The 2006 live action Death Note choosing to make Light read Nietzsche's Beyond Good and Evil is certainly a choice, given the ways the book has been extrapolated and used to justify extremist ideologies. Nice little detail honestly
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Alright so thoughts on that first movie: it's honestly really nice. It has some pretty nice shots, both just visually and in terms of cinematography, it is aggressively early to mid 2000's, which makes it a very nostalgic watch to me. Special mention for Ryuk who looks particularly gnarly in this version, I adore him. L's actor also does a fantastic work with him, portraying his immature, at times downright childish and always inappropriate demeanour to perfection. The changes made to the original story are really interesting, choosing to expand on Light's social circle, grounding him to give him less of a 'larger than life' aura that he had in the original version, making his descent all the more chilling. The big sufferer in all this is Naomi Misora, whose arc has to be expedited and, in doing so, turns one of the best characters whose confrontation with Light was a highlight of the original manga and anime into a rather dull and unremarkable character. On the bright side though, the movie drops all pretenses and openly condemns Light's actions (and L's in the same breath when he goes beyond what is morally acceptable), even having one particular, very effective abd powerful shot in which, through some criminal staring right into the camera, we as a viewer are aggressively dared to emphasise with Light before spending the movie demonstrating exactly why he's wrong. It's a great way to frame it, and makes the moral stance of the work even clearer than the often misinterpreted original manga
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Huh. Getting the distinct feeling the second movie is using the story to make a broader point about both the star system and the role of medias in the rise of fascist ideology. Which is depressingly relevant.
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Oh, it fully does that. Okay. I mean, I wasn't expecting it to, but it's a welcome and rather interesting and on-point direction to go in.
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Well, the second film, The Last Name, is definitly the most interesting of the two. One thing that has been consistent throughout the two films is the character of Sayu, Light's sister gets a surprising amount of presence and depth, although it's still admittedly not *that* much. But compared to what I think I remember from the manga up until the death of L, she feels a lot more like an actual person involved in the lives of both Light and Soichiro, which is nice. She's even afforded her own personal perspective on the entire situation, although once again, there's not that much of it. When it comes to putting respect on Sayu's name (and Misa's, who's mostly unchanged from the manga safe from her few moments of cleverness and agency being glossed over), the musical is still the way to go however. The added commentary, as I mentioned previously, is definitely appreciated, and very much lets the movie kind of tell its own thing too. Both movies are well worth giving a watch honestly.

Keeping my thoughts somewhat brief, I feel obligated to first mention I am partia to Eggers. I was lucky enough to catch his first feature film, The VVitch, in theaters when it was first released, and was absolutely enraptured by his follow-up effort, The Lighthouse. All this to say I had not only very high but also very specific expectations going into Nosferatu. And they were absolutey met. The movie is a feverish and obsessive nightmare. It offers a hypnotic precision, and I cannot recommend it enough. Eggers has very clearly done his homework, reusing elements from Murnau in clever and effective ways (the shadow of the vampire allowing him to interact with the world, contributing to the count's depersonalisation). The entire tone of the film is clearly inspired by German expressionism, of which the original Nosferatu is one of the more famous works, caring more about giving a stage to violent emotional turmoil than pretenses of realism. On that note, I feel I should expand a bit on the depersonalisation of the count, of which he is not the only example but is the most extreme one. Count Orlok is not some big bad antagonist, it is much more fundamental than that, its face constantly hidden away in shadows, offering only a vague shape withut traits, or shot in close-ups which cause his face to disappear behind its traits (a technique used for almost all important characters). In addition, Eggers has made the choice to hav the vampire feed not on the necks on its victims, but on their chests, leading to a gripping shot where, in the midst of feeding, its hunched posture and regular ebb and flow turn the vampire into a proper beating heart, the significance of the symbol being both literal (as it feeds on blood) and metaphorical (the heart being commonly understood as the seat of great passions like love, desire and grief). As well, Eggers conducts an ebb and flow of formal elements like a finely played symphony, utilising lights (warm, low and vacillating and cold and monochrome), frame compositions (with an abundance of claustrophobic frames within frames) and specific, repeated camera movements. Nosferatu is haunting, and an earnest, erudite and masterful love letter to the original and its legacy, and I cannot recommend it enough.

Decided to give The Amazing Digital Circus a chance, unsure of what to expect, and I have to say, I was pleasantly surprised. The show has some genuinely fun comedy chops and feels like a breath of fresh in a cultural landscape of stuff like Poppy's Playtime and Hello Neighbour. I can't fully explain it but while the general aesthetic of the circus and the look of the characters (including the very smooth, almost plastic-like textures) feel similar to that kind of post-game theory horror-adjacent kid-friendly series, the actual show is anything but, and where those other works have a tendancy to veer into hiding their stories in obfuscated timelines and parcellary lore (which I am very much not a fan of), The Amazing Digital Circus focuses on actually telling a compelling story, with clear themes about the absurd and finding meaning. It's very sincere, and absolutely works in the series' favour. The emotional moments hit, the quiet and heavy ones feel earned, and the tense and scary ones are all the more engaging because of how much we connect to the characters. It's an honest, touching watch and one which very much feels like it has the potential to become even better, all the ingredients are there to make The Amazing Digital Circus something truly special, and in any case well worth watching.

Miraculous season 1 is such a slog to get through. Beyond obvious problems like the apparent lack of budget and the animation style which looks too much like plastic toys for me, it genuinely feels like the authors didn't care that much about their show. It feels like a series made for toddlers with the depth to match.
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I'm on episode 16 and so far, the episode that particularly stood out to me as highlighting every problem is Horrificator, the concept of which is actually quite an interesting one, this whole idea of a creature that feeds on fear and can't be defeated by force but rather must be confronted as one confronts their fears. Even in a series for young children, it would be a fantastic way to teach some actual emotional intelligence to kids. Unfortunately, seems the writers weren't interested in exploring any of that, and instead made the monster goofy-looking, and made the way to defeat him some genuinely stupid song. Add to that the audacity to throw in a quip at the end about 'oh, the principal said our monster wasn't scary', and it goes from feeling a bit hollow to straight-up patronizing in the worst way. Apparently the show gets better with later seasons (before it gets worse if I understand correctly), so I'll try to stick with it, but so far it genuinely feels like fast food, bland and easy to mindlessly slam down, but certainly not great for you.
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Also obviousy the budget is a big part of that but Episode 15, Gamer, feels like one of the biggest victims of the lack of budget, the hommage to Mecha as a genre being so broke it just makes me want to watch The Witch From Mercury again instead.