Media Consumption not-quite-Wednesday

[firecat]

Movies

Appleseed: Ex Machina
2007 anime movie. A sequel to the 2004 Appleseed, which I saw but can't remember a single thing about. Deunan, a human, and Briareos, originally human but now in a cyborg body, are lovers and special ops partners. (Spoilers for general plot points) Briareos is injured in a battle and while he is recovering, the team leader tries to pair Deunan with another agent, who looks like Briareos used to look when he was a human, because he's a bioroid engineered from Briareos's DNA. Deunan is not happy about any of this. Some people try to take over the world with a satellite network, and the special ops team tries to stop them. I really liked this for the beauty of the fight choreography (especially in the opening scenes), for the relationships, and for the exploration of body and identity issues. It's a bit like Ghost in the Shell but more grounded, if that makes any sense.


The Asphalt Jungle
1950 noir film directed by John Huston (who also directed The Maltese Falcon); stars include Sam Jaffe (who plays a great character, a German criminal mastermind); Marilyn Monroe plays a small supporting role that was her first major film role—and she is really something. Some people claim that this is the first heist film. Beautifully filmed in black-and-white. Pretty slow-paced in a way that I liked a lot. I cared about all the characters, which can be difficult to pull off in noir films. I also liked that there's almost no background music in the film.

Episodics

Elementary
For the 3.27 people who don't know, this is a crime drama series based very loosely on Conan Doyle's Holmes and Watson, set in present day New York City; Holmes is a drug addict in rehab and Watson is his minder; Holmes is a white guy and Watson is an Asian woman who used to be a surgeon.

I've watched a handful of episodes so far. It has a lot of elements that annoy me about Sherlock Holmes remakes and TV series in general, but there are also a lot of elements I like. Overall the good has slightly outweighed the annoying so far.

• Minus: I hate TV shows that are driven by a male character's asshole-ish behavior, especially if there are also folks around him who are applying "if you talk about your wounds, you will be healed and no longer an asshole" therapy.
• Minus: I hate it when Sherlock Holmes is portrayed as a socially inept asshole, or as an asshole who isn't really socially inept and so he comes out with super-sensitive social skills at key plot moments. Holmes is NOT an asshole in the original stories, nor is he socially inept. Sometimes he is brusque and sometimes he complains about how stupid most people are, but that's not the same thing. I can somewhat set aside this objection to stories set in modern times by telling myself it's not really supposed to be the original Holmes.
• Minus: I hate it when Sherlock Holmes is portrayed as working via particularly brilliant hunches and when he encourages people around him to pursue their hunches. The original Holmes was all about deduction, which is the opposite of hunches.
• Plus: I love the Joan Watson character. I love that she's a woman of color without that being a plot point. I love that she knows more about medicine than Holmes.
• Plus: I love that Holmes & Watson like and are interested in each other as people but do not appear to have romantic interest in each other. (At least not so far. And if that changes I will be pissed.)
• Plus: I like the convoluted plots that throw suspicion on one character after another.

Witch Hunter Robin
Thanks to azurelunatic, inkstone, and jennaria for recommending this anime series about a global organization that hunts down people who use magic to commit crimes. The title character was raised in a Roman Catholic convent before joining the organization.

I like this for the subtle character interaction (it gets closer to capturing coworker relationships than most stories about offices), for the spare animation style, and for the way characters' personalities and backgrounds are revealed a little bit at a time. I just finished watching an episode that was set in a homeless shelter, and I don't often see such subjects treated in anime.

Fiction

N.K. Jemisin, The Kingdom of Gods (The Inheritance Trilogy #3)
OMG SO GOOD. I'll try to put a few more words to my reactions when I've finished it.

Katherine Lampe, Demon Lover (Caitlin Ross #6)
I made a separate post about this.

J.R.R. Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring (Lord of the Rings #1)
When I was a pre-teen my dad and I read all the Tolkien books out loud a couple of times, and then I took over reading them myself once every few years; I've never written any fanfic about it, but I consider Middle-Earth one of my home fandoms, essentially. This is an audiobook version narrated by Rob Inglis. His narration is not exactly the way I would do it, and because I've read the book so many times I am persnickety about how I would do it. But he does quite a good job overall. I do rather dislike his singing of the songs and poetry, though. He has a superb singing voice, but I don't care for most of the "generic Celtic style" melodies (again, this is because I'm persnickety and have made up my own melodies for some of them). When Inglis narrates the poetry rather than singing, he does fine. Tolkien is a writer who must be read aloud to be fully appreciated.

I am sad that the racism and sexism fairies have been at this book since the last time I read it.