Messages

31

Prog / Re: Prog 2131 - The Ape of Good Hope

« on: 19 May, 2019, 03:38:48 pm »

I'd like to see Henry Flint get a signature strip that's all his own. It's been a long time since Shakara.

Although anything that takes him away from doing as much JD as possible is a toughie as he's stamped his boots all over that.

32

Film & TV / Re: Game of Thrones: the last series [SPOILERS]

« on: 16 May, 2019, 11:08:05 pm »

I read that 18.4 million watched the last episode through official platforms.

That would probably only account for the US audience. GoT is available in 170 countries.

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Film & TV / Re: Game of Thrones: the last series [SPOILERS]

« on: 14 May, 2019, 09:14:13 pm »

I enjoyed the episode immensely and the cinders of Randyll and Dickon Tarly say 'told ya so'.

34

Books & Comics / Re: The Al Ewing USA loan thread

« on: 13 May, 2019, 12:09:48 am »

Jock and Al need to team-up so Marvel can have Jock Ewing emblazoned on their covers.

35

Film & TV / Re: Game of Thrones: the last series [SPOILERS]

« on: 09 May, 2019, 05:29:02 pm »

It was entirely *in* character for Season 1 or 2 drunk Tyrion, and emphasising those elements reinforces the divisions that are happening amongst the good guys, especially wrt Varis, who would have had no love for the old Tyrion. He's still the imp, and he's regressing into the alcoholic he was before leaving King's Landing.

There's a ton of stuff to dislike about the most recent episode, but I can't get behind this criticism.

And that division is something which the Varis and Tyrion scene achieves very well, without drunken Tyrion from season 1 or 2.

The Tyrion line to Brienne was written purely as motivation to move Brienne and Jamie to a situation where they could consummate an aspect of their relationship that never seemed to exist in the first place. That was cheap, and in the broader context did none of the characters any favours.

36

Film & TV / Re: Game of Thrones: the last series [SPOILERS]

« on: 09 May, 2019, 02:25:12 am »

The one thing that really didn't work for me was Jaime deciding to go back to Cersei, but on reflection there's ambiguity as to whether it's actually to support or kill her - he could be implying all the bad shit he's done was for or because of his relationship with her. He doesn't explicitly say which it is and there'd be a certain symmetry in him being King Slayer and a Queen Slayer.

With added ambiguity, the decision by Jamie to go back to Cersei was still on-point and in accordance with the growth of his character – as a knight he'd kept his word to defend the North and when the job was done he went back to Kings Landing.

I think it's more what they did to Brienne and Tyrion to get him there – which wasn't needed since seeing Bran again was the captsone on his realising the consequences of his actions and the need to atone (and possibly kill Cersei).

What was always more of a platonic relationship of mutual admiration – I'm glad someone like you exists in this world – that culminated in Jamie knighting Brienne, was suddenly turned into a bizarre episode provoked by an out-of-character line from Tyrion that results in both Jamie and Brienne responding with I'll show you virgin! – as if they ever need to prove anything of the sort to Tyrion or themselves.

I like friendly, drunken banter between characters, but that is just odd. Even a drunken shag with Tormund while Jamie slips off at dawn would've played better.

37

Film & TV / Re: Game of Thrones: the last series [SPOILERS]

« on: 02 May, 2019, 01:50:34 pm »

Considering there had been fewer complaints with seeing things at night in previous episodes in the show's dark ligthing scheme, the decision to emulate the naturalness of the Barry Lyndon aesthetic and mimic the effect of shooting only with available light in a pitch black battle full of smoke and snow means it was going to be hard to see even without the degradation of streaming compression. Going underlit was a design choice. They didn't want us to see everything.

“The showrunners decided that this had to be a dark episode,” says Wagner. “We’d seen so many battle scenes over the years – to make it truly impactful and to care for the characters, you have to find a unique way of portraying the story.”

Wagner says that the majority of the darkness in the episode is thanks to the night-time shoot, with the rest of the atmosphere produced on-set through lighting choices. “Another look would have been wrong,” he says. “Everything we wanted people to see is there.”

https://www.wired.co.uk/article/game-of-thrones-too-dark-to-see

4k HDR would improve it.

38

Film & TV / Re: Game of Thrones: the last series [SPOILERS]

« on: 01 May, 2019, 01:23:20 am »

the details will be made clear by the end of the (book) series.

Looks like we'll never know.

39

Film & TV / Re: Game of Thrones: the last series [SPOILERS]

« on: 01 May, 2019, 01:01:59 am »

Is Winter still coming?  I thought it was supposed to be tied up with the Night King and/or the wall (admittedly the wall is mostly still in place, but at least some of it is now gone).

The climate is unpredictable in Westeros: Summer lasted 9 years and the next Winter could last just as long. It's never really declared that the Night King is the cause of the Winter, only that he uses it.

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Film & TV / Re: Game of Thrones: the last series [SPOILERS]

« on: 01 May, 2019, 12:49:54 am »

He was never a crow. He was created before the Night's Watch was IIRC.

