Media Unstacked: 2025Q1

what I've been reading, watching, and listening to

It is absolutely wild that the first quarter of 2025 is coming to a close so soon. I feel like I should be gearing up for my year-end vacation already. So much life has happened that I realized I can’t just look back on the past three months to talk about the books I’ve read, the movies I’ve watched, and all the stuff that’s been happening in my life in a single post, so I decided to split my quarterly lookback into two posts. In this one, I’ll talk about some of the noteworthy media I’ve consumed, and in the next, I’ll share some of my goings-on in life as well as my progress on the goals I’ve set for the year. Hopefully you’ll find both posts interesting.

A pleasant surprise

Well, guess who’s officially a podcast girlie now? I’ve listened to a few podcasts last year but didn’t really feel like calling myself a podcast listener since they were mostly fiction podcasts, which I feel like aren’t really the main genre of podcasts that people listen to.

By the way, I highly recommend Case 63! It’s a science fiction drama voiced by Julianne Moore and Oscar Isaac that is as accessible as it is engaging. If you love the show Severance, you will love the twists and turns in this audio series!

This year I found my go-to comfort podcast, Chicks 2 Go. It’s hosted by Ashley Rivera and Hershey Neri, two Filipino comedians who are incredibly relatable and funny. They talk about pretty random topics like pet peeves, silly turn offs, and relationship struggles.

I have been listening to them on my commutes to work and during my workouts, but I have especially found it comforting to leave their podcast playing whenever I feel lonely living solo in my apartment. I highly recommend checking it out especially if you are a Gen Z Filipino just trying to find humor and comfort in life.

I have also started listening to two other podcasts Las Culturistas and Not A Straight White Male. They’ve been fun and relatable to listen to, especially since the hosts of these podcasts are queer men, although I don’t quite connect with them on the same level as with Chicks 2 Go which has the signature Filipino humor that simply can’t be beat.

On musicals

I haven’t seen a stage musical in a minute, and frankly, I miss it terribly! But patience, I’ve already planned to see a few later this year. With one of those musicals being Come From Away, I decided to watch the pro-shot on Apple TV+, and it was absolutely beautiful. It’s about a group of airplane passengers whose flights were redirected to Newfoundland, Canada due to the 9/11 attacks. It details how they grappled with the tragedy and how they found community and hope in the face of it. My favorite song from this musical has to be Jenn Colella’s “Me and the Sky” as she plays Captain Beverly Bass, the first female pilot of American Airlines.

It’s not the showiest musical in terms of production design, but the way all of the actors play multiple roles and have to switch accents and characters quickly in between scenes is very impressive.

I also watched a slime tutorial of Next to Normal, a musical that had a recent run here in the Philippines. I ultimately decided to skip out on watching the show since I wasn’t all that familiar with the story despite having listened to the soundtrack before. It was a really interesting look into mental illness and how it affects not just the people who live with it but also their loved ones, but I didn’t particularly like the songs.

I’m currently working my way through a slime tutorial of The Book of Mormon, but I’m starting to think it isn’t really my cup of tea. I grew up a devout Mormon, was a missionary for two years, and have since left the church, but despite having generally negative feelings towards the religion, I’m starting to find any satirical commentary on Mormonism created by people who have had no direct affiliation with it to be shallow, ridiculous, and at times even offensive in the sense that when I listen to what they have to say, it becomes clear that they have no idea what they’re talking about. These people would rather make a ridiculous song about impressionable 18-year-olds who just want to do some good in the way that it has been taught to them because it makes an easy buck, rather than tackle the real harms and trauma that organized religion causes and which is mostly caused by the leaders at the top, not the laymen who volunteer time and money to sacrifice for what they believe is right.

On movies

Aside from making progress on my Oscars Project for the years 1999, 2000, and 2001, I also got to watch Interstellar on IMAX for the first time! It was re-released for its 10th anniversary and I immediately got tickets to see it with my boyfriend. I have loved this movie for so long that being able to revisit it in the format that it was intended to be experienced was absolutely surreal.

