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I found the first two to three episodes of season one a little hard to get a handle on, but it clicked as soon as I settled into the groove of the show and the character relationships.

As I say, it takes a little mental readjustment coming from Breaking Bad, which is so balls to the wall literally from the first episode, but BCS isn't going for that same tone. I think its a bit like Mad Men - some people will love the slow burn and interpersonal drama, others will say its 'boring' or that 'nothing happens'. The actual plot of Saul season 1, on the face of it, certainly sounds quite dull, but for me it's the characters and dialogue that make it. So many great little character quirks and callbacks, setups and pay-offs. Quality writing.

[Better Call Saul]

I miss breaking bad.   

Funnily enough, we caught an odd season 2 episode of Breaking Bad on TV while on holiday over Christmas (AMC were doing a marathon of every episode back to back), and subsequently rewatched the entire series from there over the next couple of weeks. We then immediately followed it up Better Call Saul - a show that we had given a try back when it first started, but didn't initially grab us in the same way. Needless to say, we're now halfway through season 2 and loving it.

It's certainly a different beast to Breaking Bad. It's nowhere near as propulsive and gripping, but has a charm and tone all of its own once you get into it - it's much more of a slower burn, I'm tempted to say more 'mature' in it's storytelling than BB. It's a beautifully crafted and filmed show, so assured and stylish, with a fantastic score, and Bob Odenkirk is just phenomenal in it - giving real dimension and nuance to what was previously a larger than life caricature. You root so hard for him to succeed, even though you know he's ultimately doomed to a desperate, squalid fate. The rest of the cast, both returning and brand new - are also uniformly amazing - I love them all. Chuck especially is such an interesting character who shares a fascinating dynamic with Jimmy. All the Mike stuff is also just superb, again imbuing an already likable character with real gravitas.

So for those of you who loved BB but have yet to dive in to BCS - or like me couldn't initially get into it - give it a shot - it really is something special, and actually gives me confidence that if Vince Gilligan wanted, he could build his own little Breaking Bad universe that could support multiple different shows, all with their own flavour and tone.

[The Iron Throne]

Though there's a few things I have my eye on - The Iron Throne (a Game of Thrones themed reskin of Cosmic Encounter), Hero Realms and Dead Last, I'm on a moratorium of buying any new games at the moment - I buy far more than I can actually play. I did pick up the cheaper, plastic version of Flick 'Em Up! just before Christmas - looks really fun, can't wait to play it.

One that I did get to play a bit over Christmas was A Game of Thrones: Hand of the King. It's a really light, casual card-collecting game where you move Varys around a grid of 36 character cards trying to collect family sets (Stark, Targaryen, Lannister, Tyrell etc), occasionally triggering special character cards (usually characters with no particular affiliation - The Hound, Jon Snow, Brienne etc) that grant the ability to 'kill' or steal certain characters to tip the balance of the game.

The theme works really well, though the game can easily be enjoyed by non-fans, and is based on the books rather than the TV show (so features many book-only characters and House Greyjoy are featured prominently). I love the presentation and bold, stylised character artwork (which is, again, based on the character descriptions from the books rather than their TV counterparts). Best of all, its cheap (think I paid about $10 for my copy) and the box the game comes in is tiny so its easily transportable.

Strong recommend.

[Imploding Kittens]

The thing that puts me off Exploding Kittens is the fact it's called exploding kittens, which suggests some sort of childish sense of humour which I don't find funny.
That's not to say childishness in general is bad.

I would also say that the humour element, unlike something like Cards Against Humanity, is entirely cosmetic and has zero effect on actual gameplay (which can be described as a tense blend of Uno and Russian Roulette). There are also both clean and NSFW variants.

Just had lunch with a friend who got Exploding Kittens and an expansion for christmas, so when they come around for drinks we'll have to have a go at it.

Expansion, you say?

Yep, it's called Imploding Kittens. It's just a few extra cards, some of which (like Reverse) seem to have been brought over from the (excellent) EK app, others are brand new - there's now 'Alter the Future' and 'Targeted Attack', as well as 'Feral Cat' which can act as any generic paired cat card.

