We went to see Black Panther yesterday. It was very good, and I say this as one who is not a fan of superhero films. It was beautiful of course – Afrofuturism is lush visually (I’m less fond of the novels I’ve read in the genre). And so strange and refreshing to see a big ticket film like this that was almost entirely about black characters with the white ones as incidental exceptions and sidekicks. I enjoyed the call back to pan-Africanism and solidarity amongst the colonised.
It was all very political and apposite, of course.
Today, the second day of Chinese New Year, we went to the Balai Seni Negara, the national art gallery where the KL Bienale was on. It included one of the silliest bits of interpretive text labels I’ve seen. There were some fine pieces, mostly from the museum’s own collection, including a photorealist charcoal drawing on canvas called ‘Tug of War’ that I thought was very good.
We have eaten extraordinarily well this long weekend. We went to the poncy supermarket for a very good fish that was large enough for three meals. I made two fillets last night after marinadiing in ginger, accompanied by a stirfry of Chinese broccoli (appropriate to the holiday) and Ipoh bean sprouts and an experimental herb called mengkulu which tumed out to be quite bitter until tempered by lime and fish sauce. Today I made two more fillets with grits, a sauce of tomatoes, Thai basil and capers, and rocket. It started raining whilst we were at the gallery and we fled back to the flat as we could not find a good cafe or patisserie that was open on CNY, and I made buttermilk pancakes with mangoes and bananas. So a tasty weekend to date.
I finished Chew a couple of days ago, and it has now taken its place alongside The Sandman as one of the most satisfying completed comic series I have ever read. The ending was a model of rightness – there was no other way it could have ended after all that the main character had endured. but I was still surprised.
My Chinese horoscope says this is a good year for me to move southwest. Perhaps I should move to South America this year.
