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Bartimaeus

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Everything posted by Bartimaeus

  1. Bartimaeus
    SpyxFamily, episodes 7-9 (Operation Apologize and the two Secret Service brother episodes). The brother character is too much and kind of stinks, but I think they helped strengthen Yor some as a character (who I have felt is the weakest of the three main characters), which was good. Three episodes left - if they plan on wrapping up the plot here, it's going to have to be at truly breakneck acceleration because so far the show hasn't seemed to be in any hurry to do so (which is not a bad thing), so I'm assuming that there is going to be a second season at least. The show sold itself to me mostly on the strength of the bizarre character writing/reactions/behavior. I mean, my "introduction" to the series was this ridiculous video: ...which, while obviously re-purposed footage from multiple episodes, it's like...this sort of stuff is still actually in the show even if not quite at this density, so it wasn't entirely unrepresentative, .
  2. Bartimaeus
    I genuinely cannot remember if I was surprised by it, if I had expected it, or if it had already been spoiled to me...or if my brain had just gone too numb by even that point to be able to notice or care, . Luckily for me, I can't agree. I actually like the singer, though I don't think the song in question is particularly strong, but not bad either. Maybe it'll grow on me more over time. That was when the entire family blew up, right? Good times.
  3. Bartimaeus
    While (probably?) not as bad as choose-one systems, it still seems like ranked choice voting has a little too much unnecessary strategic voting. As an example, see this Alaskan election: Republicans screwed themselves out of this seat by not voting strategically and eliminating the secondary Republican (28%) instead of Sarah Palin (31%) first. If the order had been switched and Sarah Palin eliminated first, the secondary Republican would have won 55-45 instead and we would not be talking about this*. Approval voting is the commonly touted alternative to ranked choice in order to further reduce strategic voting, but treats your approved choices as being equal without preference, which I don't think is great either (...and I think if the system were adopted, people would eventually start to figure out that the system will wash out their actual first choices if they also approve of secondary candidates, which would start to create some wacky results when you have a large field of candidates and highly splintered/non-plural approval percentages). *Though the Democrat outperforming Alaska's generic Republican tilt of +15 would still be somewhat notable for November in the face of Democrats overperforming in every special election thus far, it's not quite as striking as her winning outright. Sarah Palin was a pretty uniquely disliked candidate (albeit one with a fervent base that clearly should not have voted her first over the other guy if they wanted Republicans to control this seat), which exaggerates how well Mary Peltota did. She will probably lose this seat in November unless voters make the same error. (e): Fun fact: winning this Alaskan House seat more than doubled (104%!) the total landmass House Democrats control in the U.S., .
  4. Bartimaeus
    Sarah Palin defeated in Alaskan statewide congressional special election by Democratic Mary Peltola, first time Democrats have controlled the seat in 49 years. This seat will be re-contested with more or less the same candidates in November, but still a pretty notable loss.
  5. Bartimaeus
    Noir, episodes 1 and 2. Opening song's vocalist reminded me of an album called "Noblerot" (front album cover evidently made by CLAMP, which is probably why I noticed it - looks like Cardcaptor Sakura) that I accidentally came across on YouTube once and went "what the heck is this weird crap?". I kind of liked a particular song from it, which is why I remember it...but to my surprise, it's actually for real the same artist, ALI PROJECT. Weird. Anyways, I appreciate a pretty landscape: Show looks nice, sounds even better. But how good is the show? That I'm less certain of right now, but not a bad first two episode. Surprisingly slow and sappy for an action show about girl assassins taking out contracts to kill people. ...Well, they're clearly girl assassins intended for a girl audience, given the lack of blood when they shoot people in the face - not to mention no slapstick, ecchi, or pride stuff, . Instead, we have mystery and feelings! But really, I'm not sure how I feel about either of our two main characters yet, so only time will tell, but at least it isn't a negative first impression. See, I feel like going "yay!" and "I hope this happens to the others" when a main character (well, a main character hitherto) is is probably a sign that a show is not working for you...
  6. Bartimaeus
    Nearly made me never watch anime ever again.
  7. Bartimaeus
    Wow, talking about moving the needle...straight up into my eyeballs so I don't have to see either of them in spandex, .
