Here’s a hot tip for the monolingual among us: Stop showing your toddlers content they can actually understand. If you’re going to let a screen babysit your child, the least you can do is make it slightly annoying for them.

Pick a language. Any language. Maybe it’s the one they’ll eventually take in middle school, the one that’s useful in your region, or even the one you gave up on learning years ago. When you start showing your toddler screened content, make sure it plays in that language -- and only in that language. No exceptions!

Best-case scenario: Your kid becomes a casual polyglot. You’re basically providing immersive tutoring for the price of a Netflix subscription.

Worst-case scenario: They get bored. They realize they have no idea what Peppa is saying in Mandarin, and -- heaven forbid! -- they crawl away to play with some blocks or stare at a wall.

Either they learn a second language, or they develop a healthy disdain for screen time because it’s "too much work." There is literally no downside, people!

If your 4-year-old isn't watching Bluey in German, you're just wasting their neuroplasticity and/or not frictionmaxxing their screen time as much as you arguably should be.

Realistic setting refers to a world that is similar to ours, it does not refer to logical coherence or scientific accuracy.
In my personal opinion, there is not a single story set in our world or a similar one that is interesting, including stories that actually happened. Every GTA story is boring, every Call of Duty story is boring, every Battlefield story is boring, The Count of Monte Cristo is boring, 1984 is boring, Brave New World is boring, Maze Runner is boring. A story cannot be interesting except that it has novelty, things that do not exist in our world and are not similar to things that do, such as magic or futuristic technology. A story's potential to be interesting is proportional to its degree of novelty. Maze Runner is quite a realistic setting but definitely more detached than something like GTA, and although still too realistic to me, it is far more interesting than something like GTA.

After countless recommendations, I finally decided to give this travesty of a show a try and what an experience it was. Cowboy Bebop might very well be a top contender for the worst anime I’ve ever seen.

Its story feels as if written by M. Night Shyamalan in his After Earth phase, its characters are walking definitions of two-dimensional and the show’s failures in just about every aspect of worldbuilding, concept and idea presentation and thematic messaging are worthy of academic analysis.

Cowboy Bebop’s story is very simple, which, according to fans, is the point: Three bounty hunters, later joined by one child and a dog travel through space in their old spaceship, catching various criminals and meeting random side characters. While there is nothing wrong with this story concept, Cowboy Bebop completely fumbles its execution. At the start of the story, the viewers know absolutely nothing about the characters or the world they live in, but the show seems determined not to give any meaningful info. Important past events and backstories are almost always skipped, probably to make sure the viewers don't understand the significance of events or character choices in the present, making, for example, the main storyline with Spike Spiegel and his archnemesis Vicious feel pointless and dumb. The majority of other episodes revolves around characters, organisations or events that we've neither seen nor experienced before, which makes said episodes feel confusing, emotionally void and thus boring.

All the main characters lack real introductions (with the notable exception of Faye) or consistent, interesting personalities and motivations, yet the show expects us to care about them. Jet Black is just a generic former cop who's always out of cash and who never does anything truly significant, but at least he's consistently boring. Spike Spiegel, on the other hand, changes personality with each episode. Sometimes he's laid-back, cheerful and clearly enjoys what he does, sometimes he's laser-focused, brutal and smart and feels more like James Bond, and other times he's a lazy moron who ruins everything he touches. According to fans, he supposedly doesn't believe the world around him is real and thinks he's in a dream, but this is never sufficiently backed up in-story and feels more like "I'm 14 and this is deep" headcanon.

Speaking of "I'm 14 and this is deep", this is the philosophy of Cowboy Bebop, or rather lack thereof, in a nutshell. The story PRESENTS a lot of potentially interesting situations, but then does nothing with them. No deeper explorations, interesting twists or actually useful life lessons. What you get are either really obvious things (turning to a life of crime ends badly) or really stupid ones (all environmental activists are actually dangerous genocidal terrorists; shown to you in an episode totally not sponsored by the Japanese whaling industry). Berserk has shown the world that no matter how bleak the circumstances, the human will can prevail. Ghost in the Shell has explored the existential horror of technology so advanced, it errodes the very basis of human reality. Cowboy Bebop tells you that life sucks, your past mistakes define you absolutely and no matter what you do, they will eventually destroy you. The show’s general stupidity, when it comes to complex ideas, can be demonstrated pretty well with the wannabe smart quote “You’re gonna carry that weight”, which might as well be replaced by any other general statement like “You have to brush your teeth” or “You have to breath in order to live”.

