Hello dear readers, it is my first time doing a wrapup on my blog and I thought it would be nice to start off this project with a discussion of what I've been doing this month just in general. This year is about introspection, decluttering, and really looking back at everything I've managed to make since 2020. So lets begin. The photo on the left was a collage that I made recently. It
s a new hobby that I started,( mostly cause I decided to turn the mountian of bullshit in my room into collage supplies instead of trash). Overall its actually really relaxing. I found it a bit difficult to make any progress this month but I've managed to get some small stuff done and because of some sad boi hours I binged a bunch of old nostalgic stuff. You'll see. On a side note I will be including everything else I consumed during the month but I won't write an actually review on it. I'm trying to keep these articles at a reasonable length. This month as a side project I finished watching all of the Netflix Original Movies in my Watchlist so stay tuned this month for an editing video collab I'm gonna do on my
channel.
Stay tuned next month for me watching the Conjuring-verse and the rest of Mike Flanagan's Movies.
Podcasts
The Double Density Podcast
"Greetings cyberspace. Tune in every other Wednesday as Angelo and Brian discuss tech
news and issues, as well as the fads and trends of yesteryear. Stick around as they also delve into the strange world of the paranormal."
This reference was due to a collab between Brian Hastie of DD and Our Strange Skies Podcast. Its been about a year and a half since I listened to OSS so my memory of said episode is exactly zero so lets get into the DD podcast proper.
It turns out I just don't like tech news. I like to think that I'm a curious person and there's definitely been content in the past that has piqued my interest in the subject. That being said I realized that most of my interest in these things are more about how it effects the world of entertainment and less about the technicalities about design. Also I'm one of those assholes that hates Apple with a purple passion so there's that to deal with. Its hard to enjoy a topic when you dislike the culture around it.
I want to be perfectly clear that this podcast is not my cup of tea and that completely affects my review of this show. I only managed to listen to the beginning of this podcast and this is definitely not the way I prefer to review non-fiction podcasts, (to clarify for a non-fiction podcast I listen to 10 episodes the first five and the last five, or whichever selection provides the most variety to the listening experience).
This show wasn't for me, I didn't particular jell with the hosts and while I like the novelty of looking at paranormal events through the lens of tech its high concept didn't pay off for me, a boring luddite.
Everything Else
🎧 Within the Wires (Seasons 1 - Season 3 Ep 3)
🎧 Archive 81 (All of it, no really I just finished Left Of The Dial)
Tv Shows
Orange Is The New Black
"Piper Chapman is a public relations executive with a career and a fiance when her past suddenly catches up to her. In her mid-30s she is sentenced to spend time in a minimum-security women's prison in Connecticut for her association with a drug runner 10 years earlier. This Netflix original series is based on the book of the same title. Forced to trade power suits for prison orange, Chapman makes her way through the corrections system and adjusts to life behind bars, making friends with the many eccentric, unusual and unexpected people she meets."
The older I get the more I realize how many shows are actually Soap Operas.
Twin Peaks? Soap Opera.
American Horror Story? Soap Opera.
Heroes? Soap Opera.
Pretty Little Liars? Oh honey, don't tell me you didn't know.
Also before you purists get on my ass a Soup Opera for me is any melodrama that involves an ensemble cast. I'm going more off the vibe of being able to unironically tell people that I'm watching my stories.
Orange Is The New Black is exactly this fucking vibe. I don't have anything smart to say about this show. This is just good hard core cheese. Ok Natasha Leonne and Kate Mulgrew are both in this and I love both of them. I like the cast, I like the flash backs in each episode, I like how they have LGBT characters but still write queerphobia that's realistic, (for instance the constant bi-erasure of Piper Chapman). This is just a good all-around melo-drama and when I'm done watching a ridicoulas amount of television for this blog, (like around 30 tv shows), I am definitely gonna finish this show.
Everything Else I Watched
📺The Good Place (Like literally every episode I Cried like a little bitch at the end)
📺The Woman In The House Across The Street From The Girl In The Window
📺The Cuphead Show
📺Alice In Borderlands
Games
Lily's Garden
In my Gallery review I discussed how the mobile game Gardenscapes set the tone for the now oversaturated renovation genre. Sometime over the years, Gardenscapes and its ilk began making absolutely batshit insane ads. These ads are either completely false advertising showing fake gameplay that has no basis to the game or are absolutely bizarre skits that feature blatant sexual overtones. Lily's Garden is no
exception. This might be why I didn't realize during my original review that I had played Lily's Garden before. I also want to recognize that a games marketing team and its actual design team are too different beasts. Matchington Manor which I praise in my Gallery review had the same horrible Gardenscape style ads which is why I downloaded it in the first place.
Now that I've played a good portion of Lilys Garden, (current level count is 227), and there are somethings that make it stand out. Most of the renovation games on the market have a very casual no-conflict plot but LG has actually stakes. The game starts with Lily being giving a ultimatum. Her aunts will states that if she doesn't fix up the gardens in a month then she will be out of house and home. The drama doesn't end with the premise either in between Lily's weeding and polaroid finding she has to deal with the motley cast of characters, who all have their own agency within the game.
