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As long as they don't follow the book slavishly and have...

Haha, yeah, always hated that cop out ending!

After a shaky start, I feel like the series is starting to find its feet - episode 4 was a big improvement.

Lin Manuel Miranda's Lee Scoresby gets an enthusiastic thumbs up from me, he injects a lot of charm and levity into a series that has (imo) been quite dull and really lacking in sparkle on the character front up to this point, and he even manages to coax a sense of fun and mischief out of Lyra. Iorek is brilliantly realised - love that he has a Scandi accent.

The little tidbits I've heard about the show - something about a [spoiler]superhero reality TV show[/spoiler] and a [spoiler]Dr Manhattan dildo[/spoiler] - sound, on the face of it, really crass and stupid and would ordinarily put me off watching the show completely. But on the strength of the reception it's getting here and elsewhere I'll have to give it watch.

I don't want Brexit, but accept it's the will of the people. So it should happen.

If the referendum had had a clear majority result I'd agree with you. But with the result being so down to the wire and the issue being so big and all-consuming, and infinitely more complicated than anyone realised at the time (100% myself included) I'm not convinced, especially as it seem the Tories will only be happy with a very hard Brexit that only extremists want.

The Lib Dem idea of simply overruling and scrapping Brexit altogether seems dangerous, so for me (trying to be as objective as possible) the only sensible, grown up way forward is what is being proposed by Labour - so-called No Deal Brexit off the table (because that is absolutely NOT what was being proposed by even the most hardline of Leave campaigners prior to the ref, despite what they try to spin now), and then a prospective deal for a soft Brexit is negotiated, which will be then put to the public, with the Labour leadership not campaigning for either result.

Vote labour, to have a referendum? But Corbyn will sell Scotland up the referndum river to get SNP backing.

Maybe so, but wouldn't the prospect of another EU ref and a soft Brexit at worst take a lot of the wind out of the sails of the drive for a second indy ref?

[How Did This Get Played? Episode 23 - Custer's Revenge]

How Did This Get Played? Episode 23 - Custer's Revenge

In which a (usually) lightly comedic videogame podcast, this episode discussing the horribly offensive Atari 2600 game Custer's Revenge, gets completely (and rightfully) derailed when the guest, comedy writer Joey Clift, confronts the hosts regarding the entire premise of the episode, and then from there expands into a far more interesting, illuminating - and occasionally uncomfortable - discussion about representation and tokenisation.

https://www.earwolf.com/episode/custers-revenge-w-joey-clift/

Can someone please tell me if Corbyn is an anti-semite or not?

I usually listen to the Today programme on my way to work. It's probably my main (or at least most regular) source of news. This story comes up time and again - they're always interviewing so called experts and discussing it. Over the course of how ever many months I'm yet to hear any specific examples of anti-semitic behaviour from Corbyn.
I could google it but the question is - should I really have to? If they're going to trot out this accusation time and again they could at least be specific about what the accusation actually is.

It's really all they've got to attack him with, isn't it? It's honestly quite pathetic.

Until someone can point me to evidence of an actual track record of Corbyn publicly or privately saying or writing overtly antisemitic things (say, something along the lines of Boris Johnson's openly homophobic, racist and Islamophobic slurs) - I'm just not buying it, sorry.

The story behind Blue Ruin is really sweet too. Apparently the director and lead actor grew up together making films, and following a string of failures Blue Ruin was their one last roll of the dice to make careers in filmmaking, and it paid off. I actively disliked Hold the Dark, but Green Room was similarly terrific.

[Election]

Election.

This film is so widely praised, and has such cult classic status, but I've seen it twice now and while I appreciate elements of it, I do struggle to see what all the fuss is about. Every character in it is either a sociopath, a creep or an idiot. It's occasionally amusing, but not really funny enough to be an out and out comedy, and it's just so cynical and mean-spirited a film that it's hard to see what its trying to say, or what the point is, beyond edge-lordy nihilism?

Blue Ruin.

Finally got around to this, and it's just as great as I hoped it would be - a really lean and atmospheric thriller, with a neat twist I haven't seen in a movie before, in that the guy on the rampage of revenge is pretty useless and inept, but this isn't played for laughs, it actually ratchets up the tension a lot. Great performances by the lead actor and also Buzz from Home Alone, who I've seen in a few things lately.

