just to help fight whatever the hell was going on in my Petrie dish of a body.

My blog has been so quiet lately because I honestly haven’t had the energy to write anything. By the time I got home from work, I just wanted to crawl into bed and fall unconscious, but now – well, hopefully I can start plumping up these entries again.

And yes, I will eventually post my reading/watching list for July.

This month’s theme: PIRATES!

Reading/Watching Log #116

Okay, I suppose you’re wondering: where’s the Reading/Watching Log for June? Between work, annual leave, and then a flu bug that’s still dragging on, I just couldn’t get around to finishing it – but it’s on its way. My two weeks off coincided with terrible weather, and so I made it my mission to catch up on every bit of franchise fluff that I’d deliberately skipped in the last five or so years.

But then it got a little out of hand after I decided to watch something from every big-budget franchise, from The Matrix to The Muppets, under the proviso that I’d never seen it before. There’s simply no way in hell I can write a full review for everything that I binged in those two weeks – but limiting myself to just a couple of sentences also takes quite a while when you watched as much as I did in a fortnight.

It'll turn up eventually. For now, July saw a return to the Tudors and murder-mysteries, both of which were linked by the Lady Grace Mysteries, a series of mysteries set in Tudor England (I mean, duh).

Watching another batch of Tudor-related programming makes me realize just how extraordinary those times were. If you tried putting even half of it in a fictional story, you’d be slapped by your editor. The story of Anne Boleyn alone is incredible: that Henry the Eighth would go to such lengths in order to marry her, only to cast her away when she became an inconvenience. And that their child would end up being one of the most famous monarchs of all time is just… I mean, what word could you even use to describe that?

Reading/Watching Log #115

This month, I gorged myself. I had two weeks off and I challenged myself to watching something from each of the biggest franchises and/or networks on the planet: Star Wars, Star Trek, the MCU, the DCU, Disney Animation, Pixar, Studio Ghibli, The Lord of the Rings, Avatar: The Last Airbender, The Muppets, Pirates of the Caribbean, Harry Potter (don’t worry, didn’t pay for it), Mission Impossible, Game of Thrones, Ghostbusters, Jurassic Park, The Hunger Games, Doctor Who, Dune, Indiana Jones, Max Mad (or rather Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga), The Terminator, The Predator, The Matrix, Alien…

I also managed a few slightly more “second tier” things: Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Transformers, The Wheel of Time, short films from Shrek, How To Train Your Dragon, Kung Fu Panda and Toy Story, as well as the making-of documentary of Stranger Things: The First Shadow on Broadway, since the show’s final season won’t be out until November. Oh, and I threw in a Stephen King movie for good measure.

And because I’ve seen every single episode of Xena Warrior Princess and Buffy the Vampire Slayer, I made do with a comic book and a tie-in novel respectively. Along with that, I read the graphic novel adaptations of His Dark Materials, and the last book of the Mortal Engines quartet.

Whew, did I miss anything out? I had only one condition to this little project: that everything from each of these franchises had to be something that I had never seen before, the goal being to fill in the gaps of as much of the big-name stuff as possible. It was all pretty exhausting, actually.

Not everything got ticked off: there simply wasn’t any material for James Cameron’s Avatar, or The Chronicles of Narnia. Other stuff like James Bond, Sherlock Holmes, The Musketeers, Robin Hood and King Arthur-related media I decided to hold off on until a later themed-month, as they aren’t so much franchises as they are stories about specific individuals.

All of it has coalesced into one giant blob in my mind, and there was just so much of it that there’s absolutely no way I’m reviewing it all individually. Aside from the books, I’ll comment on everything only briefly, though there are some projects that I absolutely intent to revisit and discuss in more detail later on (Andor, The Wheel of Time, The Rings of Power).

One more thing: as gluttonous as all this looks, I felt rather sad on completing it, as I almost certainly won’t ever be able to do this again. The Wheel of Time has been cancelled, and I doubt there’ll be any more Ghostbusters, Pirates of the Caribbean or Mad Max Sagas (at least not ones that I’ll ever want to see). So in many ways, this felt like the end of an era.

But for what it’s worth, it was a lot of fun.

Reading/Watching Log #114

I’m in the middle of my annual leave, which started during the final week of May and will continue through the first week of June, so I’m enjoying myself by catching up with a lot of things – and I’m finally about to get cracking on Doctor Who, The Wheel of Time, Andor, Star Trek Discovery and other big franchises that I’ve been ignoring for a while.