I also watched Ari Aster’s Hereditary for the first time. This was mostly prompted by me repeatedly seeing Toni Collette’s exceptionally delivered monologue online that I just had to see for myself what the story was really about. Saying I was really disturbed by the end would be the understatement of the quarter. As a scaredy-cat, I don’t particularly gravitate towards horror and I really don’t like anything that involves demons and the occult, but there was just so much to respect about this film that I can’t help but admire it. The writing, cinematography, and sound design were so good at making the viewers generate their own fears instead of spoon-feeding them what they should be scared about. It was nothing short of genius.

I revisited the 1937 Snow White before watching the live action remake, and I have to say, that for all the flak that Rachel Zegler has taken for criticizing the original Disney animated film, she was absolutely right. It is incredibly dated. This version of Snow White barely has any real agency and only exists to serve the men around her. She literally takes on the role of mother and housekeeper for seven grown men and waits for a prince to save her without doing anything to care for herself. That said, however, I still hated the remake. It was soulless and drowned in a series of clichés. I wanted a refund as soon as I walked out of the theater.

I have also caught up on watching the 2025 Best Picture nominees! I highly recommend Dune 2 and Brazil’s Ainda Estou Aqui / I’m Still Here. The former is a masterclass in cinematography and sound design, while the latter is a triumphant and joyfully defiant true story of Eunice Paiva and her family living through military dictatorship. I get why the Brazilians are so proud of this film; I would be too.

On TV series

I got an Apple TV+ subscription which turned out to be ridiculously expensive, so I had to make the most of it before I cancelled. I watched the first season of Ted Lasso which is about an overly optimistic American football coach hired to manage a British soccer team. I get why people like this series so much and find it to be a comfort show, but I didn’t really connect with it strongly. Perhaps the series gets better in the next seasons.

I also caught up on the second season of Severance which frankly disappointed me in that it seemed to rely on shocking twists and impressive cinematography instead of adding any real substance to the story established in the first season. When I watched season one years ago, I considered it to be one of my all-time favorite shows because it took such a seemingly mundane idea (what if you achieved work-life balance by severing your work life memories from your personal life?) into an edge-of-your-seat thriller. But then the second season came along, and it raised more questions than it provided any answers. I still think it’s a good show, but I have yet to see the next season in order to judge whether any of the things being set up actually have a good pay-off.

I finished watching the first season of Pachinko, an adaptation of the beloved novel by Min Jin Lee which chronicles a multi-generational saga following a Korean family who immigrated to Japan. It was my first time watching a fully trilingual show as it unapologetically uses Japanese, Korean, and English, and it made for such an authentic, believable viewing experience. I liked the novel when I first read it a few years ago, but I did think the latter half wasn’t as good as the first half, so I was pleasantly surprised to find that the series interwove the beginning of the story with the latter part in a way that I thought worked really well in terms of giving the main character Sunja so much depth. This series has incredible acting and cinematography that I can’t believe it’s still pretty underrated. You can literally use any scene in this show, especially ones with Kim Min Ha as Sunja, as an example of what good acting looks like. It was also interesting to watch Lee Min Ho take on a villain-adjacent role as opposed to being your typical heartthrob, because why does he have to look so hot while being an asshole?

I also watched the new hit limited series from Netflix called Adolescence, and it was absolutely amazing. On the surface, it seems like your typical crime thriller, but the storytelling is done in such a way that we don’t really focus on the crime itself but the roots of it and the tragic aftermath. Talk about a show that nails just how dangerous incel culture is and how it seeps into the youngest and most impressionable minds through social media. It also makes you think about what kind of language and behavior we allow children and teens to get away with and what it could lead to. Highly recommend this show especially to parents and educators.

Currently, I’m catching up on the latest season of Abbott Elementary which continues to be a fun sit-com to watch although I feel like it shouldn’t continue to be drawn out. I also started a new series called The Studio which seems to be the next favorite show of your average cinephile. It’s a look into the business of Hollywood through the eyes of a studio executive, and while that seems very uninteresting at the onset, the first two episodes have proven exceptional. I can’t quite recommend this to just about anyone though because a lot of the references and cameos will simply go over most people’s heads if they aren’t into the film industry.