I'm not really keen on the idea of the (optional) Imploding Kitten card, which iirc you're supposed to place face up in the deck? Haven't used it yet.

The creators are also currently at work on a follow up game called Bears Vs Babies.

[A Christmas Story]

To counter my negativity on the Rogue One thread, I'll talk about some movies I've seen and enjoyed recently:

A Christmas Story
I saw this in my local cinema just before Christmas as part of a triple bill. For those not familiar, it's a perennial Christmas classic in the US that has, for whatever reason, not translated to the UK in the same way that other Christmas movies have. It's easy to see why its so beloved; it's a warm, quirky 80s family movie that has a refreshingly odd sense of humour - it would feel pretty modern and timeless were it not for the unfortunate, out of place, slightly racist ending skit.

La La Land
Yeah, it's getting a load of inevitable backlash (de rigeur for any film getting any amount of awards buzz these days) but I went in pretty blind and thought it was delightful. Reminded me somewhat of The Artist - a film that was about, and mimicked the form of, an old Hollywood style of filmmaking and featured two dazzlingly charismatic leads. And as with The Artist, I doubt it'll stand the test of time, or even be widely remembered or revisited in years to come, but for a one-off cinematic experience (and I emphasise 'cinematic' - I imagine it would lose a lot of impact on the small screen) I thought it made for a perfect nights entertainment.

Boy
Thoroughly enjoyable debut feature from Taika Waititi. While its less accomplished than Wilderpeople and suffers slightly from the obviously non-professional cast, it's still funny, moving and heartfelt. Well worth seeking out.

...no-one waxed lyrical about sand, no cutesy CGI trolls did a musical number, nobody mentioned midichlorians and instead a lot of cool-looking stuff blew up....

No offence Tordels, but it's this sort of attitude (or at least the perception of it) that can tend to get peoples backs up a bit - ie, that we should all fawn over a movie, no matter how mediocre or messy in its execution, and that any criticism of it is dismissed as 'nitpicking', purely because it isn't as catastrophically awful as the prequels were....

It's also short-circuits my brain a bit when people can straight up admit that they don't like or understand/care about the lead character of a film, and do the required mental gymnastics to justify universally weak character writing like this:

I think TFA did a much better job creating lasting and fun characters, that wasn't R1's job... by and large these were just meat for the grinder, and their disparate motivations were subsumed into their experience of Jedha's destruction... Essentially none of them needed to endure or express much beyond their desperation and willingness to give everything to oppose the Death Star and what it represented.

...and still say with a straight face that it was still a good or even great film. And Saw and Cassian 'intiguing figures'? Really? What cut of the movie did you watch? 

I'm honestly a bit shocked at how much of an easy ride it's getting from you lot, when I firmly believe that, stripped of its familiar Star Wars trappings and associated nostalgia, and having to stand on its own merits as a generic sci fi/adventure film, its average at best.

The most alarming aspect for me is that this empty, shallow fan service seems to be what "fans" want from a Star Wars film.

Agree 100%. It's also weird how the one bit of the film that almost everyone is consistently praising is the weird tacked-on scene at the end that has almost nothing to do with the rest of the film.

So people actually liked the Vader scenes?

The groanworthy pun? The fact that he was desperately shoe-horned in, and served zero purpose in the story other than to upstage the bland actual villain of the movie? The way his hyperkinetic, over the top fight/massacre scene was jarringly in contrast to the lumbering space gangster figure we meet in the original movie?

Shoe-horned in?  I can't see how they could present the film without him - the film which follows directly afterwards starts in the middle of him chasing Princess Leia's corvette!

Only if you need the dots joined between this film and that in the most literal, on the nose way imaginable. Imo it is the (comically overly literal) ending of RotS all over again, except this time people are eating it up rather than ridiculing it.

Darth Vader has nothing to do with the events of this movie*, was reportedly not in John Knoll's original pitch for this movie, as evidenced in the original Star Wars doesn't give two shits about the Death Star and has very little to do with it specifically, and is only in this movie at all so Disney can get bums on seats and shift merch.

*Seriously. Try to describe his role and function in the plot of Rogue One and what would be lost, other than blatant fan service, if he wasn't in it.

hundred times better than the force awakens...

