majestic

@Gromnir, @Maedhros Apparently monologues are defined differently in German and English literary theory. In German literary theory, a monologue is never addressed directly at someone, and when it takes the form of a speech, it only counts as a monologue if it written in a way that precludes it being addressed to any one character in particular, i.e. the monologue itself still works if you remove the other present characters, like the audience of a speech. An answer to a question, no matter how long winded and expository it ends up being - and in this case Sarah asking the Sheriff why he's not going to follow up on her kooky idea that the faith on the Island is spreading an unknown contagion with supernatural properties that nobody is going to believe without proof that she does not have at the time - just cannot be a monologue. Needles to say that German literary theory also makes no distinction between monologue and soliloquy (or soliloquium, which is just Latin for monologue, being a direct translation from ancient Greek). So indeed, I made the mistake of assuming that monologues are the same in German and English, and thought I'd nitpick. Geez, way to look stupid.

Nitpicky remark: Monologues require the absence of other characters, hence the name. Mono, from ancient Greek mónos, meaning single. Just because someone is giving a long winded explanation to another character doesn't make it a monologue.

Midnight Mass: edit: Well, look at me going into hypercritical mode in spite of really enjoying the series.

Midnight Mass, finale. I think I'll give The Haunting of Bly Manor a shot now.

I honestly don't know, and I can't for sure say it's because of the film alone, which objectively is a little unfair, but for my enjoyment that doesn't truly play a part. There are two things, mostly, the first it being a movie spinoff of the usual kind, almost all of which were disappointments or needed sequels to make a decent film. Star Trek: The Motion Picture, for instance, most - all, when not counting guilty pleasures, and I mean First Contact by that - of the Next Generation movies, all of the new ones. Of all the films the only ones I like are II, IV and VI, and of them only The Undiscovered Country can be counted as an actual Star Trek tale. There's a certain irony to be found in that movie series - the films that are the most like Star Trek episodes are all not that great, or even bad. Not that the first Cardcaptor Sakura movie is a bad film by any means. It isn't. But it's also just that, and the entire time I watched it I felt as if something was missing that made the anime special, and in its place we had an actual villain and a classical three acts story setup. A perfectly crafted film, but not... not quite what I wanted, maybe? In the same way Princess Tutu was great to watch, but not at all what I was looking for at the time. The other part is that timing. I watched all of Cardcaptor Sakura before the first movie, and even some parts of Clear Card before the second*. Going back to series as it was in between the three months time skip between the first and the second season (within the first arc!) also did not feel right. I think I might have enjoyed the film more had I watched it when I was supposed to. I've finished watching the Sakura Card arc at a frightening pace back then, I think I went from watching the finale of the Clow Card arc to finishing the entire series in the span of four or five days. Your aproach seems like the more sensible one. Also, uhm, if I take the movie as what it is - the finale to the series - then it's probably somewhere near my #1 spot of best series finales I've seen. Good to know that you didn't like it less (or a lot less?), at least, that would have been... strange to process. Never could shake the feeling that it you'd think the difference between them a lot less than I did after you enjoyed the first one so much though. Maybe that's part of the reason. Madoushi was an actual character and a villain (well, villain, was she really one? She just accidentially ended up being an antagonist to Sakura, and that without intent), Nothing was just a force of nature set loose, much like most of the other cards. In a way, Nothing is really like the Angel in Midnight Mass, a way to set the plot in motion, but nothing else. I mean... here I was, telling the forum how much I enjoy CCS because it's Sakura and Tomoyo "fighting" a tree and cleaning house, and in that way Nothing was... closer to that than Madoushi. At the end of the day, this is one of these "me" things I sometimes mention. There's nothing wrong with the first film, I'm pretty sure that's just me. Gonna take some time before trying Clear Card or will you attempt to get that over with? *If you think I overrated the second film, perhaps that there is the reason why. It was so much better next to the terrible sequel?

