Blogocentric Formulations

April Watch List

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I keep meticulous track of all the books, scripts, and comics I read every year. Plus the podcasts I listen to. But the one thing I don't do very often is write about the things I watch. I don't really know why I haven't until this point, but I recently noticed that a friend of mine writes up a "media consumption" post on Facebook every month and I thought I might start doing the same.

To qualify for the list, it has to be something that I've watched that's new to me. It doesn't necessarily have to be a current show, it just can't be reruns of something I've already seen. So if I'm including it in this list, it means this month is the first time I've watched it. I won't list the stuff I lost interest in quickly, but I'll put "DNF" (Did Not Finish) next to anything that I stopped watching and have no immediate plans to finish.

I'm really, really late posting April's watch list, but I did keep track of everything:


Movies

          The Batman
          Death on the Nile


Television

          Barry (Season 1)
          Is It Cake? (DNF)
          Last Week Tonight (Season 9)
          Law & Order (Season 21)


I was really looking forward to The Batman, which might have had something to do with my overall lackluster impression of it. A lot of my friends absolutely loved it and raved about it, but I found it to be generally good-but-not-great. Part of the issue was the pacing; at 176 minutes, there were a lot of gratuitous shots of brooding Bruce, rain falling, Batman's cape fluttering in the breeze, etc. They missed an opportunity for a great two hours and instead made it an okay three hours.

Death on the Nile was beautifully shot but also felt a little indulgent on Kenneth Branagh's part. When you're both the director and the star, maybe don't spend so much time lingering on yourself.

As far as television goes, finally getting on the Barry bandwagon and it's great. Really offbeat and quirky and fun. I'll write more about it next month now that I'm caught up and on Season 3. Law & Order is the newest revival of the venerable series with a (mostly) new cast and, for the most part, it hasn't changed a bit. Same formula, same character archetypes. If you liked the old Law & Order, there's very little to dislike about the new one (mostly because there's very little that's different).

Last Week Tonight continues to be my favorite comedy news program. The deep dive they do on important, topical subjects is great, and the stunts they pull are always aimed at raising awareness of the week's issue. This season has done some really excellent explainers, including on the topics of what critical race theory really is, police interrogations, wrongful convictions, sex work, and data brokers.

Is It Cake? was a fun idea for a show that I didn't need to watch more than two episodes of. It's a reality show and the idea is that expert cake decorators make cakes that look like other things (each episode has a theme, so one episode was making cake that looked like junk food, one was making cakes that looked like designer handbags, etc.), and contestants have to try and guess which one is the cake and which one is real. Like I said, it's a fun idea... but the host is absolutely obnoxious and stretches out a ten minute concept into thirty minutes with annoying banter and fake drama among the cake decorators... so this one was definitely a DNF. I don't need to see a whole season of this stuff.


TOP PICK: Last Week Tonight