I feel completely the opposite way - in fact, Rogue One felt so utterly flat and characterless to me that it's made me appreciate TFA a little more in retrospect for at least managing to have somewhat likable, memorable characters.

[The Game of Things]

The thing that puts me off Exploding Kittens is the fact it's called exploding kittens, which suggests some sort of childish sense of humour which I don't find funny.
That's not to say childishness in general is bad.

I would say check out the Oatmeal website to see if you like his stuff (even if you're not immediately familiar, you'll no doubt recognise some of it as his stuff tends to be widely shared and/or ripped off). Each to their own, but I happen to think he's quite brilliant. Was a fan long before the game.

I would also say that the humour element, unlike something like Cards Against Humanity, is entirely cosmetic and has zero effect on actual gameplay (which can be described as a tense blend of Uno and Russian Roulette). There are also both clean and NSFW variants.


I had the misfortune to play a spectacularly terrible board/party game called 'The Game of Things' on a very disappointing 'games night' on NYE. Awful game, avoid at all costs.

[There's a reason every heist film has a careful, visual "going over the plan" sequence and it's all about setting up dramatic expectations. There has to be a plan in order for things to go wrong. It's freaking everything in these kinds of movies.]

This article really hit the nail on the head for me, and perfectly articulates a lot of my problems with the plotting, especially the ending, which felt totally dramatically hollow to me:

How do you make a man on a mission movie where the mission is never clear?

How do you turn an obvious heist into something so unplanned and off-the-cuff (as in everyone's just going to wing it) to the point where you neuter your finale?... You absolutely need to create previously established objectives, so you can maximize the dramatic tension of the moment when that moment arrives. To dramatically care, the audience must be able to anticipate one result or the other. If I don't know what should happen, I can't fear what might happen. And it results in a "heist" with all these randomly shouted-out objectives in the middle of an unwieldy, unfocused battle that just wants to echo the last act of Return of the Jedi.

Every action beat is desperate for clarity and works overtime to explain in the moment, but that's why it fails. Like, there's no tension in them getting through the shield because there's established reason it should work. It's just dumb luck, like almost everything that follows. It feels like they're literally fucking their way up through this, stabbing for needles in haystacks and finding them. This is seriously unforgivable for this movie. Because a heist is constructed around quiet build-up and the careful set-up of critical moments. There's a reason every heist film has a careful, visual "going over the plan" sequence and it's all about setting up dramatic expectations. There has to be a plan in order for things to go wrong. It's freaking everything in these kinds of movies.

The thing is it's not going to be "bad," as there's enough cinematic competence to make it feel texturally interesting in some way, but in terms of drama and actually giving a fuck you have just taken everything away from your carefully set-up movie and turned it into limp, wheel-spinning... Instead of a nailbiter, we get noise.

How can I really care about a 'master switch' that was introduced just two seconds prior? It's like trying to learn chemistry on the fly as you take the test.

He also makes some great points about the Vader/corridor scene, which I felt was totally gratuitous in the moment.

What this article doesn't really hit on is another one of my beefs with the ending - the absurd number of times they repeat the plot beat of a character having to press a switch and/or open or close a door. Did anyone else think that got super repetitive and weird towards the end? There are so many apparently important switches and doors in play that at a certain point it all just starts to blur together and wash over you.

http://birthmoviesdeath.com/2016/12/21/rogue-one-film-crit-hulk-the-slippery-sloping-story-of-rogue-one

It would have worked so, so much better for me had it been a much simpler, smaller scale heist type movie with zero cameos, and Jyn would have been a much more interesting protagonist had she been, as early trailers seemed to indicate, a thief/criminal recruited into the alliance, and not directly personally connected to events and also sort of kind of a rebel soldier but not really?

It's got that Hobbit problem for me where they wrongheadedly try to top the scale of the original movie in the prequel. Why does EVERY SINGLE blockbuster now have to end with 30 numbing minutes of explosions? After a while its all just noise to me.

So people actually liked the Vader scenes?

