2024 media consumption not-roundup

[sabotabby]

I normally do a media roundup in the Interstitial Days, but I have a ton of writing to catch up on and I'm not quite feeling it this year??? Also I have blogged A Lot about books and podcasts, so at least 50% of my usual posts would feel repetitive.

So in lieu of that, ask me anything about my media consumption—favourites, least favourites, strongly held opinions, whatever in the comments and I will answer them.

(Also, I did the Jew Christmas tradition of watching a movie—Nosferatu—having Chinese food, and  watching the Doctor Who Christmas Special, so I am doing quite well, holiday-wise. I just haven't done any actual work.)

Comments

[ioplokon]

Was Nosferatu good? I am trying to watch only Truly New films, but Willem DeFoe in it seems fun.

[sabotabby]

Short answer: No.
Longer answer: No, but it's very fun? Willem DeFoe is incredibly hammy in it, though nowhere near as hammy as Bill Skarsgard, who appears to be channelling Nandor the Relentless in his line delivery, and Lily-Rose Depp, who appears to be having an orgasm in every scene.

There is some gorgeous cinematography, though of course the best sequence is taken from Murnau's version. There are some moments of intentional humour that worked very well for me. The film benefits greatly from the addition of some cats. The Count's moustache is certainly A Choice, and while it is canon, it adds to the unintentional humour.

[ioplokon]

Hm, OK. It seems like I can wait til it's out of theaters to see it.

[sabotabby]

It doesn't really benefit from the big screen, but then, for me almost nothing does these days.

[greylock]

How did you feel about Eggers' other films?
I liked the VVitch, but thought it was overrated.

[sabotabby]

I haven't seen any of them. Contrary to what everyone assumes about me, I'm not much of a movie person or a horror person.

[greylock]

You know, I have the feeling we have had exactly the same conversation once before.

I think he's more style than substance. (Others disagree).
Nosferatu is one of those films that has never needed to be remade (hell, I've only watched the original once, and never seen the remake... ) but I am interested to see what he's done when it comes out on home video.

[sabotabby]

I find that with a lot of highly rated directors (*cough*Villeneuve*cough*). And don't get me wrong, I like style!

[greylock]

Eggers was a production designer. IDK about Villeneuve (whose movies are mostly dull), so I can fully expect his language is highly visual.

I must watch The Lighthouse someday.

[kore]

I just did not want Surprise! Jesus! in my Doctor Who. This is dumb, bc it was a CHRISTMAS SPECIAL and I make a point of listening to Nine Lessons and Carols every year for the music, and whooo Christianity we're soaking in it, and I was raised in it even if I tapped out to become One of Those virulent atheists when I was like 11. But still! I was like OHH FUCK YOU MOFF WHY'D YOU HAVE TO DRAG *HIM* INTO IT.

[sabotabby]

I didn't mind—Christmas specials gonna Christmas special. Plus having a fantasy/sci-fi explanation for a religious story is always fun, since they do it to everything else.

[greylock]

I switched between these two opinions in the hours after watching it.

Mostly I cringed because I saw it coming a mile off.

[blogcutter]

Are there any seasonal classics that you like to watch year after year? And if there's more than one version, which one do you prefer?

And since you mention Dr. Who, how do you feel about the way the series has evolved over the years?

Do you have a preferred way of consuming media - on live TV, via your laptop/tablet/phone, on a DVD or Blueray disc? What channels and subscriptions do you have and which of those do you use and enjoy most?

[sabotabby]

Ooooooh good questions.

Are there any seasonal classics that you like to watch year after year? And if there's more than one version, which one do you prefer?

My favourite seasonal movies, in order, are:
1) The Lion In Winter
2) The Hogfather
3) The Muppets Christmas Carol

People should offer to watch those with me more often.

And since you mention Dr. Who, how do you feel about the way the series has evolved over the years?

I realize I used to blog about it all the time and then I stopped. The reason is pretty straightforward: I despised every single creative choice that Chibnall made in his run, and rather than be negative here, I joined the TARDIS Eruditorium Discord, which is chock-full of people who have similar opinions and express them better than I ever could. (If you're curious, El Sandifer and Gig and the infamous 5-hour long video by Jay Exci sum up my feelings really well.)

