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.

I've been meaning to get into Kpop past the few Mamamoo songs I already know, so I'm listening to Blackpink's The Album front to back and honestly it's alright.
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Like, the songs are really good for what they are, but they do feel very "base level" if it makes sense? This is absolutely not putting any of them down, once again, they're well written, very well produced, but none of them feel especially innovative in any way.
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Lovesick Girls is lowkey a banger though.
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Love To Hate Me is also kinda really good? Honestly this one might be a stand out track.
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Feeling like You Never Know is a bit weak for an album closer? Like, I guess I see what they were going for, choosing the one track that's not 100% high energy as the last track, but I feel it's a bit anticlimactic? Idk.
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All in all, not a bad album by any means, but I don't know if there's anything that will stick with me or keep me coming back to it? I'll defo listen to it again though, so there's a none zero chance of me "mere exposure effect"-ing myself into loving the album lmao.

Alright, still have quite a lot of energy, so moving on to Mamamoo's Reality In Black.
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Ok right away the intro has a bit of a blues feel with the slow guitar and the scale used for the melody, quite good stuff.
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Ok so Destiny is honestly really good? Like they play around a lot with wildly different sounds and rhythms? The song takes so many different turns? Really cool opener to the album tbh
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Universe sounds so light and bubbly and optimistic and I love it?
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Ten Nights sounds fine so far, I'm just really not big on ballads in general, so like, not sure I can actually form an opinion on this one.
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Onto Hip, which I already know but there's no fucking way I'm skipping it. Killer instrumental, the bassline feels super good, the vocals are on point, the rhythm feels amazing. Perfect song and nothing less, and that's an objective fact.
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4x4ever's first rap verse is like? Genuinely insane? Also that little bit of super raspy voice during the verse is like something I felt in my deepest self?
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Better definitely feels a bit weaker than the other songs so far, but like, seeing how Better is still kind of a banger, I think that speaks of the amazing quality of the album as a whole. Reminds me heavily of, like, City Pop as a genre, so that's always a good thing. Honestly still an amazing track, love it so much.
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Hello Mama is really good. Another ballad but with a distinct soft Jazz vibe. So like, I like it a bit better. Would definitely love to play around a bit on the bass to this track.
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Absolutely love ZzZz's instrumental. That sound of the lead melody feels so good in my brain.
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Reality is also really good, I'd be lying if I were to say I'm not dancing in my chair along to the rhythm. Just doesn't hit me quite as hard as some other tracks, but still has a lot of super interesting stuff going on and is like a really good song.
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The bass and piano lines in High Tension are like really good? Getting a heavy Jazz vibe, and honestly I love it.
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I'm Your Fan is definitely a really good track to close the album on. Full of energy and really upbeat, not to mention the chord change during the transition between the verse an the chorus, which feels super good.
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Welp, loved the album, it's full of bangers and I can't wait to listen to it again.

Aight time to expand my K-Pop knowledge a bit, gonna listen to Bibi's Lowlife Princess: Noir. Not sure what to expect, but I've heard several people praising the album so I'm starting off somewhat optimistic.
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At Sweet Sorrow Of Mother and, honestly, it feels like the first truly stand out track of the album? The others are not bad by any mean, but feel kinda flat in a way. They don't really have a lot of memorable moments, it all feels very restrained and maybe a bit same-y. By contrast, Sweet Sorrow Of Mother is somewhat of a mid-album interlude and does it really well, but it genuinely feels weird that the mid-album interlude feels like the stand-out track of the first half of the album.
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Ok so to be fair, looking up the album on Wikipedia, I think my criticism might not be entirely fair since, I think one of the reasons that led me to wanting to listen to the album is that it's apparently a concept album. Given that I don't speak Korean and I don't have the lyrics, I'm not really paying attention to the story being told, which very well could be the focus of the album, which would be very fair. So my criticism is to be taken with a grain of salt, it could also very much be that the album is just not for me, which is absolutely ok. Tht being said, the second half of the album is shaping up to be a lot more enjoyable for me than the first so far. Lowlife Princess honestly speaks to me a lot more than any other track so far in terms of how the sound feels, Witch Hunt is also pretty cool, and has a lot going for it, though it doesn't feel like it breaks off from the rest as much as Lowlife Princess does.
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Okay so JOTTO is easily another stand out track. Great bass sound that the track really focuses on, cool little guitar licks here and there, just all around really solid. Also the key change works really interestingly here, really feels like a whole change in vibe, pretty cool.
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3 for 3 here, City Love is a great closing track, definitely a stand out track as well. Just leaves me wanting more since the last three songs of the album are literally my three favourites of the album, it almost feels like as soon as I'm starting to really enjoy it, it's over.
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Might have to read up on the story, and even beyond that it's entirely possible that my opinion on the album will change upon listening to it again, but as it stands, there is definitely a huge potential for something amazing but it's not there yet. Definitely cautiously optimistic for any future Bibi albums though!

