Score 1 for low expectations I guess. Enjoyed this a lot. Excellent casting.

The story's quite different from the book (although the setting is largely the same) but enjoyable nonetheless. Actually some of the character motivation is a lot deeper and more believable than the book. Shame it got cancelled - I think they were onto something.

The most formulaic and derivative thing I've seen in a long time. I know that's the appeal for this sort of film for a lot of people but not me. I need to stop watching things like this, hoping that I'll like them, because I never do.

Still, Charlotte wanted to see it so it doesn't really matter if it doesn't sound like something I'd like. Just nice to go to the cinema occasionally.

This still holds up extremely well. What a beautiful movie.

Absolutely hated this.

Nice, cheesy fighting film with every cliché you could possibly need. Always surprises me when films like this have such a high rating on IMDB but I guess if it was only me who liked them, they would never get made.

I'm torn between 🤷‍♂️ and ⭐️. It was an enjoyable enough read but just not the sort of thing I enjoy reading. It's basically a spec fiction whodunnit on a spaceship going to another planet. And it's enjoyable at all of those things; just not what I was expecting.

Sharing the Kottke link because it's a gift link; click through for the article.

I've always thought Inside Out did a great job of characterising emotions in a way that makes sense to me all the way down. From memories, situational reaction, how emotions fight each other for control, how they're implemented in the actual story; it all just makes sense to me. Other people, too, apparently. It's cool to see it getting credit for how it personifies and can potentially help as an aid for navigating your feelings.

The second film builds on that significantly with anxiety, and the article makes an excellent point that these movies don't vilify any emotions; even "negative" ones. I think that's such a good observation and so important when processing and understanding our reactions to the world. Negative emotions are self preservation and, whilst it's important to be able to self regulate (positive emotions too!), it's also important to not block them out entirely.

Highly recommend these films; the first one made me ugly cry.

Another one I initially didn't like but loved after giving it another chance. We watched three episodes of this last night to finish up season one, and I was gripped the entire time. Loved everything about it, except the dicey ageing of some characters, but that's hardly enough of a negative!

That's the second thing this week that I've really enjoyed after giving it another chance. Should I be giving things more of a chance? Probably won't.

I tried to watch this years ago when I was properly into anime, and I hated the art style and couldn't get past it. Saw a bit of a YouTube video last night and wanted to give it another try. Very glad I did; I loved it. The scope of the story is incredible. I went from "how is this two hours long?!" to "how is this only two hours long?!" in about 45 minutes.

The pacing is pretty all-over-the-place and a lot of the necessary backstory seems to have been inserted as an afterthought towards the end, which makes the last 20 minutes a bit chaotic. I bet Netflix are dying to get their hands on this to make it into 5 seasons of forgettable crap.

The sound direction is incredible as well. I'm a sucker for a good score and you don't often see something so grandiose in animation like this.

If you don't like anime, you're not going to like it. I think it probably invented, or at least popularised, a lot of the genre tropes that annoy people about anime (the last 15 minutes is basically every character screaming AKIRAAAAA TETSUOOOOO KANEDAAAA which even irritated me!). But if you're into anime, and you haven't seen it (who even is that, at this point?!); give it a try.

There's plenty to like about this, and I would say there's an almost equal amount to dislike.

I liked the silliness of it, the story was so shallow that all the twisting and turning (which would usually annoy me) kept me interested, some good performances made even better up against some hilariously terrible performances, and Jojo Macari acted his little heart out (which did look very funny in places, next to...well, lethargic performances).

I disliked the absolutely godawful CGI. Whoever was in charge of the animation should be shown some videos of humans doing things because I don't think they've ever seen that. Some of the dialogue is dreadful, and some of the background acting reminded me of that episode of Futurama where Zoidberg's uncle keeps screaming at people to emote. On more than one occasion, a guard walking in the background completely pulled my attention in a comical way.

