Media diet for August 2026

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I watched 4h 10m of movies and 59h 33m of TV shows, a total of 63h 43m:

🎬 Movies

  • Masters of the Universe (2026) – ⭐️ 4/10
    • I was a bit confused when this didn’t have the Marvel intro. I think as a kid I might have had a He-Man toy at some point? And I probably saw a few episodes of the animated show on TV as well. But I was never really into it, so I didn’t remember it was originally a Mattel toy. I’m still a bit confused, apparently there’s both DC and Marvel stuff in that universe? (Is that why Heimdall Idris Elba was allowed to take a break from Bifröst duty and star in this?) Anyway, the movie was less shit than I expected. If you can ignore the “we have to put at least two puns/comedic relief moments per minute, even in dramatic scenes” shtick that permeates through most superhero dreck these days, there’s actually a decent movie for 12-year-olds in there. The most annoying jokes were the self-referential meta-ridiculing of its origins: a character is named “Ram-Man”, and the pun is someone motivationally telling him “Give ’em head! <awkward pause>”; this is said by “Fisto”, the pun for whom you can guess yourself. Why?! Just fucking own it. It’s a movie about a children’s toy line from the 80s, it is okay for the names to be corny. An odd detail that stood out to me: A lot of shots had a fish-eye lenses look to them for no discernible reason. I absolutely did not realize that the famous Skeletor was played by Jared Leto… if I had been forced to guess I might have thought it was voice-acting by Arnie. A surprisingly effective performance, good balance between goofy and spooky.
  • Deliverance (1972) – ⭐️ 6/10
    • This movie came up in a late-at-night-in-the-lobby-bar discussion on my work trip last month: I don’t even recall the exact context, but our hotel – in Spain! – was heavily Colorado-themed for some reason, and when one of my American colleagues mentioned the movie I decided to give it a watch. I had heard of it before, but had no idea what it was about and went in pretty blind. It was a lot bleaker than I expected, even without having any concrete expectations. But overall it was pretty decent, and certainly managed to keep my attention. The (as I now know…) infamous rape scene completely caught me off guard. The palpable tension, both leading up to that pivotal moment and even more so afterwards, is very well done. I was not at all surprised to find out that some of that is (probably) owed to the fact that they went a little crazy with doing their own stunts and “keeping it real”. I did think it was a bit too long in some parts, but as I’m typing this a couple of weeks after seeing the movie I’m already thinking that I’d probably rate it higher on a second watch. Being over 50 years old, it seems to have aged remarkably well. In this 2012 interview, Reynolds showed a surprising level of insight into the significance of the movie’s use of both the word and the plot device “rape” – which feel pretty radical for the time the movie came out.

📺 TV Shows

  • The Leftovers – All 3 seasons (28 episodes with 27h 23m)

    • Hot damn, I had not accurately remembered how insanely good this show was. I knew that I really liked it back when it aired. That it was special, up there with the best shows I’ve ever seen. But it still absolutely blew me away now, rewatching it for the first time almost a decade later. I find it hard to make definitive rankings at the very top – there’s different specific reasons and strengths that catapult certain things into the upper echelon. Just last month I explained why LOST is up there for me. But I couldn’t really put LOST above The Sopranos or the other way around, for example. With that in mind, The Leftovers might genuinely be my number one show of all time. I can’t imagine another series in my lifetime ever coming this close to perfection.1
      While Justin Theroux and Carrie Coon stand out as the main characters, everyone on this show is giving the performance of a lifetime. It’s at the same time a sci-fi magical mystery show that largely lives on vibes and emotions, but also – given that context – a remarkably clear and complete story. When Lindelof talks about the finale, it seems clear that he’s been burnt a bit by the experience with LOST – and to me The Leftovers very much feels like Lindelof in his final form. Unapologetically doing exactly what he is best at.

      I understand that this show doesn’t work for everyone. There’s a lot of art that I don’t really get or can find an access to. I hate jazz music, for example. And I don’t recall enjoying a single poem in my entire life – be it ones I was forced to read in literature class at school, or favorites shared by people I love. One of my core childhood memories is from second grade: my class went to city hall and the tour there included a brief chat with the mayor. We lived in a small but fairly affluent town, and recently the city had installed lots of modern/abstract art stuff in public places, which 8yo me thought all looked really stupid. Without even having heard it at my innocent young age, I was already the embodiment of the “Is this art or can we throw it out?” joke. So I bluntly asked the mayor when all the ugly art would be removed again. That gave him a good chuckle! I’ve come a long way since then, but part of me still often feels like I don’t have a connection to “real art”. You know, a proper serious poem by some culturally important person from 200 years ago. Or a walk through the Louvre. That’s just not me. But this show, that’s the kind of thing that makes me feel like I get it. I could argue about plenty of its objective merits, but not about why and how exactly it is that impactful to me. It’s art. It’s subjective, and deeply personal. For someone else, seeing the Mona Lisa in person might feel similarly powerful. So when I see modern/abstract art in the city I no longer wish for it to be removed, though it still doesn’t do anything for me personally. The world needs more art, not less. So that more people have a chance at connecting with something the way this show connects with me.