Well, Zenless Zone Zero's newest story chapter is... Not great. There's a lot that goes into it, and admittedly, some of the reasons why I feel this way would warrant a discussion all on their own (Ie the way Hoyo handles their gacha model in every game bar HI3rd).
Mostly though, it just feels... A little dissapointing and flat, I guess. Zenless' distinguishing feature from other Hoyo games is very much its setting, the blend of urban fantasy and retro-futurist sci-fi, making the idea of 'city living' a central one (even going as far as borrowing relevant, superficially similar mechanics from Persona, specifically social links/Confidants and the whole schedule thing). The storyline of Season 1 of ZZZ relies heavily on this, and is admittedly a lot more urban than fantasy. Gangs, political power struggles, corruption, a lot of Season 1 is steeped into this particular atmosphere, and honestly, it is for the most part really cool and well done. This is also true of many characters: Biker gangs, construction workers, their apparent mundanity very much gives ZZZ an identity of its own amidst Hoyoverse games. The latest chapter, however, was probably the farthest removed from all that which drew me to Zenless in the first place. It feels safer, much more fantasy than urban, and though this isn't exactly a categorical affirmation (A big part of the major side story of this update is about connecting the protagonists' current home with the surrounding neighbourhood and its people) and some of the aforementioned more 'urban' elements of intrigue are present, it just feels like, when it comes down to it, the whole crux of the chapter was for the formidable hero to save everyone using their outstanding powers, to put it in unfavourably generic terms. (Although not unfairly: I am purposefully exaggerating because I feel a more charitable description would not do a good enough job of transcribing my own dissapointment.)

While on the topic of Zenless Zone Zero, one of the things that I feel deserves an actual honest discussion is the characters. While I am aware of the reputation of the game as a 'gooner game', at times deservedly so (Despite my distaste for the term and the ensuing implication that any erotic or suggestive content is inherently a moral flaw, both in the work and those who enjoy it). I would argue some characters are more tasteful than others, but in general, the more risqué designs and content go hand in hand with a desire to have characters that are a bit, for lack of a better word, 'edgier' than other Hoyoverse games. It's something I've discussed with other people before, but characters like Koleda, who is yakuza-coded, down to implications that some poor bastards who caused trouble for her construction company were drowned in concrete; Burnice, who has pyromaniac tendancies, who had promotional material alluding to rave culture (and the use of substances like ecstasy), whose drink of choice is the same substance that fuels the machines of her biker gang (essentially gasoline); or Corin and Ellen, who fight using a chainsaw and a pair of scissors respectively (Likely referencing the Texas Chainsaw Massacre movies and the Clock Tower games, beyond being gruesome weapons to wield in their own rights), there is a clear pull to go beyond safe and inoffensive characters, and to veer into characters with a little more spice. Again, this is a point I've already made in private, but in tone, several characters of Season 1 of ZZZ would not be too out of place in a horror comedy, and this, I think, is genuinely one of Zenless Zone Zero's strong points, especially compared to other Hoyoverse games, and something I hope the upcoming characters will renew with given their theming as supernatural investigators.

Genshin Impact's Jeht is such a strange character. She is probably one of the most memorable characters of the game, for good reasons. The quest lines associated with her are generally great, slowly build up her character in subtle ways (at this point it wouldn't be unfair to say she's had more character development that some of the playable characters), and are generally very well-written in terms of the lore, pacing and all characters involved. She's complex, compelling in a way few characters in Genshin manage to be, beloved by many including myself. And yet, the last quest involving her was released over two years ago. (A/n: This was written in July 2025.) She is meant to be a precious ally and friend to the traveller we play as, and yet, in the quest involving Liloupar, Jeht is consistently the victim of clearly racist remarks. She is seemingly afforded a romantic preference which goes beyond 'potentially attracted to the main character' (it is suggested in the story that Jeht is a lesbian, this reflects in game depending on the main character's gender), and yet once her personal arc reached some kind of conclusion, she was just gone, like an actress who was done delivering her lines leaving the stage. Jeht is a strange character, because for all the problems Genshin has as far as writing is concerned, she somehow manages to both be free of and exemplify them all simultaneously.

