Bartimaeus

Assault on Precinct 13 (1976). Simple but effective John Carpenter "zombie" movie - a fun enough action flick that did its job well.

Devil Lady, episode 5: Cardcaptor Sakura, episode 55:

Fantastic Mr. Fox (2009). I want to love Wes Anderson films, but there's always just a little something off or missing with them for me, and this was no exception. Pretty good even so, though. Between the ridiculous over-acting, the slow and painfully drawn out dramatic dialogue, and the inexplicably poorly constructed action/tension scenes, I kind of figured the film wasn't going to work within literally about the first fifteen minutes. Definitely shouldn't have watched the remaining two hours - need to trust my instincts more on these things, .

Oh gosh. I listened to his voice and was like "that's a girl, right? ...or is it? no, it's gotta be a girl, how could it not be, although...nah". Check yourself before you wreck yourself, kids. Yeah, pretty sure. See, that's exactly what I feared would happen and is why I froze my Firefox in time, and even kept a copy of the last (offline) installer before that update. There used to be a Firefox classic extension that could take you back to the styles of even older versions, I'm sure someone will make something to go back to the previous version...sooner or later. I think I wrote literally all of the same complaints you just wrote when the update initially happened (plus maybe a couple of others) in the "what did you do today" thread. Good to see the changes I hated haven't changed, . I recall you saying you're just not a Monty Python person? That would probably explain why you haven't watched it, given its lack of appeal to you.

I heard her pronounce Minako's name and I turned it off. A little piece of irrational hatred for something completely inconsequential for this Unicorn of War, . ...Plus, I think I got a pretty good idea of her shtick by that point anyways.

Bruce Willis and Madeleine Stowe are awesome dramatically, comedically, and romantically together in that film, plus your good wacky Terry Gilliam stuff, plus a time travel plot that actually works well enough in the context of the film, some themes that I thought were interesting in addition to everything else... I don't know, I've seen it a few times and I'm always struck by how perfectly all the elements come together, and how strangely sympathetic, believable, and lovable both Willis and Stowe are (and of course, as is usual for me, love of a work starts with the characters and everything else naturally flows out from where you start with that). Rarely do I ever feel so strongly about live action films - the other eight that rise to an 80% or higher in my rating system and constitute some of my all-time favorite films are the aforementioned The Florida Project, Heathers, Parasite, Rosemary's Baby, The Fellowship of the Ring, The Thing, Downfall, and Monty Python and the Holy Grain. ...Monty Python would seem to be a bit of an oddball inclusion there, but my mom was a big Terry Gilliam and Monty Python lady while I was growing up (well, she used to be...but she still is too), and well, yeah, I guess I became a victim to it as well, . Yeah, my Firefox is still frozen in time before their big terrible update. So I assume it hasn't gotten any better since then? I have not seen any of his other work, though I think I was considering Tangerine at some point but never went through with it due to how strange it looked. The Florida Project was so freaking good that I suppose I should probably check out something else of his eventually.

Nightmare gets pretty difficult without passable gear but is at least doable, while Hell gets pretty extreme - huge resistances malus (-90) that makes you melt to most elemental attacks when you don't have piles of resistance gear, and not enough damage output can be pretty tedious...which is another reason I would only play the regular game with a sorceress to start without gear, since they're the least gear-dependent, .

Did anyone else's peace of mind go up somewhere between mildly and significantly after Biden got into office and didn't immediately reveal himself to be a two-bit wannabe dictator with an IQ of 2? Short of the U.S. collapsing tomorrow after we default, you're not gonna take that away from me no matter how many times times you say "Biden bad" - I've earned this respite after the last 4 years, thank you very much!

MPC-HC >>> VLC ...But you're probably very resistant to change, so I'm not even gonna bother trying to argue that particular one, especially since VLC still ultimately gets the job done, .

The Wailing (2016). Don't know what it was with this one, but pretty much nothing about it grabbed me. The cinematography was nice enough, I suppose, but the acting, the script, the plot, everything felt kind of off-kilter and phony in a way that was taking me out of it constantly. Even some of the stock sound effects I kept hearing I was questioning why they'd been used when they so very clearly didn't sound quite right. For a Korean horror-thriller that's basically a rural The Exorcist and has a 99% on Rotten Tomatoes and a 7.5 on IMDB, I was a little surprised by how impossible it was to get into it. Maybe there's a cultural barrier here, or maybe I'm just me.

Yes. In contrast to KP, I'm content with the show simply feeling like a strange off-brand Miyu, . I think Sailor Moon is the only show where I always let them run, and that's because they were amusing in of themselves, didn't really do much more than tease a very simple premise, and Sailor Moon isn't a show where spoilers really matter one iota. I usually go back and watch them later after I've finished an episode, though it depends on the show in question and how they handle them.

