Life got busy, these past two weeks, leaving very little time for pop culture.

I did watch two movies with the tots, with two very different approaches to storytelling for children. Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory (i.e. the 1971 film, with Gene Wilder) was a blast, and we were singing the Oompa Loompa song all weekend afterwards. But watching My Neighbor Totoro the day after really made the moralistic side of Willy Wonka stand out all the more.

A short update this time, since last week was full of social events, and therefore a little light on pop culture. In fact, I will forgo the categories, since I barely read anything and did not really watch any television aside from (in accordance with last week’s plans) three episodes of Reservation Dogs. I did watch two great films. The first was the wonderful 4K restoration of La Double Vie de Veronique (with Irène Jacob in attendance!) shown during the opening night of the Kieślowski programme at Eye. The second film I’m not going to discuss here, but will be talking about on the upcoming episode of the Schokkend Nieuws podcast about the best genre movies of 2022, which we’re recording this Tuesday.

The pop culture event of the week was probably that the Golden Globes were awarded. Since I was one of the new batch of voters recruited to participate this year, I considered staying up to watch… but sleep won out, in the end. It turns out being able to vote on awards doesn’t necessarily give you much more insight into the winners (and makes it very strange to listen to people theorize about the potential motivations of the voting body as a whole, on podcasts such as The Big Picture). Overall I don’t think it’s a bad list of winners, though, if a little on the bland/safe side. On the other hand, two of the movies I would have put at the top of my best-of list for the year were nowhere to be seen.

It’s the time of the year for good intentions. The time of the year when I start logging movies on Letterboxd again, for however long it lasts. When I resolve to put away my phone at bedtime, and to read a book rather than aimlessly scrolling Twitter. Or to pick up my bullet journal yet again.

Looking back, there’s a theme to all these resolutions: it’s about living and consuming pop culture (and food, and alcohol, etc.) more consciously. Not letting time slip through my fingers, but trying to capture how I spent my time, and spending it ‘better’ somehow.