People calling him 'Mando' is one of my least favourite things about the series so far. Just sounds quite cheesy to my ears.

I know dialogue has never been any iteration of Star Wars' strong suit, but something about the dialogue in this particular series seems a bit wonky, it's probably the weakest aspect of the whole production so far. In fact, it strikes me that they could have basically done this entire series with no dialogue at all, and it would still be perfectly possible to follow the story just fine through music and visuals alone. How bold would that have been?

[The Simpsons]

Been watching a little show called The Simpsons via Disney+.

While having every classic episode at my fingertips is amazing, I was planning on watching a bit beyond my usual cut-off of season 10 and giving the more modern episodes a chance - perhaps modern era Simpsons is due a reappraisal? But no, the drop in quality once you get into season 11 is just as jarring as I remember it being at the time. Sample season 11 joke:

The Simpsons are in Holllywood. Someone says "Look, it's Ellen Degeneres and Anne Heche!"

Ellen Degeneres and Anne Heche, holding hands on a swingset: "We're lesbians!"

That's it. That's the 'joke'.

It's toe-curlingly bad, it's just like they stopped even trying. Every episode feels more like a very rough first draft (more often like a loose idea for an episode) rather than a finished script. And it apparently got even worse after this?

[Inception]

Inception. How can a film so chock-full of good actors, nice effects and cool ideas be such a boring old load of arse?

I adore Inception. Fantastic film with action and a heart.

Love Inception.

One of my favourite soundtracks from Hans Zimmer, and a great story that is brilliantly shot and performed. Just bubbles below The Prestige as my favourite Nolan movie.

Yeah was actually having a Nolan chat with a friend yesterday where we were doing some personal rankings of his films and while we both had different ideas about where everything else in his filmography sat we both put The Prestige and Inception at 1 and 2 and agreed there's not much between them for it. Both masterpieces in my mind, and so absorbing to be hugely rewatchable.

I like Nolan's films, but something about the way they are edited breaks my brain. They often feel like feature length trailers, if that makes any sense? Like, you quite often never get any kind of sense of how much time is passing.

I'd say Dunkirk and Memento are the exception because of how they are structured.

I feel it's grossly under-rated

Underrated? Didn't it make like a billion dollars?

I think I know what he means though. It might have been commercially massive but it's one of those films I skipped and had pretty much written off as some dumb family blockbuster fodder that me and my friends wouldn't be into, and then once I watched it and recommended it to friends they were pretty skeptical and then came back saying they'd really enjoyed it too. So possibly not underrated by people who have watched it but underrated/written-off by a lot of people who haven't I guess.

I had a similar experience with the Paddingtons actually, I don't think anyone who has seen those hasn't enthused about them but you can get some incredulous looks sometimes when you tell people they're great.

I kind of see what you're saying - I guess its just hard to think of a film that got very strong reviews and made a ton of money as underrated.

I'm generally a little wary of kids action/adventure films that get good reviews, because they're a genre - much like studio comedies and especially romantic comedies - where the bar is so low that anything that isn't completely crap tends to get a little overpraised.

The Paddington films are genuinely underrated here in the US - neither film did much business - they dumped the second one in cinemas in January, the cinema equivalent of a graveyard slot - and almost no one I talk to has heard of them, which is such a shame.

Targeted ads are weird - for instance Youtube seems to think I am a US military veteran for some reason.

Yeah, Sam Elliott really was perfect casting for Mr Scoresby...

Yep this will certainly be a hard me to overcome. One of the few things I liked about the movie. The movie casting might also explain my issues with Ruth Wilson as Mrs C

I'd have to rewatch it to be certain (and granted the TV show doesn't have the budget to stretch to A-listers like Nicole Kidman), but based on what I've seen of the TV show so far I much prefer the movie versions of the characters on the whole. Except Ian McKellen as the bear. That was a bit weird. I wasn't bowled over by the actress who played Lyra in the movie but at least she had a little of book Lyra's feistyness compared to the rather glum TV show Lyra.

Looking forward to seeing LMM as Scoresby - big Hamilton fan so willing to give him the benefit of the doubt.

Wow - I've heard a lot of good stuff, I will have to get around to checking it out at some point.