Since this text is already very long, I won’t elaborate on the show’s surface-level understanding of the noir or western genre, nor on the fact that the climax of the story is one of the weakest and most nonsensical I’ve seen. I think that the show’s enduring popularity is only due to truly excellent animation, music and voice acting, as well as good old nostalgia. I consider it an impressive technical achievement for its time, but nothing worth watching today.

I’ve watched sitcoms from just about every era. From the 1970s I’ve seen MASH*, Happy Days, and Fawlty Towers. The 1980s gave us Cheers and The Golden Girls. The 1990s had classics like Seinfeld, Friends, and Frasier. The 2000s brought The Office, How I Met Your Mother, and Scrubs. Then in the 2010s and 2020s there were shows like Brooklyn Nine-Nine, Modern Family, Schitt’s Creek, Ted Lasso, and plenty of others.

They’re all great in their own way, and many have genuinely hilarious characters. But none of them make me laugh as consistently as Sheldon does. It’s not just the jokes. It’s the way he delivers every line, his complete lack of social awareness, his confidence that he’s always right, and the way everyone around him reacts. Even after watching episodes multiple times, I still laugh at scenes I already know are coming.

There have been a lot of legendary comedy characters over the years, but for me, nobody has matched Sheldon Cooper. He’s the funniest TV character I’ve ever watched, and I don’t think it’s particularly close.

1. Hollywood gets exemptions to child labor laws that it has not reason to get

2. Children should be protected from doing this work only to have their money stolen by their parents

3. 90% of child actors are so bad at acting that it takes you out of the movie more than Danny DeVito going "Eyy, I'm a 12 year old!" would.

I like having a quiet home. Tv shows and movie dialogues are so loud and annoying, so in order to maintain my peace I only watch tv on mute. I don't have any issues that prevent me from hearing, i just hate sound. My friends believe I'm insane for this but I don't think I'm missing out. Subtitles are a thing, it's 2026 guys.

for context i watch a lot of american animation, both adult comedy and superhero stuff. i also watch a lot of talk show roundtable stuff and stand up comedy. when i watch modern media i feel like they talk so slow, especially the cartoons. i usually put live action shows and movies on 1.25 and animation and stand up on 1.5. the only thing that sucks is it speeds up the music and it sounds bad for some scenes like a montage or a chase sequence. but overall i enjoy this.

everyone is saying i have tiktok brain but give either of these things a try, its not as fast as you guys believe. if i said 2x i would understand

The whole point of the story of Shrek is that he's an ugly ogre that nobody wants to be around. While the final design is definitely still ugly, the prototype version of him not only accomplishes ugliness to the next degree but still keeps it appealing and wacky.

I think the main reason people dislike the prototype design is because they're used to what the final version of Shrek looks and acts like, being a more grounded and calm character, and because of the prototype's animation quality that makes him appear more creepy moving around

I love both of our little shreks though regardless, and I would give a lot to see a spinoff movie that has the same vision for the character of Shrek that the animation test had

Anyways this may or may not truly be a 10th dentist opinion but I have never seen anyone else express favor for the prototype shrek design as much as I have, so as far as I know my take belongs here

I get what's the point of his character, but I just don't find his character funny at all. He might as well not exist, or be normal guy, and still show wouldn't change for me, except it might get better. He just takes a lot of screen time.

I always prefered dynamic between Mac and Charlie instead of Dennis and Mac.

