Issue #87: Monday 2 March, 2026
Note: Links on movie/series titles below are to my reviews in other issues of this newsletter.
I have been watching way more television than in previous years, and have even visited a cinema a few times during 2025.
I watched 79 films during the year, and 32 individual seasons of tv shows, goodness knows how many actual episodes that represents. Many hours of watching, certainly.
Several of the films I saw were watched for purposes of discussion on our podcast and in each case I watched them twice.
Mission Impossible: Fallout, directed by Christopher McQuarrie
Mission Impossible: Dead Reckoning, directed by Christopher McQuarrie
Some really good TV series out there, we’re spoiled for choice with excellent new shows like Pluribus and Alien: Earth, let alone revisiting the archives to look at older shows like Manhattan.
The following “review” is taken from a discussion on our podcast.
This is not a series, it’s what they call a mini-series. So it’s just it’s self-contained. There won’t be any further seasons of it. It’s based on the novel by Emily St John Mandel, a Canadian writer.
I thought this adaptation was excellent. And it made me realize that I’d forgotten most of what goes on in the book. I’ve got to go back and reread the book now, I think.
The book was written before the COVID pandemic, as was this series was made, so it foreshadows the real thing. There’s a really devastating flu that hits and it’s literally ninety nine percent fatal to humans. So people are dying off in droves.
The TV series goes back and forth in time quite a bit, right back to when the pandemic originally hits. And we follow this young child, who’s a child actress in a Shakespeare play. And she is saved by an adult she barely knows. Then it goes forward to twenty or so years later, when the few survivors that are around, some of them have gathered to make a travelling theatre group which wanders around all the few settlements that are still in existence and they put on plays, including lots of Shakespeare.
I thought it was really, really well done. Mackenzie Davis is the lead actress. She was in Hold and Catch Fire, if you remember. She’s a Canadian actress. As I’ve said, Emily St. John Mandel is Canadian too, so there’s a lot of Canadian people in this and it was made in Canada, I think, with bits in America.
In my next issue, I’ll return to discussing my latest reading and watching. I hope to get that out fairly soon.
From: Mark Nelson
Date: 20 February 2026
Mark:
As an addendum to one of my previous locs I can say that I've now almost finished reading On the Calculation of Volume 1. I've got about twenty pages to go, so the next time I can find some quiet time I'll be able to polish it off. I won't say any more than the first volume has given me plenty of interesting speculations about what's happening or could potentially happen. So I'm definitely going onto volume two.
I don't know if it's because I'm getting older... but I greatly appreciate this being published in seven smaller volumes rather than in one large door-stopper.
David:
I picked it up just last night, read the first few pages and was hooked. I despair, though, of how long it will take to get to finish the series, given that she has still to write the last couple of volumes (in Danish) and they then need to be translated into English.
Mark:
I haven't read anything by R.F. Kuang, but I do have Babel on the meaningless list of books that I would like to read in the future. Meaningless in the sense that there are too many books that I would like to read in the future. Meaningful because I'll have a look for it the next time I visit a second-hand bookshop.
I might forward this issue onto my dad, as I'm sure that he will be interested in Is That a Fish in Your Ear?.
I think I read a review of Marty Supreme in which it was stated that the director wrote the parts of Marty and the ageing actress with Chalamet and Paltrow in mind.
I have seen plenty of clips from The Lincoln Lawyer on YouTube. I"ll have to take advantage the next time Sianne's family visit Australia so I can use their Netflix account to watch as much as possible.
In the long ago days when I was addicted to comix I typically preferred Dark Horse Comics to DC. I never read Marvel.
From: W. H. Chong
Date: 16 February 2026
Chong:
Very thoughtful review of Bird Deity.
Morrissey has an unusual kind of tone, sort of elevated omniscient but ironic and gently estranging? Rather wonderful control of mood … the landscape and rain and suppressed emotions.
I did really feel the awesomeness of the cosmic encounter. No idea what that’s about but without it there would be a hollow in the centre of the book — as it is there is a hollow but it’s charged with the constant suggestion of revelation.
David:
Thanks, Chong!
I could have written at much greater length about it, but that's probably more suitable for Gillespie's SF Commentary than my newsletter.
Chong:
!!!
David:
Re-reading the book, I made lots of pencil marks in the margins. There are heaps of questions, some trivial, some deeper.
Chong:
I would have too.
David:
Why is the transport to and from the planet via a "frigate" which has gleaming cannons? Surely we're meant to be reminded of Captain Arthur Phillip's fleet in 1788?
Chong:
I missed this detail!
David:
Why does Sarah say at the start of her account that she's chosen "Sarah" as the name to give to people, so that it can't be her real name? Why is she concealing her identity (and the purpose of her mission)?
Chong:
She is a very mysterious figure, mostly symbolic I think; an external force as an opportunity for David to act on certain feelings.
David:
What exactly happens to Sarah after she drops into the void? How does she get down from the plateau? (Does she fly?)
Chong:
I had thoughts about this of course, but have come to think of those details as not very relevant. Either David has confused/lost memories (as he is sort of the narrator pop investment) or he has been imagining a bunch of stuff.
David:
Why does the ancient parasape dream of a caged, filthy beast in a cage and then (presumably millenia later) David dream of being that beast?
And on and on...
Chong:
I can’t decipher this, but actually think that’s a good thing, Morrissey doesn’t give us a neat programmatic analogy but leaves the dreams messy, which is a better analogy.
More to the point, the metaphor of the parasapes (a wonderful coinage no? para–sapiens) as a colonial consequence is rather confused for me. Eg, if they had a very high functioning civilisation to produce these indestructible and still working emotion/psyche-influencing objects, where are any other signs of a built civilisation? (A bit of Dark Emu sleight of hand there.)
Even more problematic for me is the cosmic encounter. I have to believe that this whole passage is in David’s head — because, if the Deity exists, why are its presumed worshippers, the parasapes, not in a vital condition? (And of course, no where else has anyone ever seen a deity except in visions. The encounter is beautifully persuasive.)
But David’s fate, his decision, the unresolved resolution — all that rings true to me. And so it goes.
But still, there is as you say a haunting quality about the book. Its brevity really helps that.
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