And then Uncle Rusty came back and made it all better! Well, okay, I find his writing still a little rough and I have Critiques but honestly the show feels like Doctor Who again, with a Doctor that basically has the kind of ethical framework that I expect from the character, and plots that are decently surprising, and companions whose personalities are more or less distinct. I feel like Gatwa is finally coming into his own with the character, and I hope he sticks around for awhile.

(Obligatory "it was not Whittaker's fault and she's good in other things" disclaimer. It has been pointed out that maybe a better actor could have salvaged some of those lines, but I don't actually think it's true, because the writing was so bad.)

Do you have a preferred way of consuming media - on live TV, via your laptop/tablet/phone, on a DVD or Blueray disc? What channels and subscriptions do you have and which of those do you use and enjoy most?

I can only really play things off my laptop now, though I do have a portable DVD drive that I can plug in if someone insists on bringing physical media around. I don't own a TV; I have a ceiling-mounted projector that gives me a wall screen that's about 6x4 feet, like having a private cinema. It's basically the greatest thing ever as the picture looks wonderful and it takes up no space.

I cancelled my Netflix subscription due to them trying to make me choose between watching ads for $4.99/month or not having ads for $17.99/month. I chose "no ads and no fees, other than to my VPN" and I torrent nearly all of my telly at the moment. I am fine with paying for entertainment if the money goes to the people producing it, but not if it's going to make some exec richer. Plus I don't like the creative direction that Netflix is moving in—there is this whole idea that movies and TV have to be redundant now in case someone is playing around on their phone while watching.

I am still on a friend's Disney+ so I get that for free in exchange for sometimes watching some Marvel crap with him. A fair trade, really.

I fully don't get how people watch movies on their phones. I'm a very visual person and if it's not the kind of thing where the smallest facial expression or cinematic detail matters, it's probably not the kind of thing I'm going to like to watch.

[contrarywise]

Re: watching movies on phones, I recently found (and enjoyed) a a video by Kendra Gaylord about the trend of people reformatting films to vertical orientation using generative AI so they're easier to view on phones. I suppose if your primary or only means of consuming media is a li'l tall screen that fits in your pocket, it makes sense, but yowsa...

[sabotabby]

What I don't get is that when I show films in class, most of the kids are watching a different film on their phone. Not the whole way through—that level of attention is apparently beyond them.

[yhlee]

Ahahaha, I'm minimally visual and there are entire TV episodes I "watch" mainly by sussing out (a) the dialogue (b) the score, especially if the sound has done things like encode basic spatial information (e.g. panning a car noise left to right as it passes by). I agree that one loses a ton of close-up facial expression stuff but I'm so bad at paying attention to visuals if I get distracted, I can pay better attention to everything but the visuals if I can do something with my hands, and (c) I get migraines from film/TV, and the larger the screen, the worse it is. I'm actively likely to have a better experience the smaller you make the screen (although probably not smaller than a phone) just on not-having-migraine grounds alone. I realize this is a very weird way to experience movies though.

[sabotabby]

I don't think it's that weird—it's how a lot of film and TV is designed these days. How do you deal with the increasing muddiness of audio, though? I find I have to watch everything with subtitles, even English shows.

[yhlee]

The answer is I cope poorly :p because I often have trouble even with older English-language audio so I have to watch EVERYTHING with subtitles. :p If I care about the show, I'll make an effort! Most shows I don't...care about that much. Alternately, for anime (since I'm not fluent in Japanese), Joe considerately READS ME the subtitles. :p

I've been told by people in the industry that the ongoing enshittification of audio has multiple contributing factors, including:

(feel free to disregard as I imagine most people already knew this...)

- people cheaping out on audio and getting e.g. That One Person to do things that used to be specialty roles, e.g. recording engineers, mixing engineers, and mastering engineers are all separate specialties and now you have e.g. media composers doing...all of that...on a budget...For example, even in the first term at my M.A., I've learned that a competent film composer or sound designer will avoid putting music/sound in the same frequency ranges as critical dialogue (or other audio), so that even if the music/sound is being mixed down/softer, it's just not "colliding" in those ranges to muddy things up. Like maybe don't put your passionate flute solo on top of a critical soprano soliloquy kind of things. They'll also EQ out secondary pitches/harmonics to avoiding conflicting (and this can be done to vary over time so you might just drop out problem frequencies when the dialogue is running). And of course if the quality of recorded audio is shit, there's only so much a mixing engineer can do.