      It’s almost scary how well The Leftovers aged. When Covid hit and lockdowns kicked in, it was hard not to think back to the show and see parallels in the collective madness it depicts. But at its very core, the show is mostly about loss and grief. It first started airing only a few months into the Harambe timeline. Revisiting the show today, deep into the second Trump nightmare and with so many people having completely detached from reality, it also works painfully well as a mirror for what the world now feels like: a notable chunk of the population just lost, families torn apart, the absence of a shared understanding of basic facts. People being disillusioned, apathetic, desperate, scared, manic, cruel. And in all that, a glimmer of hope and humanity, a metric ton of pain and misery, and the never-ending quest to get answers we don’t even really know the right questions for. Truly a masterpiece for the ages.

  • Life, Larry and the Pursuit of Unhappiness: An Almost History of America – Miniseries (7 episodes with 3h 58m)
    • Meh. I don’t understand what was the point of putting it into this historic context. I know that it was done because the most pathetic 250th anniversary this world ever had to witness happened, but I don’t think that context made for a funnier show… which should be the main goal? Maybe Larry David wanted to do some actual commentary on the state of the union, in which case more power to him and I do appreciate how scathing some of the skits were. But overall this felt more like a compilation of filmed brainstorming sessions than something fully fleshed out. Ultimately no regrets watching this, it made a long train ride a lot more bearable… but I’d rather get more Curb Your Enthusiasm.
  • The Deuce – All 3 seasons (25 episodes with 25h 33m)
    • One of my hottest TV takes is that The Wire was just regular good. I never understood why people consider it in the same league as something like The Sopranos. So the fact that this was a new David Simon project did not do much for me, back when it was originally announced. Which was over ten years ago! A time where I still got kinda excited for James Franco projects. And Maggie Gyllenhaal also usually picks interesting things to work on, so it was mainly due to them that I had planned to watch this once it finished airing. Now that I finally got around to it, I don’t have a lot to say about The Deuce – it’s fine. Some of the nudity and sex seemed gratuitous despite the subject matter. James Franco playing twins did not work very well for me at all, I don’t think he was doing a good job making them into different people. I went to school with two pairs of identical twins for almost ten years, so I feel like I have a decent understanding of how twins can be unique in their own ways. Regardless, some of the characters were interesting enough, and Simon’s talent for displaying a certain era and location as a seemingly realistic “slice of life” is definitely remarkable. I’ll need to rewatch The Wire, but for now I think I actually like this ever so slighty better. I wasn’t a big fan of the ending, though.

💬 Late Night & Talk Shows

🎧 Music

I scrobbled 1244 tracks on 30 days in August 2026:

🎶 Top 10 Tracks

  1. Fatoni – Nachos (37 plays)
  2. Kraftklub – Halts Maul und spiel (24 plays)
  3. Kraftklub – Kippenautomat (22 plays)
  4. juse ju – Das Ende des Zynismus (12 plays)
  5. Kraftklub – Randale (10 plays)
  6. Donots & Antilopen Gang – Kaputt (Live aus Berlin) (9 plays)
  7. Koljah – Motto Mobbing (7 plays)
  8. Kraftklub – Karl-Marx-Stadt (7 plays)
  9. Kraftklub – Irgendeine Nummer (7 plays)
  10. Kraftklub – Liebe (7 plays)

🧑‍🎤 Top 10 Artists

  1. Kraftklub (302 plays)
  2. Antilopen Gang (91 plays)
  3. Max Richter (79 plays)
  4. Niels Bye Nielsen (62 plays)
  5. Fatoni (54 plays)
  6. Die Ärzte (21 plays)
  7. ABBA (19 plays)
  8. juse ju (16 plays)
  9. Fettes Brot (15 plays)
  10. Weezer (14 plays)

August was an absolutely incredible month in terms of musical (re-)discovery. I went to two amazing concerts, one of which I had planned to go to for almost a year and a second one I only learned about a few days ahead. Right on my birthday last year, Antilopen Gang 🇩🇪 announced they’d be playing their final live show for the time being on 2026-08-15. Planned to be the biggest solo show of their career, set in a historic location in Berlin. I had only seen them live once so far – in February 2020, shortly before Covid became a big thing. They’re one of my favorite bands, so I decided I needed to go and see what might end up being their last ever live performance. I’ve got plenty of friends and family in Berlin who I don’t see nearly often enough anyway, and in the end the timing lined up nicely for me to do a two week staycation there. Big concert to start things off, and being able to attend a significant life event of my goddaughter at the end.

Their show was great – a big celebration, more a tiny festival than just a concert. For this special occasion they had invited many of their close collaborators throughout a long career. The vibes were amazing and I ended up discovering some new music I’ve been obsessed with ever since – see my number one most played track this month, for example. One of their many opening acts were the Donots, which was a bit of a full-circle moment for me: they were opening for The Offspring in Munich on their Conspiracy Of One tour in 2001 – my very first concert experience. And now, 25 years later, I was treated to seeing them perform the incredible Kaputt/Beton “mashup” version live – what a treat! Being in musical ecstasy together with this massive 10.000 people crowd of glowing anti-fascists was also a somewhat healing experience in these trying times. A short 🇩🇪 Aftermovie was released a couple of days after the concert, and it captures the energy of the evening very well.

