Media Diet, December
Dec. 31st, 2021 13:35![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
superborbI considered doing a year-end wrap up, but realized that I didn't track all the stuff I consumed at the beginning of the year and my memory is therefore too bad to do that. Maybe next year, if I keep up the media diet posts?
A Man Called Ove by Fredrik Backman, tr. Henning Koch: The story of Ove, a Grumpy Old Man, blah blah blah heartwarming tale of his humanity as he is the sort to Do The Right Thing despite horrible depression. From @meitachi's rec! I liked the novel overall! I thought the ~reveals~ as we learned more about Ove's backstory and thought processes were well done. Maybe a little long? A mostly quiet story that deeply explores Ove and his relationships. CW fhvpvqr nggrzcgf.
The Ghosts of Birds by Eliot Weinberger: A series of essays and ...prose poems? We read Weinberger's Nineteen Ways of Looking at Wang Wei for poetry club, and he seemed snarky + opinionated in a way that might be interesting in essay form (and it's what he's most famous for it seems?). The collection is certainly on an eclectic range of topics; some of the facts in the more poetic 'essays' I couldn't really be sure if were real or not? I tried searching online and got no hits, but certainly they all seemed to be the kind of obscure trivia you find by reading dusty tomes and are found no where else. The more essay-like essays I did learn several interesting things from, especially the essays about China and Mongolia. Since he's very opinionated, I did not, of course, agree on everything he said, but it was all presented in an engaging way.
A Marvellous Light by Freya Marske: M/M secret magical society in upper class early 1900s England. I thought the characters were thoroughly enjoyable and the pacing was stellar; once I changed from a physical copy (hardcover Tor books: the worst) to an ebook, I read it in an evening. I had two complaints, one major and one minor. The major one is that the world feels like a thin veneer, drawing on our knowledge of the era and doing very little to build anything new. Some of this may be expanded upon in future books (the Indian characters certainly seem set up for that), but it was very, oh, upper class people of this time have servants! But they must know magic! So there's a whole shadow society where there is enough people to supply labor at those levels without issue, while magic otherwise remains concentrated in the bloodlines of a few families? IDK, I think this was probably a deliberate choice to keep it more focused, but not my preference. The more nitpicky complaint is that it felt under-edited; e.g. sometimes extended metaphors would be called back a page or so later, just enough that it felt confusing and there were some cases where dialog seemed there for snappy wit instead of character-driven. Overall, it was a fun read, but I suspect you read the first sentence of this paragraph and knew if it was for you.
The Wandering Earth (2019): A movie based on a Liu Cixin novella, which is very much in the line of Hollywood blockbuster scifi. The novella was written in 2000, and hilariously, bf says that Liu's later novel The Dark Forest directly addresses one of the (scientific) plot holes, that explosions moving planets around is probably... not going to work. Also none of the gravity directions made any sense! Okay, I'll stop, but more egregiously, the story/characters are pretty bland. I guess if you like explosions and shakycam and such? I was the Wrong Audience. Bf does say that Liu is really strong at describing the visual spectacle and seeing the transformation to screen worked well.
Cats (2019): Actually I mostly liked this, but I also love the musical. I'd say there were two big flaws: first, they tried to make it funNY instead of fun; the show is supposed to be weird and silly, and when they tried to insert jokes it didn't work for me. (And sad that Rum Tum Tugger is Definitely Not As Fun and also doesn't have gay tension with Mr. Mistoffelees.) Second, the lull in emotion caused by inserting the new Beautiful Ghosts song really didn't work for me. It stands out musically and was too long. I wished there was more ballet/dancing (where did Mr. Mistoffelees' fouettés go?!), but I guess the cat movements were trying to be fun? I think it really picked up at the end. The earlier songs were weak (see: complaints about it not being fun), but the final songs were excellent, with good choreo, esp Macavity. It seems to me that the people who hated it bc it was weird probably... have not seen the original.
Fantastic Fungi (2019) (DNF): Beautiful timelapses of mushrooms. The narration started out pop sci and by 30 mins dived straight into intolerable levels of woo. Why can't we just have pretty videos and benign science?
Love, Death + Robots, episodes Automated Customer Service and The Drowned Giant: A collection of short videos based on sci fi short stories; season one was highly hit or miss so we picked the first and last of season two to try out (and they looked the most interesting). Sadly, both were complete misses, so I guess I see why I didn't see much hype over it.
A Man Who Defies the World of BL: This is a very short (~100 min total) jdrama based on the manga of the same name. The MC discovers he lives in a world where the meet-cutes of BL are common, and would like to avoid all that please! Some of it was fun (I liked all the boys who had different flowers appear around them), but overall it didn't really say /that/ many interesting things? Just pointing out tropey plots can't really sustain 100 mins, and while the relationships were cute, they were... also not enough haha.
Nodame Cantabile (jdrama) + the Europe movie: Orchestra student shenanigans, with an arrogant unlikeable male lead, a messy and eccentric female lead, and an excellent ensemble. Part of this hasn't aged well (everything Stresemann, how gayness and violence/harassment are played for laughs etc), and some of the manga logic / effects are a bit over the top. HOWEVER, the core emotion of the show remains spot on and the music is still impeccable. I like that characters are flawed and can be assholes! Watching it really made it obvious how the cdrama adaptation filed off the rough edges and left-- no emotion in its wake.
Mr Queen (DNF): Playboy chef transmigrates into a queen from Korea's Joseon period. @skygiant's review was so fun, but the second hand embarrassment... too much... q_q
Johnny's Countdown: ICB I am being dragged back into JE in this year 2021. I ALSO can't believe that keyhole and LJ are still the primary ways to engage. Anyway, I suppose streaming via Twitch and watch partying with Discord are new flavors of the old love, the way that when I tuned in, it was new groups singing old classics.
