Lots of fun items in my media diet this summer including movies, music, video games and old books. Here’s what I’ve been paying particular attention to lately:
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Emily Blunt in Stephen Spielberg’s “Disclosure Day.”
Steven Spielberg’s new contemporary science fiction movie Disclosure Day is an intriguing and exciting — if somewhat derivative — speculative look at the question of how and why the government might have been hiding UFOs, especially the stereotypical “grey aliens.” (You know, the slight-bodied, aliens with grey skin, big heads and giant eyes that show up in all the standard alien encounters.)
I really enjoyed this movie starring Emily Blunt as a Kansas City TV weather woman who suddenly finds herself speaking in an alien clicking language on the air. It also stars Josh O’Connor as an Edward Snowdon-like government whistleblower who has a strange connection with Blunt’s character (You probably saw O’Connor recently as the priest in the third Knives Out movie); Coleman Domingo (who seems to be this year’s Pedro Pascal, showing up everywhere), and Colin Firth as a the head of a mysterious tech agency. (Also, am I the only one who thinks that Firth’s character looks and sounds a lot like a somewhat younger Ridley Scott?)
I noted at the beginning that though I really enjoyed Disclosure Day, I thought it was quite derivative. It, of course, referenced a host of Spielberg films in including Close Encounters, ET, and Minority Report, but also a bit less obviously The Post (the central importance of journalists holding the government to account) and The Fablemans (looking back at where director Steven Spielberg comes from). There are also clear references to individuals having unexplained mental connections to aliens as with M. Night Shyamalan’s Signs and attempts to recreate one’s past as in Charlie Kaufman’s Synecdoche, New York. Finally, it deals with questions of how meeting aliens affects people of faith, as with both Contact and Prometheus.
- Quirky video game Quick Deduction Short Mysteries
Short Mysteries would seem to be a video game from a genre with only one entry. This odd little gem gives the player a single non-moving image with a single question such as “Who is the killer?” or “What was the murder weapon?” You then use a detective-style magnifying glass to point to the answer to the question within the image. This deceptively simple Japanese game has you scouring the image trying to find the sometimes subtle clue of guilt. It could have easily also been a series in a puzzle magazine – it’s that simple. There are 39 individual mysteries in this game, and determined player could likely complete it in under an hour. But that’s not really the point. Pick it up when you have a few minutes and solve two or three of them, and then come back to it another day. You can purchase it as a digital download for about $4 from the Nintendo download store.
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Edward Abbey’s “Desert Solitaire”
Edward Abbey’s southwestern classic Desert Solitaire
I have read or listened to Edward Abbey’s account of his time working as a seasonal park ranger for Arches National Monument more times than I can count. Lately I’ve been given to reading it every summer. In it, Abbey talks about working at Arches in the late 1950s before the world discovered the awesome national parks and monuments in Utah. (In fairness, many of us initially discovered these parks through Desert Solitaire.) I suppose one would consider the book non-fiction, but it might have more in common with Hunter S. Thompson’s Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas with its gonzo combination of journalism and fantasy than with typical environmental non-fiction. It’s best not to ask yourself how much of the book deals with things that actually happened. Instead, look at it as book that is all true.
Audio excerpts from Desert Solitaire
Editor’s Note: This is available as an audio book on Amazon/Audible.
- And finally – Postmodern Jukebox’s 2001: Tap Odyssey featuring Demi Remnick
Scott Bradlee’s retro-chic Postmodern Jukebox reimagines a wide range of pop music with vintage-style covers. This instrumental medley of science fiction movie and TV themes provides the accompaniment for tap dancer Demi Remnick. While the tap dancing is clearly the star here, the jazz combo music is excellent, too, reminding me of Ron Carter’s old album Empire Jazz featuring music from John Williams’ The Empire Strikes Back score.Be careful. Once you go to the PMJ YouTube page you can find that you’ve lost an entire afternoon watching “just one more video.” Highly recommend your checking out their current tour. Dear Wife and I saw their Christmas show five or six years ago and had a great time.
What are are you reading/watching/playing this summer?
Let us know in the comments.