Weeknotes - week 47, 2023

☔️ Still a lot of rain, but at least we had two consecutive ‘dry’ days;
♟️ Black Friday is notoriously a joke, but there are some tempting offers on useless things that you wouldn’t otherwise buy. Like this Lego set : I can’t even think of buying it at full price, but with almost a 50% discount, that’s a different story;
🎵 Sexodus , the album that contains new songs from Army of Lovers ten years after their Big Battle of Egos compilation, has officially been released. Sexodus includes five new tracks - which were released one at a time as ‘singles’ every Friday in recent weeks - plus reissues of old songs, including the ‘crossovers’ from ten years ago with Gravitonas, the other band of Alexander Bard: Signed on My Tattoo and People Are Lonely. The new songs may not be the group’s most original productions ever, but Bard’s talent for catchy choruses hasn’t changed. There’s a political touch - though I can’t evaluate how respectful they are - with Love is Blue (the best track of the new ones), made in collaboration with Ukrainian artist Olya Polyakova, and Clash of the Titans, a sadder remake of Carry My Urn to Ukraine… and a new version of Israelism just for good measure; on this occasion, I also discovered that Gravitonas had cannibalized Army’s hit Crucified with a decidedly more ‘gravitas’ cover renamed Sacrifice ;
🎬 I caught up with the latest film by Benson & Moorhead: the almost impossible to find (at least, in continental Europe) Something in the Dirt, released just last year. The duo doesn’t disappoint with its extraterrestrial and supernatural suggestions (I’m trying not to use the usual adjective ‘cosmic’) serving as a backdrop to a very human dynamic between two men in crisis. It doesn’t hide its pandemic origins, but the limitations due to Covid don’t prevent Justin and Aaron from building a narrative on multiple levels. The surprise ‘cameo’ in Italian by production designer Stefania Cella was very welcome, as was the fleeting appearance of Vinny Curran (from Resolution and The Endless). The cherry on top is the dedication at the end: “This film is dedicated to: making movies with your friends.” It sounds to me like a celebration of the passion these guys put in their projects. And, of course, ‘Shitty Carl’ makes his appearance, even if only among the names in the credits’ acknowledgements. How can you not love them?
🎬 First-world problems, but I fear we won’t see Christopher Landon’s Scream, since the two leading ladies are no longer part of the project. Melissa Barrera removed for her social media posts , and Jenna Ortega officially overwhelmed by overbooking issues two days later. Maybe we’ll have a new reboot in ten years or so;
🖥️ There seems to be some excitement around Omnivore , a web app for managing posts and articles to keep aside for later reading. I must say my first experience with it has not been encouraging: the text-to-speech reading of an article stopped before the end of the text, and the interface, both web and app, seems very simplistic to me. For now, I’ll continue to use Pocket, also because of its integration with the Kobo reader;
🖥️ I added a couple of links in the head tag of this site to ‘verify’ my user on micro.blog and on Mastodon.