Below are posts associated with the “❤️❤️❤️🖤🖤” rating.
🎙️ radioblog: The Black Hole (❤️❤️❤️🖤🖤)
It wasn’t bad, but I wasn’t very engaged and kept waiting for it to be over.
🍿 movieblog: Zootopia 2 (❤️❤️❤️🖤🖤)
I like what this movie is trying to be, but it’s so committed to gags, a breakneck pace, and a certain amount of self-defeating essentialism that I don’t think it ever gets there.
🎙️ radioblog: The Light Keepers (❤️❤️❤️🖤🖤)
Meh. I really don’t like the narration in this series, and even though I was a bit distracted while listening to this one, I’m not convinced I would have liked it much more if I had been giving it my full attention.
🎙️ radioblog: The Calendar Man (❤️❤️❤️🖤🖤)
I gripe a lot about audio plays being dumb sometimes, but this “narrated story” approach is a lot less interesting than an audio play, and that annoyed me. Jacob Dudman does an excellent Eleventh Doctor, though, so it wasn’t terrible.
📚 bookblog: Chrononauts, Volume 1 (❤️❤️❤️🖤🖤)
The art is good, and there are elements of a rollicking time travel romp hidden in here, but the story ultimately comes down to tech bros doing what they want because they have the power to, and we’re lucky that they decided to have a conscience at the end. That is not the kind of story I want to read in 2026.
🎙️ radioblog: Their Finest Hour (❤️❤️❤️🖤🖤)
Battle of Britain Doctor Who would really have appealed to me at some point, but it’s the sort of thing now where I find myself wondering if the story is uncritically pedestalizing an important moment of history that is actually much more complicated.
📺 tvblog: The Diplomat Season 3 (❤️❤️❤️🖤🖤)
Enjoying this series less and less the more that it goes on. I think I’d still watch a Season 4, but what began as a smart series with interesting drama has felt with each season that it’s leaning more into the drama and willing to set aside the smarts. Some fun moments in this series but also some headscratchers.
🎙️ radioblog: Quantum Heresy (❤️❤️❤️🖤🖤)
Maybe I shouldn’t have listened to this while trying to find parking on campus at a very inconvenient time, but even though there’s an interesting time travel bit at the center of the story, it just didn’t pay off for me.
🎙️ radioblog: Penny Wise, Pound Foolish (❤️❤️❤️🖤🖤)
There’s an interesting, even Ellulian, moral to this story about falling in love with the means and not thinking about the ends, but I think the story surrounding that moral could have been better done.
🎙️ radioblog: Murmurs of Earth (❤️❤️❤️🖤🖤)
The Voyager record as inspiration for a Doctor Who story really ought to work for me, but it didn’t land. Maybe I’m tired of this series, or maybe I should have paid more attention instead of listening while cleaning.
🎙️ radioblog: Wet Walls (❤️❤️❤️🖤🖤)
I can’t say this one worked for me. I can kind of see the vibe that the author was going for, but I wasn’t a fan.
🎙️ radioblog: Pop Up (❤️❤️❤️🖤🖤)
The idea behind this one is fun—not least a BASIC interface on the TARDIS—but it doesn’t really deliver.
🎙️ radioblog: Critical Mass (❤️❤️❤️🖤🖤)
Yet another story that doesn’t really land with me because I don’t know Classic Who that well.
🎙️ radioblog: Walls of Confinement (❤️❤️❤️🖤🖤)
Some fun gags, but this is another case where I think not knowing the classic series prevents me from appreciating this. Or maybe it’s just not that interesting?
🎙️ radioblog: Running Out of Time (❤️❤️❤️🖤🖤)
Wondering if I should be reviewing these a volume at a time instead of a story at a time, but it’s too late now. This one felt like a Doctor Who story—if a bit darker than what we might see on TV—but that’s not entirely complimentary. Not bad, but nothing impressive in my book.
🎙️ radioblog: The Deep (❤️❤️❤️🖤🖤)
Meh. The TARDIS turning into a whale is a fun idea, but not enough of one to really intrigue me.
🎙️ radioblog: The Death Dealer (❤️❤️❤️🖤🖤)
I wonder if I’d feel stronger about this if I knew Classic Who better. As is, it’s an interesting scifi concept that isn’t bad but doesn’t capture my attention as much as some of these other stories.
🎙️ radioblog: Rise and Fall (❤️❤️❤️🖤🖤)
Interesting idea in here, but it just didn’t grab me enough to earn more than this rating.
📚 bookblog: Dim Sun (❤️❤️❤️🖤🖤)
I don’t regret pitching in $5 to support a webcomic I have loved for almost twenty years, but even after years of listening to The Incomparable’s Dark Sun campaign, I just don’t know if I know/like that setting enough to really enjoy this story. Alas.
🍿 movieblog: Les Visiteurs (❤️❤️❤️🖤🖤)
J’ai des souvenirs très précis du monent où un ami Suisse m’a conseillé ce film et m’a fort déconseillé la version américaine. Cette conversation a eu lieu il y a 17 ans, et je suis enfin arrivé à regarder le film.
Bon, je crois que je ne suis pas suffisamment français (ou bien francophone, si c’est un Suisse qui me l’a recommandé) pour apprécier le film. J’avoue que le regarder en faisant la vaisselle ne fait pas meilleure impression, et j’assume. Pourtant, bien que je me débrouille assez bien en français, j’ai plus du mal à comprendre le dialogue d’un film qu’une conversation face à face. En plus, les sous-titres en anglais n’aidaient pas trop, et je n’avais pas le choix de les mettre en français. Il y a plein de blagues qui ne se traduisent pas bien, et j’ai attendu la moitié du film avant de comprendre la blague Jacquouille, Jacques Ouilles, M. Ouille, qui est assez marrant en fin de compte.
🍿 movieblog: Rio ne répond plus (❤️❤️❤️🖤🖤)
Il me semble que parmi les Français, ce film est aussi bien aimé que le premier, mais je trouve que je l’aime beaucoup moins bien, moi.
Il y a des trucs drôles dans le film, mais je le trouve trop compliqué. Ce qui est pire, c’est que c’est bien difficile d’avoir un héros aussi raciste mais sans pourrir le film même. À mon avis, on réussit à trouver l’équilibre juste dans le premier film, mais dans ce film, on ajoute des assassins chinois avec des accents impénétrables, et on commence à se demander si ce n’est pas eux la blague au lieu de Hubert.
📚 bookblog: Moroni: A Brief Theological Introduction (❤️❤️❤️🖤🖤)
Happy to have wrapped up this series, though I’m sure I’ll be coming back to each of the titles. This last book has some good stuff in it (including a fascinating, existential discussion of the tension between grace and agency), but I found too much of it to be boring rather than captivating. I think that’s probably my fault in part—as I’ve previously noted, I’ve been powering through these books just to finish them—but it’s how things stand right now.
📺 tvblog: The Sandbaggers Series 3 (❤️❤️❤️🖤🖤)
I enjoyed watching some of my favorite characters in this series, but it does not have the coherence or cleverness of the first one.
📚 bookblog: Daisy Chains (❤️❤️❤️🖤🖤)
Still kind of meh at this point, and I’m wondering if there’s only so far that the premise of this series can go. There are some interesting plot developments, though, so we’ll see if things get more exciting in the next volume(s).
📚 bookblog: Broken Toys (❤️❤️❤️🖤🖤)
Parts of this are good—especially the Batman-analogue/Catwoman-analogue date subplot that bookends this volume—but a lot of it is meh. I’m also not a fan of the “rich dude has to work to make a problem go away for his company” plot, though we’ll see if that changes any.