I just love this film. Took a chance on watching it with Tabitha and she liked it. Some 15s are weirdly fine, but Pitch Perfect 2 is a 12A and I feel like that was totally unsuitable for her. Maybe I'm a prude 🤷‍♂️

Jesse Eisenberg and Woody Harrelson is a combination I would watch a lot more of. It just works.

Watched with Tabitha for the first time. This film makes me cry so much but I absolutely love it.

It's good but (and I don't love being this guy) it's not as good as the book. There's so much more in the book, and you really do miss out by not having the footnotes.

A lot of the story, particularly towards the end, feels rushed and confusing. So much more is made of Strange's relationship with Flora in the book, and Lacelles becomes truly terrifying. I wish they'd shown what happens to Lacelles because it's such a beautiful punishment. Alas, you'll have to read the book.

Childermass is amazing, though. I love that character, and he's brilliant in both. Paul Kaye is genius casting as Vinculus as well. I was wondering how they'd cast him and that did not disappoint, even though he did go a bit Jack Sparrow with it at times.

To summarise, read the book because it's way better, but the TV show is still a good story if you don't want to read.

I can't remember who but someone said they'd watched this with their kid, and since we watched Hot Shots recently it made sense.

This film still makes me laugh like an idiot. Tabitha seemed to enjoy it as well. I think Lloyd Bridges and Leslie Nielsen in one film is difficult to get wrong. I wonder if Naked Gun is suitable for her.

Decent super-hero fare. Reminds me a lot of The Boys in some ways. Starts out extremely unoriginal but develops into something of its own. Looking forward to picking up season 2.

It's a mess. I found it super entertaining, and wasn't bored at any moment, but it's just a mess. I genuinely don't know what it's even trying to be about. I think it somehow wants to be Shakespeare, and it's definitely opaque and confusing enough for that. If it felt like there was a thread to pull at to make sense of it all I might watch it again, but I don't think there is.

I'm glad it got made though. I saw this thing a while ago that said something like what better way to spend your money than hiring a bunch of people making the thing you always wanted to make?, and I am on board with that. I just don't understand what it's really be about. It's obviously not just about a guy building a city. Why can he stop time? Why all the Rome stuff? Why all the stuff about his wife dying? Why are his own personal relationships and sex life so central to everything? They can't all just be window-dressing.

As far as I'm concerned, The Wizard of Oz is a perfect film. I am naturally skeptical when people make prequels and sequels around films I admire, but I have to admit I love what they've done with this.

Contrary to what is popular opinion in our house, I think the songs are largely forgettable, but the story, casting, foreshadowing, and costumes more than compensate for that. The costumes! I would wear so many of those costumes.

And obviously Ariana Grande is beautiful and her voice is totally ridiculous. Tabitha hadn't heard of Minnie Riperton so it was nice to introduce her to another vocalist who can carry whistle register. Cynthia Erivo has a lovely voice, too. They did such a great job finding two vocalists who complement each other as well as they do. And I like that Kristin Chenoweth and Idina Menzel got cameos. I'm a sucker for stuff like that.

Jeff Goldblum though. How does this guy keep getting work?! He's the worst.

My goodness, this is a lot. Literally and figuratively. As evidenced by the fact that it took me four months to finish. The fact that this is a first novel is astounding, really. It's part source-cited fake historical text, part magical fantasy history and I couldn't recommend it more emphatically.

It was recommended to me by someone after we spoke about how much I loved Piranesi, and it's pretty much the opposite of it in many ways.

In Piranesi, Susanna Clarke conjures a vivid and detailed other-world with almost nothing. It's remarkable and I would recommend you read it today. In Strange & Norrell, she crafts an immensely detailed parallel universe history of 19th century England, as if magic were real.

I could talk and talk and talk about this book but I won't. Just read Piranesi, and if you like it read Strange & Norrell because it's unbelievable.

I loved the first series (not enough to write about it though! Maybe it predates this) but this one felt like hard work at the best of times. It's such a slow burn, for almost zero pay-off and to end on a cliffhanger is pretty much everything that turns me off of a TV series.

I think I'll just grab the book and read that instead. I can't be waiting around for another series to slowly plod through again. Shame, really, as it's mostly brilliant but the pacing is unbearable.

Solid zombie movie, even if Jim does somehow turn to a superhero in the last 15 minutes. We can just chalk that up to adrenaline. And whoever's idea it was to make Brendan Gleeson a cockney should be imprisoned for crimes against cinema. Irish people lived in London, even as far back as 2002.

I'm guessing the film couldn't have been made without the product placement but some of it is pretty egregious!

Amazing soundtrack. You don't hear post rock in films so much these days.

Surprised that they actually did something interesting and different with this season. I'm not super happy with where it ends but it's enjoyable. Asks some very interesting questions about the fundamental flaws of a bipartisan political system that I wasn't expecting!

The best of the 3 by a long way. Laughed out loud multiple times, good length, good pacing, very silly. Complements the games so well. Can't wait for the next one.

Screen X is cool as well. Although it was on the verge of giving me a bit of motion sickness at times, and I rarely suffer from that.

One of my favourite films, original Japanese audio, subbed and on the big screen. Oh, and free because I got some tickets through work. Great way to spend a Saturday afternoon.

This is about the highest praise a film in this series, or even this genre, is ever going to get from me. I enjoyed it more than the others but that is not saying much. I do love Emily; the only character in all of this with some semblance of personality.

Nobody is talking about how Disney made Moana into Death Stranding at sea, so when they start you tell them you read it here first.

How do I keep letting this happen? I hate these films. Did you know that there's a Netflix Christmas Movie Cinematic Universe? Well apparently there is and that makes me hate it even more.

I literally couldn't tell you anything about this film, but Charlotte and Tabitha wanted to watch it.

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.