Okay so, at this point I'm apparently going to have colds etc until my allergies start up once spring hits. I am not very happy with 2016 so far and no one is going to believe that I planned to write even more this year at this rate. I have been getting some reviews out, like The Perfect Insider and K: Return of Kings but it's harder to focus on titles you like less, even if you're not sick. Thankfully I have liked a number of other titles I've also been reviewing, like Uprooted, A Darker Shade of Magic and volumes 2 & 3 of ReLIFE over at OASG but only five reviews in two weeks? That's not the amount of content I'm aiming for so, a little catch-up with a few reviews I missed and decided to just summarize instead:
Quite a while ago I read Beautiful Darkness and I was surprised that I did like it (of course I hoped/wanted to but more underground/indie comics are really hit or miss for me). I was hoping for slightly more explanation about the larger world/what was up with all of the little people but at the same time I wasn't shocked that it was all kept vague, the book is very clear about what it's trying to focus on and that kind of logic wasn't it. So, if you like dark and gothic comics, give that one a shot (and even if that's not always your thing it reads so fast that you should still try it out).
My other missing review was going to be about two of Seijun Suzuki's films, Man With A Shotgun and The Breeze on the Ridge, both of which I saw courtesy of the JICC which was part of an even larger film series about him (I think the others were being shown downtown in the Freer/Sackler). I'm completely unfamiliar with b-movies or really any movies from that (1960s) time period, it's something I want to fix, but I still enjoyed both of the movies fairly well. I liked that they were shorter (I just don't have time for two, 2+ hour movies on work nights) and liked how the comedy mixed well with the more serious parts. Overall I think I liked Shotgun a bit more than Breeze, although Shotgun also went a bit off the rails at the end and Breeze was more consistent throughout. I'm certainly curious about more of his works, sadly by the time I saw these almost all of the other showings were over so I wasn't able to catch any more as part of the mini-festival.
