Weekly Entertainment Wrap Up #367 [CC]

Hi YouTube, it's Kathy, and this is my Weekly  Entertainment Wrap Up for January 7th - 13th. This week I read two books, I watched  one show, I watched four movies, I watched one circus, and I listened to one book. [pages turning] This was quite a lovely week and  I can't wait to tell you about it but I wanted to let you know that later  this evening Chad and I are actually escaping to a cabin in the woods for a few days, so if I don't get back to your comment like  I usually do pretty quickly,

that's why. We don't have cell service.  We don't have the internet. We just have a cabin in the woods  with the ocean and a hot tub and hopefully it might snow again, because if  it's going to snow in January where we live it might as well snow while we're in a hot tub. The first book that I finished  this week is Ink & Sigil. As I understanded, this is  part of a bigger book series. It's, like, an offshoot of a different  book series that I haven't read, but you do not need to because  this is

absolutely delightful and I think it might be the first in its own  dedicated series within this bigger world. Our main character is Aloysius MacBharrais. He is 63 years old if I remember correctly, and  he works as a Sigil Agent in Glasgow, Scotland. I almost said Edinburgh, because Edinburgh  is my favourite, but no, he works in Glasgow. He does go to Edinburgh in this, though. And what that essentially means is he is highly  skilled in writing these things called sigils which let people do c

ertain magical  things, and he's kind of a border agent between our world and the Fae world,  and if the Fae want to come onto Earth, they have to have contracts and all  of these different types of things. And he is the agent for basically all of Europe. As we meet him, he's going to the flat of  his apprentice, who has just recently died, and this is really not great because  this is the seventh apprentice he's had who has just up and died on him, and they've  all been different sorts of accid

ents. Additionally, we come to learn  that Al has actually been cursed so if he speaks out loud to people too many  times, they actually end up hating him, which is how he lost some friends and family. That means in this book he relies  heavily on a text to speech app that he uses with the people he  doesn't want to lose in his life. Everything gets turned sideways when he's  going through this room in Gordie's flat and finds that he's hiding a hobgoblin  in there who he plans to traffic. From t

here, Al has to figure out what  the heck is going on, who is behind it, and if he can stop it. I really liked this. Not only is it set in  Scotland, which is kind of my favourite place, although Edinburgh is the  one I'm more familiar with, but it's also written with the Scots dialect  in mind, which is just so fantastic to read on the page because you can just hear the  voices in your head while you're reading it. Additionally, all of the characters  were just so interesting. For example, he h

as this manager named  Nadia who works at his printing press, which is basically his cover job, and he  got her to work for him because not only does she have a degree that has  something to do with business - I think it was to do with accounting - but  she also has this thing called battle sight, which basically means that  she can look ahead in a fight and know what's going to happen and  she reacts naturally because of that. And he actually finds her in an underground  fight, her very first u

nderground fight, where she walked away without a scratch  on her and won three fights in a row. Everyone in this world is so interesting. The way they interact with each other is  so interesting, and I am really excited to continue reading this. I don't know if the  next book is out. I haven't even checked yet. But I know I want to read more. The other physical book I read  this week is one called Frindle. This is a kids book I had never actually  heard of before until I saw Ashley on The Booki

sh Realm talk about it in one  of her videos a couple of years ago, which prompted me to put  it on my 40 Before 40 TBR. If you're not aware of that TBR,  it's pretty self-explanatory. It's 40 books that I'm  going to read before I'm 40. Unfortunately there is a slight  problem with that TBR at the moment because I only ever got it up  to 39 books in the first place, so I need to fill that last spot, but there's also two books on that original  TBR that are from St Martin's Press and I'm not rea

ding from them right now,  for reasons you should probably know if you've been watching this channel, but there  is a current and ongoing influencer boycott of St Martin’s Press and its imprints. At this point and I'm just going to  take them off my list for this time, so I need to fill three  spots on my 40 Before 40 TBR. So if you have any suggestions, please  leave them in the comments below because it will be really awkward  if I get to the end of that project having only read 37 books becau

se that's  all I was suggested by the vast places on the internet that I've  asked for recommendations. In any case, Frindle is nice and short. It also has pictures by, um, Brian  Selznick, who is also an author, and I've read some of his books before.  Some of them are actually told in pictures which is really cool, and the same art style. But this is about a boy who is kind of a  little bit of a shit disturber in class. Like, he knows how to get teachers  talking so they don't actually remembe

r to give out homework, but  when he gets to the fifth grade, he meets this adversary named Mrs Granger. He basically tries to make it so they  don't get homework on the first day and she sees right through him and  instead gives him his own assignment to figure out what the history of dictionaries is. He goes home to do this assignment and  realizes that he can make this assignment waste a lot of time in the class the  next day, so he just keeps going on about all the things he learned about di

ctionaries. She shuts him down again and basically  during this exchange says something to the effect of “the people in the  society decide what words mean.” This kind of sticks in the back of his  head so when he's walking home one day with one of his friends and he  sees a pen on the side of the road, he decides it's not called a  pen. It's called a Frindle. And then a whole language war erupts in his  school, and then eventually in the nation, when he starts calling it a frindle. He gets ever

yone he knows to start calling it  a frindle and the teacher really wants people to just call it what it is, a pen. This went much further and deeper  than I expected from a kids book. I also really enjoyed reading  it because it is an older title, so it has all of this older technology in it  that was perfectly valid when I was a child but just makes me laugh now. For example, they were getting their class  photo taken and instead of saying “cheese,” they all held up a frindle and said “frindle

.” And they couldn't retake the photo  because the photographer was out of film. Which is something that would  have happened when I was a child, but definitely wouldn't happen  now cuz that's all digital. This is a truly delightful tale, so  thank you to Ashley for recommending it - just broadly. She didn't recommend it  to me specifically, but I took it out of one of her videos around the  time I was making this TBR. Onto the one show I watch. You can  probably guess that it was Taskmaster, an

d it was delightful. We  are still in the 10th season. We have two episodes to go  until the end of this season, and like I've said before,  this is just a delightful show. It's just so fun to watch. It's so fun to figure  out who you think is going to to be the person that the episode is named after,  because every episode is named after something that is said in the episode, and  it's just a really fun, wholesome, lovely time. Onto the movies I watched. I watched My Best Friend's Exorcism, whi

ch  is an adaptation of the Grady Hendrick book. I didn't realize that this had  been adapted, so I was like, ”perfect, I remember reading that book, I remember  liking that book. Let's watch this movie.” And I was entertained. Essentially in this book, two girls, they’re  best friends, and one day they go to a cabin in the woods with a couple of other friends and then when one of them wanders off  the other one comes and finds her. They find this creepy house. They  go into it and things happen

. After that, it's decided that one of  them actually requires an exorcism. This was delightful and  honestly all I wanted out of it. It's full of nostalgia because it is set, I  believe, in the 90s, so it's kind of that era, and it's just a good time. Next, on date night we went to the  movie theatre and we watched Mean Girls. And even though I told him ahead of  time, Chad forgot that this adaptation is the adaptation of the musical,  so as soon as they started singing, he was like, “oh wait,

is this a musical?”  and I was like, “yes, yes it is.” Also, I don't really blame him, even  though I did tell him it was a musical, because all of the advertisements for this  don't really tell you that it's a musical, so I'm sure there's a lot of people that  have gone to it expecting a shot or shot remake of the one from like 20  years ago and then realized that, “oh, no, this is an adaptation of the musical.” I found the music pretty good. I had never  heard the music from this musical befor

e. I enjoyed it. I enjoyed seeing certain  people come back and reprise their roles and of course there was one cameo  that I just did not see coming and just really appreciated that. I also really enjoyed how the queer character  characters in this one are explicitly queer because in the first version of this  story, we have the Janice character, and it's like, “well, did Regina just say  that she's a lesbian and she's not actually or is she in fact a lesbian?” There was this kind of grey area

about  that, whereas in this one it's like, “no, no, she's definitely into ladies.” I just appreciated that it was more  queer, it had people of colour, the dancing and the music was great. I enjoyed it. That night we also watch Kung Fu Hustle,  which is an absolutely ridiculous movie, that if you don't speak that language  you're going to watch it in subtitles or you're going to watch it dubbed.  We watched it with subtitles. And it's basically about this one gang in  the area and a couple of g

uys that want to get into that gang and pretend to  be in that gang and things go down, they need backup, and there's this small  area where the gang comes to attack and then we find out that there are a couple  of people that are basically Kung Fu Masters that live there but nobody really  knew about it ahead of time. And it's basically all this warring back and  forth but it's done in a very comedic style, so they actually use CGI to like stretch  people's limbs and do these ridiculous things

and it's just just really an  interesting time because you're like, “wait, what? This shouldn't work but it does.” The final movie I watched this week was last  night and that was The Thing About Harry. I had never heard about this  movie previous to this week but I found out about it found out that it stars  two people that I really like from Grey's Anatomy and was like, “yeah I need to watch that.” Essentially this is a hate  to love romance between Sam, aka the guy that plays Schmidt on Grey’

s  Anatomy, and this guy that used to torment him in high school, who is named  Harry, aka Adams on Grey's Anatomy - in the most recent season. If you  haven't seen the most recent season, you don't know this character. Basically Sam has had some heartache in  his time so he's a very guarded character and he's supposed to be going  to this engagement party and his friends call him and say,  “hey can you give Harry a ride because you're the only person in the same  city as him coming back and he

needs a ride and that would be really great.” And he's just like, “Harry literally  made High School hell for me, though” cuz he gave me this really bad nickname that  people used until the end of high school and, like, “he bullied me all  the time; why would I do that?” But he really loves his  friends so he decides to do it. When he brings this up during this 9-hour  car ride, Harry doesn't even remember being the person that started that nickname,  and is actually really truly sorry. It's als

o revealed during this car ride  that Harry is pan which is something so shocking it actually causes Sam  to drive off the side of the road. Sam was openly gay in high school and was  basically kind of the only one type of thing and Harry really admired that but  hadn't really come into his queerness so he kind of was like, “well if I'm mean to  him nobody will think I'm queer by association.” From here we see the story that happens  over over at least a couple of years because we keep having th

ese time jumps  where maybe they're going to get together but then it's not good for a specific  reason, and then eventually we get to our happily ever after, but not without  a bunch of conflict along the way listen. It's not the most solid script in the  world, but I did heavily enjoy it, and also I really enjoyed the  portrayal by these two actors, who I already really enjoyed.  and if that's not enough for you, Karamo Brown actually plays a  small role in this, as well. As for went to the li

ve event I watched  this week, yesterday and my best friend actually had two spare tickets to Cirque  du Soliel Corteo, so Chad and I were privileged enough to go to  that, and it was just wonderful. I have seen one Cirque du Soliel before, and  that's when I was on a class trip to Las Vegas. That one was Ka. That was amazing  because it's in its own dedicated theatre so they can do more with the stage.  However, I was pleasantly surprised with how much they were able to do  with this traveling

stage, every Cirque show has a different theme  and has a different plot to it but it's not something you  need to especially follow. This one kind of opens with this guy being  like “I dreamed I was at my own funeral” and then there's all these acrobats  doing these different cool things, apparently at his funeral. You don't really need to care about that,  because the plot basically just carries through these different little vignettes  while the other people are changing into different costum

es and getting ready  to go back on stage and do amazing things. Needless to say, I was incredibly impressed  several times with the different acrobatic tricks that were going on. We had people  doing flying trapes, we had somebody who was suspended by helium  balloons, we had hoops, we had silks, we had somebody who was pole dancing, and how do you make that even  more dangerous and impressive? You pull the pole out of the  stage and have it flying around. It was just incredibly impressive.  I

really enjoyed the staging of this because they actually had it set up like  a proscenium theatre and they used scrims at the beginning so you couldn't see the  fact that on the other side of the stage is the rest of the audience, so the  audience is actually viewing from two sides. So the actors actually have to move around  in a way where you're actually including both sides of the audience, which  for a theatre person is just such an interesting thing to look at, and I  could see that's what

was happening when we started, so I was just  like, “this is going to be so cool.” Because obviously before I've seen  proscenium shows, I've seen black box shows, I've seen theatre in the round, but I've  never seen it done in this exact way. Onto the book I listened to this week. That was Nettle & Bone, which  is another T Kingfisher book. This one is a quest story told  in a very interesting way. A we're meeting this main character, she  is on the second of three impossible tasks where she is

trying to create a dog out of bones. If she's able to do this and she returns  the dog to somebody called the Dust Witch, she has one more task before the Dust Witch  will actually help her take down a prince. At the beginning that's all we know. We don't really know the backstory of  why she wants to be able to kill a prince and we get that filled in as she's going on  this journey and learning these different things and getting these different characters  together to do the thing that she nee

ds to do, and I don't want to tell you more about that  besides the fact that I just really enjoyed all of the characters in this. We have characters that are  companion characters, so for example, we have this one chicken that  is a hen with a demon in it, and I just really love when we  have these kinds of side characters that are whole different personality to  themselves even though they don't talk. Basically I haven't read anything by T.  Kingfisher that I didn't really enjoy, so I'm lookin

g forward to going  through more of her backlist because I know there's a bunch  out there I didn't know about, and then and there's going to be  more so I'm excited for those too. I've gone on long enough and I have to  get this edited before I go to the gym and then before I go to the cabin in  the woods, so that's it for this week! If you read, watched, or listened to any of these, let me know about it down in the comments below. On the way down to the comments,  if you hit that Subscribe but

ton, that would be very nice of you. If you don't feel like leaving a comment but  want to make sure that I know you were here just leave me an emoji or a smiley face  if you happen to be on your keyboard. Some people have asked if there's a  way to financially support this channel so I set up a Ko-fi account, which  is a digital tipping service. The link for that, as always, is down below. You can like and share this as you see fit, and I will see you very soon. Bye! [outro music]