Bartimaeus

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.

None of the rest of us are lawyers or have that background; most of us see obvious wrongdoing (from our own individual perspectives on what is 'wrong') and want heads to roll. It's been about six years since the clear Trump political wrongdoings started (not accounting for anything he did before that outside of the political realm, which would be mostly irrelevant to us since before that, he was just yet another bastard billionaire - one of many), and that's a damned long time with regards to a very distinct lack of head rolling appropriate to the level of harm done to our government, institutions, and society at large...enough for a lot of us to get enraged and start thinking that maybe mob justice is an attractive alternative to a broken system where people like Trump can "get away" with everything he's said and done. As for the issue of legal vs. wrong, that only makes it worse - if obvious wrongdoing is not actually illegal and the ones doing it don't face punishment, then it only reinforces that the system is broken (particularly in the face of not being able to change the law in any meaningful way!), making the desire for wrath all the stronger. Never minding the issue of 'the system' and what certain individuals get away with, the last ten or so years have made it pretty clear that both sides of the political aisle have been pushed well beyond their limit with their counterparts: the divisions are so immense that so many (too many!) of us do not want to live with, talk to, or really even see the other because it's become increasingly difficult to view your political opposite as being anything but despicable and divorced from reality. Divisions that deep, combined with the times not being nearly so good as they once apparently were, are likely to reach their boiling point sooner or later, and this ever-swelling mass of fury would seem to be just a symptom.

Thought that happened like a month ago, but apparently it was last week.

Think I'd rather they cut out the bear entirely than go the animated route, but agree to disagree: something about this Wikipedia article for the bear being structured in the same way an actor would be made me laugh out loud. Based on what's in this article, it seems like he was a remarkably nice bear...still pretty frightening, though.

0 for 2 so far, . Sure would be nice to know whether anyone can see the videos that you can before you start posting them on a forum for other people to watch (or not, as it were). I mean, I can still watch them since I obviously have ways around it, but most nobody else can without a bit of trouble...which is probably too much for people to bother with. What, just because I usually like simple (i.e. borderline monotone) singers who stick to like two, maybe three notes for an entire song...and who also don't (or can't!) hold a note for longer than a second because long notes are the devil? Well, I never!

I'm at the point where I actually prefer fake film grain for at least some stuff (e.g. animation) just to give it something rather than the unnaturally clean appearance of digital. Jay specifically argued for it to be shot on actual film, which would of course be better.

I wish that there were a genre of metal fused with either dream pop or shoegaze - I need gentle or at least relatively measured vocal performances instead of all the yelling, screaming, growling and such prevalent in metal. The only metal I've ever consistently enjoyed is stuff modelled after video game music, which tends to be power metal-ish in instrumentation but minus all ludicrous fantasy nonsense and fascist undertones...and when it has vocalists, they don't play by the same rules that "proper" metal does, which I like. Well, if something like that exists as a genre, I don't know about it, .

While I agree with this literally, the spirit of it I can't, since he's one of the very few mainstream-ish metal vocalists I can actually bear to listen to.

Yeah, I didn't even watch the Red Hot Chili Peppers version until after seeing this one. No surprise, I also prefer this one, . My mom loved SOAD as I was growing up, so I have some familiarity with their 90s/early 00s stuff as I heard it a lot, which certainly doesn't hurt. (e): Apparently, SOAD only made music during the 90s and early 2000s, so I guess what I said covers pretty much their entire existence. Whoops.

Inscryption. I finished it, and it was pretty good! This particular developer sure likes his very strange narrative stuff that I'm not especially interested in, but on the other hand, it makes for a more succinct game that didn't take 300 hours to play all the way through a la most other roguelike games, and the gameplay and atmosphere were quite good, so I'm all for it in that case, .