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I really liked this!! I've never been a humongous Superman fan, in that I've never followed the franchise/character very closely, but there has certainly been Superman stuff that I like. The Christopher Reeves movie from the late 70s was my foundational knowledge for Superman as a child, of course, and it wasn't too long ago that I was watching the more recent animated series My Adventures with Superman with my spouse. I think that David Corenswet did a wonderful job playing Clark, and found him charming and very likeable--a force of good without being preachy or over the top. I really believe his Clark Kent and the values he's built his identity upon. Without spoiling anything, I think the themes this movie tackled were great and commend the writers and director for standing by them and hope anyone who is mad about Superman being 'woke' or dealing with his identity as an immigrant or anything a very merry 'develop media literacy soon'!

Anyway, a delight. I'd recommend seeing it even if you have no emotional stakes in DC because it's an actually good DC live action movie!!!! And it filled me with joy and hope!!! Let's gooooo

I fear they made this movie just for me...I've been meaning to watch this movie for years, and finally got around to it with my spouse. The serotonin I derived from seeing this movie's portrayal of Dick Grayson was outrageous. They made him the sweetest little guy, silly but still so loveable...I am very pleased by the explicitness of his and Bruce(/Batman)'s bond as being that of father and son, and of Alfred as Bruce's surrogate father as well. While it's obvious that Robin sees Batman as a father figure, I think reckoning with it so directly here (rather than Dick being Bruce's 'ward' this is explicit adoption) puts the emphasis on family that this movie wants to discuss. Michael Cera did a lovely job portraying the innocence, joy, and humor of Robin, to the point where I forgot it was Michael Cera at all. I knew it was a voice I recognized but didn't put my finger on it until seeing his name in the end credits! Maybe that's a skill issue? But I think he did great. I also loved the visuals--while they were a bit over the top at times, I can only expect that of what is primarily a children's movie. What I really loved visually was how grounded the lego pieces looked, like, actually worn down lego people and sets, I just thought that was cute and liked the committment to the silliness of 'being' legos!! Like the end when they click the city back into place. Super funny. I also love Joker and Batman's dynamic here, the writers' little jab at 'ships' which in the end turns into Batjokes being canon in a strange way? XD Anyway, a lot of whimsy and heart in this one.

I don't remember what we were going to watch, but when my spouse saw this on the Amazon Prime home page and realized I had never watched this movie before, we knew what had to be done. I commented early on in the movie--I think as early as the intro credits wherein the camera followed the POV of the cop car crashing into increasingly ridiculous places--that I was annoyed at how suited to my sense of humor this was XD But really, this was such a treat. I was impressed by how jam packed this movie was with gags, like every scene had a joke baked in either environmentally or in the dialogue or both, no matter how short the scene was. I now completely understand why this movie is so iconic. And I was also happily surprised that its humor didn't draw upon racism, sexism, or other cheap punching-down sort of tendencies the way I was worried it might. In contrast, a few years ago my spouse and I tried to watch Austin Powers: Goldmember and couldn't even make it past the intro where there was almost immediately a very racist joke at the expense of a young Asian woman and we were like 'no, we're shutting this off.' (Crazy that I grew up watching Austin Powers with my parents as, like, a toddler; there's a reason I knew all the right contexts to use curse words already.) In the Naked Gun, though, the humor is dependent way more on slapstick and subverting your expectations of the average James Bond or cool-detective type suave main character. In fact, a lot of the jokes are at his expense entirely. One of my favorite scenes is the 'car chase':

(clip here)

(clip here; quality is super borked but eh)

What an absolute joy this movie was! My spouse has been following a lot of the artists that worked on this film on social media for years now, and the creative control they gave the artists really shows. This whole movie feels like a love letter to K-pop and it's fans, of course, and it's also a beautiful piece of art. The expressions are SO cute, and I really love how the characters are modeled; they're almost more like dolls (without the uncanny valley feeling) than 3-d models, I don't know, its very unique! The songs were also bangers. Visually and musically a treat.

I watched this movie with a close friend and enjoyed it quite a lot! The character designs are probably my favorite part. However, it did feel a bit like there was more to this story than the runtime could comfortably allow. Ultimately it seems that the plot/story was too ambitious; maybe it would have had more room to breathe had it been a mini-series (a la Over the Garden Wall) rather than a movie? Even so, it has a style all its own and worldbuilding I found fascinating; I can see myself putting it on again for a future Halloween movie night.

We're in an era of remakes, sequels and continuations of stories that were long thought dormant (the Shugo Chara! sequel manga, Shugo Chara Jewel Joker comes to mind, as does the Lucky Star spinoff about Konata in her thirties, the Death Note sequel oneshot, Inuyasha's sequel Yashahime, etc.) This one, however, was LONG awaited. The original PASWG anime from 2010 ended on a bombshell cliffhanger--then, nothing for 15 years. I'm happy to say that New Panty & Stocking delivered. This was especially noticeable after rewatching the original series, but I feel that the sequel series/'season 2' of PASWG is how I remembered the original series to be in a lot of ways. It has that same spirit, although a little softer, a little less rough around the edges. WAY less grossout humor (significantly less shit and puke, thank god)

A read that was at once both joyful and haunting. I might never recover from the line, "life is too short and love is too long.” Muir kept me guessing until nearly the final act about who Nona really was and what the situation was. The realization of it was horrifying, not only for Nona but for the reader (or at least for me.) But even so, the transience, the impermanence of something doesn't take away it's realness, it's truth. As Paul says, "it’s finished, it’s done. You can’t take loved away."

