This October has been mixed bag. It contains the best days of the year and some pretty miserable ones. But let’s start with the best ones.

I spent 5 days in Veneto between October 11th and 15th. It was long due (See October 2023) and they were wonderful days. I went one day at the CICAP Fest (the annual convention of Italian Skeptics), and the rest of the vacation meeting friends, people and shared acquaintances, eating creamy cod and drinking Hugos. I’ll change nothing of this trip (other than the train strike on the 13th that almost derailed the entire Sunday).

On the remaining days, instead, I stumbled my way through the month. My baseline mood is quite poor, and I terribly struggled at work. Probably because of the feedback loop of being in a bad disposition, sleeping poorly, having low energy, mess up at my day job and repeat. Groan.

I am making some change, though. Let’s see how they will plan out.

At least, this month wasn’t a complete disaster close-to-mental-breakdown like last October. We have to look at the bright side!

Housekeeping

As I said, I had not enough mental space for a lot (for good or for bad). I had the occasion to increase my idea-list even if having ideas is usually the easy part of the writing process. Now… If only I could find the focus to truly work on one thing.

Reading

I read only two books. Not exciting but, as you know, I read multiple books at the same time and, in September, I completed all the “on reading” ones and I had to start with a new batch (of which, just two ended in time for this review). Unfortunately, I am a bit disappointed by both.

• Star Trek: Vanguard: Storming Heaven by David Mack. The final chapter of the Star Trek: Vanguard ended with some disappointment. I don’t want to spoil too much, but my greatest problem was the anticlimactic resolution of the shedai.(Spoilery Section 1). And, it was a couple of books where Diego Reyes ends up as a far away spectator, and it is a shame because he was a great character.
• The Ghost Cat by Alex Howard is a short book I bought this summer in Edinburgh. It tells the story of significant events in Edinburgh’s history from the past century through the eyes of a Victorian cat. I am a bit puzzled because it is both charming and not well executed. I would have preferred more “meat” because the stories are disconnected and fell flat, as if they were just scenes we witness through the window of a moving car. On the other hand, I am still a bit sweet-sad about the end, so there may be something there.

Watchlist

It is the spooky season and what a better occasion for go over my horror movie watchlist?

House (1977)

Imagine being born in Onomichi, in the Hiroshima prefecture, in 1938 and, because your father was a doctor called on the battlefront of World War II, you get raised by your grandparents. And then the Atomic Bomb came and almost all your childhood friends dies and you keep this trauma inside all your life. And you cannot really express it, because you do a little of experimental cinematography and you are mostly a TV commercials director.

But finally, your moment comes. You write a movie script and, because they cannot find a director, you get chosen to direct it. What would you do?

House is the debut as a director of Nobuhiko Obayashi, one of the most influential Japanese directors. It is an insane film. The actresses are mostly inexperienced, having worked only in TV commercials with Obayashi, and the special effects are, for the significant part, hand-drawn by Obayashi himself. The result is the most crazy, deranged, horrific, absurd, Japanese movie you can experience.

On the surface, House is the tale of a group of young girls that goes to visit one of their friend’s auntie and they end up victims of a classic hunted house situation. But the story is not really important, it is the experience: more similar to watching random Japanese TV shows while licking LSD.

Probably, it would not be your next favorite film. But you’ll be glad to have watched it.

Onibaba (1964)

I had Onibaba, one of William Dafoes’ favorite movies, in my watchlist for a while. Onibaba (literally “witch demon”) is one of the early works of the legendary Japanese director Kaneto Shindō. People typically categorize it under the “horror” genre because of the mild supernatural elements and the virtual presence of the onibaba. Personally, though, I think the horror element is barely present.

Instead, Onibaba is an unsettling and crude critique of war and sexual moralism. It follows the life of a woman and her daughter-in-law, both surviving by killing samurai who stray into their swamp and then selling their armors and weapons. When the old woman’s son Kichi dies in a random war of feudal Japan, the young woman starts a relationship with a neighbor. The old woman disapproves and tries to stop them putting in motion a series of events (including scaring the young woman by posing as a demon) that will bring disgrace to them all.

This apparently simple story is accompanied with some truly wonderful cinematography. I swear I had to hit pause every 30 seconds to admire the composition.