You're right I'm thinking of the Night's King.

41

Film & TV / Re: Game of Thrones: the last series

« on: 30 April, 2019, 11:50:37 pm »

My reading of 'Game of Thrones' has always been in the description- a frivolous game played by narcissistic mortals, but ultimately irrelevant to the millennia old threat beyond the wall, now making it's play (backed up by the onset of a severe ice-age).
That has been the underlying narrative, as the viewer was made aware in the first few minutes of the first scene almost 10 years ago.

That threat was summarily negated in this episode, over the course of mere hours, with relatively little cost to mankind (or the main cast) and with a completely unsatisfying one-punch kill.

Whats next for A Song of Curry and Rice?
Our heroes take on Cersei and Pop-Up Pirate (who joined the cast 20 minutes ago) then have a final kerfuffle among themselves over who gets to sit on the melted swords?
Underwhelming.

I think the bigger point of that futility still stands and has not been negated – Winter is still coming. The only thing that's gone is the self-appointed embodiment of it – who used to be a Crow and declared himself King. As another narcissitic long-time player he's been wiped off the board, but no matter what, Winter cannot be beaten and it's still coming to King's Landing. I'm still not sure that Night King story is fully over but there's the possibility that no-one gets out alive, and even if they do, there won't be much to rule over when it's finished.

42

Film & TV / Re: Avengers: Endgame Spoiler Thread

« on: 30 April, 2019, 11:03:40 pm »

As a "film" in and of itself, not so good.
Quite messy in parts and extremely continuity heavy. The less you know about all of the other films, the less you will get out of it.

Hasn't this been the case for almost every Marvel movie since Civil War? I honestly can't really judge them as individual films any more - they are all essentially episodes in an ongoing TV show, and they generally all share the same strengths and weaknesses every time out, to the point where it's hardly worth mentioning any more.

Much more than any of the other films –even Infinity War– the Universe part of MCU is the raison d'etre of Avengers: Endgame (The clue's in the title).

I think most people who are seeing it early are at least familiar with that aspect of the franchise.

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Film & TV / Re: Avengers: Endgame Spoiler Thread

« on: 30 April, 2019, 10:54:37 pm »

I believe Steve did go back to Peggy in the core timeline, hence his presence on the bench, but like I was saying upthread, maybe 15 years on from the crash of the Valkyrie. And yep, Bolt is right, that places 4 Steves in 2012.

Steve(s)'s paradoxical time-schmozzling looks like a set-up (or fudge).

In the end, Steve Rogers goes on a solo trip to restore the Infinity Stones from the other time dimensions to the moment they were taken, thereby bringing them back into alignment with the main timeline.

He also takes Thor’s Mjölnir hammer, though not necessarily as his own weapon. That has to be taken back to The Dark World era to set the timelines straight, too.

But then …he doesn’t come back. At least, not as we know him. He finds Peggy Carter and stays with her.

So, has Cap been living in the past this whole time — or did he go and live in another dimension?

The directors say it’s the latter.

“If Cap were to go back into the past and live there, he would create a branched reality,” Joe explained. “The question then becomes, how is he back in this reality to give the shield away?”

The brothers smile.

“Interesting question, right?” Joe said. “Maybe there’s a story there. There’s a lot of layers built into this movie and we spent three years thinking through it, so it’s fun to talk about it and hopefully fill in holes for people so they understand what we’re thinking.”

There are other questions in this sequence that set up this future story…

https://ew.com/movies/2019/04/30/avengers-endgame-russo-brothers-captain-america/

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Film & TV / Re: Game of Thrones: the last series

« on: 30 April, 2019, 12:15:49 am »

Game of Thrones has done better night battles –The Watchers on the Wall– and it was always going to be a challenge shooting/rendering scene after scene of fighting dark, leathery hordes of the undead in pitch blackness, but I suppose the wintry chaos played its part in the brutally unsentimental, silent deaths. I'd liked to have seen the battle graduate to the dawn and seen a bit more as the repetition of dark hacking and slashing shots from Brienne et al. make The Long Night feel a bit of a stretch at 80 minutes – but then again this is still TV and budgets only go so far. A great ending for Arya, though, despite the deadites going down like the Trade Federation's droid army.

The Night King served his purporse in depleting the armies of the North before the end of the story, aka Cersei's plan, and unless there's some other twist involved, taking down the Night king was a good choice and now means it's not quite the same anti-climax – acting purely as an elemental threat with little dynamism he holds nowhere near the meaning of a face-off between the Targaryens and Cersei Lannister.

45

Film & TV / Re: Avengers: Endgame Spoiler Thread

« on: 29 April, 2019, 02:29:41 am »

I don't buy into the idea going around that because this is pre-snap Thanos he's diminished as a character. He still knows everything that happened with Stark and the lads through Nebula's memories and adult Thanos from just before this period is still Thanos – the Titan that sees every other race as beneath him and still believes we should all go halvsies. He's really worse since he aims to go back to year zero.