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God the amount of time spent on the Mercenaries mini-game in RE3. And when you realise you can save people if you get there fast enough! What a game.

[ROCK CANDY MOUNTAIN]

ROCK CANDY MOUNTAIN

Thank you for bangin on about it Colin. Damn fine.

[Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri]

Went to see Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri last night and absolutely loved it. It's properly laugh-out-loud funny throughout but also emotionally gripping as a drama, the writing is fantastic and the performances are amazing across the board. I couldn't get over how well it manages that one-two punch of hitting you in the feels hard and then getting a laugh out of you moments later. Brilliant film.

Caught this at the Hebden Picture House last night - agree wholeheartedly. Everyone else seemed to like it too and my wife started a small round of applause at the end, much to her delight. Could not predict where it was going at all

[The Realm]

I caught up on Image's The Realm

Initially I was very dubious about the fantasy post-apocalypse (though I would enjoy reading more of actual fantasy post-apocalypses), where the modern world falls to pieces due to magic, orcs and beasties. This sort of situation is only slightly more favourable to me than Shadowrun or 'Bright', where the near-future goes all High Fantasy and suddenly you've got Elves in your Starbucks and Orcs in your LAPD. Mostly I find the concept never lives up to its promise, and I end up longing for a Weirder apocalypse or a more traditional story of magical beasties, where swords and magic aren't around in a world that has already seen the horrors of the Big Bang Theory.

However, the first five issues of The Realm won me over pretty quickly.  The artwork is nice, crisp and functional whilst containing enough fine detail to sell a crumbling cityscape. The character designs are great. People wear a mix of typical post-apocalyptic survival gear, normal clothes and fantasy costume. So far, so normal but the main characters all have a clearly defined look that goes from panel to panel without ever feeling like a superhero costume or complete affectation. My favourite  of the fantasy bits is the younger scientist's little Conan belt, which seems out of place but suitable for a nerd, and my least favourite is bad guy Necromancer 'Eldritch' (Hmm) who dresses like every cliché of a dark metal cover.

The central concept isn't overly explained but you get enough to go along with, relying on the familiar just enough without losing all that's intriguing. It's nothing overly original or groundbreaking but it's solid and enjoyable, so in my book it's a good book.

Many won't like his terminology, but from what I gather, he doesn't hate comics or diversity, he hates comics that he considers to be poorly written that don't sell and that he argues have resulted in comic stores closing down. His daughter is Muslim so I doubt he hates diversity.

"SJW Marvel Destroying Comic Book Stores" - oh drokk off (not you Surfer!). He's one step away from calling everyone cucks [Edit: No I see he already does that. Woo.] This is one of the creeps who thought there was anything to object to in this picture of Marvel Employees: https://twitter.com/HeatherAntos/status/891004244089810945/photo/1

Anyway. Back to Last Jedi and a bunch of social justice warriors called the Rebellion/Resistance.

Good luck Sharky! Keep us posted.

3/5

Enjoyable but messy and flawed. Baffled at the idea that its 'new/done something different/its own thing/etc' as the main narrative was a long rehash of bits of Empire with a bit of RoTJ thrown in. Slightly more varied than TFA is all I could say on that score. (I enjoyed both enough! This one, less so though.)

[Channel Zero]

Watching SyFy's horror series Channel Zero. I think I prefer this to American Horror Story by about a 1000X though the budget is probably smaller by that factor. By no means without flaws, the ideas and the sense of unreality throughout more than make up for the missteps in continuity and logic at times. Season 1, 'Candle Cove', felt like two good ideas for a season mixed poorly into one by the final 'reveal' but the journey was slow, scratchy and sinister. Stepping further away from the original idea of a kid's show that everyone of a certain age in a certain place remembers but never aired (other than on static that said kids watched whilst parents marvelled at their imagination) was a mistake in my book.

Season 2, 'No End House', is so far (50% of way in) more akin to American Horror Story in its conceit of a mysterious 'haunted house' that leads through the Scary Door, but it's an interesting idea and again delivering a decently spooky sense of struggling through a broken reality.

Hadn't really heard much about the series so figure it hasn't done well, but I'd recommend it. Like I say, beats the #1 'Horror show' in my books.

Glad I wasn't the only one - kept thinking "Well, Stammet's prime is playing a very long and strange game here."

[spoiler]My personal theory on all this is Lorca swapped places with his 'prime' version, the guy with the Starfleet career that he could step into and start to exploit. Otherwise he was proper busy! Even managing to get a backstory with the Admiral.[/spoiler]

I don't mind it either. But let's not pretend the bad things are ever focused on. As you can see here, even mentioning them will lead to the spontaneous appearance of a straw man, who claims that a less racist or murderous man would never have been capable of winning the war.

The obsession with The Great Men of History is fueled by the myopic, rose-tinted way they are portrayed.

Also, what the fuck in places like Richmond Park? Just get out of the fucking way, rather than offering hubris and letting another bloody Tory in.

I agree wholeheartedly with this. But the parties act like your vote counts individually, rather than in a first past the post system. Strategic voting undermines the democratic ideal they espouse but anything other than strategic voting is a waste of the absolutely miniscule amount of power anyone has.

Tim Farron demonstrated the self-same hubris in the by-election by taking the opportunity to piss all over Labour. He spent longer talking about Corbyn and Labour being 'irrelevant' than he did about taking Richmond Park from Zac Goldsmith and the Conservatives' attempt at a puppet-independency.

For all the stick they get for idealism, the Greens are the only ones I see who talk about the electoral system in the context of how it actually bloody well works.

[Who said it!? Hitler or Churchill????]

Who said it!? Hitler or Churchill????

"They needed to recognise the superiority of race."

I propose that 100,000 degenerate _____ should be forcibly sterilized and others put in labour camps to halt the decline of the _____ race.

The unnatural and increasingly rapid growth of the feeble-minded and insane classes, coupled as it is with steady restriction among all the thrifty, energetic and superior stocks constitutes a national and race danger which is impossible to exaggerate. I feel that the source from which the stream of madness is fed should be cut off and sealed before another year has passed

I am strongly in favour of using poisoned gas against uncivilised tribes.

Take a guess! If needed you can check out those 'self-published books' and 'documentaries'!

Feel like I'm in the wrong thread here but it's a fair discussion of the complete white-washing of Winston Churchill. Let's see the story of the plucky pashtun resistance fighter against the brutal collective punishment of a foreign force, eh?

[1922]

1922 on Netflix. One of the best Stephen King adaptations and in and of itself, a creepy, low-key horror that delivers unease throughout. Tom Jane smashes it as the main character and there's excellent camera and sound in a fashion that ratchets up the horror as the spiral continues.

[2012]

Saw the first four minutes of this at the weekend before it was declared "too stupid" and we watched 2012 instead...
[/quote

Oh it is so, so stupid. But I would say maybe 5% smarter than 2012.

Lorca is my favourite character because he's a tool. Nice to see a tool on Star Trek that isn't just a fusspot or Neelix.

[spoiler]Looks like many of the bets about Lt Tyler were correct, eh? Lot of character arc already for a fake person. Gutted about the Doc, bit dubious about in regards to the 'Bury Your Gays' trope  The other half was doomed from the second he injected himself with spacemagic of course, but I feel that's a bit different. Maybe just because this was my favourite couple in SF for a long while and one of the things that made the relatively dark world of Discovery still part of the Utopian tradition of Star Trek.[/spoiler]

This Mirror World is Totally Fun. Captain Killy? Doesn't need a goatee