You're right, if we're talking about actual film snobs and not the film snobs on the internet, but even that has been changing in recent years. A bit, at least. I was by far and large thinking of online discussions like this one, where the opinion overwhelmingly (in my experience) is that Alien is better than Aliens, Terminator is better than Terminator 2, and the first bad Indiana Jones movie wasn't Crystal Skull but The Last Crusade because it was too comedic and not gritty enough as an adventure film. Yeah, don't look at me. Also, I guess that would be different for a place like the Bioware forums, if they still existed. Not sure though. Never put up my tent there. There's good company down there. Plenty of films I could comment on that would land me back there, I'm sure. Just bring up Fargo... or almost anything by and with Mr. Tarantino. Like, go ahead and ask me what my opinion on Pulp Fiction is. Heh.

Like I said, I had to pause to laugh that one off. I went from "Did I accidentially get a really good looking fan film? Why is this suddenly a stupid action film?" and then it's all Tomoyo forcing Sakura to use Create to make her Sakura fan film. Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return. Part of what made this film better for me than the first one - they just didn't even try to make this something else than a finale for the series. There's no way this film works for anyone who didn't watch the show. Eh, and yes, what a corny ending, but a deserved one. Do that in one self-contained 90 hour movie and I'm very likely to hate it. Here, yeah... I might have grinned like an idiot for a while. Next to the basis of the plot being a so far never mentioned card that's the one thing I... might... want to criticize. Or maybe not, because it really just worked. The movie takes elements that were already present in the show and combines them into something that's hilarious, heartwarming, fun and (almost?) suspenseful for 80 minutes. There's a play (although all of the play episodes were great, so that was probably an easy choice), Tomoyo is joined by Meiling playing the matchmaker, there's the Ferris Wheel and a price to pay in lost emotion at the very end. It's all so well put together that I didn't really care, but if someone would raise it as a downside, I'd have a hard time arguing against it. Did you watch the Kero special? Poor Takashi can't catch a break, can he? No one else even tried. I mean, except for IC who said he watched it earlier than I did and didn't like it, which is fair. Also... *dances happily into the night*

To be honest at the moment I'm kind of happy that the episodes aren't as offensive as the ones where the insane stalker and dog girl got introduced. That's not much to go by, but Komi Can't Communicate's copious amount of text on screen (plus the ever present and very helpful furigana) makes for a fun reading excercise, at least, so it's not a total loss. The episode itself was... fine, I guess. Can't have a water park episode without fanservice. The best parts remain the moments between Komi and Tadano when they're alone and "talking" to each other.

The premise is kind of interesting, but the execution is so... not for me that I better stay clear.

Nah, but that's personal preference and attention span, I guess. Both Terminator and Alien are more grounded (as far as sci-fi films go) than their more action laden sequels. The first Alien also has the advantage of Ridley Scott's attention to detail and ability to set scenes. His more recent movies might be lacking in everything else, but that's still one of his biggest strengths. In film snob circles it's heresey to not prefer Terminator to the sequel and Alien to Aliens. The train station (helpfully called "Limbo") is from the third one, like the billion Smiths and the terribly boring mech defense, and the room with all the screens is from the second, and yeah, I know you're being facetious here, but I can't help myself. City is of course called Zion, because why not, it certainly fits the whole Chosen One narrative the films have going on. The third one fell completely flat for me because I figured out how it will end after Neo had his talk with the Architect in the second. Also wasn't too terribly interested in this hybrid Eastern/Western philosophy and religion motif they came up with. The Matrix sequels are what happens when the Wachowskis try to come up with a Western equivalent of Revolutionary Girl Utena, which for all its problems, does everything better than the Matrix sequels. Probably becaues it doesn't try to fuse Judeo-Christian mythology and the quest for the holy grail with Nietzschean philosophy and Buddhism. Funny how watching something completely unrelated makes something already awful even worse. Huh, not sure how they would hold up for a first viewing in 2021, but they were great fun. The basic premise is about as stupid as the one in the Matrix - don't feed Gremlins after midnight (midnight where?) makes no sense, just like using humans as batteries makes none, but that's just something you need to gloss over because otherwise the films fall apart. Well, Matrix more than Gremlins. Or at least cut down on the action sequences inside the Matrix, and cut down on the stupid action sequences outside of the Matrix too, then focus on one philosophical topic instead of them all. In other words, make a completely different film, then it could work. That's basically wrong, but also correct. Pitch Black is a fantastic little indie film that had the unfortunate side effect of spawning the Riddick franchise. I enjoyed the films in the "so bad they're good" sort of way and there's a reason I'm referring to Karl Urban as Lord Eomer Vaako McCoy, but... yeah. That's just me.

