November 2024 media
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Dragon Age: The Veilguard: This is the best Dragon Age has played, after years of somewhat unsatisfying attempts to blend genres. Structurally it’s found an appealing combination of Dragon Age II and Mass Effect 2, and the production values are as impressive as they’ve ever been (I’m still floored by the hair). Unfortunately, the evidence of its troubled development cycle is pretty conspicuous. Everything from the characters to the factions to the romance subplots feels underdeveloped, with important beats either relegated to text boxes or glossed over entirely. Its attempts to build on past games in the series felt pretty threadbare as well. Veilguard constantly asked me to meet it more than halfway; I still enjoyed it overall, but with a decade since Inquisition it felt like a missed opportunity.
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Thelonious Monk: Straight, No Chaser: A college professor once told me he saw Monk spend an entire chorus hovering silently over the keys, staring and sweating as though he was playing. That’s been my mental image of Monk ever since, and now I feel like I’ve had it validated. This is my favorite kind of music documentary: plenty of live performances, some interesting behind-the-scenes footage, and just enough interviews to fill things out and give a sense of the subject as a person. (It also made me want to learn more about Pannonica de Koenigswarter, who only passed through as a secondary character here but seemed fascinating in her own right!) I would watch an entire movie of Monk’s bandmates trying to work out their parts while he just stands there, reticent.