HYPERTEXT WONDERLAND

I open this post by mentioning the lamentable point that I haven’t watched many films lately. Why?, you, the beautiful and intelligent reader, are inevitably asking. Well, because I’ve been confined to a small bedroom back at my dad’s and haven’t had access to my big screen TV. I am, after all, a man who eschews small screens as the pinnacle of film-watching when a big screen a-beckons. I'm okay with it. But it's all about to change because I just subscribed to MUBI . If you haven’t heard of that before it’s a fantastic thing. It's a bit like Netflix, if Netflix had a good choice of foreign films rather than literally zero. MUBI’s mantra is that it features a new film every day - the catch being that there are only ever 30 films available at one time. This means that if you’re unorganised, or maybe just forgetful, then there’s a good chance you’ll miss that Swedish masterpiece you kept meaning to watch. This week, I took the opportunity to watch two films offered as pa...

A controversial opinion I have about games is that there only two or three good ones released every year. I'm sure many will disagree but these days I get far less enjoyment from keeping up with the latest titles. Thankfully  Breath of the Wild   is one that's been worth doing so for. It’s a game I’ve now spent about twenty hours playing since it came out just over a week ago and an experience I've really enjoyed immensely despite flip-flopping on the Zelda series as a whole. For that I’m thankful but so far I've only managed to complete one of the games' dungeons. I’ve spent the rest of my time exploring - taking in the sights and sounds of the game's absolutely humongous open-world. If you've played a Zelda game before then it's a similar experience. There's a story which as usual has something to do with Zelda and Ganon and an ancient evil being awoken. What does differ though, is that this one is set in an open-world, punctuated by numerou...

Last night I watched  The World of Kanako   which is to be honest a pretty insane movie. Often you get movies that are kind of slightly insane but never overstep the mark fully. Well, this one does. It’s a hyper-stylised, bloodthirsty, marauding thriller. It revels in excess, bloodthirsty violence and would be an utterly terrible choice of movie for a first date. The film tells the story tale of an absent father who returns home after several years to look for his estranged daughter Kanako. Much of the film is spent watching him roam the streets of Tokyo looking for leads. At one point he ends up running into with a bunch of hipster teenagers who somehow control gangland. There's corrupt police everywhere and somewhere in the middle is Kanako, seemingly the most prescient part of the puzzle. What follows is a twisted fairy-tale that focuses on unconscious drives leading towards madness. Not only are the aesthetics stylised, but it couples an absurd...