Ivan K
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ivankander.bsky.social
Ivan K
@ivankander.bsky.social
170 followers 540 following 310 posts
Repping the DMV. Bad filmmaker. Mediocre motion designer.

www.lucky9studios.com
thereisnttimeforthat.substack.com
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ivankander.bsky.social
What if recession, but, you know, Instagram friendly?
A screenshot of my phone touting how good melting cabbage is
January 19, 2026 at 11:55 AM
ivankander.bsky.social
Sent off the follow-up e-mails. Made a cup of tea. Currently unwinding by trying to put together a cursed candy company's family tree.
A screenshot from the detective video game "The Roottrees are Dead"
January 5, 2026 at 7:03 PM
ivankander.bsky.social
The algorithm really doesn't understand Dredge at all.
A screenshot from Xbox gamepass suggesting that Dredge is a relaxing game.
December 30, 2025 at 10:56 PM
ivankander.bsky.social
Read some real bangers this year. Lonesome Dove was a bit of a project but it’s an American masterpiece.
My goodreads year in review image
December 29, 2025 at 9:19 PM
ivankander.bsky.social
Thanks to @jeffcannata.bsky.social for recommending "Death Howl" on @dlchypetrain.bsky.social. A game that feels like it was built for me.
The Vince Mcmahon reaction meme indicating the various elements of the indie deck building game, Death Howl
December 21, 2025 at 1:35 PM
ivankander.bsky.social
Screenshot from Season 4 of the Righteous Gemstones, featuring an image of the "Cape and Pistol" society.
December 18, 2025 at 3:19 PM
ivankander.bsky.social
Yes, Caught Stealing is very much a “movie”—not a film—and I think it’s very interesting that Darren Aronofsky—a very notorious “filmmaker”—decided to make a movie. Regardless of your opinions of his oeuvre, Aronofsky is incontrovertibly an auteur, so it’s cool that he has used his powers to craft something that isn’t meant to be particularly deep or nuanced. Rather, he just gave us a good time at the movies. Coming from the man who brought us both Requiem for a Dream and Black Swan, that’s a surprise. And, the fact that a studio actually gave him $40 million to make a movie like this…well…that feels like a miracle. Darren Aronofsky has a sense of humor? It’s true…people really do contain multitudes. All this to say, I wish more auteur filmmakers would do this. I want Ari Aster to make a studio thriller. I want Noah Baumbuch to give us a straight-up romantic comedy. I want Kathryn Bigelow to make something Point Break-esque again (instead of whatever House of Dynamite was supposed to be).
December 11, 2025 at 2:17 PM
ivankander.bsky.social
All this to say, how can we separate the art from the artist? This basic debate has come up often in the world of movies—where problematic filmmakers are finally being called out for disgusting and often illegal behavior. But, does that mean folks shouldn’t watch Annie Hall in a film studies class? Does Rosemary’s Baby get stricken from the record? Is it possible to enjoy the art without somehow supporting the artist? I’d argue that the two are inexorably linked; bifurcation is impossible. In the case of Hogwarts Legacy, it gets even more complicated: a team of literally hundreds of people—developers, artists, writers, animators—brought this game to life, and I’d imagine the majority of them disagree or are actively opposed to Rowling’s views. But, yet, by building such an elaborate piece of Harry Potter lore, they too are feeding the machine, both with financial and cultural capital. By preserving the legacy of the property, they too preserve the legacy of its creator. There is no unraveling that thread.
December 4, 2025 at 3:51 PM
ivankander.bsky.social
Screenshot from my substack newsletter that reads: "Eddington is a Thanksgiving movie in that it is representative of the awkward interactions that occur at a yearly meal with family members you hardly see, ripped from our bubbles and forced into ceremonial congregation. It’s where barely-researched—but strongly held— ideals clash with one another, where Facebook posts and Twitter memes are confronted with the reality of the person spewing them. After the niceties about weather and football fade away, you begin to realize that your dear old uncle is actually kind of racist, or that perhaps you didn’t really know as much about clean energy or bitcoin as you thought you did. The irony of modern life is being inundated with information, yet, also still being woefully uninformed about most things."
November 26, 2025 at 2:24 PM
ivankander.bsky.social
Meme image of Frank Costanza from Seinfeld complaining about motion smoothing.