The story reminded me of a 6-year-old telling you what they did at school, and they can't focus on the main thread of the story so they keep going off on tangents and forgetting where they were, and filling in things they can't quite remember with some clearly fabricated nonsense. It's mildly entertaining but by the end there's a mutual feeling of relief.

I feel like there's something going on here that I don't fully get. This is the top of quite a lot of people's lists and I don't see why. I enjoyed it, I like the concept and the structure, and I like the meaning behind a roadside picnic; I just don't see how it's at the top of anyone's list.

I do think it's something I'm going to have in the back of my mind for some time, so maybe it'll brew into something more as I think about it.

I am so glad to find this! I've always used letter opener for Rails projects, and it's pretty good, but this being platform agnostic and configured in the same way as SMTP on the client side makes it so much more portable. I am immediately adding this to all of our projects.

I've been trying to incorporate more weights into my workouts as I'm pretty much exclusively a cardio guy and, as you get older, that is a recipe for being constantly injured. I don't know much about this sort of thing, and I don't have the budget for a personal trainer, so finding this has been great. List your equipment, tell it which muscle groups you want to hit, and it'll generate a ~30 minute workout for you.

The main criticism I have is that the videos for each exercise don't work, so I have to make my workout then look up any I'm not familiar with on YouTube so I can see how you do them. You also can't log the weight that you do your reps at which makes referring to them in future kinda annoying. But to just be able to knock out a 30 minute strength workout fits well with my schedule and means I can hopefully start building up a bit of muscle and not being injured all the time!

Really beautiful. Just so well done; well considered. A deep understanding of emotional motivation and connection. I can't believe this works as a film but it does. Probably not great on the rewatch but neither was the first.

This was hard work but worth it. I found the first, maybe, fifth of it just incomprehensible but apparently it was all world-building because I just started to get what everyone was talking about and what was going on, after what felt like a very long time of neither.

As such, any specifics I talk about on this, including a loose synopsis, would spoil something. If you like sci-fi, and a difficult read (certainly compared with what I've been reading lately!) I emphatically recommend The Peripheral. Stick with it though!

Unhinged and perfect. A better analyst than me would elegantly link the thankless task of making art for everyone but yourself, and the ensuing desperate hollow that leaves behind. The all-too-late reminder of why you took your chosen path, and the vindication of honesty and innocence.

Not even remotely what I was expecting, and instantly creates a perfect double-header with Chef. I love movies like this almost as much as I love finding movies like this. And if you're looking for a triple-bill, let's put Midsommar in there as well.

A live session for these guys showed up on my YouTube recommendations. Watched it in spite of their name and love the guitar-heavy post rock. And they're playing ArcTanGent 🎉

Loads of people recommended this in the same breath as Sanabi. I've had it in my library for ages but it has never grabbed me. Picked it up this morning and it's a super fun, short action platformer with a surprisingly good story. I can see why it's often compared with Sanabi - the gameplay is different but the stories share some similarities and both have amazing art styles.

Katana Zero's soundtrack is very strong in places too.

Starts out quite weak, in my opinion, but I started as soon as I put the book down. Took a little break, came back, and actually ended up liking it a lot. I still prefer the book but there's a couple of very nice visual elements and some good screen adaptation.

One of my all-time favourites. A perfect film.

First time I saw this I didn't really care for it, and now I absolutely love it. A glow-up for the history books. Just watch it; it's brilliant. And if you don't enjoy it, just keeping watching it until you do, I guess.

I've never seen a Godzilla film but a bunch of people said this would be a good one to watch. I enjoyed it. Visually beautiful, good mix of practical and special effects, nice hammy acting. Everything I didn't know I apparently wanted from a Godzilla film.

There's absolutely no doubt in my mind that watching this at 6am five days a week had an impact on my state of mind. The brutality, iconography, futility are all tonally very similar to The Handmaid's Tale, and it's tough to watch at times.

