Blarghagh

Having flashbacks to Paul Verhoeven's Starship Troopers. "My parents always said that violence doesn't solve anything." "Really? I wonder what the city fathers of Hiroshima would say about that."

Pork cutlets marinated in kentucky sauce fried with mushrooms and shredded onions with pan fried potato wedges and apple sauce on the side.

Nipple clamps does not count as exercise. Clearly you have never used them right.

Now that looks entertaining.

My anxiety disorder reared its head in a bad way and now I'm on sedatives temporarily. I don't think my body has ever been this relaxed.

Guys, to answer the question in the title: that is not.

Watched a couple of episodes of a SyFy horror show called Channel Zero: Candle Cove. It had a traumatizing fake old puppet show for kids in it called Candle Cove and had adults talking about all their memories of it. And it scared the everloving bejeezus out of me because I remembered it too. Then I looked it up and found out it was a creepypasta about 8 years back. I *DID* see it before, just not as a kid. I forgot about it. But those two episodes where I felt like a part of the horror was glorious. :D

When the teaser to the new adaptation to Stephen King's IT came out I realized I'd never actually read a Stephen King novel and that'd be a good place to start. It's pretty good, only occassionally scary, bit too long. But it's made me laugh at one thing - when pictures of the new Pennywise came out, I saw a lot of people complaining that Pennywise was too over the top, trying too hard to be scary, that it wasn't subtle enough. Reading the book, that sounds like EXACTLY what Pennywise would do - he spends 90% of his appearances in the book transforming into zombie hobos, giant birds, spiders and classic monsters like the Mummy, a Werewolf and the Creature from the Black Lagoon. There's only a few instances of more subtle horror - he's mostly in it to try too hard so he can scare little children.

Yeah, lots of arguments to be made against TFA, I agree. It remains a poor man's remake of the original Star Wars. I'm just saying I enjoyed it more than Rogue One because Rogue One failed to connect with me on pretty much any level. And it continues to frustrate me because I WANTED to enjoy it, and everyone else seems to enjoy it. The things you say about their bond and the meaning of their fate sound to me like the things this movie SHOULD have shown, not things it did show.

I dunno, but it wasn't a film in which nothing happens and has no story that matters until the last 15 minutes and none of the characters are interesting. That was doubly clear on second viewing, where I was bored out of my skull until they hit Scarif, the only place that matters and it doesn't even matter in this movie, it just matters as a reference to another film. Even then, there's no stakes or cameraderie. Nobody has a personality. Character get a sentence of history or maybe a scene establishing that history ("I did bad things for the rebellion" says spanish lead character whose name I still don't remember after two viewings), if even that much but are never seen acting like they have that history, instead being perfect heroes. What's the point of seeing Jyn's parents die and seeing her in jail? It clearly didn't affect her, because the girl we're told is a scoundrel and a rebel acts perfectly standard heroic throughout. And that's the characters who even get the remotest bit of attention. I know Donnie Yen is a monk stereotype who has a mantra - that's all I know about him because that's all there is to know about him. I know that the pilot is, in fact, a pilot. Did he even get a name? And how can a movie where the Empire wins still fail to make them threatening (or interesting)? Every character that has to make a last ditch effort does so easily, being more indestructible than the Ewoks up until they succeed, at which point the script says "oh, we've run out of things for you to do, you can die now" - they never die TRYING to do something, they're never in danger of failing, just of dying after they've won. Nobody struggles emotionally or physically - there are no stakes. It's as if Frodo walked up to Mount Doom with no resistence, threw in the ring, and THEN an orc bashed his head in with a mace. All it's got going for it is the fantastic production design, as evidenced by your saying "it's a war movie" but that's not really true at all, it simply looks like one by having the effects team and cinematographer take their cues from old war films. Plot wise it's a meandering mess up until the end, where it turns into a heist movie that distracts you by throwing a lot of imagery from The Pacific at you. I enjoyed TFA, it was a flashy remake true, but I can tell you what Finn's personality is. He's a coward who hides that behind bluster and lies, but also can't live with himself if he runs. I can tell you Kylo Ren is a whiny, emo teenager. Is that a good character? I dunno, I don't think he's that great. But it's A character. What's Jyn Erso got? Her character is "my dad is involved in the plot". Why are the characters here suddenly a group, or even friends? They're not, the script just says they are. The actors are better directed, but their characters are as poorly written as Mace Windu or Qui-Gon Jinn. I just really can't find anything I like about Rogue One. Even the vaunted "amazing Vader scene" just feels to me like people are still high on it looking great, because it fit the character about as much as Yoda flying around Dooku in the prequels. Vader is methodical, he doesn't whip it out and start doing kung fu on people's butts. EDIT: Also, that whole Kyber crystal thing never goes anywhere. It's built up as a big deal, but clearly whatever payoff it had was just cut out just like about 75% of the footage used in the trailers.