I don't usually watch previews until after I've already seen the episode in question unless I'm kind of brain dead and forget to close it or go to the next one before it starts to show. So most of the time, I only have the name of the episode to work with in terms of expectations. Trailers/previews don't do much for me, so I prefer not to see them, not even when I'm trying to prognosticate whether I'd like a show/movie. ...Yeah, I could see why you wouldn't be too thrilled with that preview, . Lady Devil, episode 4:

I did, just indirectly. It was a long-time coming, and of course, had to resolve that way, for how else could it? Episode 55:

Cardcaptor Sakura, episode 54:

Yeah, that was the part that I said was quite bad and didn't stylistically work at all with the rest of the film that almost made me turn the movie off early on, . It doesn't do anything like that ever again, thankfully. Bad forced action sequences are anathema! If only I'd seen the show in question to fully understand the comparison...I guess I'll take your word for it! In regards to logical sense...well, take Steins;gate for instance - I couldn't finish a single episode because I hated the Japanese voice-acting so much in such a particular way that I'm sure nobody else understands. Stuff like that, . I more or less get the same treatment as you. It's not that I hate everything, it's just that I have no inherent interest in watching what everyone else is watching, and I'm better at identifying what I will or won't like than everyone else. It doesn't help that whenever I try to watch something that I have specifically identified as "I'm not going to care too much for this AT BEST", I'm right at least 9/10 times. If there was a "reset show" button on platforms like Netflix that erased all progress of having seen a show, would you ever use it?

Speaking of crazy laughs, Meiling is still missing and I don't like it. I feel like I need someone less comically evil but just as petty and needlessly cruel as my metaphorical comparison for how I perceive things. Palpatine's too charming and too much fun to be it - ya need someone who's way more of an unlikable jerk, someone whose feelings and motivations are clear and obvious, but which still don't really make any kind of logical sense or make them even the least bit sympathetic, . At least there wasn't audio this time, .

That is a solution I had not considered, but probably should've, especially in light of indirectly doing so for Nadia's filler episodes recently. How about you watch a bit more of the show and let me know if you at least semi-seriously think I should try to pursue that option first? KP's video was of Mikase (Christina?) laughing. Sakura: Yeah, that was probably one of the weaker episodes I've seen throughout the entire show, I think. Still not bad by any means, of course, but weaker.

Yeah, that's fair. ...That's gotta be one of the worst-sounding laughs I've heard in anime thus far, though.

As someone who played many D2 ladders over the years and pretty much always used a sorceress strategy of "bumrush to nightmare as soon as possible in order to farm quest-bugged* Andariel, Duriel, and Mephisto for Tal Rasha's amulets and Stones of Jordan to make a crap-ton of money on d2jsp early ladder when those are worth a ridiculous amount early on and use them to pay for a bunch of high runes a few weeks later", I've always found Act 2 the most tedious due to its length and the amount of stuff you have to do. Gotta kill Radamant for the skill tome, gotta get the stupid amulet, gotta get the stupid staff, gotta kill the stupid Summoner, gotta do the stupid tomb, and there's not really any shortcuts for any of that stuff. And if you're on normal, you don't (really) have teleport yet and you have to get the Horadric Cube on top of everything else as well. Act 3 is a total snoozefest, but it feels more straight-forward and less time-waste-y for the most part since you run into the organs mostly on your way to the end of the act anyways, and by that time, you'll actually be able to use Teleport at least a little. Bonus points for Act 2 that Duriel's a right real bastard because of his holy freeze aura and the fact that mercenaries cannot stand up to him at all and there's no way to really stay away from getting your brains bashed in by him. ...And if you're not playing a sorceress, then I imagine the entire game is a little miserable because who the heck does the main game as anything but a sorceress? Unfortunately, I won't be able to play D2R because of the subpar controller scheme they set-up that I couldn't figure out a way to disable. I already had my own controller scheme on the original Diablo II that worked ten times better than theirs, thank you very much. *...I wonder if they fixed the quest-bugged bosses? The drop tables on non-quest-bugged bosses are miserable - trying to farm an Arachnid Mesh or Mara's Kaleidoscope on a non-quest-bugged Mephisto is death - no thank you, I probably wouldn't want to play at all if they did fix that.

