Happy Thursday, everyone! My sympathies to the rest of the country as they recover from a polar vortex. Meanwhile, my neighbor started his spring landscaping this morning. Moving to Virginia is...weird. But hey, let's see what I found this week!
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Ursula K. Le Guin (1929-2018) is a bit of a fascinating figure in New Wave science fiction to me. The daughter of author Theodora Kroeber and anthropologist Alfred Kroeber, she combined both of those careers into deeply humanist literature where humans and human analogues deal with different civilizations, both more and less (for lack of a better word), technologically advanced. Heart of Darkness, for instance, is about a representative from a coalition of human-descended worlds dealing with a planet that has humans who change gender along with the seasons, a work that is really relevant these days as we all learn about transgender.
The Word For World Is Forest is maybe not her best work (for me) but it's such an interesting piece of work about another planet with humans who only grow to a meter tall and have green fur. They have been invaded by more conventional, Terran-based humans for their lumber. Suffice to say (since we all know the terrible history of our species) things are not going well for the creechies, as the Terrans call them. How this all develops and works out for both species is really interesting and Le Guin can't help but write lyrically.
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The recent Oscar nomination for Brendan Fraser reminded me I have this and should watch it this week. It looks weird and dark and hey, Grace Zabriskie is in it! I have zero idea what's going on in this trailer but I can only imagine Grace is in this because hey, when you've done Twin Peaks you can do the weird.
The Passion of Darkly Noon isn't on any streaming package at the moment but is available for streaming and rent at the usual places.
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Short column this week but boy, do I have a treat for you if you've never seen this. It's been going around a bit again, but please, take the 6:21 and watch the Japanese gum commercial saga, over several commercials, of "Long Long Man." I'm so sorry about how this song is going to be trapped in your head for the next week.
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Remember, join me next Thursday for the first Invisible Man movie. John Whale's 1933 classic, starring Claude Rains as one of the biggest jerks in movie history.
Sadly, also not on your standard platforms but cheap to rent. Check your local library!
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