A Man Called Ove by Fredrik Backman, tr. Henning Koch: The story of Ove, a Grumpy Old Man, blah blah blah heartwarming tale of his humanity as he is the sort to Do The Right Thing despite horrible depression. From @meitachi's rec! I liked the novel overall! I thought the ~reveals~ as we learned more about Ove's backstory and thought processes were well done. Maybe a little long? A mostly quiet story that deeply explores Ove and his relationships. CW fhvpvqr nggrzcgf.
The Ghosts of Birds by Eliot Weinberger: A series of essays and ...prose poems? We read Weinberger's Nineteen Ways of Looking at Wang Wei for poetry club, and he seemed snarky + opinionated in a way that might be interesting in essay form (and it's what he's most famous for it seems?). The collection is certainly on an eclectic range of topics; some of the facts in the more poetic 'essays' I couldn't really be sure if were real or not? I tried searching online and got no hits, but certainly they all seemed to be the kind of obscure trivia you find by reading dusty tomes and are found no where else. The more essay-like essays I did learn several interesting things from, especially the essays about China and Mongolia. Since he's very opinionated, I did not, of course, agree on everything he said, but it was all presented in an engaging way.
A Marvellous Light by Freya Marske: M/M secret magical society in upper class early 1900s England. I thought the characters were thoroughly enjoyable and the pacing was stellar; once I changed from a physical copy (hardcover Tor books: the worst) to an ebook, I read it in an evening. I had two complaints, one major and one minor. The major one is that the world feels like a thin veneer, drawing on our knowledge of the era and doing very little to build anything new. Some of this may be expanded upon in future books (the Indian characters certainly seem set up for that), but it was very, oh, upper class people of this time have servants! But they must know magic! So there's a whole shadow society where there is enough people to supply labor at those levels without issue, while magic otherwise remains concentrated in the bloodlines of a few families? IDK, I think this was probably a deliberate choice to keep it more focused, but not my preference. The more nitpicky complaint is that it felt under-edited; e.g. sometimes extended metaphors would be called back a page or so later, just enough that it felt confusing and there were some cases where dialog seemed there for snappy wit instead of character-driven. Overall, it was a fun read, but I suspect you read the first sentence of this paragraph and knew if it was for you.
The Wandering Earth (2019): A movie based on a Liu Cixin novella, which is very much in the line of Hollywood blockbuster scifi. The novella was written in 2000, and hilariously, bf says that Liu's later novel The Dark Forest directly addresses one of the (scientific) plot holes, that explosions moving planets around is probably... not going to work. Also none of the gravity directions made any sense! Okay, I'll stop, but more egregiously, the story/characters are pretty bland. I guess if you like explosions and shakycam and such? I was the Wrong Audience. Bf does say that Liu is really strong at describing the visual spectacle and seeing the transformation to screen worked well.
Cats (2019): Actually I mostly liked this, but I also love the musical. I'd say there were two big flaws: first, they tried to make it funNY instead of fun; the show is supposed to be weird and silly, and when they tried to insert jokes it didn't work for me. (And sad that Rum Tum Tugger is Definitely Not As Fun and also doesn't have gay tension with Mr. Mistoffelees.) Second, the lull in emotion caused by inserting the new Beautiful Ghosts song really didn't work for me. It stands out musically and was too long. I wished there was more ballet/dancing (where did Mr. Mistoffelees' fouettés go?!), but I guess the cat movements were trying to be fun? I think it really picked up at the end. The earlier songs were weak (see: complaints about it not being fun), but the final songs were excellent, with good choreo, esp Macavity. It seems to me that the people who hated it bc it was weird probably... have not seen the original.
Fantastic Fungi (2019) (DNF): Beautiful timelapses of mushrooms. The narration started out pop sci and by 30 mins dived straight into intolerable levels of woo. Why can't we just have pretty videos and benign science?
Love, Death + Robots, episodes Automated Customer Service and The Drowned Giant: A collection of short videos based on sci fi short stories; season one was highly hit or miss so we picked the first and last of season two to try out (and they looked the most interesting). Sadly, both were complete misses, so I guess I see why I didn't see much hype over it.
A Man Who Defies the World of BL: This is a very short (~100 min total) jdrama based on the manga of the same name. The MC discovers he lives in a world where the meet-cutes of BL are common, and would like to avoid all that please! Some of it was fun (I liked all the boys who had different flowers appear around them), but overall it didn't really say /that/ many interesting things? Just pointing out tropey plots can't really sustain 100 mins, and while the relationships were cute, they were... also not enough haha.
Nodame Cantabile (jdrama) + the Europe movie: Orchestra student shenanigans, with an arrogant unlikeable male lead, a messy and eccentric female lead, and an excellent ensemble. Part of this hasn't aged well (everything Stresemann, how gayness and violence/harassment are played for laughs etc), and some of the manga logic / effects are a bit over the top. HOWEVER, the core emotion of the show remains spot on and the music is still impeccable. I like that characters are flawed and can be assholes! Watching it really made it obvious how the cdrama adaptation filed off the rough edges and left-- no emotion in its wake.
Mr Queen (DNF): Playboy chef transmigrates into a queen from Korea's Joseon period. @skygiant's review was so fun, but the second hand embarrassment... too much... q_q
Johnny's Countdown: ICB I am being dragged back into JE in this year 2021. I ALSO can't believe that keyhole and LJ are still the primary ways to engage. Anyway, I suppose streaming via Twitch and watch partying with Discord are new flavors of the old love, the way that when I tuned in, it was new groups singing old classics.
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Date: 2021-12-31 23:06 (UTC)no subject
Date: 2022-01-01 02:43 (UTC)