MEDIA THREAD ARCHIVE
as i've taken to using social media more, i've gotten into the habit of keeping an ongoing thread of the things i've watched, read, listened to, and played throughout the year. a lot of my friends had already been doing this for a couple years, and to me, i think it fills a nice niche as a sort of personal journal. i can look back on the year i've had and take note of what i've been up to, or use it as a launchpad to share stuff that really resonated with me. it also helps when it comes to things i don't have a lot to talk about; not everything needs a whole essay here on the blog, after all.
however, part of the point of founding HYPERFIXT was that i wanted a place all my own, with minimal dependencies on outside platforms. while i've warmed up to the idea of at least having a social media presence, i don't want to lose sight of my web 1.0 roots. in the interest of preserving my posts on my own terms, i've decided to start archiving the media thread here. every month, i'll copy over a fresh new batch of entries. no posters or anything - seems like a waste of my limited storage - but at the very least, the things i have to say will live on forever here, even if Bluesky falls apart.
MIND GAME
2004 // directed by Masaaki Yuasa2026 entry #002 // added on January 3rd // rewatch
there's some Unpleasantness that makes it hard to say "go watch MIND GAME", but fuck, dude. Yuasa truly is a one-of-a-kind talent and underneath all those rough edges, this is still, to me, one of the most impactful stories about how life is an infinitely complex web of choice
EXTENDED ENTRY
one post is almost certainly not enough so take, i dunno, A Few
i really would caution that while this movie means a lot to me, it's also 100% part of a long legacy of Dude-Centric Narratives. i think if someone can crack the code to make Woke MIND GAME, they'll change the course of human history
the female characters don't get much of anything in ways i can't stick up for. assault is used to basically just set the stage for the plot and romance just kind of obligatorily happens. unfortunately the catgirl BDSM inflation art demo scene doesn't balance this out on the scales of Anubis
MIND GAME shines when its over-the-top, manic energy meets a holistic view of the human condition, buuut that human condition is the human condition of an air-quotes "lovable loser" in his 20s. we see his self-actualization, but the script feels like it's pitying him more than criticizing him
the way its beat-by-beat plot is so maximalist, yet it all hides this weird unspoken subplot about generational trauma that only further serves to illustrate that every life story is connected? that ending montage that lays out 50+ years of choices shaping the story? that shit still moves me deeply
i guess what i'm saying is that recommending MIND GAME is a lot like recommending Scott Pilgrim, which is very funny when you think about what the studio Yuasa co-founded went on to do. MIND GAME Takes Off could still fix all of this
also, if you're watching this on HBO Max like i did, the subtitles seem... rough? not unwatchable, and i'm hopeful that it's not an AI translation because a lot of the errors are homophones like "brakes/breaks", which seems like a very human type of mistake. not sure how other options fare.