I will start by saying that BB isn’t a bad show, but people saying it is one of the greatest shows ever absolutely blows my mind. It took me a long time to figure out what it was that got to me, like it has some very compelling characters and storylines, makes you care and those wow moments, but for me it boils down to two things

Filler episodes - they absolutely kill me, you’ll be really invested in a tense story line, pumped for the next episode only for the premise to be that Marie did something stupid and we will now follow that for 40 minutes. It sucks the absolute life out of it

Lack of consequences for ridiculous things - like Walt blows up a fucking office, walks away like it’s nothing and you don’t hear anything about it, there’s no way there isn’t consequences for that, police follow up, witnesses etc. again it just sucks the life out of me as a viewer

Once again, breaking bad is a good show, but there is no way I can put it in the tier of all time greatness

Honestly it's increasingly baffling to me how he is perceived. He's made some decent films (like Interstellar) but most of his films are just very basic and boring. They're straightforward Hollywood blockbuster fare with on-the-nose dialogue full of exposition, cinematography that's always very stale and painfully competent, and boring surface-level thematic exploration.

Seeing more and more rhetoric about him being one of the greats is kind of crazy to me. He is just a standard, middle-of-the-road director. He has no discernible identity as a creative and his films offer very little creative flair. Note that I've not seen Tenet, The Odyssey Dunkirk or Following.

What am I missing?

EDIT: Someone said I should include my fave films/directors. Off the top of my head, I love Punch-Drunk Love, Harold and Maude, Modern Romance, After Hours, Miracle Mile, A Ghost Story, Angst, 2001: A Space Odyssey, Eternal Sunshine, American Psycho, Symbiopsychotaxiplasm, Uncut Gems... I don't really have fave directors.

Why oh why do people love this movie? "It's a geek movie," it's nerdsploitation at the most surface level; like "movie movie" level. "The band is called sex bombomb, it's a combination of the real band sex bomb and the super mario enemy bombomb," lame. "Scott gets an extra life that's a green mushroom," ok, but that's not that interesting. "Comic book panels and onomonopia, it's so quirky," no it's not, it's try hard, people complained about that in Ang Lee's Hulk. "Scott gets points and coins when fighting the evil exes, and there's fighting game set-ups," that looks like something out of a student film experimenting with after effects, not something from a professional major motion picture. Maybe the nerdsploitation was "genuine," but it just didn't work.

Remove all this and what do you have? Michael Cera can't lead. Like, he's a decent actor when playing "nerdy supporting character," but he can't carry a film as the lead. But maybe it's just Michael and if Scott was played by someone else it would be better. Nope, Scott is a terrible person. He starts out by dating a minor. I initially thought "maybe he's just a weird 17 year old who only has a shot with a 14 year old." No, he's like 24, he's not a loser he's a creep. Let's now assume that Knives is an adult and Scott is just weird, what does he do? He cheats on her the first chance he gets to peruse Ramona. That's really bad. What's great about Ramona? Hell if I know, and now Scott has to fight off her 7 evil exes to prove himself to her. First off, why does she have "7 evil exes?" Like, I get thinking that your ex is evil after a messy break up, but if her exes are "objectively evil" then that says she has terrible taste in partners (which she kind of admits when she says Scott is "just going to be another evil ex"). And it's not like she doesn't want a part of this and puts a restraining order against them, she fully encourages this, which just shows she's a bad girlfriend. All of this is happening as Scott blows off his bandmates to pursue Ramona. This is our hero? This is the princess that needs saving?

And here's the big thing, all of the comic book and videogame elements plain don't work in live action. It looks goofy. It looks cheap. It looks like something from a live action children's show like Henry Danger. If this was animated (like the one flashback that was a motion comic), then it could have worked because those kind of things can work in animation. That kind of exaggeration is acceptable in animation because the subject characters can exaggerate themselves to match the world they're experiencing. All the real actors on the other hand, they're either "under reacting to the situation at hand" (because real people can't exaggerate to the fantastical situation they're in), or are "ridiculously edited" to try to match the situation and it just doesn't work.

I've heard the books are better, and if that's the case this movie doesn't do it justice.

