What’s Up 2019: Week 48

Welcome! Its the next weekly recap of What’s Up. Week 48 lands is in the first day of December already. Its hard to imagine how quick 2019 has gone by. This week was a lot of wrap-up: festivals and podcast prep material. Things need to head into Christmas and winter holidays mode soon.

READING

Currently reading: Love Potions and Other Calamities

Reading in a low right now as festival and the wrap-up consumed most of my time but we will be getting on track next week with more reading time.

PLAYING

• Afterparty

Currently playing: Rusty Lake Roots

Im anticipation of the upcoming recording for Game Warp, my main focus has been on completing Afterparty. For gamers who have played Oxenfree before, you also know that one playthrough is never enough because they have such a cause and effect choice based storyline that from my research, at least 3 endings to this. So second playthrough is happening for sure, somewhat debating to stream it although I haven’t streamed in a long time (always depends on time).

WATCHING

• Freaks (2019, Review)
• Lady Bird

Its been a good batch of viewings this week. Its nice to get to the end of the year and have a string of good films. Usually, I just make really bad choices. Freaks was an early screener in anticipation of its digital and bluray/DVD release and a very good scifi film of sorts. On the other hand, Lady Bird is more my type of movie as a dramedy with Soairse Ronan (one of my fave actresses) and the coming of age of her character heading to college on the road of love and friendships.

Blood in the Snow Festival

• Dark Visions Shorts Program (Review)
• Z (2019, Review)

BLood in the Snow Festival ended in the middle of the week, just when I had a writers block so everything got pushed back for a week in order to wrap everything up. I luckily did go back to watch the last feature film, Z because it ended winning the festival awards for Best Director and Best Feature and I can somewhat agree with it.

BINGING

• When I Grow Up (Season 1, 2019)
• Lipstick Prince (Season 2, 2019)
• Nailed it! Holiday (Season 2, 2019)
• Sugar Rush Christmas (Season 1, 2019)

Currently binging: Who’s the Murderer 5, The Brightest Star in the Sky, Put Your Head on my Shoulder, Viva La Romance (S1, 2, 3)

As I dive into a lot of rewatches because of its landing on Netflix or some other Youtube channel, the variety/reality shows that I’ve been watching all gradually wrapped up its season. Lipstick Prince Season 2 was a short 4 episodes long, which is barely half a season but it seems like they will have a next season from how they ended this season. At the same time, When I Grow Up, which I’ve enjoyed a lot with some famous fathers and their kids going on trips to reconnect and discover different cities and cultures in China with some pretty subpar living conditions to much better ones by the end.

HOWEVER, as touching and funny as those previous ones are, Nailed It! Holiday is always the one that captures me especially this year was very much some great amateur bakers that they chose. Some truly hilarious moments. Just slightly more than Sugar Rush Christmas, even though the latter is more in the whole traditional Christmas festivity. Either way, some fun baking shows both amateur and more professional baking competition Netflix shows that fits well with the season. I’ll have the TV binge for those up soon for the December month line-up!

That’s it for this What’s Up!
Next week’s recap will be more festive, I promise!

What have you been reading/watching/playing/binging?

What’s Up: Week 46 Blood in the Snow Festival is right around the corner…

A week of vacation is upon us and the recap of it actually is surprisingly not quite a lot, especially since we just had a stay-cation so still around our home quite a bit. However, a lot of it was in the relaxing state so all doing things that I wanted to do while catching on a few little errands and eating good food and you know, the having fun not in the house variety. I’ll share those adventures at the end of the month in the November Adventures post. For now, lets look at the week!

READING

• Proximity by Jem Tugwell

Currently reading: Love, Potions & Other Calamities

And we are done with Proximity! Its a pretty clever little mystery and suspense thriller which plays on a future that could happen if technology were to control our lives or due to the overdependence of it in the future. A premise that definitely applies very well to questioning certain elements of a technology-filled world and how it applies to the investigation. I’ll talk more about it in the upcoming review. As for now, I just started reading Love, Potions & Other Calamities. Its too early to say anything yet but I have great hope that it will be great as this author Charlie Laidlaw has released some solid novels.

