The Straw Dogs Consultancy Agency: Days 350 to 363

Aka 15 Jan to 28 Jan 2018

This fortnight I:

1. Brought some DVDs:

2. Finished watching the Person Of Interest boxset. Re-watching the series reminded me of how great and prescient it was (PRISM, Snowden, etc.) and how it developed over the years. When it started Person Of Interest was kinda like the Equalizer or The A Team, with the ‘A’ story being about an individual in danger and therefore in need of Mr Reese and Mr Finch’s help and a ‘B’ story about the ethics and implications of AI, spying on the public and personal freedom (this was occasional in the first season, but it came much more to the front as the series developed).

The entire crew did a great job of presenting a believable world and giving us characters to care about, even the recurring villains/bad guys, like Elias, Control, Root, etc. are portrayed as fully rounded individuals. Some even become good guys/anti-heroes! I became so engrossed with the characters that there were tears when some of them died. Highly recommended.

I also watched these DVDs:

The Man Who Would Be King, a great film with superb acting from Caine and Connelly. I was a little worried that as it is a Rudyard Kipling story it might be a bit racist, but aside from a scene on the train, it isn’t;

Platoon, a great Vietnam War movie, although I feel that some of its power has been diluted by the many Vietnam War movies and TV shows that followed it and repeated/reused the ropes in Platoon;

Little Big Man, a fun film about a child who is taken in by a Cheyenne tribe and what happens to him over the years (gun fighting, store owning and General Custer) and it’s an odd ‘cowboy’ film for the time as the Native Americans are portrayed sympathetically;

The Yakuza, is a great gangster flick starring Robert Mitchum, who, to help a friend recover his kidnapped daughter, returns to Japan and must deal with the Yakuza and his past in Japan;

Wind River, is written and directed by Taylor Sheridan, who also wrote Sicario and Hell Or High Water, and is as good as those films. In a nutshell a local girl is found dead in the woods and a local hunter/tracker and a rookie FBI agent team up to catch the killer(s) and covers issues like the treatment of Native American, friendship, grief and justice. A great film;

Jupiter Ascending, an ok sci-fi flick, some nice visuals and a straight forward storyline;

Bear Island, is one of my favourite movies and is about the child of a U-Boat commander making peace with his father’s history, gold, murder and climate change, all set in a beautiful barren Artic island;

Anatomy Of A Murder, stars James Stewart as a lawyer defending a client who murdered the man who raped his wife. It’s a great courtroom drama and it doesn’t make clear who the good guys are and who the bad guys are, as there are elements of doubt over whether the wife was raped or if the man who was killed was a lover, who the husband killed in a jealous rage rather than a justified rage;

Casino, is a mob film about a casino manager and his trials and tribulations and reunites De Niro and Pesci and is coda/follow-up to Goodfellas;

and

Sicario, I watched this again after watching Wind River, and it’s still as good the second-time round. There’s great acting, direction, photography (the film looks beautiful) and plenty of food for thought;

3. Tried to make GP appointment, but all I got was either a busy tone or a ‘sorry, all of today’s appointments have gone and you’ll have to call back tomorrow’!

4. Brought Simon Mills’ Poke EP (great Balearic/nu discoy tunes), the WattStax boxset (which I haven't listened to yet), Michael A Grammar’s Michael A Grammar album (which I haven't listened to yet), Turin Brakes’ Invisible Storm album (a good album, but the songs are not as memorable as their earlier songs) and a Slipknot Best Of album (which I haven't listened to yet):

...and listened to some other music Soulwax's Any Minute Now (great electroy/technoy/discoy music) and Dawn People's The Star Is Your Future album (kinda sounds like Krautrock crossed with hip-hop style sampling).

5. Had two New Comic Book Days:

6. Had a dentist appointment and was prescribed antibiotics for enflamed gums. I started them on the Saturday and felt a little dizzy, which got worse as time went on and by Monday I was feeling really woozy and out of it, so I stopped taking them. It turns out that I’d misremembered what antibiotic I was allergic too, so I went back to the dentist got my record updated and got a new prescription and my gums feel much better!

7. Got a haircut.

8. Watched some TV:

I caught up with Star Trek: Discovery (I’m not a big Star Trek fan, but I’ve enjoyed Discovery, maybe because it has more of an overarching storyline, rather than just lots of stand-alone stories);

VanHelsing (a vampire series that alternatives between being really good, e.g. different spins or vampire staples, taking unusual story turns, not dragging things out and really bad, e.g. sometimes the sets are terrible (I assume due to budget reasons), like dark shadows for a cave rather than rocks/walls, or over relying on coincidences to move the story forward); and

the new Stacey Dooley documentary on BBC3 (Stacey does a great job of tackling dark stories without being preachy, this documentary is about paedophiles who have been released form prison and how they reintegrate/live in society. When the show starts you’re thinking you’re going to be watching the worst people trying to excuse and minimise their crimes, but Stacey does a great job in humanising the situation (especially the families) that some of these paedophiles and their families are in and shows that in some cases the laws in the US may not be helping them reintegrate and not reoffend. There’s one case, where the guy claims that the girl he slept with lied to him about her age (by a few years) where you think that his case should be re-examined. She also confronts paedophiles who try to minimise/excuse what they did and doesn’t let them off the hook, pushing them to explain themselves and confront the reality of what they did, although often they run away instead!).

9. Brought some Playmobil toys to help decorate my shelves: