Hereby diverse babble.
It's January and what shall I say...?
I'll say this.
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The best hobbies have a creative element to them. You strive, you try to get better. If only as a private pastime, not a career.
You strive, you want to get better at the specific art. This entails a certain element of dread.
Like, if you have cooking as a hobby. Then it might come a day when you've done doing casseroles and "meat plus sauce". When you feel the urge of mastering a soufflé -- pannacotta -- chocolate mousse and such. Béarnaise. French stuff utilizing the binding element of eggs.
Well, that's an example. My point is that the hobby worth mentioning has this striving, "get-better-at-it" element. Including an element of dread. You dread doing a soufflé for the first time, if only for your family, because the ingredients cost and you risk losing face. Then again, if you succeed, then it's a great sense of accomplishment.
So, I can understand the practice of hobbies like "paint by numbers" and "stamp collecting". But a hobby satisfying in the long run must have some creative, get-better, develop-your skill element to it.
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Movie tip, an excellent film from rather recent times: Hitchcock (2012).
You can, of course, be wary of a "recursive" film like this, a film about a film: about how Hitchcock made Psycho in 1960. But never mind that, this is damn good.
Like, no frame from the actual Psycho film is in the movie. Everything is reconstructed along the story of Hitchcock being a bit of a sicko himself -- but he's also an artist. And no one believed in this film project Psycho at first. It was "one man against the world".
There's Hitch (Anthony Hopkins), there's his wife (Helen Mirren), there's Janet Leigh (Scarlett Johansen); in all, a perfect cast. And Hopkins is overacting perfectly; the real Hitch probably did too IRL, speaking a bit pompously. The whole film is playing with the format a bit, not self-indulgently -- no, it's simply right.
A story about an aged genius in a cooling-off marriage getting aroused by his female leads, wanting to scare the audience, leading it by the noose, leading the whole current culture in a frenzy of violence and suspense -- in a perfectly legitimate way, by way of an artwork.
Also in the plot: Hitchcock's wife has an adventure of her own, however it's only a way of getting an outlet for her own writing. Plot-wise, a credible "human interest" feature. Then there's flashbacks of the real sicko that inspired Robert Bloch to write the Pyscho novel, Ed Gein; rather unsettling.
The film serves psychotic violence with tea and cookies. Which is kinda intentional. Then there's the wity dialogue with hints and double entendres. Britishness in Tinseltown.
IDK if this film didn't get an Oscar but it was Oscar material. As "films about films" go, clearly above average.
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January is soon over. Fine. I have never enjoyed this month.
So, what am I going to round off this post with?
Maybe some links. In Swedish.
This one tells diverse stories about Sweden: Svenska stories.
This is in praise of the car company Koenigsegg.
And this one is the ten-year jubilee of the blog.
Related (in Swedish)
Kluge: "Slaget"
Melina Starr -- agent i befrielsen av Sverige
Castanedas värld: en ordlista