A few days after this concert, while out and about in Berlin, I randomly came across a poster for a Kraftklub gig happening the following weekend. A fantastic coincidence, and after brief deliberation I decided to snatch up tickets for that show as well. Almost exactly eight years earlier I had already seen them in Berlin, at the same venue no less. We2 even ended up picking almost exactly the same seats, so this video I made back then serves well as illustrating this month’s experience – save for their new music since then, of course. They released two new albums in that time, and neither had really clicked with me. But I wasn’t sure if the band had evolved away from my taste, or if being too busy with life, death and taxes3 had just prohibited me from properly engaging with their new stuff.
The answer is already hidden in my most played artists of the month above! There was only about a week of August left after the Kraftklub concert. Seeing them live again powerfully reignited my love for their music, and that very much included the newer albums. So despite the short time-frame, they quickly climbed to the top spot for the whole month – dramatically ahead of even the band for which I had travelled to Berlin in the first place. It was great to obsess over their incredible live performances for a couple of days, and e.g. exploring the amazing cover songs they sometimes play with their opening acts or on special occasions: Song 2, Rock & Roll Queen, I Love It, Die Da, or Blitzkrieg Bop, just to name a few.

📚 Books

  • 📘 Jade Legacy [The Green Bone Saga #3] – ⭐️ 3/5
    • Unfortunately this series really didn’t stick the landing for me. The world-building was still pretty great, and the character foundations from the first (and second to a lesser degree) book made me want to see how this all plays out, but there were just too many things I didn’t enjoy. The more I think about it since I’ve finished the book, the more I feel that 3/5 is still too generous. For one, I didn’t love the overall direction the story went – massively widening the scope by dragging the more intimate conflicts from the beginning into a much larger geopolitical context as well as a broader “times they are a-changing” theme. Both those aspects are interesting in general and in the Green Bone world, but it wasn’t what I was most interested in after the setup in the first book. Even worse, the third book also dramatically increases the pace by introducing large time jumps4 every couple of chapters. At times, it felt more like reading an outline of a story rather than a really fleshed out book. This made it harder to feel much of a connection to the newer characters – who inevitably did not get nearly enough development.
      The big thing I mentioned for part #2 last month (where I felt the book wasn’t properly acknowledging a specific action by one of the protagonists) did indeed have very significant ramifications for the conclusion to the Green Bone Saga. But I still feel that the book, and thus the author, treated it pretty badly. The fandom seems to be largely excusing that with “it’s a different culture” and insult your reading comprehension for being too dumb to get it. But my problem with “the thing” is not that it happens – I understand that it does make sense in the context of that world and is absolutely in-character for the person in question. But the timing, frequency and general way in which the ramifications are addressed in the book just don’t sit right with me – it deals much better with a lot of similarly complex and nuanced topics, so this one stands out like a sore thumb. The fact that it suddenly does have implications in the final book doesn’t course-correct for how awkward it was that the second book never mentioned it again – especially with the world, culture and characters that the author had shaped up to that point in mind. It’s still a strong series overall, but not nearly as great as it could have been.

🎙️ Podcasts

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

🎮 Games

I played 4 different games for a total of 18.8 hours in August 2026.

  • Spelunky
    • Played for 14.8 hours across 9 days. Unlocked 7 new achievements this month, now at 7/20 total. Haven’t written a review yet.
  • Rocket League
    • Played 1.7 more hours, already unlocked all 88 achievements in the past. I had already written my 👍 review (21 words) back on 2022-09-03.
  • Hollow Knight
    • 🏆 Finished this up in 1.5 hours, unlocking the single remaining (of 63) achievement. Wrote a 👍 review (1161 words) on 2026-09-02.
  • VVVVVV
    • Played for 0.8 hours. Unlocked no new achievements, still at 10/19 total. Haven’t written a review yet.

  1. Don’t just take my word for it. ↩︎

  2. I went with a different friend this time around. In 2018, me and the friend I went to the show with back then were staying at the place of the friend I took to the concert this time around. The concert circle of life! ↩︎

  3. I mean that pretty literally, the entire family tree on my father’s side has passed away in that time. It’s been a lot. ↩︎

  4. It feels too petty for more than a footnote, but I also absolutely despise the way the time jumps were done: There’d just be a “the sixth year, fourth month” line at the start of a chapter and nothing else (and no explanation for what the reference year zero is, but that didn’t even bother me much). It’s not happening every chapter, though, and I don’t think there was a single time when I still remembered the year and month from the last jump. So I had no idea how much time had actually passed, and needed to use context clues to orient myself. Just write “x years have passed” and don’t try to be clever about it. When I encountered it the first time, I scrolled back to find the last jump and calculate the difference, but after that I decided I just don’t care enough to put up with this god-awful UX choice. ↩︎