Messages

[spoiler]Oh, God. They did it again. That same sinking feeling in my stomach as when 'The Rains of Castamere' began to play back in S03E09. Cannot believe I fell for it again. Of course Oberyn won't lose, he's only just been introduced and is such a great character he's still got so much potential for future stories. I mean, who else is there to root for? To shake things up for the Lannisters and end their winning streak? This guy is no Ned or Robb Stark, he can play the game with style, and all I've heard about him from book readers is how much of a dangerous badass he is. Besides, this is how Martin is writing himself out of the corner that Tyrion's predicament presents, I know how storytelling works.

Oh.

What a gullible idiot I am.

In all seriousness, I found that last scene genuinely shocking and really quite upsetting. I've rewatched the 'I'll be your champion' scene between him and Tyrion over and over in the weeks since it aired, so moved I was by it - and now it's tarnished for me forever!

I'm becoming a bit concerned that it's all a bit too bleak, and that Arya's delirious gallows humour is the only sensible response at this point. A lot of people said the same thing after the Red Wedding, but in my mind Robb Stark was always on the chopping block as, unlike Oberyn, he was always too decent for this world, but this one really stung. The relentless pace of the show (where something horrific happens every 5 minutes) doesn't help - at least in the books it feels less grinding because grisly events are usually separated by several hundred pages, often presented as conflicting reports, or else told second or third hand rather than shoved right up yo' face. Perhaps that's why they're throwing us the bone of the burgeoning (show only?) romance between Grey Worm and Missandei? To give us a little sweetness to contrast with all the misery? Before they are both presumably slaughtered in the most gruesome fashion imaginable, of course. I know how storytelling works.[/spoiler]

A couple of points that I wanted some clarification on:

I'm still unsure how the [spoiler]trial was resolved - did the Mountain die too? And if it was a draw, what does that mean for Tyrion?[/spoiler]

That scene with the Boltons - was that[spoiler] Winterfell they were heading for?[/spoiler]

Unless I really misread the scene, Littlefinger totally [spoiler]banged Sansa, right?[/spoiler]

[£760]

Gave a meter reading to our electricity supplier when we left the UK, and they have sent us a final bill for over £760.

Apparently we've been paying estimated bills for the last two years, but still - f**king hell! 

And Carlos could be 'Beyond the call of duty' with DeMarco back when she was a Judge.

Nah, the Carlos story has to be 'The Girlfriend'.

IIRC Ephraim had never been mentioned before Origins.

The Cal Files is a weird one in light of Origins as it hinges on the 'revelation' that Dredd is not a clone but the result of an affair between the 'incorruptible' Fargo and a mystery woman. A rare example of Wagner tripping up on continuity.

Has anyone ever used The Wordery on amazon marketplace before? They are astoundingly cheap but seem to be rated quiet highly...

Yep, managed to snap up pretty all 5 of the 100 Bullets deluxe hardbacks between them and another seller called 'speedy hen' for a fraction of the rrp.

Service was excellent all round.

I know this is supposed to be a big next-gen deal, but it doesn't appeal to me at all. I've never once been playing GTA and thought "This would be more fun if I could hack into things".

I'm also not sure why every open world game has to be compared to GTA

To my mind Rockstar still do by far the best open-world style games, so it makes sense to use them as a benchmark.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZSkn3KYwmtc&feature=kp

Explains things! Suppose they never really thought they'd get another X movie then (after X-Men 3 itself).

As I understand it, X Men 3 was at the time one of the most expensive movies ever made - not only because of all the visual effects, but because of the cast's vastly inflated salaries. It's a huge ensemble with multiple academy award winners remember, many of whom were much bigger stars by film 3. As the original X Men was a relatively cheap film that wasn't expected to do particularly well, it's possible that the cast weren't tied to multi-film deals as is common practice now, giving them a lot more negotiating power.

Current thinking at the time was that a fourth X Men film would be prohibitively expensive to make, hence the cavalier attitude to killing characters off and the shift to making (cheaper) X Men Origin movies instead (the second of which was intended to be based on Magneto and which eventually became First Class).

Implausible and having no internal logic are two different things.

Agreed. Too many people think that just because a film has a goofy or implausible premise the rules of good storytelling and screenwriting no longer apply, or are entirely subservient to visual spectacle. It's entirely possible for a 'dumb' story to be be told intelligently and have great, memorable human characters.

