Bartimaeus

If Evangelion can have a nigh pointless recap movie (Death and Rebirth / Death(True)^2) that doesn't work for literally anybody regardless of whether they have or have not seen the show, I don't see why Violet Evergarden can't.

Even in the original, I tried to do as little base-building as possible (in fact, I deconstructed the literal singular room I had built the moment I got the big ship that served as a mobile base), which is probably why I only play an hour or two of Below Zero every couple of weeks: unlike the original game, there's really not much that feels like it's driving me to keep playing it. A kind of awkward and uninteresting story and no great depths to explore (or at least not any that I've found), it's O.K. but not nearly as compelling. As far as video game experiences go, taking the Prawn all the way down the Lost River in the original while not having any clue where I was going but being inexorably pulled deeper in while trying to avoid leviathans and crabsquids to be able to solve the story was pretty top tier - dinking around decorating rooms has never been my thing and never will be.

My patience for metroidvania is pretty low, but the Momodora games are an exception as short and simple examples of the genre - I've played them all (except for the side-game Minoria, which was pretty horrible from like the hour or two I played of it), and I think they're making another one. This reminds me that I should finish Below Zero...I seem to only play like an hour or two every couple of weeks...

This is what I initially wrote after seeing that trailer: However, upon further reflection, I remembered that I hate roughly 99% of trailers and think they're generally a horrible way to be introduced to a film, including even my all-time favorites, so I'm thinking that I should maybe just forget what I've seen and stop watching trailers or commenting upon them. Slumberland (2022). The core premise of this film (child suddenly loses their only parent upon which their world revolved around, would go to any length to see them again) is pretty tired...but somehow a Jason Mamoa film is actually kind of fun and not embarrassing. Probably better watched with children. I don't quite get why this got such bad reviews with critics (but conversely maybe a little too great reviews with audiences), as it just seems like a generally well-executed family adventure film with a little love and heart to it.

The National Weather Service has been blowing up my phone with warnings about snow squalls several times today, alert sounds and all...and today's been the less severe of the three days. Where've you been at the last two days, NWS?

I prefer the old stuff, because looking at...well, this, hurts my brain: Sigh. Movie-quality animation just isn't what it used to be, is it? And never mind writing... I'm usually happy with most anything that isn't needles into my brain, and the old stuff is certainly very formulaic, but it's not needles, and that makes it alright in my book. The equivalent voice actor for me is Frank Welker, who has been voicing Fred since literally the show's inception and continuing up to this day...along with a number of other memorable roles like the doppelganger from BG1. Okay, his voice isn't "music to my ears", but still, .

Well, have you seen the films - the many, many films? There are literally like 50 of them*, and most of them are somewhere between "really terrible" and "very mediocre". I have a healthy amount of respect for the original 1969-1970 series and watched all of it with my nieces. But like many things for me, as you dial the clock hand forward, I seem to start having more and more problems with the series... Funny thing about Zombie Island is that it was just a direct-to-DVD adaptation that Warner Bros. evidently didn't give too much of a crap about, and it's apparently pretty widely considered to be the absolute best film or close to it - glad they were able to make a 1080p scan of it. *Literally literally. 59 different film entries on imdb, although at least a handful of them are not Scooby-Doo proper but related documentaries or other nonsense.

Right, what anime do we have in the queue for today? Let's see here...*squints* ...Scooby-Doo on Zombie Island, directed by Hiroshi Aoyama, Kazumi Fukushima, and Jim Stenstrum, animated by Japanese studio Mook Animation? Have to say, "anime" Scooby-Doo looks fairly spiffy, all in all...and it was actually pretty good overall, certainly the best Scooby-Doo film I've watched. I've been subjected to a number of them, and...I would've rather not have been for the most part.

Right, I guess it's about time to go recycle all my useless junk before it joins the other fossils.

There have been movies critically panned that were hits with audiences, or eventually gained insane cult followings after being ignored initially, since practically the dawn of film-making, don't think much has changed recently. At different times and according to one's own tastes, the individual will inevitably feel that the critics are morons or that the audience must be brain dead for viewing [whatever] the way they do, all completely dependent on which side you happen to agree with. For my part, it is likely that I would feel all of it is bad because no matter the changes they made between the first and second season, it still isn't doing anything to appeal to me. Doesn't make my opinion "right", it's just another garbage opinion in an endless sea of them.

It's really a shame that a lot of these old slice-of-life shoujos aren't available: between this (Maruko-chan), Azuki-chan, and Akko-chan (hey guys, are you noticing any kind of pattern with these titles here?), I've really enjoyed their movies, but I can't watch the shows from which they were for. I guess I'm a weirdo for enjoying old as dirt shoujo that apparently attracted no Western attention of any kind. 245 GB for all 142 episodes of Maruko-chan in 1080p, but I can't understand a lick of Japanese: life is so unfair. ...Wait, hold on a second, I'm getting something now: that's just the first season? There are more than 142 episodes? Well, just how many episodes are there then? What the hell did I stumble onto? I guess this is the One Piece of shoujo...except this has 300 more episodes than even One Piece - it's even still going to present day, although the art style...the art style is admittedly not what it used to be. Still, I'd like to be able to watch the "first season" (note: the first season spanned three years, as you might expect a 142 episode season would do), especially seeing as this film was practically a miracle.