I saw that when I was too young to see it, it remains my scariest mummy memory. Really good. You know where horror movies screw up? They think everything needs to have an explanation. And it is usually handled with a clumsy, even absurd exposition in the last scene that just screws up a all the great buildup they've done. Take the original Blair Witch Project. The reason why it was so good is because none of it was ever explained. You never saw what was chasing them. You never found out where the screams were coming from. The worst of it even happened off screen so it was left to the imagination. That was brilliant. Paranormal Activity (the first one, the rest were predictably awful) was another one that set the stage and managed to not screw it up by just staying out if their own way. Yep, that pinpointed the problem. Same thing happened in a lot of recent horror movies. We don't always need to know the answer, and most of the time the answers your audience comes up with are scarier than anything you've got in store for them. The recent "Lights Out" was particularly guilty, as they had a lengthy and detailed explanation halfway through the film. In comparison, I felt that "It Follows" was much more effective - we still don't really know why or what it really is.

Rewatched Rogue One in the comfort of my own home. I was underwhelmed by it in theatres, but everyone else loved it so much I figured it might be me and I should give it another chance. I went in trying to like it. Except that didn't happen - I went from being underwhelmed to actively HATING it. I guess I just have to accept that I don't get it. I followed it up with a nice little horror flick I missed called The Autopsy of Jane Doe. Fell apart in the last 15 minutes (as most horror movies do) but before that it was tense and lovely. I'd hazard to say it was some of the best build-up I've seen in a horror film.

The Autopsy of Jane Doe. Somewhat disappointing final 15 minutes - but before that it was a damn tense and horrifying little flick. Color me impressed.

Dear God...

Parkitect has a similar aesthetic.

Anyone hear of an upcoming game called Dauntless? Looks like a fantasy RPG meets Evolve (without the PvP). Co-op monster hunter. I really enjoy the style and it looks fun. Apparently by ex-BioWare and ex-Riot people, and it'll be freemium for PC. I thought it looked pretty interesting. https://playdauntless.com/

That justice league trailer is so boring.

Caught up on Star Wars Rebels after seeing trailers hyping up the final Darth Maul Obi Wan confrontation. Don't bother and just look it up on YouTube. I'm sure you'll find all 5 seconds, and I rounded that up.

My every waking moment in a nutshell.

Finally took a look at this because there were so many complaints about the animation and I'm not sure how this isn't par for the course for BioWare.

Agreed. It seems to be getting worse. I can hardly get through more than one episode at a time now and I'm sticking with it solely because it feels like homework for upcoming shows.

Philosophy class?

Ah, that sounds more like the industry I left.

Personally, remembering my school days I would have likely tanked such an experiment by myself. I'm an incredibly effective killjoy. :D

Snark: What do they say exceptions do to rules again? Non-snark: What's the timeframe and socio-economic status of your classroom? Are you representative of anything? Does it have any statistical outliers? How's class motivation? The way you describe it, it sounds like there was a directed effort towards making it work rather than an actual experiment to see what would happen? I don't actually care, but neither should you since as an experiment it looks meaningless, especially without a control group.