2020-07-12 08:35
Finished up my rewatch of The Witcher yesterday. Even on second viewing the final episode felt like a long waste of effort. There just wasn't a need for a large extended, convoluted battle scene. It puts a lot of focus on characters that were otherwise undeveloped and seems to diminish this awful battle (never directly narrated in the books, only referred to afterwards) by making it a seen event. Ended up playing some of The Witcher 3 yesterday too, as I'm out of new games to play, and was feeling like doing something interactive.
Watched part of one and all of another of the Criterion western noirs yesterday. Lust for Gold had a truly awful beginning so I gave up on it. Rancho Notorious a Fritz Lang directed one was... ok. None of the actors were particularly engaging (not a Marlene Dietrich fan and the lead man whose name I missed was pretty bad) and the revenge plot was just not much. It had a truly awful ballad that showed up quite a few times in the movie; the lyrics made me wince every time a new verse was added.
I have been reading Mervyn Peake's Titus Groan but I think I'm giving up on it. I see it mentioned as a fantasy book/series well regarded and worth reading, but it's just not keeping me interested. Partially the plot is so far pretty non-existent and a lot more because the writing is just overly descriptive. There are just too many words describing rooms and characters and I just can't find that engaging over a long period of time. I've got a whole pile of books to pick up from the library this week, so I think this one will go back on a shelf or pile.
Also reading Michel Leiris' The Ribbon at Olympia's Throat which is a fragmented work of short prose and poetry, autobiography, dreams, criticism. It's a strange book that I am not totally sure about yet. Leiris was a very old man by the time he wrote it (80ish?) and he has a very friendly style, but also writes very long convoluted sentences. At times the writing feels too personal, where much context and many referents are unsaid, making it abstract.