Enter your email address to subscribe to this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.
Join 16 other subscribers
Email Address
Blast from the past week. (Photo courtesy robotspacer)
Movies
Scott Pilgrim vs. The World – I didn’t technically watch Scott Pilgrim because I was listening to the director commentary with Bryan Lee O’Malley. Very informative to learn about how autobiographical the story is and about how integrated Edgar Wright’s movie was with the book.
TV
The Walking Dead – Not killing off Shane was the smartest thing this show did. He’s ice cold and his decision last week was awesome.
Samurai Champloo – Finally got around to starting this show. It’s interesting and the music is good, but I find the animation to be a little cheap looking.
The League – I haven’t seen Brie Larson since I saw Scott Pilgrim! This was actually part of why I rewatched Scott Pilgrim. The resolution between Brie’s character and Rafi was unexpected and awesome.
Prime Suspect – Ava from Justified! She’s not bad, but I miss the accent. This show’s not too bad for just hanging out and watching
Homeland – This show is getting so good! I wonder if he actually slipped him the razor blade. Super neat to watch all the twists and turns.
Glee – Not the strongest episode, but, per usual, I like any episode that has a song I love like “Bein’ Green”
Fringe – Back when Lost was on I watched three episodes of this show before Lost started (it was on at 2000 and Lost started at 2100). I watched the first four episodes of the season and I’m hooked! I just want to watch more, but it’s not streaming anywhere for free! So frustrating!
Music
Nothing really new here. Started getting back into Girl Talk
Books
The Last Best League – I swear I’m finishing this during this week. I’m pretty much at the epilogue.
Scott Pilgrim – I know I said no comic books in here, but this is an exception
Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me? (And Other Concerns) – I meant to download a sample of Mindy Kaling’s book, but I accidentally bought it. It’s a woman’s book, but whatever…it’s funny.
Video Games
Batman: Arkham City – Completed my Calendar Man obligation to see him on Halloween. Finished the Catwoman stuff. Might go back to finish more sidequests. Might not.
Uncharted 3: Drake’s Deception – Seriously great game. about as cinematically perfect as possible. Been avoiding playing in long bursts to stretch out the experience.
Dungeon Defenders – Still playing with Min, Lee, and Min’s friends from Utah. Good fun.
The Binding of Isaac – Beat the game for the second and third times with Cain and Magdalene. Still gotta beat it with Judas, Eve, and ??? and about 5 more times after that.
It's Halloween! I really hate Halloween, but these costumes are awesome! (Courtesy DJOtaku)
Castaway on the Moon – I’m about halfway done with this movie about a man so despondent that he gives up on society when he is barely isolated from it and a woman doing the opposite. Very interesting.
Heartbreaker (L’arnacœur) – Finished watching my favorite French romantic comedy with Min. I think he dug it too. One of those movies where the guy who the woman leaves for the protagonist is perfectly fine (better, even), but the leading lady would be “bored” with him. Also interestingly sidesteps most of the part of the movie where they’d be all, “Oh, but you lied to me!”
OSS 117: Cairo, Nest of Spies (OSS 117: Le Caire nid d’espions) – Such a ridiculous movie, but I thought I’d watch it again with Min since we were on a French comedy kick. So stupid, but so funny.
How I Met Your Mother – Finished off season 6. Not a bad end to the season. I’m interested in seeing if S7 gets any better. If anything, at least I enjoy watching Cobie Smulders.
Community – Last week’s episode, “Remedial Chaos Theory” was aired a week late resulting in back-to-back seven perspective episodes. Last week’s was way darker, but this week’s was super funny. I’m really loving what they’re doing this season and Annie’s story was the craziest. She’s also really hot, you guys. Just sayin…
Parks and Recreation – Not my favorite episode (I don’t love Aziz Ansari’s character), but it had much more of Aubrey Plaza, which is awesome. The scene where she turned Jerry’s Potato Head smile upside down was classic!
Buffy the Vampire Slayer – I only watched about five minutes of the Incan mummy episode of season 2. So 90s! So contrived! So slow-paced compared to Community/Parks and Recreation!
John Oliver – So it’s not really music, but Min and I went down to see John Oliver deliver a stand-up set. He really tore down the house with a joke about Obama delivering the state of the union as an inspirational coach. Should have closed with it, considering we were in DC. Gave a really long set, too. Loved it.
The Last Best League – Getting close to the home stretch and loving that it looks like it won’t be a miracle season. I find the gushing over this New England sports league to be borderline intolerable, but I do love baseball, so…
1Q84 – Still haven’t even shifted reality yet, but I’m digging the weirdness of Murakami’s world.
