Movies
- Audiobooks: Listening to a good narrator reading a book can help and improve the experience
- Don’t be afraid to jump somewhere in the middle of a book and start reading to spice things up a bit. Books are slow; most chances are you won’t spoil everything if you read a page or two.
- Push yourself to read at least 10% of a book before putting giving up. Many books take their time to get interesting. On the other side of this coin (I’m adding this as a personal note), if a book still sucks after that 10%, don’t force yourself to keep reading it. There are plenty of other books to read.
- If you read a book and find yourself glazing over pages or reading the same line over and over, put it down and read something else. Reading a book is a skill. Develop it on something lighter for a bit (like magazines or blog posts) before trying for a whole novel.
Liquid Sky, 1982 - ★★★★
I'd like to say this movie is before its time, but it's not. The issues it raises were present in the 80s as well as in the 1800s. We just take more notice now.
Liquid Sky is not easy to watch. It's an explosive, colorful, emotional,l drug-influenced, NYC-punk, alien, in-your-face, weird sort of a thing, and it gives zero fucks about it. Which is exactly how it should be.
I'd stop here and say good job, but the movie went further and made me question my values, past and present. It grabbed me by the throat and forced me to look. I'm glad I did.
Liquid Sky, 1982 - ★★★★
I'd like to say this movie is before its time, but it's not. The issues it raises were present in the 80s as well as in the 1800s. We just take more notice now.
Liquid Sky is not easy to watch. It's an explosive, colorful, emotional,l drug-influenced, NYC-punk, alien, in-your-face, weird sort of a thing, and it gives zero fucks about it. Which is exactly how it should be.
I'd stop here and say good job, but the movie went further and made me question my values, past and present. It grabbed me by the throat and forced me to look. I'm glad I did.
Leviathan, 1989 - ★★
Your typical 90s suspense flick with all the clichés. I enjoyed the story, and the effects are nice. It makes you appreciate the stunts department before we had AI integrated into everything.
We have come a long way since the days of women being sexy meat sacks that always need rescuing. It's good to watch one of these movies to remind you why this was a problem. It made me cringe more than once.
Think Aliens underwater without Susan Weaver to kick ass.
Leviathan, 1989 - ★★
Your typical 90s suspense flick with all the clichés. I enjoyed the story, and the effects are nice. It makes you appreciate the stunts department before we had AI integrated into everything.
We have come a long way since the days of women being sexy meat sacks that always need rescuing. It's good to watch one of these movies to remind you why this was a problem. It made me cringe more than once.
Think Aliens underwater without Susan Weaver to kick ass.
The Beast, 1975 - ★★★½
Ok, let's get this out of the way first. Yes, there's horse dick in this movie. Lots and lots of it. So if you have a problem with horse dick, this is not the movie for you.
As a movie, it's OK. It gets a 7 out of 10. The story is not revolutionary, and the effects didn't exactly age well. Still, I found that it was well performed. It tells the familiar story (all men are sexual beasts) but it turns it around, with women beating men in their own game.
This is an erotic movie from the 70s which you won't find on any streaming services today. The question to ask yourself is not if you're OK with the sort of taboo the movie shows, but why you no longer have the option to wonder about this.
The Beast, 1975 - ★★★½
Ok, let's get this out of the way first. Yes, there's horse dick in this movie. Lots and lots of it. So if you have a problem with horse dick, this is not the movie for you.
As a movie, it's OK. It gets a 7 out of 10. The story is not revolutionary, and the effects didn't exactly age well. Still, I found that it was well performed. It tells the familiar story (all men are sexual beasts) but it turns it around, with women beating men in their own game.
This is an erotic movie from the 70s which you won't find on any streaming services today. The question to ask yourself is not if you're OK with the sort of taboo the movie shows, but why you no longer have the option to wonder about this.
Neptune Frost, 2021 - ★★
I gave this movie about half an hour before giving up. A cloud of buzzwords in different languages thrown into trippy song and beautiful costumes. There's no plot here, just floating ideas.
Neptune Frost, 2021 - ★★
I gave this movie about half an hour before giving up. A cloud of buzzwords in different languages thrown into trippy song and beautiful costumes. There's no plot here, just floating ideas.
Failed to finish
List of movies I could not finish, usually because they're bad or because I can't follow the plot
My thoughts about Mirco.Camp and what I learned
Micro.Camp 2023 is over. I had fun, enjoyed listening and participating, and got exciting new ideas to explore. For me, these include mainly three categories. books, photos, and movies.
Books
Micro.blog (MB) has an excellent book integration built into the left sidebar. You can find a book there and import it directly into a post. My problem with books is that I can’t get myself through reading one. I turned to the book lovers of MB for advice and got several good tips. Here they are in no particular order:
Photos
The MB community is very active around photos. There’s a dedicated photo page by default in most themes and an option to upload photos to short and long posts, which can also be re-posted to other services automatically, like Flickr.
Lurking in the chatroom, I learned that Glass is now available on the web and on Android. I registered and quickly realized why it’s a photographer’s favorite. The interface is beautifully minimal and shows you nothing but photos. Unlike Instagram, you won’t find folks using posting pictures of text. Zero ads. You have to pay to use Glass, but I feel it’s worth it.
While Glass comes with an RSS feed that can be used with MB (go to your Glass profile URL and add /rss at the end), it doesn’t allow much customization. The MB team is looking into ways to improve Glass’ integration, but for now, it seems there’s not much to work with from Glass’s side.
Still, the resourceful MB community came up with a couple of plugins and themes that work better with photos (I’m experimenting with one of them right now, under the photos page.) This is a good place to mention Jean’s post about Discovery, prompting people to make sure their photos include a description (via the “alt” HTML tag).
Movies
Weird/indie/rare films are something I tried to get into in the past and failed. I knew there were movie lovers on MB, and I feel lucky I stumbled upon Chris Campbell’s presentation. Chris uses letterboxd is a movie professional, and listening to him about the benefits of letterboxd sold me within a minute. I had a profile on letterboxd I haven’t really used, but I intend to fix this now.
Letterboxd calls itself “a global social network for grass-roots film discussion and discovery.” It’s a free service that offers a clean browsing experience (almost no ads) and a lot of information. And yes, it also comes with an RSS feed.
It seems like I have a couple of movies to catch up on…!
When I joined MB, I was looking for a place to save me time messing around with Hugo. But MB proved to be more than a blogging solution. It’s a community of passionate individuals with similar interests to mine. The true value of this place is the interaction with the community, something I learn to appreciate a bit more every day.