The Tale of King Crab is beautifully shot and the first half (called "Chapter 1") is engaging and slow, but not too slow. In early 19th century Italy, the son of a doctor is a drunk, in love with a shepherd's daughter, and angry that the local prince has shut off a door in his castle (?) walls that the shepherd uses a shortcut for pasturing his sheep. When he decides to burn down the door (with a molotov) and ends up burning the castle and killing the daughter (who may or may not have been assaulted by the prince's guards) who he didn't know was inside, he ends up being sent out of the country. "Chapter 2" finds him disguised as a priest in far southern Argentine looking for hidden treasure. What follows is fairly banal treasure hunt with unscrupulous treasure hunters... It felt so distant from the beginning. It comes back around right at the end to connect to some earlier moments, but mostly the treasure hunting part felt unnecessary.
Awake by Harald Voetmann is short novel about Pliny the Elder. Excerpts from his Natural History are accompanied by monologues of the elder, his nephew (Pliny the Younger), his slave, as well as a few more omniscient scene settings. I'm not sure yet what to make of it. Keeping it around to reread.
Started and gave up on a whole slew of books (mostly from the library) that failed to keep my interest. I probably should list them so I can remember later (and not get them a second time), but I can't now be bothered to look up the names. I went on a book request spree at the library and I don't think I finished any of them.
Midway through The Camera: Essence and Apparatus a collection of essays by Victor Burgin. At times it is very heavy on psychoanalytic theory early on, but I think that lessens as it goes (I've read two of the later essays elsewhere).
Saw Bringing Up Baby for maybe the first time the other night. I've seen so many of those screwball comedies but that is one I missed (I think cause it's not a favorite of Lianne's). And... it wasn't that great. At times funny, but it seems to much a series of comedy bits without a great sense of the two leads interest in each other. For one of Cavell's "comedy of remarriage" examples, I never get the "re" part out of it. The leads aren't together in the beginning (or previous to the beginning) and there's never really a break up. Much happier watching The Lady Eve, The Awful Truth or the like.
We followed it up with rewatching The Philadelphia Story for the umpteenth time. Always funny and enjoyable. I'm always impressed by Ruth Hussey as Liz the photographer, who (I looked it up) didn't have much of a film career (she was more on stage). She's in the background a lot in the movie but her delivery and expression is always great.
Reread Alan Moore's Neonomicon because I plan on rereading Providence (having recently reread From Hell and Promethea) and it's a kind of prequel/sequel to the latter (I'm forgetting exactly the relationship). Burrows' artwork is soooo stiff in the earlier work (iirc he's better in the latter, I guess those extra 5 years of practice paid off). It's all a little too awful content-wise, but I guess that is kind of the point.
