Seen, Read, 2024

1/4

The Wheel of Time, Season 2

I can't compare to the books, but I'm really enjoying this. I'm not a fan of the gender essentialism in the magic system, but other than that I like the variety it's shown to have, and how they make clear that it has some internal rules or logic without overly dissecting it or making it not... magic. The worldbuilding remains strong, although I would like to understand Seanchan and Aiel better.

1/7

Castle in the Sky

The kids' first time. They were very sad about the robot.

1/12

Bank of Dave

This was cute. The plot was unsurprising and the dialogue was so-so, but it's a nice light story about mostly good people trying to do something good and it mostly works out.

1/13

Whisper of the Heart

Snow day movie with the kids. I'd only seen bits of this before. It was almost worth watching just for the aesthetic of that violin workshop and the Lo-Fi Girl-esque study space. The Junior High love story felt very... Junior High, which makes sense, but the journey through figuring out what you want, and realizing the sorts of longer-term work that goes into it, was very well done. I really appreciate how the Ghibli films which don't actually involve explicitly magical elements still feel like they could at any moment, like the characters here inhabit nearly the same world as, say, those in Kiki's Delivery Service.

1/18

Tetris

This was a lot of fun. It's of course heavily dramatized, but it really is a pretty wild story, as tales of IP acquisition go. Also well-received by my partner, who is decidedly not into video games and was a bit skeptical up front.

1/21

Maestro

This was very, very good. Both of the leads did remarkably well, most especially Carey Mulligan as Felicia Montealegre. Bradley Cooper feels like he'd do better if he wasn't both directing and staring.

1/26

Mike Birbiglia: Please Stop the Ride

My partner got us tickets for Christmas; It was a wonderful show. When he started talking about "urgent care", I thought my partner might pass out from laughing too hard.

1/27

The Secret World of Arrietty

Like pretty much everything from these folks, it was visually beautiful; warm and cozy. The story was cute, even if the plot is a bit simple. The film also has some interesting lessons for allies, which I'd like to get back to writing more about.

2/21

One Love

This was a very good telling of Bob Marley's story. It drifted a little towards hagiography in parts, but overall kept Markey feeling human. The only editorial choice that really stood out glaringly was that the film never mentioned the religious basis for Marley's refusal to have his toe amputated. I'd love to know what the conversations around that were like. This film renewed my appreciation for older reggae as proper folk music, with the heavy political, social, and religious themes throughout.

3/6

Killers of the Flower Moon

I did not enjoy this. There were too many decisions in the filmmaking that didn't work for me. The depiction of the violence tried to be both mundane and jarring; several scene cuts seemed to be trying to reinforce that, especially in the first half, but just ended up taking me out of the movie. It was also very long given how much time was spent watching DiCaprio and De Niro just sort of mutter at each other. That probably would have been more compelling if I didn't find DiCaprio's performance so one-note through most of the film. I'm particularly disappointed because I think the actual story is important.

3/9

Dune, Part 2

Beautiful. Dragged in places, especially the Harkonnen drama. While Part 1 was a fairly straight-forward (exceptionally well done) retelling of its part of the story, I appreciated the fact that Part 2 made explicit a lot of the themes around religious fanaticism raised later in the book series.

3/18

Avatar: The Last Airbender, Season 1

I've been hearing the hype for this for years, from lots of sources, and finally decided it was time to check out. I'm really enjoying it and very much get the following, but it's interesting how distracting the structure is. The commercial cuts are very jarring, even compared to most other things originally made for broadcast with commercials.

3/19

Foundation, Season 2

Everyone I've heard talk about this show who enjoys it at all seems to think Season 2 is much better than Season 1, but I disagree. I still think it's very good, but I was a bit dissapointed that the structure turned it into a more standard sci-fi show. Which is great! I love those! But the original books were something else, and I wish they'd given that more of a shot.

3/25

Oppenheimer

This was good, but very clearly Oppenheimer's story. There's a quote from his wife part-way through the film: "You don't get to commit the sin and then make us feel bad for you that it had consequences." In a lot of places, I think that's exactly what the film tries to do for him.
I also don't know how valid this is, but the depiction of Truman doesn't match what I've heard elsewhere. I'd be curious to know more about that from more academic.

