Media diet for August 2025

Posted on 16 mins read View source

I watched 32h 11m of movies and 37h 34m of TV shows, a total of 69h 45m:

🎬 Movies

  • Scent of a Woman (1992) – ⭐️ 6/10
    • Bonkers how old Pacino already looked in this. To be fair, he was 52 – which is also bonkers. Anyway, it was highly recommended some place I don’t recall, and I hadn’t seen it before. It’s fine, but I would not highly recommend it. I had no idea it was famous for being Pacino’s Oscar performance, and it really shouldn’t be. He’s done much better work. The vibe of the entire movie is so 90s it hurts – the NYC energy, but mainly the climax where the Baird disciplinary committee gets a righteous lecture. And then everyone clapped! Literally. Too much eye-rolling for a movie as acclaimed as this. But it had its moments. Seeing “young” Bradley Whitford and Philip Seymour Hoffman was fun, and Chris O’Donnell was a blast from the past. I don’t even remember when I last saw him in anything.
  • Swordfish (2001) – ⭐️ 6/10
    • Apropos blast from the past! In my ongoing crusade against the ratings of my childhood, I revisited Swordfish1. I really liked this one when it came out, but of course it doesn’t hold up as well as the memories – downgraded from 8 to 6. That’s still pretty high for how dumb all the computer stuff in this movie is. But the action and story kinda manage to entertain. Smutty detail: I must have watched it at least twice back in the day (as was common before the age of being drowned in “content”). I still remember when I realized that I had missed a crucial detail on my first watch: During the “show me what you got” hacker test that Hugh Jackman’s character has to perform, the girl is giving him head! No way, so edgy! (A blow job interview, if you will.)
  • Death of a Unicorn (2025) – ⭐️ 5/10
    • Meh. Not awful, but the movie should have decided what it wanted to be. Horror or not? Comedy? Satire? It ended up not being great at any of it, despite a fairly solid premise. (Meta: It’s funny that within the same year I came across two pieces of media that heavily rely on the “Unicorns are actually evil monsters” theory – the other being the Equoid short story from The Laundry Files back in March, which I didn’t like very much.)
  • Superman (2025) – ⭐️ 3/10
    • Ouch, that was a lot worse than I expected. I really liked how the movie sets things up during the first sixty seconds, but as soon as it actually started there was almost nothing that didn’t make me roll my eyes. One of the very first scenes has Superman needing to get somewhere as quickly as possible – so he starts flying. Fast. Cool. Super! He’s speeding low across the ground, going towards a small cliff-side. Right before crashing into it he takes a turn, now flying along the cliffs, doing sick maneuvers through the terrain. And then… does another turn, away from the cliffs. So… he was going in the wrong direction initially? I rewatched this scene to make sure I wasn’t hallucinating, but to me it’s a pretty glaring editing error. People will bring their usual idiotic “It’s a movie to turn your brain off, d’uh!!” argument for things like that… but it’s not like I was watching out for this. I noticed it despite my brain being turned off. I’m not complaining that Superman is flying – that’d be silly. I’m complaining that the movie was edited in a way that makes it look like Superman, in a situation of great urgency, is not taking the fastest path from A to B.
      Moving on: None of the cast was remarkable in any way, there was little to no chemistry between any characters. While I understand (appreciate, even!) the desire to skip over half a dozen of “origin story” movies, there was way too much stuffed into this movie. There was easily enough material for three movies, so none of the plot lines had enough room to breathe. I’ve seen praise for Luthor being very comic-accurate, which I can’t judge – but everything about him in this movie seemed extremely stupid to me. A database of extremely specific (counter)moves for a remote-controlled robot to defeat Superman by Luthor shouting their IDs into a control-room of nerds who then push some buttons to perform the correct move? That is the dumbest shit I have ever heard, the input lag on that has to be worse than GeForce Now via Starlink. Speaking of villain technology, I also disliked how the movie approached politics. I think you need to either ignore the current insanity, or portray it more accurately. It feels tone-deaf to me to have versions of the ridiculous clowns that currently drive the planet into the abyss, but then make it a major plot point that they’re facing a setback from publicly revealed corruption – as if that was still a thing that actually happens.
      It’s a shame, because there were a few things to like: John Cena’s couple of seconds, and Nathan Fillion was also good. I found the brief glimpse at Supergirl somewhat intriguing. And I am all for the not-so-gritty approach. Despite all my misgivings, I do commend the film for its core message: Kindness is punk af.
  • Mission: Impossible (1996) – ⭐️ 8/10
  • Mission: Impossible II (2000) – ⭐️ 3/10
  • Mission: Impossible III (2006) – ⭐️ 6/10
  • Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol (2011) – ⭐️ 6/10
  • Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation (2015) – ⭐️ 7/10
  • Mission: Impossible - Fallout (2018) – ⭐️ 4/10
  • Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning Part One (2023) – ⭐️ 4/10
  • Mission: Impossible - The Final Reckoning (2025) – ⭐️ 4/10
  • The Abyss (1989) – ⭐️ 8/10
    • Finally followed up on my plan from May to watch the Special Edition. I did indeed like that even better, updating the rating from 7 to 8. It’s almost half an hour longer and changes the movie notably. Most characters benefit from a fair bit of extra development, and I think the ending works a lot better. Despite having seen it just a few months ago, the intensity that Cameron managed to craft drew me right back in, and Harris’ performance is just out of this world.
  • Stretch (2014) – ⭐️ 3/10
    • I forgot why I added this to my watchlist… and will soon forget I watched it. Odd choice for Pine. Fun cast and cameos, but too weird – not in a good way.

