Tootfinder

One of my New Year's resolution is about watching (and reviewing) a bit more movies this year. So I thought I might as well share (some of) those reviews here:
https://letterboxd.com/njamster/film/late-shift-2025/
This (fictional) film follows the protagonist throu…

A ★★★★★ review of Late Shift (2025)
Pretty much what I expected after watching the trailer: A very stressful, yet extremely well-made movie with an important message. Guess this won't be for everyone (and especially: not every mood), but for what it [i]wants[/i] to be, it's absolutely perfect! At first, I was a bit worried about it being too black-and-white when absolutely everybody seemed angry, hostile and impatient. But in the end, the script turned out a lot more nuanced than I thought (most evident in the "lost watch" subplo…

#Anime vom inzwischen letzten Jahr noch abgeschlossen: "Uglymug, Epicfighter".
Der Protagonist (und viele andere um ihn herum) gelangt durch eine Website in eine andere Welt. Seine Eigenschaften legt er auf der Seite wie in einem Rollenspiel fest - nur dass er sein Aussehen auf extrem hässlich einstellt und in den Anmerkungen weitere negative Eigenschaften, und so als "Ausgleich…

"Perhaps the biggest difference between the two novels is that Goldratt’s protagonist gets promoted after demonstrating the success of his techniques, while Kim’s is promoted while it’s still clear to him and his manager that he has no clue what he’s doing. This ass-backwards career progression is necessary to make the book realistic in a software development context."

Play It Again, Sam
While the phrase "Play it again, Sam" never occurs in the film Casablanca, the sentiment does. Sam is asked to play "As time goes by", a song about how some things remain the same despite the passage of time. The song was originally part of a 1931 Broadway musical, and perhaps ironically due to a musician's union strike when Casablanca was released, the studio were unable to release a new version of the song as a record. Instead, they re-issued the original version, recorded over a decade earli…

Series B, Episode 05 - Pressure Point
AVON: Frankly, I don't see how you can do it without me. Your strongest enemies are going to be the defence computers. I am the only one qualified to tackle them.
BLAKE: Yes, that had occurred to me. You better start getting kitted up. Do you want to tell me why?
https://blake.torpidit…

#PhantastikPrompts 3.11.: Zum Weltmännertag: Wann ist der Mann ein Mann und was macht einen männlichen Protagonisten aus?
Ein Mann ist ein Mann, wenn er sagt, dass er einer ist. Nicht mehr, nicht weniger.
Bei einem männlichen Protagonisten habe ich die Entscheidung getroffen, dass der Protagonist männlich ist, also ist er das dann auch.
1/2

Yesterday they've released SOLO Leveling: Arise Overdrive.
I kinda liked anime and game looked good, so I've tried it.
I was surprised, when in the middle of the fight everything stoped and I couldn't move / use any skills / attacks.
My surprise was even bigger when outisde of the battle I stopped moving for about 10(maybe 20) seconds.
Fights are perfect🤌, if it wasn't "always online" "feature" it would be really good game with great c…

Arriving at Act I, The Alters is quite engaging. It's a video game, in case you are reaching for your favourite search engine. So far, the sci-fi aspect has that structured feeling of the Eastern European/Soviet branch of the genre, mixed up with the post-Soviet era shift of values and cultural trends -- still kind of bland, but looking at the Western guilty thrill of the dystopian. It's a damn good, well-made game. I hope it holds up in that way until the end.

Day 21: Aya Yoshinaga
I'm actually generally much less aware of the creators involved in the anime I watch, for a number of reasons, and the few anime directors I could name without looking them up were all men before I started this list. I've now got a short list of anime directors/writers who are women, and the first I'll include here is Yoshinaga, in part because she was pivotal to one of my favorite lesser-known anime, "Kurau Phantom Memory". It was actually one of the first anime I watched ever, but I didn't like it just because of that, since I've rewatched it at least twice and still regard it highly. It's got a pretty cool science fiction setting, an extremely cool barely-comprehensible alien race, a female protagonist who is not sexualized and not subjected to romance, and it centers a platonic relationship torn apart by technological hubris. Very "cool seinen stuff that wouldn't make it past the focus groups today" stuff.
Besides Kurau, Yoshinaga has worked on other great stuff like Golden Kamuy, Azumanga Daioh, Durarara, and Fullmetal Alchemist, and when you see a correlation like that between well-written shows and the same writer showing up again and again, it's clear there's talent there, even if most of these are manga-based.
Probably going to circle back to at least one more anime writer, but for tomorrow I'll move on to manga probably, since I want to space out all my YA enthusiasm a bit.
#30AuthorsNoMen

