In Media Res March 11, 2008 – Posted in: Aberrant Normalcy

I’ve been exposed to a lot of good stuff lately in television, film, books, and graphic novels. Last night I watched Sigur Rós‘s beautiful film “Heima.” Filmed after their world tour and upon returning home to their native Iceland, the film follows these soft-spoken musicians around the country as they give free concerts to the locals. I’ve heard much about Iceland from Mary Robinette Kowal, but have never been there myself. This movie makes you want to live there. With magnificent views of moutains, fields, fog and ocean, interspersed with Sigur Rós’s unique sound, the movie is utterly hypnotic, and one of my favorites this year.

And while I’m not typically a fan of the many cop shows that permeate TV these days, I watched the first three episodes of The Wire over the weekend. The show surprised me with its wit, its ability to embrace clichéd topics like drug usage in a new and, dare I say, realistic way. The dialog is snappy and filled with insider jargon that makes you want to enmesh yourself in the realm of H-heads and the 5-0s that hunt them, if only to understand the world they inhabit. This is definitely a show I’m going to continue to watch.

Also just finished reading The Moment of Freedom by Jens Bjørneboe, a dark, satirical critique of not only Germanic cultures, but humanity itself. The book was banned when it came out because people thought the protagonist sympathized with the Nazis. But it’s clear, when you read between the lines, that Bjørneboe could not be more critical of them. His dissection of the darkest parts of the human psyche was frighteningly refreshing.

On my to-read/reading-now list are The Yiddish Policemen’s Union by Michael Chabon, which I have recently started and am enjoying, and the last four issues of the graphic novel Y The Last Man. I look forward to both with excitement.