Bartimaeus

Persepolis (2007). The local movie club is doing a watch of it, and it's been sitting in my bookmarks for years and years. Five minutes in: "...wait, this is Only Yesterday, only it's during the Iranian Revolution when everything's going straight to hell. But the thing is, I love Only Yesterday..." It didn't end up being quite Only Yesterday, but I enjoyed it anyways. Outside the occasional spot of animation floatiness for more background-y stuff, I thought the visual style was quite nice as well. No, that's correct.

Everything you say about WALL-E makes perfect sense and I'd be hard-pressed to argue, and yet it doesn't really feel it makes much difference to me - I get what it was going for even if the way it got there didn't work. The benefit of being more pre-occupied with the characters and it thus not feeling like an overt issue, I guess. Maybe I'm being too kind in giving a film with such an obvious construction issue too high of a rating...but then again, I've always said I try to rate films 75% subjectively and 25% objectively, and it's the only Pixar film I particularly like in the first place (out of the...fourteen I've seen - A Bug's Life would be next but significantly farther down, I guess). Up, ironically, was a film that started out on a high note that then spent its entire run-time steadily descending, so you'll see no disagreement from me there. Finding Nemo is one I haven't seen since I was like ten, so it's not included in the fourteen that I've seen...particularly because I hated it then, which is why I haven't seen it since. I've been forced to re-watch The Lion King at the end of the proverbial blade by my nieces (another that I disliked as a kid and didn't ever want to re-visit), so it's possible I'll eventually find myself similarly endangered there as well, .

First three episodes? How could you resist watching the second half of Challenge of the Masked Racer? You watching the blurays? Hope so, it's critically necessary for my favorite part of the show: spotting all the poorly drawn and/or silly faces Trixie makes, .

They're thematic shortcuts meant to get across an idea quickly (and probably to less critical children) even if it doesn't make much sense in the real world. Humans continue to litter everywhere they go to show that their nature hadn't fundamentally changed even if their environment is carefully managed to be squeaky plastic clean (i.e. they're still the same humans that trashed the Earth even hundreds of years later or whatever the time-frame is); the humans finally stand up at the end as a symbol of hope in trying to make a change, as wanting to make a change, as still being capable of making a change and righting the ship that is Earth if they really try. I would think much more offensive is the fact that clearly so few humans were afforded the opportunity to get off Earth in the first place, so where is all the evidence of incredible social upheaval, mass violence, and the survivors slowly asphyxiating in their own burnt out husk of an atmosphere? Where are all the hills of corpses, and why aren't the bones being slowly compacted into cubes by WALL-E? Well...it's probably for much the same reason: it's a lot easier and less problematic to skip over that kind of level of detail so we can get back to the silly robot love story, . I would say it seems likely that the film just didn't appeal to you enough on other levels to make it so you're not reacting hypercritically to these over-simplified symbolic devices, . If this were a more serious film (or if I didn't otherwise like it myself), I would agree that it's insufficient...but I mean, c'mon, it's crappy Pixar who makes movies about talking toys and fish - that we got any kind of attempt at a real world setting is kind of a miracle in my eyes. I would say that a more serious film should show the humans as being incapable of making any kind of change on a long-term (multi-generational) basis, and playing in with the themes, should also probably have our characters end up in the garbage themselves with all of their effort ultimately being for naught...but um, that would be a pretty different film aimed at a different kind of audience.

Hey, I don't deride your tastes in movies. Well, not much...publicly, anyways, . I'm about to start deriding your recent usage of those lousy art style emojis if you don't stop with that nonsense, though. Who in their right freaking mind would use that crap over the legacy emoticons? Some of us have eyes, man! Well, that's the nice thing about Galaxy Quest: it has a good emotional core driven by its characters, strong performances from its cast in their respective roles, some clever but also cliched humor played tongue-in-cheek with regards to its nature as a semi-parody...and some sci-fi silliness and action to top it all off. What more could you ask for from a film of this type?