I feel like the last season rushes in places to tie things up (they knew they were getting cancelled) but it never felt inconsistent. It just moves a lot quicker than all the other seasons, but I suppose a slow rebellion wouldn't be very effective.

I don't know. I enjoyed it but maybe filling your head with that much Nazi symbolism at 6am isn't good for you. Watch it in the evening instead!

Well this was a pleasant surprise. Super fun platformer, loved the art style and music, and a very intriguing story. What a load of over-achievers.

The animation reminded me a lot of Dead Cells, which I think is 3D models converted to 2D. Makes for smooth, realistic movement that has this almost uncanny valley quality that I like a lot.

If I was feeling critical, it's heavy on conversation and exposition in places. Like very heavy. At times I just wanted to play the game but the story was good enough to stick it out, and those scenes are skippable anyway. There's also an annoying feature where you get stuck in the red bits and just die and that's quite frustrating but only happened around 3 times the whole game.

Definitely recommend if you're into grappling hook movement. It made me want to try Katana Zero again even though that has no grappling hook.

But if you don't have a use case then having this sort of broad capability is not actually very useful

This whole article is just repeatedly hitting the nail on the head but this quote is especially accurate for me for so many things. If you don't have something specific you think any new technology or feature will solve, just move on. It's really that simple. I have become an extreme AI skeptic, not least because it has only ever done one useful thing for me, and that was completely by accident (and I'm not even sure if it was right anyway) (if you're interested, I needed monthly local median sunrise/sunset times for an entire year, and it gave me a table that didn't look ridiculous). Everything you read is about how terrible/amusingly terrible it is, and every time I use it it's just not good.

I've had this conversation with clients so many times about various things. Most specifically reporting. Clients always want to add "reporting", but when asked what are the sorts of things they want to report, they don't know. I've even trained clients on their data and installed Superset, but it doesn't get used because they don't know how to use SQL, or they realise they don't actually know what they're looking for (or they just use the 3 dashboards I made for them as an example that don't really provide any business intelligence).

In general, I find the immediate flocking to any new technology frustrating. I've always been like it with language adoption, preferring to be fashionably late to the party, and it has served me pretty well. AI seems to have been a particularly insidious one because everyone is rushing to implement it with no real idea of what they're doing or why. I'll just stay here repeatedly saying "why" like an irritating toddler until I either get a good reason, or the asker backs down.

Fun. Long - very long - but I enjoyed it.

Oh man it feels wrong admitting to liking this but I was properly cry-laughing for some of it. I think this is a great example of comedy that looks and feels super gross but actually landed so well with me.

I think the stuff that sounds misogynistic is super self-aware and actually a lot funnier because of that. And genuinely if I could do his impression of Trump I would do it all day every day. People would stop talking to me.

I get if you hate this, and I even get if you judge me for liking it. I wish you wouldn't, but I get it.

Well that didn't take very long! Another page-turner from Blake Crouch. Some more questionable prose and unconfortable intimacy scenes, but the underlying story is excellent, concise and moves briskly.

I need more books like this to read in between more challenging ones. Purposefully wanted to read this before watching the Apple TV show, as I loved Recursion, and I'm glad I did.

She's done it again! The pacing of these books is almost identical. First half is world-building and not a lot of story, and the second half is an action-packed journey. This one took me ages as I think I've had enough Earthsea for a little while. Or rather, I've had enough of that story structure. Will definitely finish it at some point, but a break will be nice.

Solid time travel story with some absolutely brutal story arcs. I think the story goes off the rails towards the end of series two, but 1. I might be wrong and 2. it's to be expected of time travel. Solid casting, but Caroline Quentin still manages to overshadow everyone; I think she's brilliant.

I've used Transmit since I started using a Mac, and I love Panic as a company; they give me a good feeling. This is the first time I've seen Cabel speak and he's not what I imagined at all. I thought he was going to be a cool, smooth guy but he's a total exciteable nerd and now I love them even more.

