Avatar: Fire and Ash — stunning to look at, but falls flat (★★★☆☆)

Let’s get the rating out of the way first, because it frames everything else.

If Avatar was a 4.5/5, and Avatar: The Way of Water landed at a solid 4/5, then Avatar: Fire and Ash sits at a 3/5 for me.

That doesn’t mean it’s bad.

It does mean it didn’t stick with me.

And notably, my two teenagers were even more disappointed than I was. These are kids who watched the first film over and over again, and who happily went to see the second Avatar film twice on IMAX (they were much too young to see the first in theatres). 

This time, walking out of the theater, the reaction was basically: “Yeah… that was fine.” 

Which, for Avatar, feels telling.

**Warning: spoilers ahead!**

2025: Finding my way back to writing, one post at a time

It’s that time of year when I take a step back and look at what actually happened over the last twelve months.

Going into 2025, I fully intended to blog more consistently. In reality, that consistency only really showed up in the last four months — and if I’m being completely honest, it’s mostly been the last two.

And yet, despite that slow restart, this blog saw more life this year than I expected.

This wasn’t a year of volume. It was a year of re-entry.

After long stretches of relative quiet, 2025 became about finding my rhythm again — figuring out what I still wanted to write about, what felt forced, and what I kept coming back to even when no one was asking for it. Writing sorta stopped being something I planned to do and slowly became something I did again.

When passion shows in every detail: Zlín City: Arch Moderna

 

I just finished watching the "Zlín City: Arch Moderna" announcement trailer for the nth time, and wow, it hit me with a full-on wave of nostalgia.

Visually, it doesn’t feel like a typical city builder at all. It feels like a miniature world on a table — the kind I obsessed over as a teenager, building my own model train layout piece by piece. Laying down tracks. Placing buildings just so. Tweaking little details until the whole thing clicked and felt alive. That same quiet, tactile satisfaction is all over this trailer.