LG has also followed the trend in match-3 games to shy away from the punishing difficulty that Candy Crush started. LG utilized for lack of a better word uses a love-bombing system filling the game with benefits, sign-in bonuses, and infinite hearts for brief periods of time. Which I will admit has worked on me, more then once. Free lives for half an hour I guess I might as well keep playing.
Giving how ubiquitous and efficient the mobile market is its hard to really define a game decontextualized from its genre. These games are just like the social games of the 2010s. Each game has its own ideas but its on top of a well-defined and socially engineered skeleton to keep engagement. Any thing that praises the game is usually a praise for the aggressively manicured engagement design of the genre itself. What I will say is that Lily's Garden is a worthwhile example of the genre that capitalizes on what works and adds its own soul to the formula.
Everything Else I Watched
🎮 Life Goes On (Trying for the Speed Run)
🎮Loralie
Movies
Midsommar(2019)
"LET THE FESTIVITIES BEGIN.
Several friends travel to Sweden to study as anthropologists a summer festival that is held every ninety years in the remote hometown of one of them. What begins as a dream vacation in a place where the sun never sets, gradually turns into a dark nightmare as the mysterious inhabitants invite them to participate in their disturbing festive activities."
One of the things about being in any kind of appreciation group is that the same stories get mentioned over and over again. Midsommar was a film so ingrained in pop culture that I felt that I was always missing out on the conversation even more so then the yearly iconic films that all my cool film friends talk about. Midsommar is by all accounts a modern classic and is engrained in both the critics and audiences perception of the zeitgeist. With any classic modern or otherwise there's a weight behind it that gives me cold feet.
There are so many times were I will say to myself :
"oh no Ryen, you worked a long week you can't sit down and watch a 2 1/2 hour long movie that by all accounts and purposes will emotional fuck you up and also change your life forever, you better put on something like 'Oy Vey! My Son is Gay'(2009) or 'Sharkansas Women's Prison Massacre(2015), so that you can feel nothing'
Which now that I'm looking at it sounds a little toxic.
Midsommar was a movie that when I actually started it it was hard to put down. there's something about the midnight sun that makes everything film timeless. Their is am aggressive aesthetic to this film that while the 2 1/2 hour run time made it daunting there was never a moment I wanted it to stop. I watched this movie in two segments and every second felt lived in. This film is like an eclipse, it is absolutely beautiful but somewhere deep inside there is this primal terror as we stare up at an eldritch nightmare that has changed even for a few moments our reality. There is something so personal about this film that while it is absolutely a horror film it doesn't have the impact of one. It's a film that is transcendentally in one beautiful terrible moment. An instance of midnight sun, death, and renewal.
I completely understand why we as a culture are so captivated by this film and I really want to see more art horror especially modern art horror.
Run Lola Run(1998)
"EVERY SECOND OF EVERY DAY YOU’RE FACED WITH A DECISION THAT CAN CHANGE YOUR LIFE.
Lola receives a phone call from her boyfriend Manni. He lost 100,000 DM in a subway train that belongs to a very bad guy. She has 20 minutes to raise this amount and meet Manni. Otherwise, he will rob a store to get the money. Three different alternatives may happen depending on some minor event along Lola’s run."
I remember when I first mentioned Run Lola Run I felt like such a bad bitch flexing my knowledge of cool experimental German Cinema. Over the last two years during the pandemic I've been spending a lot of time reading and listening to people that have actually been to film school and say cool words like adject, transcendent, sophomoric, and "I've seen Lars von Trier's Depression Trilogy and Gregg Araki's Teenage Apocalypse Trilogy, yes I am very cool, no you cannot have my autograph".
What I'm saying is that I'm that friend who calls green onions "Scallions", and orders the "Soup de Jour Al Fresco" at their local Olive Garden because I watch the Food Network.
That being said over the last two years I have gotten to see a lot of really interesting and experimental movies and learn about a lot more films then I had previously. Being a critic is doing your best and then watching films like the The Exorcist(1973), or Alice, Sweet Alice(1976), or even Black Christmas(1974) and realizing how much context you've missed from newer films. What I'm trying to say is that being a critic is a lot like being a chef, you have to trust your cooking but also strive to never rest on your laurels and learn new things and experiment with ingredients that you've never tried before.
Run Lola Run, is everything I want in a film, it has a bitching soundtrack, it has a hot punk chick, it has aggressively stylized cinematography, and it has a cool existential twist on the Time Loop Story. Ok just because I'm a fake ass bitch that likes to name drop Ballet Mécanique(1924) in casual conversation it doesn't mean that this film isn't rad as shit and you should watch it.
What are you not going to watch a film that basically if the guy who directed Darude -- Sandstorm was like wait what is this had a plot? Well that sounds like a you problem.
Everything Else I Watched
📽️ The House(2022)
📽️Good Burger(1997)
📽️Countdown(2019)
📽️The Perfection(2018)
📽️The Woman in the Window(2021)
📽️Ringu(1998)
📽️Kaali Khuhi(2020)
📽️Nobody Sleeps in the Woods Tonight(2020)
📽️The Decline(2020)
📽️Man Camp(2013)
📽️Hypnotic(2021)
📽️Crash(2004)
📽️Things Heard and Seen(2021)
📽️Intrusion(2021)
📽️The Trip(2021)
📽️The Call(2017)
📽️Clinical(2017)
📽️His House(2020)
Referenced: Russian Doll
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