Bartimaeus

Jay has a few different types of recommendations that I know of - specifically, I try to watch the "boring" ones (e.g. this) and the "offbeat/weird" ones (e.g. Censor recently). He has other types of films he recommends, but I'm not as much into the "horrific perverted nightmare" ones as much, .

The Assistant (2019). A simple little film that is just a look at one day in the life of an assistant at some big company working for a crappy boss (though interestingly, said boss is literally never shown, and I greatly appreciated that because it allowed the film to not be obnoxious and instead focus more on the main character). Lot of stylistic and even some thematic similarities to Jeanne Dielmann (I didn't expect to bring this one up again so soon, but here we are): if you like super boring films where basically nothing happens and instead you're just given a look at someone's life and the issues surrounding it in a flat, realistic manner with no expectation of any kind of grand resolution, then this is great. I actually liked this one a lot more than Jeanne Dielmann - lot more personable main character, a bit more direct plot that shows more of what's going on, and visually a little more cinematic. Dielmann was a bit too realistic for me, so this was more up my alley. (e): Oh, also, it's only an hour and a half-long, as opposed to Jeanne Dielmann's THREE AND A HALF HOURS, so there's that as well, .

The Bucks are the first team I've actively followed and been a fan of for a decent amount of time (since the 2016 season, to be exact) that have won a championship (note: I only started following the Packers in 2012, so I missed their 2010 SB; wasn't allowed to watch sports growing up, so it was a pretty late development), and I have to tell you guys...I really didn't get as much out of winning as I thought I would. It sure beats LOSING (especially with how many playoff heart-breakers I've seen in just the last ten years), of course, but at the end of the day, what I really enjoyed most were the actual great game moments (plays, camaraderie, personalities, etc.) in the high stakes playoff games. So that's kind of weird. I might legitimately be one of those "it's more about the journey than the destination" people, I guess. Or maybe I just need to experience like 40 years of a losing team first to really get it.

Whiplash (2014). Decent enough movie about how hard some musicians are pushed in order to be great, but really, I think J.K. Simmons was born to play anti-villains.

For most of my life, I've had low blood sugar problems, where I could literally just about pass out or even temporarily lose my vision because of it if I wasn't paying enough attention - when I started having gut health problems a few years back and consequently cut out all breads and the worst of most simple carbs/sugars, suddenly I didn't have low blood sugar pretty much ever anymore - it only happens once every few months now, it's way less severe, and it's usually the result of me eating stupidly for a day or two. Dietary changes can be pretty wack. Interestingly, I've even also managed to put on a little more weight, which is probably a good thing because I used to be borderline unhealthily skinny. A seemingly weird result from eating more healthy, but given how sickly I was for a while there, it probably makes sense.

Indeed. Sometime last month, I finally created a uBlock filter that erases the Political series of threads from being seen by me, to remove all temptation of going in there and getting mad at people I shouldn't be getting mad at or saying stupid stuff. Sailor Moon's Bizarre Adventure...I'd watch that. And probably like it more than the normal Jojo's, .

I think the Sailor Guardians legitimately wear those DBZ outfits really well (especially Usagi, Minako, and Rei - Makoto and Ami could use just some slight tweaking to get there as well). So I presume you actually mean that the Z Fighters look better in the Sailor Guardian outfits than the Crystal Sailor Guardians do, .

More like "can't look away", right? I bet it sucks to be the only moderator who ever checks the anime thread,

a friend felt compelled to send this to me that wakaba episode ending up getting averted from the usual formula was a welcome reprieve

Probably Giannis' best game of his career - 50 points on 60% shooting + 17/19 FT, 14 rebounds, 2 assists, 5 blocks...insane. And in a closer game in the Finals. Awesome. Also, just a couple of weeks after nearly ruining his knee in the conference finals...people were certain he wouldn't even be able to play.

The power of feeling external pressure to make time and effort to watch something!

That's been my feeling as well...that, and they're much more enjoyable. Good luck with 20-23, .