November 21, 2025 at 1:40 PM
ivankander.bsky.social
Well, as a father of two, I have a theory: kids don’t so much like mac and cheese as they like the blue box that comes with the powder. The homemade stuff? Fancy gruyere and shredded cheddar? They ain’t having it. As a food snob, I refuse to submit to the altar of Kraft, and so I stubbornly always make mac and cheese from scratch. My homemade variation basically amounts to buttered noodles, some milk, shredded cheese, salt, and paprika, mixed together in a single pot. My kids like this okay, but they also don’t go bananas for it like I’m always secretly hoping (to be fair, it’s always a bit bland). And, of course, I have to suffer through their eye rolls when they discover the vegetables I try to sneak in there. Dad!? Are these frozen peas?!
November 13, 2025 at 2:49 PM
ivankander.bsky.social
For any one wondering, yes, middle schoolers are still doing this 30 years later…
A scribble of a stussy symbol I found in my sons bedroom
November 10, 2025 at 7:07 PM
ivankander.bsky.social
After the series’s inciting incident where Ron Trusper is humiliated by a faulty chair, we watch him deal with the mundane insanity of “normal” American life. Ron just wants to talk to someone on the phone, but alas, he’s forced to navigate stock-photo filled, corporate-speak laden websites, useless and infuriating AI Chat Bots (“you’re a fucker!”), an ouroboros of phone trees and bad on-hold elevator music. Is Ron Trusper crazy? Or, are we insane for living in a society that has normalized all this? Just yesterday I tried to buy groceries at an Amazon Fresh, only to find that my “smart cart” couldn’t recognize the store QR code on my phone, and thus, didn’t keep track of my scanned items, resulting in me having to wait in line for 10 minutes so that the check out clerk could just scan my items manually—you know, like they’ve been doing for the last five decades. It’s amazing that we all haven’t snapped already. Tim Robinson is clearly fascinated by the dumb rules and mannerisms of “polite” corporate culture—how we all comply with arbitrary guidelines or default into HR speak…the way off-hand comments can become obsessions, and, ultimately, how people at their core only care about their own wants and desires (a recurring bit where the father of Trusper’s daughter’s fiancé kept bringing up how often a dead dog used to bother him had me rolling). As I often glibly joke to my wife: Everybody is nuts about something. Robinson’s oeuvre, through the characters he plays or encounters, is emblematic of that idea.
November 6, 2025 at 2:23 PM
ivankander.bsky.social
The real question mark for me is that I have no clue how OpenAI or Meta or whomever else intends to make money off this garbage. And, let’s face it, all of these tech projects, at some point, need to figure out how to make money to satiate their investors. Social media is already a tremendously difficult industry to monetize; people won’t pay to use the service, so you are reliant on advertising or other avenues for revenue. In other words, the currency is eyeballs and the content itself—created by users—is free. But, with AI slop video apps, the content is no longer freely generated…it costs money and time—compute, energy, server usage, whatever—to make these things. So, now, literally the only selling point of social media as a business—the fact that users will self-generate the stuff that people will want to click on, and thus, appeal to advertisers looking for eyeballs—is gone. Silicon Valley has managed to make an unprofitable industry, less profitable? Amazing. We thought the future was flying cars? No, it was computers burning hectares of rainforest in order to get enough compute power to generate facsimiles of existing social media videos, which are then being commented on and viewed by other computers. Gosh, our technodystopia is way more boring than I thought it would be.
October 30, 2025 at 1:14 PM
ivankander.bsky.social
My controls. #therehearsal
Me dressed as Nathan Fielder for Halloween
October 26, 2025 at 11:53 AM
ivankander.bsky.social
Remember: You are stronger than you know.
Screengrab of me beating Silksong
October 25, 2025 at 4:25 PM
ivankander.bsky.social
Maron’s departure truly is the end of an era. The podcast boom has been punctured by the enshittification that always swallows any endeavor dependent on profit and constant growth. Honestly, I’m just glad Maron is quitting on his own terms…that he got out before selling out (albeit after uttering hundreds of ad-reads for Shari’s Berries). And, really, at this point, what more could I have asked for? Maron has talked to practically everyone—from guitar players to politicians who share my last name. Dude deserves a break. Still, though, it’s hard not to get a little weepy knowing that his familiar voice just won’t be there anymore: on neighborhood runs, when I’m cooking dinner, when I can’t sleep. Marc Maron has been the soundtrack of my life for nearly 15 years. Everything ends, I realize, but that doesn’t make it any easier to say goodbye.
October 23, 2025 at 1:23 PM
ivankander.bsky.social
Eleanor & Park by Rainbow Rowell

A John Green-esque heart on its sleeve, YA romance that I enjoyed. Sue me. Apparently, there is a lot of hate for this due to to how it handles race (or rather, how it doesn't), but that sort of went over my head. An easy, sweet read.
