For my birthday dinner this year, we indulged and had cheddar bay biscuits from Red Lobster, a petite filet mignon, and fried Oreos from Twist delivered to the house. Each thing on its own was very fine, but the combination of the three proved even better than the sum of its parts. It felt like going to a really nice buffet, but at home and with fewer children sneezing on the food.
The Galactic Projector continues to be a marvelous thing.
This is Mystic Mountain, a region in the Carina Nebula, being projected onto the ceiling of our Airbnb, so we could stare up at it while we lounged in the indoor hot tub. Being boiled alive and indulging in fwine and succulent fruit was a nice way to spend a couple of days.
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After 40-plus years, it looks like KING CONAN is finally happening:
In teasing King Conan, Schwarzenegger told the crowd, “It’s a great story where Conan was 40 years king [as] king and he gets complacent, and now he gets forced out of the kingdom, slowly. Then there’s conflict, of course, and then he somehow comes back, and then there’s all kinds of madness and violence and magic and creatures. Now, of course, you have all the special effects, and the studio system has plenty of money to make those movies really big. So I’m looking forward to all of those projects.”
There is a desire emanating from some quarters of the internet for KING CONAN to be a deconstruction of Arnold’s eponymous hero, à la UNFORGIVEN or LOGAN. I respect that position, and I’m sure it would make for a fine film (especially with Christopher McQuarrie writing and directing). It feels like the natural approach, at this point. But it is for that reason that I hope the filmmakers take the concept and story in a different direction. As much as I love the “miserable old crank is reluctantly drawn into One Last Job, starring a bleak setting and humorless tone” genre of film, it feels like the too obvious, too easy route to go with KING CONAN. As an actor, Arnold can be playful and charming. Injecting some of that energy into an older Conan the Cimmerian, one who’s been king of Aquilonia for 40 years and has learned a few things, could make for an interesting film. We shall see.
READING: THE HOBBIT, J.R.R. Tolkien
LAST WATCHED: ASTEROID CITY
LISTENING: EARLY DAYS, Los Retros