Recommendation Post!

( ^ Colour prep (or "flatting") is the process of painting flat colour on separate layers, which has an effect similar to using masking fluid for a watercolour painting. It makes it easier to colour, later, if you don't have to worry about staying inside the lines so much. )

I’m in the middle of flatting, a mundane process that produces little worth looking at, so please accept these recommendations for things that are not mundane, and are very much worth looking at (or listening to).

Supergirl: Woman of Tomorrow (a comic book)

I’ve been seeing a lot of art from this on Instagram, so I was excited to pick it up, and I’m happy to report it does not disappoint. Bilquis Evely makes lovely drawings, and Tom King’s writing does one of my favourite tricks—pairs a character with a wordy, baroque manner of speaking with a no-nonsense, straight-shooting character. Maybe that sounds familiar. All together, the story is fun and has a pulpy, sci-fi vibe that I am really enjoying. So far, it seems to require no prior knowledge of the Supergirl character or the DC universe, which is a boon to me.

Also the first “floppy comic” I’ve picked up in a long, long time. Know that I’m going out on a limb recommending it after only one issue, crossing my fingers that it doesn’t let down either of us.

Portrait of a Lady on Fire (a movie)

This has been out for a while, but I only watched it two or three weeks ago and have not stopped thinking about it since. The first thing that struck me was its sound—this movie sounded unlike any movie I’d seen or heard in recent memory. And I was watching it on an iPad. With the iPad speakers. And the sound still had a unique presence, and it felt important, not incidental.

I want to say more about it, but I am torn between that impulse and a wish that you experience it like I did, knowing only what the poster looked like, and that people praised it well. I expected a sober, perhaps morose, artsy, historical lesbian romance movie. It would probably be tragic. Is it any of those things, you ask? It’s certainly some of those things. And it is beautiful, stark, captivating, and moving.

I also found it to be a very relatable movie. If you’ve ever had a brief summer vacation romance or got into a relationship with the foreknowledge that its lifetime would not be long, this movie speaks to that experience well.

I’ve been thinking about that relatability a lot, and how it dovetails with representation. That’s a much bigger discussion, which I started writing out here, but it became too unwieldy. Early on, I read advice saying that readers love to read something they can relate to. They like to see their circumstances told in a story. “Garfield hates Mondays. Wow, me too.” Relatability is important.

Representation is important, too. If you’re on the fence about that, consider this news article that has stuck with me since I read it. (TL;DR: "TV viewing can raise white boys' self-confidence, a study says, but harm the self-esteem of girls and African-American boys.")

I worry that people conflate the two, though, or think that they are the same thing. I worry that someone might learn that Portrait of a Lady on Fire is a story about lesbians, so it is only for lesbians to watch, or it is a story about women, so only women ought to be interested. You will probably agree with me that these ideas are foolish. Quite the opposite: we tell stories to help others empathize with our situation.

And conversely, you might argue that we don’t need another story trotting out the old trope about queer romances being tragic ones.

To that point (and this might be considered a big spoiler), I am prepared to argue that the movie has a happy ending, though your mileage may vary on that note.

Bluey (a TV show)

I kept hearing that this was good—“the best kids’ show ever,” from some folks. So I sat down to see what the fuss was about.

I am happy to confirm that the hype is real. This show is a delight.

It’s about a family of dogs. Mum, Dad, youngest daughter Bingo, and titular daughter Bluey, a Blue Healer. They all have Australian accents.

For the type of show it is, the animation is good. The BG designs are especially lovely, with their geometric shapes and rounded corners.

This is a show that’s more than the sum of its parts, though. I am still trying to identify exactly what is the invisible magic that puts it ahead of its peers. Maybe it’s the accents. The writers seem to be able to make something out of nothing; the scenarios are all very straightforward and seemingly limited, but the simplicity is deceptive. There’s a lot of heart in every 8-minute episode. There’s a lot of kindness on display, too, and a lot of imagination played out. Maybe that’s all you need.

Bonus anecdote: I watched an episode called “Hospital” with my partner, who is a nurse in a hospital. She laughed and laughed, and insisted that “someone on staff is married to a nurse.” She seemed to find it very relatable.

Marjan Mozetich’s Affairs of the Heart and Postcards from the Sky (a thing to listen to)

All contained in this one recording. I added this to my “Classical” playlist and have kept returning to it ever since. It’s melancholy, but I’m weird, I sometimes find melancholy music comforting. It sounds like what I expected Portrait of a Lady on Fire to be like. I’d describe it further, but I feel like stapling more words to it would only weigh it down. Just go listen.