Mickey 17

After 3 failed attempts, I finally managed to see Mickey 17 on Tues. after work.  It actually snowed on Tues., which was a real kick in the teeth.  (On Wed. I did bike in, despite it being on the cold side, particularly in the morning, but it warmed up a bit in the late afternoon.)  I had just enough time to get to No Frills and then march back to Market Square to see the movies, dropping in a few minutes into the previews.  (Somehow I got the row numbers wrong and was in someone else's seat, which was embarrassing.)  I have a few reservations, particularly Mark Ruffalo's impression of Trump.  Both he and his wife, who was totally obsessed with sauces, wore out their welcome really quickly.  It certainly wasn't a subtle movie, but overall I enjoyed it a lot.  That said, being beaten over the head repeatedly over how humans were the terrible colonizers and the so-called Christian leader who repeatedly called for the aliens to be doused with nerve gas was definitely unnecessary.  

It is interesting to see how polarizing this film is, with almost equal numbers giving it a 5 stars or 1 star!  I was definitely far more interested in life on the ship and some of those subplots than in the conquest of the aliens subplot.  I hear that the director shot enough for a 4 hour movie, so who knows how much of that might show up some day in a director's cut.  I think what I would have wanted to see more of was the love quadrangle, perhaps with Mickey 18 pretending to be Mickey 17 and then to make a move on Kai.

In general, I thought Nasha was a bit too much of a loose cannon to have kept her job as security officer, including pulling guns on fellow crew members any time they messed with Mickey, which was all the time as he was the lowest ranking individual on the ship by a long shot (and basically not even considered fully human).  But the interactions between her and the Mickeys were really the most interesting part of the movie, and I wouldn't have minded seeing even more of that, including how she coped with the fact that she would be mourning Mickey and then immediately start with a fresh one the next day.

Perhaps the drollest thing for me was the printer and how close it came to malfunctioning and generally it seemed to catch just like the old dot matrix printers.  I think I probably still have a few things printed on those continuous rolls of paper.  Or how they didn't always have the "printer tray" ready, and the new Mickey would end up on the floor.  Indeed, my brand new printer doesn't appear to have any sort of a printer tray, and my print jobs always end up on the floor.  Frustrating!

Now part of me is a little annoyed as I had drafted a SF story that uses some of the same conceits (reprinting bodies and overlaying a personality matrix on them).  So it might be a while before I could shop that around.  But it isn't as if this is really unique plot point.  I can think of several other authors that got there first, including Altered Carbon.  What is interesting is that apparently in the actual novel, not the movie, the aliens have a hive mind, which is something I was toying with in my "moon novel."  

And several people were saying they vastly preferred the movie Moon, which had some parallels to Mickey 17, and particularly to the original novel by Edward Ashton.  I'm kind of glad I didn't see this, as it apparently has cloning as a plot point, and yes I was thinking that there might be a handful of the founders clones running wild in my novel, so probably best to wrap up whatever I am going to do with my own novel (which is, honestly, probably nothing) before watching Moon.

I had debated going to see Blade Runner on Wed., but was just far too busy, and tonight I need to get a first cut of the U.S. taxes done.  If all goes well, I will try to see Godard's Une Femme est une femme at The Fox after work on Friday, but I have to say I predict something will come up to prevent that from happening, given the way things have been going lately.

Quiet Desperation

I'm struggling a bit to recall how I found out about Dorothy Edwards.  Most likely it was through an Amazon recommendation, though I don't think I have been browsing anything lately that would have triggered this.  At any rate, I was surprised at the parallels between her and Katherine Mansfield (connections to the Bloomsbury group and dying much too young), though I suspect Virginia would have seen Mansfield as much more of a true rival.  Indeed, the way that Edwards sort of fell out with the group, and with David Garnett in particular, led to her suicide in 1934.  She had published Rhapsody, a collection of short stories, and Winter Sonata, a novel about a young man who struggles with his feelings towards a beautiful young woman in the village where he lives.  It's not really giving that much away to say there is not a happy ending in sight in the novel.  (I haven't read through the short stories yet.)

I don't remember all the details of Carr's A Month in the Country.  I vaguely remember the plot running on similar lines but being very different tonally.  Nonetheless, given that A Month in the Country is quite short, I think I will slip it into my list of very short books I am reading on the side.

For that matter, I have only read long chunks of Walden, but not the whole thing.  (This links back to the title of the post: “The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation.”)  Perhaps in the late summer and autumn, I will finally tackle reading all of Walden.  The edition I have also has some excerpts from The Maine Woods and Cape Cod, and I'll probably read those as well.  I actually have the full texts in a LOA volume of Thoreau's writings, but honestly, I think that will have to wait for some other year.

For the book club at work, we are reading one of my suggestions - Tim O'Brien's America Fantastica, which is a darkly comic road trip through Trump's America.  (This is set during the first Trump term and has quite a lot to say about greed and corruption.)

I'm kind of reskimming it now, though I don't know if I will definitely get through the whole thing.  I may need to borrow a copy from the library if that is possible.  (After checking, this definitely doesn't appear to be a problem...)  Here is a good summary though it and the interview with O'Brien have some significant spoilers, which I am trying to avoid.  At the time, I saw lots of parallels with Rushdie's Quichotte, and those are definitely still there.  But the slightly manic road tripping (with a spunky female sidekick) also recalls Tibor Fischer's The Thought Gang.  I'm trying hard not to endlessly reread books I've already read (though sometimes I do read them faster the second time around), but I remember really enjoying The Thought Gang, and I probably ought to read it again one of these days.

