media review

i felt the sudden need to do a media review - i haven't done one of these in ages but they're so fun to read back, and it's a nice way for me to reflect on the media i've been consuming, so they don't fade into obscurity in the deepest drawers of my mind

FILM/TV 📺

past lives: ★★★★

("see you then.")

in the end of 2023, i turned 24, and i thought it would be hilarious to make a filmclub where we only watch a24 movies, since my name happens to be an. anyway, past lives was one of the films we watched in the a(n)24 filmclub, and ugh!! it was good!! a gorgeous, gentle, bittersweet ode to the people in your life who pass you by. thinking a lot about roots, bridges, mourning people who are alive, closure, and what it means to love someone. in an interview with celine song, mia lee vicino wrote the following, which i think summarizes the film perfectly:

This, however, is no melodramatic tragedy; Nora and Hae Sung’s lives simply, softly pass each other by. It’s the feeling of a barely missed subway transfer, the wind of what could have been stinging your eyes. Past Lives dries your tears and gently suggests that you don’t need to sprint for the train; another is always coming.

minari: ★★★★.5

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this was another a(n)24 filmclub pick. i've been wanting to watch it since it came out *checks notes* four years ago... and i'm so glad i finally got around to it! loved the themes of the american dream and toxic masculinity, framed within the experiences of a korean-american immigrant family.  loved the symbolism of the minari plant. steven yeun and han yeri were so convincing as a jaded married couple, you just feel they are trying their best, or at least, what they believe is best. yeun's character especially is so infuriating at times, but you cannot help but empathize with him and feel for him still. this family is just portrayed through a lens that's unbelievably tender and nuanced. AND ALAN KIM!! <333 ugh

harry potter 1-8: ★★.5 (rewatch)

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i adore the first three movies; they encompass this feeling of childhood nostalgia where the magic just feels real and everything feels big and new, regardless of how horrible the cgi is. and then they just get worse!! for me, the best film is the third film - although i will forever have issues with ron's portrayal, it's otherwise really solid! the worst one is the sixth. nothing happens in that movie fr - the hinny romance is awkward and weird, ron is just There, and the trio dynamic is kind of nonexistent

atla season 1-3: ★★★★.5 (rewatch)

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i was inspired to do a rewatch after all the (annoying) social media discourse surrounding the remake. i love my blorbos!! to me, atla is close to being the perfect show - season 1 is one of its weaker aspects, i'd rate that 3.5 stars, but the other seasons is 5 star television to me. i thi make a separate post about my thoughts so i'll just leave it all for that post.

spy x family season 1 and 2: ★★★.5

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a riot. so silly. as so many other things, it's at times foiled by the incest jokes but apart from that! i love the forgers - all of them are just so fucking hilarious, and their dynamics are so fun to witness. the ridiculous conflicts which arise due to the huge parts of their lives loid and yor keep hidden from each other, and anya's ability to fucking. read minds!!! is funny every time. i love damian and becky, they are both just so ridiculous (but also damian's endless need for approval and validation from his father... please. someone hug this child). it's the kind of show where the stakes are super high, regardless of whether yor is being attacked by 50 people at once who wish to kill her, or anya tries to get macarons af the school cafeteria before they're sold out, which is one of my favorite things about it

little women (kr): ★★★

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this was intriguing most of the time, and then the ending just sort of tanked. but my expectations weren't that high anyways, so i didn't really mind it. i had fun! and honestly, despite being ridiculous throughout and fumbling the ending, it's still a k-drama i actually finished, which i can't say about a lot of dramas, so it's also got that going for it. my favorite things about it were hye-in and hyo-rin's relationship and the fact that they quite literally eloped, and do-il (i love a scammer!!)and the dynamic he developed with in-joo. i was toeing the waters of in-joo/hwa young at first, but hwa young had just become so unsympathetic by the end it was ridiculous lol. and pretty insensitive?? anyway

teenage mutant ninja turtles: mutant mayhem ★★★★★

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watched this during a flight and i had the most delightful time ever. i wish i hadn't been on a plane while watching it because being on a plane automatically makes everything worse, but i'm still giving it five stars. sooo delightful, in terms of artstyle, characters, script, voiceacting... just perfect. i love when teenagers are cringe. i need more of this genre of animation please

i-land: n.r.

yeah so i jumped on the enha bandwagon 4 years late and started watching i-land to catch up. i'm thinking i'll make a full post on it since i do have Thots. anyway. my enha <333 love those boys. they've become very importantt to me in an impressively short timespan.

BOOKS 📖

yellowface, r.f. kuang: ★★★

i haven't really read much in general this year because i haven't had the brainpower to concentrate on anything in between thesis writing and work lol. i must have started a hundred books and finished 10 lol. anyway, i listened to yellowface on audiobook on my flight to vietnam, and while i found it really enjoyable and pretty funny while i was listening to it, it did become too ridiculous and surface-levelby the end, especially for an author known for thorough research and critique. also if you've seen readwithcindy's video on the book, you'd know about the self-insert stuff which is also kind of weird but year  

the honeymoon crashers, christina lauren: ★★

another audiobook i listened to in vietnam during the first nights where i was really struggling to fall asleep. i remember choosing it because it seemed like an easy read, it was a full-cast audio book which i'd never tried before, and harry shum jr. was the male lead which was kind of funny. it was fine, i've mostly forgotten everything about it now lol. lucky for me, past me wrote a review on goodreads. it's not exactly the most in depth review in the history of book reviews, but here it is: 

