Birdboy: The Forgotten Children

Written and Directed by Pedro Rivero and Alberto Vaquez

Film

A allegorically and visually rich tale that I thoroughly enjoyed. Parts of it are kind of messy, particularly at the beginning and end, but the sheer amount of good elsewhere makes it easy to overlook. Wonderful stuff.

ELDERBORN

Hyperstrange

Video Game

Fun but easy combat, great visual designs, and noticably poor signposting at crucial moments congeal into something I really should have fallen for but couldn’t really. That being said heft on a few of those weapons is a thing to behold, particularly the heavy ones. Story also was weird and didn’t do it for me.

Paradise on Fire

Jewell Parker Rhodes

Novel

Quick read that didn’t do much for me. Most heavy handed environmentalism message this side of the racist crying Native from the 70’s, sans the racism.

The Man in the White Jacket

Directed by Alexander Mackendrick, Written by Roger McDougall, John Dighton and Alexander Mackendrick

Film

This is a strange film. Despite be called everywhere I can find a comedy it is pretty light on jokes, even the implicit kind, and when it goes for them they often fall flat. The script however is really great and remarkably pro-union, even given the lead union role to a woman which blew all my expectations for the time period out of the water, touching on the push and pull between capital, labor, and innovation in a just past baby steps manner. On the other hand yet again, with the notable exception of a quasi-montage sequence in the middle, the filmmaking is just a step above okay.

Back on the topic of the script, while bringing up the perverse situations in which advancements in technology can lead to labor and capital seemingly aligning in interests, it refuses to go beyond “oh no invention puts us out of jobs/products.” Yes, in the short term in this case their interests are aligned, but that presumes the continuation of the status quo outside of this incident – loss of jobs are only important if you need them to live. If the status quo, wage labor under capitalism, were not treated as immutable then it would be clear that removal of exploitative labor would be a almost unquestionable good, freeing them to do whatever else. Since it does treat the status quo as untouchable, the conclusion follows that labor must align itself with capital in order to ensure the continuation of the status quo – a self-fulfilling prophecy.

That was pretty shit and hard to read, I think I should read more Marxist literature before writing one of these again. Sorry to people who suffered through that.

Also I’m not into headcanoning characters with various orientations, but Sidney is almost certainly Ace if not Aroace.