The Playdate is such a delightful piece of hardware. If you're interester in quirky, fun games and interesting, whimsical and high-quality hardware, it's definitely worth a look. You're going to see criticism of the lack of backlit screen, and I would love to be able to see the screen better in all lighting conditions, but that doesn't detract too much from it as a device for me.

If you're interested in some more whimsy from Cabel, I emphatically recommend this too.

I wasn't going to get this. As I have mentioned, I've been pretty unmotivated by games lately, and it felt like throwing money away, which I don't like to do.

Charlotte and I watched a kind-of interview with Billy Basso and Dunkey where he talked about his development process, and that sold me on it.

It's such a cool little metroid/platformer with some elegant puzzling. I say "elegant" because most things I came up against, I felt like the game had already taught me how to do them. There's some stuff that is heavy on the platforming, and some that's heavy in the puzzling. It just works.

There's a couple of bits that annoyed me but nothing deal-breaking. I think I missed a visual cue quite early on that lead me down a path that was more advanced than I was equipped for, and a lot of the design language became quite opaque. Nothing that a bit of backtracking  couldn't solve, but then I had opened up a lot of the map without achieving anything. Upside was a lot of things falling into place quite quickly once I had everything I needed.

This game is pretty short - I saw the credits after about 5.5 hours. I have some stuff I'd quite like to go back and do, and it'd be nice to open up the whole map, but I feel like I got my money's worth.

Every time I watch a show like this, it reminds me of Lost. I've never seen Lost but I do know they dragged it out and tacked a disappointing ending onto it. This feels like the sort of show that could go episodic like that. They try to find Vault-Tec, some other faction shows up and then they spend a whole season on that conflict and they've got one more season out of it.

But, not to focus on the negative, I felt like this captured the character of the games very well. The mixture of brutality and humour is done well, without going too far into Borderlands territory. It's a fun story, good characters and acting. It's all very Fallout and it did make me want to pick the game up.

There is a lot of filler though. In 8 episodes they still manage to pull out one whole episode where nothing happens (episode 4 I think?). I do still feel like it's worth watching overall, but a little disappointing that there wasn't enough story to spread out to 8 episodes.

Fell off this, for whatever reason. I think it took too long to get around to Ged still being part of the whole thing and I was a bit like "oh I thought Ged would be in everything" then he wasn't. But it turns around very well and I'm just going to get straight into The Farthest Shore now.

Film-ruining spoilers for After Yang, Klara and the Sun, and maybe Click? If you're looking for something poignant and melancholic, you can do a lot worse than this!

This reminded me so much of Klara and the Sun, in terms of its tone. The mute grief is played so well across the board, I could almost see a movie adaptation of Klara being pretty identical to this.

I didn't get the need to carry on with Russ and Cleo's branch of the story once Jake starts exploring Yang's memories. For me, the ethical question about Yang's relevance as a museum exhibit, or his right to privacy after his death, aren't relevant to the story. Maybe those will become questions humans need to ask ourselves in future, but a half-baked attempt to do it speculatively just doesn't work for me. The important part of that branch is that we get access to Yang's memories and explore his past lives.

This forms another parallel with Klara; the exploration of what happens when you leave an old life behind. When we see Yang's first life; full, bitter-sweet, come to its inevitable end, and his memories roll up and get compartmentalised, his grief forbids him from engaging in his short second life. These ends made me feel very similar to how I felt when Klara was disposed of.

The synopsis of this film describes everything from Jake's perspective and re-establishing his connection with his family, and I suppose I get why. But it does make the whole thing feel like an artsy Click, rather than a study of grief, rebirth, and one's capacity to start again and keep going.

This is one of those films that feels like it probably has loads of layers if you want to watch it tens of times. Smarter people than me have probably already written about it. Maybe I'll just read that.

Fortunately, if all you want to do is watch a beautiful film with some nice characters and that stilted, matter-of-fact Wes Anderson dialogue, this is a very pleasant way to spend an hour and a half.

