Tag Archives: Film

Fall 2024 – Week 12 in Review

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Hello folks, and welcome back to Wrong Every Time. Today I write to you from the midst of more end-of-year preparations, as I simultaneously chart out my favorite anime of the year, and also cram in as much Dead Dead Demons as I can before the dead dead deadline. I’ve been enjoying the show more now that I’m past the point I read in the manga, and am no longer directly comparing the two; taken as a work in its own right, it provides a fatigued, almost fatalistic snapshot of our lives on the cusp of apocalypse, perfectly echoing both our real-world inability to contest the decline of late-stage capitalism, as well as the ease with which that uncertainty lets us justify the unthinkable. I’ve also been puttering away at some big Dungeons & Dragons projects, and am currently nearing the end of designing a “quest” that’s in truth a brief campaign in its own right, featuring a fully populated boom town and a variety of Wild West-evoking side quests. I’ll probably let you know how that turns out either here or in my Vox Machina pieces, but in the meantime, let’s break down the week in films!

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Fall 2024 – Week 11 in Review

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Hello folks, and welcome back to Wrong Every Time. Today I write to you from the midst of another cold, gloomy December day, as I wonder to myself why exactly we choose to end the year at the conclusion of such a miserable month. How are we supposed to feel optimistic about the new year at the end of fuckin’ December, when the cold’s already seeped deep into our bones, and the promise of spring is still several brutal months away? I’d frankly prefer it if we were continuously running through an April-to-September circuit, with no threat of frigid weather looming over us, and the promise of a fresh summer never more than a couple months away. Of course, I’d miss Halloween, but perhaps we could just push that back a month and have it serve as September’s end – I mean, it’s not like September’s got anything else to do with its time.

Anyway, where were we? Ah yes, the Week in Review. Let’s break down some films!

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Fall 2024 – Week 10 in Review

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Hello folks, and welcome back to Wrong Every Time. It is fucking cold out as we enter our first week of December, and what’s more, my neighborhood’s usual street parking has been outlawed in deference to the kind of New England blizzard which may well never return to Boston. So I’m cold and I can’t park anywhere and the year’s nearly ending, which of course always heralds its own signature suite of anxieties and responsibilities and reflections on our eternal, unstoppable relinquishing of days, just in time for January to inform us that yes, it is indeed possible to be colder and more miserable than December, just watch me. So that’s where I’m at right now, but I’ve at least gotten most of my Christmas shopping done, and am also so far ahead on my reader projects that I’ve indulged in some more DnD retrospective pieces, which I’ll hopefully be sharing with you soon. In the meantime, cold weather only means more movies, so let’s see what we’ve got in the latest Week in Review!

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Fall 2024 – Week 9 in Review

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Hello folks, and welcome back to Wrong Every Time. This week has seen me fully immersing myself in 2024-in-review catch-up projects, as I’ve both torn through the first major arc of Monogatari’s Off Season and begun my viewing of the Dead Dead Demons adaptation. Both have been quite enjoyable so far; Nadeko’s latest adventure served as a surprisingly touching coda to her identity-forming adventures, and Dead Dead Demons has certainly been adapted with care, even if it feels a little superfluous in its absolute loyalty to Inio Asano’s paneling. Admittedly, it must be a terrifying thing to try adapting an artist as preternaturally gifted as Asano, but it sadly feels like such an exact adaptation only reveals the animation’s inability to match the impact of Asano’s compositions. Nonetheless, the strength of the source material still makes for a compelling ride, and I’m looking forward to catching up on the year’s key films as soon as possible. In the meantime, let’s break down the films I’ve snuck in the week’s margins!

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Fall 2024 – Week 8 in Review

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Hello folks, and welcome back to… dear god, it can’t really be week eight of the fall season already, can it? Is November even a real month, or just a collective hallucination that carries us directly from Halloween to Christmas? Anyway, yes, it is apparently time for the Week in Review, and I am still embarrassingly behind on my annual anime catch-up. I know I should really be watching this year’s outstanding productions rather than more Armored Trooper Votoms, but the heart wants what it wants, and right now it wants to watch Chiricho to emerge from the bloodstained field of battle only to discover his own personal war has just begun. Alongside that, we’ve been marking the encroaching holiday season with a variety of seasonally appropriate film productions, which I’m sure you’re eager to hear all about. Let’s celebrate the increasingly all-consuming Christmas spirit with the latest Week in Review!

