Author: Brian Behrend

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The Boy and the Heron – ★★★★

The Boy and The Heron

Fantastically beautiful in both expected and unexpected ways. The animation in the fire scenes was remarkable and surprisingly evocative and scary. Not our favorite Miyazaki but the kids and I both really enjoyed it, though I wonder how much of it they followed in parts. My 8 year old is not exactly as familiar with World War II and metaphors for grief as most folks on Letterboxd.

Maybe seeing in the theater without distractions is why it worked better for me on first watch than some of Miyazaki’s other more fantastical, less narratively straightforward films have. Looking forward to rewatching it again to see if it rises any higher in my Ghibli rankings.

This is actually my first ever Miyazaki to see at release in theater. The third one on the big screen this year though as we saw Nausicaä and Mononoke as part of Ghibli Fest this year. Will definitely make it to a few more when the next one rolls around.

Rating: 4.0 stars

🍿 Crossposted on Letterboxd
💿 Watch The Boy and the Heron in theaters

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13: The Musical – ★★

13 the musical

This was rough. Best song by far is in the trailer and in general this is just awkward and sub average musical. A huge portion of this story and multiple bad songs are about the entire school of 12-13 year olds openly talking and planning so two of them can kiss including the two of them that want to kiss. It feels like a story about 13 year olds written by an 8 year old.

Based on other reviews they butchered the stage version so maybe I’ll get a chance to watch that sometime.

Rating: 2.0 stars

🍿 Crossposted on Letterboxd
💿 Watch 13: The Musical on Netflix

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The Sword in the Stone – ★★★★

The Sword in the Stone

I think this may have been the only hard plastic Disney VHS we had when I was a kid, but not sure how many times I actually watched it because Madam Mim scared the ever living crap out of me.

I had forgotten that this is just Merlin and Wart goofing around for 72 fun minutes before he actually finds the sword in last seven and becomes king for half a scene. I also forgot all the jokes about how Merlin knows the future, some of which resulted in some lol moments for my 8 year old watching with me.

Story and songs nowhere near as strong of some of the movies preceding it, but nostalgia factor for me still made it a quite enjoyable watch. That Madam Mim is still scary though.

Rating: 4 stars

🍿 Crossposted on Letterboxd
💿 Watch The Sword in the Stone on Disney+

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All Systems Red (The Murderbot Diaries #1) – ★★★★★

All Systems Red

Great, quick read that I didn’t want to put down. Enjoyable humor and strong premise and character development of the titular murderbot. I was disappointed at first by the very last couple pages but then I remembered there’s 6+ other books that it leads into and am a lot less critical of how it wrapped up.

Rating: 5 stars

📚 Crossposted on Goodreads
📕 Buy All Systems Red on Bookshop

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Airpods constant mute and unmute message

Airpods mute and unmute message

Are we all getting this alert over and over and over again every time we use AirPods?

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Sleeping Beauty – ★★★½

They waited 15 years and 364 days without using magic and then everyone lost their damn minds baking cakes and color changing dresses and getting drunk one day before her 16th birthday.

Really enjoyed this on this rewatch though. I think I previously had this as maybe my least favorite of the classic princess movies but this is light years better than Snow White and almost up there with Cinderella. Glad to be moving on to the 60s and 70s now though as part of my animated Disney chronological rewatch, there’s a good number of films there that are either blind spots or I haven’t watched in probably 30 years.

Rating: 3.5 stars

🍿 Crossposted on Letterboxd
💿 Watch Sleeping Beauty on Disney+

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Mac shortcut to auto quit Apple Music

Created a Shortcut on my Mac just to quit Apple Music every time it opens and open Spotify instead.

It’s not that I hate Apple Music that much, it’s just I constantly click the play/pause on my Airpods after a work call meaning to restart podcast/music on my iPhone. Be nice if Apple would let us configure that behavior. (I know, I know.)