Bartimaeus

i've watched an embarrassing amount of this show as well, mostly because my nieces like it and are still holding me hostage PLEASE SEND HELP

the Mario movie no, this one stinks, I was talking about the other Mario movie no, this is insane nightmare fuel, I meant the OTHER other Mario movie That's the one! Super Mario Brothers: The Great Mission to Rescue Princess Peach (1986). Peach suddenly crawls out of Mario's TV screen while he's up late playing video games and she asks Mario if he can protect her from Bowser, so of course Bowser and his minions immediately follow her through the TV and kidnap her, taking her back through the TV so that he can marry her. Yes, they are going to keep re-using that idea for literally our entire lives. Mario and Luigi have the figure out what the hell happened and how to try to rescue her. Random screenshots: also i watched the chris pratt mario movie my neices are holding me hostage pls send help

I may not have totally understood the usage of "stumping" myself: my understanding of the word was it meant to go around being vocally in support of something. Usually politically related, so like a presidential candidate calling it quits so that they can go throw their weight behind another candidate that they feel is the best choice (especially if they make speeches and/or go to rallies to do so), or perhaps something more like Bernie Sanders going around yelling at clouds all of us to raise the minimum wage. I figured both of those would qualify as "stumping".

It shared the same name and I didn't think to check the author before starting it. I'm pretty astonished myself that it would apparently qualify as some kind of outrageous ignorance of literature worth commenting upon - exactly what percentage of posters here do you think knew there was a series of Peter Pan prequel books in the first place? Before I mentioned it in that thread, that is. I am guessing it was, and is still, not very high.

General rule of thumb is that if a service will let you watch, read, or listen to something, that service has necessarily opened up a golden opportunity for you to permanently own it outside their means of control as well. Whether or not a particular end user finds this of interest or will make use of it is another matter entirely...

been stumping for denver vs miami in the finals, might actually get it

I have a noted and remarkably poor tolerance for continuing to sitting through at length things that I do not enjoy, be it music, television, or books. When it comes to specifically English literature, I always had a tendency to start thoroughly skipping the books I just wasn't feeling, which was a lot of them because "classic" middle school-level, high school-level, and college-level English literature was full of books that I would've either returned to the library or donated immediately if given the choice. It's really not any different from the conversation I had with Gromnir regarding Citizen Kane: I've enjoyed a lot of very old films, but I didn't really enjoy Citizen Kane basically at all even after having specifically taken the time to read about how it pioneered and revolutionized film-making beforehand, so what am I supposed to take away from the experience? Bleh. Suffice to say, not only will 'ignorance' of such subjects abound from the point of view of someone more traditionally 'learned', it's also pretty clear that I will have very different takeaways compared to most others...and any appreciation I have for something will often derive from things that others evidently do not understand, and I am fine with that. On a side-note, my comment about the Peter Pan book was actually in the movie thread, not the book thread. I am somewhat curious as to what you would take issue with, given that I didn't really write much about it in the first place...mainly, it focused on Peter himself, so I suppose you had a very different reading of his character? On the subject of music, I just don't enjoy the vast majority of music, which is why I don't typically comment in here on other people's music: I try stuff out, and I almost always go "oh, yeah, this isn't for me" very quickly. When watching all of those "top hits from each month for [given decade]" videos, I came across just two artists from all of those videos combined whom I took an interest in (Gogi Grant and Melanie), whom I subsequently wrote down and said "I'm going to check out an album from both of them", which I did and subsequently kind of wrote off because even though I liked the specific songs I heard in those videos, I still didn't really enjoy their music as a whole. That's usually the way it goes for me.

I think the film you're talking about is just called "Mother!" (2017), but I could be wrong. Though I haven't seen it, there is an obligatory "won't somebody axe-murder Darren Aronofsky so that he can't hurt me anymore, please and thank you?" and all that that I have to mention. Sorry, the man's made two of my very most unpleasant film experiences...well, maybe more than that if I ever watch any of his other films. If I am wise, that shouldn't happen, but...well, you know, it is me. (e): Nope, turns out, there's also a film called "The Mother" (2023) starring Jennifer Lopez, whereas I got confused because Mother! stars Jennifer Lawrence, and apparently I thought the "J-Lo" moniker applied to Jennifer Lawrence as well. Phew, okay, that's my bad. I believe The Jungle Book remake is supposed to actually be pretty good by all accounts, but I haven't seen it myself. The animated Jungle Book certainly has its charms, particularly given the largely great musical scenes, but I've watched it in its entirety in recent memory and can say that I certainly remember it being a lot better overall when I watched it as a kid. So you never know, sometimes good things come from even totally wrongheaded ideas.

now and forever but actually i just wanted to see if it was as bad as it looked, which...it wasn't, but I still didn't much like it I was recommended Hereditary at one point, but I never got around to seeing it.

