Roy Tang

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Programmer, engineer, scientist, critic, gamer, dreamer, and kid-at-heart.

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2020 April

2020 March

2020 February

2020 January

  • Watching Lately, Jan 2020: Arrow, The Good Place, The Witcher, Kim's Convenience, The Expanse
    I wasn't sure if I should continue this watching-lately series since I already set up a separate page for listing my 2020 movies watched. It might have been more consistent to have a list for the 2020 TV shows also? But then again, TV shows are a much different beast, since each show/season is broken into an episode and sometimes you watch them all in one go or sometimes over the span of a few months. So maybe let's keep this going for the while. So yeah, movies. From the list for January, I think the best one was Parasite.

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    Posted by under blog at #pop-culture #movies #tv #watching-lately
    Also on: twitter / 1198 words

  • My Top Tens of the 2010s
    Apparently I'm not done looking back at the 2010s yet. I had some "top tens of 2010s" discussions with some friends recently, here are my personal lists, each in no particular order: My Top Ten Movies of the 2010s Avengers Endgame (2019).. I'm keeping only one slot per franchise, so I had to choose an MCU movies for this. Runner-ups for this slot were Guardians of the Galaxy and Captain America Winter Soldier, and individually either one of those movies might be around the same or better than Endgame, but Endgame is the culmination of a decade's worth of movies

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    Posted by under blog at #movies #tv #gaming
    Also on: twitter / 👍 1 1145 words

2019 December

  • Watching Lately: December 2019
    Been watching a lot of things this December. I finally got back on The Expanse after finishing S1 more than a year ago. I only finished S2, but it was already a vast improvement over S1. S1 felt like a lot of meandering around until the characters actually ran into the plot. S2 was stronger, faster-paced, and there's always a lot of things going on in each episode. I really like this series now, looking forward to S3 and S4 when I have the time. Netflix-wise, I enjoyed their recently-added Jeopardy series (always a great show to have playing in

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    Posted by under blog at #movies #review #tv #watching-lately #pop-culture
    Also on: twitter / 👍 1 720 words

  • RISE OF SKYWALKER Spoiler-free review:

    • the movie is fine and entertaining to watch
    • It's a Star Wars movie, so you pretty much know what to expect, space wizards and space battles and such
    • pacing is frantic in the first act, and a bit in the second. Abrams has a lot of things he wants to do and limited time to do it, so things happen in rapid succession
    • the third act is basically an ode to Return of the Jedi, as a parallel to The Force Awakens' ode to A New Hope. In fact, there is a lot of fanservice for original trilogy fans sprinkled throughout the movie.
    • it is not the best ending I could have imagined for the sequel trilogy, but it is an ending
    • there are a few twists and turns in the movie, but because it's Star Wars, you largely know what to expect from the overall plot
    • magugustuhan ba ni Mama: The movie is generally family-friendly (outside of the violence), but my mom doesn't like space battles and she would probably be confused by the rapid pace of events and all these characters she's not familiar with, so no.
    • I watched in IMAX 3D, but I don't think there was much noticeable 3D, the movie is probably perfectly fine without IMAX
    • there is no post-credits scene
    • I think I liked The Last Jedi more than this one

    I have a bit more spoilery comments posted here.

    Comic does not reflect my viewing experience
    Posted by under notes at #movies #spoiler-free-review
    Also on: twitter facebook /

2019 November

2019 October

  • JOKER spoiler-free review:

    • very dark movie, not like any previous superhero movies at all; don't bring your kids
    • it is violent and potentially disturbing, but strangely not as much as the hype made it out to be
    • Joaquin Phoenix definitely gives a pretty good performance, but IDK about the supposed "Oscar-worthy" hype
    • some of the shots feels like the director definitely had a lot of fun bringing this story to life
    • I would have liked less connection to the Batman mythos so that this movie is more stand-alone. I mean, it is pretty much stand-alone, but it does remind you where it's set and direct connections to the Mythos exist
    • I think a lot of the story and plot elements are handled well, any concerns I have would largely be nitpicking
    • No post credits scene
    • i didnt watch in imax and don't think it would be relevant
    • magugustuhan ba ni mama: sure NO
    • Ultimately, I still prefer that Joker's origin story remain undetermined, as it makes him more akin to a natural force of chaos, but I accept this movie as a version that even canon Joker could have told and that might have been believable
    • it's definitely a better movie overall than Suicide Squad, Man of Steel or Dawn of Justice or Justice League, but it's also a different completely type of movie, so the comparison is difficult
    • I still like Ledger's Joker the best, the character is best opposite Batman
    Posted by under notes at #movies #spoiler-free-review
    Also on: twitter twitter twitter twitter twitter twitter /