For whatever reason, May ended up being a month of Arthurian legend and vampires – I’ve no idea how two such different genres came together this month, but it’s lead to a number of familiar faces popping up in various projects, years apart from each other. Oliver Jackson-Cohen starred on NBC’s Dracula as Jonathan Harker, and I’m now watching him on Surface every week with my mum. Ben Miles also featured on Dracula as the head of the Order of the Dragon, and has just recently played Mon Mothma’s unfortunate banker friend on Andor.

And between Gawain and the Green Knight, Elphaba in Wicked, and the dense forest setting of Frances Hardinge’s The Forest of a Thousand Eyes, this was also a month brought to you by the colour green.

(We also had another movie night at work recently, but because I’ve spoken extensively about Spirited Away in the past, I won’t repeat myself here).

Reading/Watching Log #113

Late as usual, but here it is. April was about the two Alien movies (there are only two), Beatrix Potter, and plenty of Arthurian retellings – specifically three TV shows that are fascinating in how different they are from each other whilst still being recognizably based on the same source material.

Furthermore, none of them are very good. It left me wondering what a good adaptation would look like. It would have to span several decades, feature actors willing to be credibly aged from twelve to about sixty, contain dozens of narrative tangents and cul de sacs, and not be afraid to go to some very strange places. It would also have to settle on a central theme, which might be the most difficult thing of all considering the number of writers who have brought their own perspectives to the Matter of Britain across the centuries. 

Personally, I think that the myriad of legends do better in print than on-screen, evidenced by all the talented authors that have handled the material: Rosemary Sutcliffe, T.H. White, Bernard Cornwall, Roger Lancelot Green, T.A. Barron, Mary Stewart, Kevin Crossley-Holland... One day I’ll get through all of them, though I managed to check a few off the list this month.

Reading/Watching Log #112

I did it! For the first time in ages, I actually finished a Reading/Watching Log on time. Well mostly – technically should have been posted yesterday, but that’s not that bad!

Because I found two documentaries on Greek heroes that I’d been searching for for ages, March turned into a fully-fledged Greek mythology month – especially where Medea was concerned. She appeared in four of the shows I watched these last few weeks, and was a strikingly different character in each of them.

Reading wise, I finished three more of my favourite authors as a belated birthday treat: Garth Nix, Susanna Clarke and Frances Hardinge, reminding myself all over again as to why exactly they’re my favourites. I also finished another double-feature of period films starring Holliday Grainger, and the second season of Hustle.

Now, onwards to a chilly April and Arthurian legends...

Reading/Watching Log #111

You know, I really did try to get this one done on time. Whenever I finished watching or reading something, I immediately wrote down my thoughts on it, and yet I still ended up posting this a week late. My time is so limited at the moment, I don’t think I’m going to be able to go into as much detail with these entries in the future – it’s just too much of a time commitment.

But why didn’t anyone ever tell me that rereading your favourite books puts you in a great mood? For my birthday season I’ve been rediscovering the works of Meredith Ann Pierce, Patricia McKillip, Garth Nix, Philip Reeve and Frances Hardinge and I feel SO GOOD. If you’re in a bad mental place right now (and let’s face it, most of us are), I’d definitely advise you to a. stop watching the news, and b. track down the work of a favourite author.

Due to a couple of GIF-sets passing through my dashboard recently, I ended up watching several films starring or featuring (or cameoing) Holliday Grainger – which meant quite a few period films. Likewise, I finally tracked down those two Musketeers films that both came out in 2023, and finished up the third and final season of the BBC’s Robin Hood with my long-suffering friend. 

It’s been a couple of years since we started that particular project, but I’m going to hold off talking about it in this post since I’m working on a retrospective which will probably be completed within the next decade or so.

Reading/Watching Log #110

That felt like an uncommonly long January; usually they’re over and done with before you can blink.

I decided to continue in my theme of last month’s viewing, which involved picking things out of all the categories I selected in the previous year: eighties fairy tales, historical epics and Shakespeare productions, mainly. I also managed a few graphic novels from the library (I haven’t read any in a while) and more of Philip Reeve’s Mortal Engines series, which is just as good as I remember it.

More Babysitters Club books, more Apple paperbacks, another Robin Hood movie, and I finally get started on Hustle, which I’ve been meaning to watch since... well, back when it first aired in 2004.

I’m looking forward to February, as I’ve decided to read something from each of my favourite authors: Frances Hardinge, Patricia McKillip, Philip Reeve, Garth Nix, Susanna Clarke and Meredith Anne Pierce – it’s my birthday month, so I may as well enjoy it. I’ve also finally found the most recent Musketeers film on DVD! After so many attempts to find a subtitled copy on-line, it turns out we had one at the library the whole time.