I have been on a mini run of “you gotta hand it to him” with regard to Kevin Costner. That run led me to dive with reckless abandon into Waterworld, a movie that I was ready to believe was treated unfairly over the years. It has not been treated unfairly. This wasn’t good.

The movie has a decent enough idea and a not-awful plot line. The premise is not subtle (the intro voiceover describes the melting of the polar icecaps, creating a world without land), but that unsubtlety to start the movie can be seen as world-building. It’s quickly just part of the movies, with a minor line here or there to remind you that the people alive today at least abstractly understand that their ancestors had really fucked up.

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I had a tough time with this one. I feel like the evidence is mounting that I just am not a huge fan of the visual style of this type of movie. What I mean is the movie that shows you gritty, 70s New York or some other American city. I don’t really appreciate the camera work of the intimate close ups, I dislike the amount of contrasty darkness that obscures what I can see. And I think I dislike the “real people” genre when it’s a couple of mugs who are just shitty in their existence. Read the rest...

Despite US politics, EVs are here to stay, and I won’t buy another ICE car again without an absolute need.

We have had our EV now for just over a year and 11,000 miles (~4,000 miles in road trips). I want to reflect a bit on what the experience has been like in that time, and how it has changed things.

We bought a Kia EV6, 2024 Wind trim (mid range) with AWD and the tech package. The tech package includes a few cool things, like a 360 camera view, and a few kinda useless things, like a parking assist feature that takes minutes to get you into a parking spot. It also features Highway Driving Assist (HDA)(Kia’s name for it), which is Kia’s version of self-driving. It’s not that, but it is a great feature. More on that later.

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I suspect this was made for me and my generation. I didn’t care or it, or even get it, really. I have a major gap in my movie watching that’s about ten years long, from 1995-2005. I had little kids at that time, so many of the movies that helped shape the young adults of my I missed. This, and probably a lot of the things that inspired it, were movies that never really made it into my life. They weren’t the easy to spot ones at the video store, and I didn’t have time for that. Read the rest...

I watched this as part of the Criterion Challenge, with this being in the category of, wait for it, “The 1940s.” As a Criterion Collection fan, this has been at the top of my list for a while. It’s another that has felt so overwhelmingly important that until now I was unable to get myself to watch it. Thank goodness for this challenge. Read the rest...

This covers a couple of required viewings for me. I got his suggested in the Letterboxd Roulette group, and I have it listed in my Criterion Challenge under the category “European Film.” It’s definitely that! Read the rest...

I have spent time each day since Friday calling my representatives. I started calling everyone—my two democratic Senators, my Republican Congressman, and my Republican Governor ask them to get oil television denouncing what is happening in Washington, D.C. and with Elon Musk effectively working through a coup on our government. Amodei’s office hung up on me twice. Read the rest...