Media diet for May 2026

Posted on 14 mins read View source

I watched 18h 43m of movies and 13h 0m of TV shows, a total of 31h 43m:

🎬 Movies

  • Avatar: Fire and Ash (2025) – ⭐️ 3/10
    • Sometimes very pretty looking, but an offensively stupid “story” and insufferable characters made this even worse than the second movie – which in large parts it just repeated anyway. Good for Cameron if he enjoys making those, I just don’t get who enjoys watching them.
  • Mutiny on the Bounty (1935) – ⭐️ 4/10
    • I found this nowhere near as interesting or entertaining as the 1962 version from last month. I read high praise for Laughton’s Bligh, but for me personally he paled in comparison to Trevor Howard. I didn’t care much for Clark Gable either, and found myself rather confused by common criticisms against Brando’s portrayal of Fletcher. The ending of the 1962 film has its own problems, but the cheery “Look at the British navy being all forward-thinking!” aspect of this version didn’t sit right with me. Though it is interesting that a Hollywood movie at that time chose to portray the UK in this light – idealizing the past and glorifying their former masters just ~150 years after declaring independence. While similarly impressive in terms of production value (relative to when it was made), I have to admit that it was sometimes challenging to overlook the film’s age: theater-like cleanliness in close-up shots, and potato camera quality elsewhere. I have seen enough movies to know that technical details ultimately don’t matter much, so in the end I think this version just wasn’t for me.
  • Project Hail Mary (2026) – ⭐️ 6/10
    • I really, really enjoyed the book but always thought it would be significantly harder to adapt than The Martian (the magic of which already was tricky to put from the pages to the screen, but they mostly managed). And ever since I saw the first promotional photos of Gosling as the main character, I was terrified how this movie was going to turn out – he looked absolutely ridiculous. It’s hard to believe they actually went with a) that casting and b) that look, it seems like some cosmic prank. I adore Gosling, but what an absolute miscast (not from a business perspective, of course). Compared to the book, the film was indeed the piece of shit I expected. As a movie on its own, it was alright. Utterly gorgeous visuals, and it had some good character moments thanks to a decent cast overall. However, the goofy humor felt really out of place – I almost needed surgery to unroll my eyes after the “bowling at Home Depot” scene. Maybe the most painful thing to see was “An Amazon Company” under the MGM logo at the start – apparently nothing super new, but first time I recall seeing it myself.
  • The Super Mario Galaxy Movie (2026) – ⭐️ 3/10
    • Atrocious garbage, just like the first one. I had actually forgotten that Luigi was in that one already – all throughout the sequel I couldn’t stop thinking about how ridiculous it is that they literally just have Charlie Day read Luigi’s lines. Looking at my post from back then, I guess it was just as bad then. I wouldn’t even call this voice acting, it just sounds like a table read. The “story” in this movie is somewhere between non-existent and offensively stupid ret-con for anyone who actually does care a bit about “Mario lore”. The latter was never very consistent throughout the games either, so I don’t mind this aspect a lot – the bigger issue is that it’s barely even a movie. It’s more like a fever-dream of mildly related sequences, truly a movie for the TikTok generation. I don’t like the rendering style very much either, though it did have some pretty views. The animated Star Fox sequence was a visual highlight, the endless amount of references to the games was occasionally endearing, and I think one time I even almost laughed at a joke. What I hate most about these movies is how they bring out the “It’s just for kids!!” morons in droves – as if movies for kids shouldn’t have actual heart and soul, and at least the semblance of intelligence. Twelve years ago, the freaking LEGO movie of all things showed that you can do that while still producing future brand worshippers.
  • The Bounty (1984) – ⭐️ 6/10
    • And with this rewatch, my Mutiny-experience has concluded. I upgraded this from the 5/10 I gave it upon first watch back in 2018 – but it’s barely a 6. Compared to the ‘62 version I have many criticism, and even on its own merits I think it is rather flawed.1 For one, I found the 80s synth soundtrack very unfitting. It did add to the tension sometimes, but overall it just didn’t set the right mood for me. While Hopkins was by no means bad in the role, I still maintain that Trevor Howard is the best Bligh by a very wide margin. The 1984 script did worse in making me believe the character’s arc – he starts out too friendly and amicable, and turns mad too quickly and unreasonably.
      Oddly, the portrayal of the native Tahitians felt more racist and sexist to me than in the 1962 movie. I’m certainly not a prude or someone to complain about tits in a movie, and the reason 1962 didn’t also just have all the women run around completely topless was probably just the decency standards of its time. After all, the 1984 version is said to be the most historically accurate. I assume that’s mostly in reference to the circumstances of the mutiny and overall voyage, but it may apple to the depiction of the natives as well. Still, it was rather off-putting how the women were shown to throw themselves at the arriving sailors, well beyond the level of curiosity and flirtatiousness I recall from 1962. Having the king speak English himself rather than employing a translator, but then making him say “How is the great Captain Cookie” is also quite the choice.
      Besides Hopkins and Gibson the movie also features a very young Liam Neeson and Daniel Day-Lewis, plus Bernard Hill for good measure. Solid performances from that all-star cast and high overall production value made this enjoyable despite the flawed script and soundtrack.
  • Zootopia (2016) – ⭐️ 8/10
    • I cannot believe this movie is from ten years ago already – which is also when I first watched it. A remnant of the time before the beginning of the end, and a thoroughly good ride. Stacked voice cast, great world-building, lovable characters, and non-stop visual gags (like the zebra crossings on the street having actual zebra coat patterns) and witty writing (like “addressing the elephant in the room” taken literally). I’m glad this held up upon rewatching it before the sequel – it retains a strong 8/10 rating.
  • Zootopia 2 (2025) – ⭐️ 7/10
    • Despite Zootopia+ (see below) being mildly disappointing I still had high hopes and expectations for the proper feature-length sequel – and it delivered. The story isn’t quite at the level of part one, but otherwise this is more of the same in a good way. I think it also dialed up the gags, puns and references even further – one of my favorite details was a street sign saying “Gnu Jersey”, on screen for barely a second. Given how wildly successful the second film was both critically and commercially, I assume Zootopia will now be dying a long and painful franchise-death. But until that happens, I remain excited for a third movie – hopefully to be released before I turn 50.
  • Hoppers (2026) – ⭐️ 6/10
    • What the hell, there was not a single actual hopper in this movie! Dad jokes aside, this was another pretty decent animated movie to finish out the month. Mildly questionable overall message due to a severe lack of proper class-conscious squishing, but overall very entertaining thanks to a level of deranged jokes that was somewhat unexpected in a Pixar movie.