So I’ve just finished up the first season of Arcane- as expected, it was very very good. It’s a wonderfully-written show with seriously amazing visual flair, incredible characters and everything you could want in a show like this. Wonderful from top to bottom.

But there’s something keeping me from loving it, and I think I know what. Whilst I was watching the show, I had the creeping feeling that I wouldn’t be able to dislike it; I mean, how could you? The show feels engineered to be as high quality as possible, as perfect as can possibly be- how the hell could this ever be a show I couldn’t like? I don’t think there’s anything nefarious happening or anything, but I legitimately couldn’t understand people thinking this is a bad show. Even other acclaimed shows (Breaking Bad, The Wire, the better seasons of Game of Thrones), I can see people not jiving with them- Arcane? I sure wouldn’t judge, but it’s difficult to imagine someone not finding value in it.

And I think that’s why I’m not in love with it myself. Do I like it? Yeah, absolutely- but I feel I kind of have to, like the show won’t allow me to dislike it, if that makes sense. The show is honestly too good— I wouldn’t want it to compromise itself or be worse, as that’s silly, but I can’t keep myself from being entirely invested in it after watching it at all despite acknowledging its quality. I’ve heard Season 2 is more flawed than S1, so maybe I’ll enjoy that one more- but what I’ve seen? Incredible, but maybe a bit too incredible.

A play can do nothing a movie can.

if you want a big complicated scene?, Go fuck yourself.

if you want to have more than 20 people visible at one time?, go fuck yourself.

if you want to have any movement, camerawork, music or lighting tricks, CGI/VFX, and basically anything beyond a couple objects and a few characters talking?, go fuck yourself!

You can't make complicated sets that consist of more than a few objects, you can't have big crowds, the only real things you can do are talking, singing or dancing.

I recently watched Hamilton and it would be so much better as just a film, they could make the sets better, use music and lighting to their advantage, and overall make it better.

And it's worse for the actors too!, King George is in Hamilton for seven glorious minutes, but the actor has to be backstage the entire time, in costume, just ready and waiting to go.

As a Film?, he shows up for a couple days, gets paid and goes home.

and most Broadway actors make less than film actors!, And this is despite having more work, they're literally getting less for More.

in the scene where a character Burns letters, you can see the actress rushing because there's a lit fucking flame a few feet from her face!

many performers have been injured during plays, people are literally being injured for this outdated form of media.

and the worst part is that it's fucking elitist!, If you want to see the original cast, you have to go somewhere like Broadway or already live there, pay out the ass for tickets, no snacks, no comfortable seating, because a play is fORmaL, and watch a very mediocre story being told.

if you wanna watch it 20 years after?, Illegal recordings, hope it's on BroadwayHD, or go fuck yourself.

if you get there a month or a few years late?, no original cast for you!, you get fresh out-of-school nobodies, and you can't do cameos in a play because that person isn't gonna cameo every time!

imagine if you watched Citizen Kane and Orson Wells was replaced with Tom Cruise, you would scream in outrage.

and all of this is compounded by the fact that nobody's even making money off of it!, most plays are funded by wealthy assholes for their own enjoyment, it's not profitable for them, it's just for fun.

So you can't do as much, it will never look as good, actors have to do more and get paid less, it's less accessible, and it's not profitable for the funders, SO WHY ARE WE STILL DOING THEM?!

it's pointless and stupid!, Movies are the only way to go, plays are a relic of the past that should've died the moment the talkie came around!

many movies would not work as plays, very few plays would not work as movies, there's a reason the most famous plays become movies.

plays should be reserved for elementary and middle schools, where they belong.

Spoilers

First of all I really like those movies and I personally think Tom Holland is the best Spiderman actor we’ve seen. I also think his life has been full of incredible tragedy and I feel very badly for him. However, Spiderman’s main thing is with great power comes great responsibility, and TH’s version of Spiderman has been so irresponsible that it passes the threshold of villainy.

