2021-02-15 11:01
I remember hearing about Olivier Assayas' Demonlover back when it came out in 2002 because it had a soundtrack by Sonic Youth. I don't think at that point I had seen any of his movies, though I have watched quite a few in the past year (some I liked more than others, but some of the ones I liked I really liked). It's out in a new remaster, so I watched it online via the Lincoln Center site. It's a pretty dark narrative about corporate espionage, very cyberpunk in a way, despite the now out of date tech in it. A woman is acting as a double agent in some kind of deal where a French company is acquiring (I think) a japanese animation company (that seems to mostly make porn) and also making a deal with a US company that deals in websites (also mostly porn). There is all the expected genre elements: drugging someone secretly, breaking into a hotel room, a fight or two, unclear loyalties, double crosses and double agents, international travel, affairs, even a car chase. By the end it's pretty dark. I'm not on the whole sure... what the point was. It's a lot of people doing shitty things for... money, I guess. Seems like there's a point where I start liking Assayas movies, certainly a few of the most recent ones.
Had a fun D&D session, a little one-off ███ ran interrupting our ongoing campaign because we couldn't all make the session. He threw together a little mystery involving the knight my character is in love with (but has never met). It was almost all role-playing and making weird plans and almost no dice rolling. Only one brief combat that for once ended fairly quickly with our opponents surrendering. Not the way most 5e sessions seem to end up. Also went to show how much playing one can get out of a setup, a few NPCs, and a single map (at least we only saw 1 map).
Last night while we were in the living room watching tv, I looked over and there was a raccoon staring in the porch door at us. I've known they like to walk across porch, as sometimes on wet days I see their hand like paw prints, but that was the first time I saw one so blatantly spying on us.
Just finished reading issue 3 of Frank Santoro's Caniffer zine. The series is all about the "ohio school" of comic artists Frank has been studying: Caniff, Sickles, Graff, etc. Very low-fi old school zine: pasted together copies from the strips, typed text with mistakes just crossed out, annotations hand written in, limited color, cash in the mail only, a labor of love. Really enjoying it, a history lesson in Frank's pretty distinctive voice. He also includes extra copies with the zine, like the latest has a Graff and a Caniff strip copied at full original art size, which really makes you see how much the art gets reduced, in the old newspaper but also even in modern day reprints.