I was sound asleep at 12:30 am the night before last when the guy delivered my delayed baggage, and I feel like I could have slept through the night. However, last night I was wide awake at 1:30 am and remained more or less awake for the next couple of hours. Jet lag, man. It’s a drag.
I was trying to remember what the other movie was that I watched on my way to Japan and it finally came to me: a very odd indie film called The Lobster. It’s a dystopian flick set in a time and place where it is against the law to be unattached. If your partner dies or leaves you, you have 45 days to get a new one. You’re shipped off to this hotel resort with other singles and if you fail to connect with someone after that period (it’s a little fluid, because there are ways of extending your deadline), you are turned into the animal of your choice. Colin Farrell picks a lobster because they have blue blood (status), live a long time and are fertile all their lives. The hotel is run by Olivia Coleman, and John C. Reilly and Ben Whishaw are among his fellow desperately seeking singles. It has the feel of a Wes Anderson movie, with voiceover narration provided by Rachel Weisz, who enters the film later as a renegade single who lives in the nearby forest.
What’s it all about? I couldn’t possibly tell you, but it seems to have something to say about loneliness and togetherness. And poking your eyes out with a sharp stick. It’s surreal and absurd and I think I liked it.
I finished the fourth Game of Thrones novel and I think that Martin made a huge mis-step there. Once he discovered that the novel was going to be too long, he decided to split it into two books, which is all well and good. However, instead of slicing it in half temporally, he divides the two books by character, which means that Jon Snow, Daenerys and Tyrion, three of the series’ most interesting characters, don’t appear in it at all. It’s bad enough reading the books now, having to wait a couple of weeks to get to the fifth book to find out what’s going on with them. I can’t imagine what it was like for people reading the books upon release having to wait six more years (after waiting five years for the fourth novel) to catch up with them. Well, as someone who read The Dark Tower books as they came out, I can sort of sympathize. I can’t imagine that HBO did the same thing with the TV adaptation. I’m only at the beginning of the third season there, though.
I started watching the Netflix original Bloodline last night. Intrigued enough to carry on.
