Catching Up At The Movies.

 Fun stuff at the workplace; we got a bunch of the film writers to come up with some films that got away this Summer (basically, stuff we didn't review at the time for whatever reason), and I talked about The Wrong Girls and Maa Inti Bangaaram (and a little bit about how troubled I am by the "AI Sequence" in it).

At the movies: Let's just call it Mission: Impossible 7.

 

Mission: Impossible: Dead Reckoning - Part One has a few surprises up its sleeve, namely a triumphant return for Esai Morales. 

At the movies: Her.

So, I got to talk about what I widely consider to be the best film of 2013 for The Scene. There's some stuff I couldn't find a way to fit in completely (like the queerness of Chris Pratt's character, the economics behind the OS One launch, and how rather than children, the creative-minded reproduce through ideas which are exploited by higher-ups) which I will happily go into if asked. But give a read, and then see the film.

So I read this: River of Gods by Ian McDonald.

Imagining India circa 2047, this is a rather remarkable SF novel. It has an expansive but not diluted collection of main characters, its technology is advanced but comprehensible, and its knowledge of human behavior is remarkably consistent with who we are and where we most likely are headed to.

There's a playful cleverness to McDonald's work, and his embrace of the complex sociopolitical forces at work in contemporary (and alternate future-contemporary) India is impressive. I'd love to see this in a cinematic context, but it would be hard to find a happy synthesis that can make allowancwes for some of the extremely nonvisual plot points. But this book is an utter delight, and I recommend it to anyone looking for an evocative SF experience.