Media diet for June 2026

Posted on 9 mins read View source

I watched 3h 52m of movies and 28h 6m of TV shows, a total of 31h 58m:

🎬 Movies

  • Kingdom of Heaven (2005) – ⭐️ 6/10
    • It’s been at least a decade since I’ve been meaning to rewatch this film. I originally watched it in the year it was released – the original cut, and while I remember absolutely nothing of that experience anymore, I rated it as a 3/10 back when I initially set up my Trakt profile a few years later. Around that time I had probably already heard that the Director’s Cut is a completely different – and supposedly good – movie, given that it came just half a year after the theatrical version. Last year it got a 4K re-release, so I finally decided to revisit the film and in June I was in the right mood. I didn’t think it was particularly great, but it certainly wasn’t a total dud like the version I watched 20 years ago. I find the crusades a very interesting topic, to the degree where historical accuracy starts to impact my enjoyment of a movie like this. It probably goes without saying that it doesn’t score very highly on that metric. Regardless, it’s an impressive and pretty film as you’d expect from Ridley Scott of that time. Absolutely stacked cast, though I honestly didn’t think many of them gave particularly standout performances – ironically it was Edward Norton behind a mask who stood out. The final battle was properly epic and satisfying in a way that today’s usually too obviously-CGI-enhanced movies don’t achieve anymore. Don’t regret revisiting this, but I doubt I’ll ever come back to it.

🎸 Concerts

  • Stop Making Sense (1984) – ⭐️ 7/10
    • I decided to watch this after learning about this band through David Byrne’s performance in the final week of The Late Show last month. None of their other songs really clicked, but this concert was definitely still a very good time. Apparently it is considered one of the greatest live recordings of all time?

📺 TV Shows

  • Rick and Morty – S09 up to S09E06 (6 episodes with 2h 20m)
    • This latest season has been mostly “meh” for me so far. Not terrible, but only one or two episodes that I really enjoyed. Oddly, I also thought the new voice actors were more notable now than in the first two seasons since the recasting. But it’s been a pretty rough month at work, so I may also just not always have been in the right headspace for fully enjoying this kind of show. It’s still entertaining enough that it remains one of the very few things I actually watch as it airs, but I suspect I might enjoy it more when I rewatch the entire series again in a couple of years – because at this point I have absolutely no clue anymore about any details of the larger backstory.
  • Lost – S01, S02 up to S02E02 (26 episodes with 19h 33m)
    • Speaking of rewatches… it was finally time. It’s probably been a decade since I’ve been toying with the idea of doing a full LOST rewatch. Ever since it concluded back in 2010 I hadn’t revisited the series. I’ve seen the first half / two thirds of it multiple times – either with friends/family as they too fell in love with it, or in preparation for the final season. But best I can tell – this was before I tracked enough details to know about rewatches – I have only ever seen the final season in the year that it aired (but probably more than once that year). I’ll get straight to the point: I enjoyed the last season, and the finale was an excellent and fitting ending to the show. As many others, I’ve certainly grown a bit tired of the now infamous mystery box method – but to me, LOST has always been the example of where they got it right. It has always been a bit of a red flag to me when someone feels compelled to explicitly state how much they didn’t like the ending.
      I’m curious and a bit scared of how I’ll feel about all that once I’m done. I can hardly overstate the significance of LOST during a very formative time of my life. I started watching when the end of the third season had just aired. Blissfully unaware about what was awaiting me – the internet wasn’t yet such a toxic wasteland of clickbait and engagement-driven drivel with spoilers in every god damn headline a day after something airs. And after that, for the second half of the show, I got to experience – nay participate in – the collective excitement: staying up to the early morning hours here Germany until the pirated1 copy of the latest episode was finally available to watch, then spending hours on Lostpedia2 developing and discussing theories with others. There will never again be anything comparable to the magic of that.
      The first season I probably saw more than five times, maybe closer to ten – but it still didn’t take long until I was just as hooked as back in 2007. It’s not a perfect show: a lot of the effects didn’t age very well, for example. The CGI often looked goofy even back then. The scenes inside the plane during the crash relied on shaky cam a lot, big Star Trek energy. But as with Star Trek, it doesn’t matter because effects aren’t what made these shows great. The stories, characters and positive overall message are why they endure the test of time. Details like the emotional soundtrack at the end of S01E17 stopping because Hurley’s discman is dying. “You got some Arzt on you” still cracks me up. And the first episode of season two remains in my top three all time greatest (non-pilot) season openers of all time – I will feel deeply emotionally attached to Make Your Own Kind Of Music for the rest of my life, and it is a constant (ha!) source of motivation thanks to the context LOST put it into.