Okay, funnily, Shrek, Nausicaa, and Mulan were the three that I thought were maybe possibilities, but again, my ignorance of the genre limits me in being able to determine that, and it definitely limits me in being able to tell if the Western influence is something I appreciate in them anyways. Mulan, for instance, I largely don't care about the dramatic action sequences, Hunnic invasion stuff, the particular musical cues, filmography choices and such...I love Mulan the character, her story, and the interactions with the rest of the characters. Those elements don't hurt the film by any means, but if they're not what I really care about, then it feels a little besides the point. But I definitely did not think of Tokyo Godfathers (...or Crusher Joe/Ghost in the Shell, for that matter...but I guess Crusher Joe is pretty Star War-sy, which of course has roots in westerns, so that one makes some sense after having it pointed out at least - yay for arguing from a place of ignorance!). @KP From Another World Maybe I'll check it out. Does it carry an official recommendation to specifically me?

I first watched Galaxy Quest when I was probably like...six or seven years old? My mom then made me re-watch it probably a hundred more times...and then a whole bunch of random bits and pieces of Star Trek: TNG and Voyager over the succeeding decade. Like with Holy Grail, you can consider it a form of childhood bias - the only difference between them (plus a few others like The Fellowship of the Ring, Beauty and the Beast...) and most of the other stuff that she made me re-watch a million times (e.g. the Indiana Jones films, the original Star Wars trilogy, A Christmas Story, The Goonies, and a pile of other random crap) is that re-visiting them as an adult still yields a "ok actually this is really good" reaction from me, hence why it and other exceptions rate higher than the rest. You can probably thank the cast and the characters they played for that (particularly, I'd say, Alan Rickman and Sigourney Weaver). I get why other people don't like it, and that's okay. There are certain thematic, character, and setting elements that make it work for me where pretty much no other Pixar film does. Literally every other Pixar film has some kind of fatal flaw in at least one of those areas that makes it impossible for me to get into them nearly as much as I did WALL-E, but they're probably all things that literally nobody else cares about. I've always been a pretty big Pixar hater outside of WALL-E, even back when practically everyone insisted they were chef's kiss (pre-2010). I was really hoping that film was only 2 minutes long so I could watch it right now, . (e): I see that it was directed by the same person that made One Cut of the Dead, which I liked. Hmm.

Unfortunately, like @majestic, I very much dislike Tarantino. Another case of a director whose work is technically impressive, usually quite amusing, and seemingly well-written...and yet who leaves me feeling completely empty inside after seeing anything by him. His films are a bit like riding a rollercoaster for me: it's exciting enough while it's happening, but not much of note otherwise. I have not seen a single one of the films (or The Mandalorian) that you listed - a hearty combination of ignorance of and not much interest in the genre, I would think. Of all the films I would qualify as being a favorite of mine, I feel as though there is very little Western influence in any of them. And even if there is, it's probably what I would consider to either be irrelevant to why I like it or possibly even the weaker and less interesting components of whatever film it is. Here are my top 50 non-TV films (warning: somewhat dominated by animated films, particularly at the top...I'm very much an animation person more than anything else), see if you can quickly identify anything as being particularly Western-influenced: Fun fact: a good bit more of my top 50 films were made before I was born than after. I wonder how often that happens for people, particularly given how much of a hassle it usually is (relatively speaking) to watch older movies.

If RLM ends up doing a re:View of A Fistful of Dollars (mentioned by them as a possibility), I'll probably watch that one too. There doesn't look to be an Italian dub version of A Few Dollars More (or at least not one easily available), which might make that one a tougher sell if they end up doing that instead. I really have trouble listening to English when the vocal delivery just isn't quite right, whereas I don't know enough of what Italian should sound like to know whether they're doing it correctly, . I should watch some of those classic crazy Japanese films someday.

