Hi, hello, how are you? The moon is full, and this is your friend Adam from the internet, dropping into your inbox once more. I hope you’ve had a fantastic month of March and have shaken off the last of winter. This month I want to tell you about a literary event I attended, a couple of games I played, and a book with my name in it. To start with, however, a few words about a documentary on a living legend in video games.

I recently watched the new documentary Hideo Kojima: Connecting Worlds (currently available on Disney+ in the UK). Right from the jump, the presence of the PlayStation Studios and Kojima Productions logos in the opening credits, might tip the viewer to expect something at least mildly hagiographical. Aside from being an interesting recap of Kojima’s career, I found it to be telling whom the producers chose to feature as interviewees. Unsurprisingly long-time Kojima fan (and collaborator) Guillermo Del Toro is here, but so too are George Miller, Nicolas Winding Refn, and Grimes. If that group has one thing in common it’s the extent to which they prize their artistic independence; they are all people to whom one might accurately apply the (sometimes over-used) label ‘auteur’. Also mentioned in the doc as inspirations are David Lynch, David Cronenberg and Stanley Kubrick — more names securely on that auteurs list. 

You might also notice that (with the exception of Grimes) these are all film-makers. Kojima is a noted cinema-obsessive, prone to including numerous and lengthy cutscenes in his games, every aspect of which are cultivated with a strong visual sense. It’s no surprise that he considers himself in the company of directors of cinema as opposed to fellow game-makers. Video games are a collaborative artform to an even greater extent than cinema, and the list of the medium’s true auteurs is extremely short. The first names to my mind are Jeff Minter, Tetsuya Mizuguchi, and Famito Ueda, but no one has a stronger claim to the descriptor than Kojima. All of this is particularly interesting perhaps, because his currently-in-development projects include OD: a horror game collaboration with Jordan Peele, featuring Hunter Schafer; a television series adaptation of his own Death Strandingfor Netflix; and the mysterious Physint, about which Kojima has only said — notably when announcing it on Sony Pictures’ backlot — that he intends it to be “both a game and a movie at the same time”.

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The three best films I saw this month were Justine Triet’s rightly lauded (Palme d’Or and Best Original Screenplay Oscar-winning) Anatomy of a Fall (2023), Stephen Spielberg’s delightful 2021 adaptation of West Side Story, and the truly jaw-dropping spectacle of Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour (Taylor’s Version) (2023). (Are you on Letterboxd? Say hi.) 

When it comes to games, I had two very different experiences this month. First, I finished The Last of Us Part II Remastered (2024), and honestly it’s left me a little shaken. Undoubtedly an absolute masterpiece of game narrative and design, it was also an emotional workout that I was not entirely prepared for. When the game was initially released, I put off playing it because 2020 was trying enough. Now that I’ve completed both games, I feel as though I’d like to write something about the whole experience at some point, but first I need to sit with it for a while. 

The other game I ‘completed’ this month could hardly be more different. I first played Mario vs. Donkey Kong when it was released for the Game Boy Advance in 2004. I have fond memories of days sat in the laundry room at my university hall of residence, playing it whilst waiting for my spin cycle to finish. When GBA games started arriving on Nintendo Switch Online last year, the title was at the top of my wish list. Instead, Nintendo went one better and remade the game for Switch. I’ve had a blast playing through it again, and I saw credits this week. However, I was immediately reminded that going perfect through the first 64 levels is just the beginning: expert levels and time attack modes await!

This week I had the pleasure of attending the 2024 Bodley Lecture, at the Sheldonian Theatre. This year’s recipient of the Bodley Medal is Ali Smith, a writer whom I’ve admired for many years. She seemed somewhat overwhelmed throughout proceedings to be joining the list of awardees alongside Sir Kazuo Ishiguro, Hilary Mantel, Stephen Hawking, Dr Oliver Sacks, Sir Tim Berners-Lee, and Baroness P. D. James (among others). Another former recipient, Oxford’s own Philip Pullman, was also in attendance.

At the beginning of the event, Smith read an extended excerpt from an unfinished novel, and then took a moment to ask her editor — who was seated in the audience, and who was hearing it for the first time — how it had sounded. Then came a conversation with Bodley’s Librarian, Richard Ovenden, throughout which Smith was passionate and eloquent on the subjects of early reading experiences, the uniquely durable technology of physical books, and the importance of story in people’s lives. 

During the audience Q&A portion of the evening, Smith again gave thoughtful, brilliantly considered responses to several questions from fans of her recent seasonal quartet, and the novel that confirmed her genius in my own mind: 2014’s How to be Both. She then dedicated her acceptance of the Bodley Medal itself to her late parents, and her partner Sarah Wood. 

After the event I spoke with one of the ushers, who at first mistook me for an attendee of the subsequent gala dinner. Ali Smith was due to eat two courses with donors and grandees, before enjoying desert with a student group. Judging by the length of the signing queue that was forming as I left however, my guess is that she may have had to skip the starter. 

As as aside, this was my first time attending an event at the Sheldonian, and I can confirm what I had been told ahead of time: it does seem that Sir Christopher Wren, when designing the building in the 1660s, had little regard for the convenience and comfort of those visitors sat in the Semi-Circle and Gallery.

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I also attended another event at Oxford Literary Festival — hosted by an old acquaintance — and took the opportunity to ask the most pretentious question I could. You can read about that here.

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My longest-running friendship began in week one of Law school, back in 1999. Leaving one of the course’s very first lectures, I commented upon a classmate’s t-shirt, which featured the logo of a relatively obscure rock band. It’s fitting that our first conversation was about music — it’s been the subject of the majority of our conversations since, over the last quarter century. 

It always felt to me as though James and I were a little out of place in Law school. Perhaps nothing illustrated it better than one night towards the end of our studies, when the rest of our class were attending a formal event, and the two of us were across campus at a screening for the Sex Pistols documentary The Filth and the Fury (2002). We were also inseparable enough in class that for a while people didn’t know who was who. On one awkward occasion I turned up at the faculty building to learn my grade on a recent test, and was congratulated by several fellow students who had already seen the results. The only problem: they thought that I was James.

But I only shared the star pupil’s CD collection and not his aptitude for the law. James is now a widely-respected Professor of Public International Law at UWE Bristol, and has just published his latest book with Cambridge University Press: Collective Self-Defence in International Law (2024).

Am I mentioning all of this because I’m proud of my friend’s considerable accomplishments? Yes... and also because he quite unexpectedly included me in the book’s acknowledgments:

Thanks pal – it’s been my pleasure to talk pop culture with you for the last 25 years. If this (not internationally respected) newsletter had an acknowledgments section, I’d return the favour.

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I only managed to drop one photo into last month’s issue of the newsletter, and recently I’ve been making more of an effort to snap away more often. This month, things in Oxford looked something like this:

Let’s round things out with a handful of links to things elsewhere on the internet that I’ve enjoyed recently:

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Happy Easter to those who mark it. (Or, to my fellow marzipan addicts, happy simnel cake day.) The baseball season begins this week, with the Cubs playing their first series away at Texas, before the opening series at Wrigley Field starts on 1 Apr. All of which means it’s very much spring. 

That’s it for this issue. If you want more from me, over in the online notebook recently I’ve written about the Oxford Reads Kafka campaign; my confused reactionto the new Ethan Coen movie; and two conversations I had whilst travelling. But, if once per month is more your speed, I will send the next issue of Syzygy Business to you on Wednesday 24 April. 

Stay well. First one to spot a fuzzy yellow duckling wins!

✌🏻

Adam