Sun, 20 July: Weekly Review 71

I finished volume five of the Bocchi the Rock manga. The dynamic between drummer Nijika and her older sister Seika is explored more in this one. They share a tragic past (mum died) leading Seika to take over the mother role, especially since the mother asked her to look after Nijika just before she died. It’s a fairly standard trope, but a good one. The new season two anime series should be coming out soon, but it probably won’t feature any of this storyline, which comes later (unless they shoehorn it in).

I watched the Christopher Nolan film Interstellar again. This was the dvd version I bought yesterday. At over two and a half hours it’s always an epic session, but I watched it all in one go. This time I added the English subtitles, because I often have trouble following the dialogue in Nolan films (biggest perpetrator was Tenet!). I still have problems with the scene near the end where they fight their way out of the planet’s gravity well, only to be caught in the black hole’s gravity well seemingly seconds after. The sequence inside the black hole also asks us to take a lot on faith. How did Coop (Matthew McConnaughe) fiddle with that watch to create that morse code message? That ice planet that Matt Damon’s character lands on still gives me the willies. I completely understand why he went mad – ‘few men have been tested like me’. But it’s a magnificent science fiction (and I’d say horror) film. I continue to give it four and a half stars on Letterboxd. The missing half star is for the aforementioned flaws.

I’ve been listening to Gordon Lightfoot’s A Painter Passing Through album in the car and it’s really growing on me. It’s just a clean immaculate sound with crisp playing and singing and songwriting, I’m digging it. Standout tracks so far are the title track, Yonge Street, Much To My Surprise and I Was Once a Country Singer, but everything’s good. Weirdly, something about it reminds me of the Go Betweens. I imagine Robert Forster must be a fan. And Gordo’s voice, although slightly raw, easily beats out Dylan’s from this period.

I read a second Modesty Blaise graphic novel called The Mind of Mrs Blake. The titled character is a psychic who senses impressions of objects and is based on a real life psychic that author Peter O’Donnell once ghost wrote for (surely as a psychic she could’ve conjured up her own ghost, yuk, yuk?). An interesting premise. He throws in some Cold War intrigue and some good old fashioned revenge into the mix.

I read the last story of the Modesty Blaise graphic novel I borrowed. It was called Uncle Happy. Happy is actually a psycho who runs an extensive prostitute ring with his wife, who is equally psychotic. Modesty and Willie Garvin have to infiltrate his island compound to get evidence of their wrong doing, which includes murdering various hapless people who come into their orbit. The final running battle between Modesty and Willie and Happy’s henchmen plays out in a similar way to the climax of the first novel. It even ends on a similar note with Modesty crying in Willie’s arms after the battle. I really enjoyed these three stories and can’t wait to devour more when they become available.

I watched the dvd of Dracula: Voyage of the Demeter. This is an expanded imagining of a chapter from the novel, and I liked that about it. Bram Stoker was vague about what happened, so how did it play out? This version is pretty interesting, but it feels simply a lot like Alien on a ship, with Drac bumping off the crewman bit by bit. I like the main character Clemens, who is a black ships surgeon played by Corey Hawkins. There are some tense moments and some outright horror as a very animalistic Drac puts the bite on people, and crew members infected by Dracula’s bite burn up in the sun. But the most memorable thing for me was the living death of the young boy, Toby. I won’t go into details, but it is horrifyingly haunting. I have to say it was overall an average film. I gave it three stars on Letterboxd without a Like. But now I know at least one version of how it happened.

One of the news items that’s happened lately was the burning of a door on a Synagogue here in Melbourne. It caused a lot of moral panic about anti-semitism. There’s been an investigation about the perpetrators and their motives, and as the Age mentioned on its front page today, the investigation has stalled. The internet is rife with theories about this, most leading towards the vandalism being a false flag operation with the ultimate culprits being Zionists stoking moral outrage. I don’t know if we’ll ever get to the bottom of this, but I’m sure about one thing. While the moral panic was shouted to the roof by the mainstream media, I’ll bet the cover up (if cover up it is) will barely get a mention. Kudos to the Age for at least following it up.

