What I'm Watching

This is a monthly digest capturing all the movies and TV I’ve watched in the last month, as well as the music I am listening to. It wasn’t going to happen this month as I was supposed to be in Japan right now. So it will be next month that it won’t happen.

Movies I’ve Watched:

• 28 Years Later (2025): What a weird movie.

• Die Abenteuer des Prinzen Achmed (1926): This is not, as I understand it, the first animated feature film. As far as I know, it’s the third. But it’s the oldest surviving animated feature, as the two others that preceded it have both been lost.

• Ballerina (2025): I watched this before I got around to watching John Wick 3, shock, horror.

• Kimi no Na wa. (2016): The kind of fantasy I really don’t have time for. I don’t really care for stories like this. I don’t believe in stuff like this and I’m not captivated by such stories even though I do not believe. Anime, by the way.

• Titan: The OceanGate Disaster (2025): A decent documentary about what happened. You’ll never guess…

TV I’m Watching:

• Adventure Time (2010): I don’t watch a lot of children’s television, for obvious reasons. But I have seen few shows as relentlessly creative as Adventure Time. The rough outlines of each story are pretty similar from one to the other, and with other plots of children’s shows with adventure themes – and, arguably, family sitcoms as well. But the world of Adventure Time is one of endless adventure and endless new creatures and worlds simply because the people behind the show have decided that animation lets them do whatever they want. And so they do.

• Alien: Earth (2025): If there’s one movie franchise that didn’t need a TV show, it’s Alien. However, I had faith in Noah Hawley from Fargo. So I decided to go ahead. But this is a frustrating show. It looks fantastic and has some pretty compelling moments. It is also so typically of our era of storytelling, but telling you why is a major spoiler. I don’t know that I will watch season 2.

• Baseball: The Blue Jays are in the ACLS for the first time in 9 years so I’m glad I started paying some attention earlier in the season.

• Taskmaster: The original is back for its 20th season.

• We Never Stop (202?): The Chinese version of Physical 100 is better than the Japanese version (Final Draft). But we’re watching it with bad subtitles so it is also far goofier. There’s definitely some kind of perfect version of this show that combines the best of all three versions and eliminates the worst of all three.

Music I’m Listening to:

• Crumb: Black Angels (1970): Pretty avant garde. Not for everyone.

• Shane Ghostkeeper: Songs for My People (2023): Country.

• Haydn: Variations in F minor (1793): Widely considered to be the best piece of its type between Bach’s and Beethoven’s keyboard variations.

• Jerry Lee Lewis: Live at the Star Club, Hamburg (1964): There are boomer music critics who will tell you that this album by The Killer is the greatest live (rock) album of all time. It might have been in 1964 but things have changed.

• Liszt: Années de pèlerinage (1842): A piano cycle.

• Mahler: Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen (1885): A song cycle.

• Messiaen: Turangalîla-Symphonie (1948): His only symphony. Featuring the ondes Martenot!

• Willie Nelson: Red Headed Stranger (1975): A concept album not entirely written by one person is kind of weird to me. But I guess a country concept album is also weird.

• Nyssa: Shake Me Where I’m Foolish (2023): Sort of garage-y singer songwriter.

• Joe Policastro Trio: Mending Wall (2025): Bop/post-bop guitar trio covers of music from multiple different genres. That is their MO, but I always enjoy them.

• Schubert: “Trout” concerto (1819): I think this is one of his most famous concertos.

• Schumann: Frauenliebe und leben (1840): A song cycle.

• Virgil Shaw: Alt country singer-songwriter from San Francisco.

  • Live at the Great American Music Hall [2004] (2009): His only live album that I’m aware of. A trio with guitar organ and drums. Less quirky than the studio album he released right before he recorded this.

  • (w/ The Killer Views): New Mid City (2013): Recording with a proper band makes his arrangements a little less quirky.

• Richard Strauss: Don Juan (1888): I was a little surprised at how high Romantic this sounded.

• James Blood Ulmer: Odyssey (1983): A quirky jazz guitarist with fronting an unlikely trio - violin instead of bass.

• Verdi: Rigoletto (1851): I much prefer Puccini.