3/26

American Fiction

3/37

The Holdovers

The story and characters were strong, but I what I found most interesting was the juxtaposition between the screenplay, especially the dialogue, which was written in a very modern style, and the directing and cinematography, which felt designed to evoke the feeling of watching a film from the period in which it was set. It was a little jarring at first, but less than half an hour in it had turned into something which worked very well for what it was trying to do.

3/28

Rustin

This was great. I knew nothing about Bayard Rustin before watching this, and I'm interested to learn more.
When an individual is protesting society's refusal to acknowledge his dignity, his act of protest confers dignity on him.

4/6

Percy Jackson and the Olympians, Season 1

I haven't read the books (other than reading one chapter to a friend's kid), but this is great so far.

The Marvels

Great. I really enjoyed the Ms. Marvel series and am glad she got a first-class treatment here. It's definitely on the goofy side, but no more so than most of Thor or Guardians.

4/7

Secret Invasion

This was not very good. The emotional cues felt unearned, character development was a mess, the "I have to do this alone" stuff was absurd, and the resolution made no sense. Thankfully, it's also pretty much irrelivant to what came before or after.

4/15

Wish

4/16

Toy Story 2

Rewatch with a sick kid. Still excellent. She wants me to explain why I like it so much more than other cartoons that seem very similar to a 6yo, like Rescuebots (which I did not enjoy), and it's a tricky thing to explain the value of emotionally complex storytelling to a 6yo.

4/17

The Ice Age Adventures of Buck Wild

More sick kid viewing. Not great, not terrible.

5/17

IF

It was... fine? 4yo and 6yo had fun, but I don't think "got it", which is fine.

6/15

Evil Does Not Exist

I really enjoyed the first 95% of this movie. Beautiful visuals and storytelling, characters given time to breath, minimal exposition that still let us get to know the characters as we went. But not having that exposition in a "slice of life" framing, there's a lot we don't know about these characters and their motiviation. Which made the last ~5 minutes a giant "WTF" with no good answers to be had.

6/19

Avatar: The Last Airbender, Season 2

Season 1 was good, but I was starting to think the hype might've been overdone. But by half-way through Season 2... wow. This is really good. Zuko and Katara really come into their own as characters, but the obvious standout here is Toph. The way they handle her disability — and her attitude towards it — is just exceptionally good writing, kids show or no.

8/3

Madame Web

I've decided that the perfect movie to watch on a flight is one which I'm interested in seeing but don't actually expect to be very good. In that sense, this was a perfect fit. It was bad. I will say that the "worst movie ever" hype I'd been hearing was a bit much; it was, again, not good, but it didn't rise to that level of awful.

8/17

Stolen Sharpie Revolution: A DIY Zine Resource

A very good resource, especially the bits on the actual design, production, and distribution. The later parts drift a bit into "dunno, this all changes, check the web site" (which on the one hand is fair, but also feels like it pads the book out a bit). In the book's defense, where it does point to web resources, they're mostly very good resources.
One notable thing I'm still digging into: the book asserts a meaning of "copyleft" more or less equivalent to the public domain, which is very different from that term's meaning in the software world. I'd initially assumed (and you know what happens when you do that) it was based on the author's misunderstanding, but a few conversations elsewhere suggest this meaning might predate the Fres Software sense of the term. I haven't yet been able to find concrete support for this, but that would be very interesting (and, honestly, kinda consistent with RMS's history of poor attribution practices).
As a more trivial note, I really like the physical form factor of this book. It fits really comfortably into the back pocket on all my pants and is very comfortable to hold and flip through casually in any environment. I'd like more books to use this.

9/11

See, Season 2

This show makes some very weird choices. There's a lot about it that's wonderful; the But the handling of Sibeth is... not good. It's hard to miss that the most ambitious and, for most of the show so far, powerful woman is the only one depicted as having anything outside conventional sexuality. It ends up feeling like too easy a marker for her being unhinged, a lazy cruth to avoid spending time on actual character development.

