Media Monday: TV & Books
Some more of the TV I've watched so far this year:
Sherlock s3
I liked, in the end, the interconnectedness of the season, but only because without the final episode, it would have seemed like a season wasted. Early on it was feeling to me like the fun episodes you would put amid a long season, to break up the episodes with good cases. I began to think (and still might) that the show has become, instead of what it used to be, what the internet thinks it is.
Attack on Titan s1
Recommended from various angles, I watched this whole anime series on Netflix. I was really expecting it to be in space for some reason. The mobility devices are great. My complaints though: the thing that I was told was the basic premise of the show isn't actually established until almost halfway through, so boo to that reviewer for blowing a fun surprise. And second, and I'll say this carefully so as not to do the same thing to you, there was something very early in the show that I thought sure was going to happen, and then much later they announced it was going to happen, and now I'm wondering if I have to watch a whole second or third season before it actually does happen.
The Eric Andre Show s1
This show wasn't for me. I remember that there were a couple bits I liked, but I don't recall what they were anymore. Hannibal Buress seems to be getting very gently typecast, but maybe this show is the first one where he plays the role of "the writers' awareness."
And hey, let's talk books!
Screenwriting 101 by FilmCritHulk
Very interesting book with ideas I'd like to try to put into practice sometime. As an iBook, it uses its own medium badly.
In the Belly of the Fail Whale by someone or another.
Sometimes you're in a place and you read or watch something just because it's there or it's on. But that doesn't mean it's good, and this wasn't. Bleh. It's the story of a guy who signs up for twitter, and how he wrote a book about signing up for twitter while working in the names of his followers into cringeworthy asides so they would buy a book that has their name in it.
Looking for Alaska by John Green
I guess I'm a little wary because he's having a popularity explosion right now, but I've been avidly consuming his YouTube shows since sometime last year and decided to try one of his novels. And I liked it! Like an alarming number of books I've read in the past few years it takes place in and around a boarding school, and as in all of them, the first half is more fun than the second half. I think all my vlog consumption clued me into some pretty oblique references, which made me feel clever. I was just happy to go through a window into an impossible sounding but convincing world, to see what bits of a YA novel connect with me today and what bits don't.