The Ballad of Buster Scruggs

Written and Directed by Joen and Ethan Coen, Based on works by Jack London and Stewart Edward White

Film

Mixed bag of tedious to quite enjoyable, leaning towards the latter more than the former. I’m a big lover of the Coen’s work and this is probably my least favorite of theirs I’ve seen, and yet it still had its moments. Brain mush, can’t write more.

Robin Wright at The Congress

Written and Directed by Ari Folman, Based on “The Futurological Congress” by Stanislaw Lem

Film

This film attempts to graft two science fiction concepts on top of each other, while poorly executing both, confusing all potenital exploration of the topics. It might be tempting to call the “scanning actors into computers to animate” as being ahead of its time, but that idea has been kicking around for a loooooong time, and even if it weren’t the exploration here is still surface level at best. The story you can feel them wanting to tell is clearly the digitization one, but not only is that part executed seemingly without any passion, it then has to be grafted upon the shoulders of fantastic novel by Lem. There is enough even just conceptually, let alone thematically or allegorically, with the novel to fit into this film’s runtime even if it devoted itself wholeheartedly to it, and at best it devotes maybe ~40 minutes. I will commend the animation for looking pretty good, but nothing else really works. In theory this kind of bizarre half live action, half animated sci-fi part adaption of a classic should be right up my alley but they fumbled hard on the execution in a myriad of ways.

That’s incoherent, but you see I did it on purpose as reference to the film(which was coherent but bland)

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George Wylesol

Comic

A science-fiction adventure game in the shape of a graphic novel. This is so incredibly my shit that I don’t really know what to say. Please get this and have pen and paper at the ready.

There are a few quibbles I have with it though: couple page numbers seemed flipped, 2-3 puzzles seem non-sequitors, and a few times so many options are presented it’s a bit overwhelming. Those are pretty minor and honestly in some weird way might add to the experience.

Weeee this was good now I gotta get the rest of the guys stuff :)

Also started reading Monster by Naoki Urasawa and roughly one volume in I am very interested. Even if I think I might be hitting my “work place/interpersonal politics is hell” breakpoint soon, though that seems to be not the focus. Excited to see where it goes from here :)