Mike From the Internet

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Media Bites – July 2019

Wow, looking back July was a busy month for my Media Bites review posts. We watched a lot of stuff adding up to a ton of hours. A lot of it was rewatching things we’ve watched to reacclimate ourselves with beloved characters before new seasons aired, others was rewatching just for the joy of the story. But we did also get some first-time viewings in as well. Here’s what I watched and listened to in July 2019.

Movies

Spider-Man: Far From Home – How could you top the reboot of a reboot that was Spider-Man: Homecoming? I don’t know how, but they did it. Far From Home was so much fun and felt bigger while still being very approachable. There were a few things I didn’t love from the Tony/Peter relationship and Peter trying to move on yet fill Tony’s absence in the world, but I may have a different viewpoint on it in further screenings.

The Art of Self Defense – This movie is as odd as you’d expect it to be with Jesse Eisenberg giving his all to being awkward – which is probably like breathing for him. This movie didn’t turn out to be what I thought it would be, but it was still good.

Total MCU Rewatch – We decided to do a total MCU rewatch leading up to the Endgame home release on July 30. Yes, I did this over Christmas last year, but I’m never not going to say no to watching these movies again. I’m consistently blown away when I think about what Marvel accomplished with these movies – even the ones that weren’t great (but were still decent) – they made 23 movies that told (mostly) one long story with several mini-arcs running throughout. Whatever the MCU becomes in Phase 4 and beyond – The Infinity Saga is a special thing that will be difficult to ever come close to replicating.

TV

Veronica Mars (seasons 1-3) and the movie – To prep for the new season Ali and I binged on all three seasons and the movie. The series holds up pretty well – though it was interesting rewatching the show from a technology angle knowing the technology that they had at the time and either used, or didn’t use depending on how it served the story. The overarching storylines still were good, but there have always been weird story and character developments that never sat well with me.

Veronica Mars Season 4 – Season 4 was released a week early, surprising fans everywhere. Ali and I watched it all that first night. It’s definitely the same show with the same quirks, but they didn’t pull any punches that this was a more adult Veronica Mars (except for the swearing). Not getting too much into spoilers, I called who the bomber was pretty early on (which is never a good thing because I am terrible at that) and the ending was meh – I don’t care too much what they did, but how it was done. That said, the father/daughter chemistry between Kristen Bell and Enrico Colantoni was even better than it’s been in the past.

Stranger Things Season 3 – I was a big fan of Season 1, not so much Season 2, and I couldn’t get into Season 3 at all. I don’t know why. I really wish this was an anthology show with a different story every season.

Aziz Ansari: RIght Now – This started playing right after Stranger Things ended, so we kept going with it. There were some funny moments, but overall I was not very into this.

Star Trek: The Next Generation – I’ve been curious about this show for a while, but with seven mostly full seasons I wasn’t really ready to commit. I’ve seen this post about watching the series in 40 hours flying around the web for a while and while Ali was out of town I jumped in. I’m into Season 7 and am liking most of what Temkin recommends. Some of the episodes don’t hold me at all, but the overwhelming majority of them do. It’s crazy some of the topics that a show from the late 80s and early 90s covers here – gender, personal freedom, race, civil rights, adoption, culture, language, and so much more. I never would have watched this show if I didn’t have this guide to pinpoint the best of the best episodes, though.

Music

Like I did for 2018, I’ve been keeping both an Apple Music playlist and Spotify playlist updated that includes all of my favorite new songs from 2019.

Here is the 2018 playlist: Apple Music / Spotify.