I should probably expand on that particular point, but one problem I very much have with Genshin Impact is that, for a lot of the characters, they feel more like a collection of traits and backstory events, in the sense that they lack any sense of real agency. This is the reason why I tend to praise characters like Jeht, Furina, or to broaden a little bit, characters like Shenhe and Yoimiya (particularly since her second character quest). While a lot of the characters, even in their character quests, can feel more like they're archetypes reacting to the world around them according to that archetype and not having any subjectivity beyond that, there are the rare few who are afforded the privilege of not only having things happen to them, but of having a nuanced, personal view on these things. Shenhe in particular is quite an outlier, engaging with her own story and Genshin Impact's broader themes surrounding the idea of stories, and developping her own view on her experience through her interaction with those themes. It's surprisingly good for Genshin, and exceedingly rare. In contrast, a lot of characters do very much feel like cookie-cutter archetypes that serve as easily digestable potential waifus for the player who get one story quest to explain their tragic backstory and their three personality traits. As much as I appreciate the broader themes of Genshin, how it explores the tensions between stories and history, and humanity's multifaceted relationship to the divine, for a character-based RPG, the characters are really not the strong point of the game.

On that note, fuck it, I've been putting it off for forever, but I'm going to watch Tim Burton's Alice in Wonderland again because I need to be able to justify my distaste for it. This movie is my roman empire tbh, I've hated it with a passion for years but wasn't able to articulate it well enough when I was a teen, so I got accused of not liking it just because it's different from the book. Which, sucks for me, but I must exorcise this inner demon eventually.
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And it's immediately hitting me 'What if we agreed proper was wearing a codfish on your head, would you wear it?' what if you actually read the book you were adapting? The critique of polite society is very much present in the original book, through Alice trying to be the voice of reason she sees the adults around her as in the topsy-turvy world of Wonderland, making faux-pas after faux-pas and making herself ridiculous by contrast. But I guess this was too subtle and needed to become 'Alice is more clever than the posh assholes surrounding her so she calls them out like a true hastag girlboss'.
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Also, on the whole 'all the best people are crazy thing', did you know that the purpose of lobotomy was to sever the connections between your frontal lobe and the rest of your brain to alleviate things like hallucinations, a practice which despite its marginal use (iirc) had an even more marginal success rate, the overwhelming majority of cases failing in one way or another? Who know why I'm mentioning this here, could mean anything really.
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I feel like I should be more precise as to my feelings towards the movie: I might be biased and seeing something that's not here, but I feel like the movie was made for the wrong reasons, spurred on by a sort of uncritical disdain for the original book which is certainly not perfect and could be criticised in many ways, but is far from a shallow and complacent (the original novel was, interestingly, quite original for its purely amusing nature at a time when it was considered imperative for children's litterature to teach them good morals). Despite that, however, it does feel like Burton saw the surface level wackiness of wonderland and decided 'I'm going to take the wacky stuff and fix everything else in the book' without ever trying to understand how it might read on a more critical and even satirical level (the whole passage with the lion and the unicorn in Through the Looking Glass, satirical of England and Scotland's political antagonism as an example.)
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Danny Elfman better have gotten a massive check on that one the way he's carrying so much of the film with his music.
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Yeah, even the Queen of Hearts is just... It's hard to verbalise specifically, but the critique of monarchist power reads clearer to me in the original, with the Queen, King and executioner arguing whether you could behead the Cheshire Cat (who was only a head at that point), and perhaps counterintuitively, having the Queen of Hearts advised by discount Grima Wormtongue makes the entire character feel milder? I don't know, maybe it's down to ridicule being more effective a critique than just calling someone evil.
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Literally exclaimed 'get fucked' out loud at the Cheshire Cat going 'I don't get involved in politics', purely by reflex. But like, yeah, get bent, Tim 'I don't cast black people if the film doesn't specifically call for it' Burton, you cunt.
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Hiring people of colour for roles that aren't tied to race as a cultural identity is a no-no for Tim, but we absolutely had to have Johnny Depp in the film, don't worry about his english accent being intermittent at best, why hire a british actor for a british character anyway?
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Also, I've scarcely ever seen a more ugly-looking film. Bloody hell. The colours just bleed out everywhere, looking more like big splotches of special effects than anything. In a way, it reminds me of Justin Kurzel's Macbeth, in which the highly pigmented colours in key scenes, with careful framing of the shots, made pivotal moments look monochromatic, making their emotional impact overwhelming, with some of the shots feeling like they were composed with a painting-like mindset. By contrast, Burton's Alice in Wonderland at times feels barely deliberate, and like high-pigmented paint was just spilled onto the film by accident.
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Going back to the issue of surface-level 'fixing' Alice in Wonderland, isn't it weird to take a book which was satirical about the monarch in power and make it into a movie that's about two queens, one good and one evil, and thus accidentally legitimizing monarchy as a system?