This is the perfect film. I will throw down over this.

I thought this was lovely. Not sure it'll go into rotation as a Christmas film but it's definitely got rewatch potential. You go through the emotional spectrum with this, and it's sentimental without being cloying or clichéd.

Most of the time, not reading a synopsis on a film is fine. I like to go in as blind as possible on films.

With this, however, I was expecting a comedy. You shouldn't judge things by their covers or posters. A comedy, this is not.

I did like it a lot though. Ryan Gosling's brand of radio-friendly, high-functioning drug addict means you get a decent story and some good relationships, which are pierced by Frank's "he's a base-head. Base-heads don't have friends".

The film doesn't do much to glamourise or villify drug addiction; it's just a story about a guy who seems to be trying to be good (a lot of the time), whilst living with a thorn in his side.

In a way it's a shame that they tried to run Dan and Drey's stories together. Neither gets explored fully and they're both interesting characters that I did end up caring about. Solid ending though.

I am looking forward to this record a lot. This track is so heavy.

We started watching this when it first came out and this premise is so tired; "I'm an assassin and I live by a very specific set of rules that I'm about to break and watch my life fall apart". I'm over it. I do realise that "I'm an assassin and I live by a very specific set of rules; watch how that works out for me" isn't exactly fertile ground for a gripping story.

The Killer is a pretty decent take on the concept, though. It's paced well, and it lays out the plan in the first quarter then spends the remaining three executing (lol good pun Jasper). "Anticipate. Don't improvise" - words for assassins and filmmakers to live by.

The almost-mute dialogue of the protagonist, interspersed with whiplash-inducing hyperviolence gives the film a bit of a Drive atmosphere. For a film about a highly-skilled assassin, it's more of a train journey than a rollercoaster, but a pleasant one nonetheless. No rowdy youths get on and spoil your calm, unless you hate The Smiths.

Not sure I'd recommend going out of your way to watch this immediately if you haven't already, but if you're looking for something to watch and nothing is taking your fancy, maybe give it a go. I'd rather watch this than John Wick any day of the week.

Massive spoilers for both the books and the Netflix show here. If you're planning to ever read or watch either, please don't read this. If you have read the books and watched the show, forgive me any mis-remembering here, I guess!

Enjoyed this way more than I expected to. In places, especially with regard to character development and introduction, the book sometimes suffers from being planned as it was being written, I think. The absolutely crucial, pivotal character Luo Ji being unceremoniously inserted after the first book (I had to go back and check that Wang Miao and Luo Ji weren't the same character) was very jarring, and one of many symptoms of poor foresight and character development in the books.

Having all of the main character concepts visible from the start was a good move by the writers of the show, in my opinion. It allows them to be developed for longer, and to form proper attachments to them. I love that there's evidence of all the characters and their function in the story, spread across the whole cast. I see elements of AA and Cheng Xin in both Jin and Auggie, as well as Auggie obviously adopting most of Wang Miao's formative storyline in terms of nanotechnology. The story flows very well in the new Netflix characters.

I feel like these character adaptations must have taken such a long time to unpick and adapt, but it was worth doing, for me. It means that they left the story alone and focussed on how do we tell this story with these characters? What they've achieved there is quite remarkable. And the casting is excellent as well. Knowing what happens to Wade, Saul (Luo Ji), Auggie and Jin (Cheng Xin and AA), and Will (Yun Tianming), I feel like that's all going to be fun to watch and will make the central friendship group dynamic a lot more powerful by the end of Death's End.

The low-key star of the show is still Benedict Wong as Clarence (Da Shi). My reading of Da Shi was a lot higher energy than the resigned, sarcastic Clarence, but it works well for the tone of the character.

I hope Netflix renews this to cover the rest of the story. The visual implementation of the Panama Canal was absolutely amazing and I am excited to see what they do with the probe's first contact, the shadow colonies, 4D space collapse, Yun's resurrection and meeting with Cheng Xin, and the Neptune capsule.