- related to the above: you also have people time-crunched so if something will see theatrical release with e.g. Dolby surround sound, they'll mix for that but not do a separate mix for a "standard" consumer audio system, or a mix that will sound reasonably good in both contexts. Or you might have people cynically time-crunched so they will mix something to sound SPECIFICALLY good on the PRODUCER'S system (or whoever the hell is signing off on this stuff) and too bad for anyone with a different setup. Assuming they know anything about mixing, which I still don't. :]

ETA: I'm told that getting a base mix to sound good in different contexts is a mastering engineer's job?? And that a mastering engineer should be someone whose ear/training is so good they can just hear a thing and go "yeah, we need to cut the frequency band around 11kHz by 0.7dB," which is wild to me because my ear suuuuucks. :p

[sabotabby]

I actually didn't know a lot of this stuff, so thank you!

[minoanmiss]

Where are all my goddamn qquestions. I keep thinking of things I want to ask you and now I have forgotten them all.

[sabotabby]

No rush!

[yhlee]

Actually, what were your favorite book reviews? :)

[sabotabby]

Oh! That's quite a good question. I don't read a ton of book reviews other than for my own or friends' books, though there was one guy with very snarky reviews I was reading for a while except now I forget his name.

I'm not sure if it counts but The Moral Economy of the Shire is my favourite nerdy deep dive of the year.

This is from last year but I did enjoy this easy dunk on Legends and Lattes, because people won't stop recommending that book to me.

Of the people I subscribe to, Dale Stromberg and Tucker Lieberman both do excellent reviews of books that I'd actually want to read.

[yhlee]

Ah, will check these out, thank you!

[greylock]

Did you know the actress who played the hotel manager had never acted on TV before?

Like... wow.

[sabotabby]

I did not!

[greylock]

I think she could be one of the great missed companions. Like the nurse from The God Complex.

I am sure Varada Sethu will be great as Rani's grandmother or whoever she is, but Steph de Whalley's Anita just had so much pathos. I'd not be surprised if she turns up as the next 'Donna'.

They kept adding scenes for her, which says a lot.

[sabotabby]

She absolutely derailed the plot. It was great.

[greylock]

Joy (who I think was from Bridgerton or somesuch) did get derailed in her own plot. Even the COVID death I didn't feel hit in the same way. Plus, Joy was a plot device.
Anita was just a character with a story.

[rydra_wong]

Hmm, I would like to know what media product you consumed in 2024 you would most like to make more other people consume. Not necessarily the one you think is objectively the best, but the one which makes you go WHY HAS NO ONE ELSE SEEN/READ/HEARD THIS SO I CAN TALK TO THEM ABOUT IT.

[sabotabby]

Okay yes there are probably a bunch but right off the top of my head is Slow Horses. I do have the community of nerds who recommended it to me, but they all saw it way before I did and so a lot of the spicy takes had dried up, and now we all have to wait for another season of it. In the meantime I have a hold on the first book.

I even went to Tumblr and one of the top posts was about how River Cartwright is like, basically an engineered Tumblr sexyman blorbo from my show sopping wet cat but because it's on Apple TV almost no one watches it. But beyond that I need people to scream about how great Catherine Standish is.

[rydra_wong]

Thank you! I keep hearing good things about it but have not yet got round to checking it out, so this is a useful prompt.

[sabotabby]

Also The Diplomat, which I just finished watching last night. Similar kind of tightly-plotted, vaguely subversive storytelling.

[metawidget]

I have gotten a fair number of excellent recs from you in this season before — Bob Vylan and Death/Sentence come to mind. And Wizards and Spaceships, although it could use a bit more in the loud musical interlude department 😉

What would you recommend to keep the morale needle in the right place in 2025?

[sabotabby]

By coincidence, I have just the thing! Noise>Drones: Palestine Fundraiser just dropped. Like as in today, as in I haven't listened to it yet, lol. 52 tracks, should keep everyone busy for awhile.

Also, enjoy Margaret Killjoy playing accordion on "Bella Ciao" with Unwoman.

[metawidget]

Got the fundraiser… and it's a musical hot shower after a good flogging, or something — I like that from time to time 😉

[sabotabby]

Hah! I don't know how much I'll listen but it's a good cause.