Sorcery 101 turned 20 on May 12th. And if you don’t follow me on Blusky you might have missed that everything in my store is currently 20% off with the code Happy Birthday. It is running until my birthday June 10th.
I’m not doing a whole lot publicly this month. I’m having eye surgery on June 20th, I’m prepping for that.
I’ll still do my usual stream though.
- Tuesday at 8pm – 10pm PST – Art times
- Wednesday at 6pm – 8pm PST – Art times
- Thursday at 3pm – 4pm PST – Wolf & Bones Comic Club
- Thursday at 4pm – 6pm PST – Art times
- Sunday at 8pm – 10pm PST – Baldur’s Gate 3
All these streams will be on my twitch, so stop by!
Last month was pretty busy!
The big thing was the Sorcery 101 livestream. I recorded the whole thing (4 hours!) and it is on my youtube.
I also hosted to panels for the Nib and Ink fest. One is Having Fun With Backgrounds and the other is Alternative Careers in Comics. Both are on the Nib and Ink Fest youtube with the rest of the digital conventions panels. A lot of them are really good and you should check them out.
Like I mentioned above, I’m having surgery at the end of the month. So this month I’m mostly getting ahead on The City Between and my Seven Seas editing work.
Speaking of my Seven Seas work, later this month (June 24th) one of my favorite titles that I’ve edited while working there is coming out. Wolf’s Daughter: A Werewolf Tale is a quiet and subtle story of a teen girl who learns she is a werewolf. It explores how this discovery of her true identity helps her realize why she has felt disconnected from the future her mom is planning and pushing to her. I highly recommend you check it out.
So this month I started having movie afternoons where I make a point to watch movies I own but haven’t seen yet. Click here if you wanna join, it’s always Saturdays at noon PST. The first of which was Aliens. I had first Alien and all the sequels and prequels but had never seen Aliens. I enjoyed it but had have absorbed through cultural osmosis. The one thing that did surprise me was Hicks and Ripley’s relationship. I like that it was built on a mutual respect and class solidarity. I like when Ripley overrules Burke by pointing out Hicks has command now and it took Hicks a little bit surprised. I also thought Lance Henriksen was a good pick for Bishop. If I didn’t already know he was a good guy and had only seen the first Alien, I definitely would have assumed he’d turn on everyone. He is kinda creepy looking in a way to play into assuming he is a bad guy.
I also watched American Fiction. I grabbed it after it got an Oscar nomination but never found time to watch it until now. It wasn’t what I expected. The trailer for it made me think it would be funnier. But the trailer leaves out the more emotional plot line about his family dealing with grief. That gives it a sad edge that elevates the whole movie. At least in my mind it does. My favorite books, movies, and shows are ones that are both sad and funny at the same time. And American Fiction walks that line extremely well.
A movie that was what I expected was Death Becomes Her. It was campy and fun which I knew going in. I especially like the look of Isabella Rossellini’s character and her chippendale’s looking servants. The effects on Meryl Streep and Goldie Hawn’s fight were also on top of it.
I rotate my streaming services to save money and have had my Apple TV off since Severance Season 1 ended. But I recently turned it back on for Murderbot. I have been hearing good things about the books for awhile and the trailer sold me on needing to check it out. It exceeded my expectations. Alexander Skarsgård knocks it our of the park as the socially awkward Murderbot. I liked the first two episodes so much I ended up grabbing the audiobooks for the first two novellas because I NEEDED to know what happened next. The scientists that Murderbot protects are very charming. I like how they are understandably naive from Murderbot’s pov but are also clearly competent in their chosen field. I also like the attention to detail put into the show within a show. It looks ridiculous but in a way that makes Murderbot’s hyper-fixation on it believable. And the fake opening is on Youtube as well.
While I wait for new Murderbot episodes I caught up on Ted Lasso since I never saw its third season. Ted Lasso still leaned into that a show doesn’t have to be cruel to get a laugh. But it was kinda uneven in its last season. I did felt like it successfully wrapped up most of the character arcs. I think my favorite plot line was either the friendship budding between Roy and Jamie or Keeley winning over her very serious CFO.
I’ve watched a few youtube essays talking about the visuals of Blade Runner 2049. It is certainly breathtaking visually. But I kinda wish I didn’t know Denis Villeneuve was the director while watching it. I kept thinking about Broey Deschanel’s video about how he hates dialogue. Like for as beautiful as the movie is, it doesn’t have any icon lines like the original’s tears in the rain speech. I might have been more forgiving if I wasn’t thinking about Villeneuve’s dislike of dialogue. The movie mostly works because most of the cast are robots. Like the most interesting bit of dialogue is when the ad for Joi says some lines similar to K’s Joi. But like the words don’t matter, what matters is they are repeating. It is kinda a shame that the movie is ignoring on of the tools in it’s creative tool kit. I might have also been harder on it because the next movie I’m gonna mention uses everything it can to make a masterpiece.
I saved the best movie for last. Sinners blew me away. I went and preordered it as soon as I got home from the movie theater. During the Sorcery 101 anniversary stream, Jay Edidin and I talked about how I am frequently drawn to things that can only be the medium they are in. Sinners would fall into that. There is so much it is saying about music and how they connect communities. It is so tightly written and shot, that expanding it beyond a movie’s length would have diminishing. I’m probably being unfair to Bladerunner 2049 to judge it against Sinners just because I saw them so close together. But it is the perfect example of how the dialogue and the visuals work together along with every other piece of a movie. Disregarding any piece weakens the whole. Sinners is truly excellent and if you haven’t seen it yet, you should. As soon as my preorder arrives, I’m gonna rewatch it and listening to any director commentary on the bluray.
That’s it for this month! Thanks for your support. Fingers-crossed that my surgery goes smoothly.