I spent the evening with Lui and his fam. It was the usual good time, with an Indian dinner thrown in for a change from pizza. Lui regaled us with the story of how he and his father once visited the old Channel 10 TV studio to attend a taping of the old quiz show The Price Is Right. They were there because Lui’s dad’s company, which made window blinds, had listed the free installation of the blinds as one of the main prizes. That night the prize went off and some lucky contestant won everything, including the free blinds. The problem was, Lui’s dad’s company, which was only just starting and used the offer to drum up publicity, didn’t even have the plastic needed to make the damn things at the time. And a week or two later, the prize went off again. So his dad was stuck with supplying two new customers with free blinds and installation before they’d even started! His company later got the contract to do the entirety of the Menzies Building at Monash University, which must have helped. But it would’ve been a big job for such a small company. The place is huge. Lui went to that university, and it must have been strange looking up at that building and seeing his dad’s blinds in all the windows.

After the talk we watched some episodes of a Danish show called Families Like Ours. It was about the impact of global warming in the near future where Holland is going under and the people have to be relocated, then Denmark follows suite. It was good because it didn’t go all science fiction blockbuster on us, like a typical Hollywood show would. It just focused on the human drama of one family dealing with the ethical and social issues of relocation and becoming refugees. It’s on SBS On Demand, and I thought I would not be able to watch it coz it’s not on my Playstation. But I forgot it is on my Smart TV (which I rarely use for internet because the picture sometimes looks strange), so I will continue with it there.

I’ve started listening to the new Twice album This Is For on Spotify. It’s early days, so I won’t judge, but for some reason it just doesn’t feel the same. Have my feelings changed about Kpop?

I watched some Youtubes, mostly K-pop themed. One was a nice choreography video of Twice doing the dance for This Is For. The song is definitely starting to grow on me, and the dance is pretty good. The synchronised foot stamps and claps and shouts of the live audio really give the clip an extra dimension, and the members’ moves line up nicely. Now the This Is For video is out we have a MV Reaction follow-up from the members. This was a fun dissection of the clip with Nayeon, Momo and Jihyo as usual being the most animated. The overall meaning of the clip was discussed, with most agreeing it had something to do with them all being cats, as cats feature quite a bit in it. I can’t wait for the Making of series now. There was also a reality tv thing called Dirty Workshop that has the Aespa members going through their leisurely paces starting up a pseudo business called (ae) company. Each member was assigned a position within the company, with Ningning getting the choice spot of Company Manager. It was silly fun, but I think Twice did it better with their Time To Twice version of the same concept. Speaking of which (again), the last thing I watched was a terrific clip from studio PARN of the Twice girls attending some outdoor fan meeting. They were all dressed in shirts, jackets and ties (their ‘For’ concept) and looked cool as fuck. They also looked tired, which added to their air of jaded coolness. At one point Jihyo sternly exhorted the fans, ‘Why aren’t you asking questions, Once?’ Nayeon looked particularly fagged and seemed to throw a small (but funny) tantrum at one point. The other members mainly stood around holding their mikes looking bemused at the crowd, who seemed to want spoilers for the album. I need some more context to this clip.

