10 variations

Movies

Not much... I saw a documentary called Ice Grave at the theater, at a festival. It's (another) version of the famous Swedish North Pole expedition in a hydrogen balloon in 1897. I can't honestly recommend it, but it was well done and pretty immersive, put together mostly from the photographs taken by one of the three expedition members. It has an absolutely beautiful saxophone score by Bendik Giske, who was there at the showing, and explained that he recorded it in one go, as one long piece through the whole movie. O_O His style is unique, here's a concert of his: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6OQfk5HUN-Q. I couldn't find any more information on it online anywhere, and the version we saw looked kind of unfinished. I don't think it has an international release yet.

TV ongoing

HPI season 5!!!! This fandom is my whole world at the moment and I'm loving it. I've made a French friend with whom to talk about it, and I've managed to rope two friends into the show, and both are on their way through season one and love it so far. \o/

The first three episodes aired in May. My new friend and I agreed to follow the weekly French airing schedule instead of watching all four episodes at once, to really be able to dig into each episode separately. So I've seen the first three and they are brilliant! Half of it is excitement about a new season - premieres tend to do that to me - and half of it is that the end of the first episode is just so very good omg. I'm very happy that I have the means to watch it at all and don't have to wait for months for a German release. (It will be on Disney+ in June, so that's something.) My rewatch is now in season 4, and I suspect if we want to keep going with that, I will have to translate the subs myself. At least I've found French subs by now, so it's less work than it could have been. The first episode was quite a trial for me, watching it without any subs at all. I think I watched it at least five times, and there were still scenes where I didn't get everything.

I had the crazy idea to make a comm for it (hpi_tv) and posted all my icons to it so far. I'm thinking of adding ep discussion posts, and articles/photos, but haven't gotten there yet.

I finished The Pitt in one big rush. Phew! So good! I still maintain that the one-day format detracts from my enjoyment of character development, but they did a really good job letting us get to know the characters despite that restriction. I liked all of them in the end, even Langdon. I think my faves were the abrasive women, Santos and McKay. I was happy (not happy) to have predicted what was going to happen in the evening eps, as I'm usually not good at picking up on foreshadowing. I blame it on them being very very obvious. :D I quickly scanned the fic that's there about the show, but nothing snagged me so I've basically put the show behind me. It was good.

Doctor Odyssey finished airing, and the thing I had been afraid of happening did happen, so I'm likely out of there. I don't think they'll get a second season anyway, but... yeah. I might change my mind by September, but I am pretty miffed at where they took it in the end. It was very good in the middle there. The fandom suspects network interference, which probably explains the lack of a renewal. Moving on.

Having been ill for a bit this month, I opted for watching something random and landed on Remington Steele. Oh my, it only holds up part of the time. It's quite funny in places, but a lot of the jokes are more misogynistic than they should be, considering the premise of the show, and Pierce Brosnan's acting is still cringe. (I love him anyway.)

TV new

Murderbot! I watched the first ep, and then started rereading the novella, because I'd forgotten most of it. I finished that (and two more novellas) before I continued with episodes 2 and 3. Definitely a good decision, because I can now relatively confidently tell what follows the book and what they changed. Fwiw, I don't like the fact that murderbot sounds and looks so decidedly male, but I liked it despite that. It's really well done, great visuals, fun book-accurate narration. I think all of it is really close to the book, except for some sex/romance/pining that wasn't in the book. Which confuses me, because Murderbot explicitly says it doesn't care for sex, so why did they think they had to add that? To annoy Murderbot (and its fans) more? I guess it's a valid trade-off between the existing Murderbot fans (who are going to watch it anyway, lets not kid ourselves) and trying to attract new fans by adding more sex. Anyway, that's a minor complaint. I like it so far.

I tried two eps of Etoile, and while I adore the pervasive bilingualism - every character speaks both English and French and some of them codeswitch wonderfully - I actually don't like a single one of the characters. Some of them actively annoy me to a point I never want to see them again. A pity.

Through the whole "where do I get HPI from" stress, I've found more French tv streaming sites and got my hands on more Mehdi Nebbou things:

Another Mehdi Nebbou thing! Tout Va Bien (2023) (English title "Everything is Fine"). It's a French drama about a family whose child has leukemia - basically it's a study on how people deal with grief. I'd originally intended to watch this over the summer, but then it sucked me in and I watched all eight eps this week. (I knew if I stopped, I wouldn't finish it, because the subject matter is so dark.) I only watched this because Mehdi Nebbou is in it (and he's cute and dead sexy in it so totally worth all the tears), and I liked 90% of it very much and have many thoughts about it, so I'll write up a review. It's on hulu.

Aaaaand another Mehdi Nebbou thing! Mann|Frau, a German 2014 webseries of 40 5-minute eps. The title implies that it's about differences between men and women, but that's not at all it. It's just a cute, quirky, slice-of-life, growing-up thing told from two povs, where the protagonists turn into a group of friends/lovers. By the end, I very much loved all the main characters. I never noticed that none of them have names, until I watched an interview with producer Christian Ulmen at the end. :D There's lots of casual drinking and casual drug use (not my thing), and lots of sex and funny dialogue and surprise polyamory (very much my thing!). It's a quick watch, I recommend it. Youtube playlist here (only German, no subs).