Media diet for July 2025

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I watched 10h 7m of movies and 4h 6m of TV shows, a total of 14h 13m:

🎬 Movies

  • Thunderbolts* (2025) – ⭐️ 4/10
    • Wow, a Marvel movie that wasn’t offensively bad! Now they’ll just need to figure out how to make it about people or a story that I care about.
  • From Dusk Till Dawn (1996) – ⭐️ 6/10
    • Downgraded from 7/10, and I was really not sure if 5 or 6 is more adequate. Ultimately I’d say it is above average (which would be 5.5) entertaining, but it’s a weak 6. When I first (and last) watched this as a teenager, I was probably still watching dubbed movies. The 7/10 rating was from my initial data-backfilling upon joining Trakt all the way back in 2008 – so it was indicative of what I then guessed/remembered about how well teenage me had liked the movie. Anyway, I was curious to revisit this movie after seeing something that reminded me of it last month. It didn’t age well in certain aspects – the effects mostly are comically bad, though they do fit the B-movie vibe of the second half. Seeing Tarantino suck on feet isn’t great. There’s some weird casting and acting, but some is also pretty decent. Ultimately I think this movie works much better upon first viewing (and I was lucky enough to go in blind back then). On the rewatch I enjoyed it more through a “historian lens” than for what made it so unique the first time around. (I’m intentionally beating around the bush with my wording, which seems silly given that the official plot synopsis doesn’t even bother.) The final shot of the movie is still really iconic, though – and interesting enough that I’m considering the TV show now.
  • Ballerina (2025) – ⭐️ 5/10
    • Not nearly as garbage as I expected it to be, but certainly just as unnecessary as the sequels. While I’ve rated those both above 5, I still maintain that they should never have been made. I long for more of a good thing as much as anyone else, but this fucking franchise fetish has to end.1
  • Kill Bill: Vol. 1 (2003) – ⭐️ 6/10
    • I was in the mood for revisiting some more Tarantino, and it was fascinating how badly I remembered many details. For example, I was completely surprised that Volume 1 has a pretty long sequence that’s entirely animated. I’d also have sworn that Battle Without Honor or Humanity is the score for the restaurant fight, when it actually is “just” a character intro song a fair bit before that scene. Overall I didn’t enjoy this as much as I apparently did in the past – updating my rating from 8 to 6.
  • Kill Bill: Vol. 2 (2004) – ⭐️ 7/10
    • Down from 8/10 as well, but I liked the second part better. To me that is entirely logical, given that it’s where the story not only concludes but starts to make sense. Most seem to prefer the first part because of the action, but I don’t care all that much for what Tarantino was paying hommage to in it. Volume 2 on the other hand has more Michael Madsen (RIP!) and the Pai Mei training chapter. Even before reading up on The Whole Bloody Affair I was thinking that the movie would probably work best if never split up into two parts – I’d give it another go if that cut ever is released more widely.

📺 TV Shows

  • South Park – S27E01 (1 episodes with 23m)
    • Cool, but where was that spirit a god damn decade ago when it was already obvious to anyone with two brain cells where this would all lead to?

💬 Late Night

  • Last Week Tonight with John Oliver
    • July 27, 2025: Gang Databases
      • Almost the entire month without new shows, that was rough. I said it before, but I take so much solace from John Oliver. While Last Week Tonight is off the air I often look for guest appearances, his visits to Late Night with Seth Meyers are always delightful.
  • The Daily Show
    • July 7, 2025 - Steve Kroft
    • July 14, 2025 - Kyla Scanlon
    • July 21, 2025 - Dr. Patrick Soon-Shiong
    • July 28, 2025 - Peter Beinart

🎧 Music

I scrobbled 1197 tracks on 26 days in July 2025:

🎶 Top 10 Tracks

  1. Fettes Brot – Da Draussen (6 plays)
  2. Eagles of Death Metal – Speaking in Tongues (6 plays)
  3. Die Ärzte – Super Drei (5 plays)
  4. Farin Urlaub Racing Team – Am Strand (4 plays)
  5. Peter Fox & Cold Steel – Lok auf 2 Beinen (4 plays)
  6. The Offspring – L.A.P.D. (4 plays)
  7. Hilltop Hoods – Don’t Happy, Be Worry (4 plays)
  8. The Offspring – Beheaded (4 plays)
  9. Drapht – Jimmy Recard (4 plays)
  10. Public Enemy – Harder Than You Think (4 plays)

🧑‍🎤 Top 10 Artists

  1. Die Ärzte (65 plays)
  2. Blumentopf (51 plays)
  3. Fettes Brot (42 plays)
  4. Sportfreunde Stiller (27 plays)
  5. Jan Delay (26 plays)
  6. Beatsteaks (26 plays)
  7. Eagles of Death Metal (24 plays)
  8. Beastie Boys (24 plays)
  9. The Offspring (23 plays)
  10. Eminem (22 plays)

📚 Books

My worries about not enjoying the seventh novel much due to being designated as an easy entry-point for new readers of the series were unnecessary. While there were aspects I didn’t enjoy much, they had nothing to do with that. (Briefly: A bit too much time spent on alternate-world-building.) But besides that I thoroughly enjoyed it, maybe even more so than the last main entry – despite pulling the same I-usually-do-not-like-this thing. It’s interesting to see the author play with different genres/pastiches throughout the series, and finding out which ones work best for me.

🎙️ Podcasts

I listened to 21 episodes across 6 podcasts in July 2025:

🎮 Games

I played 5 different games for a total of 77.1 hours in July 2025:

Pretty solid progress – can’t believe I completed JC2 and JC3 in the same month. JC3 was “just” the final 30% after I had abandoned the game some time in 2017 – the total playtime for JC3 is almost 90h. JC2 is only a bit over 45h in JC2, which almost entirely happened this month. Both solid titles that mostly hold up.
Afterwards I decided to finally try to power through the utter disappointment that Hot Wheels Unleashed turned out to be. I was mentally exhausted from work more often than usual this month, so doing brain-dead easy and boring races while rewatching old Hermitcraft episodes was a good way to come down.

  1. I can’t help but think back to the equally prescient and depressing You Won’t Live to See the Final Star Wars Movie article. ↩︎

  2. For an extensive summary, see Michael Tsai’s post. His usual way of maintaining a meticulous update history helped keeping up with all the madness. ↩︎