Dungeon Defenders – Way more addictive than I thought it would be! I’m having a lot of fun playing this with Min, Lee, and Min’s buddies from Utah.
Team Fortress 2 – Halloween Event is up! Got the achievements from this year and even picked up a few from last. Monoculus is an interesting boss, but it’s hard to get people to focus on killing him. Still lots of fun, but it also gets old playing the same map for hours at a time.
The Civil Wars were absolutely beautiful. What a fantastic show.
50/50 – What a great movie. It was funny and emotional at all the right times. After seeing it I just wanted to go home and hug my roommate (like Joseph Gordon-Levitt’s character, she got cancer at a young age). I’ve seen her in a grand total of four movies now, but I love Anna Kendrick. She is absolutely adorable and she will go far in this business. So cute!
Solaris – A heady movie about a man who chooses to reject reality for a chance at fixing his mistakes. So muted and quiet and sci-fi without being sci-fi really at all. It’s not gonna blow you away, but it’s remarkably well acted. Potentially could be a stage play if it wasn’t for all the flashbacks.
Homeland – Claire Danes is just perfect at her insecure, crazy, competent role. Morena Baccarin has the most unenviable role. The wife who thought her husband was dead and moved on is not one that audiences attach to. Also she got to take part in the most awkward sex scene ever. I guess I don’t have to keep worrying about this harem subplot (thank god!)
The Walking Dead – I really hate that nonsense with the “He told me…it doesn’t matter what he told me.” plot contrivance. Setting up suspense by explicitly hiding information from the viewers is one of my pet peeves. Hey Merle, a motorcycle in the zombpocalypse is a TERRIBLE IDEA. The premiere was tense and pretty awesome most of the time. I like how it’s going so far, but if they ever kill Glenn…haha.
Eleanor Friedberger – The opener for Wild Flag, she was definitely interesting. All of her songs crescendo to these great endings, but can often sound similar. I fell in love with “Roosevelt Island“, but know that all of her songs aren’t that funky.
Wild Flag – I plan on writing more about both of these concerts, by the way, but these women rocked the stage like they owned it. They were having serious fun up there dancing and playing and almost showing off how great they are at this. I can’t say I love the mix that Black Cat had going (and Mary Timony seemed to agree with me. She kept motioning for adjustments), but it’s never a bad thing to be struck by a wave of sound. Great show, heard some new songs, a lot of fun.
Milo Greene – Super busy on stage as the four frontmen swapped instruments repeatedly during the show. They had some great songs, but their set was so short! The song they closed with was stellar.
The Civil Wars – This concert was…wow. Best show I’ve seen in a long time. More to come later, for sure, but The Civil Wars are a quiet group. It’s just Joy singing (occasionally on piano too) and John Paul on guitar (and also singing) and in moments of silence during the songs you could have heard a mouse sneeze. I heard someone crunching five rows behind me. The audience was rapt and Joy and JP just totally rocked the stage. Just beautiful. I can’t think of a show I enjoyed more this year.
The Last Best League – Coming to a close on this one. I was expecting the team to suddenly turn things around during the summer, but it seems like they might close in last place. Wasn’t expecting that.
Batman: Arkham City – Batman’s face isn’t so obscured that he shouldn’t have any expressions. He’s seriously like a robot when he talks. It’s…unnerving. Makes him seem like a sociopath. I might explore it more in this space, but I don’t think the open environment served the game well at all. Arkham City was superior and, while Arkham City was definitely a good game, it’s very far from the best of the year for me and nowhere near as impactful as the previous game.
Gears of War 3 – Shotgun event means…I get killed badly. Not my thing.
Mass Effect 2 – My game was so glitchy yesterday that I quit after making 10 minutes of progress over an hour. Bleh…
Wild Flag knows how to rock
Here’s another breakdown of the media I’ve been consuming:
Video Games:
I haven’t talked about these for a long while, so I’m just gonna go over recent history, post-robbery.
L.A. Noire – Just beat it last night. I think that the game premise shows a lot of potential, but the true masterpiece will be any game that piggybacks off of this one. Why did they feel the need to open world this? It only creates dissonance between the character as portrayed and the character they want him to be. Also: interrogations are neat, but very tough.
StarCraft, Mass Effect, and Portal (all part 2) – Been meaning to fix some choices that my Paragon Shepard made in ME2 before ME3, so I was getting some of that done. Portal 2 multiplayer with Eric was lots of fun. Now I can’t wait for the new “test” this summer. I hope they’re a lot harder. Played SC2 with Min and Simon. We did alright as long as I wasn’t goofing off trying to Hellion rush the enemy. Turns out those flamethrower cars don’t have AA. Fancy that.
