Tag: Consumption

Book review: Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow

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Tomorrow and Tomorrow and TomorrowTomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow by M. Barnard Eldershaw
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I can’t say that I’ve ever been too aware of Australian sci-fi, which is more my failing than that of the genre. But I’d heard Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow spoken of in reverential tones, a kind of feminist, socialist meditation on war, peace and politics, conveyed through an historical novel told within a science-fiction framework. And I must admit, I was intrigued.

Then I read that Patrick White thought the book was pretty good, and that made me even more interested, as I couldn’t really recall stories of him liking anything, so I figured it must be good.

And it is, with caveats. Continue reading “Book review: Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow” →

Opera Australia’s My Fair Lady

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I spent some of last night watching a dress rehearsal of the new production of Lerner and Loewe’s My Fair Lady, as performed by Opera Australia, and thought I’d cobble together some thoughts.

The musical, based on Shaw’s Pygmalion, tells the story of Henry Higgins, a self-involved phoneticist who enters a bet with a military colleague to turn a Cockney flower girl, Eliza Doolittle, into someone with the carriage – and diction – of a princess. All of which is carried out to a soundtrack you’ll know, even if you think you don’t.  Continue reading “Opera Australia’s My Fair Lady” →

Jetpack outta Hell

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Just a quick entry, as I’m aware I’ve not written about anything for a while. I wanted to just assure people that I’m a) alive and b) not a fan of the terrible God of War clone that is Dante’s Inferno. You can probably glean all you need to know from that terrible trailer above.

The upshot of the game is that Dante’s Inferno is the be-ringed skeleton upon which a dire knockoff game was hung. I think I scored this free on the PSN one month, so I hadn’t had much investment in it anyway, but upon playing a couple of hours of it – ecccch. It’s derivative, features a psychopathic lead who has stitched his garment into his skin, and is trying to get his girlfriend back from the clutches of Hell because he boned someone while on the Crusades, once.

Well, something like that. Continue reading “Jetpack outta Hell” →

On Firewatch

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Despite the best efforts of my video card and Windows 10 to stop me, I recently completed Campo Santo’s Firewatch, an adventure game. It’s become the favourite thing I’ve played in the past year, I think, partially for its design, but also for the way it’s unafraid to put story first, mechanics second.

The game takes place in Wyoming’s Shoshone National Forest, a wilderness of almost 10,000 square kilometres. It’s 1989, the year after the calamitous Yellowstone fires, and you play the part of Henry, a bearded, chubby dude (voiced by Rich Sommer, Mad Men‘s Harry Crane) who takes a summer job as a fire watcher to place some distance between himself and his life’s problems.

(I don’t want to explain the problems too much – there’s a surprising amount of determining your own variant of the story in its opening minutes, and they’re certainly emotional.) Continue reading “On Firewatch” →

Book review: Dogs and Demons: The Fall of Modern Japan

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Dogs and Demons: The Fall of Modern JapanDogs and Demons: The Fall of Modern Japan by Alex Kerr
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This is the second of Alex Kerr’s books on Japan that I’ve read, and it certainly doesn’t hold back. It’s critical – rightly so, in many cases – of the ornate, backhander-rich culture that permeates government and industry, of the blinkered educational aims of the country, of the done-with-mirrors, waiting-for-collapse economic system, the addiction to government works and needless halls that bankrupt cities and swell construction coffers, the lack of regulation and the wholesale disregard for culture, simplicity and the landscape which outsiders associate with Japan.

The man’s distaste and fear couldn’t be better conveyed if each chapter were entitled SHIT’S FUCKED in 72-point type, followed by pages of onomatopoeic screams.

And yet part of me – as a big ole gaijin myself – wonders how much of the writing is the result of the foreign lens being brought to bear, with the baggage that brings. Continue reading “Book review: Dogs and Demons: The Fall of Modern Japan” →

The Priest of the Invisible

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As part of an attempt to become more organised (and to eke more out of my hours) I’ve recently begun scheduling things I’d like to do. It’s not quite as cold as it sounds, and it affords me the ability to ensure I do things I like, but which often suffer in the throes of a Wikipedia hole or a TV Tropes vortex.

One of the things on my list is to read a poem a day. Every day. One poem. This is to counter the fact that though I like poetry, and though I spent four years at university reading books – some of which were made up of poems! – I still feel myself to be a low-watt bulb when it comes to poetry. It’s something I like, and have liked for a long time, but something I feel kind of stupid around, like I’ve turned up to a fancy restaurant in tracksuit pants. Continue reading “The Priest of the Invisible” →

Keeping Bad Company, twice

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Continuing the play-through-the-PS3-backlog project, I’ve just completed the two Battlefield: Bad Company games, my first proper excursion into the Battlefield world. I didn’t play any of the multiplayer, so I assume this means I am now an associate dudebro. Continue reading “Keeping Bad Company, twice” →

Running out of Forgotten Sands

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So I finally reached the end of my Prince of Persia saga, and have found it’s concluded not with a bang, but a whimper. A pretty whimper but a whimper nonetheless.

Prince of Persia: The Forgotten Sands is not, as you’d expect from the cover, a tie-in with 2010’s moustache-twirling film. Continue reading “Running out of Forgotten Sands” →

Book review: Burial Rites

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Burial RitesBurial Rites by Hannah Kent
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Time to enthuse: this is one of the most striking first novels I’ve read in a long time. It’d sat on my shelf for a while, and I grabbed it as I hustled for a bus, so I approached it with no real expectations. So to end up reading something that came across as a more astringent cross between Atwood’s Alias Grace and the austere bones of Miller’s The Crucible was a surprise, to say the least.

Kent’s book is rooted in history and tells of the final weeks of Agnes Magnusdottir’s life. It’s the story of the last woman executed in Iceland, Continue reading “Book review: Burial Rites” →

Prince of Arse?

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My sporadic attempt to play through the Prince of Persia games continues apace with a whip through 2008’s Prince of Persia. Fancy a trailer?

There you go.

Firstly, wow. I know that I’ve most recently been playing fancified versions of the original console trilogy, but this game is very pretty – almost pretty enough to counteract a few of its glaring flaws. In this episode, you’re wandering around and stumble into a battle between a couple of gods who’re somehow involved in a family matter.Maybe.  Continue reading “Prince of Arse?” →