On music

I’ve accepted early on this year that I will simply not be able to take my Spotify Wrapped for 2025 all that seriously. It’s usually an exciting time for me, because as much as I love exploring different genres and artists, I find myself laughing at the fact that I am not as “cultured” as I think myself to be. My top artists will always include Taylor Swift and David Archuleta. (Hey, at least the latter isn’t quite mainstream!) My top tracks will always have a number of songs that went viral on TikTok. Having Tinashe’s “Nasty” as my top 3 track of 2024 is all you need to know.

The reason I won’t be able to take my Spotify Wrapped seriously this year is because I’ve been doing most of my music exploration through watching NPR’s Tiny Desk concerts. Lately they’ve been doing such a good job of featuring diverse artists from different countries and different genres. Tiny Desk has made it so easy for me to listen to music the way I want to: variegated, unexpected, and exciting. Perhaps I am becoming a man of culture. I jest.

I’ve explored the music of a couple of artists I’ve listened to before but have regained interest in. I instantly fell in love with Doechii’s “DENIAL IS A RIVER” and “NISSAN ALTIMA” on first listen. One random day I also decided to listen to the entirety of Cup of Joe’s discography—it’s pretty short—since both my boyfriend and my sister love their music. And oh my goodness, they literally have zero misses! I loved listening to all of their songs. My favorite right now is “Pahina”.

I have also fallen in love with some new renditions of older songs such as David Archuleta’s version of “Freedom” by George Michael, Monica Barbaro’s version of “House of the Rising Sun” by Joan Baez, and Charles Yang’s version of “A Change is Gonna Come” by Sam Cooke. Please give them a listen!

On books

Out of the 26 books I’ve read so far this year, I have only one five-star read. And that is Malayo Pa Ang Umaga’s Libing-Isa. It is a collection of short, illustrated horror stories that are as haunting as they are captivating in their individual twists. I am hoping to see more of MPAU’s work in the future.

In the same vein of local literature, I also started Ronaldo Vivo, Jr.’s widely acclaimed Dreamland Trilogy, beginning with the first book Ang Kapangyarihang Higit sa Ating Lahat. I struggled with the writing quite a bit because even though I can speak conversational Tagalog, I am not well-acquainted with the “deep” Tagalog of the masses that Sir Nal shamelessly employs here. It’s a gruesome crime thriller about police brutality in the Philippines that I felt relied more on shock value than on meaningful commentary, but I’ve heard from trusted reviewers that the next book is much better by leagues, so I’m eager to read that one.

I also found a new favorite called Second Chance Summer by Morgan Matson. I rarely read contemporary books these days, but they’re always such a treat after I’ve read a bunch of heavy fantasy books or literary fiction. It’s about a family who goes back to their old lake house to spend one last summer with their dad before he passes away. It’s a bit hard to pitch this book when its discussion on grief is coupled with a young adult romance, but I promise that in this book, neither one of those cheapens the other. It was such a beautiful, heartfelt story that I can’t wait to pick up my next Matson read.

I also highly recommend Disability Visibility, an anthology of essays edited by Alice Wong. If you feel that you already know the basics of disability inclusion, I suggest picking up this book in order to get a more nuanced look on how disability awareness and advocacy should be intersectional, and how the disabled community is not a monolith. This anthology has such a diverse collection of stories that I was surprised to find that some of the essays even further challenged my view of people with disabilities.

I was saddened to watch Fredrik Backman’s Beartown trilogy sputter to an unsatisfying close after the first book became an all-time favorite and the sequel was a solid installment. While the final book The Winners wraps up all the storylines nicely, it went beyond what it needed to do and added so many unnecessary characters and plotlines that just convoluted the story. I feel strongly that you can just read Beartown as a standalone, you can optionally read Us Against You if you really want to, but you might as well just read a Wikipedia summary of The Winners to find out how it ends. Except for the last hundred pages or so, this final installment was a slog to get through. It honestly could have been edited to be a much shorter yet infinitely better book. Alas, we truly can’t have it all.

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What have you been watching, listening to, and reading? Any favorites and disappointments? Let’s talk!