Alita, shops, arty ideas

Seem to be busy again at the moment !

Definitely missing the chance to do more posts. Things happening lately and I'm ending up crashing out when I get home and turning the brain off as much as I can. I did feel like an escape to something where I definitely could turn the brain off though .... this was Friday pm.

What's that ?

Friday's escape was a film called Battle Angel Alita. Without giving too much away (like some of the images that Google will show you !), this one is a live action / cgi film set about 500 years in the future where all of the cities of Earth have fallen in an apocalyptic war, save one. The film is set in Iron Town, below the flying city of Zolom. (I may be getting a couple of the references wrong here).

I really enjoyed it and .... a tear or two may have escaped at certain points. Actually, I've been feeling the crispiness of impending burn out this week* and it feels like this film gave me a much needed reset. Films tend to be like that.

*(what I mentioned last weekend, plus I damaged my eye last Monday which was getting me down too. It's ok now.)

Anyway, the story picks up with our Alita being found in a junkyard and being put together by Dr Ido, very ably played by Christoph Waltz. She has no memory but everything that she sees and experiences is met with total joy and absolute commitment.

And there are those big wide eyes too that take in the world. But there is more to Alita than the big cute eyes and a personality that wants to jump into absolutely everything.

And the story leaps off from there. As usual, there is daftness involved with the storyline and shortcuts to make it all fit into a film. But ... lots of action, plenty of spectacle and I thought the central character was incredible.

Thoroughly recommended.

Friday's escape wasn't just about the film though. (It was on at 5pm so I needed to find something to occupy until then ! Plus lunch).

One thing I've been observing over the past years is that our High Street is steadily disintegrating. It started with a few big names collapsing when the banking collapse happened. But it's continued ever since then.

My theory is that the continuing austerity regime means that people don't have any disposable income any more, so the shops that thrived on that have been driven out of business. The curiosity shops with knickknacks and trinkets. Fun stuff. Useless decorative stuff that makes you smile when you look at it.

Those shops don't exist any more. We have expensive clothes shops, nail bars and vape shops instead. I'm not interested in those. I'm not sure if I'll be doing the old run across to our local Mall any more, with the closure of the HMV shop there. That place now has an increasing number of empty lots and the HMV was one of two shops I'd regularly have a look in when there. (The other was the Lego place).

It's a similar story in town, except that it still has its HMV and its Foyles bookstore. (And Waterstones too). The HMV thing is curious actually, they've just suddenly closed another 27 stores out of their 127 and some of them are very painful looking closures indeed. (Here's the BBC story with the list).

It's only part austerity though. Some of it is down to the online people who don't play fair. Like Spotify who draw you into their renting model and other places who don't pay their taxes. Places like Waterstones and Foyles can't get away with that and compounding that, have their prices fixed by the publishers. I'm not even seeing the old Buy 1 Get 1 Free type offers that the bookshops used to do.

I choose what I buy based on what's more economical to buy, which means favouring Kindle over Paperback. But .... I'd much prefer to buy paperback if it were the same price because ... paperback will always be better and you're helping to support the awesome people who work in the Foyles and the Waterstones.

Oh and I'll always want to own my music rather than use Spotify. Even better to acquire the music from places like Bandcamp or as downloads from the artist's own site. Spotify and Youtube are rubbish for supporting the creators ... and if those creators aren't getting the recompense for making stuff for us to enjoy, they will quit and get jobs to let them eat. I'd rather see them making videos or music.

I sense I should come down off that particular soap box though. I did acquire a few things on Friday :
Seal - Standard
Jean-Michel Jarre - Equinoxe Infinity
Ed Sheeran - divide
Lorde - Pure Heroine
It might take a while before I get to listen to them though, there are still 6,000 unlistened to tracks in the library and I'm going from A albums to Z albums .... (After 6 months with the laptop, I'm in the C albums).

There's a Steam sale going too .... and games called Frostpunk, Unavowed and Blood Bowl 2 have been acquired. (Maybe a little dealing with Sad by buying stuff ? Haha, maybe).

Last bit ... I'm trying to develop the drawing still. I have ideas, one nearly emerged for today but after cogitating on it over the last week, I didn't get a solid enough idea. Not like the one someone gave me the other week ... Here we go :

There we go. A Sleepy Wagon Man, dreaming of pizza.

I've been enjoying watching as much of the Inklings streams on Geekspace.tv, led by Steph the sourfruitjunkie who has a thing for crows. She saw the Sleepydwagonman username I use on Twitch and wondered what a Sleepy Wagon Man would be like. And then there's pizza.

I quite enjoyed making that one, as I'm enjoying learning more of technique from teaching streams like Inklings and by observing what I'm seeing. When you look at cartoons, drawings or animations, keep an eye open for the technique. It may surprise you how flat the colouring of the picture is ! Gotta keep it simple though, as less seems to be more.

Erm. That "it's getting a bit too more" pinger is going off, especially as I haven't had me dinner yet and it's getting later ! Cya.