I did just reread Gide's The Vatican Cellars.  While it was fine, I didn't think it was quite as amusing this time around.  The criminal gang was sufficiently interesting, but Lafcadio is a bit of a drag, and I couldn't really get behind his motiveless crime this time around.  But it does set me up to read a couple of short Gide novels this year.

Anyway, to round out books that I might reread in the next couple of years.  I am definitely considering Murdoch's Under the Net, even though I don't know where my copy is.  I did plan on reading other Murdoch, though it might not be until 2026, so there isn't a huge hurry.  It looks like I read it for the first time in 2014.

I don't think I am going to reread Hoban's Turtle Diary in 2025, though there is a chance I might tackle it in 2026.  I read this back in 2019.  I don't have any specific novels I would pair it with, though it does make me think of del Toro's The Shape of Water.

On top of my work book club, I just found out that The Fox seems to be partnering with Great Escape Books (over on Kingston) to do a book club meeting on Kobo Abe's The Woman in the Dunes on May 9 with the actual film screening the following week at the Fox.  This is awfully tempting, but I am not sure I will be able to fit it in.

Just to recap, I have about 100 pages to go in Winter Sonata, and I should wrap this up tomorrow (or rather the next day I take transit).  I have two more chapters (roughly 150 pages left) in Soseki's I am a Cat (which honestly I am not enjoying all that much).  I'll probably go ahead and intersperse I am a Cat with Dawn Powell's Sunday, Monday and Always and Joy Williams's State of Grace as I wrap this up.  After that, I probably need to switch exclusively to O'Brien's America Fantastica, and then decide if I am going to read Abe's The Woman in the Dunes.  I think after this it is The Leopard and some other short story collections and maybe A Month in the Country.

Speaking of quiet desperation, I think I'll put in another hour or so on the ground work to do my US taxes and then go to bed.  Unfortunately, because of a pension distribution (a long story), I likely will owe US taxes, or at least I might before I claim the foreign tax credit, but I need to have the Canadian taxes completely done before I know what that credit would be worth.  It's definitely annoying.  I was on track to have the US taxes done in time, but think it would be a real push to have the Canadian taxes also done by the 15th.  I mean Musk is destroying the IRS, and Trump imagines replacing taxes with tariffs, but neither of these (quite horrible) events will happen in time to prevent me from needing to file my own taxes.  Sigh...
 

Edit: I just found out I don't even have a copy of The Woman in the Dunes.  I was sure I did, but instead I have The Ruined Map (which is probably the book I remembered wanting to read) and The Ark Sakura.  Weird.  (Maybe I do have a copy in storage in the basement, but I suspect not.)  TPL has this as an e-book, but only one reference copy.  Fortunately, there are a few copies kicking around at Robarts if I decide to tackle this after all.

 

Last Chance - Truck and Red

There is quite a lot I should blog about as it has been on my mind for some time, but I am running late, per usual, and will keep this brief.

I was able to slip in to see John Logan's Red over at the Theatre Centre.  I enjoyed this production a lot, though nothing ever quite lives up to the experience of seeing Alfred Molina on Broadway.

Molina even looked a bit more than the real Rothko (above) than this actor, though that doesn't really matter in the end.

At any rate, for 90 minutes you get Rothko opining on art and other artists and how the viewers need to be "compassionate" towards the art they are viewing.  I've actually seen this play three times (also in Vancouver), making it one of the most-seen plays I've seen along with Stoppard's Arcadia, Kushner's Angels in America, Rivera's Marisol and of course many Shakespeare plays (including 6 Lear's after a slow start!).  I wouldn't quite put it that company, but it is definitely worth seeing, esp. if you love visual art.

There are two shows today and one on Sunday over at the Theatre Centre.

The other play is Truck, which is a one hour play about automated vehicles taking over the trucking industry and putting thousands of blue-collar workers out of work, on top of the general deindustrialization that has so shaken North America.  The playwright also sees the same forces impacting creative work, and even copy-writing and legal work, though he doesn't raise it in the play, only in this interview.  Unfortunately, the CBC piece gets the closing date wrong and says the show has closed (and even the splash screen at the Factory website says the same!).  Nonetheless, there are two more performances of Truck; one tonight and a matinee tomorrow.  Tickets here.

I'll just drop in one more thing, as I am really late now.  I had vaguely remembered there is a Warhol exhibit opening up somewhere in Yorkville, and I didn't think I had missed it but wasn't sure.  It was surprisingly hard to find the right info, but the show opens next weekend at Taglialatella Galleries and will run through April.  I expect to get there next Sat., and also to stop in at Galley Gevik, though I think the current exhibit will have closed, which is a bit annoying.  Well, I really don't get over to Yorkville that often and probably can't add yet one more cluster of galleries to my crowded calendar.

Edit: While I never made it swimming, I did stop in and saw some new paintings at Thomas Landry in the Distillery.  Then I went to Taglialatella in Yorkville.  Interestingly, they had all the Warhols installed, so I wandered around for a bit, though I plan on going back next weekend with my wife.  Interestingly, Gallery Gevik thinks they will extend for a few more days, so I didn't absolutely need to get over there on Sat.  I am sorry that I didn't stay on top of this and see the Henry Wanton Jones exhibit back in Nov.  I liked several of the pieces.  They were nice enough to give me one of the exhibit catalogs.  They had a handful of pieces from that show in the basement, and I was able to look them over.  There is a small chance I will pick up a small painting, though I have to admit, I am not sure where I would hang it...