media [2023]

[hyojungss]

MOVIES

first time watches:

• Women Talking, 2022
• Somebody I Used to Know, 2023
• Sleepless in Seattle, 1993
• Showing Up, 2022
• Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse, 2023
• Past Lives, 2023
• Mariposa, 2020
• Barbie, 2023
• Bottoms, 2023
• Miss Congeniality, 2000
• Crazy, Stupid, Love., 2011
• Jennifer's Body, 2009
• Ocean Waves, 1993
• Elemental, 2023
• Mamma Mia!, 2008
• Riceboy Sleeps, 2022
• Senna, 2010
• After Yang, 2021
• He's Just Not That Into You, 2009
• Shortcomings, 2023
• Next Sohee, 2022
• You've Got Mail, 1998
• Return to Seoul, 2022
• The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes, 2023
• Monsters University, 2013
• The Wolf of Wall Street, 2013
• May December, 2023
• Do Revenge, 2022
• Taylor Swift: Reputation Stadium Tour, 2018

letterboxd log: here although i barely rated anything!! i'm not proud of this list. i feel like i watched a lot of bad/meh movies this year even when i could drag myself to the theater. some of the movies were quite sad but good if you are in the mood for a drama. unfortunately my brain is broken and what i liked most was purely entertaining... of the older classic movies i really liked jennifer's body and you've got mail LOL.

last year i said i was looking forward to watching broker and the community movie but i didn't watch either... tbf the community movie did not come out but broker is on hulu... anyway i don't know what is coming out this year

TV

completed:

• F1 Drive to Survive season 5
• Shadow and Bone season 2
• One Piece live action season 1
• Adventure Time Fionna and Cake season 1
• Severance season 1
• The O.C. season 1

partial:

• The Glory part 1
• One Piece - One Pace cut, WCI 20-39 & Wano 1-34
• Abbott Elementary season 2 (started in 2022, finished in 2023)
• Great British Baking Show collection 11 (started in 2023, finished in 2024)

dts season 5 was nice because it was more accurate than it has been in previous seasons but since i actually watched the 2022 season it didn't have much new content to offer me. we did of course get "you've got a problem change your fucking car" "then you change your car because checo has been saying the car is fucked" and frankly i can't believe that was 2023 because i feel like i've been hearing it for years. formula 1 fans cannot let a joke die.

shadow and bone season 2 was trash... as the fans had been saying since before season 1 aired, the mistake here can be traced back to the decision to adapt s&b instead of skipping to six of crows. i've had enough of that show and i'm not mad it was cancelled. the singular crumb of zoyalai...

one piece live action on the other hand was not bad for what it was. i had mixed feelings on the acting (live thread here, minor spoilers) but i was expecting so much worse from the show to be honest. the adaptation was relatively faithful and actually made some positive changes characterization-wise. east blue is not my favorite arc of one piece anyway and it's not like i feel like it was butchered! most importantly, it brought one piece back into cultural relevancy, which is what got me to finally catch up on the anime. i'm still behind but much less severely :)

i have some mixed feelings about one piece and eiichiro oda of course and i don't praise either unconditionally, but op is still a great work with a good message and it's a joy to watch. here is my livethread for the anime

fionna and cake + severance are objectively good, severance in a slow burn way but i don't have a lot to add, meanwhile the oc is objectively bad but i will continue watching it because i love to use relationship drama as inspiration for writing

BOOKS

i read almost nothing this year and i have nothing to recommend... embarrassing!! i stopped reading manga and webtoons too... i caught back up to jjk/spy at one point but i stopped subscribing to wsj and i'm not logged in so i don't remember where i was!

GAMES

• Fire Emblem Engage (2023) (Switch)
• Tears of the Kingdom (2023) (Switch)

i think i only played those games + melatonin (rhythm game)... i cannot believe engage was this year because it feels like AGES since i played that game. it's embarrassing for intsys that i haven't played the game since february when it came out in JANUARY. it's also really sad because the gameplay mechanics are pretty cool, but the story and writing is almost offensively bad in a juvenile way, like you really thought this was good enough for your fanbase? waste of good character designs... but i can't bring myself to care about the game anymore which is sad. i got the dlc too (worth for ikesoren, that's all...)

totk was great fun for many hours, i was surprised how much i liked it when i had basically done all that in botw. the thing that killed me in the end is that i ran out of things i could do without fighting phantom ganon T___T so yeah i haven't played like a large portion of the game i'm sure but i suck at fighting and i don't want to learn how to be good. also the cultural relevance seemed to fall off kind of quickly idk if it's just me...

too ashamed to put them on the "list" but i also played some old nostalgic PC games this fall LOL. i'm like 90% through Fizzball (2006) and i was working through the Dream Day Wedding hidden object series... i'm almost done with the 3rd out of 7. i don't know that i will finish them all atp because diminishing returns, which is too bad bc i started with the worst ones!! i always overestimate my motivation...

still doing the easy days of the week in nyt crosswords... i do vertex/connections/spelling bee sometimes but i can't do the daily thing i need an archive so i can do it when i'm in the mood or have extra free time. i know they will never listen to my pleas. whatever!!

i played a LOT of sporcle quizzes this year. particularly formula 1/logic puzzles/formula 1 logic puzzles but i've done tons of random quizzes, the daily badges, etc... i can't say my brain is very smart or good at retaining knowledge, but i have fun with it honestly. i don't know where i was at last year but rn i'm at 656 unique quizzes played lifetime... i've had a sporcle acc for 5 years but i def played more this year than ever before. i used to mostly do kpop audio quizzes every few months whenever i thought of it

lastly i got back into playing idle phone games while i watch the oc... sad b/c i haven't played them since the peak year of covid isolation (2020) so that's how you know i got bored!! / addicted to the dopamine!

PODCASTS

• Shift + F1 (40 episodes)
• Beyond the Grid (7 episodes)

i need to diversify my podcasts but if i don't enjoy them what's the point! i usually only listen to them in the car and it's really important that i don't fall asleep there v____v

MUSIC

see last.fm summary post;

concerts attended:

• Taylor Swift - The Eras tour (April)
• TWICE - Ready to Be world tour (July)
• SE SO NEON (September)

MISC

• 2023 Formula 1 season (22 races), including attending the US GP in person
• the first 9 races of the 2012 Formula 1 season

Comments

[arundels]

i am always so impressed with people who keep a good log of what they've watched/read/listened to/engaged with in general! this is such a cool lookback on your year. i recently made a letterboxd account as part of an attempt to get better and tracking my own media experiences, i'm gonna follow you if that's ok! need more recs for things to watch - esp things that are simply Entertaining cos i think there's a lot of value in a movie doing Fun well :)

i didnt watch s&b s2 and am kinda glad i didn't now... there was so much potential with the six of crows stuff idk why they didn't just do that! i miss the era of good tv and being able to get invested in a tv show trusting that it would (a) be good and (b) not get cancelled. honestly the only tv i watch now is university challenge which is a long-running british trivia competition lmao.

wishing you a fun and entertaining and fulfilling year of media in 2024!