Studio Ghibli's Earwig and the Witch (2020). I watched this a couple of weeks back, but I'm pretty sure I forgot to ever mention it? Really weirdly constructed film. There are actually stretches of it that are well-made and flow together rather nicely, and so you think the film has finally settled into a nice rhythm where everything is starting to make sense...only for it to all suddenly go down in the drain due to some jarringly bad film-making and/or writing choices that take you right out of it. The conclusion of the film especially is incomprehensible pants that just suddenly happens for reasons I cannot understand even upon rewinding and watching it again, and like retroactively soured me on what I thought had a mostly decent second half. Really unfortunate, because there was a potentially quite nice film buried somewhere in there. As for Goro, I think From Up on Poppy Hill is actually solid (if pretty derivative of other Ghibli stuff), while Tales from Earthsea is irredeemably goshawful - I guess Earwig places as being roughly in between the two, though unfortunately probably closer to Tales from Earthsea than From Up on Poppy Hill. I generally hate 3D animation, but this film actually looked decent enough...for the most part. Occasionally a weird expression (or an expression held for uncomfortably long) that didn't seem to quite work here and there, but the general style and aesthetic really wasn't half-bad. Also, I wouldn't even bother trying to watch the English dub - due to it being in 3D and having more specific mouth-movements for the original Japanese, they couldn't even try to have an English dub that matched them, and it makes it unwatchable IMO. Not only that, but they got the VA for the main character very wrong in the English dub - this terrible manipulative little girl should not have such a nice and cheerful voice that makes her sound alarmingly similar to the titular character from Netflix's Hilda.

@majesticUtena sure is starting to feel a lot more Evangelion-influenced than anything Sailor Moon.

Do the other characters ever even like yell at Nico to cut that crap out? I'm not really sure one would realistically want to keep being friends with someone that goes around assaulting other women... Just finished watching up 'til then. My request for no more brothers and sisters (either literal or in spirit in the case of Juri and that other girl whose name I already forgot) has so far been completely and utterly ignored, and instead we have just gotten more and more. At least there was the hilarious Nanami episode where she turned into a literal cow to cheer us all up...although Nanami episodes almost feel like they take place in a different show from all the non-Nanami episodes. The crazy shadowplay girls getting wackier all of the time while Utena actually talks to them is indeed a bit much for the senses, .

Belle de Jour AKA Beauty of the Day (1967). Did not realizes Luis Bunuel was the director of this until after I'd seen it - I've seen his Exterminating Angel and Viridiana as well. Exterminating Angel I couldn't really get into at all because it was like social commentary specific to the place and time it was made in and did not really offer much in the way of anything else or so I thought, but I did love Viridiana - this one was more in between the two. Wish I'd liked it a little better, but this result was predictable as soon as I figured out what kind of character the singular protagonist (who plays a young, unaffectionate wife that's attempting to learn how to...love her husband, no matter the cost) was going to be playing. She's basically in a perpetual state of great inner conflict that unfortunately reduces her to a sort of wishy-washy incomprehensibility where she's confident yet meek, totally into what she's doing yet still full of "oh, I couldn't possibily!"s, etc., and completely unable to deal with the consequences of her own inanity. Although a pretty different kind of movie that also wasn't necessarily as exciting or Hollywood-ish, I appreciated Jeanne Dielman (1975) a bit more which tackles some of the same general subject matter.

No, no I did not. All these sick bastards are making Nanami look wholesome in comparison...at least she's stayed relatively above board with her disgusting love for her brother, I think. ...I think.

Utena, up to episode 14. I feel like I no longer have any clue what's going on in this show. majestic wasn't kidding about this show going places...and ye gods, I'm really getting a little sick and tired of people having siblings. Let no other characters have siblings for the rest of this entire show, thank you very much.

!!! (e): That was a game. Heart just exploded towards the end there, and I had to scream silently (because of how late it is) when Jrue made that steal and then the insane alley-oop. Chance to go win it at home in game 6!

Still sitting on the backburner for me... At least it's finally over. It didn't quite live up to the original show, but I'm super glad to hear it was ever so close, . Weirdly, I saw it (as well as Scipio's Dream) mentioned in the lyrics of a Utena song as well - literally on the night of the same day I watched Night on the Galactic Railroad. Was a little weird, .

They're not fantastic by any means, but they're way more efficient and effective than the Wii controls. And I can tell you as someone that tried to play the original on an actual Wii that not having to use motion controls to try to select things in menus is already a godsend and makes the game significantly less frustrating. Being able to skip cutscenes and speed up dialogue, not having to shake the Wiimote to do basic crap like go faster, being able to manually turn the camera instead of it always being auto-controlled...yes indeed, it's like the game is actually semi-playable now without a million different pointless annoyances that should've never made it past initial playtesting. You know what I really love, though? The sound of Link breathing heavily because that's what he does every time you hold down the A button to run for more than one second. And all these close-ups of characters' faces is enough to send shivers down my spine...

