Roy Tang

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

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Mar 2021

  • #WandaVision spoiler-free review:

    • Overall, I really liked it, and I think they did well with the one-episode-per-week format. The show certainly would not have been this hyped if it all came in one drop
    • Really difficult to not spoil. If you have somehow avoid being spoiled by the internet until it all dropped, good for you!
    • A very emotional story of Wanda dealing with the aftermath of Infinity War/Endgame
    • good usage of the sitcom tropes
    • fantastic performance by Elisabeth Olsen
    • lots of fan service for comic book fans to dig into. Maybe too much even; don’t overthink or overhype it to yourself
    • most of the episodes have something like 5-6 minutes of credits. Episodes 7 and 8 have a mid-credits scene. Episode 9 has both mid and post credits.

    Looking forward to Falcon and Winter Soldier next!

    Posted by under notes at #tv #comicbooks #spoiler-free-review
    Also on: twitter mastodon tumblr / 0

Dec 2020

  • Perfect Strangers
    While digging through some old stuff recently I found a copy of the late 80s/early 90s US sitcom Perfect Strangers and decided to binge through all 8 seasons of it (really more like 6 and a half, since seasons 1 and 8 were an abridged 6 episodes each). I grew up watching this series, on live tv even, before we had cable or Netflix or anything like that. During the binge-watch I remember a good number of the episodes from the first season all the way up to the end of season 7, which implies almost all of it was broadcast on local TV, kind of a rarity I think?

    read more (743 words)

    Posted by under post at #tv
    Also on: mastodon twitter / 0 / 743 words

Feb 2020

  • Watching Lately, Feb 2020 - Not Much Apparently
    2020 Movies update: 7 movies watched in Feb. Probably the best movie I’ve seen this month was Knives Out. (Jojo Rabbit close second.) The goal of 200 movies for the year is getting farther! As for TV, I think most of my watching time was spent rewatching Rick and Morty for quiz purposes lol. Well, Criminal Minds ended, so there’s that. Arrowverse has been meh, though I did enjoy Supergirl’s 100th episode.

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    Posted by under post at #Pop Culture #Movies #TV #watching lately
    Also on: twitter / 0 / 415 words

  • Criminal Minds
    In 2010 I took a short work hiatus which meant I was often home for most of the day. Back then Netflix wasn’t really a thing, so I would often have local cable TV playing in the background of whatever I was doing. And it was because of this that I started regularly watching police procedurals. They’re not the cleverest or most highbrow of shows, but they’re more like a guilty pleasure.

    read more (844 words)

    Posted by under post at #tv #pop culture
    Also on: twitter / 1 / 844 words

Jan 2020

  • 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.

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    Posted by under post at #Pop Culture #Movies #TV #watching lately
    Also on: twitter / 0 / 1198 words

  • Arrowverse: Crisis on Infinite Earths
    So the back half of the CW Arrowverse’s epic Crisis on Infinite Earth’s crossover finally aired this week, and I promised more words about the Arrowverse and the crossover last month, so here we are. Spoilers abound! On 15 Jan 2020 5:05am I wrote: #CrisisOnInfiniteEarths spoiler free review: low budget, pacing and writing issues, but idc because all the dc comics fan service kept making me smile First the bad: as noted above, writing and pacing and budget issues plague the crossover, but this is typical of the Arrowverse as a whole.

    read more (655 words)

    Posted by under post at #tv
    Also on: twitter / 0 / 655 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 and gave me the most enjoyment as a comic book fan.

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    Posted by under post at #movies #tv #gaming
    Also on: twitter / 1 0 / 1145 words

Dec 2019

Nov 2019

Sep 2019

Aug 2019

Jul 2019

May 2019

  • 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.

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    Posted by under post at #pop culture #movies #tv #manga #watching lately
    Also on: twitter / 0 / 710 words

  • Game of Thrones
    After a much-maligned eighth and final season, HBO’s Game of Thrones is done. Unmarked spoilers follow. The eighth season was so notoriously bad, we got petitions asking for rewrites. Here’s how I explained it to a friend after the notorious episode 5: It’s not about characters being killed, it’s about bad writing because they’re cramming. The writers were determined to finish the show in 2 smaller seasons so they’re skipping a lot of necessary character development and characters just do stupid things because the plot demands it.

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    Posted by under post at #pop culture #tv #books
    Also on: twitter / 0 / 766 words

Apr 2019

  • 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.

