I don’t even remember what led me to this, but watching the Amazing Race has been my latest guilty pleasure. The Amazing Race Canada, too. TAR still has all the super-dramatic reality TV editing and music but is way less focused on interpersonal conflict. It’s the places and tasks that make it interesting.

Compared to the US show, the Canadian show is way lower budget and milder in vibes, but the Canadian host is way more enthusiastic. He actually does the challenges while explaining them.

We watched Flow. It’s exquisitely beautiful. It’s a Latvian film yet it feels like it was inspired by Ghibli. Very well done. No characters perish (there are 2 characters where that’s debatable), but my gods I was hella stressed out for the main characters throughout the whole series of events. I think I’ll have to watch it again so I can appreciate more of it now that I know the outcome. There are mysteries presented that are just left as mysteries. We never get the answers for them. Leaves a lot open for interesting discussion.

After being reminded of it by suggesting it to someone else on Lemmy I’ve been re-watching Kieślowski’s Dekalog. Been doing an episode a day and have seen four so far. They really are just masterpieces. I’d almost forgotten how uncomfortable episode 4 was (in a good way), but it’s impossible to forget just how much humanity Kieślowski is able to capture and put on display. Some really gorgeous shots and visual symbolism too, mixed into the fascinating stories that always pose questions and never provide any answers. For a series about the ten commandments there is a complete lack of moralising, he only ever presents you with dilemmas and lets you draw your own conclusions. Phenomenal series.

Daima dubs getting entertaining, solo levelings alright (better than webtoon), mythic quests last episode was mid, I forget the rest right now

Almost done with season 6 of The Expanse and I don’t want it to end. Also started Invincible season 3.

I watched Challengers recently. Felt like The Social Network for tennis. Opens as a tennis movie, ends ends as a friendship/relationship movie.