9/24

Civil War

This was not good, but it was better than I expected.
At some level, I feel like the current political climate was bound to produce a "second Civil War" movie, and if that's true, I suppose I'm glad it was this one. Using the journalists as the framing device, especially the photographers, was a good choice; it allowed a good level of detachment (paralleling the characters' own) and gave a good in-world excuse to focus on the more horrific elements of war. And interspersing the movie with still shots that the photographers had ostensibly taken was an efective way to break up the flow of the movie and force the viewer to confront what the in-character photographer (and, I think, the filmmaker) wanted to convey.
Still: while it might have been inevitable, I'd still rather it hadn't been made. The Frech filmmaker Francois Truffaut famously claimed that a true "antiwar film" was impossible — or at least that he'd never seen one. No matter how grotesque, It's hard not to imagine someone watching the combat or slaughter or murder or unceremonious dumping of bodies depicted and thinking it was worthwhile, or at least justified, if you're on the right side.
Civil War tries hard to undermine that. I think it's on purpose that we get next to no information on the origins of the conflict, and the division lines presented are far enough from anything we're familiar with today to frustrate easy comparisons. And making the POV characters journalists instead of soldiers removes some of the tempation to aspire to the heroism of people engaged in war. But not all. It wants to present just the brutality and destruction, but it can't. It's still a movie, and we still want heroes.
At one point, the main protagonist of the film, a seasond war photographer, says: "Every time I survived a war zone, I thought I was sending a warning home: don't do this." I think those are the filmmakers' words in their character's mouth. But I suspect Truffaut was right; at least, Civil War doesn't provide the counterpoint that I think its makers wanted it to.

10/2

Doctor Who, Series 13

Jodie Whittaker's run as The Doctor coincided with a mostly-new production team, and I think it took them until this season to really figure out how to do Doctor Who properly. This season was very good. I enjoy the longer Doctor Who arcs, and The Flux was an excellent example. The three specials closing out Whittaker's run were good, and while bringing in past companions and previous incarnations always feels at least a little like gratuitous fan service... whatever, it was fun. I didn't know these two companions, and I thought it was a nice touch for the story to introduce a "post-Doctor support group".
Finally: I really want Jodie's t-shirt.

10/4

Doctor Who: The Star Beast

10/5

Doctor Who: Wild Blue Yonder

Doctor Who: The Giggle

David Tennant really is very good at this; it's nice to see him in the role again. The setup — and, really, the non-resolution ��� is a bit too neat to be narratively satisfying (so, the 14th doctor is going to work through the trauma we've seen building since long before this regeneration, but the first Disney Doctor gets to just... skip it?), but regeneration has always been at least a little about the writers getting a shot at a big reset button.
When I first saw Neil Patrick Harris, I was hoping we were getting a new regeneration of The Master. The previous guy was good and going right back to The Master would probably have felt a bit tired... I just really wanted to see NPH stick around. He'd be a great recurring Doctor Who villian.

10/7

Doctor Who: The Church on Ruby Road

10/28

The Acolyte

This wasn't very good. The character motivatioins were a mess. The pacing was uneven; when things were actually happening it was great, but too much of it felt slow and ponderous, in a way that felt like the show was trying to get you to feel that things were important or suspenseful without actually doing the work to set that up. The resolution between Osha and Mae makes no sense, nor did Vernestra's explanation at the end.

12/14

Descendants

The character Red was everywhere this Halloween, and my kids were enthralled despite never having seen any of this. So, on a day when both were sick and it was rainy and grey, they got their pick of movies and decided on this one.
There is so much wonderful childrens media these days. Complex characters and stories, genuinely wonderful writing that can hold up to any standards of media for adults. Friends, this... was not that. It was bad. Impressively bad. Astoundingly bad. The-things-we-do-for-love-of-our-children bad. Plot, writing, acting, choreography, singing... just bad all around. I think the thing that really did it in for me, though, was the awful lip syncing. Characters would close their mouths while the voiceover was still singing. It very clearly said "we don't think the audience will care, so neither do we." I'm not saying it all has to be high art or intellectual. But please: care.

Spirited Away

The sick kids got to pick two movies for the day; I am so greatful this was their second pick. Always wonderful, and especially after the privious one, extra welcome.

12/20

Deadpool & Wolverine

I really dislike the Deadpool movies. I'm rarely a fan of 4th-wall breaking to start; it's rarely done well, with real purpose, and too often just a way to feel clever or transgressive. Not always, but too often. And the variety in Deadpool feels like it's telling the viewer they're stupid for taking these movies seriously, for caring about the stories.