Review-ku.

So, lots of stuff has been listened to and watched lately. Here are some notes on the various topics.

Listening

Case Studies, The World is Just a Shape to Fill the Night
If every night
were so dark as this man's songs
Morning ne'er would come.

Mondkopf, Doom Rising
Glowing techno like
dark-forest video games --
this level, you die.

Cold War Kids, Robbers and Cowards
Cold War Kids lost track
of the summertime front porch
that made them unique.

Elliott Smith, From the Basement on the Hill
Worryingly close
to my headspace; emotions
too strong for haiku.

Watching

X-Men: First Class
Gets better with time:
First viewing was appalling;
later, fangirling.

The Last King of Scotland
Beautiful, subtle,
Technically delightful --
but oh, the horror!

Hamlet (David Tennant version)
Security cam
Conceit grows less annoying;
doesn't hide quality.

Reading

You know, I was going to do a haiku about Stieg Larsson's The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, but I just have to say this: I don't know how he did it. He put an obvious author avatar in the middle of the plot, had a waifish hacker fall in love with him, and went on plenty of rants that related only tangentially to the plot...

And it didn't suck. It was actually pretty great. Not the finest literature known to man, but it was pretty good, especially considering all the factors mentioned above. How did he do it? I must know this. How did this all work? I can't figure it out.

Also, I finished reading Emil Cioran's Precis de Decomposition, but that is another (ridiculously depressing) story, and shall be told another time.

Probably this post will be followed by a lengthy paean on the above-mentioned Elliott Smith album (which is rapidly becoming one of my favorites), or maybe one on the also above-mentioned Cioran piece. Or both! It can be a depression megapost!

I think I'll just off myself and save the blogosphere the trouble.