March Media Recommendations
- Archives Abound
- Mar 11, 2024
- 4 min read
Updated: Mar 31, 2024
Looking for something new to read or watch? Our writers share a selection of books, shows, and films they’ve enjoyed recently.
Kraken, China Miéville (2010)
With Kraken, China Mieville constructs an other-London of squidnappings, cult-politics and apocalypse-obsession. Where the Met has a cult squad, anything can be origami-d if you try hard enough and trade unionist spirits can hop between Barbie and your dashboard Jesus. Mieville’s grasp of myth and the occult are so expertly interwoven with his interrogation of the political and spatial dynamics of the city that its myriad neologisms and magical quirks (or knacks) seem to roll off the page almost effortlessly. It is a joy to read — playful, pulpy, the right kind of tonal absurdity. Kraken’s twists and turns had me kicking my feet (or tentacles?) with teuthic glee.
Tress of the Emerald Sea, Brandon Sanderson (2023)
This novel is one of my favourite reads of last year! In a world where the seas are made of magical spores, rather than water, teenage Tress must leave her home and make a dangerous sailing journey to rescue her friend, who was kidnapped by the evil Sorceress. Sanderson’s excellent worldbuilding stands out in this novel, creating a spellbinding world of talking animals, curses, and swashbuckling, with an interesting group cast. The narration is particularly fun, and brings humour as well as emotional depth to the story. Tress of the Emerald Sea is full of heart and has a whimsical, fairy-tale quality that I loved, without losing the complexities and surprises of the plot. It is a beautiful standalone fantasy and a cosy and joyful read.
Percy Jackson and the Olympians, created by Rick Riordan and Jonathan E Steinberg (2023)
If you enjoyed the Percy Jackson books, the new Disney+ show needs to go on your watchlist. Fair warning - don’t expect scene-for-scene book accuracy - but the show captures the heart and the humour of the story. This is driven by the amazing young cast playing the main characters; the character relationships are strong and form the emotional core of the story. Walker Scobell especially shines as Percy, getting his sarcastic attitude just right. The design of the show is also impressive and really pulls you into the world. Overall, the show is heartwarming and fun, and I recommend it to any fans of the books, or anyone who enjoys fantasy with a younger tone.
Dune: Part Two, Denis Villeneuve (2024)
The first blockbuster to make tremors in 2024, Dune: Part Two may perhaps turn out to be the cinematic event of the year. An immediate continuation of Dune, we follow Paul Atreides as he befriends and eventually comes to manipulate the Fremen people of the desert planet Arrakis - all in the pursuit of a prophecy he himself is initially cynical towards. Standing in his way of self-fulfilling prophecy are the nature-bending Harkonnens and the Padishah Emperor of the Corrino Empire - both of which contribute massive new additions to the already stacked cast. For my money, Austin Butler stands as the greatest new addition, shining as sociopath Feyd-Fautha and chewing at the scenery of every monochrome arena he sets foot into (which is sadly only one). Dune: Part Two is a generational work of blockbuster ambition, of creative vision, with echoes of Peter Jackson’s similarly and also truly “great” Lord of the Rings trilogy across its massive production. Films this big, this intelligent, and this well-done are very rare. If you can see it in IMAX, see it in IMAX, if you can’t, see it anyway.
Suzume, Makoto Shinkai (2022)
One of my biggest regrets of last year was that I did not make the effort to see Makoto Shinkai’s Suzume in cinemas. It is, I think, Shinkai’s richest, densest text — at once fascinated by the sentimentality of objects, tradition, spirituality, modernity, other-landscapes, memory (collective, individual and our repression thereof) but also trauma, disaster, ruination and our response thereto. He has described Suzume as a kind of ‘answer’ to an “emptiness or ... feeling of loss — the feeling that something is disappearing” and though this undercurrent runs throughout the film (and, I would argue, his filmography) it is not without hope. In rationalising this feeling he crafts a fascinating fantasy road movie that interweaves the personal and national in a way that feels simultaneously novel and natural within his body of work.
The Zone of Interest, Jonathan Glazer (2024)
The contrast of slab concrete against the Polish countryside: strangely enough, that is my lasting image taken from The Zone of Interest. Intelligent, innovative and disturbingly immersive, Glazer’s newest turn of audience unsettlement is - for my money - the best film thus far of 2024. As the comings and goings of the initially mundane Hoss household develop, we come to realise that the family patriarch is none-other than Auschwitz Commandant Rudolf Hoss. We the audience are made immediately complicit, witnessing the privilege of ignorance rife in the celebration of the traditional family - such a lovely garden, such a lovely house. That sickening contrast, akin to the aforementioned imagery of concrete aside country, gleams through the masterful sound design and implied extra-narratives, both of which exist only in the background. This is a new twist to approaching such human tragedies, to exist complicit through the familiarising proximity of cinema, bringing the massively historicised past to the current present. As Glazer himself said in his Oscar-win speech on the 10th of March: “All our choices were made to reflect and confront us in the present: not to say look what they did then, rather look what we do now.” A profound speech it was, but nothing the film doesn't already convey remarkably. Watch it! Watch it! Watch it! For revolutionary filmmaking and awareness of those suffering aside complicity across the world.
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