Media Diet: August 2023

It’s hard to believe it’s already September and the Summer is over! It has flown by this year. I am not ready for a return to rain and cold. I hope to get a few trips to warm places this winter!

I spent the first half of August without the internet, so my Film watching this month is much more in theaters than it has been lately.

While putting this together, I noticed my July post was written but never posted. Technical difficulties! I utilize Cloudflare Pages to host this website, and it’s continually failing builds. For now, I am manually pushing out builds to the site while I figure out what went wrong.

📺 Daisy Jones & The Six - I read the book earlier this year in preparation for the TV adaptation. I thought it was solid! It took me a little while to get into it, but I thoroughly enjoyed it. (A-)

📚 Hell Bent by Leigh Bardugo - I have almost no memory of the previous book, Ninth House. I never really got into the story or the characters. It’s not my favorite work by Leigh Bardugo. (B-)

🎥 Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One - My god, do I hate that we’re still doing two-part finales. Both this and Fast & The Furious were terrible. They both have almost identical shots in Rome, too. It’s by far the worst entry in the Mission Impossible franchise. (C)

🎥 Barbie is definitely on my list of the year’s top films so far. Greta Gerwig continues to be one of my favorite directors. (A+)

🎥 Spirited - Yes, a Christmas movie in August! After moving, I didn’t have internet for a few weeks, which was still downloaded on my iPad. It was a light, fun watch. (B+)

🎥 Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse - Thoroughly enjoying the animated Spider-Verse films. I can’t wait for the next one. (A)

🎥 Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem - I was never big into TMNT as a kid, but I thoroughly enjoyed this film. It is an absolute blast from start to finish. (A) Based on a True Story Season 1 - Love a comedy crime series. Kaley Cuoco and Chris Messina are fantastic. (A)

📺 The Bletchley Circle Season 1 + 2 - Continuing on the Crime Kick is an older series I never watched. I highly recommend it for those who enjoy British crime shows! (A)

📚 Light Bringer (Red Rising Saga, #6) by Pierce Brown - I started reading this series when I got a free pre-print edition of the first book at PAX West years ago. I loved this one after not getting into the last few books in the series. It’s the best in the series in ages. (A+)

📺 Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan Season 4 - Better than the previous season but still needs to be better. (B)

📺 Justified: City Primeval Season 1 - I was a massive fan of Justified and was very excited about this return. Many critics complained about the lack of Boyd Crowder, but it did a great job without him. Very excited for the second season. (A-)