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    Posted by under post at #Pop Culture #Movies #TV #watching lately
    Also on: twitter / 0 / 282 words

Mar 2019

  • Watching Lately: March 2019
    The big one this month was Captain Marvel. I posted the usual spoiler-free review over on Tumblr, but I have some more spoiler-y thoughts over here: (Spoilers) While I thought the movie was ok, I was underwhelmed by the third act and specifically the lack of any serious threat for Carol to defeat towards the end of the movie. As this tumblr post explains more clearly than I ever could, perhaps the issue is that the narrative is not something targetted towards me as a man, who has not experienced the emotional gaslighting IRL that many women are exposed to.

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    Posted by under post at #Movies #Review #tv #watching lately #Pop Culture
    Also on: twitter / 0 / 419 words

  • Netflix and Amazon Prime: An abundance of content
    If you haven’t figured it out yet, I watch a lot of TV shows, rarely on TV itself though. I outgrew scheduled television maybe more than a decade ago. I’m reminded of this because I was going through some old disks and found burned episodes of stuff like Smallville, Heroes, The Simpsons, various anime, and so on. Those were from the days before streaming though. These days an abundance of content is available online via the streaming services, no need to store all those episodes yourself.

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    Posted by under post at #tv #movies #Pop Culture
    Also on: twitter / 0 / 602 words

Feb 2019

  • Watching Lately: February 2019
    Some things I’ve been watching lately, aside from the usual TV shows I follow: I watched Alita: Battle Angel, with the friend who introduced me to the series in the first place. The movie looked fantastic and the fight scenes were great. Plot was supercondensed, several books’ worth of story combined into one. Ended in a weird place, kinda? Easily the best western live action anime adaptation by far. On 7 Feb 2019 2:06pm I wrote: Watched Alita: Battle Angel earlier today.

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    Posted by under post at #Movies #Review #tv #watching lately #Pop Culture
    Also on: twitter / 0 / 500 words

  • Subtitles
    Interesting article on closed captioning, or as I like to call them, subtitles. My first exposure to subtitles was anime of course, but these days I vastly prefer having subtitles on any show, even if it’s dubbed in a language I do understand. From the article: “Why do you have captions on?” I asked. “It helps me with my ADHD: I can focus on the words, I catch things I missed, and I never have to go back,” she replied.

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    Posted by under post at #tv #Pop Culture
    Also on: twitter / 0 / 206 words

Jan 2019

Dec 2018

  • Watching Lately: December 2018
    Some things I’ve been watching lately, aside from the usual TV shows I follow: I very much enjoyed Elseworlds, the Arrowverse crossover this year. I mean sure, a lot of it didn’t make any sense, but it was like a love letter to DC fans. I actually consider myself more of a Marvel fan than DC, but I still loved it! I wrote a spoiler-free review over on the Tumblr.

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    Posted by under post at #Movies #Review #tv #watching lately #Pop Culture
    Also on: twitter / 0 / 524 words

  • Arrowverse Elseworlds crossover spoiler-free review!

    - if you’re not aware, episode 1 - Flash S05E09, episode 2 - Arrow S07E09, episode 3 - Supergirl S04E09
    - I don’t usually review TV show crossovers but TBH I can’t recall any other any TV show crossovers and I just really, really enjoyed this one
    - basically a love letter to DC comics fans, a celebration of dc comics/TV/movies from the past four decades, and apparently a prelude of things to come. Non-comicbook fans might not be as happy as me lol
    - all three episodes were great (middle episode slightly worse because Arrow lol), I was smiling all the time and apploauding all the references

    - frankly not everything made sense, but I’ll forgive it (I mean, have you *read* crisis on infinite earths? lol

    - bonus: for more zaniness, also watch this week’s Legend’s of Tomorrow, they didn’t want to be outdone!

    - I also watched Aquaman today, and that was fine (review later) but I decided to write a review of this crossover first!
    - tonight’s reading list (image attached)

    Arrowverse Elseworlds crossover spoiler-free review! - if you’re not aware, episode 1 - Flash S05E09, episode 2 - Arrow S07E09, episode 3 - Supergirl S04E09- I don’t usually review TV show crossovers but TBH I can’t recall any other any TV show crossovers and I just really, really enjoyed this one- basically a love letter to DC comics fans, a celebration of dc comics/TV/movies from the past four decades, and apparently a prelude of things to come.
    Posted by under photos at #dc comics #arrowverse #arrow #Flash #supergirl #crisis #spoiler-free-review #tv
    Also on: tumblr twitter facebook tumblr / 2

Nov 2018

  • Watching Lately: November 2018
    Some things I’ve been watching lately, aside from the usual TV shows I follow: For some reason, I watched two biopics this month. The first one is Hidden Figures, about three black women who were instrumental during the early days of NASA leading up to the Friendship 7 mission piloted by John Glenn. The movie is fairly interesting if you are even remotely interested in either the challenges faced in black history or math and science or the early days of the space program competition between the USA and Russia.

