MOVIE: Wicked (2024)

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WickedYear: 2024Rating: PGLength: 160 minutes / 2.67 hours When one looks back on all the stories that have come out that try to paint the villains of classic, well-known books as misunderstood, I think the original book for Wicked is what started this trend. Now, 30 years later, the first half of this redemption arc comes to the big screen with Wicked (2024). Having only read the original Baum book, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, and seen the Wizard of Oz (1939) Judy Garland movie, I came into this with unbiased eyes that didn’t know the context of the book or the musical that inspired this film adaptation. Casting-wise, the three leads of Elphaba (Cynthia Erivo), Galinda (Ariana Grande), and Oz (Jeff Goldblum) were great choices for a variety of reasons—mainly that the two witches knew how to sing. The songs themselves were mostly memorable, even if the only ones that stuck were the ones drilled into every piece of advertising for...
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BOOK: Uncle Tom’s Cabin (1852)

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Uncle Tom's CabinYear: 1852Author: Harriet Beecher StoweLength: 1,243 minutes / 20.72 hours Uncle Tom’s Cabin is one of those iconic literary texts that evaded my entire educational career. Remedying this, I have finally sat down to read this famous book, and I think more people would benefit from its narrative if they’re encouraged to read it as well. While the events are fictitious, the world Harriet Beecher Stowe paints with her words is probably closer to reality than most people at the time realized, thus educating people (mainly Christians) about how their beliefs should not be aligned with slavery in any way. First and foremost, the format of Uncle Tom’s Cabin is still entertaining. The story itself is strong because it shares so many similarities with things happening in the lead-up to the Civil War. Things that most people of the time were likely ignorant of. We may take these events as common knowledge after all the history books that have been...
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MOVIE: Up (2009)

by benmweilertNo Comments
UpYear: 2009Rating: PGLength: 96 minutes / 1.60 hours What’s always amusing to me is how people will often praise Up (2009) but usually only cite the first 15 minutes of the film as their favorite part. Like, I get the dialogue-less montage of Ellie and Carl’s (Ed Asner) life together is one of the best cinematic gut punches ever created, but there’s more to the movie than that. While the setup is heartbreaking, the rest of the movie is colorful, creative, and has an equal amount of heart (albeit with a different focus). At a minimum, Up is a great example of a well-thought out character arc. One reason I personally enjoy Up is Russell (Jordan Nagai) as the courageous and persistent scout. He’s the perfect counterbalance to the crotchety Carl who only has one objective in mind: living alone on top of a waterfall to fulfill a dream he had with his late wife. That Russell’s family life seems to be...
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VIDEO GAME: Sonic Frontiers (2022)

by benmweilertNo Comments
Sonic FrontiersYear: 2022Rating: E10+Time Played: 19.62 hours One of the big transformational shifts in video games lately has been the adaptation of longstanding franchises to make “open-world” versions of their IPs. While Breath of the Wild started this transition, it has been somewhat hit-or-miss for certain franchises. Super Mario Odyssey handled it well, but Pokémon Violet suffered from graphical limitations. Then there’s Sonic Frontiers, which did relatively well with making Sonic’s speed feel fun, but struggled with larger issues that crop up from moving to an open-world format. At the very least, the plot and cutscenes were well-written enough to drive the story forward. Just like when games shifted from 2D platforming to 3D space, there are a lot of different things to consider that might be overlooked because it’s a fundamental change to the core gameplay. Most Sonic games, even the 3D ones, have been fairly linear in their gameplay, so moving to open world needed lots of areas to give...
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MOVIE: Dog Man (2025)

by benmweilertNo Comments
Dog ManYear: 2025Rating: PGLength: 89 minutes / 1.48 hours While I’m no stranger to movies based on kids’ media, Dog Man (2025) was definitely not designed with adults in mind. Sure, there were a few jokes here and there that the adults would chuckle at, but the mind-numbing, blistering pace at which things happened and changed in this movie was honestly surprising. I get that kids’ attention spans are shrinking at an alarming rate, but when it’s up there flashing on the big screen, it’s hard not to notice. At the very least, I think my kids had fun, even if they were mostly indifferent about it. Despite what the intro to this review makes it sound like, I appreciated the Dog Man movie sticking to the aesthetic from the books. It still had that “high definition” veneer on everything, but the feel was very hand-drawn (similar to how The Peanuts Movie (2015) did it). And by sticking to somewhat lesser-known voice...
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BOOK: Parable of the Sower (1993)

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Parable of the SowerYear: 1993Author: Octavia E. ButlerLength: 722 minutes / 12.03 hours Even though it was written in the 90s, the premise of Parable of the Sower intrigued me because it was set in our near past of 2024. That its themes focused on the end of the world being brought about by climate change and wealth inequality was also eerily prescient enough for me to want to read how Octavia E. Butler thought things would play out in the “future.” Perhaps part of me wanted some amount of optimism; but ultimately, it’s just a depressing examination of current failures. The first half of Parable of the Sower really paints a picture of some scarily accurate predictions for the state of society today. Even if people deny the effects of climate change, this book shows an even more extreme world that could be in our future if we do nothing to reverse it. Of course, climate change is really the exacerbating...
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