There's hope for you yet! I really don't think you need to. It's an action piece set in the Alien universe. It's a pretty good action piece, but it is what it is nonetheless. Don't get me wrong, I'm usually the person to stir up a hornet's nest by saying I prefer Aliens to Alien these days, because all the tension and suspense is gone from the first film by now while the second one still holds up as nice action fun, but I don't see this working for you at all. Cross it off the list at some point, by all means, but yeah... let me know if you actually liked it though. You might remember that I once talked about how bright lights and the changes in luminosity a TV gives off will keep me awake at night, and I can't sleep with the TV on, right? There are two films that have the distinction of making me fall asleep at the cinema, of all places. One was Alien³ (although in all fairness, that was during the Alien Resurrection premiere quadruple feature, and I woke up right for Resurrection and later wished I had slept through that instead of Alien³), and the other one was Matrix: Reloaded. Can't even begin to describe the level of boring and bad necessary to achieve that feat...

Driving a rusty nail through your nether regions is probably more enjoyable than watching Star Trek Discovery. I'm also pretty sure that won't help, and I have no desire to try. There's no way I'd ever engange in self-inflicted harm that in any form causes actual damage to my skin. Warm water starts to hurt at a temperature that everyone else I know considers too cold to shower with, any form of cutting or tearing is just out of the question. But yeah, get help instead of inflicting self harm, that's a much better approach. More difficult too, I imagine, but much better.

Series squandered being generous within, like, ten minutes of the pilot.

Wouldn't that be something. On the one hand, I'd like to say with confidence that won't happen, on the other hand... you enjoyed the first film a lot more than I did (compared to the series' state at the time it is supposed to be watched I'd rate that one at a measly 7, at best, while the series burns bright with some of the best episodes and the best writing and highest average quality) so there might be less of a difference in enjoyment between the two, if there is any at all. Since the title is "The Sealed Card" I guess it's not too much of a spoiler to say that the asspull in the film is: If that doesn't bother you, the biggest criticism I had falls by the wayside. The film won me over within the first two minutes, the opening is so great and funny on both an in-universe and meta level that I had to turn it off and laugh for a while (and come post about it before continuing), so I might be a bit blind to its other faults, i.e. while it's a perfectly made capstone to the series it also helped itself to certain parts that already came up. 's about all I can say without venturing into spoilers. There's a Kero-Chan movie special too, you should definitely watch that one. It's totally awesome. Oh, there is a tone shift towards ending the story arc, that is pretty undeniable, but a lot of the better episodes in the arc happen in the second season too. There's a definite break in between the ending of the first and the beginning of the second season. It seems so strange, the first arc feels completely plotted out and well crafted as a whole, but the seasons are really lopsided in episode count. I agree somewhat, but still consider Stranger Things one of the mini-series that got good sequels. Unlike, say, season two of Westworld... ugh.

Poor Komi will have to wait until tomorrow, I'm too tired and my brain hurts from watching Star Dreck. Also... @Bartimaeus now that you've watched all the episodes, is it still a 9.5 or did it drop half a point for being a bit... not so great?

Star Dreck, Venal Disease, season 4, episode 3: Current Burnham crying counter 1:3. Current Burnham crying counter still at 1:3. Please excuse me while I go slit my wrists. I hear bloodletting causes a sensation of euphoria, which is why it was used as treatment during the Dark Age. It didn't help any with the actual disease you had, but you didn't care for a while.

