Bartimaeus

Chicken Run: Dawn of the Nugget (2023). Its uninspired title closely matches how uninspired the film itself is. There aren't very many stop-motion productions that have a budget anymore, you can't be wasting them on something as half-baked as this.

I don't expect the Packers to win, our defense is still very bad regardless of how backup QBs like Justin Fields and Nick Mullens have made it look the past two weeks, but the Packers have inexplicably beat the Cowboys in the playoffs with a terrible defense before, so I certainly won't be making any predictions.

A 2023 anime about dungeon-crawling and literal video game mechanics centered around a male character and eating food, what could go wrong? For Bartimaeus who can't think of anything that he doesn't hate about this...nothing, so let's check it out - these things have a good track record, after all. I'm exactly 2 minutes and 8 seconds into the episode and I really, really, really want to turn it off. I'm getting some painful flashbacks to the very first anime I gave an honest try, My Hero Academia, which is what lead to me instead trying Sailor Moon. Sailor Moon did not infuriate me every second of every minute like the three episodes of My Hero Academia that I watched before tossing it into the nearest incinerator did. You know, I'm pretty sure the hard drive that I used to store the first season of My Hero Academia has since died, and I'd say good riddance. I am now 3 minute and 1 seconds into the episode and I feel like my brain is going to explode from an aneurysm. I don't want to do this anymore. 4 minutes and 53 seconds, seeing this girl's stupid face matched with her boilerplate anime proclamation of not giving up has made me quit. I hope the hard drive I used to store the first episode this show also dies sometime soon. Yes, I could've easily just watched it on Netflix, but I didn't want Netflix trying to recommend any anime to me.

Ella Cinders (1926). Silent films were a mistake. A painfully mediocre variation of the Cinderella tale, except retrofitted for Hollywood and the main character going off and working her way up to becoming a starlet. It's pretty bad, don't watch it. Because I just know everyone here is waiting with bated breath for my silent film recommendations. It (1927). You know what, silent films can be alright. The main actress, Clara Bow, hard carried what would've otherwise been a rather stuffy and pedestrian 1920s comedy with her very wacky and energetic performance of a penniless store clerk trying everything to ascend the social ladder to get the guy she wants before unleashing her scorn upon him when he rejects her over a misunderstanding, and I found myself actually laughing quite a bit because of her. For a 1920s comedy, that's frankly a bit of a marvel. Speaking of and apropos to silent films, Amentep at this exact moment happens to be currently rocking my very favorite silent film actress and to whom the quote in my signature can be attributed to - not to mention she's undoubtedly the reason I continue to check out any silent films at all, as my experiences of the medium before seeing Louise Brook's films I had found to all be quite miserable. Not that that's much of a surprise, seeing as I usually have very little taste for the painfully overwrought impressionist school of acting. Being able to convey what is supposed to be going on while also coming across as perfectly natural seems to have been a very difficult craft to master in the burgeoning silent era.

According to Gamers Nexus, Starfield being nominated for and winning "Most Innovative Gameplay" was a meme campaign started on reddit to dunk on it, not that it stopped Bethesda from accepting it as sincere. Guess that's what happens when you let the common clay of video games (you know, morons) decide the awards. We all know these awards are a bit of a joke for one reason or another (simple popularity contests inevitably result in whatever's most popular winning awards rather than any honest evaluation of an entry's individual qualities in relation to what award they're up for - an especially prominent problem when most people have only played a fraction of the nominees!), but not all of us actually take the time out of our day to prove that they're a joke. Sigh. Oh, that's really soon. I can't help but notice that the main character seems to increase in size with every new game in the Momodora series...think Momodora 3 is kinda where I thought it most appropriate to stop, but certainly no farther than Reverie Under the Moonlight. Eh, as long as the developer didn't try to integrate anything from their awful Minoria spin-off, it should be fine.