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    Posted by under post at #Movies #Review #tv #watching lately #Pop Culture
    Also on: twitter / 0 / 475 words

Oct 2018

  • Watching Lately: October 2018
    Some things I’ve been watching lately, aside from the usual TV shows I follow: Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan (on Amazon Prime) – surprisingly good, even if I’m not too familiar with the Jack Ryan stuff. I only know John Krasinski from The Office, Spoilers for Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan: (Spoilers) The story starts with Ryan tracking down Suleiman’s network via financials, but they never follow-up on who was financing his group I’m not sure what was the point of the whole drone pilot side story (including the weird trip to the casino and the night with the couple), although it was admittedly kind of entertaining Daredevil season 3 (on Netflix) – I enjoyed the season a lot.

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    Posted by under post at #Movies #Review #tv #watching lately #Pop Culture
    Also on: tumblr twitter / 0 / 305 words

  • Superhero shows being political
    Comic books and superheroes have always tended to skew towards liberal philosophies, given how writers and artists tend to support ideals like individualism and free expression. So it’s not surprising that the derivative shows tend to lean the same way. Not only do many of the shows promote diversity, but many are becoming overtly political as well. Some recent examples. (Spoilers for current seasons of Supergirl, Legends of Tomorrow and Daredevil follow)

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    Posted by under post at #Comics #Politics #tv #Pop Culture #Opinions
    Also on: tumblr twitter / 0 / 298 words

  • Michael Scott
    I’ve been re-watching The Office (US) lately (it’s a good show to leave running in the background while you’re doing other stuff), and I just find the character of Michael Scott fascinating. He’s funny and well-written and basically just a big bag of human flaws that somehow bumbles his way into managing an office. He’s self-centered, attention-hungry, easily distracted, and refuses to acknowledge any bad news, yet despite all of that he loves his workmates like a family.

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    Posted by under post at #tv #Pop Culture
    Also on: tumblr twitter / 0 / 260 words

May 2018

  • Spoiler Alert!
    When Game of Thrones entered its sixth season in 2016, it was true spoiler territory for those of us who had read the GRRM books before HBO’s TV adaptation turned the property into a worldwide phenomenon. Due to the author’s glacial writing pace, at this point the TV series went past the point that the novels had reached. Thus nobody – book readers or tv viewers – knew what events would unfold in the story.

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    Posted by under post at #Movies #tv #Pop Culture #Tech Life
    Also on: tumblr twitter / 0 / 786 words

Feb 2018

Jan 2018

  • I had put off watching PUNISHER (on Netflix) since i wasn’t really too hyped about it. But now that I finally got around to it, I really like it.

    The pacing was good throughout the season (which was one of the weakness of the recent MCU Netflix seasons such as Luke Cage, Iron Fist and Defenders) and it didn’t falter halfway through and stuck the landing.

    I had put off watching PUNISHER (on Netflix) since i wasn’t really too hyped about it. But now that I finally got around to it, I really like it. The pacing was good throughout the season (which was one of the weakness of the recent MCU Netflix seasons such as Luke Cage, Iron Fist and Defenders) and it didn’t falter halfway through and stuck the landing.
    Posted by under notes at #tv
    Also on: twitter twitter facebook / 5

  • If you’re an X-Men fan and you’re not watching The Gifted, you’re really missing out. It’s a more serious, street-level take on “the mutant problem” than the movies could ever handle.

