Seen, Read, 2021

1/1

Soul

1/8

His Dark Materials, Season 2

Invisible daemons.

1/10

Wonder Woman 1984

This was... not good. The only part that felt genuinely human was when Steve Rogers was walking through the Air and Space museum.

1/16

Ma Rainey's Black Bottom

1/26

Star Trek Discovery, Season 3

If I ignore the connection to the previous two seasons, and the time travel (or at least pretend it was from well after we'd seen otherwise), this season was actually pretty good. Good crew.

1/30

One Night in Miami...

2/13

Bad Education

2/20

Fuel Me Once, Allen Lang

Analog, July/August 2020

2/24

Retention, Alec Nevala-Lee

Nanoscopic Nemesis, P. K. Torrens

Analog, July/August 2020

3/6

Terminator: Dark Fate

3/20

Zach Snyder's Justice League

This was not good. I think it was maybe a bit better than the original — more coherent, better developed — but mostly it was just awful in different ways. This is why films have editors.

5/7

Hachi: A Dog's Tale

Netflix has the dumbest spoilery blurb for this movie I've ever seen.

5/10

The Falcon and The Winter Soldier

5/14

WandaVision

I did not expect a Disney+ superhero show to make my eyes water.

6/10

Thor: Ragnarok

I re-watched this after hearing someone talk about it as something which could only have come from an indigenous director, given its treatment of Asgard as a society which had papered over and never acknowledged or dealt with its real origin story, preferring to create a more pleasant mythology for itself.

6/16

The New Mutants

This felt like it would have made a mostly-decent made-for-television movie.

6/18

Oslo

Very good, but also probably the first time I sought a movie out specifically because of the (excellent) soundtrack.

7/23

Loki(Season 1)

Very good. I was hoping for weirder, but totally enjoyable.

7/30

The Jungle Book (2016)

Family Movie Night. Slightly disconcerting when the ~2-year-old cheers for the tiger.

7/31

Thor

Re-watching the Thor movies after Season 1 of Loki

Thor: The Dark World

This one gets a bad rap. I particularly like how it's mostly the scientists who save the day while Thor makes a good distraction.

8/24

Why Things Work on a Starship, Stephen R. Luftus-Mercer

The Women We Can See in Analog, Marie Vibbert

Analog, November/December 2020

A publication error resulted in the second graph in this article getting a duplicate of the first graph's caption and legend. The author was quick to respond to my question and kind enough to include some other data that didn't make it into publication.

8/30

The Suicide Squad

This was really awful. it took me two tries to get through the opening. Harley Quinn's escape sequence was superb, though.

9/8

Iron Man

Iron Man 2

More selective MCU re-watching with an eye towards evolution and continuity. They didn't quite play fair with the origin of SHIELD between this and Captain Marvel, but overall it's been very good so far, given the scope.

9/20

Asleep Was the Ship, Eric Del Carlo

Call Him Lord, Gordon R. Dickson

Part of Analog's 90th anniversary series reprinting works from earlier in their publication history, this originally ran in May of 1966. I'd take issue with some of the author's ideas on gender relations, but overall it holds up quite well. And it's used for excellent effect in the context here.

Therefore, I Knew Him, Trevor Quachri

This editorial makes explicit Call Him Lord's commentary on the current (as of October 2020) political situation, in good effect. The story focuses on "a sort of man we should all hope never winds up with any real power" — which is exactly what we had. It also contains a line I really wish I'd read at the time: "And so we have our first Marxist president: it just happens to be Chico, not Karl, that he takes after."

Analog, November/December 2020

9/30

Doctor Who, Series 1

Re-watching the New Who run, while still working my way through some of the old ones. Eccleston is my least favorite of the new Doctors, but that's not really fair; the season takes a long time to figure out what it's doing, and the last ~third is excellent. The Empty Child/The Doctor Dances might be the best New Who story to date, and the season ends very strong.
"But you have no weapons, no defenses, no plan."
"Yeah. And doesn't that scare you to death?"

10/10

Black Widow

10/21

Dune (2021)

This was beautiful; cinematography, sets, wardrobe, &c, all wonderful. But the pacing hurt character (especially relationship) development, and it ended in a weird spot. I'm glad they seem to have gotten Part 2 signed off, but it feels more like an intermission. Good and enjoyable, but the third best adaptation.

10/29

Ant-Man

11/25

Land (2021)

Never to her extreme, but I get looking at the blisters on her hand and thinking "yeah, good", and then the "this isn't working" realization.

11/28

The Muppet Christmas Carrol

Family Movie Night. I did not expect the Ghost of Christmas Future's reveal of Tiny Tim's hypothetical death to hit so hard.

12/01

Inhumans

This was... not great.

12/23

Hawkeye (Season 1)

I sort of wanted to dislike this. But I didn't; it was good. I really appreciate getting some "smaller" stories in the MCU. It felt lke the Netflix shows in mostly good ways (even before the tie-in).

12/27

Finding Nemo

Re-watch for Family Movie Night. She got a kick out of meeting her bath toys.

12/31

Little Boxes

This was okay. Good ideas, but the execution was so-so. My main question afterwords was "how do I make sure our kid doesn't have crappy friends?".