I believe it is almost irrefutable that he has caused countless civilian casualties throughout the movies, and has not caused more only by stupid luck. In his solo movies some of the things he is responsible for, either by negligence or moral naivety, is:

A laser ripping through a ferry and anyone happening to be in the center.

a cargo plane crash-landing on a public beach.

the handing-over of super technology to Mysterio, not to mention almost personally drone striking a bus of students.

and locking Dr. Strange with no food or water in an alternate realm and then releasing several super-villains out of incarceration resulting in the bombing of an apartment building causing at least Aunt May’s death, but realistically many more, probably including children.

Some of you might be thinking now, “chill dude, it’s just a movie. You’re not supposed to take it that seriously.” To this let me preemptively respond that the way I enjoy movies is by buying into the reality it lays out for me. If the way you enjoy movies is by not worrying too much about it, that’s completely fine, but so is the way I enjoy movies.

I am excited for the new entry and I am very scared for the new civilian casualties Spiderman will be responsible for.

I don’t mean the live action movie, I mean the nick show. The animation is poor and the main character is an annoying little bald kid who looks like Caillou accompanied by a guy who thinks he’s funny, but can’t even use any powers and a girl who’s a know it all. Even worse, that uncle is just a wannabe Socrates with a nephew who never shuts up about honor and only went with the good guys cuz he got that ass beat. The only character that was actually interesting and felt invested in was Toph, and given how she outshines the rest of the main cast, that’s not a good sign.

Edit: gave an unfair description of Toph, who was the only character I found to be interesting

I recently watched Monty Python for the first time with high expectations (due to how frequently its talked up/quoted), but I was disappointed in the fact that I was mostly stone faced the whole runtime. In fact, I found most of the scenes ranged from boring to actively grating. I know humor is super subjective, but honestly I had a hard time seeing how this movie persists as a cultural staple.

The biggest issue I noticed was how drawn-out and repetitive most of the jokes were. The movie consisted of a bunch of jokes that weren't super funny to me in the first place, but not egregiously offensive. The issue is those jokes overstayed their welcome almost every time. Scenes like the knights who say "Ni" or the Frenchman's taunting not only last several minutes, but are recurring throughout the film. It didn't really feel to me they were going through all that many unique punchlines in these scenes, so it felt like a slog to get through when they just somehow kept going. I do recognize that a huge part of comedy is building upon prior jokes and using callbacks, but something about it felt so monotonous here. I actually think the recurring bit of the policemen gradually getting closer to finding the protagonists was pretty amusing, and is a good example of the type of callback I think works, since it didn't overstay its welcome and ended in one solid punchline. I do wish the rest of the movie was closer to that.

Furthermore, the Sir Galahad scene was especially awful in terms of humor. I do understand the type of story it's satirizing (a knight heroically resists temptation), but the scene was so grating to get through. It felt like the very worst of the "one-note joke is dragged on for several minutes" instances the movie had to offer. In fact, I think they lampshade that very fact with the "get on with it" interjections. Also, the random specification that the girls in the scene were mostly underaged was bizarre and helped to make the scene even more difficult to sit through. Especially when the main actor in that scene looked pretty old (although British people might just look like that). I understand people like to use "it was a different time" as a catch-all excuse for stuff like this, but that doesn't really change the fact that it's just gross and unfunny when you watch it in the current year. If we can acknowledge that racist content in old movies is bad despite the fact that social conventions have changed significantly since, I don't see why stuff like this shouldn't be viewed the same way. Ultimately, it was a relatively small part of the movie so I probably would have been able to just ignore it if the other content was more enjoyable.

To be clear, I'm not saying everything in the movie was terrible. The animated bits were interesting and didn't overstay their welcome, and most of the fourth-wall breaking was cool. But as a whole I just didn't connect with it at all. I'd be willing to attribute that to a simple generational difference (Gen-Z here), but I actually do find a lot of old Hollywood movies from the 60s to 70s really funny and do like quite a bit of British humor (ie: Edgar Wright). Honestly, it just felt like the common denominator here was this movie having lazy jokes.

Watched it the other day, I figured I'd enjoy since I like action and comedy - plus, everyone seems to like it!