    Posted by under notes at #tv
    Also on: twitter facebook / 7

  • Black Mirror S4 spoiler-free review! (episodes listed from most enjoyed to least):

    4.6. Black Museum (reminds me of White Christmas)

    4.1. USS Callister (fun, but I was annoyed by how infeasible the technical premise was)

    4.4. Hang the DJ (kind of telegraphed the ending)

    4.3. Crocodile (felt like a police procedural)

    4.5. Metalhead (would have probably appreciated it more if it wasn’t a Black Mirror episode)

    4.2. Arkangel (kinda boring and draggy)

    Overall I liked S3 a lot more

    Posted by under notes at #tv #spoiler-free-review
    Also on: twitter twitter facebook / 0

Dec 2017

Oct 2017

Aug 2017

  • DEFENDERS spoiler-free review and episode guide:

    (Okay, maybe a teensy little spoiler in that image - but I couldn’t resist lol)

    • this series moves forward each of the four protaganists
    • you get to see most of the supporting cast come back and maybe even get a teeny bit of development in
    • the plot is reasonably tight, i had a few minor nitpicks but now i can’t even remember most of them
    • Maybe it’s just the fanboy in me, but I was really excited when they met each other for the first time
    • Jessica Jones still the best character
    • Iron Fist still the weakest point (see the image), but it’s not as bad as it was in his own series. It helps that he’s not surrounded by the weird Meachum family and has a better ensemble to work off of. I also really enjoyed how enthusiastic he was at getting a team together
    • fight scenes are pretty good (at least better than in the Iron Fist series - also it’s still weird that Daredevil fights a lot better than Iron Fist. He must have been a real slacker during that decade in Kun’Lun)
    • I suspect you can come in cold without watching any of the previous series, they do bring up their backstories a lot
    • I’m disappointed that there was no title drop

    Episode guide:

    ep1 ok ep2 great ep3 great ep4 great ep5 draggy, this was the weakest ep for me ep6 ok ep7 good ep8 great. there’s a post-credits scene

    DEFENDERS spoiler-free review and episode guide: (Okay, maybe a teensy little spoiler in that image - but I couldn’t resist lol) this series moves forward each of the four protaganists you get to see most of the supporting cast come back and maybe even get a teeny bit of development in the plot is reasonably tight, i had a few minor nitpicks but now i can’t even remember most of them Maybe it’s just the fanboy in me, but I was really excited when they met each other for the first time Jessica Jones still the best character Iron Fist still the weakest point (see the image), but it’s not as bad as it was in his own series.
    Posted by under photos at #timeline-photos #tv #spoiler-free-review timeline
    Also on: facebook / 4

Dec 2016

  • Finished watching Westworld. It’s pretty good. Once you get introduced to the premise of the show, it’s easy to imagine where it goes from there - these types of stories tend to go in that particular direction. Where the show shines is the narrative, the way the events unfold, everything is very well done. Some things from the earlier episodes are quite vague, unclear or sometimes downright contradictory, but things clear up pretty well near the end of the 10-episode run, though a number of things are still left hanging (including the fates of the surviving characters) for the presumptive season two to help clear up. Not for kids. Lots of violence and nudity and whatnot. Also, there’s a post-credits scene.

    Posted by under notes at #tv
    Also on: facebook / 4

Oct 2016

  • Luke Cage spoiler-free review:

    • this is an unapologetically very black show. It highlights black culture, black music, black history, and so on
    • gang violence, sleazy politicians, corrupt cops
    • most of the cast give great performances
    • rosario dawson’s role seems to get bigger with each additional series
    • lots of great easter eggs for comic book fans
    • might have been an episode or two too long
    • I did not like the ending too much, though I can see why they might have gone that way
    Posted by under notes at #tv #spoiler-free-review
    Also on: facebook / 4

May 2016

Apr 2016

  • So I watched a couple of eps of the new Criminal Minds spin-off Beyond Borders featuring Gary Sinise’s FBI team intervening in crimes with American victims in other countries. I’m tempted to keep watching solely for the eventual episode set in the Philippines where there are militant leftists protesting against imperialist interference in local affairs

    Posted by under notes at #tv
    Also on: facebook / 0

Feb 2016

Dec 2015

  • Finally finished watching Jessica Jones. It started out a bit slow, but the pace picked up after a few episodes. It’s a different kind of grimdark than Daredevil was, but everything about the plot was great and tight. I was worried about what they planned to do with Kilgrave but it turned out he might have been a better villain here than Fisk was in Daredevil

    Posted by under notes at #tv
    Also on: facebook / 3

Aug 2015

Jul 2015

  • After seven months of watching Deep Space Nine, I watched the last episode tonight. A very satisfying series and finale. Overall while TNG was a lot more iconic and well-known I feel like DS9 had a much better story to tell and a much more satisfying ending as well

    Posted by under notes at #tv
    Also on: facebook / 1

Jan 2015

Jun 2014

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