Muir, please release Alecto the Ninth soon...!

Easily my favorite book in the series; this one solidified Harrow as my precious little blorbo.

Muir's magic system (for lack of a better term) with necromancy is incredible to me, and its on full display for the prodigal Harrowhark. Even more so, I'm impresseed by Muir's command over the narration, and thus over our perception of the book's reality. The first note I made upon starting this book was literally about the second-person narration; I thought it was a product of Harrow's distance from herself; a consequence of dissociation. Turns out I was projecting, and the second-person POV was more literal than that! But I love the way Muir is able to capitalize fully on the medium of the written word; it's one of the reasons I struggle to imagine Gideon the Ninth being adapted to a visual medium. That first book in particular makes significant use of Gideon's POV to obscure and obsfucate details of the trials and the mystery from us, because Gideon doesn't really know that much about necromancy and couldn't be fucked to care for a good part of the book. That's part of what makes Harrow as a sequel so illuminating; laid before us is all that we weren't seeing before.

I also love that rather than Harrow being either schizophrenic and not experiencing anything supernatural, or Harrow mistaking the supernatural for hallucinations, it's actually both. Anyway I love her and she has

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I love Demon Slayer, but this was a rather weak arc. This was to be expected, with it even straight up being officially named the "Hashira Training Arc", but I think it is most egregious seeing how little happened until the final, very epic sequence at the end. Kagaya Ubuyashiki you will always be famous.

I think this arc also annoyed me because it showed one of my least favorite aspects of the Shonen genre: female characters being two-dimensional, flat characters at best. It may seem like a small detail, but none of the background slayers in the training camps were women. None of them. And Mitsuri's training camp was used only as a quick gag. It's simply disappointing to see from a series that I really love. It seems in many ways we haven't gotten that much better than the days of Naruto and Bleach.

That being said, I will be sat and seated for the Demon Slayer Infinity Castle movie...when it's online, that is.

This is the sequel to 'The Darkness Outside Us', a book I really loved with a story that pleasantly surprised me. However...I think perhaps it was a book that worked better as a standalone.

From the start, I did really care about Kodiak and Ambrose's children, Yarrow and Owl, and what a struggle it would be for a child growing up with no peers but your sibling and no other humans but your family. I could have potentially enjoyed the dual timeline that shows what the original K+A did after their clones were launched on their mission, but it felt like a bit of a slog trying to get through Ambrose’s discovery of the truth and everything with Devon Mujaba.. I was sitting there like, my god do I not care about Devon. Also, narration from an Ambrose without his sort of ego-death and character development from the first book is quite hard to read, it reminded me of how I rolled my eyes at his original narration in the very beginnings of the first book. It makes sense, of course, and it's exactly what the original Amrbose would be like...it just grated on me.

I understand that Devon was the critical piece here in having Ambrose and Kodiak meet before the earth is ravaged by nuclear war, which felt like a nice nod to all the doomed K+A pairs who fell in love but ultimately died in space. And of course I can’t deny the appeal of two characters loving each other in every lifetime. And I recognize that Devon was also the cause of the family’s hardship in Minerva, therefore the books driving plot——Yarrow’s violent snap——but even that all felt cheap. What do I mean by that? It feels like it cheapened the hopefulness at the end of the first book, and even though the solution that original flavor Kodiak and Ambrose came up with together to send to their future clones was a nice thought it felt …unearned? Somehow? Like, too easy.

I really thought that Yarrow's sudden change in demeanor and his intrusive thoughts were stemming from a burgeoning personality disorder or mental illness, and frankly I think that would have been more interesting. That the issue here is another thing done to them by political forces outside their own control is one thing, but as I said, the resolution feels unearned. I think all in all, the first book is just a tighter story.

I'm not a huge Fantastic Four fan--I've yet to really read any FF comics--but I was really excited for this movie! That's why the sort of...emptiness of it was disappointing. For having four main characters who are supposed to be super improtant to each other, the film didn't demonstrate their interpersonal dynamics very well. I think this was partially the fault of direction, as I know that these actors have been good in other projects, but there was something lifeless and kind of uncanny to their performances here. Also, for what it's worth--as again, someone lackign the intimate knowledge of a FF, but who is still familiar with them and who has seen them in plenty of Marvel crossover comics and guest appearances--Reed Richards didn't feel like Reed Richards. Like it felt like he should have been a little more quirky, eccentric professor type, but maybe I'm nitpicking and this is just me wanting more life in the movie any way we could get it. Are Fantastic Four movie adaptations simply cursed at this point?

During the post-credits scene my only thought was 'if I went into the kitchen and came back to see Dr. Doom playing with my baby I would really start tweaking'

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