Menitta's Daily Yapping

Recently I've been wondering if I have what it takes to make movies. Obviously it's a LOT of work and I do not want to go from "movie watcher" to "movie maker" overnight, but I would like to try. I love movies and I've been thinking about the filmmaking process and what goes into the general craft a lot lately.  Last week during my stay at Elmira, New York, I found myself watching a ton of movies in the hotel. I finished all the Transformers movies (I almost did a post on that but I didn't have the energy. TLDR; only the first and Bumblebee are actually watchable movies) and many movies by M Night Shyamalan.  M Night Shyamalan has such a fascinating filmography. Prior to last week, I never saw any of his movies. My curiosity was sparked from Marcus Cosmonaut's video on all 16 of his movies. What I found fascinating is just how varied are his films, from indie movie starring himself, friends, and family, to one of the greatest psycholo...

This is a follow up to my last post on Persona 5. I feel like documenting my thoughts on this game. Like I said before, I played this hundred plus hour RPG three total times. That is not something I do often. Clearly I love this game. So why don't I look back fondly at it? I want to fix that. I believe it's important to be able to acknowledge the strengths and weaknesses of a work of art. Over the past near-decade, it feels like the internet and persona fanbase chose to focus on the negatives with P5, and opted to put it down rather than acknowledge the things it does well and understand why it became as popular as it did. I'd like to remind myself why I came to love this game so much and also have a fresh understanding of the game. This will be a rolling blog post. I started writing it on Wednesday, June 24th, 2026.  Off the bat, it is impossible to talk about Persona 5 without mentioning it's immaculate presentation. Opening up with a thrilling casino heis...

For work, I was tasked with traveling to Munich, Germany for a week. I didn't have a ton of time to myself, but I certainly made the most of this trip. This was the first time I've EVER left the continental United States. I've never even been to Canada (which I regret because I used to live in Seattle). The trip to Munich was uneventful. I watched a handful of movies which you can see on my Letterboxd. Unfortunately we had a layover in Istanbul but it wasn't too long. Most noteworthy thing in the layover was how nice the coffee was in the shops. IST is quite a nice airport.  Upon arrival, jet lag was very strong so I immediately took a several hour nap at the hotel. This was without a doubt the worst jet lag I've ever experienced. It took like 2 days to adjust fully. I did wake up and wander around for a bit. The hotel we stayed at was right near the old Olympic Park so that was fun to walk around.  For dinner, I had c...