I really didn't think Crimes of Passion was nearly as crazy as its billing seemed to suggest. I mean, okay, it's a little crazy, but I guess it felt a little too unserious for me to do anything but kind of laugh good-naturedly at where it went. I think a darker and more grounded/considered approach focused on Joana, as you said, instead of the boring guy with his marital problems could've had me in love with the film instead. Still, you can do a lot worse than Crimes of Passion. Man, why does my browser tell me "spelunk" isn't a word? I initially wrote it that way but I got the red underline and thought "oh, I guess the verb version is also spelunker...yeah, spelunker your way through something, I guess that sounds right". Yeah, I wish I could be a lot more tolerant, it'd make my life much easier. Oh boy, I just checked and that movie is literally already on my to-watch list. I don't feel so good...especially because it's a damned French film and I am just growing to loathe French cinema the more I experience it. Out of like the 25 French films I've seen throughout the course of my life, I think I've liked exactly one while disliking or outright hating the rest, so I don't really know why I keep bloody trying. Oh lord, it's a Godard film too...I have not had a good time with Godard films.

Whoops, I didn't really mean to imply B movies are necessarily lacking in either talent/vision...that last line/mention of them was more just meaning that when you go on and spelunker your way through old B movies, it's going to be an unfortunately common occurrence that you get films that don't quite feel complete and/or totally cohesive in one way or another - whether it's the fault of some particular failing of creative vision at the hands of the director/writer, maybe not having quite the ideal actors for the parts, not having the budget to get the right locations, sets, and props, or something else. And if they do manage all that in spite of their limitations, they're probably pretty notable cult classics. Some people are really good at taking films completely at face value and just riding with them enjoying them for what they are no matter what issues they may have, but I'm really, uh, not that kind of person, which is why I tend to have trouble with B movies. Little things that other people don't even notice, wouldn't even think as worth mentioning because they don't impact their enjoyment of the film, can take me right out of something with little to no chance of recovering...bad framing undercutting characters and/or what I think should be core themes for the sake of exploitation being a prime example. Out of lost artifacts that we happen to chance upon and which still exist by a great many circumstances of pure fortune, it doesn't seem particularly unlikely that more advanced examples of certain bits of technology were made before being lost. How much more advanced, probably not exceptionally if none of it ever became widespread and iterated upon enough to not be lost in the first place, or at least that's what I would think.

Hm, is there an alternative ending where all the boys drive off into a volcano together that I missed? I think that's the only thing that could've made that particular George Lucas film 'satisfying' for me, . Or maybe if Laurie decided to go full axe murderer and it suddenly became a slasher film. Ooh, that would've been good. I kind of always assumed that sort of thing was pretty universal to movies made by the untalented and creatively pathetic, particularly when it comes to the more shocking (i.e. sex and violence, and obviously their intersection as well). Talented minds are able to work those elements in when and where they're appropriate and can use them to create some kind of cohesive message/commentary given their framing within the context of the whole film and which will hopefully connect to audiences by being reflective of the world we ourselves live in on some level...the untalented, on the other hand, seem to so often take and remake such scenes/ideas from other works they've experienced and insert them into their films without any clear or deep authorial intent in mind, which robs them of the necessary context and subsequent impact to make them meaningful or even possibly work on any level at all. Though it must be said that some filmmakers are better at certain things than others: just because you have zero craft for themes, framing, and messaging doesn't mean you can't make a well-directed and technically sound zombie film...I'm not particularly likely to love it, but there are plenty out there who would. I don't watch very many B movies for a reason, after all.

It should be noted that the Antikythera Mechanism is a real thing (although obviously it doesn't quite do what it does in the film) and dates back to at least 2000 years ago, and it's a pretty fascinating read. Technology and science could unfortunately take great leaps backwards in the ancient world thanks to how easily knowledge and skills could be lost. It's only this year they think they discovered the secret to the millennia-old Roman concrete, and I'm still waiting to see if they ever find one of those ancient Greek flamethrowers from antiquity.

If your Windows flash drive is not bootable, reformat it with Rufus or a similar program via a Windows installer .iso so that it is bootable (there's really no reason not to have a Windows installer flash drive not be bootable!): https://rufus.ie/en/

Some seasons, it can kind of feel like everyone are frauds. Luckily, the playoffs usually sort all that out and everyone forgets by the start of the next one.

