About

Australian New Zealander

Xennial
Leftie striving for equality

Environmentally concerned

I’ve disabled right-click and copy functionality on this blog after more than a decade without it. This was prompted by trackbacks from AI-powered paraphrasing sites. While it makes no difference to me personally if someone uses info on this site to get an essay written or whatever, these technologies can’t mean anything good for humanity more generally.

There are many uses for AI, from great to terrible, and soon it will be in everything whether we like it or not. But encountering a new idea and then putting it into your own words is one of the best ways to form your own opinion. I cannot fathom a good use for paraphrasing tools.

Genuine apologies to visitors who would make use of right-click functionality for accessibility reasons.

Recency bias is at play because I happen to have re-watched these films quite recently, but for now I’ll just say: Brokeback Mountain, The Remains of the Day, No Country for Old Men.
I dislike most movies to be honest, with a particular aversion to teen movies from the 1990s, but also most things starring Nicholas Cage/Jim Carrey (the the exception of Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind). I really despise Good People, and all horror films which send women into stupid situations they’d never put themselves in. Am tired of Final Girl plots written for and by men. Not a fan of ‘Inspired by true events’ but that’s just a marketing tactic (e.g. Wolf Creek.) Can’t stand Quentin Tarantino’s sensibility and worldview but he and I share a similar taste in music. I appreciate how he uses it.

It’s far easier to think of a TV series I’d like to live in than a movie, since movies by their nature tend to involve peak suffering, though that would still depend on which character I had to be. I wouldn’t mind living in Gilmore girls or Schitts Creek, but only if I could be the happiest weirdo in town. That would be Kirk and Roland Schitt. If it had to be a movie, I’d like to live in that house in the middle of nowhere in Bridges of Madison County but only if I didn’t have to look at any damn bridges, so I guess I’d rather be Courage the Cowardly Dog actually. Or, I’d like to be in the first five minutes of a horror movie. You know, you’re cruising down the highway in light traffic on your way to a holiday destination, singing to the radio with your sunglasses on and your neck scarf blowing in the breeze.
Character I want to meet? Meryl Streep’s character in Doubt. That woman knows what’s up. I’d tell her she did a good thing there.
Streaming over cinema, any day. If you sit close enough to the TV, it looks like the big screen. We have great surround speakers at our house because of gamers.

Favourite foreign film? Well, I’m not American so American films are foreign to me. I’ll say Thelma & Louise since I had to limit the number to three in question number one. If we’re talking about non-English language films, well, Turkish film Mustang is really impressive (and is a great feminist example) but I have a soft spot for Japanese language films after living in Japan for a few years before and after my Japanese language degree. That said, I’m not an especial fan of Hayao Miyazaki films. I prefer stories which have been pre-plotted, as it happens. (Miyazaki literally makes them up as he creates the animation, such is his creative freedom.)
A movie with great visuals: Nomadland. Almost made me want to live in a caravan, which is very much not the point. The great soundtrack helped. Reading the book reminded me that I don’t want to be a ‘Nomad’, actually.
Any of the Quentin Tarantino movies, I guess, for the soundtracks. I love the Interstellar song, but it’s used too much. They needed another one.

Most underrated movie: The Father. It’s underrated because it doesn’t sound fun. It’s very not fun. Who wants to watch a movie about a man’s descent into dementia? Watch it anyway.
A popular movie I hate: So many. All of the DreamWorks animations. Pixar isn’t much better, with the odd exception e.g. Inside Out. (You thought I was going to say Brave, didn’t you, but no, Brave is a flop because of internal fighting as the film was being made.)
I refuse to tell you about a plot twist because once you know a twist is coming, if affects the viewing experience.

Worst overused cliché? If we’re talking about harmful tropes, I think the ‘girl says no, boy perseveres until he gets girl’ is actively horribly harmful, with real world consequences around consent e.g. in The Notebook.
I care nothing at all for actors and celebrities and personalities. So long as they can act, I’m in. In fact, I’d like to see big name actors less. For me, once an actor becomes associated with an archetype, time to change the actor.
I don’t know about overrated, but an example of an overused actor is Matt Damon. Does he have to get killed on every single planet?

