10 Thoughts/Questions: American Gods

Since finishing our massive Running Man marathon, we’ve been catching up on a fair amount of American television. Most of it has been stuff I haven’t felt a particular need to write about. You know, the usual network sitcoms and procedurals, and occasional sitcom procedurals (shout out to Brooklyn Nine-Nine!). But then we started watching the eight-episode American Gods, and oh man I knew I was going to have to write about it (ps: how much am I loving eight-episode seasons? a whole bunch, you guys). But this one’s a bit weird because it’s based on a book that I thoroughly love, which itself references much, much older stories that I also thoroughly love. Other shows I’ve written about have also been based on or referenced pre-existing things (like every Netflix Marvel show and Stranger Things, for example), but myths and legends have been a part of my life for even longer than comics and 80s films have. So strap yourselves in because this one’s going to be a bit more personal than usual.

Major spoilers for the first season of the show and minor spoilers for the novel it’s based on, which possibly means minor spoilers for upcoming seasons of the show (plus, some spoilers for some myths and legends, but those have existed for literally thousands of years, so if I spoil those for you, that's on you, not me).

(FYI: I will be using the words “story” and “myth” interchangeably in this entire write-up.)

10 Thoughts/Questions: Reply 1988

Reply 1988 is the best Korean drama I’ve seen yet, and one of the best shows I’ve ever seen full-stop. This was truly an all-around excellent show. I had my gripes, certainly (and I'll go into them later), but they didn't detract enough from the excellent writing, the excellent staging, and the excellent performances. This show is just as a good as Luther or Stranger Things (while being nothing like them at all), and I would recommend it to everybody who likes just really good television.

10 Thoughts/Questions: Marvel’s The Defenders

Guess who's got two thumbs and watched the Defenders? This guy! And that means it's time for a new installment of 10 Thoughts/Questions! It took me a bit to get around to this as I was still finishing the excellent Korean show Reply 1998 (look for a 10 Thoughts/Questions installment on that pretty soon) to get the Iron Fist taste out of my mouth. I’m very happy to report that this was better than Iron Fist.
Spoilers ahoy!

10 Thoughts/Questions: Iron Fist

I finally watched Iron Fist. It took me as long as it did partly because Felicia and I were watching nothing but Running Man for like five months straight (we totally watched every episode, by the way), and partly because I had heard not great things. Alas, most of those not-great things were on the nose.

But watched it I did, mostly because I am a completionist, so here are my 10 Thoughts/Questions for Iron Fist. There will be spoilers.

10 Thoughts/Questions: Luke Cage

Just finished! Spoilers ahoy!

10 Thoughts/Questions: Killjoys Seasons 1 and 2

And now, 10 Thoughts/Questions (seriously, I need a better name for this) about SyFy's Killjoys Seasons 1 and 2 (because we watched them back to back). Killjoys is a show about three bounty hunters (called Killjoys) who go around the galaxy catching bounties. Spoilers ahoy!

25 Movies in 5 Days

Leading up to and including New Year's Day, my wife (aka "the girl") and I got a nice five-day weekend (Friday, 28 December to Tuesday, 1 January) that we used to watch as many movies as possible. We were able to catch up on a lot of stuff from 2011 and 2012, as we didn't get out to the theater as much as we had hoped during that time (work and whatnot kept getting in the way).

Below are mini-reviews of the 25 movies we watched, in chronological order of their being watched, followed by the top 5 of the weekend (by special request).

Of special note, almost all of these movies are based on a previously published text of some sort, whether that be a book, a comic book, a television show, or a movie (remake or sequel). Are these just the movies that we as consumers choose to watch (we know the source material and have a reasonable expectation of liking the movie based on it), so the  movie industry makes movies catering to us; or, is the movie industry making movies like this, and we have no choice but to watch them because there's not much else? I suspect the former is truer than the latter.