2019 September

2019 August

2019 July

  • Watching Lately: June and July 2019
    I was travelling for most of the past two months, so this covers both June and July, and I guess I haven't been able to watch too much. Maybe? IDK, we'll see. Since I was in the US, I took the opportunity to finish watching Voltron: Legendary Defender which only had two seasons available on PH Netflix. Pretty good adaptation, lots of fun callbacks to the old series. Some annoying filler eps, especially in the middle seasons onwards. I like how they spent the entire series going through the main Voltron villains one by one: first Zarkon, then Lotor, then

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    Posted by under blog at #pop-culture #movies #tv #watching-lately
    Also on: twitter / 726 words

  • A Look Back at the Marvel Cinematic Universe
    I know I already made a whole post about the MCU after Endgame came out, but after the MCU Phase 4 announcements this past weekend at SDCC I was a bit hyped. I thought it would be fun to look back at the past 10 years of MCU Phase 1-3 and see what I wrote about the movies. Iron Man (2008) Surprisingly, I had written nothing about watching this film at all, and I don't remember going to the cinema to watch it. The movie came out between Batman Begins and The Dark Knight, so my hype was undeniably towards

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    Posted by under blog at #movies #comics
    Also on: twitter / 2771 words

  • Spider-Man Far From Home
    First, the spoiler-free review, then more spoilery stuff afterwards. I watched Far From Home while I was... far from home. great movie, lots of fun, and the stakes are a lot higher than the Vulture just stealing some tech off Tony Stark basically a story of Peter Parker the high school student trying to juggle his Spider-Man problems with his high school life, which was one of the best eras of comic book Spider-Man the movie gives us a look at what the world looks like post-Endgame and how weird it is for everyone if you've seen the trailers, you

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    Posted by under blog at #movies
    Also on: twitter / 791 words

2019 May

  • Watching Lately: May 2019
    The big TV thing of May 2019 was of course, the much maligned finale for Game of Thrones. I've written about that separately here. Most of the US TV series also ended their runs in May. Arrowverse show seasons were littered with poor writing as usual. I rank the seasons in this order: best is Legends of Tomorrow season 4. The reason Legends is the best is that they're not afraid to be outrageous. My favorite moment was from before the midseason break, Puppets of Tomorrow! second best is Supergirl season 4. I don't like that Supergirl always felt very

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    Posted by under blog at #pop-culture #movies #tv #manga #watching-lately
    Also on: twitter / 710 words

2019 April

  • Watching Lately: April 2019
    I've already written extensively about Avengers Endgame, but there are other things I watched this month too. Shazam came out early this month, and while it was unfortunately sandwiched between MCU blockbusters, it was a fun adventure romp and surprised me in a few ways. I wrote a short spoiler-free review over on Tumblr. TV-wise, I've been on a rewatch binge of 30 Rock that unfortunately started with season 4 due to Amazon Prime's weird way of presenting things. I've already blown past the series finale and wrapped around to the start and currently at season 2, so close to

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    Posted by under blog at #pop-culture #movies #tv #watching-lately
    Also on: twitter / 282 words

  • More thoughts on Avengers Endgame and the MCU
    I already wrote about Avengers Endgame a bit in yesterday's post, but that was a bit rushed and I had more thoughts, so here we are. I figured I might as well get everything out. There will be unmarked spoilers for Avengers Endgame and Agents of SHIELD. Before even going into the movie that was seemingly sold out everywhere despite being on almost every cinema screen in the Metro, I was thinking to myself what a phenomenon. Endgame is the culmination of a decade's worth of movies, 22 in total, and even some number of shows, something unrivalled in all

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    Posted by under blog at #pop-culture #movies
    Also on: twitter / 3143 words
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