I don't know how other people view this thread, but most of the music people post in here I can only (valiantly) persevere 5-10 seconds through before closing out. I could start marking everybody's posted with "Confused" reactions if you like, as that's about all that would seem appropriate.

The Witches (1966). Would've probably been a lot more interesting if it was made ten years later, by which time film sensibilities had changed a bit...ends up feeling fairly safe and a little stale for a "there's a witch!" movie. Joan Fontaine as protagonist lady was nice enough, though. Kind of reminded me a bit of Disney's Sleeping Beauty in some ways, which was a bit strange. Little Nemo: Adventures in Slumberland (1989). Solid children's animated film with great animation made mostly by a Japanese studio (a very troubled collaborative development between East and West, as I understand it), not particularly innovative writing or plot but fun enough even for adults...I think better watched in Japanese than in English, though - the English cast and direction is a bit...inconsistent. Peter Pan & Wendy (2023). It was a great big old mess. I'm not particularly fond of the Disney animated film, but I do like the original novel, and this film feels like...a fairly direct adaptation of the animated film while also making a lot of changes to the story and characters that also did not come from the book...some of them fine, some of them not so fine. I couldn't but help feeling very terrible for the poor lady that played Tinker Bell - not only was her CGI just atrocious and it was a noticeable eyesore any time she was on screen as a result, they also didn't let her speak for just about the entire film and she had to resort to goofy and over-the-top expressions that could work in a cartoon, but do not at all in a live-action film. She was also probably the most noticeable character re-write throughout the film, as they chose to not have her fight with or backstab Wendy, which will only bring even more scrutiny upon her character from adult fans of the original film/book wondering why the heck she's so different from previous versions. Overall, the film feels largely like a bit of a retread of other similarly misguided Disney live-action remakes like Beauty and the Beast and Cinderella and the like, so if you didn't like those and the others, probably leave it alone. But this one at least doesn't have Emma Watson's sandpaper-esque singing in it, so at least there's that. That made my skin crawl in Beauty and the Beast and that was the last one of these live-action remakes that I saw as a result (I'm pretty sure?), so it's a small but notable improvement.

That tracks - even during the Bucks' title win in 2020, I kept thinking they'd get eliminated each round. Miami in the first round? They just beat the snot outta of us the previous season. The Nets superteam? No way in hell. Atlanta in the conference finals is when I started believing...then we lost the first game at home, and then Giannis hyper-extended his leg and was out for the rest of the series. Putting faith into anything or anybody is the exact precise moment that the world stabs you in the back for it.

After the Bucks were eliminated, I told a friend I thought it was the 76ers' year...but like, for real this time. I should have known better.

it wasn't even remotely close to as embarrassing as the bucks, but the InfoWarriors are no more also, miami somehow moves onto the conference finals, science has yet to explain this mysterious phenomenon

As someone who's probably a little younger than you but hasn't ever much actively engaged in pop music: 1950s: 25% 1960s: 15% 1970s: 35% 1980s: 30% 1990s: 30% 2000s: 10% (ngl, probably about half of the ones I did recognize were just songs I recognized as weird al having parodied) 2010s: 5% 2020s: presumably going to be somewhere between 0 and 1% unless my nieces have something to say about it Conclusion: Do not look to me for any opinions on music, present or historical. Well, everyone really should've already known that, but this is definitely more corroborating evidence. stop

you get better cinebench scores when you leave the plastic in between the cpu and the heatsink or so ive heard

trash can man is officially in the trash can

I'm still on the last version of Firefox before they completely hosed the UI (88.0.1). I haven't run into any issues yet, but if it's anything like what happened with the final version of Opera before it switched to Chromium trash, it's only a matter of time. I tried to get used to Vivaldi, but there were a few nagging issues that were getting in my way that weren't a problem with this old version of Firefox. Sigh, I'm still not sure what I'll do, I just keep delaying the inevitable here. I had this already sitting as a draft in a reply for this thread that I never submitted: It's mildly pertinent to my Firefox/browser situation, .

i'm someone that keeps up with the latest disney trash, or at least i thought i was, because i ain't never heard of strange world though i've watched most of them, i can't say that i've actually liked any disney animated feature film since Frozen - even Frozen II was fairly abominable

Jack Nicholson stars in Italian thriller/drama(?) The Passenger (1975). Brevity is the soul of wit, which is a fancy way of saying quit wasting my time. Despite a glacially slow (and mightily clunky) introductory first half hour, and then a still very slow but not quite as clunky next half hour, I was determined to see this one out...and, you know, it did eventually get somewhere. Maybe not quite enough to make up for the first hour really needing to be watched at 2x or 3x speed, but I didn't feel cheated from watching it by the end, so that's a success in my books. Though I do still wish it had been 20-30 minutes shorter at 2 hours 6 minutes. The premise doesn't really matter, just look at the poster to determine if you want to watch it.