🤏 Short films

📺 TV Shows

  • The Boys – S05 starting from S05E06 (3 episodes with 3h 23m)
    • Aaaand done. The spin-off setup exciting final season has concluded. As expected, these last three episodes did nothing to turn things around. There simply was no pay-off for the confusingly pointless first half of the season. It was just a disappointing conclusion that only rehashed things the show had already explored long ago. Nothing unexpected, nothing felt like there was stakes that truly mattered, and a lot of “and then” writing. I suppose the unsurprising and stale nature of the ending could also be read as commentary, but given the weakness of the surface-level story I am not going to assume there’s much intentionality hiding underneath. It still had good zingers: my favorite line of the season was “The Taylor Sheridan AI wrote the thing, and it does not take notes.”, with the “Bro v. Wade” pun being a close second. But in the end this show will go down as a prime (ha!) example for living long enough to become the villain. Not that it was much of a hero in the first place.
  • Zootopia+ – Miniseries (6 episodes with 1h 6m)
    • Hmm, the runtime information that Trakt has here is incorrect – none of these minisodes was longer than 8 minutes – with a total runtime under 40 minutes for everything. Some episodes were kinda cute, but overall this was fairly meh. Some even hurt the overall world-building by adding things/explanations that don’t fit the established world and tone.

💬 Late Night & Talk Shows

  • Last Week Tonight with John Oliver
    • May 3, 2026: Gas Station Drugs
    • May 10, 2026: Shadow Docket
    • May 17, 2026: Structured Settlements
  • The Daily Show
    • May 4, 2026 - Sherrilyn Ifill
    • May 11, 2026 - Josh Tyrangiel
    • May 18, 2026 - Soumaya Keynes & Chad P. Bown
  • The Late Show with Stephen Colbert
    • Barack Obama
    • David Letterman, the Strokes
    • The Worst of “The Late Show With Stephen Colbert” (Not A Clip Show!)
    • Jon Stewart, Steven Spielberg, David Byrne
    • Bruce Springsteen
    • Hello Goodbye
      • I never warmed up to The Colbert Report. I think I mainly didn’t like that it engaged with awful people, even when it was to dunk on them. To me, reporting on awful people (aka The Daily Show) is different. The Late Show also was never really my thing, neither Letterman nor Colbert – too boring/mainstream, though that sounds a lot more edgy than I mean it. But I always liked Stephen Colbert as a correspondent2 and person. And through the last decade I watched and enjoyed plenty of his interviews on the show via clips on YouTube. Now that not only his tenure but the entire show came to an end as the US continues its march into totalitarianism, I wanted to see the last week in full. This all made me think back to Conan’s final week on The Tonight Show, which was interesting to observe for different reasons. I enjoyed learning about Burning Down the House through third-to-last musical guest David Byrne, and Hello Goodbye as the closing song and moment was perfect – performed by McCartney back at the place where it all began, and with Jon Batiste back one last time. I didn’t think about it in this sense beforehand because “it’s just a talk show”, but it was one of the better series finales I’ve seen in a while. The bonus episode a day later was pretty good as well – who knew Jack White was such a good straight man!