If you don't know what the hell you are doing, then do not read the rest of my post, because trying to follow what I'm suggesting when you don't know what the hell you are doing could lead to very bad things and I'm assuming a fairly basic level of PC knowledge here and I will not be held liable for people accidentally deleting all their stuff because they're messing with things they don't even vaguely understand while not having the self-awareness to realize they don't understand those things: Without being there in person to actually look at it, I'm not going to try to even guess what in the world has transpired. So since you seem to just want to start from scratch with this drive, my suggestion would be to take everything you care about off all partitions of the drive in question and then just delete all those partitions so that Windows can start with a completely untouched drive. If you can manage the drive when it's not actively the system drive (i.e. by putting it into another system that already has a running Windows drive), just go in with Windows' Disk Management and delete all partitions/volumes of that drive until the drive is blank and all space is unallocated (make sure you're only modifying the drive that you want to completely wipe; also, make sure that you understand what having partitions/volumes actually means because a single drive can show up as being a C:\, D:\, E:\ et al. drive if it's configured that way and you could easily delete a whole lot of stuff you may not want to if you don't know what the hell you're doing), then install Windows to that drive. Alternatively (and perhaps even more simply), when you boot from the Windows 10 flash drive, you'll be presented with the "Which type of installation do you want?" question... ...where you should select the second option, "Custom"... ...and you can just start hitting "Delete" on the different partitions of the drive until they're all gone, and then you can select the unallocated space as your target. If your system has multiple drives, make sure you pay good attention to what you're deleting, because deleting the wrong partitions of the wrong drives (seriously, pay attention to what is labelled "Drive 0" versus "Drive 1" and make sure you've identified what is your actual target drive, do not make any assumptions, do not start deleting anything unless you are completely sure that you've got it right) will completely wipe the data of unrelated drives. I repeat: do not follow anything in this post (except to not follow anything in this post) unless you actually know what the hell you are doing and have a tried-and-true understanding of drives and partitions and how they can be configured. I will not be held liable if you delete everything on your whole damned computer because you're messing around with things you do not understand. Don't do it if you feel even the least bit unsure.

Though I've warmed up a little to it over time, Paprika has such a that feels so weak and distracting compared to how uncomfortably personal the rest of Kon's films get: always going to make Paprika a bit of a tougher watch for me in comparison. Maybe if I re-watch it every five years for the rest of my life, I'll eventually be able to force myself to love it.

Only tangentially related, but once upon a time, I tried The Witcher and was talking to the friend who talked me into playing it...or, actually, now that I think about it, I'm pretty sure they even straight up gifted it to me on Steam...and I was a bit confused as to why the combat seemed to be such a slow, kind of damage-spongey slog. They told me that I really needed to start crafting and using potions and weapon oils in order to make battles be less painful. I was like oh yeah, suppose that makes sense, the game really seems to want me to do that...but though I didn't consciously make the decision at that exact moment, I literally never played the game ever again, and nor did I try any of the sequels even though I heard the combat was very different in those games. Seems a petty reason to flat-out stop playing and completely write off an award-winning games series, but I guess that's me for you. I just didn't feel like all the bother was worth it...and really, I wasn't having much of a good time even outside that anyways, so the fact that the game wanted me to do this silly song and dance with the crafting system and buffing up with stuff was kind of the straw that broke the camel's back. Anyways, I mention all that because the game forcing you to habitually buff in order to make combat not miserable is...I guess not my favorite, especially if you can't speed it up.