Westerns are not really my cup of tea, but I thought it was enjoyable (albeit somewhat indulgent - it's a long movie!). I decided to watch it so that I could watch the RLM re:View. I guess I should also say that I watched the Italian dub (2:54 run-time "Mondo Restoration") because the English dub was...um, pretty bad/wacky on the whole? Maybe the Italian was as well, but it worked much better to my ears. I kept switching between them for like the first twenty minutes of the film (well, once dialogue started at all anyways), and felt like I didn't really have a choice in selecting the Italian. Probably gave it a somewhat different tone compared to the English. (e): The re:View is much more enjoyable and interesting after having watched the film than it would've been without it, I think.

The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly (1966). This is a fascinating method of drinking from a bottle, though not one I think I'll be trying any time soon: What I've learned from this film is that if you're ever going to double-cross someone, you should be certain that they're dead before you wander off, otherwise you might be caught in an endless loop of revenge and more double-crossing. In my specific case, you're right: there's nothing that's fundamentally wrong with new movies that will prevent me from enjoying them wholesale, whereas with the other two, well...exceptions are very rare. For someone who has different preferences and priorities (possibly Gorth?), that may not be the case, though.

I don't know if anyone/everyone else feels the same, but I have to tell you...I get that you're doing an over-stylized Gromnir-like writing thing (...right?), but it's so strong and the context for what you're trying to say is usually so limited that I often really have trouble precisely interpreting you beyond "thing bad/good". Now that I've finally gotten that off of my chest after a couple years of being mildly confused by your posts...another episode of SpyxFamily! It's time to go to school. My only regret is that Anya doesn't spend any time mean-mugging, which should be an obligatory skill of any little girl. She could learn a thing or two from the best. But much better episode than the last, though - possibly the best one so far.

Tragic characters, complex themes, an emotional core so strong that it would make grown men weep...would be what I'd say if I was a moron inexplicably expecting a random Tom Cruise action movie to be something it's clearly not. Sometimes these things can surprise you (either for good or bad reasons), but if a movie is exactly what it presents itself as and you weren't interested in that, you only have yourself to blame for still watching it (alternatively, you can blame the people who pestered you into trying something when you made it clear it wasn't something you thought you'd like if they still recommended it to you anyways). Obviously, I'm not going to watch Top Gun, . But to @Gorgon's point, the age of big budget films not looking like a gross/uncanny CGI disaster is pretty much over. Smaller and more grounded films may look good for what they are, but those types of movies aren't ever going to be like...epic action, fantasy, or sci-fi films, you know? So if that's the type of thing that you like (as opposed to someone like me with a taste for relatively simple, character-driven stuff that doesn't really much need special effects), I could totally understand feeling as though movies are pretty much dead. It's not too different from what we're personally familiar with in regards to pathetic modern Japanese animation...or really even the sorry state of triple-A gaming right now: while the particular issues are different, that dread feeling of the entire medium having moved beyond you is largely the same.

Unfortunately, I've seen enough of Disney's other blurays to know that the phenomenon is not unique to Cinderella. Noise reduction is an ugly process that systematically leaves casualties in its wake, and whatever studio responsible for these sorts of modern HD re-releases is usually the only thing that we get for a given film - for better or for worse, and clearly Cinderella here got the "for worse" end of the stick. Previously, I've made mention of fans doing a terrible smorgasbord of filters to quality blurays in an attempt to simulate something like what Disney does...but that's a much better situation than the original bluray starting off like that - not possible to restore detail that isn't there.

It almost certainly wasn't intended, it's just a necessary artifact of the "digitalization" process. Look at the shiny stars on her dress, the fine white outline on the hem, the dark outlines between distinct objects...and how much of all of that was eliminated as well. Or how weirdly bulgy her eyes and lips got. Trying to squash noise into flat gradients for this kind of "restored" look necessitates that certain...sacrifices are made in terms of fine detail, and it's not unique to Disney's noise elimination process even if the result here seems particularly offensive. Manually restoring it is possible, but requires both a keen eye and an insane amount of manual work for little reward - the vast majority of people will not notice or care. And then there are people like me, who endlessly harp on noise reduction for old prints like these and the unavoidable damage it does...

Disney's blurays/HD streams for their classic films are generally of very ill-repute for the techniques used to make them look contemporary (i.e. "clean" and digital) and it makes me the big mad. And no, I'm not ever going to stop talking about it when I see egregious examples of it, .