AP sources: US Rep. George Santos facing federal charges I can't believe they'd do this to a Civil War hero. What a miscarriage of justice.

Yeah, when you watch the first few, you kind of assume that there's a promise of...the show trying to accomplish something. A slow start taking up the first few episodes is not necessarily a big deal, especially when it seems to be a quality show doing right all the things that 99% of other shows don't...but not so much when that "slow start" actually takes up literally all 26 episodes and the show ends without it having felt like it ever began. Really, you're going to use all ~12 hours of your run-time on that? Like...come on, I see better character writing in PBS Kids cartoons like Pinkalicious. PINKALICIOUS, DAMN IT! I watch that crap in the morning before my nieces go to school. Like, the main character has a goth friend that she threw a birthday party for, and the goth girl is like "thank you so much, Pinkalicious...but um, no, there are way too many people here and everything is loud and brightly colored and it's really just not my scene, so I'm out, but hey, you enjoy the party" and she just straight up ditches her own party before it really even starts. This is a show for babies made on a baby-sized shoestring budget, but somehow manages to do some more interesting character writing than a show intended for adults with ridiculous production values like Noir. And it's not like Noir couldn't have...you have a glacially slow show heavily centered around two (and then three) characters, and you don't do anything fun or interesting with them for roughly 25/26 episodes. What gives? Might as well just have had them sit around at the beach not talking and only occasionally glancing over to each other for all of that.

1. I thought the first couple of episodes were such hot garbage that I gave up...uh, well, after the first two episodes. But... 2. Actually, it's pretty much the same story on why I gave up on Gravity Falls as well, except that was more like...5-6 episodes and not just 2. 3. I have been told, repeatedly, that both shows get much better after their initial poor starts. Which is actually pretty believable to me, especially when I look at Steven Universe and how bad and clunky it starts out as well. Western animated children's shows that are secretly kind of aimed at adults* seem to have to battle with their networks to start out with before they become established and get more license to do what they actually want to do. Well, that kind of happened at the end of Steven Universe when it effectively got soft-cancelled (i.e. had to rush to the conclusion...and conversely had bizarre filler-ish episodes that felt like they belonged to a different show) as well, but same idea really. *There is another problem with cartoons like this: networks like Cartoon Network and Disney don't usually really care too much about the shows or their content...so long as they sell their bloody merchandise quotas. The issue is that shows with primarily adult audiences don't sell nearly as much merchandise as shows with primarily child audiences, which is often why such shows get cancelled prematurely even when they seem to have good viewership and critic ratings. Sigh. it sounds like the first two episodes were at least more enjoyable than any episode of Noir, so there is that

One positive of Millennium Actress over Perfect Blue is that I've been able to watch the former three times now. I wonder if the latter would impress on me even further with a re-watch like Millennium Actress has...or would it be much weaker without being able to watch it while out of my mind tired like I was when I first saw Perfect Blue? Hmm. not one, not two, but three distinct blu-ray releases, and every single one is a terrible, and the key word here is terrible, upscale here's an idea ya trash-can anime labels and distributors: if something was digitally produced or cannot be re-scanned at a higher level of detail, just put the entirety of the show in standard definition progressive video on one bluray instead of a bazillion blu-rays, save in manufacturing costs, and have the possibility for better-looking video because video players will have better upscaling than your "just blow it up to 1080p, sharpen it, and call it a day!" 'technique' but they won't do that because then they can't sell multiple scam blu-rays, which is probably the point when you're trying to re-sell an old series like this...but if you've butchered your blurays so badly that the original DVDs are better, then I really don't care, your blurays shouldn't exist idk if I'll watch this, the prospect of having to muck around with DVDs just to try out something I probably won't like is making me the big grumpy

You're not wrong, because from what I saw, it looked very much like a mid-2000s 3D platforming-action game, with all of its charms and warts alike, that they tried to kind of halfheartedly give the Dark Souls treatment while maintaining a more actively told story. It was a worth a try rather than just make more miserable Souls-clones that all repeatedly miss the forest for the trees like they seemingly all do, but it just didn't seem all the way there yet either. I'm also kind of presuming that the sequel will be just more of the same, but who knows, maybe I'll be surprised.