The Cancer Finishing School by Peter Goldsworthy – enjoyable and informative memoir by an Australian GP, from the time of his diagnosis with multiple myeloma (bone marrow cancer) through treatment to full remission. He's a writer as well as a GP - of fiction, drama and poetry, not only medical reminiscences - so this is a pleasure to read: full of imagery and perception. There's a wry sense of humour throughout, which he seems to be blessed to share with his wife and constant companion, and which introduces an ironic detachment into what might otherwise have been either bleak or merely clinical.
Everything Everywhere All At Once – Oscar-winning fantasy film. I liked it in the end (heartwarming and sentimental in the final act, and I’m a sucker for that), but found it very confusing to begin with because of the constant switching of genres. (American immigrant drama? high concept science fiction? techno-thriller? kung fu movie? knockabout comedy?) Of course that’s part of the point; the clue's in the title. And Michelle Yeoh is great, of course, continually switching between different versions of her character.
Elizabeth is Missing – BBC drama, and a very sympathetic and empathetic portrayal of dementia with the late Glenda Jackson in one of her last roles, troubled and disturbed by the apparent disappearance of her friend Elizabeth, which – as we gradually realise – has triggered recollections of the mysterious disappearance of her sister many years ago, when they were both young. The early scenes are especially good, putting you firmly on her side when other people are ignoring her concerns and treating her like an idiot, but so equally are the later scenes as we become aware of the all-too-real failings in her memory and cognitive powers. The payoff finds her both vindicated and culpable: a sweet-sour ending, which seems fitting.
Howl’s Moving Castle – 2004 Studio Ghibli film, based on a book by Diana Wynne Jones. The combination of Japanese animation (from Hayao Miyazaki) and Welsh story produces something quite different from the usual American studio output: an old woman as main character (actually, she's a young woman under an enchantment, but she behaves like an old woman), a young and good-looking wizard, and a powerful anti-war sentiment, with vivid sequences of planes raining down bombs on defenceless cities below – recollections from Miyazaki's own childhood. Perhaps not his greatest film (common opinion accords that honour to My Neighbour Totoro), but it intrigued and touched me, which I suspect is just what Miyazaki intended.
Vera – the final season for everyone's favourite Newcastle detective, and a wonderful send-off too with a pair of quality episodes. Very satisfying it was to see Vera, now retired (instead of taking a promotion into desk-bound seniority) walking her dog along the causeway to Holy Island, and in the follow-up documentary to see Brenda Blethyn as herself: to be reminded of just how different she is from Vera in real life and therefore what a good actor she is.
Film Stars Don’t Die in Liverpool – moving portrayal of the real-life romance between the Oscar-winning actor Gloria Grahame and a much younger lad from Liverpool. The story's tensions arise around their age difference, Grahame's scandalous past, and her reluctance to confide to her lover that her cancer has returned and that she is dying. Great performances by Annette Benning and Jamie Bell are what give this film its power.
Lost Echo – interesting but (for me) finally unsatisfying adventure game (despite a good review), in which a scientist-inventor hunts for his girlfriend who has mysteriously gone missing – at least, as he remembers it, because no one else has any recollection of her having existed at all. The usual conspiracy tropes are deployed, though here mixed in with elements of time travel and manufactured memory. It all adds up to a world in which reality is shifting and nothing is secure – which is fair enough, but it does mean the end doesn't provide any kind of closure or conclusion, and I do like stories with an ending: a reason to finish at that point rather than somewhere else.
Resonance – another interesting but (for me) unsatisfying adventure game (again, despite a good review), my difficulties with this being mainly due to the complex control system. There are four controllable characters, and the inventory of each contains memories (both short-term and long-term) as well as objects, which provides just too many different ways one might try to achieve a desired result, even if you know what you're supposed to do. Eventually I gave up and followed a walkthrough, and I wasn't impressed by the story (something about a newly-discovered source of energy which could also be used as a weapon); I didn't really care about the characters or what happened to their world, and when one of them was revealed to be evil and to have been lying all along (how can this happen in a player character, with whom you're supposed to be building up empathy?) I lost patience. There are better games out there.
Operencia – turn-based role-playing game, essentially an old school dungeon crawler but with gorgeous graphics, good voice acting, and a decent story with a middle-European feel (the characters have names like Jóska, pronounced Yoshka) rather than the usual Dungeons and Dragons vibe (basically Americanised Tolkien). I enjoyed this very much, though I did need to go back a couple of chapters at one point (I'd chosen the wrong skills for my characters so they were too weak to overcome the increasingly lethal monsters). What made me abandon it in the end was a particularly nasty trap – a field of moving spikes – which I just didn't have the speed of hand-eye coordination to pass. A pity; I liked the character I created (an oriental hunter called Bao Zhai), and I did want to follow the story through to its conclusion.
Astrid: Murder in Paris – I listed this excellent French TV detective show in a post last year, but I found the latest season (the fourth) a bit disappointing; perhaps the show has passed its peak. We've already learned about the things which terrify Astrid and how she copes with them, and we know about Raphaëlle's chaotic personal life and how she tries to keep Astrid safe so that she can do her crime-solving autistic savant thing, so there's not the same pleasure of discovery. So I went back to Season 1 to enjoy the show from the start.
The Conversation – 1974 Francis Ford Coppola film, with Gene Hackman as a top-ranking surveillance engineer, tasked with covertly recording the conversation between a woman and a man in a city square. I'd been vaguely aware of this film, especially from the point of view of sound design, and I was delighted to discover how well it still works as a slow-burning thriller. The classic features of 1970s cinema – a sense of alienation and a snail-like pace – fit perfectly with the story and with Hackman's isolated, work-focused character. The soundscape, on which his professional intensity encourages you to concentrate, is truly haunting, particularly the conversation itself, which you hear repeatedly until you know it almost as well as Hackman's character does, and still there is something in it which you hear shockingly for the first time towards the end of the film. A true classic.
The Honourable Schoolboy by John Le Carré – audio book read by Michael Jayston, who played Peter Guillam in the BBC TV dramas, and who does a creditable impression of Alec Guiness when speaking as George Smiley, which is what one wants and expects. The story flicks between London, where Smiley is struggling to revive the reputation of the Circus after its betrayal by double-agent Bill Haydon (the Mole), and the Far East (Hong Kong, Vietnam, Cambodia), where dissolute aristocractic journalist Jerry Westerby (the Hourable Schoolboy of the title) is despatched as part of Smiley's plan to ensnare a mole within Red China. Sad and unhappy, like most of Le Carré's novels, but also powerful and vivid in an unpleasant way, dripping with tawdry 1970s atmosphere and a sense of the British Empire in its final decline.
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