🎤 Standup

  • Marc Maron: Panicked (2025) – ⭐️ 6/10
    • Pretty good. I got tired of his podcast many, many years ago, and even while I was listening it was for the guests rather than his antics. But I still kinda like the dude, heart seems ultimately in the right place. I thought the r-word moment early in the show was really well done – I wish he hadn’t followed it up with this tired “Liberals are not fun” shtick later on, to me that weakened the impact. Still, overall entertaining (and frustratingly relatable).
      I also enjoyed his fury when speaking with Howie Mandel, Conan catching up with him, and listened to Pod Save America for the first time as he was on.

🎸 Concerts

  • Queens of the Stone Age: Alive in the Catacombs (2025)
    • Bit of a stretch to call this a concert. It was… fine? This was not really what I want/expect from a QOTSA performance, but I suppose that’s on me for not informing myself about what this was beforehand. It was certainly interesting and really enjoyable regardless… but I had to follow it up with listening to a couple of old (early 2000s) concert recordings with the oomph that I desired.

📺 TV Shows

  • Rick and Morty – S08 (10 episodes with 3h 47m)
    • I was arguing (tangentially) about R&M with my brother just last month: While I completely agree that the fan base can be more than just a little annoying, I still enjoy the show – and I feel that art is not (always?) responsible for its consumers. Regardless of that, I also felt that the show’s quality did not decline nearly as much as a lot of people say – some people seem to have rose-tinted glasses about the earlier seasons, which also had duds.
      That said, this was by far the weakest season I remember so far. The sixth episode (The CuRicksous Case of Bethajmin Button) was the first one where I actually laughed out loud: The double screaming of the two little Beths was just perfect. But other than that – way too much reliance on gross-out violence for no good reason, and way too little progress in the overarching plot. A good one-off episode is always fine, but the heart of R&M is the character development and family time that comes from the larger story.
  • Oliver Stone’s Untold History of the US – Miniseries (10 episodes with 9h 40m)
    • Not terribly “untold” to me – which is easy to say from a 2025 perspective, but I think even back when this came out I was aware of most of these things. Kinda surprising given how much I didn’t care for history back in school, though I’ve grown a lot more interested in the past two decades. Some things (creation of IMF etc.) that would otherwise have been new I had “recently” heard about in The Shock Doctrine. The most unexpected learning for me was what Oliver Stone looks like – he did a “talk into the camera” introductory speech.
  • South Park – S27: E02, E03 (2 episodes with 46m)
    • Their weird movies/specials deal with Paramount+ has always annoyed me due to how chaotic the publishing of new material had become. I’m not even sure I’ve seen the latest special yet. And now even the “normal” seasons aren’t really normal anymore either, sigh. Fairly good episodes so far, though.
  • It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia – S17 (8 episodes with 3h 7m)
    • Every new season of IASIP I worry that this will be the one they drop the ball, but so far they never did. Not all episodes are amazing, but every season has a couple of bangers that make me laugh out loud like few other things. I’d be perfectly fine if they ended it next season on a high note, though.
  • Adolescence – Miniseries (4 episodes with 3h 52m)
    • Good, but the one-take aspect felt a bit overhyped and gimmicky. I don’t think this would have been any worse without it. Stephen Graham’s performance was by far the best part of this for me.
  • The Jinx: The Life and Deaths of Robert Durst – S02 (6 episodes with 5h 19m)
    • When this second season was announced, I knew it could never be as good as the first one. I was correct. This review says it all.
  • Scavengers Reign – Miniseries (12 episodes with 5h 2m)
    • I had saved this for two reasons: 1) Talk of a possible season two. 2) People praised it over the moon. So I expected this to be transcendentally great. It was crap, I hated almost every minute of it. Mind-boggling to me that someone could want more. This must be how people feel for whom 2001 doesn’t work.