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Fall 2024 – Week 7 in Review

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Hello folks, and welcome back to Wrong Every Time. We’re truly nearing the end of the year at this point, which means it’s getting to that time when I must actually examine the animated year in retrospect, and catch up on any key productions I might have missed. Uzumaki fell apart and Dandadan’s second episode still failed to grab me, but there’s still plenty else I need to check on, from the Dead Dead Demons adaptation to the latest installments in the Monogatari and Sound! Euphonium franchises. Between those, Delicious in Dungeon, and the year’s superb film crop (Naoko Yamada and Kiyotaka Oshiyama!), this is looking to be an altogether laudable year in anime, before we even get to backlog personal projects like Sailor Moon. I’ll be starting on all that shortly, but in the meantime, I have of course continued sampling whatever films either catch my fancy or rudely invade my screen via my roommate’s craft-neutral curiosity. Let’s break ‘em down!

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Fall 2024 – Week 6 in Review

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Hello folks, and welcome back to Wrong Every Time. By the time you’re reading this, America will have decided whether we’ve decided to fast-track or slow-roll our cultural and economic collapse, and major portions of the country may well be on fire. No one really wants to live through times of great upheaval, and our historical moment feels particularly tragic, suspended as we are between an unsustainable past and an ascendant right driven by cruelty, selfishness, and proud anti-intellectualism. While I can’t fix whatever’s gone so terribly wrong with this world, I can at least offer a momentary reprieve from its horrors, as we join together in kicking the tires and testing the brakes of a fresh collection of film features. From ruinously terrible Netflix releases to bubble-era anime spectacles, let’s take a brief break from our shared struggle, and talk about some interesting films.

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Light Through Glass: Rebels of the Neon God

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Rain splatters against the phone booth glass, drops falling like the embers of fireworks spiraling in the distance. Their trails are lit by an indistinct whirl of city lights, perhaps cars or fluorescent signs, made obscure and thus somehow entrancing, their uncertainty of form promising riches and wonders. The beads of water are like liquid jewels, a beautiful contrast against the soot-streaked interior. Two boys huddle inside, hungrily passing cigarettes between them, then inserting a screwdriver into the terminal. A waiting bag is filled with the phone’s bounty, loose coins a pale imitation of those glittering lights – but here in the city, all truly bright things are indistinct and out of reach.

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Fall 2024 – Week 5 in Review

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Hello folks, and welcome back to Wrong Every Time. This week represents a new milestone in DnD’s ongoing invasion of my every waking moment, as we ran through our first twelve-hour session, running from three in the afternoon to way too fucking late in the goddamn morning. Assured by our guest DM (party leader of our first two campaigns, now playing second to my character in campaign three) that this would just be “a quick investigation followed by a Metal Gear Solid boat,” we found ourselves ten hours later in the midst of a fight with an unkillable barbarian, recreating the Vamp water battle in an actively sinking ship. I have lost control of my life.

That aside, this week also featured some excellent film screenings, alongside my conclusion of the beloved original Trigun. Let’s talk about all that!

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Fall 2024 – Week 4 in Review

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Hello folks, and welcome back to Wrong Every Time. Today I am eager to finish this dang article and get the heck outside, as we’re apparently experiencing some sort of late-October summer reprise, with temperatures in the 70s even as the leaves fall from the trees. You gotta take what victories you can during our ongoing environmental collapse, but fortunately for you all, this unexpected bounty of perfect weather has not stopped me from huddling inside and watching movies all week. This week I’ve got epic adventures, sordid slashers, and also a gorgeous anime feature by a man who is rocketing up my list of favorite directors. Let’s break ‘em all down!

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