The groanworthy pun? The fact that he was desperately shoe-horned in, and served zero purpose in the story other than to upstage the bland actual villain of the movie? The way his hyperkinetic, over the top fight/massacre scene was jarringly in contrast to the lumbering space gangster figure we meet in the original movie?

To me they were pure fanwankery, and reminded me of the worst of George Lucas' 'throwing the fanboys a bone' appeasements from Revenge of the Sith.

I wouldn't agree with that at all, and I'd say that the only Star Wars film that feels like a blatant retread is TFA, and now the ending of R1. Both TFA and R1 have a very similar formula of what I described - good guys go somewhere to get a maguffin, the Empire show up, there's a fight, good guys escape, and on and on. Yes, this does happen somewhat in the OT, but it isn't ALL that happens, and it doesn't feel anywhere near as repetitive.

I thought it was passable, wouldn't watch it again.

There's some nice stuff in there - mainly technical, and they at least made a solid stab at a poignant and affecting tale, and at times it ALMOST works, but it all felt a bit flat and uninvolving for reasons i can't quite put my finger on.

I had long suspected that Felicity Jones had been miscast, and i kinda felt that ended up being the case - she looks totally out of her element in action scenes. The team never quite gelled for me, or interacted in a really satisfying or meaningful way - and i think you're in trouble when the only memorable and charismatic character in your movie is a robot.....

The score was pretty forgettable and the plot seemed quite repetitive 'characters converge at same location for big set piece, rinse and repeat', and the finale felt outright videogamey and over the top to the point of fatigue - i feel like i never need to see another stormtrooper being gunned down or x wing blowing up for as long as i live.. As with TFA, i felt like nothing i was seeing on screen was anything i hadnt seen before - specifically its a retread of climax of RotJ but with palm trees.. I also felt that the first act had some very clunky writing quirks, and I still feel very unclear regarding Jyn's backstory and her exact relationship to the rebel alliance. It doesn't really add up and felt like an obvious rewrite, especially as it seemingly contradicts what we learn in the trailer. And if the Empire had her in captivity, wouldn't they know her identity?

As others have already noted, certain creative decisions made are baffling, and damn near ruinous (and will date the movie horribly). I may be crazy, but were some of the in-cockpit shots actually recycled footage from the OT? And yep, cheap fan service and distracting cameos in full effect, was really hoping they'd give that stuff a rest this time. Once again, it all conspired to make the universe feel very small and crowded. Final few scenes were goofy and redundant - strongly brought the closing scenes of Sith to mind.

Overall, feels like a 'fans only' type deal. My girlfriend - who had a great time with TFA - was bored out of her mind, and another (non-geek) friend fell asleep.

Going to see it tonight. Have heard very mixed things...

My own theory on the (by all accounts very extensive) reshoots is that Rogue One was pitched as a gritty, downbeat war movie, and then Disney decided late in the day that they wanted a more upbeat, crowd-pleasing sort of film.

Maybe.

I interpret it more that the film turned out duller and less satisfying than they all would've preferred rather than playing as the next gangbusters adventure that's costing them hundreds of millions. 'Gritty' and 'downbeat' alone are quite limiting constraints on a 'Star Wars' film; which is something I've always felt was an error at conception - the Black Hawk Down/The Hurt Locker version of Star Wars that it was sold as sounded like it came from Warner's DCEU manual.

They hired Edwards to bring a certain modern style to the direction and while it looks moodily epic this approach alone may have meant it ended up a bit Godzilla in the story/character dept. so the script needed more heart. However, seeing Edwards doesn't look miserable in interviews, I'm inclined to think it's probably a better film than it originally was.

Personally I wouldn't have wanted something that was too grim.

Fair points. My only concern with that is looking at the Marvel films, which seem to have settled into something of a rut post-Avengers, where they all have the exact same, safe, heavily comedic tone, even ones that seem to have originally been conceived as a lot darker (Thor: The Dark World, Iron Man 3). While it's certainly working for them, it does start to get a bit predictable/generic after a while.

The Force Awakens, while an entertaining film, danced right on the line of being a bit too broad with its humour for me, and went over it a few times.

I have relatively low expectations for R1, so hopefully I'll be pleasantly surprised.