  8. Bartimaeus
    I promise I'll stop watching random garbage (or not garbage?) and get to trying the first episode or two soon...ish, . Though I guess I still have some SpyxEpisodes that I keep forgetting to watch as well...
  9. Bartimaeus
    Yeah, I guess that's pretty fair, given that I've only seen her in cruddy action stuff like Marvel, a few minutes of Ghost in the Shell, and like half of that laughably terrible Lucy film...not counting some voiced roles as well, I suppose.
  10. Bartimaeus
    That's doubly weird in consideration to this film, but I can't really explain without at least some major allusions to spoilers. I liked this one a bit more than Portrait of a Lady on Fire which didn't quite grab me all the way even though there was a decent amount about it that I liked, and I have no idea what Wild Zero is, .
  11. Bartimaeus
    Under the Skin (2013), a weird art house film singularly starring Scarlett Johansson, was described to me by a friend as being the slowest and most boringest film they'd seen in years. The way they talked about it, it sounded like another Memoria that would deliberately waste your time looking at, feeling, and experiencing nothing. I've never cared for Scarlett Johansson as an actress, weird art house films are pretty hit and miss with me, and I normally trust this friend's opinion...so why the heck would I ever watch it? I'm not entirely sure, but I did anyways. Unfortunately, it looks like I rather enjoyed a Scarlett Johansson film, and a pretty bizarre and very theme-heavy one at that. Whoops. Eh, just goes to show you that you can't always trust even the people you trust...or even yourself, . (e): Actually, it was probably the poster that convinced me to at least give it 5 minutes, really (and boy, I was very prepared to quickly quit the movie if it wasn't working for me). I'm a terrible sucker for striking posters.
  12. Bartimaeus
    Yeah, it sucks. There's been a few different teams with pretty seriously injured star LTs the past few years, including Packers' Bakhtiari, Cowboys' Tyron Smith, and Ravens' Ronnie Stanley off the top of my head.
  13. Bartimaeus
    It's never too late to criticize. I even waited to watch Aliens until five years had passed after I'd seen Alien - a little less than the seven in between them originally, but still a pretty good chunk of time to try to give it a fair shot. No dice.
  14. Bartimaeus
    Yeah, I'm a little different in my approach because I think that power-to-performance efficiency is basically the only thing that matters before you factor in price, so I'm fairly certain that I will still look at Zen 4 pretty positively. However, to be fair to the people saying "nah", the price is the exact reason why they're saying that, so it does make sense. Personally, I will probably be set with my 5800X for the next ~5 years given that my personal PC doesn't need to be anything more than a good workstation with a small amount of gaming performance at this point, so probably the next 2-3 generations do not matter at all to me.
  15. Bartimaeus
    Well, that's a key difference in our approaches: I never even try to judge anything in a vacuum, especially if it's part of a series. My expectations are a pretty direct part of how I experience it. If I go into a movie like Top Gun expecting it to be the worst thing I ever saw because there's literally nothing about it that should appeal to me, and I never painfully squirm while watching it and get some laughs and "that looks pretty neat"s, hey, that's a mildly positive experience...which is better than the absolutely miserable Aliens experiment. Between my own personal tastes (what kind of music, visual style, themes, characters et al. I like), my knowledge of other movies and what they've tried to do and have accomplished versus their peers, and my expectations set by how a film presents itself by various means, it's frankly impossible to ever truly watch something in a vacuum, so I don't even see any point in trying. Yeah, it is pretty amazing that Aliens is such a giant pile of dog doodoo that the trashy war propaganda films were inexplicably a better experience. Thanks, James Cameron - very cool. Maybe make your atrocious 80s action flick in a different series that doesn't carry the "Alien" name next time...perhaps Predator would've been a better venue, . I can't disagree. I gave it a 5.5/10, which I think is a pretty fair/kind score coming from me considering what kind of film it is. I'll try to check out 3000 Years of Longing.
  16. Bartimaeus
    Seems like the general impression from the AMD fanboys is "no thank you" so far - not exactly a highly positive initial impression.