🎧 Music

I scrobbled 1115 tracks on 29 days in May 2026:

🎶 Top 10 Tracks

  1. Talking Heads – Burning Down the House (9 plays)
  2. Seeed – Dancehall Caballeros (7 plays)
  3. Seeed – Schwinger (7 plays)
  4. Seeed – Stand Up (7 plays)
  5. Seeed – Wir sind Seeed (Reeemix) (7 plays)
  6. Seeed – Dickes B (6 plays)
  7. Seeed – Music Monks (6 plays)
  8. Seeed – Aufstehn (6 plays)
  9. Limp Bizkit – Break Stuff (5 plays)
  10. Limp Bizkit – Just Like This (5 plays)

🧑‍🎤 Top 10 Artists

  1. Seeed (127 plays)
  2. Limp Bizkit (82 plays)
  3. Peter Fox (32 plays)
  4. NOFX (31 plays)
  5. Die Ärzte (30 plays)
  6. Weezer (20 plays)
  7. Daft Punk (19 plays)
  8. Fettes Brot (18 plays)
  9. Ramin Djawadi (17 plays)
  10. P!nk (15 plays)

📚 Books

  • 📘 Magic for Liars – ⭐️ 4/5
    • This was extremely entertaining! I don’t remember where I originally heard of this book, so I went in almost entirely blind. I mostly picked it as an intentionally short interlude that doesn’t ask for much commitment – after just having finished the Dublin Murder Squad and The Laundry Files series. It served that purpose perfectly, but it still got me hooked good. Every day I was looking forward to finding out what happens next once I finally hopped into bed for my daily dose of reading. I don’t even want to know how late it was on the day I finished the story. Not a perfect ending or high literature, but somewhat-grounded-magic + fucked up family dynamics + whodunnit is a winning combination for me. More please!

🎙️ Podcasts

I listened to 16 episodes across 4 podcasts in May 2026:

🎮 Games

I played 5 different games for a total of 64.0 hours in May 2026.

  • Hollow Knight
    • Played for 38.1 hours across 18 days. Unlocked 37 new achievements this month, now at 57/63 total. Haven’t written a review yet.
    • Holy moly, that was some challenging shit I had left over from my original playthrough back in 2019. But it was (mostly) fun to git gud again and nail (ha!) those bosses. Not sure if I will go for the remaining achievements, as they’re mostly speedrun-related.
  • Marvel’s Spider-Man: Miles Morales
    • 🏆 Began and finished the entire game this month, unlocking all 50 achievements in 13.6 hours across 7 days. Haven’t written a review yet.
  • Marvel’s Spider-Man Remastered
    • 🏆 Finished this up in 9.9 hours across 2 days, unlocking all remaining 38 (of 78) achievements. Haven’t written a review yet.
    • I actually have written a review – but not on Steam where the automation grabs the information from. Back when I first played this on the Playstation I was in my cringe brief German blogging phase and 🇩🇪 wrote about the game. It’s still great! I hope I’ll find some time to get the review situation sorted out – Steam shouldn’t be the single source of truth, the blog should be.
  • Rocket League
    • Played 1.3 more hours, already unlocked all 88 achievements in the past. I had already written my 👍 review (21 words) back on 2022-09-03.
  • Keep Talking and Nobody Explodes
    • Played for 1.1 hours. Unlocked no new achievements, still at 6/10 total. Haven’t written a review yet.

  1. And it appears Hopkins himself would agree! ↩︎

  2. Speaking of Daily Show correspondents, Ronny Chieng gave an absolute banger speech recently. ↩︎