Cover art for Rainbow Rowell's Eleanor & Park.
October 20, 2025 at 4:06 PM
ivankander.bsky.social
Screencap from my newsletter reading: "I very much believe that watching anything done well is inherently interesting. Obviously, the most common realization of this in modern life is sports—it’s fascinating to watch people in peak physical shape and ability face off against one another in athletic competition. But, this sense of wonder can apply to anything if there is enough skill or passion behind it: painting, model-making, sand castle building, and, yes, of course cooking. Not to derail this newsletter post too far into the weeds, but this fascination in the process itself is one of the main reasons why AI-generated material feels so soulless…we are denied seeing the struggle of creation. In watching true masters of the craft smoke brisket, I was often left slack-jawed at the effort these folks put into their work—an effort not driven by monetary reward, but rather, by a desire to be excellent at something…to make something delicious. In a world driven by capitalist incentives, I was moved by the sentiment."
October 16, 2025 at 12:42 PM
ivankander.bsky.social
I’m not suggesting that beating Silksong is actually an “important” endeavor: in the grand scheme of things, I know that completing a video game is literally childish. But, I do think there is something more to glean from all this self-induced thumb pain. You see, Silksong’s ultimate thrill comes not from collecting items or trinkets (none of the upgrades fundamentally make the game any easier), but rather from the vicarious joy of thinking something is impossible only to realize that it, in fact, actually isn’t—that you are capable of much more than you ever dreamed of. It’s a general aphorism, yes, but it proves there is some value in my struggle.
October 9, 2025 at 1:16 PM
ivankander.bsky.social
Picks & Shovels by Cory Doctorow

Apparently this is a part of series with a recurring main character; I liked the setting (early 80s Silicon Valley) and the book's heart is in the right place. But, the story lacked tension and the characters too simplistic to elevate things beyond airport fiction.
Book cover art for Cory Doctorow's Picks & Shovels
October 8, 2025 at 1:09 PM
ivankander.bsky.social
But if BoJack’s specific niche was show business, Long Story Short’s is Jewishness. Yes, the show has plots and characters that don’t revolve around Judaism, but every frame of this show is packed with Yiddishkeit. As a basic pitch, I recognize that’s not particularly unique: there’s lots of comedic Jewish stories that have been been told via mainstream platforms (The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, Curb Your Enthusiasm, Seinfeld). But, I just don’t think anything has ever felt this authentic before. The Jewish characters in Long Story Short aren’t there to fill stereotypical roles nor does Waksberg relegate Judaism to only its cultural identity (e.g. Bagels and lox! Nagging mothers! Guilt!). The great accomplishment with this show is that Waksberg manages to give us all these things—the bagels and nagging mothers and Borscht-belt affectations—but also grounds it in a reality that exists beyond the punchlines and expected tropes. This show is unafraid to explore the faith directly and how it is being practiced (or not practiced) in the United States today.
October 1, 2025 at 1:13 PM
ivankander.bsky.social
So, apparently I’m a masochist?
Achievement for beating “the last judge” in hollow knight Silksong
September 27, 2025 at 7:09 PM
ivankander.bsky.social
Careless People by Sarah Wynn-Williams

A tell-all memoir from a former Facebook staffer. Interesting in parts, but, also, I feel like I already knew that Facebook was awful, and I don't think the author ever really comes to terms with her own complicity in Zuck's evil empire.
Cover art for "Careless People" by Sarah Wynn-Williams
September 25, 2025 at 1:30 PM
ivankander.bsky.social
Screengrab from my Newsletter, "There Isn't Time for That" reading: When you have kids, you don’t so much sit down to “watch a movie” as you do “watch it increments”: 30 minutes at night here, another 20 there. Soon, you have inadvertently turned a single piece of art meant to be consumed in a solitary sitting into an extended miniseries. For me, the length of each impromptu "episode" is often determined by how long my wife can go before falling asleep. Look, I’m not pointing fingers…life is tiring. My personal resting state is exhausted. Both of us get up early, work all day, make lunches and dinners, and clean up improbable messes (You’re 11! Use a fork!). Come 9pm, sometimes the best either of us can muster is 15 minutes of The Bear before tapping out. Still, though, I’ve noticed that the kind of material we watch is directly proportional to how long my wife will last before the sweet siren’s call of slumber beckons her home.
September 25, 2025 at 1:07 PM