Did you see the trailer for A Quiet Place: Day One? It is amazing!!!! A Quiet Place is one of my favorite franchises, so my behind is going to be seated on June 28th for this. Oh my goodness, I am SO excited for that movie. Ahhhh!!!! I know the Wicked trailer came out too during the Superbowl, which I was also excited about but uhhhhh A Quiet Place: Day One takes it for me!! My oh my!

Aside from that, award show season is in full swing and if those who have won over the past couple of weeks is any sign of what’s to expect at the Oscars, I’d say Oppenheimer, Past Lives, Da’Vine Joy Randolph of The Holdovers, and Lily Gladstone of Killers of the Flower Moon have everything to look forward to which is super exciting. The Spirit Awards also reminded me that Zoe Lister-Jones’s parallel universe show, Slip was nominated and I really enjoyed that show when it was streaming. It’s a shame that it was randomly yanked off streaming. Hollywood needs to invest more in DVD/Blu-ray distribution because more and more consumers are going to be investing in expanding their home collections now that streamers are yanking shows and movies off with little to no warning.

In personal news… 1) Be sure to read my piece, “Dear Hollywood, Where Are the SFF Book-to-Movie/TV Adaptations From Black Writers?” over on Reactormag.com, previously Tor.com! 2) I was a guest at the inaugural Lifted Book Festival, a two-day book festival in which day one was physically in Los Angeles and day two was virtual. You can catch the virtual panel that I was on here. 3) I appeared on The Broadcast Podcast and talked all things books which you can listen to here. Alright! Let’s dig into more TV, movies, and books…

TV

Iwájú premieres on Disney+ today and they barely promoted it which is a shame because during Black History Month, they should have pumped out so much promo for this and Moon Girl season 2 among other shows on their roster but that’s expecting too much from a company that clearly doesn’t care about its diverse stories. *rolls eyes* Anyway…

NBC’s La Brea came to an end. I do like the way that it wrapped up even though I wanted to see more of the aftermath of them returning to 2021 but we get what we get and what we got was also fine. I ain’t mad at it! We are lucky we even got a conclusion at all the way networks cancel shows so I am grateful for that.

Netflix released the entire first season of their live action Avatar: The Last Airbender series which I thought was fine. Could it have been better? Yes, of course. But I was actually really surprised with how much I enjoyed the show, given how the trailer and promo interviews did not set my expectations high. But I enjoyed the adaptation much more than most. We all knew it wasn’t going to be a carbon copy of the original and we all hoped that meant at least it would be better than the movie adaptation. I respect the decisions that were made for this adaptation, even if I didn’t necessarily agree with all of them. Overall, the final product came out well. I’m not mad at it, mainly because we all know that nothing will ever come close to touching the original and we always have the original to rewatch as we please. So watch and enjoy!

Abbott Elementary was renewed for Season 4! Season 3 is currently airing and it’s just as hilarious and exciting to watch as the first two seasons. This series shows no signs of slowing down with its absolutely top notch writing. If you’re not watching this show, please get on it. I beg of you!

Movies

I’ve watched so many movies this month that I had a friend ask me if I’m watching all of the movies that I’m logging on Letterboxd or just adding the movies that I’ve already watched. These are two different tasks on Letterboxd. When you log a movie, you are logging the date that you watched it. If you mark a movie as watched, that’s all you are doing – you are not telling the world when you watched it. But I’ve watched multiple movies almost everyday this month due to the fact that during this period in my life, I am home all day and can do that. So if you see me logging in 5 movies in a day, yes, I did that hahaha. I’ve recently caught up on some sci-fi classics that I hadn’t yet watched, including The Blob, Trancers, It Came from Outer Space, etc… and I have been having such a blast watching these! My favorite movie that I finally watched this month doesn’t go to a sci-fi though, it goes to Theater Camp. I pushed this off for so long because I didn’t want to be disappointed and now I’m mad I pushed it off for so long. This movie is going to be on rotation forever. It is an instant classic for me oh my god. If you are a theatre geek and still have not watched it, you will be blessed beyond measure when you do oh my goodness this movie is absolute perfection.

Finally, I watched the documentary, Silver Dollar Road which is streaming on Amazon Prime. This documentary was very well made and is so infuriating. White people are very lucky that the Black community doesn’t take out our anger on everything that’s been done to us with severe violence. It’s only by the grace of God that these lying, stealing, conniving white people are 1) alive and 2) have businesses of their own that haven’t been burned down cause BABYYYY!!! Taking the high road and fighting fair is not rewarding in a nation that is grounded in white supremacy. And this documentary right here will help you understand the fight for maintaining generational wealth & getting reparations, the fight against the prison system and more.

Books

This was a light month for me in that I only read 2 books this month, I believe. Not much time for reading when I’m zooming through 3-5 movies almost daily hahaha. But if you want good sci-fi, I highly recommend Mike Chen. I finally read Here and Now and Then and I’m on the library wait list for his latest book, A Quantum Love Story which I am highly anticipating. As soon as that becomes available to me, I am reading that bad boy!

What did you watch or read and enjoy this month?