A miscellany of recent experiences of increasingly local interest

Rupunzel's Revenge: fun, short, subversive wild west fairytale graphic novel retelling of Rapunzel. A bit well meaningly raceblind but I still really enjoyed it.

There's a tv adaptation of Dirk Gently's Holistic agency on the ABC, first episode is still up on iView for anyone else in Australia. They took out all the aliens and literary references and extreme surrealness and turned it into a fairly generic quirky humourous British mystery show. Once I got over that I enjoyed it well enough.

I went to Morley today, after becoming increasingly dispirited about how sack-like and blah all the plus size clothing is I came across City Chic near Myer, which has not entirely ugly clothes in sizes 14 up. Very expensive of course, but I got a nice skirt on sale and the sales assistant was lovely (turns out she uses a wheelchair too a lot of the time) Rather biased towards apple shapes but they do remember the existence of waists.

I then explored the Coventry Square markets across the road. I didn't try any of the restaurants (though the sushi train at the front looks nicely accessible) and the shops in the middle are mostly crappy knick knacks but at the back are a number of really interesting butchers selling wild rabbit and pig faces, greengrocers with fresh oyster mushrooms and turmeric etc. Not worth going out of your way if you don't live nearby, but I'll certainly be going back.

More Reviews of things!

I rather overdid it today, and this sort of post keeps me from falling asleep at 7pm.

Rango: a straightforward but well made humourous CGI spaghetti western with talking animals which are BEAUTIFULLY animated. The cinematography and character design in this film are truly gorgeous, they really add to the humour and drama etc. It is alas rather racist and ableist, this didn't ruin the film for me but YMMV.

Becoming Loveless A cute sweet little comic about being aromantic.

Kino's Journey (2 episodes): Slow, gentle, atmospheric anime where not much happens, about a young traveller and their talking motorbike travelling between various strange lands. The final proof I needed that I cannot stand this kind of anime (see also: Mushishi, Haibane Renmai). I kept waiting for there to be ACTUAL PLOT that MEANT SOMETHING rather than subtle mediations on the bittersweet irony of life. Also the gentle tragedy of the first episode has a REALLY OBVIOUS SOLUTION which really didn't lessen my desire to walk in, slap everyone upside the head and take over the damn story. Um. But if you like this sort of thing it's pretty good for what it is :D

Fringe (First 3 disks of season 1): This is basically an updated, slightly kookier version of the X files. I really like the main character Olivia, a gritty bitter female FBI agent, but in general am not sure why I am enjoying it. Yet, I am!

Hanna: Thriller about a teenage girl trained in survival skills by her father in the wilderness, on the run from the FBI. A failed attempt at a good film, had some good moments but was patchy and tonally inconsistent. On the plus side: a thriller with a female main character who is neither sexualised nor evil!