w/e 2024-04-14

I got nothing.

I’m having one of my periodic wonderings about whether I should stop weeknotes and try more frequent, but shorter, blogging again. Each section of weeknotes could easily be a blog post of its own. It’s a question of whether I would actually write them if I don’t have this self-imposed weekly deadline.

I’d need to spruce up my interface for posting to remove one little hurdle because, like my ongoing work to make ooh.directory‘s admin interface nicer, I should do the same here, because it’s a bit basic and unappealing.

It might never happen, we’ll see.

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§ We watched Ripley on Netflix this week and it was brilliant. Once it got going it felt constantly tense, and every shot was beautiful. Probably my favourite telly I’ve watched for some time.

You could say that filming in black-and-white is a shallow affectation but I disagree. For me it entirely suited the atmosphere, the time, and the theme and the only time it occurred to me that colour would add anything was the one or two occasions that someone mentioned the colour of something. Otherwise I loved it. Shooting in colour – while it would have gained the boringly obvious blue seas and skies and whatever – would have watered the visuals down into something more humdrum and conventionally Netflix.

I’ve also never read the novels (although, oddly, I added them to my “I should read this” list only a few weeks back) so I don’t care how well or not they’ve been adapted. Did it work as a TV show? Yes, definitely. Good.

§ We also continued our exploration of the Anna Torviverse with the first season of 2016’s Secret City. She was good, it was OK. There was too much going on and none of it was as deep or as gripping as it wanted to be. But it was obviously not-bad enough that we’ve started the second season.

§ I think there’ll be some more rain this week but it does feel like Spring is arriving. We’ve had something like two or even three consecutive days without rain this week, and warm sunshine. It’s a different place, here, when you can go out without everywhere being mud and water.

A little earlier I asked Mary what she was going to be doing until dinner time. “I think I’ll go and organise the sticks in the garage.” That’s the kind of exciting pastime you too could have if you moved to the countryside.