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I really loved _10 Cloverfield Lane_.

I did not love the _Cloverfield Paradox_.

Best news ever.

Do we know when book 3 of Brink will be arriving?

Duncan Jones has other plans

https://news.avclub.com/duncan-jones-to-make-his-tv-debut-by-directing-drama-se-1828177794

Additional plans. RT will be in development and pre-production for quite some time, and he has to pay the bills.

I want Wesley to be dead. From AIDS.

Harsh. But not harsh enough.

Let's not start with this crap, eh?

It all costs, but at the level of adding CGI, robots are at the cheaper end.

E.g. the facial animation can be more basic, or it could even be a puppet/person in a suit.

Yeah I bet animation is easier with a robot, you don't have to think about musculature or nailing human realism as they move, and there'd be much less need for  unnecessary movement compared to an animal like when idling for example. They're also probably quicker to model and get to look right too, often having much more simple geometry compared to organic things, and being made of materials that reflect light in easier-to-reproduce-convincingly fashions

The recent Lost in Space, which I presume had a healthy budget, still decided to do its robot mostly as a man in a suit (to its detriment I thought). This should be a clue that fully CG characters are still an expensive proposition for TV.

Very excited by this! I spent all Sunday speculating with my Trekkie friends what the show might look like. One of the coolest things, for me, is that we're going to be seeing a continuation of the TNG universe... at least I sincerely hope we are, and not some daft Young Picard or alternate universe nonsense.

It's a long way off, but with one excellent new series underway, and this to look forward to, I feel like Star Trek  is back in rude health.

When I started re-reading Dredd in the Case Files a couple of years ago, I found Walter to be one of the most embarrassing artifacts of Dredd's past. If it was satire, it passed me by. Robohunter was much more successful in that regard. So no Walter, please, but since the new series isn't really focused on Dredd per-se, I doubt we'll see him.

I'll hop on the Fallout love train. Stunning! McQuarrie and Cruise clearly get each-other. I'll take another one, please, and if you feel the need to kill off Ethan Hunt, that would be okay. Cruise is ageing spectacularly well, but it's going to catch up on him at some point. (If nothing else, on the basis of this film, he has to be rated as one of the best stunt-men in Hollywood.)

I bought TB only a couple of months ago, one of those rare "I remember this being great, so I'll take a punt on a reduced-price blu-ray" moments, which then spawned the even rarer "Still great!" moment that we all crave in our middle-age.

A TV series could be fantastic. Very exciting.

[Dredd]

For me, more googly eyes at Dredd's art, and nice story development. A refreshingly low-key and personal Grey Area hits the spot. Mechastopholes looks great, but I'm more interested in the origin story for this universe than I am in a giant demonic robot punch-up. The Order and Deadworld are both on catch-up for me now.

Including Leia at all is a bad idea. I understand that the intention of her being a big part of IX was always there,  but tragedy intervened. Carrie delivered a fantastic couple of scenes at the end of TLJ,   I watch them over and over, moving and uplifting: leave it at that.  Unless it's a holo recording of some inspirational speech,  Leia dies off screen between movies,  move on.

That might be exactly what they're planning, who knows?

[How it Ends]

How it Ends, a Netflix Original Thing.  Ahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahah.  More like how did this thing get made, and why did I watch it. Anyway, this is the almost certainly the dullest end-of-the-world movie ever put to film; it doesn't even attempt to do anything original, or really do anything at all. The characters act like morons and remain steadfastly unlikeable (Our Heroes fuck over every person they meet, even the nice ones), the perils encountered are no greater or more mysterious than the average US road movie, and the ambient threat level lurches from fighting to the death over a jerrycan of petrol to everyone having a good night's sleep in unguarded houses full of food and water.   

It adds insult to boredom-inflicted-injury by sacrificing its last 15 minutes to the thinnest imaginable rip of Z for Zachariah (and not the book or TV adaptation, but the recent film version), being so blatant as to call the bloke 'Jeremiah'.  And then just when it might redeem some credit[spoiler] by killing its vacant protagonists off, the still-unspecified disaster turns into one of those 2012 volcanic clouds that goes just slightly faster than a 4-wheel drive on a mountain road, before sort of giving up and letting our Adam & Eve drive into an unblemished Washington State sunrise[/spoiler].

There's obviously some talent involved somewhere, because the opening shots of Chicago are glorious (if irrelevant), and the road-trip background landscapes are frequently gorgeous; there's even a wondefully creepy abandoned waterpark location that looks like it could have been fun, if anything happened there. There is one single element of surprise, if only by omission, in which the Native American Stereotype [spoiler]leaves the party, and doesn't reappear at an opportune moment[/spoiler].

Finally, would somebody please pay Forest Whitaker enough money for something that he doesn't have to say 'yes' to every single script he's handed - that guy must have an incredibly expensive lifestyle to support.  There are other actors that can play whispery curmudgeon, you know.


Johns Christopher and Wyndham are spinning in their respective graves.  AVOID!

That is one of the best film reviews I have ever read. Bravo.

For Whitaker, also see: "Doomed mentor" (Rogue One, Black Panther).

Welcome!

[Incredibles 2]

Incredibles 2

Sequel to my favourite Pixar movie, and very good it was too. Lots of genuine hilarity, and it looked amazing. Suffered a little from naff villain syndrome (Ithangyou). Amazingly imaginative and heartfelt, with a great score. Win!