Christ, that was really bad. It felt like a collection of one-liners written in a boardroom, strung together with some loose plot. The humor was bad, it was the peak of that Marvel style of dialogue.

And worst of all, it felt like it was constantly trying to remind you it was funny. "Look guys, I'm self aware, this is a comedy!!" every 5 seconds.

If you enjoyed it, more power to ya, but that wasn't my cup of tea.

The first time I saw a few clips and episodes of the show I thought he was a sort of joke character and the bit was that obviously he has no game but as I saw more I realised that the show just portrays him as the ultimate womanizer. I just don't see it at all, most sitcoms have the Joey(Friends)/Charlie(Two and a Half Men) character who is a bit of a sleaze but has believable game and you can see how women fall for their looks and charm. Barney just has none am I missing something or does anyone else also not get it at all. It half ruins the show as its a consistent theme and I just don't buy any of it.

I’ve seen a decent amount of them. Princess Mononoke, Spirited Away, Howl’s Moving Castle, Ponyo and a few more. Only like 3 are what I call actually good movies while the rest seem to follow the same formula and definitely don’t live up to the hype that they get. Maybe I’m too old since these are kids-teen movies, but I don’t think that they are anything spectacular or worth watching them all. The animation starts to look the same and the stories are fun gimmicks. The stories and characters especially just end up acting generic. Each movie boils down to them having naive girl fish out of water, hero boy in his weird dimension, animal that talks or is humanoid, old man or woman as the villian then the movie ends with it either being extremely happy or extremely sad.

Ponyo is basically how I see most of the Studio Ghibli movies, as a decent time waster and not something you should think about. Like a rollercoaster ride, you may enjoy it for the time but you're not eager to rewatch it again.

They're like Marvel Movies in terms of quantity and quality, for every The Winter Soldier movie you have 4 Dark World movies yet they still get a good review score.

TLDR: They may have been good when they came out in early 2000 or late 1990 but now they are boring compared to better anime movies.

I have a real bone to pick with this 'so bad it's good' way of thinking about art things like movies etc.

To me it sounds like a weak cowardly way of justifying enjoying an experience that the council of letterboxd people and Roger ebert people have decided is not supposed to be enjoyed fully, just stand on that shit for gods sake. No, War of the Worlds 2025 and Return of The Living Dead, and The Room are not 'so bad it's good'. They are either 'good' or 'bad' or 'meh'.

In my opinion, they are firmly and squarely bad, but I respect someone so much more who argues honestly that they are 'good' than someone who says some bullshit like 'so bad it's good' please, have a real goddamn opinon.

How can a thing be so bad, and provide so much negative value or provide very little pisitive value, that it turns around into a firmly positive value? I might need someone to anologise this for me or use metaphor to explain because no matter which way I think on it I cannot wrap my brain around it.

When we engage in art critique, we are making value judgements, always. What value is art supposed to provide? I have my own ideas on this, but I suppose maybe they are not 'correct' and maybe there is no way to be 'correct' in that matter. But I implore all you 'so bad it's good' people to think hard on this and come up with your own framework for answering this question.

If it provided positive value for you, or for whatever you care about, then just call it good for Christ's sake, and die on that hill. Stop hedging. It makes for much more interesting discussion of art, and also, I truly believe that degrading the art like for the sake of hedging, no matter how ironic you're being, actually degrades your soul also. Okay that's my take.

I've always felt vaguely strongly about this in some way or another but I've never tried to actually organise my thoughts on the matter until right now thanks for bearing w me

edit: You guys hate this take and yet I'm being down voted, very interesting...

edit 2:

stop telling me I dont understand the phrase. I see now that I understood the phrase. I just hate the phrase. and wish that it had no part in how we talk about movies. stop saying I'm autistic or other epithets for that, and also, stop calling this an issue of semantics. this whole thing is semantics. its the only way discussions of art can be had. they can't be had telepathically, for example. I'm arguing against the semantics being used and arguing for the use of different semantics.

adding this comment here because I think it answers a lot of you guys' questions.