💬 Late Night & Talk Shows

  • Last Week Tonight with John Oliver
    • August 3, 2025: Deferred Prosecution Agreements
    • August 10, 2025: Deportation Promise
    • August 17, 2025: Make America Healthy Again
      • Noooo, another summer break until mid-September. 😭 I recently watched him on Monica Lewinsky’s podcast and quite enjoyed their conversation.
  • Saturday Night Live
    • SNL50: The Homecoming Concert
      • A bit late catching up on this one – fairly entertaining, opening with Soul Man and closing with Seven Nation Army is solid. (Watching this also reminded me to finally watch the latest installment of the only other SNL content I still watch regularly – excellent as always.)
  • Charlie Rose
    • John Oliver
      • An old interview from 2013, the summer when he hosted The Daily Show.2

🎧 Music

I scrobbled 1252 tracks on 28 days in August 2025:

🎶 Top 10 Tracks

  1. Hilltop Hoods – Don’t Happy, Be Worry (15 plays)
  2. Hilltop Hoods – Laced Up (13 plays)
  3. Hilltop Hoods – The Omelette (13 plays)
  4. Hilltop Hoods – Naked (13 plays)
  5. Hilltop Hoods – Fall From The Light (feat. Nyassa) (13 plays)
  6. Hilltop Hoods – Rage Against The Fatigue (12 plays)
  7. Hilltop Hoods – Get Well Soon (feat. SIX60) (12 plays)
  8. Hilltop Hoods – The Gift (feat. Marlon) (12 plays)
  9. Hilltop Hoods – Never Coming Home (feat. SIX60) (12 plays)
  10. Hilltop Hoods – The Moth (feat. Nyassa) (11 plays)

Well, what can I say – the new HTH album is good! 🎉
I listened to it five times in a row and never felt like skipping any of the songs. Don’t Happy, Be Worry remains the highlight to me – in fact, HTH almost always pick the tracks that I like best as singles. That isn’t the case with all artists, some of them have no taste when it comes to their own work! I guess this explains why I keep enjoying them so much even 20+ years after discovering them.

August delivered twice: The Hives Forever Forever The Hives is also a solid album – the top ten above would look a bit different had it released earlier in the month.

🧑‍🎤 Top 10 Artists

  1. Hilltop Hoods (190 plays)
  2. Die Ärzte (43 plays)
  3. The Hives (43 plays)
  4. Queens of the Stone Age (40 plays)
  5. Foo Fighters (37 plays)
  6. Weezer (29 plays)
  7. NOFX (25 plays)
  8. Ramin Djawadi (19 plays)
  9. Fettes Brot (18 plays)
  10. The Offspring (18 plays)

📚 Books

After really enjoying the eighth book as well I was wondering if sunk cost fallacy was clouding my judgement, or if I just enjoy anything once I’ve gotten used enough to it. (I don’t think so, given that I can play a game for 100+ hours and still not enjoy it.)

The stakes are getting higher and higher, but so far it hasn’t crossed over into complete absurdity. Book eight ends with quite the shake-up, so during book nine I began to wonder if this series is actually going to stick the landing or not. That’s when I realized I had somehow managed to freaking do it again: I started a series that is two decades old and not actually finished yet. And that is despite my earlier praise for the author maintaining a continuity-overview on his website. It sounds a bit silly, but there is some complexity to how the series is structured.

As it turns out, this ninth book is actually the last one I’ll be reading for now. While there are still three more books published already, it sounds like they are really more “just in the same universe” but separate. A final(?) book that is more directly connected to the nine I have read so far is scheduled for release in January 2026.

While digging into all this I read a few more posts on the author’s blog, and I appreciate how much insight Charles Stross gives into his process. One thing that stood out to me from the ninth book was how uncomfortably well its ridiculous fantasy premise works as a metaphor for the endless car crash that is currently unfolding in the real world. It was released in 2018, and Stross posted what he calls a “crib sheet” for it in 2021. To summarize: He originally wrote the book in 2015/2016, and then felt the need to rewrite it as reality was getting stranger than fiction with Brexit and Trump’s first win. With that in mind it isn’t terribly surprising that the plot often felt like direct commentary on what is happening during the second term, because reality continues to outpace fiction when it comes to strangeness.

Fun fact: I switched to KOReader (on my Kobo Libra 2, the perfect eReader hardware) in early February, right in the middle of the series’ first entry. It’s almost September now, so for more than half a year I have been reading nothing but The Laundry Files. I’ll miss it, but am also pretty excited for something new!

🎙️ Podcasts

I listened to 18 episodes across 7 podcasts in August 2025:

🎮 Games

I played 11 different games for a total of 59.9 hours in August 2025:

Sadly I didn’t find time to incorporate achievement information into my automated tooling for these posts yet. In all but three of the titles above I managed to reach 100% of the achievements this month. Me and my brother did a couple of sessions where we cleared out some remaining co-op achievements in Breakout, Hot Wheels (both terrible games) and It Takes Two (a masterpiece).
In N++ I will likely never reach 100% but always enjoy making some progress. Fieldrunners is similar, though I’m confident about reaching 100% there some day.

Good month – Chameleon Run, Hue and INSIDE are all titles I had played at least a bit of on other platforms before, so I already knew that I’d most likely enjoy them.

  1. Fun fact, apparently Germans are too dumb for English movie titles that are just a single complicated word. The German title for Swordfish is Password: Swordfish – literally, not translated! I wasn’t even aware that for Sinners they changed the title to Blood + Sinners (again, the German title is those two English words, not the German translation of them!) until my brother asked me if I got the title wrong. Another example I’ll never forget is Taken, which for some fucking reason they released as 96 Hours in Germany. ↩︎ ↩︎

  2. Depressingly, the links for his best bit from that era are now broken. ↩︎