I went to the K-pop Time store to take possession of my latest K-pop orders that had arrived. These were Aespa’s Dirty Work single cd, the Kpop Demon Hunters Takedown seven inch single, and Twice’s new full-length Korean album, This Is For. Whilst there I also grabbed the Misamo Haute Couture Tokyo Dome bluray. They were also giving away lucky dip albums to purchasers, so I grabbed what ended up being the first album by boy band Oneus. The unboxing of all this when I got home was fun, though I was a bit disappointed about the Oneus album – hoped it would at least be a girl group – but I can’t complain. Oh, I was also disappointed by the Aespa single. I thought it would at least be an EP with other tracks, but it was just the one song plus its instrumental version. All this for twenty eight bucks! Damn! The Takedown single comes in delicious purple vinyl and a nice picture sleeve. There was also a card and I pulled the Jeongyeon. Very cute. The Twice album was the ‘This’ concept with all the members in blue, which I don’t love. I should’ve got the ‘For’ version where they’re wearing those cool suites. Well, I could still do it, but don’t think I will because I’ll be getting the digipak version anyway. There were five cards in this pack and I got two Momos, a Jihyo, a Tzuyu and a Jeongyeon. No Mina, damn.

I’ve been listening to the new Twice album over the last couple of days and I’m definitely warming to it. The single This Is For is actually a girl power anthem banger and very catchy. I’m especially loving a song called Seesaw, and the last track, Heartbreak Avenue. I guess my feelings haven’t changed about Kpop, or Twice. I still love them.

I saw on Twitter/X that one of the mangas I’ve been reading, namely Rumiko Takahashi’s Mao, is going to be made into an anime for next year. This is good news. Can never have too much Rumiko anime! The studio doing it is Sunrise, who did her Inuyasha manga. And that is a classic. So high hopes for a good adaptation.

I had a chat with Michael, one of my patrons on the van run today. He had borrowed the autobiography of Ricky Lee Jones called Last Chance Texaco and gave me a round up including an appraisal of the albums, most of which I’m not familiar with. Seems to know his stuff. I’ll have to get into listening to them – especially since I have the first five and only know the first one. He talked about a recent live album she did where, in doing Texaco, she repeats that ‘eeeyyyoow’ sound at the end. I was amused and surprised that he referenced that, as I was thinking of it recently when I played the album. I was at least able to let him know that was her doing a vocal doppler effect.

I got a strange fan letter email from someone who said they’d read my novel, Eye of the Timegate, and enjoyed it. This was strange because I thought I’d withdrawn all the electronic copies from the internet because I want to release a new iteration of it. I guess some may have stayed up, I don’t know. The email’s by someone called Kenny Jerome, and old Kenny’s review of my novel couldn’t be more glowing. I fairly blushed reading it. Not one criticism, nothing but praise – and more importantly, targeted praise, name-checking my main characters Kathy and Lina and accurately pinpointing my main themes. But I have to admit, I wonder if the letter’s not AI. And I wonder what Kenny wants, if anything. I’ll send a reply and see what comes up. But all of this has got me thinking about the novel, and the second unfinished one. Should I get a move on with those?

I put in my order for some more Twice stuff with K-pop Time. This time it was the digipak of the new album (Mina version), and also the soon to be released new Japanese album, Enemy. I’m getting the dvd version.

I’ve had Twice’s This Is For on high rotation on all my media. Listened to it all day in the van on the run on Spotify. I’m also listening to it in the car on the cd player. Listened to it on the home stereo with the subby pumping. It never stops. I’m quite amazed how much of it’s in English. Is this JYP’s big bid to get them played in the US? It feels a bit jarring having so many songs completely in English. By my count only three tracks have any Korean in them, one of them being the divine Seesaw. Man, the melody in this song is gorgeous. It’s so stuck in my head in a good way. There are five sub-unit songs in various groupings, and my favourites so far are Let Love Go and GOAT. The song Talk, which features only Nayeon and Jihyo, should be a highlight of the album, but it isn’t. I don’t know why but JYP’s people chose a very downbeat song (and especially the chorus) for the members who are the chorus queens and should be belting out vocals all over the place. What happened? Options is a nice song (apparently a favourite of the members) and has a verse that’s sung very low. I must find out who it is, because it’s striking. My money’s on Momo. I wonder if the vocal was electronically lowered? So it’s a good album, the album they’ll be touring with all the rest of this year, so yay.