They do at that, now that you mention it...though it wasn't raining, and I was wrong about other people not wearing them, it seems roughly half the school was: Unrelated:

does anyone know what these hats are? they look like hardhats, but I can't figure out why two girls in school would randomly decide to wear hardhats while nobody else does

When he left The Witcher, the word on the street was that he had been constantly fighting Netflix and its Witcher production team to try to keep the show and character close to the source material, as he apparently happened to be a fan of it even before signing on. No idea if it's true, it's just what I remember hearing.

It's the worst kind of snow, too: that ultra wet, heavy crap that not only turns everything slick and slippery as it melts and freezes repeatedly, but also is a royal pain in the butt to move. No school yesterday or today as a result. Fortunately, Texas has had an excellent track record of handling freezing weather in recent history...

Power's been on and off all night, big blizzard for two days now. Was outside for like 40 minutes at about 4:30 AM when suddenly the power kicked back on, and wow, it's hard to really get a feel for light pollution until something like that happens. The transition from being outside for that long with only having that weird kind of snowfall light diffusion (where there's no apparent source of light yet everything has this kind of unnatural glow to it, almost like you'd see in video games in "dark" areas that aren't actually nearly as dark as they should be) to all the lights in your area suddenly roaring back on all at once makes it feel like you went from early morning straight to mid-day. Light pollution's no joke...and I barely live by anyone!

Yeah, it's not like I can't understand how one might like and certainly respect it more than disposable yarbage like Maverick...but it failed to appeal to me on pretty much every level, which doesn't necessarily make it contemptible trash - it does, however, mean that I really didn't like it. I've always touted the 75/25 rule: 75% subjective "how much did this appeal to me and how much did I enjoy it" vs. 25% objective "how well was this made". Being really great on the objective side can help me appreciate something I'd otherwise be fairly neutral on, but if you're completely failing on the other side, it's just not gonna do you much good in the grand scheme of things. I can't sit through and pretend to enjoy a film that was perfectly made if I hate everything about it.

Almost everything about The Northman felt bad to me, so that rating is honestly at least a little kind. Characters and performances that I didn't like, a story and themes that I didn't like, even visuals that I often thought were ugly and didn't like. At least Maverick had some pretty neat plane footage and plane action, which is something even with all of its other maladies. If it hadn't been for liking The Witch and The Lighthouse as much as I did, I would've have stopped watching within the first fifteen minutes...but I didn't, and that was obviously a big mistake, and also plays somewhat into how miserable the experience was. I expected Maverick to be utterly terrible, but it had very mild entertainment value; I thought The Northman would be good, and it had pretty negative entertainment value that I forced myself through, and as you know, I am quite famously bad at and very miserable when forcing myself through hours of something I am not having a good time with. Whoops.

I edited that in after the fact just for you, but it's true! Maverick got a 5.5/10 while Pinocchio got a 6/10. Other films this year: Everything Everywhere All at Once (8.5/10) The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent (7/10) Barbarian (7/10) Watcher (6.5/10) Nope (6/10) Death on the Nile (5/10) The Northman (4.5/10) You could do worse than a 6/10, . Overall, 2022 wasn't too bad of a year for films for me.

Guillermo del Toro's Pinocchio (2022). It's all well made as you might expect, and the fascist Italy setting is used to some effect...but did I enjoy it? Eh, kind of, I guess. Out of the 2022 films I've seen, at least I liked it slightly more than Top Gun: Maverick, .

still not as bad as the one time I tried to post a 400 MB one and dropbox and imgur both exploded trying to host it the power to make high quality, correct FPS gifs in but a few seconds is one that requires great responsibility which I do not and will not exercise whatsoever I need me some of that for my messed up neck and shoulders

At least it wasn't stolen? In the states, you would have to specifically get signed/verified delivery (i.e. face-to-face, make sure you're actually home) for them to bother with that, otherwise they just drop it on your front porch or whatever and you hope somebody doesn't take it, particularly if you have no idea if something was delivered and you only check hours later. Usually you only get that service for extra money or on high value items.

it's only 81 MB (instead of 3) to do it properly, I don't see what the big deal is

If you check, Katphood actually visited two weeks ago, so he was still kicking at least then - last time I checked, it was a hell of a lot longer than that, I think a couple of months at least. So a little bit of good news: look at all them post likes he handed out! Of course, with how things are going there, a lot can happen in two weeks...

I had a brain fart - for some reason, I was imagining that the Cowboys would become the #2 seed if the Vikings were to fall out of it, but of course, duh, Eagles are division winners, so Cowboys would just be a wild card, thus denying us a Packers-Cowboys playoff rematch in the event of the Packers magically making it, . By the way...Jalen Hurts seems like he's gonna be MVP, .