Happy Thursday, everyone! It's a nice sunny day here in Richmond and it's kind of nice to be in the 50s a week into December. I haven't had much chance to go shopping this week due to plumbing issues in the house, which is real fun, but I did find a few things to take a look at.
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I meant to rewatch this during Shocktober, but just never got around to it. I've been loving Ari Aster's work so far (it seems weird that next year's Disappointment Blvd. will be only his third movie) and this movie is a great example of why, with its slow unfolding of what is actually going on and anchored by great performances. (I particularly like a great use of Will Poulter's brand of smarmy jerk boy.). It's a great example of modern horror and how people like Reeder and Aster and Eggers are doing great work in the field, some of them reaching back in their influences to things like The Innocents and The Haunting.
You'll note I've deliberately not said much about the plot because a lot of this should be seen as blind as possible. Just go in for Florence Pugh as well, because she's freaking great here.
Midsommar is available on the various Showtime streaming channels as well as Kanopy.
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Found this really nice set from 2004 for George Lucas' first movie, THX 1138, and one thing I'm happy to see is that it includes his student film version, Electronic Labyrinth: THX 1138 4EB, that he made in 1967 when he was a student at USC. The feature film from 1971 is an interestingly cold and scary future story of people whose emotions are controlled by a dispassionate government. This is part of Robert Duvall's excellent run of film acting, a year before The Godfather (and Frances Ford Coppola, director of that, is also a producer here as this is an American Zoetrope production). It's very much worth your time if you've never seen it, a very interesting piece of 1970s dystopian science-fiction.
THX 1138 is not currently streaming for free, but is available for rent and purchase at the usual places.
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Dreams Before The Start Of Time is this week's blind buy. Part of it was noting it's an Arthur C. Clarke Award (given to the best first British science-fiction novel of that year) and part of it was this back cover description, which is really intriguing:
"In a near-future London, Millie Dack places her hand on her belly to feel her baby kick, resolute in her decision to be a single parent. Across town, her closest friend―a hungover Toni Munroe―steps into the shower and places her hand on a medic console. The diagnosis is devastating.
In this stunning, bittersweet family saga, Millie and Toni experience the aftershocks of human progress as their children and grandchildren embrace new ways of making babies. When infertility is a thing of the past, a man can create a child without a woman, a woman can create a child without a man, and artificial wombs eliminate the struggles of pregnancy. But what does it mean to be a parent? A child? A family?
Through a series of interconnected vignettes that spans five generations and three continents, this emotionally taut story explores the anxieties that arise when the science of fertility claims to deliver all the answers."
Generally good critical reviews, and then this pops up in the Amazon customer reviews and the dismissive nonsense of this comment made me definitely pick it up because absolutely, this novel made someone angry and I had to check it out:
"It was like reading a gossip-filled woman's magazine."
Like...wow. This novel got under someone's skin so bad and they had to post what they thought was a legitimate criticism.
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