Notes from December 2024#
2024-12-01#
"Enough Said" from 2013 is the last movie to star James Gandolfini, who is so different here than I remembered him from "The Sopranos." He even speaks differently. It was also nice to see him paired up with Julia Louis-Dreyfus of "Seinfeld." I don't normally watch this drama-like movies, even if this one is half a comedy, but it was pleasure. I realised that romantic movies about young people don't resonate with me any more. But this movie did.
"Viridiana" is the second movie from Luis Buñuel which I've seen. I wanted to compare it against "Tristana" as it was supposed to be more surreal. It's definitely a unique experience, but mostly due to the fact it's from 1961 and the mental models from then were just completely different. I had no idea where the plot was heading. I read a quote from a review back then that the movie had too obvious symbols. I can certainly say they're not obvious any more.
This year's "Brothers" with Josh Brolin and Peter Dinklage (and Glenn Close) is a typical action-packed comedy about criminals. There is really nothing more to it, but it's an okay position for a undemanding watch that catches us every now and then. I liked the finale in the abandoned shopping mall, which reminded me of my fairly recent fascination of liminal spaces.
2024-12-02#
I've been stumbling into boars so much these recent months that I'm no longer impressed, even in a dark grove by night. It does help that the bigger dog is a breed for hunting boars, so he always makes a lot of noise and scares them off. But they're not aggressive if left alone. There is something natural in this coexistence.
(Technically, they're half-boars, or cerdali, as they call them here.)
2024-12-03#
The minutiae were crucial.
2024-12-04#
I was so half-asleep in the morning that I put my baseball cap on the roof of my car and forgot about it and drove off. I didn't find it in the afternoon. It's a shame because I really liked the colours.
2024-12-05#
A todo list in the form of a text file. A perfection.
2024-12-07#
We had a Christmas event at work yesterday. I'm not a heavy party goer, so I pulled off a Ron Swanson: I ate a lot of meat, I talked to people, which might seem a bit un-Swanson, but I made up for it by having 3 desserts, followed by a coffee for the road, and I was off. Luckily, the parking spot I found was not towing punishable (one can never know with those fancy neighbourhoods). I went to bed by my usual time. Next year, I'll do the same.
"What is wrong with you" as an opener on a party.
2024-12-09#
Cold came in.
2024-12-11#
One of my Winter pleasures is when I wake up in the morning and the room is cold, but I am under my duvet, which brings this blissful coziness. It cannot be mistaken with anything else.
I added a game to my wishlist on Steam years ago because it was in development. I would check on it every now and then, but to no avail. Then I started digging and found out that the developer tried to crowdfund it in 2017, I think, and there even was a demo, but eventually, the goal was not reached. Oh well, not the first time in the history, I concluded. But today, I got a notification that the game was released.
I won't give a title yet because I want to go fresh into it.
Years ago, Google would proudly use "to google" as an expression, but at some point, the official usage became "to search with Google engine." Turns out that when a word becomes an eponym like that, it weakens the trademark issues in the court later. Ever since I learned that, I use it to describe searching the internet, just in spite of the Evil Corp.
But if many people do that, it will become problematic for the Big G. Which is a big "if."
2024-12-14#
I think I'm dehydrated. I need to drink more water.
"Reavers of New Rome" was the game. It took me 100 minutes to beat it, and it was a bit peculiar experience, but all in all, I had fun. The soundtrack was tiresome, but the rest was there. Plot was a bit goofy, but it reminded me of 1990s shareware games that I explored heavily at the time.
I think if it was longer, it would overstay its welcome. It was well balanced in this department.
2024-12-16#
I found a comfortable desk chair in IKEA, and I think it'll be my next birthday present.
2024-12-17#
Being edgy was overplayed and abused for petty oppression on the Internet, which saddens me because I find it a useful tool of describing things with brutal honesty. Effective way of getting to the heart of the matter. But now it's gone, condemned and banished to the outer rims of the known Web universe.
My bigger dog developed a taste for sleeping on blankets. He wasn't like that when we got him. It's fascinating to watch how dogs can develop little pleasures like that. There is more to them than meets the eye.