  17. Bartimaeus
    Yeah, I did have a laugh at that. I totally agree with you on that aspect being...terrible: it's very transparently pro-U.S./military propaganda. But no, Maverick more or less follows directly in its predecessor's footsteps just about down to a T, while Aliens stands on the shoulders of a giant...and proceeds to have a diarrhea disaster all over the poor thing's head. Non-analogous situations, different impressions as a result.
  18. Bartimaeus
    Sigh, I was roped into watching Top Gun: Maverick (2022). Well, where to begin with this one? It was a complete...ly kind of okay-ish film. Sigh, I was roped into watching Top Gun (1986). Well, where to begin with this one? It was a complete...ly kind of okay-ish film. It could've been worse. I feel like you don't want to know what's going on in a bad movie though, so that should really work against the film if anything, .
  19. Bartimaeus
    I would say "heavily" is a tad generous...Lupin's grandfather being a partner to Bresson was very underdeveloped next to how much time was spent on Laetitia and her family, and it seemed to really be more of a basic setup device so that he had some kind of personal reason to be involved at all. But yes, it is ultimately Laetitia's and to a lesser degree Lupin's story, so it makes sense not too much time is spent on them given that it's a long-running series where I lack the particular context of the character dynamics due to not following the series (though I did remember Zenigata from The Castle of Cagliostro). I think the biggest issue with this film is that the film really leaned into the fairly bog-standard Disney plot and emotional core of Laetitia just a bit too much - I felt like I had figured out the film and where it was going with her the moment I realized her "grandfather" was the same guy that stole the medallion from the intro, which kind of took the wind out of its sails. Not to mention the very generic angry nazi as the nominal villain combined with the doomsday device...it all felt pretty standard even if competently executed. I think I complained about "the girl" being both the objective and prize in The Castle of Cagliostro, but that seemed like it fit this kind of series better...even if I thought "the girl" was just too weak of a character for it to quite click like it should've. Eh, again, 2019 3D animated Lupin film: it was fine and better than expected.
  20. Bartimaeus
    I think I read his DM of the Rings D&D/LotR parody many, many years ago. RIP.
  21. Bartimaeus
    Lupin the Third the First (2019). It's more or less a solid but unspectacular Disney movie mixed with a little bit of Indiana Jones, skewing slightly older in terms of tone (maybe around ages 10-13 with more violence and some fairly slight innuendo), but otherwise for setup, structure, and characters, I'd say that's right. I guess that's about what you could hope for out of a modern and fully 3D Lupin film. The 3D style is...pretty much Disney's 3D style but less blobby for character designs, which looks fine (certainly better than some of the 3D anime monstrosities I've seen in this thread), although the main character (Laetitia, girl in the bottom right in the poster) has a pretty strong case of Frozen face, as her resemblance to Anna from Frozen is just a bit too striking...though it's not super obvious from here, it starts to become so once you see her in motion. So aren't Lupin and Jingen supposed to be partners in crime? Didn't really feel like it, as the only time he appeared was for a few random save-Lupin's-butt moments and the very end sequence (which he wasn't really a part of anyways)...and Goemon (the samurai guy) probably shouldn't have been in the movie at all as he did and said almost nothing, while Fujiko (lady in green) did more as the seductive secret agent type that's usually out-smarting everyone else, yet she still didn't really feel she had much of a reason to stick around for the entire length of the film either. Maybe that's the result of the movie following a long-running series and them just not caring that some characters won't necessarily feel very important for every story, though.
  22. Bartimaeus
    I've seen just a minute or two of this one so far...it went into the "looks promising" bin, but I have approximately 40 shows in that bin right now. ...No, I actually went and looked, it's at 68 right now. I think I've said this before, but I'm better at identifying shows I might want to watch than I am at actually watching them...man, that's a lot. Okay, now we're talking. I guess I'll have to check it out sometime soon...er.
  23. Bartimaeus
    Three episodes in. The level of violence is...uh, pretty brutal: if you don't care to see various sorts of creatures bloodily disembowelled and eaten, probably not the show for you.
  24. Bartimaeus
    The American intro song isn't quite as good as Moonlight Legend, but otherwise I thought it was more or less a faithful adaptation.
  25. Bartimaeus
    (timestamped) The entire American Sailor Moon pilot was apparently recovered from the Library of Congress. It's...greeeat, .
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