🇺🇦 #NowPlaying on KEXP's #DriveTime
T H R O N E & Protagonist:
🎵 How To Land A Plane
#THRONE #Protagonist
https://somerapcouple.bandcamp.com/track/how-to-land-a-plane
https://open.spotify.com/track/1l2GTAUPnlnDngSbDCvHUh

Day 22: Yuki Urushibara
I've got a few more mangaka left on my short list, and might very well get to at least one more, but Urushibara is the author of Mushishi and anyone who knows either the manga or anime understands immediately why she appears here.
Mushishi is a "seinen" anime, which means it's written for adults, not children or teenagers (although it's very accessible for all ages). It deals with a vast array of life's circumstances through the lens of a traveling mushi expert and the various whimsical supernatural creatures he is called on to deal with. He's not an exorcist though, instead understanding that humans must live in harmony with the mushi, and working like an ecologist to sort things out. As is probably obvious, Urushibara is an incredible world-builder; she's also a top-notch artist and above all, her stories are overflowing with kindness, humanity, and respect for the natural world.
Besides Mushishi, I've read "Suiiki", and it's one of the few manga I stumbled through in the original Japanese, which says a lot given my limited reading vocabulary (and the fact that it doesn't include rubi). It weaves the supernatural into a story of childhood innocence and curiosity in a lovely way.
Much like Shirahama who I mentioned earlier, Urushibara's stories are full of gentle wisdom for all ages, but Urushibara's work is quieter and less dramatic, with an adult main character confident in his expertise instead of a young-and-learning protagonist.
#30AuthorsNoMen

Just finished "Beasts Made of Night" by Tochi Onyebuchi...
Indirect CW for fantasy police state violence.
So I very much enjoyed Onyebuchi's "Riot Baby," and when I grabbed this at the library, I was certain it would be excellent. But having finished it, I'm not sure I like it that much overall?
The first maybe third is excellent, including the world-building, which is fascinating. I feel like Onyebuchi must have played "Shadow of the Colossus" at some point. Onyebuchi certainly does know how to make me care for his characters.
Some spoilers from here on out...
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I felt like it stumbles towards the middle, with Bo's reactions neither making sense in the immediate context, nor in retrospect by the end when we've learned more. Things are a bit floaty in the middle with an unclear picture of what exactly is going on politics-wise and what the motivations are. Here I think there were some nuances that didn't make it to the page, or perhaps I'm just a bit thick and not getting stuff I should be? More is of course revealed by the end, but I still wasn't satisfied with the explanations of things. For example, (spoilers) I don't feel I understand clearly what kind of power the army of aki was supposed to represent within the city? Perhaps necessary to wield the threat of offensive inisisia use? In that case, a single scene somewhere of Izu's faction deploying that tactic would have been helpful I think.
Then towards the end, for me things really started to jumble, with unclear motivations, revelations that didn't feel well-paced or -structured, and a finale where both the action & collapsing concerns felt stilted and disjointed. Particularly the mechanics/ethics of the most important death that set the finale in motion bothered me, and the unexplained mechanism by which that led to what came next? I can read a couple of possible interesting morals into the whole denouement, but didn't feel that any of them were sufficiently explored. Especially if we're supposed to see some personal failing in the protagonist's actions, I don't think it's made clear enough what that is, since I feel his reasons to reject each faction are pretty solid, and if we're meant to either pity or abjure his indecision, I don't think the message lands clearly enough.
There *is* a sequel, which honestly I wasn't sure of after the last page, and which I now very interested in. Beasts is Onyebuchi's debut, which maybe makes sense of me feeling that Riot Baby didn't have the same plotting issues. It also maybe means that Onyebuchi couldn't be sure a sequel would make it to publication in terms of setting up the ending.
Overall I really enjoyed at least 80% of this, but was expecting even better (especially politically) given Onyebuchi's other work, and I didn't feel like I found it.
#AmReading