Yeah, I was considering a scheme where I would switch between audio tracks depending on what character was talking, before I slapped myself in the face for even thinking of such a ridiculous idea when I could just watch something else, . Ah, yes, my favorite form of time travel - the one where nothing matters and it usually just serves as an excuse to have crazy crap happen constantly, . Be sure to let me know how that works out for this specific series! Cardcaptor Sakura:

I kind of already wanted to bludgeon him in those first eleven minutes since he was already pretty schizo-seeming for no apparent good reason, but not necessarily to death. I figured he'd get better, though, not worse - that there'd presumably be some kind of good reason for his wacky behavior. Was that a bad assumption on my part? ...And to be fair to him, I did actually want to bludgeon the unnamed(?) black-haired girl to death, but that's mostly on the basis of the English version of her being absolutely terrible. (e): Also, I feel pretty confident I'll be able to tolerate K-On for longer than that. Pretty confident...but not absolutely certain, .

Agents of Goldsteins;gate, episode 1. The English voice actor for Kaji reminded me of Okarin...strike that, reverse it. So I thought maybe I'd be able to listen to it, but then I heard anime girl's voice and had traumatic Madoka Magica PTSD flashbacks and was like "nah". So I switched to the Japanese and was punched directly in the brain with a bunch of gross and uncomfortable-sounding Japanese mouth sounds on top of the dub and direction just sounding kind of strange and I was like "nah". So I switched to the English and I kind of realized that the resemblance of Okarin to Kaji was farther away than I initially thought and I don't really like the direction for the English either...and then the Madoka knockoff started squealing about a metal oompa loompa or something and I wanted to die. So I switched to the Japanese and got hit with Okarin making a bunch more awful and uncomfortable mouth sounds and I wanted to die. So I switched to the English and was pleasantly surprised to see the English dub removed all of the terrible and unnecessary mouth sounds, and the guy, Okarin, no joke, called the red-haired girl an "illustrious agent" and I had traumatic PTSD flashbacks to Mari from Rebuild of Evangelion. So I stayed on the English because while that was indeed somewhat traumatic, it wasn't really the dub's fault especially considering it came out before...wait, no, it came out *after* Rebuild 2.0, so I guess it is kind of the dub's fault. So I switched to the Japanese because I wanted to hear this Makise girl's voice in the Japanese dub and was immediately greeted with *her* having her own uncomfortable mouth sounds. So I switched to the English because at this point because I am not going to listen to a show with main characters that won't stop making those detestable sounds with their face holes, and that's that, no matter how bad the English is. But then the Madoka knockoff appeared again and... Okarin's phone turned to static, . I don't...think that's really possible, . This terrible conversation between him and anime girl is...thank goodness, finally over. To think, it only took killing Makise(?) to finally end it...I mean, it was only like a 30 second conversation, but it's really bad-sounding dialogue in the English dub. OH NO, SHE'S BACK! Okay, wait, there was a time shift...OH NO, SHE'S BACK! It is at this juncture that we reach the intro music, which for some reason happens halfway into the episode, and I have to consider whether I have the constitution for another half of this...and I think the answer is no, no I don't. Usually switching to Japanese is my fallback for a bad English dub that's ruining all the dialogue and scenes, but that's not an option here what with the Japanese VAs deciding to stick their microphones inside of their mouths while they're trying to voice act and all. It's funny - because I mostly watch older Japanese shows where the VAs don't have every breath recorded by their microphones, I honestly kind of forgot that this could be a problem with a number of newer animes, but now that I'm subjected to a newer show where it's a problem, I'm remembering that this is a particular issue I've had a few times before all over again. Eleven minutes for a 2011 anime show - it was a good run, folks. We'll get 'em next time!

On second thought, let's not watch Steins;Gate, 'tis a silly show.

I remember reading that Anno was pleased that Rebuild wouldn't face the same creative restraints that the original NGE did. My reaction to remembering that he said that after now having actually seen Rebuild: Yeah, but if I don't watch anything post-2000, then it's not a problem to begin with! I mean, sure, I keep breaking that rule to try out random stuff, but the key figure is that I have repeatedly regretted it roughly 9/10 times, . I presume this was a joke, because no, I wasn't saying that at all, . Also, I edited in a few more sentences to that section while you weren't looking, . I've discovered that I have way less memory of the latter half of the show - some of the stuff more towards the ending here I've basically been like "whoa, what the hell is that, I don't remember that". That probably makes sense, since you're probably more likely to remember the first hour of a 10 hour marathon of watching a new show more than the eighth, ninth, or tenth hour of the 10 hour marathon. And this is why I never watch shows like that...except for NGE, which I inexplicably did for reasons still unknown to even me! For myself, it should be purely Cardcaptor Sakura and Devil Lady at this time...and maybe Stein;Sgate if I want to test out to see whether I hate the show before y'all finish before I ever try it, . As for Princess Tutu, that was originally slated to be watched, but for the month of October, I think there will be a little bit of a hiatus for anime in general on that particular front. To be re-visited at some point in the future, .