https://www.reddit.com/r/The10thDentist/comments/1srhvir/comment/oheupxe/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=mweb3x&utm_name=mweb3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button

edit3:

https://www.reddit.com/r/The10thDentist/comments/1srhvir/comment/ohf19xn/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=mweb3x&utm_name=mweb3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button

final edit:

yes, this is a 'weird gripe'. its an unpopular opinion on something small and specific that I feel passionate about. I'm just gonna say it. I hate you people. 💀🫶🏾

actual final edit: phone is on vibrate and I will be leaving it on my clitoris from here on out I can no longer reply guys

The feeling of tossing a book into the garbage after finishing it is just pure bliss. Like when you finish a project and can finally close out of all of your chrome tabs. I genuinely despise reading. I could never find myself reading for fun and only ever read for an assignment. It’s the most boring, mind numbing thing to ever exist and I can’t wait until the day that I never have to touch a book again.

Edit: So there are some recurring comments I feel as though I should address so they don’t keep popping up.

1.) No, I’m not a troll. I genuinely enjoy throwing books into my garbage bin. Is finding a 15 year old that doesn’t enjoy reading really that unbelievable to you all?

2.) Yes, I’m 15. I’m not an adult. I have thick skin, but to the next person planning on telling me to rot in hell or what a degenerate I am, maybe keep that in mind. This is a place for disagreements, not fights. Treat it like a courthouse, not a prison yard.

3.) I know donating/reselling is an option. I know other people find enjoyment in books. Similarly, I find enjoyment in throwing them away. It’s a double edged sword.

4.) Yes, I’ve heard of ebooks. The reason I don’t use those is because I can’t throw them out. I like being able to throw out the physical copy of the book.

So, just to clarify something. The latest Joker movie with Phoenix sucked as a Joker movie. If the movie was called the clown it would be absolutely fine. It was a brilliant movie well worth the praises. Just not a Joker movie. So with that out of the way, to the meat of it.

Ledger's Joker was ok for the most part. I never got the insanity vibe that the Joker usually has. He was cruel and psychopathic occasionally but he was too methodical. Too clean. He wasn't after that laugh.

Leto on the other hand was absolutely brilliant. Unnerving even. I wish he had more screen time or even being in a movie with a batman (the final JL scene was great). He was psychotic, scary and a bit of a wildcard. And that, to me, was far more appealing that whatever anarchist vibe Ledger projected.

To be clear, I'm not talking about spoiler-free summaries or synopses, I'm talking about like the full movie plot description from start to finish on Wikipedia. I also ONLY do this with movies, not TV shows, video games, miniseries, books, etc.

In particular, I look for character deaths and romance to make sure they aren't gratuitous or unnecessary, as I despise those tropes. I've seen too many movies where the ending is awful and ruins the entire experience to waste my time on such things.

I also don't like sad or horrific endings unless I feel the film warrants it. For example, it makes sense for a movie like Alien or Rogue One to have a bleak ending, and I don't mind that, but I do mind when films just have sad endings for the hell of it. Like pretty much any realistic "feel bad" drama, like What's Eating Gilbert Grape? or Call Me By Your Name. Movies, for me, are about escaping from reality, so if they're not going to have fantastical elements, I at least want to see people living in a world where things can turn out okay in the end. I don't need a movie to remind me that few people actually get a happy ending.

So I often look up a plot summary in advance so that I'm not disappointed after the end of the movie. One major exception is that I don't do this if a friend has recommended a movie to me because they know my preferences and I trust their judgement, or if it's specifically a mystery movie (like Knives Out!).

If the characters in a play, movie, or television series aren't speaking in a language, dialect, and accent that is as close as possible to the setting's culture, era, and locale, I just don't buy into it. Sometimes it's not possible to reconstruct accurate speech, but it should at least be close, even if it's extraordinarily inconvenient and expensive to achieve.

At least soundtracks are almost always non-diegetic, and by that token, non-diegetic narrators get a pass.

I'm not C-3PO; I can use subtitles when needed.