2024-12-18#
I expect that anthologies will largely take over from movies. Cinema is in decline and most users will binge-watch, while some will watch it in parts, per their preference. This will of course happen organically.
A format of 6 to 8 episodes gives more room for a story without changing it into a soap opera. This could also mean less series being cancelled after a cliffhanger. Assume you're not getting another season and close the arc with dignity. No one wants to watch orphaned stories, anyway.
In a desperate move to force-feed me with AI, Microsoft gave me free access to Copilot. Limited but still.
2024-12-25#
"Rebel Moon: Part One: Chalice of Blood" is a director's cut of Zack Snyder's movie (which premiered on Netflix, so I don't get why this wasn't the first cut, anyway), and it watches weirdly because the plot is like for teenagers while visually it's 18+ (sex and violence). It reminds me of "Little Prince" a bit in that manner. A lot of references to 10,000 things and strong Star Wars vibe mixed with Boris Vallejo art style. Not a bad thing if you're willingly going into 6/10 experience.
"Le Samuraï" from 1967 is a classic that inspired a lot of other stories like that, including "The Killer," which I saw this year and later even read the script. Alain Delon plays a role of a hitman who leads a very spartan life. There is no deepened psychology of the character or any explanation for why he's the way he is. Pure action where he does the job, plays cat-and-mouse with the police, and a person who contracted him. Raw and harsh visual style appealed to me heavily.
"Map of the sounds of Tokyo" from 2009 is one of my favourite slow burners, and it was my second watch. It's a Spanish movie, but the action is set in Japan. A story of a contract killer told from a perspective of her friend who's a sound engineer for movies and somehow, he has a lot of recordings of her conversations. This narrative device is my favourite part here. The writer from "Until the End of the World" strongly resembled me this solution here.
I ran out of classic sitcoms, so I started watching "Barry," which is a comedy show. It's a modern show, so it has a couple of layers, but it's funny too. Barry himself is a bit like Dexter. While I found a contract killer who reunites with his feelings through learning to act a bit implausible, I think it works for the story. A tonne of well-played and well-written characters. The finale of season 1 brings back Dexter again. Not that it's a bad thing, as I am a sort of a fan of the character.
"Brain Dead" from 1990 is a definitely strange movie. The resolution explains why, and it makes sense, but before that it's hard to realise what's real and what's not, which I can appreciate. I suspected that in the beginning it was real and then, at some point, it took a divorce from reality, but when exactly, that's the riddle here. It's what I liked in Netflix's "Ragnarok." It's also funny that Bill Pullman played such a similar role to the one from "Lost Highway" before.
Speaking of "Lost Highway," for years, I thought that this was a movie one of it's kind, but when I rewatched "Naked Lunch" (after reading the book), I realised that they basically tell the same story. And now "Brain Dead."
I was very curious of this year's "Joker: Folie à Deux" because it got mixed reviews (if you ever follow any cult classic to its premiere, they all started with mixed reviews), but I like Lady Gaga and was interested in the musical part. On paper, it can't work. However, people exaggerated the musical part. It's there, but in my opinion, it doesn't change the genre of the movie. It's a solid closure to the story from the first movie.
It's a really big "fuck you" to misaimed fandom of the Joker, who idolised him. Well, guess what, the director has a word for you. :D
"Sweetie" from 1989 is a feature debut from Jane Campion. It's probably one of the stranger movies I've seen, at least in the beginning, when it's not really clear what the story is. It gets much better after this introduction, and by the end, it's a touching family drama. It is also interesting because it shows everyday Australia of the late 1980s. I always like to see other places, and low budget productions capture that by shooting in real locations with little to no staging.
I must have found "Dave Made a Maze" from 2017 when I was reading about "House of Leaves" on TV Tropes. The book is not really adaptable into a movie, but a similar story can be done for a movie. And that's what "Dave Made a Maze" is. A story of the titular Dave who built a card-box fort, which somehow turned out to be a living and deadly maze. There even is a documentary crew here. The movie is interesting because it uses horror tropes but nullifies the outcome with cardboard special effects.