The example I always use is Jurassic Park. Ostensibly it's a special-effects driven movie about dinosaurs running amok. In lesser hands it would be disposable schlock. What makes it enduring and classic is not special effects alone, it's great writing, art direction, inspired casting and intelligent performances; lovely little human moments to sell the spectacle. It says a lot that most people could instantly identify any of the human characters from JP just from their silhouette.

Saw it on Sunday. Overall I liked it quite a bit - one of the better superhero movies of recent years. I liked how despite (apparently) being one of the most expensive movies ever made and having a huge roster of characters, they managed to keep it quite contained and personal. The plot got a tad convoluted at points - which is unavoidable, really, but overall I was impressed how well it all hung together. The packed-out audience went nuts for Quicksilver - I expect to see him back in a much bigger role in the next film. Great use of powers in the film - especially when two or more mutants were using their powers in tandem - the Chinese teleporting girl did some great mind-bending stuff that was clearly inspired by the Portal games.

I thought the final scene in the [spoiler]Xavier school with all the surprise cameos was perfectly-judged and just lovely (I'd avoided all spoilers), and I took it to be an ending/farewell for the original X-cast, wiping the slate clean and allowing the younger cast (with Mystique as a goodie/ambiguous antihero) plus Wolverine) to branch out into all new adventures.[/spoiler]

One minor quibble is that I didn't really like the design of the future sentinels. I can see why they beefed them up, but 1970s sentinels were way, way cooler imo.

A couple of things I didn't quite get on first viewing:

[spoiler]The Vietnam scene seemed a bit random. Xavier and Magneto's students were drafted, and Mystique was liberating them, is that correct?

I also didn't quite catch Magneto's motivations going into the third act. He was helping the others to stop Mystique, but then decided to kill Mystique to make double sure - that much I understood. But I didn't quite see why he went off towards the end. To destroy the sentinels? But he couldn't tell that would backfire massively? It could be me being slow but I felt there was a scene or two missing here.

And back in the 'past' timeline - Wolverine is now not going to be experimented on and bonded with the metal skeleton?[/spoiler]

Oric! It was Oric!!! I didn't imagine it. *phew*.

You might be thinking of [spoiler]Cadet Paris[/spoiler], in 'The Forsaken'.

As both [spoiler]she[/spoiler] and Nimrod r[spoiler]epresent genetically altered experiments[/spoiler] rather than true clones, do they count?

Unless I dreamt it, Dredd visited the cloning facility during either Tour of Duty or Day of Chaos and a new Cadet was mentioned. I think it was Tour... Because Dredd was investigating Sinfield's clone. Can't remember the name but it was an anagram of something. Or am I really going mad??!?!

Already been at least two more confirmed iirc - Nimrod in Total War and, unless I'm going mad, another was named in Tour of Duty.

It seems to be getting surprisingly strong reviews across the board, though one review noted that Cruise is clearly far too old for the role of 'raw recruit'.

I read the book back when it was first optioned, and it was pretty entertaining, sort of like a prose version of a mecha anime. I liked how the unknowable enemy force was explained (IIRC it is revealed late on that [spoiler]they were a swarm of nano-organisms created by mankind to terraform planets that went awry and returned to Earth many years later in mutated form - can't remember how the time-loop aspect was explained though, something about tachyon particles and them phasing in and out of parallel dimensions or something[/spoiler]) but I expect they will have a different origin and explanation in the movie.

Pacific Rim was good fun but so, so stupid

Stylised, yes. Cheesy as hell, yes. A bit predictable, yes.

But I'd argue that Pacific Rim managed to tell a coherent story, keep a consistent tone throughout, keep track of all its characters and give each of them a proper arc and plenty to do without getting bogged down by any significant plotholes, taking itself too seriously, being offensively jingoistic, outstaying its welcome and/or just being an extended trailer for a sequel or franchise. And to my mind that makes it a much more intelligent film than pretty much any other blockbuster so far this decade.

Seems to me most people instinctively reacted against it and proclaimed it 'dumb' based purely on the (deliberately) goofy tone, because evidently they wanted their apocalyptic 'giant monsters vs giant robots' movie to be dark and serious.

Not one to condemn a film based on a title alone, but that is a bit naff, isn't it? A bit overthought, like something a committee would come up with.

I remember a while ago someone listed a few possible titles that Warner had apparently trademarked - they were all variations of something laughably overwrought and cheesy like 'Dark Knight of Justice'.

The one they chose is almost as bad.