"Pearl" by Ti West (2022)

It was a very long time since I was blown away by acting performance, specially in a horror movie - perhaps the last genuinely excellent horror I have seen was 2017 "Get out" and nothing since had thrilled me as much as 2022 "Pearl". After the movie I had to do some research and found out this is a part of movie trilogy directed by Ti West who decided that each movie will be created in a different style - "Pearl" is a tribute to classic sweeping old Hollywood movies - together, these three moves create a coherent story, but they can also be enjoyed on their own. Since I never heard of this, I simply dived in "Pearl" and later made my way trough the rest.

"Pearl" is happening on a desolate, isolated farm around 1918 and we know it because it is time of Spanish flu and everybody is keeping distance, their faces covered with face masks. The main character is a simple farm girl Pearl (Mia Goth) who lives with her impoverished German parents and waits for the return of husband from WW1. There is not much joy in her life - after the stroke, her father is basically a plant in the wheelchair, while stern mother suffers in silence and makes life hard by insisting its all the valley of the shadow of death & prayers before meals, etc. The only distractions happened when Pearl is sent away to the local little town to get medicine for the father and here she catches glimpses of glamour on the cinema screen and daydreams imagining herself as one of the chorus girls. Slowly, we also get impression that not everything is right with her, as she gets more and more sucked in her fantasies and things get really complicated when she finds out about the audition for a new dance troupe, which she feels is her way out of the farm life and into the stardom ... 

I won't spoil the rest of the movie (this is just a beginning in a nutshell) but after a slow start, it really gets extremely gripping and its all thanks not to excellent script but also to brilliant acting. First, I must compliment New Zealand actress Tandi Wright who is really powerful as a mother. She suffers in silence until the dinner where storm outside reflects the turmoil inside her mind and we find out she is literary as disturbed as her daughter. David Corenswet is also very good as a local cinema projectionist who flirts with Pearl until her bizarre behaviour turns him off (with dangerous consequences). But the movie belongs to Mia Goth who is so spectacularly brilliant in the main role that she became my new movie crush - her acting is out of this world, technically and physically a true perfection and honestly one would never expect such sensational acting in a horror movie. There are two scenes where camera is focused on her face and she just walks away with the movie.  I enjoyed this so much that I even watched the rest of the trilogy, but this one is by far the best of them. It could be also because other movies were created in different styles and happened in modern times, while this one has a certain artificial patina about it that makes is it so special. 

"Mexican Gothic" by Silvia Moreno-Garcia (2020)

Goodreads recommended this one, in fact the novel was winner of Goodreads Choice Awards 2020 as the best horror novel of 2020. And because I have so many books on my e-reader, it became difficult to choose what exactly to read so I decided (on the spur of the moment) not to bother with self-imposed tasks, classics, etc but to give chance to someone I have never read before. I even checked her pictures online and she looks incredibly young and fresh-faced, but the lady is actually 43 at this point so its just funny how everybody looks young to me now as I am over the hill myself.

"Mexican Gothic" is exactly what the title says: it is a heavy drama set in creepy house somewhere in Mexican mountains. It has a young, self-confident heroine (Noemi) who is sent by her father to find out what is going on with their cousin Catalina who is sending disturbing letters from her new home, where she got married despite family's objections. When Noemi arrives there, the scenery could have been Transylvania - not only that house is ancient, neglected and spooky but its inhabitants don't use electricity, move trough the house silently and demand no talks during dinner.  Being adventurous city girl, Noemi don't accept it easily and constantly clashes with them, asking too many questions, trying to help her comatose cousin (who is perpetually "resting" and should not be disturbed) and basically sinking deeper and deeper in trouble, until the reader starts wondering why she simply don't run for her life instead of staying in danger. Moreno-Garcia explain this is her loyalty to Catalina, but we never get impression that she actually care for Catalina in the first place (Naomi is described as strong-willed and somehow narcissistic, wealthy daddy's girl who probably until now never had any struggles in life) - we understand it helps the story that Noemi insist on her support for Catalina, but it stretches credibility a bit, since everybody else would run and bring some help. Moreno-Garcia is a pleasant surprise and she knows how to weave a very good, atmospheric and moody story - I read this breathlessly and (despite some reservations about credibility of characters behaviour) enjoyed it so much that now I am going further with another book by her. 

Gramophone records fair in RAI

 

Recently I found the advertisement for a big, second-hand gramophone records fair that was supposed to happen in Amsterdam - since I gave myself a brand new gramophone player for my birthday, it was just perfect occasion and I purchased ticket online, very interested to visit the place and have a look what they have there. My idea was to perhaps find and replace my old collection that I used to have as a teenager - I don't need anything that can already be found on Spotify, but would love to experience the thrill of taking the album out of its cover and enjoy the music the way I used to, a lifetime ago. So I was quite excited about the prospect of this and to be honest, anticipation was the best part of it.

When Saturday finally came, I took a underground to Amsterdam South where the fair was happening. Funny enough, I have never been to RAI building before, so this was my very first visit there. It turned out a bit different than I expected - namely, this was not just some second hand records sold for peanuts but a big business where sellers from all over Europe presented their collectors items and prices were just ridiculous - going on from € 20 to anything upwards, even € 90 and more. I mean, these were not just any old records but really something more like a status symbol. This quickly discouraged me and I roamed around a bit, until I found the bins with available second-hand records but here I had to be patient because the crowd was mainly focused on them and not on expensive records. 

At certain point, I got excited about a LP that was never released on CD and even went to ATM to get cash - it was pricy but I liked the idea of owning it - and than, because the way to ATM was so complicated, long and convoluted, on the way back I changed my mind. Why spending € 25 for a record that I already have in digital format and can listen at home anyway. So I keep to my inexpensive bins and found a handful of old records that simply reminded me on the childhood, like "We Are The World" , "Flashdance" and "Grease" that gave me kick of holding the original album covers in my hands. But I left the place thinking how perhaps these large fairs are not really for me - I will get much more excitement looking into second hand antique shops where something pops out unexpectedly and affordably. 

"The Other Pandemic: How QAnon Contaminated the World" by James Ball (2023)

 

I glanced at this out of curiosity and before you know it, the book was simply reading itself. It is a subject that always intrigued me and I have found it incredibly interesting, alarming and scary as any horror novel - except this is not a fiction, but our reality. 

James Ball is a British journalist and winner of Pulitzer Prize for investigative journalism, so he really has some solid background. His writing is exciting, inspired and straight to the point - in this book he elaborates about our virtual society that helped spread of all sorts of viruses that differ from other viruses in a sense that they spread trough our brains. He makes a good point that instead of bringing informations, the online world also spreads disinformation, fear, conspiracy theories and whatnot. To a big degree, it influences how people behave, what they think and worst of all, it can lead to serious crimes based simply on ideas, gossip or illusions. (Like father who kidnapped his kids and murdered them, to stop his wife from using them for satanic purposes) 

Unfortunately, we all know people who succumb to conspiracy theories. I personally know some old school acquaintances who got lost in the rabbit holes and surprisingly, every now and than I find out that even people I know as my work colleagues (for example) have weird ideas picked up online. Because computer algorithm always brings you more and more of what you searched for, its quite dangerous to succumb to these temptations - before you know it, it might affect your whole perspective on life and reality. I found this book to be very informative, interesting and quite disturbing. We are still learning how to cope with this sudden explosion of technical progress and it is very possible that its effect on human brains are in fact very dangerous and perhaps even self-destructive.