Archive for Movies
I watched about 65 movies in 2021, including rewatching about 15 that I had seen before. Of the ones that I hadn’t seen before, here were my favorites, in approximate descending order: 1. The Milagro Beanfield War (1988). Lovely, funny, charming movie full of great character details. Liked it a lot. 2. In the Heights […]
I’m thinking about what the difference is between an amazing major revelation late in a story (I’ll call this a Big Reveal) and an annoying Surprise Twist Ending. Here are some of my thoughts. Some examples of good Big Reveals of the sort that I’m thinking of (no specific spoilers here, but I suppose that […]
A lot of people don’t have the same ideas that I do about what constitutes a romcom. To me, romcom (also written as rom-com) is a genre, with such strong genre conventions that they border on formula. It doesn’t just mean a movie that has some romantic or comedic aspects. (I’m intentionally using the term […]
Kam and I watched the new Mulan, and enjoyed it quite a bit. It’s very clearly intended to be a wuxia movie rather than a musical for kids. I don’t know enough about wuxia to be able to judge it as an example of that genre, but I thought it succeeded as a movie pretty […]
Back in 2010, I posted about classic works of literature reworked as movies set in a modern high school. Comments on that post led me to expand my definitions a bit, and I’ve seen a couple more such movies since then. So I thought I would post the updated list: Movie Year Original What I […]
I enjoyed the vid party at WisCONline last week. Here are half a dozen of my favorites—some sweet, some thoughtful, some angry. “Come ’Round for Tea” (2014), by Garrideb Showing female friendships in Marvel comics, with all the words in word balloons replaced by hearts. (song: “Baltic Sea,” by The Social Services) (2 min) “Pipeline” […]
Books! Free to a good home. Let me know if you want any of these. Also some CDs, DVDs, and VHS tapes. (All at the end of this post.) This list contains 100+ more books than the previous list I posted (a couple months ago), so even if you’ve already looked at the other one, […]
In 1989, I wrote a story (titled “Absences”) about a kid and her brother who had survived an alien invasion. Part of the core idea of the story was that the invading aliens were super sensitive to sound; humans who made too much noise got killed, and the protagonist’s brother was deaf, so the protagonist […]
Yesterday morning, I attended the Families Belong Together rally at San José City Hall. It was pretty good, although it took me a while to find a place to stand where I could hear the speakers. Came home afterward. (Traveled to and from via light rail; took a lot longer than driving, but (a) could […]
There are a bunch of movies currently in theatres that I wanted to see, so I decided to see them this week. So far: Monday: A Wrinkle in Time Tuesday: Annihilation Wednesday: Tomb Raider Plan for next few days: Thursday: Love, Simon Friday: Black Panther again (saw it a few weeks ago, want to see […]
Dreamed I was watching A Wrinkle in Time in a tiny “theatre” that was a lounge at an airport (with no seats; we were sitting on the floor). For unspecified security reasons, they couldn’t show a film using a projector, so we were watching it on a grainy videotape. There were maybe 20 people in […]
Didn’t sleep much or well on Friday night, I think mostly because I stayed up way too late reading and playing iOS games. Hung out with Karen and Pär and Jeremiah during the day on Saturday, mostly playing Terraforming Mars, which has become one of my favorite boardgames. Then came home to help Kam move […]