Christmas labels
😕
I made good progress, but I’m feeling the pressure. I’m at the worry stage of the project, where I don’t know if I can come up with the right ideas and make the right decisions at the right times to make it all turn out well. But really it’ll end up fine like it always does.
Movies
😎
I rewatched The Dark Crystal and liked it better this time. I watched it as a prelude to watching the prequel series from a few years ago, The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance. I heard about the series on The Climate Pod, which did an interview with one of the executive producers, Javier Grillo-Marxuach.
The first time I watched the movie, I remember being annoyed with the protagonist for being so simple minded. In fact, I thought of it as the movie’s defining feature. This time I was expecting it, so I could pay more attention to the movie’s incredible display of puppetry and its evocative aesthetic. It made me want to rewatch all the other fantasy movies from that period.
I even found a new appreciation for the main character. He really was not prepared for this challenge, and it added palpable tension to the plot. The world’s fate was in the hands of two people who stumbled into their roles, and events could easily have gone completely wrong.
Dune: Part One made me more interested in revisiting the book. I saw this with Jeremy on Saturday, and we were both impressed, but he remembered much more of the book, so he was in a better position to be impressed with the adaptation. What I could say is that the movie made the story’s political situation very clear, which I probably wouldn’t have said about the book. Now I have to relisten and find out.
While being dazzled by the movie, I also felt at home there. It had the kind of aesthetic I would’ve gone for if I knew how to make movies and were making one like this, with a naturalistic feel rather than stylized and polished, probably with a similar kind of slab-like architecture, except that my film would’ve been less inventive. I was especially intrigued by its use of sound and language.
Music
🙂
I’ve been listening to a winter instrumentals playlist. It’s not very Christmasy, which is on purpose, since I’m expecting to listen to this music past the holiday. In fact, it’s a lot like the fall music, so I’ll be looking for more variety in a cold and snowy direction. These playlists are part of a project that’s emerging where I organize more of my life around the seasons.
