Media diet for February 2025

Posted on 6 mins read View source

I watched 7h 8m of movies and 61h 58m of TV shows, a total of 69h 6m:

🎬 Movies

  • Sanctuary (2023) – ⭐️ 6/10
    • Always up for a BDSM-themed movie. This could have been much better, but it wasn’t bad – I was torn between 5 and 6 as it had potential that ultimately didn’t really go anywhere. Style over substance, but the style was pretty.
  • Brick (2006) – ⭐️ 4/10
    • Surprised I didn’t like this – I am still in love with JGL1 and I mostly dig Rian Johnson’s work. Maybe I went in with the wrong expectations, I didn’t really know it was supposed to be (partly, at least) a spoof.
  • Megalopolis (2024) – ⭐️ 3/10
    • I kinda respect when someone as accomplished as Coppola does whatever the fuck they want to. I just wish the result would actually resonate with me.
  • Watchmen: Chapter I (2024) – ⭐️ 6/10

📺 TV Shows

  • Arrested Development – S01 from S01E16, S02, S03, S04, S05 (69 episodes with 30h 23m)
    • The Netflix seasons really don’t hold up nearly as well as the original run. “There’s always money in the banana stand” and “No touching!” will probably forever remain my favorite lines/jokes – though the 10$ banana is a classic as well, of course.
  • Mo – Both seasons (16 episodes with 7h 27m)
    • Beautiful from start to finish. A bit ridiculous and over the top at times? Sure. But it’s been a while since I saw something with this much heart, hope and love in it. A few weeks before watching the show, I actually saw the titular Mo Amer on The Daily Show because of the second and final season airing – but I must admit it didn’t really catch my attention. My girlfriend then recommended it completely independently, and only during the first episode did I realize that this was the thing I had seen promoted on the Daily Show earlier.
  • Say Nothing – Miniseries (9 episodes with 6h 37m)
    • The main thing I took away from this was one kick-ass new earworm from the score: If you look down a bit, you’ll see that Seanchaí dominated my listening habits as soon as I discovered it thanks to this show. The Troubles always fascinated me, and this show was very well done – but my usual reservations about historical dramas/thrillers apply to it as well.
  • The Responder – Both seasons (10 episodes with 9h 34m)
    • Martin Freeman is brilliant, even more so than usual, in this. But it would have needed a stronger story to truly shine, unfortunately.

💬 Late Night

  • Saturday Night Live
    • SNL50: The Anniversary Special
      • Oddly this felt much less special than the 40th anniversary special. Writing this sentence made me feel like the oldest person on the planet.
  • Last Week Tonight with John Oliver
    • February 16, 2025: Trump 2.0
    • February 23, 2025: Facebook
    • I’m so happy John is back, I almost cried. I don’t know why, but his presence gives me solace like few other things these days. While the show was off the air, I binged clips of him as a guest on various late night shows and he is just such a delight. I also really enjoyed this interview.
  • The Daily Show
    • January 13, 2025 - Mark Carney
    • January 20, 2025 - Brooke Harrington
    • January 27, 2025 - Royal Ramey
    • February 3, 2025 - Mo Amer
    • February 10, 2025 - David Remnick
    • February 24, 2025 - Rupa Bhattacharyya

🎧 Music

I scrobbled 898 tracks on 22 days in February 2025:

🎶 Top 10 Tracks

  1. The Scratch – Seanchaí (Live) (79 plays)
  • As mentioned above, my first amazing new discovery of the year. Give the live versions that are up on YouTube a go as well, it’s even more energetic. The rest of the album hasn’t clicked for me yet, but I’ll keep it in the library for now. I listened to the song on one-repeat again while typing most of this post. 🤘
  1. Elastica – Connection (8 plays)
  2. Le Destroy & The Red Glare – PAIN (6 plays)
  3. Jain – Makeba (6 plays)
  4. Pharrell Williams – Double Life (From “Despicable Me 4”) (6 plays)
  5. Die Antwoord – Baby’s on Fire (6 plays)
  6. OMC – How Bizarre (6 plays)
  7. Kendrick Lamar – Not Like Us (6 plays)
  8. Tom Petty – Love Is A Long Road (6 plays)
  9. George Harrison – Got My Mind Set on You (5 plays)

🧑‍🎤 Top 10 Artists

  1. Foo Fighters (106 plays)
  2. The Scratch (83 plays)
  3. Sportfreunde Stiller (66 plays)
  4. Bear McCreary (55 plays)
  5. Eagles of Death Metal (43 plays)
  6. The Hives (28 plays)
  7. Donots (27 plays)
  8. Daft Punk (23 plays)
  9. The White Stripes (22 plays)
  10. Peter Fox & Cold Steel (19 plays)

📚 Books

  • Snow Crash – ⭐️ 3/5
    • Wow, a Neal Stephenson book I didn’t hate! Kidding – actually I only read two others: Reamde, which was a deeply unpleasant experience and one of the first times I actively noticed just how much I can hate the specific way someone writes, and Seveneves, which I thoroughly enjoyed the first part of but didn’t care much for the ending. I still disliked Stephenson’s style in Snow Crash, but the story/world was interesting enough to keep me engaged.
  • The Atrocity Archives [Laundry Files #1] – ⭐️ 3/5
    • James Bond meets The Office with a (very, to my disliking) large blob of Lovecraft. It must have been over a decade since a friend recommended this series to me. It has more than ten novels by now, so it’s quite daunting – I usually get through a bit more than one novel per month, so (unless I truly hate it) this will be what I’m reading for most of the year. This first part was solid, but nothing extraordinary.
  • The Concrete Jungle [Laundry Files #1.5] – ⭐️ 3/5

🎙️ Podcasts

I listened to 21 episodes across 5 podcasts in February 2025:

I wrote and backdated this post after I built my automated media diet tooling. Published on 2025-05-28.

  1. I mean, come on. ↩︎