psocoptera

Stranger Things Season Four. Whoops, I've had this tab open for awhile, as I discovered when I went to post something else. The needle continues to swing between entertaining and annoying, and this season the balance may have tipped; too many plot threads I wasn't into. Kind of think they should have ended it last season. Although I like it more now that I've started reading it as itself an RPG - thinking about which characters are PCs vs NPCs, and thinking about the narrative from a standpoint of player engagement/satisfaction rather than single-author storytelling, makes so many choices make more sense. We'll probably still watch the last season eventually at some point?

Stranger Things Season Three continues to be entertaining enough that my eyeballs haven't actually rolled out of my head yet. Like, it is four cups of 80s riffs in a blender with minimal logic to help it come together, but why not.

Somehow I managed to sneak in an entire 12 episodes of television - six hours!! Overall I'm glad I watched it, they did a reasonable job with it, and I liked some of their choices more than others. Behind the cut, a longer review with major spoilers for both the adaptation and the original book series.

( Read more... )

Scavengers Reign is so many things I love. Genuinely adult animation, visually gorgeous, genuine SF (as opposed to space opera or space fantasy or space action-adventure, not that there's anything wrong with any of those, but this feels rarer). Weird, inventive alien biology and a story that keeps it simple and lets the character beats and landscape shine. There's an obvious Miyazaki influence (Nausicaa, most of all, although also certain aspects of Spirited Away and Princess Mononoke) but also some print comics influence, I think? Like I'm having trouble putting my finger on who but sometimes there's a shot where I'm just like oh, this feels sort of familiar, whose art is that. It is definitely an adult show and is high on body horror, but is also quiet and hopeful and beautiful. I would not call it horror as a genre.

Sadly I am not going to get to see the last three episodes when they air this week - it's on Max, and our long-overdue cancellation of Max takes effect tomorrow - but probably I wouldn't have watched it at all if I hadn't had the excuse of needing to do so before losing the opportunity, so, hey, getting to see 9 episodes out of 12 is better than zero. I wasn't even really aware of it before we came across it while trying to find what we actually meant to watch. (This whole Max thing has been a farce, we kept it around for way, way too long intending to watch a couple of things, only to discover when we finally tried that neither was available any more, for who knows how long.) I will definitely nominate the series as a whole for Dramatic Long - they're 25 minute episodes, so even all 12 episodes will be a pretty reasonable quantity of runtime. God knows nine episodes felt shorter than that latest Avatar movie (although I didn't watch them in one sitting, I was breaking them up with chores and parenting and stuff. But I did watch them all today.) I'm hoping it becomes available for purchase somehow rather than subscription-only in time for more people to check it out before nominating season, although that doesn't seem to be how things work anymore, alas. (But if it did, I could finally see those last three episodes...)

Has been brought to my attention I never wrote up either of these here. For the benefit of my future self going through my tags, I liked both - Turning Red was my favorite Pixar movie in awhile, the boyband stuff was so spot-on, and Ms. Marvel was so fun.

Wandavision. I wasn't sure I was going to watch this, but I had the unprecedented opportunity of two days with the house to myself, and it turns out 6 hours of television over two days isn't actually that crazy! Well, plus the movie yesterday, but even still! Watch an episode, do a chore, watch an episode, prep a meal... I've always been baffled by how people manage to watch all these different shows, but suddenly I was living this totally different life where it was possible. (Well, I had to watch the last ~90 minutes on my laptop because everyone came home, but, muahaha, now I have the ability to do that too, which I guess I could have all along, but hadn't. I guess I've sometimes watched Amazon stuff there? But now I also have our Disney+ password! I could watch anything! All the Pixar shorts I've been wanting to see! Incredible!)

Anyways, this show. I have thoughts and I'm going to put them all behind a cut. ( Read more... )

I always lag so much more at writing anything about these than about books.

Watchmen. Clever and well-done, except for a few characterization details I just couldn't buy that clearly let them set up things they wanted to do. But I'm definitely glad we finally watched it.

Encanto. So pretty! Hair animation has come so far! The internet seems to be really into the Bruno song but for me the standout song was Luisa's song, "Surface Pressure". The third-act climax and resolution didn't do a lot for me - this was no Moana - but the premise was great, so, hey. (Also some of the details of the house gave me so much nostalgia for my favorite restaurant when I was little, Casa de Bandini in San Diego's Old Town, which was the next best thing to Disneyland when I was, like, 6. The tiles, the courtyard, the bougainvillea. I was very pre-programmed, watching Encanto, to find it magical. (And now that I'm nostalgic, fuck you to Delaware North for ruining it.))

Hilda and the Mountain King A sweet and cute conclusion to Hilda's story. Except that apparently there's also going to be a third season?? I am confused. Anyways, if you like the show, more or less an extra-long episode, and if you don't know the show, probably pretty incomprehensible.

We watched the first episode on YouTube and it was so good I'm tempted to actually pay for HBO so we can keep watching as it airs. I will probably talk myself out of that by tomorrow but damn. (If you haven't read the book, highly recommended, I wrote about it here.)

I'm not great at remembering to review tv, but I'll probably want to nominate the Steven Universe Future finale for something next year. Good stuff.

My kids continue to enjoy this show but for me the relative proportions of awesome and cringy have crossed into negative territory (plus an unfortunate share of nonsensical). There's so much potential and they're trying so hard but the dialogue was clunky and the pacing was weird and... meh.