PLAYING

Currently playing: Afterparty & Cube Escape: Paradox

An hour down and a bunch more to go for Afterparty but its a start. Afterparty is a game that I’ve been anticipating since its announcement so I’m working hard to get some hours into it. Only thing hindering it is that whole Cube Escape: Paradox that I started but never got around to finishing it as its very difficult. I’m going to wrap that up before continuing on with Afterparty.

WATCHING

As the final festival of 2019 is among us, yet again the watching section will be split between two sections. The normal viewings and the festival viewing. The festival hasn’t actually started BUT remote coverage means some reviews can start going up as it approaches so if you are in the Toronto area, you can always go and catch it during this festival run.

• Creepshow 2 (1987) Friday Film Club
• Murder on the Orient Express (2017)
• The Ice Storm (1997)

If only I had a 2007 then I’d have watched films ending with 7s over 3 decades. It wasn’t intended until I noticed the pattern here. Either way, Creepshow 2 was my pick for the Friday Film Club and I’ve shared the link up there. However, the movie that caught my attention the most was Murder on Orient Express which finally landed on Netflix so I jumped right on it during vacation week to catch up and it did not disappoint. As for The Ice Storm, its part of the Movies and Tea new season which is starting up soon with Ang Lee’s filmography.

Blood in the Snow Festival 2019 (Remote coverage)

• Puppet Killer (2019)
• Liaison (short 2019) Review
• Housekreeping (short 2019) Review
• Happy Face (2018)
• Copenhagen Road (short 2019) Review

I’m slowly getting into the Blood in the Snow Festival screeners day by day and working out a nice schedule to get the writing done. Its been a lot of procrastinating and pondering. Hopefully by the time this gets out, the review for Puppet Killer will be listed as done above. I spent a few days thinking about it and putting together the review and its really growing on me.

BINGING

• Wait, My Youth (2019)
• Nailed It! France (Season 1, 2019)

Currently binging: Lipstick Prince (Season 2), Relation Ship, Green Eggs and Ham, Chase Me, Who’s the Murderer (Season 5), Viva La Romance (Season 3)

Go ahead! Tell me to pick my favorites this week! Not an easy task. Everything I watched was really awesome. Wait My Youth was the TV series that I chose as the series to watch during my week off and it was a ton of fun. I’m a huge fan of the male lead, a young actor with a lot of potential. Nailed It! France was hilarious to watch as well. The husband and I has pretty much pinpointed that understanding the language does help in the enjoyment of these things but this host also seems more in line with our type of humor than the other foreign version we saw, I think it was Nailed It! Mexico (review). I’ll probably do a TV binge on Nailed It! France soon!

Even my currently binging stuff, which is more currently playing, except for Green Eggs and Ham, has been pretty entertaining. All the variety shows and reality shows and whatnot have just been a blast to watch. I sometimes play the episode in the background when I’m writing to watch again. Its rare that I do that usually. Unfortunately a lot of them don’t have subtitles. But then, I’m translating the 90% of Chase Me, which is a celebrity Ultimate Beastmaster tag concept game on Zhejiang TV (on Youtube), for my husband as he also finds it very amusing to watch. Not to mention Season 5 of Who’s The Murderer is set on a cruise ship so its awesome plus it has Boran Jing (who I like a lot) as one of the participants. Viva La Romance Season 3 also started (and I just realized that I never finished Season 2..oops) and it has Miriam Yeung and I never knew a lot about her after she got married so its a fun little wife’s trip. So far, its been pretty cool. Lots of a great shows!

That’s it for this What’s Up!
Week 46 already of 2019! Its crazy!
But then, we have started setting up for Christmas..so I guess its not that crazy, right?

What have you been reading/watching/playing/binging?