I wasn’t intending on watching this documentary but clips for it are going viral and my wife seemed vaguely interested. I’m familiar with neither Louis Theroux’s work nor any of the male influencers featured here. Still Theroux seems like a skilled interviewer and the influencers are obviously huge celebrities in their own niche. That means this does have value after all even if I’m familiar with most of the talking points. The most fun parts are certainly when Theroux speaks with the women in the lives of these men but the scariest part is when it suggests that political power is the logical next step of the movement.
This was a free game, on Steam this time, and I’d never even heard of it before I saw the offer. It seems one reason why this was given away and then subsequently taken off the store is that the publisher lost the right to the IP. Unfortunately the offer was only for the base game and now you can’t even buy the many DLCs even if you wanted to. After playing this for a while, I very much wanted to because the prospect of having the extra ship types to experiment with is very enticing. The strategic layer is lacking and feels inconsequential. But the tactical layer is very strong and one of the best implementations of fleet-based starship combat I’ve seen.
I haven’t seen enough of Mike Leigh’s work and after taking the time to watch this one, I continue to be wowed by his ability to depict the lives of the British working class. This is ostensibly a film about abortion, one so realistic that it feels like it should be based on a real person. But it’s also about the lives of the working class, their concerns and their problems and how they’re forced to solve them in their own way because the laws as written were made by and for the rich.
This film was made by Zhang Lü, a Chinese director of Korean ethnicity. Its title refers to the White Pagoda that is a landmark in Beijing, said to be shadowless as due to a combination of its white color and sheer size, its shadow is difficult to perceive. It’s definitely one of those arthouse films with depths that are difficult to perceive as said tower’s shadow. In this case, it’s both subtler than I’d prefer and even when I can work out what it’s trying to say, the stakes seem too small to support the weight of its presentation.
The name Peter F. Hamilton was not familiar to me and I thought I knew all of the big name science-fiction writers. While popular and commercially successful, this trilogy is closer to being space opera and so never won any major awards which could be why I never noticed it. The books are also notable for being huge doorstoppers. That kind of length isn’t that unusual for the current era of web series but present real logistical issues when printed on paper. The cast of characters is extensive and Hamilton takes his time to describe his setting so the plot doesn’t really get going until a few hundred pages in. For a long while, I enjoyed the action adventure story well enough but couldn’t see much point in it. Then the action got started and I must admit that I got hooked.
I held off on watching this because I feel that zombies are way overused in media and it didn’t even seem like this adds anything new to the genre. I was persuaded my mind due to a friend’s recommendation and because I have a newfound appreciation for the work of Alex Garland. In the event, this turned out to be a perfectly cromulent action movie and a decent coming-of-age film. Thematically, it’s not that interesting despite an attempt to suggest a mythic link to England’s past. But it is entertaining and even does a bit of worldbuilding.
The slew of awards and international recognition this film won more than qualifies it a must-watch. I was hesitant to approach it however, being cognizant of its contentious and depressing nature. Indeed as the end of this documentary itself shows, the crisis at Masafer Yatta that is its focus, has since been overshadowed by the October 7 attacks. The Palestinian perspective it offers is both interesting and invaluable. Its images show exactly how a people is smothered to death slowly over the course of decades. Yet it probably doesn’t offer much that is new to those who are already reasonably well-read on the subject and is too roughly put together to be a great documentary.