💬 Late Night & Talk Shows

  • The Daily Show
    • June 1, 2026 - Jason Bateman
    • June 8, 2026 - Jane Fonda
    • June 15, 2026 - Sen. Raphael Warnock
    • June 22, 2026 - Maggie Haberman & Jonathan Swan
  • Last Week Tonight with John Oliver
    • May 31, 2026: Presidential Pardons
    • June 7, 2026: New College of Florida
    • June 14, 2026: UK Elections
    • June 21, 2026: Feral Hogs
    • June 28, 2026: Congressional Maps

🎧 Music

I scrobbled 664 tracks on 25 days in June 2026:

🎶 Top 10 Tracks

  1. Billy Talent – Viking Death March (21 plays)
  2. Billy Talent – Louder Than The DJ (18 plays)
  3. Billy Talent – Devil On My Shoulder (14 plays)
  4. Billy Talent – Fallen Leaves (13 plays)
  5. Billy Talent – Surprise Surprise (13 plays)
  6. Billy Talent – Surrender (13 plays)
  7. Billy Talent – Perfect World (13 plays)
  8. Billy Talent – This Suffering (13 plays)
  9. Billy Talent – Devil in a Midnight Mass (13 plays)
  10. Billy Talent – Reckless Paradise (12 plays)

🧑‍🎤 Top 10 Artists

  1. Billy Talent (352 plays)
  2. Sportfreunde Stiller (82 plays)
  3. Blumentopf (78 plays)
  4. Papa Roach (22 plays)
  5. Fiva (13 plays)
  6. Weezer (8 plays)
  7. Afrob & Ferris Mc (5 plays)
  8. Irie Révoltés (5 plays)
  9. The Osmonds (3 plays)
  10. Die Ärzte (3 plays)

📚 Books

  • 📘 Jade City [The Green Bone Saga #1] – ⭐️ 4/5
    • Excellent! This came highly recommended, and I’m happy to report that it clicked for me as well. A grounded, unclear-when-exactly-but-somewhat-modern and mildly magical setting with extensive world-building and interesting politics. Embedded in all that is great character-focused storytelling with plenty of relatable family drama, and some pretty strong The Godfather vibes at times as well. More please!

🎙️ Podcasts

I listened to 26 episodes across 5 podcasts in June 2026:

🎮 Games

I played 4 different games for a total of 36.6 hours in June 2026.

  • Hollow Knight

    • Played for 30.0 hours across 14 days. Unlocked 5 new achievements this month, now at 62/63 total. Haven’t written a review yet.

    • Last month I wrote:

      Not sure if I will go for the remaining achievements, as they’re mostly speedrun-related.

      Well, I went for them. And I actually enjoyed them a fair bit. So now I’m going for the very last one as well. It is quite a tough nut to crack.

  • Time Flies
    • 🏆 Began and finished the entire game this month, unlocking all 13 achievements in 2.6 hours. Wrote a 👍 review (146 words) on 2026-06-28.
  • Rocket League
    • Played 2.2 more hours across 2 days, already unlocked all 88 achievements in the past. I had already written my 👍 review (21 words) back on 2022-09-03.
  • HITMAN World of Assassination
    • Played 1.8 more hours, already unlocked all 83 achievements in the past. I had already written my 👍 review (438 words) back on 2023-11-27.

  1. Keep in mind, that was so long ago that global availability wasn’t really a thing yet. These episodes were only shown here several weeks to months after their original broadcast in the US, and only as dubbed versions. If I recall correctly, during the later seasons some options for legally getting undubbed versions with not too much of a delay started becoming a thing. ↩︎

  2. To the surprise of no one, that wonderful site has fallen victim to Fandom. ↩︎