I've made it a rule to never directly reply to "hey"s or "are you there"s. If they do it multiple times, what I'll do is see it, not reply and instead wait a bit, and then find something else to message them about that completely ignores it. Lead by example, maybe they'll learn someday. Yes, I am unfortunately very passive aggressive about people who somehow have gone through decades of life without ever learning how to communicate in an even remotely effective manner. Ironically, they're usually the extroverted type, so you'd think they would know better...and sometimes I wonder if that actually has something to do with it.

WARNING to non-@majestic people of this thread: the following post is a love-letter to one show in particular. It's difficult to envision a show in Cardcaptor Sakura's vein (a combination of cute, sweet, simple, heartfelt, girly in all the right ways) somehow ever being better than it - as much as I love Sailor Moon, it's impossible to deny just how positively sublime this show is in everything it chooses to do...and it's especially powerful when you're so strictly rationing out episodes like I've been doing: every half hour episode of this show feels like it's own wonderful little movie. The sheer attention to detail and the always appropriate callbacks, consistently being completely overloaded with cuteness that somehow never gets repetitive or tired, the intelligent but perfectly age-appropriate dialogue and character writing, all the different yet sincere and meaningful or funny ways our characters somehow manage to interact with each other, and never wasting your time with anything that ever feels unnecessary... Even the art style: I sometimes wonder why I like the art so much, especially because whenever I pause the show on an individual frame, it somehow doesn't appeal to me quite nearly so much...and yet when I unpause it and see it all in motion, it somehow looks so perfect for what the show is, and everything feels framed just exactly as it should be. No, it's not Ghibli level of detail, but it still feels perfect for it in just the same way I feel Sailor Moon's art style is perfect for what that show is. The individual parts are great, but somehow the sum of them are even more so: if the show had ended right here, right now on this Sakura-has-the-flu episode, I think it would be difficult to deny Cardcaptor Sakura as being a perfect show, something I've never, ever said about any show or movie ever. @majestic says the final arc of the show, which I have not quite reached but am getting close to starting, is a little weaker than the first two arcs, so perhaps I will have to downgrade this evaluation by the end of it...or maybe not, if I keep watching it slowly and take time to appreciate each and every episode, .

Which one of them literally drowns kittens because they get in the way of her voracious love for and obsession with her own freaking brother? I'm not talking "kind of crazy" or "a bit neurotic", I'm talking "this person is legitimately mentally disturbed and should not be in or around the general populace", . I think part of the reason she's more likeable to me than she should be is that up until THAT episode, all the episodes she had a major part in were absolute silly nonsense, so even though she's being terrible in them, it came across as more fun and ridiculous than it perhaps should have. Your Name: I actually had like 4 specific complaints about it that I came up within the first five minutes that annoyed me and nearly made me turn it off...buuut one, they're things I've already complained about in other movies, and two, a couple of them weren't really problems beyond those first five minutes. It's...fine. Other people that aren't as particular as me would probably love it. Really, it's fine. There were some ideas and implementations of those ideas that I rather liked even given how ridiculous they were. It's fine.

Third Xbox One Controller? I think I'm on my sixth or seventh from since when the Xbox One released, and I don't even play very many games, much less intense ones that often...but I do admittedly use them regularly for non-gaming purposes. At one point, I saw a good sale and I got a handful for $20 each, but I literally only have one unopened one left, and I'm about to cycle back to one that only has one minor problem, which is that the right analogue doesn't work (and actually, it came out of the box that way). Every single one, either a trigger or an analogue stick goes nuts - my current one (that I've been about ready to chuck out of a window for a few weeks now) the left analogue stick can't go left without it going up-left and it can't go right without it going right-down. But you're not wrong re: Microsoft/Nintendo. I don't know how anybody uses a Playstation-type controller as their main controller, the form of those things are intolerable. In regards to wireless stuff, if I was playing something like Hollow Knight or Dark Souls, I definitely would not want wireless input...but most of the time, I'm playing more slow-paced stuff, so it doesn't really matter.