Movies:
Bridesmaids – Super hilarious. Kristen Wiig is one of my favorite comedic actors and it’s great to see her find success. I hope this means good things for female-led comedies (no more Heigl, please! (unless she’s in an Apatow movie)). Worth watching.
My Neighbor Totoro – How did I get to be 25 without seeing this movie? The landmark Studio Ghibli feature was heartwarming and fun and just awesome. A sincere movie that is hard not to love.
Love and Other Drugs – I constantly recommend films to friends, but I don’t often watch their recs if I know they’re not gonna be very good. Since that’s kind of hypocritical of me I took this recommendation despite knowing in advance that the movie wasn’t very good. Guess what, it isn’t, but I also knew it had a lot of Anne Hathaway’s boobs in it, so I guess I win anyway.
Animal Kingdom – Australian gangster film. Well done, but not quite as interesting as I was hoping it would be. Gotta love the accents, but creepy uncles are always weird…and creepy.
TV:
Tremé – Season 2 started and I fell about six weeks behind. Watched the first episode last night. I still love these characters, but without the urgency of post-Katrina I have even less of an idea of what the characters are doing now. I kind of like it a little more, but that may just be familiarity. The show also continues to impress with its strong music.
The Office – I’m about two episodes in and Ricky Gervais is proving to be the absolute worst boss possible. Micheal Scott has nothing on how cringeworthy Gervais’ David Brent is. Martin Freeman’s Tim is also meaner than Jim in the US The Office, but I think I like his early character more. I’m interested in seeing this through, it’s only about six hours, after all, and I like succinct series.
Buffy the Vampire Slayer – The opposite of succinct. Don’t think I’ve mentioned that I started watching this show at all. I’m about four episodes into season 2. S1 was pretty good, but we’ve advanced much further in television since then. It’s so very 90s and I think that Joss Whedon is a better writer now than he was then. S2 opened with an unbearable episode with Buffy being super emo, but it moved on to be as enjoyable as S1. I’m not 100% on board with this show like other people might be, but it’s been solid.
Mad Men – I’m 2/3 of the way through the first season and I’m really enjoying it. So far I’ve been most impressed by the superb acting. Don Draper and the rest of the cast are all so nuanced and interesting that I can’t help but silence the annoyance at the period-appropriate mistreatment of women and the job-appropriate philandering. Fantastic show so far.
Parks and Recreation – What a stellar third season. I wish NBC hadn’t given us two straight weeks of two episodes because then I’d still have P&R for a little bit longer. This is, without a doubt, the finest comedy on television right now. I can’t wait until it’s on Netflix Instant so that I can watch it with Min and Tiffany (that’s right, watch it two more times!).
Community – A season of ups and downs ends on some solid up episodes. Throw in the promise of a reduced role for Chevy Chase (thank you Dan Harmon, he was getting old) and I’m pretty hyped for this show (not as hyped as I am for S4 of Parks and Rec).
Glee – What a weak season. No, seriously, it was super weak. The magic and fire of season 1 has been lost, no doubt thanks to how successful this show has been. Risks are gone, the music is much more poppy and less classic/Broadway, and the writers keep pushing the angsty relationships of the characters to the forefront as if anyone cares. Guess what, Ryan Murphy, we don’t care about Finn and Rachel! We really don’t. Every time I want to quit this show they manage to do one number that keeps me hooked, but this season hasn’t made me want to buy any recordings. Original songs? No thanks. What was up with the finale? Where was the spectacle? There were barely any numbers in it! I’ll probably watch next year, but you’re on notice, Glee.
Books:
The Hunger Games – Think Koshun Takami’s Battle Royale, but Young Adult. Dystopian future with annual deathmatches between 24 teenagers. Brutal, but with a heart. The series is being built up to be the next big thing and I think it’s worth it. A quick, snappy read with enough violence in it to hide the fact that it’s kind of a book for girls. Fight your sexism on this and give it a try. You might enjoy it.
The Last Best League – A book about the Cape Cod baseball league as the last real talent pool before kids start their professional career. I’m a little biased against New England and their overenthusiastic love of themselves and everything they do, so I don’t get into the flowery fellating of the region. Still, I like a good non-fiction baseball drama. Still early in it, should be interesting.
A Visit From the Goon Squad – Jennifer Egan’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel lived up to the hype I’d seen. The book is not an easy read, every chapter is from a new perspective, with different styles (including one that is a powerpoint printout) and different characters (they all tie into one person, in particular, but some have characters who are never mentioned again), but it’s an interesting look at the way time changes everyone and everything and the way that the world itself is changing as we hurdle onward in time. Definitely a good book.
