GeekNights Wednesday - Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse

Tonight on GeekNights, we review Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse. It might be the best cinematic animation ever made. It's the longest animated film every produced by an American studio at 140 minutes. It's a classic for all time. Everyone should watch it immediately. You will never see Rym and Scott this giddy about anything. That aberration alone warrants that you must watch this film as soon as possible.

In the news, the American northeast is a dangerous hellscape currently, Hayao Miyazaki's "How Do You Live" hits theaters July 14th and there will be no trailer, and Image Comics leaves Diamond Distributors.

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Also, fuck this

Holy fuck, this one character alone had so much detail in his animation.

I feel for you guys over there. We had AQI in the 240s here in Seattle back in 2021. This was due to several wildfires from Canada down to California. I remember that almost everyone I knew was suffering from headaches and fatigue when the smoke really bad. For people like me, living in apartments with no HVAC, we had to construct those DIY box-fan air purifiers and shit like that. I also bought one of those stupidly overpriced Dyson air purifiers. They look nice but that’s about it. Seeing what’s happening in NY right now reminds me that I need to start preparing for this year’s fire season.

These fan filter masks are pretty nice for having clean air to breathe without the mask feeling. If you want to have even better fresh air, one of the comments has instructions for how to take it apart and caulk a couple of gaps.

Also, I don’t really like the mask it comes with. A duck bill n95, with the hose connected off-center on the bottom feels better.

I’ve spent way too much Covid time thinking about masks and air purifiers. These masks are pretty good for the person wearing them, but garbage for spreading to the people around you. I used them for airplanes and crowded places once nobody else seem to give a shit and had pretty much stopped masking.

I think I’ve said it elsewhere, but a P2 mask also works very well, and is far more comfortable to wear. They’re higher airflow while maintaining a high level of filtration, more comfortable to wear and easier to seal(since they’re fit-tested on actual people as part of the certification), and they’re dirt cheap. The only downside is they will often have exhalation valves, but tbh those are fine unless you’re exhibiting COVID symptoms at this point.

Just returned from watching Across the Spider-Verse. Technologically an absolutely astonishing, and I also liked the themes. Unfortunately the film is a bit marred by a bad ending. You should still definitely see it, but perhaps in a year or two in case you are unaware.

ending

I initially thought the movie was overstaying its welcome a bit too long. The moral high point was of course the escape from the Spider-Society and after Miles escaped I did think he would end up int he wrong universe, but really the movie should have just ended with him returning and saving his dad, and perhaps the storyline being picked up in a sequel dealing with the consequences of those actions. Instead the movie dovetails into him landing in the wrong universe and ends on a cliffhanger. Boo!

Interesting transition from “New Yorkers that don’t know about the catastrophic air in New York” to “everyone who would care about the Miyazaki movie is going to see it anyway”.

I think many of those issues stem from the film being made to have a sequel. If I recall correctly, during production it was decided to adapt the story from being on film into two, which seems to happen a fair bit with superhero films.