Can’t go past Planes, Trains and Aeroplanes for a great holiday movie, although I could do without the dutiful wife waiting at home. That was the era, though. I’m sure there are better holiday movies now but that one is still better than any other Steve Martin film I would watch.
On that topic, Del Griffith and Neal Page are a great movie couple.
Anton Chigurgh

The sad on-screen deaths which come to mind are TV examples, in which I’ve had more time to know the characters. The Father (mentioned above) is so sad because he hasn’t quite died. Likewise, The Wrestler destroys me because he hasn’t quite died. Sometimes, it’s more sad to remain alive.
Although I’m not a particular Studio Ghibli fan, Chinese movie posters for Spirited Away by artist Huang Hai blow me away. We do not get the best movie posters here in the West.
It’s adaptation, with that extra syllable. I think Brokeback Mountain is a great adaptation but Annie Proulx wasn’t too happy with the marketing campaign, which is a whole different story. Turns out my favourite adaptations are from stage play to film, overall e.g. August: Osage County, Doubt.

Get Out is a great horror movie. I avoid schlock shock but like a good psychological horror. I find it hard to be truly frightened by horror, though. I’m far more frightened of death, illness and the possible loneliness of old age these days.
Drama is my favourite, but movies these days are almost always a blend of two or more genres.
I dislike romance, but don’t mind love stories. Perhaps I just haven’t met the right romance story yet?

Office Space, despite its flaws. I do find it difficult to find a movie that is genuinely funny, where the jokes aren’t all ruined in the trailer (because there are only five good jokes in the entire thing).
Flawed, yes, but I do like Interstellar, especially the first half hour or so. Arrival is pretty good too. Contact has interesting ideas, but in the adaptation to film it was changed into a story for Christians.
I can’t think of any Action movies I like and have seen recently, but I remember enjoying Speed as a teenager. Generally, the action sequence of a film is the bit I tune out for.

Favourite movie from 2023 so far: I watched The Black Phone on Netflix with my teenager and although it’s more his thing than mine, it was something we enjoyed together. The jump scares were really effective.

MY OWN WRITING

URBAN LEGENDS, RE-VISIONED

Choc-Egg Surprise
How To Leave A Stranger

The Babysitter

FAIRYTALES FOR GLORIOUS CONTRARIANS

Each of these stories is a creepy re-visioning of a classic fairy tale.

The Magic Pipe — The Pied Piper

Winter Rose — Beauty and the Beast
The Awlings — The Elves and the Shoemaker
The Porridge Thief — Goldilocks and the Three Bears

The F**k Princess — The Frog Princess

ÉTUDE AND OTHER STORIES

Étude
Knot Theory

THINGS I’D LIKE YOU TO KNOW ABOUT

CHALK TALK

Chalk Talk: A routine for silently considering ideas, questions, or problems and responding to others.

AVOIDING AMAZON

If you would like to quit using Amazon as your wishlist, check out Throne. (Let’s you import from Amazon.)

If, like me, you try to avoid Amazon as much as possible, an alternative source for audiobooks is Libro.fm.

Libro doesn’t have every single thing. That’s because publishers make exclusive deals with Amazon. For instance, the first Children of Time novel by Adrian Tchaikovsky is only available on Amazon at the moment, but you can support local bookstores and buy the rest of the series via Libro.

If you have a monthly subscription, you get 30% off further purchases. There are regular sales, e.g. discounts on LGBTQ books during Pride Month.

If you would like to check Libro out, I get a free audiobook if you use my referral code to join up: lfm494291

OOH! DIRECTORY LIST OF BLOGS ABOUT BOOKS AND LITERATURE

Blogs about Books and Literature

MAKING GOOD USE OF SEARCH ENGINES

The search bar within this website doesn’t work very well. You’re better off searching the website

site:www.slaphappylarry.com

from within Google etc.

Aside from that:

Use quotation marks. All results will have your terms in it.

Exclude a term from your search by including a hyphen before that word. For example -amazon -pinterest generally leads to better search results. Add a space between what you’re searching for and what you don’t want, but keep the minus attached to the don’t want.
Use tilde (squiggle, top left on your keyboard) when you want to force synonyms in the result.
This one is non-intuitive: Use two full-stops to search between two number ranges e.g. films 1950..1960

Find news and articles related to a specified location with e.g. location:australia
Filter by file type e.g. alice munro short story filetype:pdf

However, even when you use search engines in a really smart way, the big ones will still show you what’s in their best interest to show you, and whatever makes them the most money.

These may not work on mobile search engines. And Google keeps changing its algorithm without publicising the nature of the changes.

BOOKMARKING

As Google Keep is wound down and losing functionality, I’m on the hunt for a new way to save bookmarks.

Check out Pinboard.in (“social bookmarking for introverts”). Costs $22/year. If you have a bunch of bookmarks saved all over the place, Pinboard lets you import from Google Reader, Delicious, Firefox, Diigo, Safari and Chrome.