Catchy Name Needed

A weekend's worth of TV and movies (no spoilers!)

Mon, 05 Dec 2022 05:53:29 GMT

We met my sister and her husband for dinner (BBQ - which is the best food to be had in my hometown that I know of) and then went over to their house and watched Knives Out. I think that all four of us had seen it before but it came out three years ago and we never re-watched it so I think we all enjoyed it. I did, for sure. I won't spoil it for those who haven't seen it but I remembered some of the plot but not all. The plan is that we will watch the new one, Glass Onion (which has no characters in common but the one played by Daniel Craig, as I understand it) on Christmas Day. Netflix is weird sometimes - they put it in theaters for a week, possibly to make it eligible for award nominations? I don't know - but then they pulled it and it will be out on Netflix shortly before Christmas. That's an odd decision, to my mind, but whatever.

Rob and I watched Willow - meaning the two existing episodes of the new series - last night. I had seen it once, earlier in the week, but he hadn't. And it actually grew on me the second time. Hopefully the producers found their footing doing these early episodes and it will be a bit more consistent after this. I read a review that said, effectively, "If you were fond of Willow the movie as a child, you will like this series." (I was in my 20s by the time it came out, but I was fond of it just the same, so I imagine I count in that number, more or less.)

And then we watched the Guardians of the Galaxy Holiday Special, which was unexpectedly sort of charming. I won't spoil it, because some of you probably haven't seen it and are still interested, like we were. I mean, when I say "charming" I mean charming in a Guardians kind of way - but by Guardians standards it was relatively toned-down. I don't think I would let small kids watch it unless their parents had vetted it first. (I don't have kids, I'm not tuned in to thinking about what's appropriate for kids. I would be liable to miss something that's a deal-breaker for other people.)

Rob intended to go see Violent Night, the David Harbour/John Leguizamo thing, last night but was foiled by two, two! Christmas parades between here and the movie theater. We had planned ahead on how to get around one, but not the second one. I had bowed out of going because I saw the trailer and thought it seemed too violent for my taste. He said he was not in any particular hurry to see it in any case.

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Happy Holidailies

Thu, 01 Dec 2022 06:50:32 GMT

It's that time again, the time when I actually try to journal online for a month. (I do have paper journals and I try to write at least a paragraph or two in those daily, and I do pretty good about that. So it's not like I'm completely out of practice! It's only the habit of saying everything online that I've gotten out of.)

I'm writing this a day ahead - it's very early Wednesday morning. I have just been watching Willow (the new TV series, not the old movie) and I'm kind of unimpressed. Or maybe it's just that it pales in comparison to Andor, which just ended and which I loved so, so much. I kind of feel like Willow belongs in a different time-slot - although I'm sure most people don't watch TV in the middle of the night as much as I do, and aren't likely to watch streaming shows at any particular time, anyway. (Caring about time-slots just shows my age, I suspect.) But going back to three years ago when The Mandalorian first came out, I've been in the habit of watching the Disney - mostly meaning Star Wars & Marvel - shows at 2am Wednesday mornings, which is usually when they put up the new stuff in my time-zone (presumably because that's midnight Pacific).

Willow feels more like a kids' show, is what I'm trying to get at. Really, it always did - I remember rolling my eyes when we first saw the movie at all those reaction shots of the baby - and then there were the brownies. The baby is grown up now - and in fact I got spoiled regarding who she had grown up to be, so watch out for that! - and the brownies are nowhere in evidence in the first two episodes, which is what's up on D+ currently. I certainly wouldn't be surprised if they make an appearance at some point, though.

Willow the movie certainly grew on me - I'm hoping the series will too.

(I was going to add a movie update, but I'll save that for tomorrow.)

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February update

Wed, 23 Feb 2022 03:27:05 GMT

This started out to be a movie update, but I had so little to say about that that I went on to TV and books, too!

So far this year, Rob and I have seen these movies in a theater:

Spider-Man: No Way Home (twice since January 1st, as well as once in December)
Ghostbusters: Afterlife (also one we'd seen in 2021)
Belfast

The usual January movie "desert" was especially lean pickings this year - that's mostly why we went to see Spider-Man so many times! I think there were at least two weeks where we just gave up and stayed home, which is unusual for us! At least the only new-to-us one that we saw (Belfast, that is) was quite good.

Rob has also been to see these without me:

Scream
The Cursed

(He seemed to like The Cursed considerably more than Scream, from what I gathered.)

On TV, we enjoyed The Book of Boba Fett a lot, even if it was a bit uneven. I have also watched a whole lot of Marvel, as usual (Black Widow holds up to repeat viewings much better than I would have expected), and also repeat viewings of Encanto (resulting in a semi-permanent "Bruno" earworm). Rob still watches the news a lot but I have cut back because I find it so depressing. (And he watches a ton of horror movies, mostly when I'm asleep.)

(I've come to think one of the secrets of our going-on-35-year marriage is having schedules that vary enough that each of us can do our own thing while the other one is asleep!)

I've been reading the Cinder series (I guess it's officially The Lunar Chronicles, right?) and re-reading a bunch of other things because I've kind of been in a slump where I can't seem to finish much. I think I've finished a dozen books so far this year that were new to me, but they were mostly short, very easy reading. There's another dozen or more that I started but didn't get very far into - and only a couple that I officially called as DNF. The rest I'll hopefully come back to.

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