Movies
Grand Hotel 1932
First multi character film, that wasn’t a war film? It did keep me engaged while watching. All characters were interesting in their own ways. I particularly liked the ending, which surprised me. But it is hard to summarize due to the ensemble cast.
Cavalcade 1933
I hated this one. Mostly because of one scene. A newly married woman and man on a ship, talking about their plans for the future. They leave and camera pans to the life to the life guard floater thing showing the name Titanic. And could have been an interesting commentary on inter class marriage, but the resolution was that people died, so society doesn’t have to confront the system. It is historically interesting though, in the sense of finding out what were the important historical events that people thought should be in a movie.
It Happened One Night 1934
I had seen this before. OK movie. I think this suffers from being one of those works that established the genre conventions so longer feels as remarkable as it was, when it was made. I wouldn’t mind recommending it to anyone though. The “plane” scene was interesting, especially seeing how far we have come from Wings.
Mutiny On The Bounty 1935
Second Clark Gable movie. Does suffer from the white savior for native issues. Interesting watching a move set on a ship though and inspired by real life events. Lookup the wikipedia page for the movie and section on historical accuracy. I didn’t realize while watching the movie that it was based on real life events. This incident apparently resulted in major changes for naval procedures so at least interesting to watch from that perspective.
Books
Such a fun age
Fiction grappling with themes about race, motherhood, activism. I mostly liked it, but it did feel sort of unfair towards the motherhood part. Alex in the novel is not a great person, but Emira’s line questioning her being a bad mother seemed a little confusing. I guess because the father was essentially absent form the story and I am not sure if the novel is having very different expectations of fathers vs mothers. Activism and race fetishism plot were interesting though and had a satisfying resolution to me.
Roadside Picnic
Inspiration behind the vide game franchise Stalker. People in the book club found it very Russian in setting. I have no idea what that means. Some very interesting ideas about aliens visiting Earth as a pit stop, and leaving random junk around. And humans are analogous to animals who would be confused by random paper cups, etc. The artifacts left behind have either very interesting or of the kind that will immediately kill you.
Video Games
Spelunky 2
It is a rogue like where if you die, you start from the beginning with a procedurally generated level. So you can’t memorize and mistakes are punished. Really hard game! I am essentially stuck but it always feels like if you were just a little bit more patient, you could do better. Also, fun to play on co-op though as the other player can revive you. Con of playing in co-op is you can’t use shortcuts that you unlock when playing on single player.
Resident Evil 7
Kinda mixed feelings on this. I have heard that you are hunted for the first half of the game and then you are powerful. I still haven’t made the mind shift required to switch from fps perspective to running away perspective.
TV
She-Ra and the Princesses of Power
Fun! It did have filler filled episodes initially. First kids cartoon I watched that had LGBT representation from the get-go. I don’t want to spoil anything but the ending is great!
Software
Renpy
Looked at renpy for writing a visual novel. I couldn’t help but try to add more structure in it. For some reason. I thought computer science would actually be an issue while writing a visual novel, but it seems it is essentially the writing that is going to take the most time. I petered out pretty quickly.