I love Eddy. He and NakeyJakey are the best thing to ever come out of Gus Johnson getting big (but we don't watch Gus in this house. I loved his videos but abusers gonna abuse and we don't play with that here).

Eddy is one of those YouTubers I have alerts on for (Jakey too actually) just because everything he does is in my wheelhouse. They're so sincere and their videos are so thoroughly considered. I almost don't care what they're about; I'll probably be into it.

Jordan has won the ETID breakup (yes every breakup is a competition; I will not be taking questions at this time). I want to love Many Eyes because Keith has my favourite voice in heavy music but I just don't. I need my riffs.

This is shaping up to be a monster of a record.

I loved The Boys, and this somehow stands on its shoulders. Incredible storytelling and I love this universe. I was skeptical about this purely because of how much I enjoyed The Boys but no more. I will watch anything they put out relating to this. Best superhero show/anything ever.

This is neat. It's a hectic twin-stick shooter with a movement mechanic that may remind you a little of Splatoon with a twist. At any moment, you can turn into a ball (think Metroid Prime) and zoom around the level. You can use this to bash into enemies and knock ammo (and sometimes health) out of them. If you time it just right, you can also stop them from attacking, which I've found to be essential for bosses. The movement feels really fast and satisfying, and overall it's a fun casual game for picking up for short runs.

I did have to disable vsync to get over 50FPS but in doing that it does seem pretty stable above that. Would I love 60FPS? Yes of course, but I'll take 50 on a handheld. Doesn't even really kick the fans on either. I've always struggled with vsync and performance on PC gaming.

I loved this and I'm so glad I got to see it at the cinema (though I wish I'd gone to IMAX). The sci-fi, religion, politics, power, control themes are exactly up my street, and putting Denis Villeneuve in charge is exactly the right call. I love the story, performances were all brilliant, but especially Rebecca Ferguson and Javier Bardem had amazing supporting roles.

Sound design and music were perfect, even though the sound system in the theatre was not really up to the task in places. The character design, costumes, and really the overall art direction are just so strong; photography, locations, vehicles, are wonderful. Particular nod to Baron Harkonnen who is so creepy and scary the way he floats around the place and bathes in oil.

A friend said on Letterboxd that there's a lot of talking about very silly-sounding important things and I know exactly where he's coming from. Usually I'm very sensitive to that sort of thing - it's usually worse in fantasy for me - but I don't get that here. Bene Gesserit just sounds mysterious and intriguing to me, fortunately. I guess I'm a bit of a fanboy.

I love Tiny Desk. It almost doesn't matter if it's an artist you're into. Everyone has their own interpretation of the format and most do something memorable with it. I even enjoyed Sting and Shaggy's collaboration and I don't have any particular interest in either of them.

Somehow I got chatting to a school mum about music and festivals at the easter ceremony at Tabitha's school and she was into house music. That's not something I'm terribly conversant in, but I can go to Skrillex, Pendulum (a DJ set I saw about twenty years ago 🤫) and Fred again (I've seen his Boiler Room set so I'm something of an expert) and it served me pretty well. Nice to connect with new people about music.

I told her I was usually into pretty heavy music that a lot of people find quite unpleasant, but she asked for a recommendation nonetheless. I recommended Every Time I Die because that's who I recommend to everyone. They're heavy but accessible and they've got a good vibe and an amazing sense of humour. I wonder if she listened to them.

Anyway this Fred again... set is quite special, in my opinion. I'd almost categorise it as post-electronic. Live sampling and basically writing songs on the bounce is an absolutely incredible skill that I feel is only available to people who live, breathe, and think in music. Obviously it's rehearsed, but writing a song whilst you invent instruments in front of a room full of people will never not impress me. It reminds me a lot of this J-E-T-S video where they're cutting samples up live. An enviable skill.