The games that win industry awards are usually what a plurality of people actually spent time talking about, experiencing, and enjoying. They may not have been everyone's personal favorite game of the year, but that's not really what it's about: it's the games that are going to stand out in most people's minds as having been a 'big thing' for the year, that had some kind of tangible and positive effect on the collective gaming consciousness - while also hopefully setting a standard for other games to try to achieve for years to come. I have my own misgivings with Baldur's Gate III that makes it not particularly suited for my tastes, but in terms of being a creative vision with actual sincerity that clearly people genuinely enjoyed (versus just yet another samey sequel, or a committee-decided mass appeal construct, or an exploitative corporate cash-pump), it seems pretty easy to accept the game getting its flowers even if I must ignore that that the game wasn't quite to my liking. Our media/entertainment is a 'victim' of its time and circumstances - for better and for worse. Films considered to be notably horrible failures at the time of their release are sometimes re-examined decades later and then re-labelled as brilliant masterpieces because of how the film industry and the way people see movies have evolved since then, and the opposite can obviously happen when someone tries to go back to watch some of the older 'greatest films of all time' without having experienced first-hand the circumstances surrounding those films when they released that made them into the major successes that people remember them as. At least some of the greatest games of yesteryear would well be naught but a fart in the wind if they were released for the first time today (even if they were given a new [current year]-appropriate coat of paint!). If you feel current 'great' games don't compare well to decades-old games, they may well not - at least in the ways that you personally value as being most important given how your own tastes developed from playing the games that you did and also when you did...but that might not be what other people currently care about given the circumstances that they have experienced. None of us is special for not loving or liking something that most other people seem to, and nobody is trying to make you a victim of propaganda, conspiracy, or anything else when it happens: it's just not your thing, and that should be perfectly okay. Trying to fathom precisely why something does or doesn't work for you at the most base level is far too nebulous even at the best of times, never mind when it seems everyone is proclaiming something as being the "best" and "greatest" when you just can't seem to even vaguely understand it.

Trying to catch up with the food thread while being subjected to conspiracy theories and culture wars all because of a brief mention of poppy seeds. Hope you're pleased with yourself, @Gfted1, .

You know, I didn't know exactly how to describe how that specific element looked, but I think you put it perfectly.

The image here looks just about alright...except for the goofy fast pan that happens during that shot, which immediately triggers a derisive snigger from me on account of how grossly uncinematic it looks, and then the cutaway to that hilarious face close-up doesn't help matters any. Amateur hour stuff from amateur hour developers who just couldn't do any better and didn't even seem to understand what the purpose of the cutscene was: there was definitely a way they could've done this without it being an embarrassment, but they flubbed it, because of course they did, that's just what Beamdog always does, and I'm here for it. But bless their hearts, at least they tried. I just feel there's more artistic merit to something that even though it is definitely old and busted (no argument there!)...was nevertheless effective at the time it was made, and you can still appreciate that there was some kind of cohesive artistic vision for it, and that it was able to convey something. At least over something that...well, oh dear, oh my. But as @majestic said, beauty is in the eye of the beholder and all that, so it is what it is.

In all fairness, life would be at least a little easier if I didn't always have to be such an unapologetically massive snob. It's a difficult burden to bear...uh, for myself, and also the people who have the unenviable task of tolerating me, . Speaking of editing the audio, they did: off the top of my head, they inexplicably took out the bit where the unnamed Bhaalspawn tries to plead and barter with Sarevok (who then punches the Bhaalspawn in the face), presumably in reference to the other Bhaalspawn that Sarevok is seeking. So on top of how cheap and ugly the whole affair looks, which already has the effect of eliminating any kind of tension and atmosphere that it had, it would seem to kill much of the intrigue/mystery that the original hinted at as well. I mean, we've all played these games so it doesn't really matter, but come on, this intro cutscene seems sadly all too emblematic of the rather sorry and misguided approach Beamdog took for the BG Enhanced Editions. Sigh. I'd have paid more for an Enhanced Edition that offered less by stripping all the nonsense they added to the game: give me the engine improvements and bugfixes, and let's just call it a day.

I think I'd prefer to see the original video rendered at 160x120 rather than experience this hilarious travesty of artistry... ...but I'll do me, and you'll have to do you - for better and for worse, .

Anyone remember Beamdog's remade BG1 cutscenes, where they replaced the original full motion videos with their bizarre comic book-style slideshows...while also still using cut-ups of the original audio from the full motion videos? Woof: boy, that was a tough scene from a number of angles. I know the original videos were these like horrifically compressed 640x480 MPEGs and they probably didn't feel using them made for a professional product, buuut...sometimes, ya just gotta know when to let things be.

Mr. Intel, I don't feel so good. In the comments, GN said they would also cover idle power at some point within the next few months, which might be a bit more interesting.