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I've expressed my distaste for the Wormtongue stand-in, but what the fuck is the dog's character about?? Like, sure, he is an unwilling agent of the villain under duress with clear threats of harm coming to his loved ones if he doesn't cooperate, here's my question however: What the fuck is he doing in an Alice in Wonderland movie? What does that have to do with anything???
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Okay, the river that Alice must cross jumping from stone-like visage to stone-like visage is cool. It's kind of nightmarish, creative, an interesting piece of set design. It serves no purpose, and it's over as soon as it started, but it's there.
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And again, with the flamingos and hedgehogs being unwilling participants in the croquet scene, turning a situtational satire of croquet and the English aristocracy into just 'Queen of Hearts evil, evil is not nice, it's better to be nice than evil'. It feels defanged and harmless.
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Oh fuck, yeah, there's this whole thing where the place is called 'Underland' and not 'Wonderland'. For some reason. I don't know, maybe I'm just stupid for not getting it.
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Wait. Earlier in the movie, I dismissed Alice being amused at imagining 'all the women wearing pants and the men wearing dresses' as, like, typical 2010 'man in a dress' joke, but with the Hatter consistently refering to Alice as 'he' and 'a boy'... Is this a theme?? Is this, like, supposed to be a jab at other fantasy movies, denouncing male protagonists as the default, using the Mad Hatter as a way to satirize considering the hero to be male by default? Is the movie defending gender non-conformity? Mocking misogynistic views on womanhood?
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Ok so that little throwaway line about the White Queen being able to make everyone fall in love with her, quoth the Queen of Hearts, 'Men, women... Even the furniture'. Like, there has to be a theme there, right? It feels too shallow and surface level to say anything atall, but at least it's there I suppose?
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And there we have the callback to the 'You're entirely bonkers. But all the best people are' line. By the way, unrelated to anything, do you think anyone ever tried to cure manic depression with cocaine? Again, why am I even bringing that up, no reason to do so really.
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Ha ha. The White Queen is adding buttered fingers to her brew because it's a play on the candy bar 'Butterfinger'. Could this movie get more zany and cooky? *Head twirls like a corckscrew in astonishment and hilarity at this tasty little reference which is entirely à propos.*
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If I were willing to engage in a little bad faith criticism, I'd point out it's a real low point when your version of the 'sibling monarchs with one turning into an evil tyrant' story has less nuance than this similar story structure in literally My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic. Princess Luna has more character depth in the pink ponies show for six years old than the Queen of Hearts in this supposedly more mature retelling of Alice in Wonderland. Which I could say is frankly pathetic. Yet I won't say it. I still could though.
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Oh, so it is against the White Queen's vows to hurt any living creature, but COOKING FINGERS IS FINE??? Where do the fingers come from, Tim? Are they magical meat which appears by itself in her pantry? Cunt.
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I'm not sure if I'm a fan of the Hatter commenting on Alice's size, calling it a 'good size, it's a great size, it's a proper Alice size' while looking at her chest. Realistically, it's probably meant to be his mind slipping and his eyes unfocusing as it does, but on camera, it super reads as him commenting on her breasts. It's weird and I don't like it.
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I'm probably not the first person to comment on this, but beyond the surface level gender stuff, which is too shallow to be sure if it's a proper theme or not, the whole deal about the prophecy is also very strange. Like, prophecies are oppressive forces of fate, sometimes even acting as moral imperatives made law. What is foretold is what must be, and, as is the case with this movie, what must be is necessarily good. And while the movie presents Alice as a character who, in the context of the oppressive patriarchal society of Victorian England, must learn to claim her agency and live for herself, the whole crux of the Wonderland story is Alice, in a way, becoming herself. Only she becomes herself by becoming the heroine of the prophecy, and the White Queen's knight, surrendering herself to an external dictat and achieving character growth by... Surrendering her agency and will to decide for herself.
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I've stated it before, but I feel I must state it again, and more explicitly: the introduction of the White Queen as the nice queen beloved by her people and no one actually liking the Queen of Hearts turns the original satire of monarchy and its absurdity into less of a demonstration of said absurdity of monarchist rule and more into a 'The Red Queen specifically is a cunt, who's mean because she's ugly and angry about it', which gleefuly tosses any critical edge the original work had and trades it for a conformist hero's journey.
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I will say, it's interesting that, as she slays the Jabberwocky, Alice screams out 'Off with your head!' with a triumphant swing of her rutilant sword. Because what was probably meant as a witty one-liner calling back to the Queen of Heart's famous obsession with beheadings turns into a parallel with the end of the movie, with Alice taking over her father's business and becoming a true strong, independant woman by sailing to China, no doubt eager to sell the Chinese people opium, aiming to leverage addiction to enforce the brutal rule of the British empire. it's unintended, but it's interesting.