"Vincent doit mourir" from 2023 starts as an intimate horror that does not explain what is happening, which is a staple of my favourite horror movies. Without an explanation, you cannot guess what will happen next. Just what I like: a movie which I cannot predict. A story of Vincent who gets viscously attacked by random people and who escapes to a country side to deal with it. Musically and visually and in the vibe, it seems to be close to "It Follows" (2014), but it has its own essence.
"Dune: Prophecy" is a show set in Dune's universe. There was a mini-show 24 years ago, but this one acts as a prequel to the movies. And not a modest prequel because it's set 10,000 years before the movies. At the same time, it shares the visuals, as they used the style that has been created for Villanueve's duology. The show is more about court plots and conspiracies, and it shows them perfectly, with all the moving parts that can go wrong at any time. I can't wait for season 2.
Christmas Eve in Poland means watching one of 2 movies: "Home Alone" or "Die Hard." A secular tradition. Anyway, this year, I finally saw "Die Hard." Yes, that's right, I haven't seen it before. The thing is so known that I'll go straight to my impressions. So, the movie got old with dignity. Bruce Willis as a regular person who's forced to heroism by circumstances works much better than initial ideas of hiring Arnold Schwarzenegger. But now I need to see other parts to observe the progression.
And that was it. I am not a fan of dropping all those mini-reviews at once, but I was busy with other stuff.
2024-12-28#
Years later, I can still recognise Verdana at 11px font size on the spot.
"Juror #2" is 2024 movie from [Clint Eastwood](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clint_Eastwood. As a huge fan of "Runaway Jury" (2003) I had different expectations from the movie, which turned out to be more of a drama than thriller. There is actually no thriller here. The movie was a bit under-delivering, but I have to admit that the last scene is really strong and well done in the context of all that was before it. However, it's interesting that a 93-year old director is still making movies. Maybe I'll appreciate it more when I'm his age.
2024-12-29#
"Highway" (2002) is a bit like MTV road/coming-out-of-age movie with the likes of young Jared Leto and Jake Gyllenhaal. Jared plays Jack, the God of Fuck (because he hasn't ejaculated in the last 5 years), and Jake plays Pilot (because, well, you'll learn from the movie). Action is set in 1994, during the week that Kurt Cobain killed himself, but it plays a little role in the movie. The vibe is nothing like 1994, though, it's pure 2002. I was 19 then, so the movie resonated with me.
I'm copying posts from LinkedIn to my page, and LinkedIn doesn't display the timestamp of a post. There is only relative "10mo," and that's it. Big, big disappointment. It's not hidden anywhere in HTML either. I guess I'll make up some dates. It's not like anyone can prove me otherwise. :D
2024-12-31#
"Tokyo Vice" is HBO's show based on a memoir of Jake Adelstein, a young American who starts working as a journalist in Tokyo and has to navigate foreign customs, the police, and Yakuza. Well done (Michael Mann was on board!) and despite being cancelled after 2 seasons, it managed to complete the story hinted at in the first scene.
I was posting a screenshot of Elon Musk's tweet and, as the custom tells on Fediverse, I was adding alt text, and I realised that I'm typing Elon's words myself. And it was a bit like getting into his head. Not something I asked for! :D It could be an interesting exercise for people to rewrite others' words. A lesson of empathy/POV. I recall that Hunter S. Thompson was retyping Ernest Hemingway's texts to learn to write.
When I was 33, I read that this was the age people stop discovering new music. They might listen to new things, but it's more of the same. That made me realise that this was what I was doing, with vaporwave 2-3 years earlier being the last hype I was into. You can't really fight yourself, so I explored "more of the same." But it got better over time, and I'm catching up with 100 gecs and other Dylan Brady's projects, and those came after my reaching no-new-music point. So, there's still hope.
Hyperpop is wild.
I really wish Howard Shore's score to "Crimes of the Future" was released on CD (there was only a vinyl and of course digital).
You can have dotted and dashed underscores in CSS. And wavy! And in a different colour. I missed that completely.