it was fine. I think maybe I need to warm up to this kind of full cast audiobook experience because the transition from description to dialogue was so awkward to me. tbh I don't think there was enough harry shum jr. the surfer bro in this for my liking, if they're gonna name a surfer guy BRODY of all names they might as well just have gone all in and bestowed him with a kronk level of loveably idiocy. as far as I remember, we didn't even get one (1) heeelll yeaa dude 🤙 which I personally find a bit upsetting (just kidding, mostly, but can u imagine)


the trial by franz kafka, ★★★

i read this across two or three months so it wasn't really the greatest reading experience, but as i said earlier, it has been a pretty weak reading year for me so far, overall. i really do think i'm starting to become illiterate. anyway, the trial was fun, and i loved the ending, but i would probably have enjoyed it a lot more if i'd been in a better headspace, i kept zoning out while reading it. but i mean! i finished a physical book at least! yippeeee

MUSIC 🎶

ngọt - suýt 1: ★★★★

a short and sweet ep, slightly dampened by the fact that they immediately announced their disbandment on facebook afterwards lol. but yeah, ngọt continues to be my favorite viet artists i've listened to. while i'm honestly somewhat indifferent towards the first half (i haven't listened to the first two songs since i first heard the entire ep), i love the second half so much that it justifies a four star rating.

♡ : hay là & thắp hương / hoá vàng. both are really good, but the latter feels especially made for me with its indie/jazz/viet folk fusion... it's such a shame they disbanded lol 

kara jackson - why does the earth give us people to love?: ★★★.5

i didn't like this when i first listened to it, and i think it's partly because it'd been so hyped by musicheads that i was underwhelmed, and partly because i'm not much of a country/blues enjoyer. but it grew on me upon a few relistens! and kara is such a great lyricist - despite the fact that i enjoy writing, lyrics are usually not something i pay attention to at all when i listen to music which probably stems from the fact that i've played music since i was a kid, and only got into writing as i got older lol. i only tend to note lyricism if it's really bad/cringy or if it's really good, and this album stood out to me in terms of the latter! but like. maybe don't listen to it if you're feeling very existential 

♡ : free, why does the earth give us people to love, & curtains

iron & wine - the shepherd's dog: ★★

generally pretty underwhelming, and all the songs sounded the same to me. flightless bird, american mouth was the only song i already knew on the album, and it's also iron & wine's most listened to song on spotify, but it was one of my least liked songs on the album help, it was just kind of boring to me

faye wong 浮躁 (fuzao): ★★★★.5

hell yeeaaaa i loved this album, it's so fun and i love her voice and the way she uses it, i'm really glad i checked it out. it was my first faye wong, but i really need to get into more of her stuff. from what i've read on the internets, this is her best/most experimental album tho - i tried listening to her most popular track on spotify and they were all ballads and i'm not really a ballad girlie lol

♡ : 无常 (wu chang/impermanent), 浮躁 (fu zao/restless), 想像 (xiang xiang/imagine)& 掃興 (sao xing/disappointed), although i thought most of the songs were really good.

rm - right place, wrong person: ★★★★.5

i can't stop thinking about that fucking tiktok that's like "forced to be leader of bts, born to be a british roadman"... another banger of an album... i honestly hadn't intended to check this out because i didn't know it was coming out lol. i haven't followed any of bts' activities in a really long time, so it would have flown totally under the radar for me, but then i saw THEE LITTLE SIMZ had a feature on the album, so i just had to listen to it, and i'm sooo glad i did. it's so good!! rm dabbling in experimental hiphop... love that for him <3 and i'm so glad he gets to fulfill his creative vision <3 it's definitely my favorite solo project from any bts member, all the songs differ from each other while still being a cohesive project, and it's so obvious how namjoon is just exploring his creative freedom and doing whatever the hell he wants

♡ : nuts, domodachi (<333), groin, around the world in a day & come back to me

anaïs mitchell - hadestown: ★★★★.5

returning to my musical theater phase with this one and ykw i'm not even mad about it!!!! i'm seeing hadestown in london this summer with my roommates, which i'm super excited about, so i figured i'd listen to the broadway recording album instead of going in blind, and now i'm obsessed. i must have listened to the reprise of wait for me 500 times. i'm so obsessed with eva noblezada's voice, i hope she never shuts up, ever. also again. great lyricism!! great vocals. great instrumentals (esp if you're a folk/new orleans jazz enjoyer). great everything tbh

♡ : road to hell, any way the wind blows, wedding song, way down hadestown, chant, when the chips are down, why we build the wall, flowers & wait for me (reprise)

blonde redhead - melody of certain damaged lemons: ★★★.5

my first blonde readhead! i obv already knew for the damaged coda because i (unfortunately) watched rick and morty in my teens and play classical piano (shoutout to noct. in f minor, op. 55, no. 1 by my homie chopin), but the rest was very new to me. i really love their sort of creepy, atmospheric, dreamy sound, but while i think the album as a whole is good (it's cohesive but not boring!) i feel like i wouldn't listen to that many of the tracks individually. then again, i dont think blonde redhead is aiming for listenability first anyways so! anyway, i cant wait to listen to more of their stuff

♡ : melody of certain three, loved despite great faults, for the damaged & for the damaged coda

ok. see you later 🫡🫡🫡