Messages

The no meat and no dairy thing is really a piece of cake*.

Well, if you are doing it for ethical reasons... I can see it would be harder to take if environmental was your main reason for giving it up.

At the moment, I reckon being holier than thou gives me a free pass on some of the others. But obviously, that will only be the case for so long.

* except there are some pieces of cake you don't eat.

Reading back on the prog review threads of all those years ago,  a few people call out accusations of casual racism in Stix Fix and some let it slide with "Get a sense of humour you nanny-state, pc-gone-mad, do-gooders!"

I picked up SPACE1999 season 1 on blu-ray a couple of years back and really enjoyed it. Some cracking episodes, some very dark with an amazing roster of British thesis guest starring. None of the science makes much sense but who cares. Still too feart to look out Season 2 though.

[WARGROOVE]

WARGROOVE on Switch. Just started it but it looks like it will scratch my Advance Wars itch.

Also Prof. Layton and Spectre's Call on my DSLite. Utterly charming and gentle puzzle solving in a slowly unravellj g mystery. The very opposite of twitch gaming and none the worse for it.

It exists for me.

But which is which?

Might get me a couple of those mugs.

Nonsense, it's clearly a pen-name for Alec Worley.

Kenneth Neimand?

artis worling

What a fabulous, Potteresque character name. I'm nicking that.

Every couple of years they try to give us a new leading man... Sam Worthington, Taylor Kitsch... but Jai Courtney is real barrell scraping.

I always liked the acronym SCROTUS for Trump.

So Called Ruler Of The United States.

Persevere with Cloud Atlas - I really liked it.

It isn't really convoluted. If you haven't already clicked already, the tales are nested. e.g. The South Sea voyage is
a book being read in the tale of the musicians/gay lovers which is the letters being read in 70s San Francisco by Halle Berry which is a pulp novel being published by... etc.

They behaviours in one tale often relfect into the other tales - Tom Hanks has the most obvious (and lovely) character journey

Necroquoting myself... this was the other movie I watched while Mrs. Tips was away. Still great stuff with a simple and beautiful philosophy at the heart.

It sounds more like consistency than being unpredictable.

If they say yes to one fan produced strip like this then they'd start getting accused of not treating other fan submissions fairly.

I'm already annoyed that my Fifty Shades Of Psi: Anderson fan fiction hasn't illicited a reply.

He calls himself Tharg but he doesn't recognise deep fried comic erotica; even when I sent him the pre-viz selfies I took to pitch it to him.

[State of the Union]

State of the Union
Late to the party here but just caught up with this short form "comedy" from Nick Hornby* and Stephen Frears on iplayer. It's in ten ten minute episodes so eminently bingeable in a couple of sittings.

I know there are some Rosamund Pike fans on the board so you'll be glad to know that it's basically 100 minutes of her in conversation with the lazily charming and charismatic Chris O'Dowd.

Each episode is them waiting to attend marriage guidance and seemingly making more progress in the pub than in the sessions. 

The conversation veers off on many odd tangents on the way to discussing the place of love in a relationshop and what may or may not derail it.

The casting is [spoiler]a bit of a giveaway as to the outcome; of course you are rooting for the pair to reconcile. Look at them! Charming, attractive people with forgivable flaws. (Though one act of forgiveness, or rather forgetting, takes a bit of a leap.[/spoiler]

I put comedy in quotes above because this isn't just a gag fest - it does ask some questions and also has both of the leads - and it's a testament to the performances that by the end, they are drawing many more laughs out of the terrible situation.

* I appreciate he is a trigger warning for lots of you.

"Still better than it has any right to be"

I see this term an awful lot these days. It seems like a very back-handed compliment.

I didn't mean it as such. Perhaps "better than the film I expected it to be" is what I should have said.

It was a film for me that a) came out of nowhere as I had missed any marketing hype b) when I did see a trailer it didn't look anything like classic Kong story I was familiar with c) had scope to be Transformers all flash effects and no substance

It certainly tops all of those. But there is always a bit of surprise when a monster movie has a theme over and above wondering for what the monster is a metaphor.

[KONG: SKULL ISLAND]

Mrs Tips was out on a hen so me and Student Tips snuck in KONG: SKULL ISLAND.

Still better than it has any right to be and the monster action is short but very sweet. Two hours flies by.


I think the fact it isn't a Kong/Ann Darrow "beauty and the beast" means they have to find a new theme. And what do warriors do when war hasn't worked out for them and is ending fits the bill nicely. I still wish Toby Kebble mad it to the end intact though. I was really rooting for him.