And I get that there's an issue of affecting the "integrity of the game" vs. external stuff that doesn't, but...you think of past incidents like with Ezekiel Elliot who got six games for just one offense. Here's a guy who went through at least a documented 66 masseuses over a 17 month period (a new one nearly every week for a year and a half straight!), which is so weird and fishy that you even have other players coming out and saying that you usually find one or two that you like and stick with them...and twenty-six of them come forward to allege some pretty serious misconduct. He's not even apologetic about it: the most he's offered is a "I'm sorry if I offended you" type apology, which is so insincere to add insult to injury. It just doesn't compute for me. Is it because there's no criminal case or video?

I noticed that as well - a lower level of detail, a way less striking color palette, and actually really bad bright/dark dynamics a lot of the time, it looks like. Even a cursory look at the Steam store screenshots for both games does not flatter the second game visually.

It appears their banner image game has regressed as well. First game: That banner image was why I tried the game in the first place! I didn't end up caring much for it (well, I played it for a couple of hours, looked up online how long it was and realized I didn't want to play another ten hours of it - I have a noted aversion for too-long Metroidvania games), but still. Now the second game...: Pathetic: I wouldn't even notice this if I was scrolling past!

Deshaun Watson reaches settlement of 11 games and 5 million fine...less than the 12 games and 10 million fine that the NFL offered to settle with before the judgement and subsequent appeal. Seems pretty abysmal, and I don't understand why the NFL felt the need to settle on a slam-dunk case where being as harsh as possible is what the vast majority of the public wanted.

Yawara! This show is so silly...and also very obvious with where it's going at times, it almost hurts - almost. The issue is, even though it is what it is, I'm still enjoying it. So far, the show maintains a driving storyline and consistent characters while not quite going too far into absurdity, and...well, I guess that's enough to keep my interest so far. Actually, even with its few fundamental design issues, I'm rather starting to enjoy it. Right, now for SpyxFamily...episodes 3 through 5. Three and four more or less kept walking the same line as the previous two - a lot of absurdity, but most of it serves a purpose and keeps the story moving along without trampling on the characters or plot, so it's enjoyable and fine. Episode 5, on the other hand, was a classic "the characters are puppets to the premise" kind of episode, where you have a wacky premise that takes center stage over everything else and the characters no longer behave in line with their established core characteristics for completely arbitrary reasons (i.e. to make the premise play out how the writers want it to...no matter what it takes to get there). It must be said that this style of episode in shows is almost always complete anathema to my brain, even for a show as silly as this one...actually, with the relatively short run-time that this show has along with it being pretty tightly scripted up until now, it feels very inappropriate indeed. The good news is that I think the show promises to treat this episode as if it never happened (because it's obviously filler) while getting back on track for episode 6, and that should prove to be more enjoyable. Anya, so far, continues to be the core of the show that makes it work, .

Seemingly everyone that's ever watched the Paddington movies says they're wonderful, so I suppose I should check them out sometime. But I don't think I'd necessarily call Wes Anderson's films pretentious, but rather...the ones I've seen almost feel like children's movies, but for adults? I don't even necessarily mean that in a bad way. It's just that...it's always like the most one-note characters taken to such a cartoonish extreme, scenes and plot that directly tell you everything that's happening all of the time and never leave you wondering about or trying to figure out anything, fast and witty humor that comes at the expense of grounding and its characters, the same exact visual style choices over and over... I watch them and they're kind of funny and they look nice enough, but that's all there is to them, and I feel...insatiated. Like when you're starving for protein and all you've got are tasty but very empty sugars and carbs - no matter how many thousands of calories you have of the latter, you're still ravenously hungry for the protein. Wes Anderson films don't have any protein...and one fried egg is infinitely more filling than all of the donuts in the world, so it just doesn't quite do it for me.

