(Week 13: March 24-30)

I took a break from rewriting old stories this week to start a brand new one. It’s a story that’s been batting around in my head for quite some years, and has even had much of the plot attached for a lot of that time. This week a few more of the missing pieces fell into place and the story decided that it was ready to be written.

I don’t have it completely ready in my head, so there may be a couple of sessions to get the first draft right, but I’m excited about finally getting started on this one.

Watching

This week the Elderbeast and I finished watching season one of Barry, starring Bill Hader. What a superb show—with Henry Winkler, in particular, getting a rare second shot at a career-defining role. I can’t really say too much about it (both because of spoilers, and because the show is not altogether easy to summarise) but both the Elderbeast and I loved the blend of comedy, pathos, darkness and slapstick that these eight episodes delivered. And I’m terrifically excited that a second season is just about to start.

For Fridate horror we revisited Nightmare On Elm Street. The viewing was marred slightly by some audio sync issues on the bluray, but if anything the film is better than I remembered (and it’s been a few years since my last viewing). I was particularly impressed by how quickly and efficiently the script gets things underway. It’s also interesting how Freddy is revealed almost right away—there’s plenty of mystery around exactly who he is and where he comes from, but the movie puts him front and centre fairly quickly without angling for any sort of a big reveal.

On Saturday I got to introduce my Awesome Partner to yet another one of my all-time favourite films: the 1978 remake of Invasion Of The Body Snatchers. One of the things I particularly enjoyed this time around was the steady pace at which we’re introduced to the various characters. We start off by establishing Brooke Adams and her husband (with some brilliantly economical character notes that offer just enough to leave us in no doubt when things start to go wrong). Only then do we meet Donald Sutherland, and get to understand his relationship with Brooke Adams. Finally, almost in the second act, we meet the other key characters—played by Jeff Goldblum, Leonard Nimoy and Veronica Cartwright. From that point there’s a superbly crafted build-up of menace as our characters realise all-too-late the scale of what they’re up against.

Reading

I decided I still needed a break from Dracula in my audiobook listening adventures, so I checked out some of the Twilight Zone Radio Dramas I’d picked up a while ago. These weren’t bad, but didn’t really engage me. There seems to be a stylistic difference between dramas that were crafted for the radio vs. the dramatisations that are put together today. Consequently, these Twilight Zone episodes came across as somewhat quaint.

On the plus side, they’re perfectly timed to last for one day’s worth of driving (i.e. the journey to and from work), so will make for great stopgaps if I fancy something different on a given day.