august media

[latespring]

Continuing with my monthly catch up! Here was last month! Pretend we're not almost at the end of this current month…

Movies

Boss Level (2021) ☆☆☆☆☆
ZERO STARS. This movie is a complete! waste! of! your! time!

Michelle Yeoh only shows up for 3 minutes max and every plot point sucks. The main character is annoying and not in a fun way, more in a "insufferable post-irony bro who thinks he's hot shit" way. Also the message of the movie is depressing.

This tastes terrible but I'll eat it for you Michelle Yeoh…

Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings (2021) ★★★★☆
I think everyone's seen this by now it feels like… Anyway, Tony Leung Chiu-wai, hello?

Gunpowder Milkshake (2021) ★★★★☆
This was what Boss Level thought it was. The lesbian under/over tones in the whole thing were immaculate and I love the gratuitous violence from women. It's very much an action movie you don't have to think too hard about. I actually am not sure if it'd pass a reverse Bechdel test, which is fun. Michelle plays a side character who is an assassin posing as a librarian.

I think the concept fucks too--an assassin reunites with her assassin mother to protect a little girl (the first assassin killed the little girl's father). Kind of like John Wick (I have never seen John Wick).

There's quite a bit of violence, as you'd expect from a movie like this, but it's all really enjoyable. It's tropey in a way that could get tiresome if you're not into the premise, but I was and so it was a lot of fun to cheer on everyone. I support women's wrongs!!!

Books

Several People are Typing by Calvin Kasulke

• why I read it: Someone from a podcast I listen to pitched this as an "office isekai" which was funny enough that I picked this up.


• thoughts: It's like, not bad? I think if you had read less of this genre, you'd really get a kick out of this one. Also perhaps if you were more into an office environment than I am, maybe you'd like this one more. As it was, I felt like it was fine? It's a really quick read. I think it could have gone even weirder than it did. The whole thing is told in slack chats.
  
  At the end of the day, that's really all I feel about it. It was fine?

The Witch King by Martha Wells

• why I read it: This is Martha Wells' latest release and I like her work so I wanted to check it out! The premise of a fantasy world plot advanced primarily on character interactions also appealed to me.


• thoughts: Overall I did like this book! It reads more like a fic of a book than a book, I feel. What I mean by this: we follow the plot of the book in a tight third person flipping back and forth between the present and the past. Wells writes like she assumes you know the world, which I most assuredly did not. This is a pretty standard move from scifi fantasy but I felt especially unmoored in this one. Some of her character and plot beats landing like she thinks they should be significant to the reader, but I hadn't remembered enough of the world to go oh the way she wanted me to. It's also a pretty limited scope of time in terms of the past, which really limits how much I got invested in the present.
  
  I think the book could have benefitted from being approximately 100 pages longer, with some more room for emotional development beats, especially in the past. More development for the politics would have been good too. The things I really liked about the book were the characters and the character relationships--the premise that I picked it up for definitely delivered. Character relationships were the focus of it for sure.
  
  While I would recommend the book (if you're up for tracing the worldbuilding), I didn't quite like it as much as I wanted to.

TV

The Untamed
I started a watch of The Untamed with some people I'm in a server in, and a friend. I have never successfully finished this show, so here's hoping the company will get me through it this time!

MISC

N/A

In Progress

Also not sure what I had in progress last month.

Poetry

I've also subscribed to a poem email called Poetry Daily so I'll see if I have it in me to read two poems a day next month!

Cover Story by Richard Siken
Richard Siken is publishing poetry again! This was really gutting.

From poem-a-day:
Poem Without Love by Tarfia Faizullah

Skull Song by Genevieve Taggard

Names for Hunger by Mrigaa Sethi

Ewako by Tanya Lukin Linklater

Fragments on Naturalization by Snigdha Koirala

Ode to Donor Gametes by Robin Silbergleid

Minotaur by Douglas Kearney

Theodore the Poet by Edgar Lee Masters

Exposition by Lauren Russell

Short Talk on Pain by Anne Carson

Valley Oak by Julia Bloch

Music

SCROBBLES: 2,216

SCROBBLES PER DAY: 71

The Hozier album came out!!! Here was my August playlist.

Artists:

1. ATEEZ - 441
2. Hozier - 300
3. Pinkshift - 145
4. The 8-Bit Big Band - 82
5. LE SSERAFIM - 60
6. THE BOYZ - 47
7. Rina Sawayama - 44
8. Lee Young Ji - 41
9. MUNA - 41
10. CHEN - 40

Albums:

1. Unreal Unearth by Hozier - 210
2. THE WORLD EP.2 : OUTLAW by ATEEZ - 168
3. Don't Stop by ATEEZ - 69
4. Backwards Compatible by The 8-Bit Big Band - 63
5. home by Pinkshift - 62
6. TREASURE EPILOGUE : Action To Answer by ATEEZ - 55
7. Eve, Psyche & The Bluebeard’s wife (Rina Sawayama Remix) by LE SSERAFIM - 54
8. TREASURE EP.FIN: All To Action by ATEEZ - 48
9. Saccharine by Pinkshift - 45
10. Love Me Forever by Pinkshift - 38

Songs:

1. BOUNCY (K-HOT CHILLI PEPPERS) by ATEEZ - 78
2. Don't Stop by ATEEZ - 69
3. home by Pinkshift - 59
4. De Selby (Part 2) by Hozier - 55
5. Precious by ATEEZ - 54
6. Eve, Psyche & The Bluebeard’s wife (Rina Sawayama Remix) by LE SSERAFIM - 54
7. Chrono Trigger Main Theme (From "Chrono Trigger") by The 8-Bit Big Band - 50
8. De Selby (Part 1) by Hozier - 42
9. Rainwalk by Pinkshift - 42
10. WITCH (Feat. Jay Park, So!YoON!) (Prod. by Slom) by Lee Young Ji - 37

Comments

[sleepypapercrowns]

I had the exact same reaction to Witch King as you! I was so lost with the worldbuilding, really I couldn't have explained it to anyone the second I closed the book, let alone now. But the characters! I loved them a lot, although I think Kai would've deserved some more kisses.

[latespring]

yeah!!!! more kisses for kai! I'm really interested to see what comes out of yuletide this year actually, since Witch King is nommed, and there's quite a few character options for it