The Grand Budapest Hotel (2014) by Wes Anderson. It's a shot-for-shot live action remake of his Mr. Fantastic Fox. Well...okay, it's not at all, but it somehow completely feels like it. After having seen three of his films that all felt like watching the same exact movie, I think I now understand what RLM meant when they said if you've seen one Wes Anderson film, you've seen them all. And if you love it, that's great...but I only just kind of liked Mr. Fantastic Fox and Isle of Dogs, so I think I've really got my fill.

General audience appeal can be a pretty useful (though not perfect) measure if you're just trying to find something that is watchable/enjoyable. Now if you're like me and clearly not part of the general audience, seeing the user score distribution (i.e. what percentage of people gave it 10/10s, 9/10s, ..., 1/10s) can be way more useful than seeing that it's 100% positive. It's a better use of my time to watch a film that one third of people thought was a 10/10 but another third thought was a 1/10 with the rest falling somewhere in between than a film that is 75% ~7-8s. Sure, the latter is probably "fine", but I'd rather try something weird and niche with the chance of adoring it than something relatively mediocre that everyone "liked".

As I imagine is the case for most people these days, I am a conflicted individual with a mess of feelings and ideas...which is particularly relevant right now because it is making it extremely difficult to effectively get across all of that which I am trying to convey in an intelligible manner. Like with the ongoing Ukrainian-Russian conflict, I personally occupy multiple perspectives that are at odds with each other. My previous post are two of those perspectives, the former of which (the first half of the post) wherein I keenly feel the fury of the anti-Trumpers, who are largely so completely beyond the point of caring about the particulars of the U.S. political and legal systems that have allowed Trump to avoid personal culpability for his actions thus far. We simply do not care anymore, the pain has been too long and too extreme for "don't hate the player, hate the game" to be enough, particularly when many of us already held a cynical disgust for the system that makes this the current reality in the first place (and again, when it is also simply not feasible for the system to be changed anyways). But as you pointed out, that is the exact feeling experienced by people on the opposite side with regards to Obama, Hillary, Biden, and so on...which is what the latter half (the second perspective) of my previous post was for: the recognition that on some level, we are all too far gone, that way too many of us are experiencing a kind of visceral wrath that is making what should be important (law and its consistent application!) feel a terrible obstacle getting in the way of actual justice...and with the way things are going (and being completely unable to affect it), it is only going to get worse. The first perspective also contains my anger at the current Supreme Court, where it is becoming increasingly difficult not to feel as though a tyranny of the minority taking away fundamental rights, regardless of their legal reasoning or process by which it happened, should be met with the exact response necessary to reverse it, and damn the consequences. And yet...not too long ago, by means of a third perspective opposite to the first, I also expressed a terrible fear of what might ensue if the Democratic Party gains a large enough control of Congress to finally eliminate the filibuster and seize control of the Supreme Court through it. Why? Well, I can only speak for myself: I am not for throwing the entire rule of law into the garbage can because I want to see Trump finally get his due...but is there at least one part of me that is, one that can speak louder than the others at certain times because I am not a judge or lawyer trying to take a measured approach to everything? Yes: in fact, that part of me is strong enough that I don't believe I could ever be either a judge or a lawyer, as I would be fundamentally incapable of doing my best to fairly view or defend someone I believe to be a murderer, rapist, or any number of other detestable qualities. As I said, you have a perspective and background that the rest of us do not, that many of us could not ever have because we're simply not that kind of person (or maybe because we've grown up in a different kind of social/political environment that has made that perspective all but impossible for us to attain). Too many of us are just tired and angry and want the problem to simply go away, and that's often the feeling that comes to the forefront when we're posting random crap we feel but do not think deeply about to a message board as a kind of outlet for said negative feelings. Which is likely why... ...responses like this are so often necessary to what people post in here - when it becomes obvious that while someone may have had a deep feeling that made them post something, they did not have deep thoughts behind it that would be able to fully rationally explain it to a non-like-minded person. You might be able to make someone as conflicted about these matters as I am see some reason (and to be clear, I do think I agree with everything you said), but...that's only me - it's pretty easy to influence me on political matters precisely because of how conflicted and unsure I am.