Watching - April 2024

Flat Pack Pop: Sweden's Music Miracle (2019)

A brief look at the history of Denniz Pop and Cheiron Studios, and their influence in the last couple of decades. Like the more detailed look in The Song Machine, it has a tendency to overstate how dominant their productions were (yes, I know Max Martin is ridiculously successful but there's still 95% of the chart that isn't made by him) but in a one hour documentary I suppose some corners have to be cut. Interesting but could really do with being a series - and by reducing Max Martin's subsequent success to the last ten minutes, it missed a significant part of the real story, to my mind.

Twins (1989)

Apparently, because Schwarzenegger and Devito took a slice of the profits, this ended up being one of their biggest paychecks - it was a big hit. Looking back now, it's a little hard to understand why: it's a pleasant enough film, with some mildly amusing moments. I hadn't seen it in literally decades and it was kind of fun to see it again.

Free Guy (2021)

I've watched this several times and I'd watch it again, mainly for Ryan Reynolds. This time, let's focus on Hollywood's ludicrous portrayal of "l33t hax0r skillz" - myriad windows popping up all over the place, fancy code visualisation graphics, a few taps on the keyboard to completely reprogram a game and then, just to really cap it all, a DOS prompt. FFS. (fwiw, a real programmer has open: one IDE, one Linux terminal, and multiple Stack Overflow tabs)

What If? (2023-)

I've been watching this channel for a few months now, and it's an on-going thing (videos are released at varying intervals), but I had to give it a mention. Each video is a few minutes long, and takes a question from xkcd's What If? archives and animates it, with a voice-over from Randall himself. Yes, they're just replays of what you could read online but they're sweet little videos. Worth a watch.

Brooklyn Nine-Nine (Season 1, 2013)

Despite having watched this about two years ago, I only remembered about half of it, which is odd, because it's very funny. Maybe that says more about me ... anyway, I wanted something to watch that's enjoyable and not too demanding, and I've never got past this first season. So here goes!

Reading - April 2024

The Déjà Glitch by Holly James (2023)

I love a time loop film, but one of the common features that has always bothered me is that at the end, everyone seems to be best friends with the person who's finally learned their lesson - even though they've only just met him that day! (as far as they're concerned anyway) This story is mainly from the other side of that relationship, which I don't think I've seen before, and it is surprisingly plausible (within the boundaries of a universe that has a time loop in it, of course). It's also a very readable and enjoyable contemporary romance.

Martin Simpson - Live

St. Mary's Church, Twyford

13 April, 2024

I have to admit, folk doesn't usually do much for me. As music, it's rarely interesting or exciting enough to keep me listening for long, and as for the words - well, lyrics aren't really my thing and in any case, the subject matter of folk songs is rarely something that I find engaging. But when a friend mentioned this concert, it seemed like a good opportunity to re-examine my prejudices and, at the very least, see one of Britain's most accomplished and legendary acoustic guitarists, in a beautiful, atmospheric venue only ten minutes from my house.

A fine specimen

Well, I'm afraid I'm no more enthusiastic about folk music afterwards, but it says something that when the gig ended, I was impressed to find that almost two-and-a-half hours had passed. Martin Simpson is an amazing guitarist and a seasoned pro who can easily keep an audience entertained with stories between songs, and the time only started dragging right at the end. Simpson's playing on his gorgeous Taran Tirga Mhor fan-fret acoustic was stellar, and the sound in the church was wonderful: clear and balanced and just the right volume.

I was surprised that there weren't any instrumentals, as I think it would have varied the pacing and dynamics of the set (and my companions at the gig confirmed that he usually features two or three). I wasn't surprised at the political opinions: Simpson is predictably left wing and got a few predictable cheers from predictable comments. I'm broadly sympathetic to such positions but I feel that these sound-bites cheapen the discussion and are out of place - yes, even at a gig like this, which might contain protest songs. Thankfully there wasn't much of it.

Overall, I'm pleased I got to see such a distinguished guitarist in the flesh, as I'm unlikely to do so again and certainly not so conveniently!