Welcome to my must-see list of movies for 2019! Okay, "must-see" might be a bit overreaching. "Wanna-See"? Oh, and this isn't for all of 2019; just the first half of it. I'll do a list for the second half a little later on once IMDb populates their release list and makes more trailers available. So let's call this Kapgar's Wanna-See Movie List for the First Half of 2019. Oy, that's clunky. Oh well.

On Tuesday night, I went with coworkers to see The Life Aquatic with Arthur Curry... er... Aquaman. Being such a big deal release and one that I was pretty interested in seeing and that it was so highly hyped that it received a sequel approval before it was even released, I feel like it warrants a post review.

While clearing through our bookshelf, I discovered I had two books there that have been on my shelf, unread, for two decades. 

Katie and I (unofficially) resolved to build more puzzles this years. “More”? How many more? Considering we haven’t done a puzzle since either before Nathan was born or, maybe, his first year of life when he wasn’t mobile and couldn’t steal a piece and eat it, anything is “more.”

A funny thing happened while perusing Netflix yesterday. I found Avengers: Infinity War and watched it. This was my second viewing of the film after being vastly underwhelmed by it when it was in theaters in May.

Have you ever been reading a book and, after however many pages, you asked yourself why you were wasting the time reading it?

Mark Rober... you're my hero! You deserve a Time Magazine Person of the Year award for this...

No. This is decidedly not a post about insect prevention. It is, instead, a review of two of the movies listed as unwatched on my Rankings page. 

I don’t get it. Being parents, Katie and I have seen our in-theater moviegoing decrease dramatically. Or, at least, that’s how it feels. 

In the last few months, Nathan has become a junkie for Gravity Falls on Disney XD. Never heard of it? It's about a pair of twins who travel from California to spend the summer with their great uncle in the backwards town of Gravity Falls, Oregon. It's very much an animated and semi-kiddified hybrid of Twin Peaks and The X-Files and winds its way, over the course of two seasons, to a storyline in which the kids battle to save the world from the apocalypse.

I’ve entered a few contests on Goodreads for free copies of what’s known as Advanced Reader Copies (ARCs), or unfinished copies of forthcoming books. What makes them ARCs is that they usually aren’t 100% proofread/edited or have finished artwork or whatnot. 

Have you seen the teaser trailer for The Wandering Earth? It’s a sci-fi film out of China based on a book by Liu Cixin and looks ridiculously cool!

So the, um, People’s Choice Awards are happening as I type this. I don’t usually put much faith in what we the people have to say about anything. I mean... 45. ‘Nuff said.

Can I tell you how nice it is to have a working one of these again? It’s an Aiwa CA-DW235 and the sound is great!

Compared to previous years, Katie and I kinda took it easy with the Fall 2018 batch of new TV shows. We only added six new shows. And, honestly, I can only guarantee we’ll stick with half of them. 

No, that's not some obscure reference to a tarantula. It's my next Rankings list! Seeing that director Quentin Tarantino is vowing to retire after 10 cinematic directorial turns, it seemed kinda fun to do a ranking of his 10 and title it by mashing his name with the number 10. So Tarantino + 10 = Taran10o. I thought it was clever, anyway.

As you know, I've been a fan of the Lore podcast for a couple years now. It was announced last year that Aaron Mahnke's stories would be making the transition over to anthology-style television courtesy of Amazon Prime Video. 

You might remember how I've lamented losing my favorite comic book of the last few years, Descender, to the winds of change (read: the story ran its course). Well, knowing it was coming to an end, I held off on reading the final two issues. I just couldn't bring myself to do it. It was admitting the end was nigh.

While I'm not happy that the holidays are approaching, I gotta admit that this is the most stoked I've been in a while for holiday film releases. Yes, this despite the fact that we've had Star Wars films released each of the last three holiday seasons and this is the first in which we won't.

Back in grad school, I was pretty big into documentary films. Heck, I even worked on the crew of one. 

Due to the fact we will no longer be able to have DirecTV starting next year (HOA installing new roofs and decreeing that no dishes can be mounted on the roof anymore), Katie and I have been researching new means by which to consume visual entertainment.

Being that this is Halloween, it's a good time to talk about those things that terrify us beyond comprehension. Yes, I'm going there. I'm sorry but you'll just have to deal with it. And mine is made all the more timely because I just finished watching season one of Lore on Amazon Prime (you might be familiar with this name because of my Kevin's 7 Podcast lists of the last couple years - 2017 | 2016) and the final episode ("Unboxed") was all about dolls.

Recently, I picked up a habit from a coworker. That being that I will keep my laptop open and serving as a second screen to my large monitor. On that second screen, I’ll run videos from MoviesAnywhere, Apple’s TV app, or Netflix. 

Much like the mistake I made with my initial Disney/Pixar rankings post, when I ranked the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) films a couple months ago, I forgot to explain why I put them where I did. Time to rectify that mistake.

The other day, Nathan came home from school with a new book checked out from his library. It was titled DC Super Pets: Royal Rodent Rescue. 

I'm not sure how closely you follow the news, but Disney was recently cleared to acquire 21st Century Fox, including the 20th Century Fox film catalog and rights to a lot of iconic characters. Oh yeah, and Disney already owns the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Translation: The X-Men and the Fantastic Four and the Avengers can finally work together, like they always have in the comics.

Shortly before Katie and I got married in 2001, CBS introduced a new entry in the Star Trek television universe known as Star Trek: Enterprise. I was pretty gung-ho in favor of it.

At one point tonight, the Chicago Bears were actually up 20-0 over their divisional rivals the Green Bay Packers. 

After a long day of swim lessons and re-organizing our media collection and nearly destroying our oven door (don’t ask), we decided to relax at home with the ol’ Nintendo GameCube. 

Another weekend, another free trial of a movie channel courtesy of DirecTV. 

Over the course of the last four (or five?) days, I've rewatched or finished watching both Star Wars: The Last Jedi and Avengers: Age of Ultron. I've changed my tune slightly with The Last Jedi and need to add Ultron to the rankings overall. So here's a little explanation...

It's pretty nice that we have such a reliable network connection that is so uncongested that we can stream video while we work. I logged into MoviesAnywhere.com and streamed Guardians of the Galaxy, vol. 2 on a second screen while doing some QC on my other screen. Even just listening to it is a pretty amazing experience.

Katie and I were watching TV in bed tonight flipping through the program guide when I saw Point Break. I told Katie how I had never seen it.

Wanna know what really sucks? Getting an email from Spotify announcing the arrival of...

A couple months ago, I created my ranking list for Disney/Pixar films. Then I realized that all I did was make a list. I gave no rationale for the rankings whatsoever. This might be a good time to remedy that. So, below, please find my original ranking list appended with a brief reason why...