All the rest

• Venom (2018). This kinda bland movie is much funnier (and almost a documentary) if you think the villain is practically Elon Musk.
• St. Vincent (2014). I really like it. But I am a sucker for Bill Murray and the “father-son” tropes. 🥲
• Inside Out 2 (2024). I finally watched it as soon as it landed streaming. I felt it very close to me.
• The Masque of the Red Death (1964). I need way more space to talk about the Roger Corman’s Poe series. This one is kinda crazy, though.
• A Classic Horror Story (2021). An Italian meta-horror movie that becomes too preachy toward the end. Nevertheeless, it is not terrible.
• Breakheart Pass (1975). A western with Charles Bronson cannot be bad. However, this gets very messy in the end.
• Lethal Weapon (1987). I rewatched it after a long time, and I liked it way less than I remembered. I swear the ending scene made me livid.
• Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956). The original IotBS. Classic 50s sci-fi horror at his best: no special effect and only existential dread.
• Lifeboat (1944). This Hitchcock’s work is great. How could they make a 2 hours movie in a single tiny setting and be so awesome? It starts on the lifeboat and ends on the lifeboat. In the middle, a plethora of stories and drama and reflections and pain and joy and love. And an important life lesson: never trust a Nazi.
• It’s What’s Inside (2024). Netflix movies are like Bertie Bott’s Every Flavour Beans: you can get a good peppermint one, or a disgusting vomit one. This is of the good sort. It doesn’t have an original concept, but a fantastic execution and a superb editing.
• The Thin Man (1934). Another hit for my X4 challenge. A fun whodunnit movie, especially remarkable for coming out in ‘34.
• After the Thin Man (1936). I rented this one by mistake. It follows more or less the same formula. It is good (but I watched them in the wrong order).

Moreover, I’ve finished Season 2 of The Rings of Power. This is a series that makes me irrationally happy. It also threw me back into the depth of Tolkien’s lore and I started re-reading The Lord of the Rings. What a treat. I know someone feels overtly against it. It is fine; you are allowed to not like anything you want. But if you need to complain to me because I like it, well, in that case I have the answer for you.

Music

It may not surprise you to know that I am fond of soundtracks. Every time I watch a movie, or a TV series, or play a videogame, I put the corresponding soundtrack album into my playlist queue. Some of my favorite contemporary composers are authors of soundtracks: Ennio Morricone, Hans Zimmer, Howard Shore, Nobu Uematsu, and many more. All giants.

But on the fringe of these giants there is a music writer that consistently nail tunes into my brain: Bear McCreary. Bear McCreary is an American composer from Bellingham, pianist and protégé of Elmer Bernstein (writer, among the many, of the The Magnificent Seven score). Bear composed some of my favorite soundtracks ever: Battlestar Galactica, the new God of War saga, the Foundation TV series, and The Rings of Power. Not only, I adore these compositions, but Bear spend also a lot of time writing very nerdy and detailed blog posts explaining all the artistic decisions and composition details (see Other Interesting Things).

Therefore, now that I spent 4-5 hours binging all the albums related to season 1 and two of The Rings of Power, I think it is only fair to give him the spotlight of this month’s Music section.

Other than that, I am continuing listening to the most obscure progressive rock bands I can find. Many albums blend in my memories, but I uncovered some pretty good gems. Let me reflect about them more and I may suggest you something in the next episode.

Gaming

As I mentioned you in the previous issue, the biggest game I was expecting to play was the new The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom. Not only it is the first game that doesn’t utterly suck with Zelda as a main character, but the new echoes mechanic also intrigued me.

I have to say; I didn’t play as much as I wanted (both because of work, and because of Gioia monopolized it for the entire month), but I played enough to state this: how the hell Nintendo can pull these off?

Echoes of Wisdom, like Tears of the Kingdom is that kind of game that would make game developer screams in agony and game designer laugh at the audacity. And yet, they work. These games allow you to approach any challenge in hundreds of different way: you can build towers of beds, spawn a never-ending stream of snakes, dig holes with moles, summon birds and spiders and every monster you defeated. In theory, a game with so much freedom would be unstable as hell or broken on a game-design level. It is not. It works, and it is charming, like very few gaming experiences can be.

Other Interesting Things

• 📝 A great example of soundtracks explained. – I love how Bear McCreary finds the time to explain with such details the backstory and the decisions that go into the composition. This is the article for the first episode of Season 2 of The Rings of Power.

Conclusions

That’s all for this month. The best thing I can wish for November is to be “constantly slightly better than average” instead of jumping wildly up and down. But it will not be.

And because of that, I need to keep my brain busy. I have this curious idea of doing another NaNoWriMo. Last year, it really helped in giving me structure and making me bounce from the hole where I was burying myself. I am like a climbing plant: I need a fixed lattice to maintain integrity, direction, and not slop on the ground.

So, I’ll take this sense of structure wherever I can.

Spoilery Section