It's two seasons, but one story arc. I can only imagine it was two seasons only from a production viewpoint (with the break in between for the first movie), because that never made any sense. Netflix splitting them up into a Clow Card arc and a Sakura Card arc makes a good deal more sense, and it's odd to have one 35 and one 11 episode season. Great finals are really rare indeed. This topic came up before and some posters often cite shows I haven't watched as shows with great endings. Nothing readily comes to mind for me though. TNG had a great episode as a final, but it was just a two parter. If we count the second Sakura movie as series ending then that's great, but was written and animated as a capstone movie. Mini-series are easier because they're usually "just" longer movies and properly plotted out all the way through, but when they are successful they get a second season and it's just going down the drain, usually. That never felt like an issue with Cardcaptor Sakura, but it's really just that the story idea of the second arc wasn't as strong as the first one, by any objective and subjective measure. I still have a hard time ignoring the ups and declare the Clow Card arc the better arc, and some of the episodes simply could not have happened without the prior buildup. Clow Card had a higher average quality, I think. Sakura Card had single episodes that were stand out moments for me. Not easy to decide. The new Westworld for instance would have had a great ending if it just ended when it was supposed to. But nah... studios keep ordering more oodles of cash. Makes sense from a business point of view, of course. Nope, that's not acceptable. When next you feel like watching Samurai Hairdo, just click on Cardcaptor Sakura: The Sealed Card instead.

Basti ciao! Basti ciao, ciao, ciao! Bye bye. Don't let the door hit you on your way out. Best day in a while. Looks like a veritable bomb is going to go off, because there were a good deal of rumors about new evidence, and that must be really bad if that parade of corrupt <bad word>s actually cut off the head of la famiglia. Here's to hoping that this party goes the way of the dodo, or the way of the Democrazia Cristiana. *dance*

The movie is better than the last two episodes. I mean, I really liked everything of the final episodes that wasn't the storyline, but yeah, that conclusion wasn't the best. At least, not compared to the finale of the first arc, which was not just great for the feelings but also legitimately... better written. I'm not going to say riveting or interesting because it is what it is when you watch it as an adult, but it was still really good, and this finale was... simply not as good. It does have the added bonus of being the final episode in a longer running show. A journey's end always feels different, unless you make a movie with ten separate endings. *sideglance at Return of the King* Explanation for Clow Reed's looks: That card that Sakura created there at the end... ah, well... The movie, like I said, features a slight asspull for the storyline and if there's one bad thing about it, then it is that it kind of repeats certain parts of the anime, but it does it so well it doesn't matter. Almost doesn't matter, I guess.

I wonder if watching Neil Breen's ballsack cures Covid-19. That should be tried, and has a better chance at working than bleach.

How self-contained is Stone Ocean? Does it reference the prior stories in a meaningful way?

Midnight Mass

Could also be a metal band.

Had a talk with my GP today, she said I can come in any time to get my booster shot. Now all that's left is to, uhm... My experience with my two Moderna shots were somewhat unpleasant. After the first one I could barely leave work because I couldn't get my access badge out of my car window and to the reader because my arm didn't respond to my attempts to move it, and it felt like someone had stabbed me with a red hot knitting needle, and after the second shot I ran a relatively high fever and was more or less out for two days with high body temperature and the symptoms of a really bad hangover. Getting a third dose that, so far, everyone else I've talked to had an actual reaction to (as opposed to nothing or mild discomfort after the first two), I can't say I'm looking forward to the experience. Sigh. I wouldn't be surprised if our recent explosion of cases was linked to Omicron in some fashion. That wasn't just a regular uptick due to the seasonal change, it really went bonkers from one week to the next and there are also an awful lot of breakthrough infections. There have been rumors that laboratories identified a more infectious variant a far as a few weeks back, but those were just that - rumors. Or maybe they weren't. There's also been a surge in Denmark in spite of having high vaccination rates. If that really is Omicron then that's good news though, because hospitalizations are still by far and large limited to vaccinated high risk groups without a booster shot and the unvaccinated, of which we have a lot (at least compared to the rest of the Western world). On the other hand, that would necessitate that the bumbling buffoons that are our current leaders are actually capable of keeping information like that under wraps, and I honestly... really, like... don't think they are. Our current ministers are busy sending each other schlong picks on their work phones and talk about their embezzlements on WhatsApp chats that they thought were gone forever after they deleted them in the app. Lastly, regarding the name, well, it not being Xi because it would offend Pooh isn't much worse than it not being Ny/Nu by virtue of the WHO assuming that Americans would be too dumb to distinguish Nu from "new" and would think of an entirely new virus (the actual wording isn't that drastic, but it really boils down to that). *shrug*

I honestly did not remember @InsaneCommander posting that he watched the original series, and it wasn't that long ago even. See what watching these films does to a mind? Dear God.