PhilThePill Dot Online

Blog

  • A Recent Letterboxd Review

    Mickey 17 (2025)
    Read on Letterboxd

    I guess I’m a Bong-head.

    The initial idea of adapting this story had a 95% chance of producing a movie that I still probably would have liked, but which would have felt somewhat paint by numbers. You pace the movie so that you make the Creeper translator into some sort of macguffin and seed its origins early on; you ratchet up the tension Nolan-style in the final act to get the audience snapped into climax mode. It would have all been cool, but it would have been a little tiresome to go back to years later. 

    The antidote to that fate is to give this to Bong Joon Ho, who makes sure every character is either a charming or at least compelling collection of foibles and flaws. Every scene becomes a small work of art thanks to the ongoing support of composer Jung Jae-il and cinematographer Darius Khondji. You draw on the talents of Robert Pattinson and Toni Collette to make sure no one accuses you of putting a stock character on screen, even though, alas, you kind of wasted Steven Yeun. 

    It’s a rare achievement, wherein a little-known IP gets nearly a $120 million budget from a recent Best Director who operates on a wavelength that would jar 90’s Hollywood producers. I wish one could reliably walk into the theater to get stories told this way, but I think this might be the One and Only, as they say.

  • Buying a Car in Dystopia

    I suppose one of the more significant things to happen to me recently is that I got rear ended on my way to pick up my kid, leading to the car being totaled and us having to buy a new one.

    The best thing I can say about our car habits is that we’re a one-car family, so I guess our emissions could be worse. But whatever car we do have, one of us drives it daily and when I do it, it’s several inefficient trips.

    I suppose this would have been our opportunity to go EV, but the payout from the insurance -while generous – was $9,000, leaving us with a a total budget of about $20K. You can get like a used Nissan Leaf for under that budget, but there were just a lot of question marks regarding an EV that may have been traded in because it got damaged.

    The point is, the ultimate choice of car was a compromise. It’s all gas, not even a hybrid. It’s the biggest car I’ve ever consistently had to drive, despite the fact that it’s a “subcompact” SUV. It’s struggling to get 25 mpg at the moment. It kind of feels like I got owned.

    I guess I owe the planet a couple of trees or something.

  • Madonna – “Don’t Tell Me”

  • A Recent Backloggd Entry

    Compelling enough to have me finish it in two sessions, but by the end I was feeling exasperation at the long and drawn-out sequence of psychological head-screw set pieces. Mouthwashing is entertaining in having you piece together a story across controlled time skips, but I at times I felt like there could have been more player interaction between past and present, almost like a Gerudo Temple from OOT mechanic but for the whole game. As it stands, it’s a pretty solid filmic experience, but not a great game experience for me.

    I enjoyed making the cake.

  • Travel diaries, January 23, 2025

    You ever been frantically leaving messages and calling a dozen cousins to see if they had time to see you over the weekend?

    Just me?

  • The Self-Illuminating Monotony of Papers, Please

    I finally got around to playing this classic that had been sitting in my Steam library for a few months. What proceeded was a strangely compelling four hours of gameplay.

    The scary thing about Papers, Please is how much the grind lulls you into just following orders. Even knowing this is something of a morality simulator, the need to just make a few bucks immediately drove me to compromise. The game may have taught me more about myself than I wanted to know.

  • Diary Update, January 19, 2025

    My brother and I actually had a good conversation.

    The consulate situation started off easily enough, because they granted me an appointment as soon as I walked in. But, somewhat predictably, my lack of readily accessible documentation made any process of obtaining an ID card come to an impasse.

  • Diary, January 17, 2025

    I’m in Fairfax ostensibly to see my brother because we didn’t see each other over the holidays. He’s not thrilled about it. I try not to take it personally. It’s the autism, I say.

    But also today I’m going to try to address a curiosity about my Colombian citizenship. World events being what they are, it seems like a good time to have a backup country. I have a memory – very fuzzy – of going to the Colombian consulate in the D.C. and getting registered as a Colombian citizen on account of both my parents being citizens. However, I’ve never received the card nor do I know my ID number.

    The Colombian consulate’s website is like a dark pattern nightmare with no evidence on how to actually set up an appointment. So I’m just going to try to show up and see how far I get. Maybe I won’t get very far at all, but possibly I can meet someone in D.C. before I come back and try to actually connect with my brother.

    Diary Update

  • Here’s a Post That’ s Got Me Thinking

    Came across this post via a friend on Mastodon. You can read the whole thing here: https://retro.pizza/@pdsmix/113527799021051600

    But here’s some points it made:

    • Bluesky isn’t the proper alternative to Twitter/X
    • Bluesky’s funding comes from established venture capitalists
    • Two of those VCs are Bart and Brad Stephens of Blockchain Capital, a firm that has ties to Steve Bannon
    • The original author’s theory is that Blueksy needs to remain beholden to the interests of the powerful – if they can’t milk it for profit, then they will use it to “influence [and] control larger narratives for their personal, political, or financial gain.”

    When I first joined Bluesky, it was “under protest” because it had previously had ties to Jack Dorsey. Jack Dorsey has since fled from it, which endears me to the platform, but I do admit at getting the heebies when they reveal where they get their funding from.

    Still, I was Team Mastodon for a very long time. I’m still Team Mastodon, I have several accounts. But I’ve seen its limitations. Bluesky – probably because it had enough money to throw at the problem – built an app that welcomes an average user, as opposed to a platform that alienates that same user.

    Bluesky will not be the ultimate answer to “how should the web work differently?” A big lesson from this Twitter fallout is that we are not all meant to be in one place, reacting to the same things. It’s a fear that people have had for centuries. What is the Two Minutes’ Hate except for a fear that television was turning us all into mindless vessels of propaganda? It won’t stop with Twitter and it won’t stop with Bluesky.

    So I’ll be sad if and when the day comes that it becomes truly not worth the ethical sacrifice to use the platform. Because it means I’ll lose even more of these ephemeral connections.

    But the game is to discover enough new possibilities within each framework and carry what you’ve learned to your ultimate destination.

    I think in terms of the discourse, it’s a step away from centralized corporate power. You just have to keep traveling and not stop here.

  • Campwatch, Day One

    Today, the state of Texas let the incoming Trump admin know that they have 1,400 acres of land that the administration can use for deportation camps.

    Well, I really hate that.

    There’s a pretty good reason you don’t build the infrastructure for human rights violations, even if you feel it is legal and within your structure of ethics to round up and cage an immigrant who doesn’t have legal status.

    You don’t build a 1,400 acre camp because eventually it will not only be used against migrants. I think even if you’ve been wrestling with this policy, deep down you know what else this can be used for; what precedent this sets.

    This seems like the problem I should invest in and I’m trying to think of how. Is it time to look into bail funds for people who go out there and take direct action? Shouldn’t someone, somewhere be suing the Texas Land Commissioner for offering this?

    I know there will be a response. The question is how coordinated. How soon. How can we get everyone to shock the administration at how intolerant we’re going to be about this?

    Literally fundraising for people to take trains out to Texas, set up safe houses, set up moral support, help each other not feel alone.

    We’ve moved into the next phase of the crisis and I have to be on the lookout for how to respond.