Culture Commentary and Miscellaneous Musings
As I continue my journey of watching the Studio Ghibli movies it continues to amaze the sheer quality of these movies. This particular one is quite possibly the most joyous ones I’ve watched.
Continue reading “Review: My Neighbor Totoro (1988)”
Just one night. That’s what Rania, the main character keeps saying to herself. Let’s just get through this one night. In the cyberpunk metropolis of Nivalis, one night can be the difference between life and death, between the wildest riches and the depths of destitution.
Continue reading “Review: Cloudpunk”July has been a fairly productive month as far as media goes. I decided earlier in the month that I wanted to start watching all the Studio Ghibli movies in chronological order.
So this month I watched three movies, all of them Studio Ghibli movies. I started with Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind and then I watched Laputa: Castle in the Sky and ended the month with Grave of the Fireflies. All of these were excellent movies in their own right. Grave of the Fireflies especially is one of the saddest movies I’ve ever watched. I will be continuing my watching of Studio Ghibli movies over the next month.
I read two books, the first was Sister Outsider which is a series of essays and speeches by the Black lesbian feminist Audre Lorde. I enjoyed the book a great deal and every bit of writing imparted some wisdom and knowledge that will enhance my understanding of the world going forward.
I also read The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho, one of those rare books that I finished in one sitting. Partially because it is quite short but also because it is quite good. I am still processing the themes of the book but in short I think it also imparted some wisdom that will help me down the road.
I played and finished one video game, Cloudpunk, It is an adventure game set in a gorgeously realized cyberpunk setting, a city called Nivalis. I very much enjoyed my playthrough of the game. The game leaned into cyberpunk genre tropes at certain points with its characters and themes but it was never overdone. I am very much looking forward to the developer’s next game Nivalis.
That’s all from me this month, see y’all next month!
This past week I have been reading Sister Outsider, a collection of Audre Lorde’s essays, papers and speeches. Every bit of writing in this collection is worth reading. Lorde’s writing remains applicable and useful to our current struggles and I found myself wishing that I had read her words earlier in my life. Better late than never I suppose.
While I was reading this book, I used my Kobo ebook reader’s annotation function to highlight and save a few choice quotes that I thought were particularly important.
Continue reading “Some Quotes from Sister Outsider”This month there was a good variety of media. I started off the month with reading Laura Kate Dale’s book Who Hunts The Whale which is a satirical novel about the video games industry. It was quite effective at making me both laugh and cry.
I am also watching a dystopian sci-fi TV show called Silo. It took a few episodes for the show to really get going but when it eventually did, it got very interesting.
I watched another movie in the theatre, this time it was Spider-Man: Across the Spiderverse. Quite possibly the best animated movie I’ve ever seen. It was a delightful experience from start to finish. Worth watching in a movie theatre if you can.
I watched an anime series, the first season of The Witch from Mercury. This show is a show set in a wholly new Mobile Suite Gundam universe disconnected from the rest of the franchise. It was a enjoyable watch even if in typical Gundam fashion it is a little heavy handed with its messaging in some places. It’s always cool to see mechs fight.
At the end of the month, I watched the first season of Star Trek Strange New Worlds. I see why people have been singing the praises of this show and I also enjoyed it. Between Strange New Worlds and Lower Decks there is a good variety of Trek TV out right now.
That’s all from me this month, see y’all next month!