Creative Productions, Arrangements and Operations • Art, Technology and Amusements. Software Engineer and certified FileMaker Pro developer and full-stack web developer by day, https//www.kupietz.com
Reviews & Criticism
Michael Kupietz’s short review and opinion pieces, media and product reviews.
Pretty self-explanatory. I mostly got into the habit of reviewing things to aid my own life-long chronic faulty memory. I can remember facts and skills indelibly; but firsthand experiences sometimes fade quickly. So I got into the habit of jotting down short summaries of my feelings about things I’ve experienced, such as movies, to spare me that thing where I invest a half hour in something before suddenly I realize I’ve seen it before and know how it ends. That sort of thing.
As of this writing (March 2024) this is pretty sparse, I only just had the idea. Generally I've never written much about music—I don't need to, because music is just one of those things I retain like a steel trap; it's all carved in stone upstairs, so I don't have to spend time putting it down on paper.
But, I was thinking, I do like a lot of obscure and unjustly overlooked albums, as well as having some unpopular (and therefore inescapably superior) opinions on popular music, so I thought it would be fun to make a list. This will certainly grow over time.
Finally giving a listen to the prerelease of old friend Dan Sonenberg’s return to solo singer-songwriting, "Peaks Island Ferry". Rather than set down & give him feedback after it’s over, I’m gonna liveblog it here.
Track 1: "Turn it over" Given that the baseline quality of even the bottom rung of Dan’s songs is somewhere north of "totally listenable", I’d say this is middle of the road for him, a solid B or B+. Not particularly adventurous in terms of songwriting, and slightly familiar to anyone who knows his influences, but literate and full of enough unique and vivid imagery to stand out from the pack. It also continues Dan's lifelong trajectory of finding ways to sneak weirder and weirder musical flourishes into conventional-on-the-surface songs in ways that…
Unbeknownst to anybody except Dan Sonenberg—in fact, practically unbeknownst to even myself—I occasionally write fragrance reviews. These are those. Some people enjoy them.
Those of you with the nose can find me on Fragrantica.
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A number of years ago I started jotting down summaries of movies I've watched, just to keep track of what I'd seen. As the years went by, the list grew, and occasionally (but not often) I was moved to write more, until finally I wound up with hundreds of them, mostly very short summaries but occasionally a little more in-depth for movies I particularly liked or loathed. There's a brief section of favorites and honorable mentions, then below that they're indexed by movie title, click a letter to see the titles starting with that letter.
By the way: this list is extremely heavy, although not exclusive, with horror and science fiction films, because that's what I watch most.
Unbeknownst to anybody except Dan Sonenberg—in fact, practically unbeknownst to even myself—I occasionally write fragrance reviews. These are those. Some…
Unbeknownst to anybody except Dan Sonenberg—in fact, practically unbeknownst to even myself—I occasionally write fragrance reviews. These are those. Some…
For confused first-time visitors and other people still acclimating, here is a description of these little tabs to the left, as well as some other features of the site.
Open "Expert Mode" CLI Navigation - this give you the option to switch your browser's display to an old-fashioned terminal mode where you may browse this site, view pages and images by typing text commands. Just like how we used to browse the web back in 1978!
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