Blogocentric Formulations

December Watch List

To qualify for my Watch List every month, the following has to be something that I've watched that's new to me. It doesn't necessarily have to be a current show, but it can't be reruns or rewatches 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'll put "DNF" (Did Not Finish) next to anything that I stopped watching and have no immediate plans to finish.

Movies
          Don't Worry Darling
          Scrooge: A Christmas Carol
          Black Adam
          Luck
          Pelosi in the House
          Emily the Criminal
          The Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery
          Bullet Train

Television
          The Good Place (Season 2)
          The Good Place (Season 3)
          Harry & Meghan
          The Sex Lives of College Girls (Season 2)
          Emily in Paris (Season 3)

Other
          Writing (James Patterson MasterClass)
          Style for Everyone (Tan France MasterClass)
          Writing for Television (Shonda Rhimes MasterClass)
          The Bible Project

This was a really good month as far as things to watch. On the feature film side of things, LUCK was a pleasantly surprising animated feature from my former employer Skydance, and PELOSI IN THE HOUSE was a great documentary about Nancy Pelosi's life in politics as captured by her daughter Alexandra, a documentary filmmaker who has been following her around for years. BULLET TRAIN was fun, but the real standout this month was THE GLASS ONION which is writer/director Rian Johnson's sequel to KNIVES OUT and, honestly, it might be even better than the first. It was absolutely delightful.

As far as television goes, I finally got back into THE GOOD PLACE and like it even more than I remembered. The second season of THE SEX LIVES OF COLLEGE GIRLS wasn't quite as great as the first season, but it was still a lot of fun to watch. And the HARRY & MEGHAN documentary series, despite being pretty blatant PR work for the couple, was actually very well produced and showed a lot of pieces of their lives together that hadn't been seen up until this point. I don't mind documentaries with an agenda if they're well done, and this one fit both bills.

I also finally noted the MasterClasses I watched this year, which I definitely need to be better about next year. I always forget that I have a membership and then end up binging an entire class in a couple of days, and I'd like to dedicate more time to slowly consuming the content and learning things over the course of the year in 2023. Lord knows there are no shortage of classes for me to take on the service. But the real winner, IMHO, was The Bible Project, which I finally finished this month (alongside finishing reading the ESV translation of The Bible). If you're not familiar with it, The Bible Project is a fantastic resource for those who want a better understanding of The Bible. They produce a series of animated online videos that review and unpack the story, themes, characters, etc. found therein, all of which are very well produced and really helped me with my understanding of the Bible this year as I read it. I highly recommend it for anyone who wants to better familiarize themselves with The Bible and it's incredibly rich and complex history.

TOP PICK: The Bible Project