Pseudonymous Bear

On one level 'Predator: Badlands' is really straight forward on another it makes some really complicated choices which is in keeping with the franchise's roots.

Full ★★★★ #Review on #Letterboxd: https://boxd.it/dls3q1
#Movies #Action #ScienceFiction

'Sisu: Road to Revenge' is a real step down from the first one.

Full ★★ #Review on #Letterboxd: https://boxd.it/dkoo4j
#Movies #Action

Have you seen the photo of Mamdani host Mahmoud Khalil at Gracie Mansion?

It looks like it was painted by a Dutch master.

I dream of a society where I would be guillotined as a conservative.

-- Pierre-Joseph Proudhon (Allegedly)
#Anarchism #Quote

My problem with James Talarico (in Texas) is that his names keeps reminding me of Tommy Tallarico who is not an association you'd want to make.

#OOF

'For a Few Dollars More' is the worst of the 'Dollars Trilogy'... which still might make it a top ten western. Full ★★½ #Review on #Letterboxd: https://boxd.it/diM8Kj #Movies #Western

I have massive nostalgia for like three scenes in 'Hudson Hawk'.

Full ★★ #Review on #Letterboxd: https://boxd.it/dibnmd
#Movies #Comedy #Adventure

I struggle to say anything other "it's good" about 'A Fistful of Dollars'. Full ★★★ #Review on #Letterboxd: https://boxd.it/dibhi5 #Movies #Western

Clips from this one podcast keeps getting recommended to me captioned things like “[Actor] reveals truth about…” and then the clip proper is just the host interrupting and changing subject for five minutes straight.

'Invitation to a Murder' is a TV movie in all but name. Full ★ #Review on #Letterboxd: https://boxd.it/dgkzVf #Movies #Mystery

Back on Monday I thought “wouldn’t it be funny if Trump’s stupid little war scuppered the Paramount/WB merger” but I didn’t post anything then because I didn’t have any details. I knew that the Ellisons had been depending upon Middle Eastern money for like a third of the bid but I couldn’t remember if it was from a country currently being bombed, so if there was a risk of that money being pulled. I know the Ellisons were leveraging Oracle stock to raise the rest of the cash but I don’t know how healthy that stock is, so whether or not those loans can survive the war shock. Yesterday a number of Gulf countries publicly threatened to pull their money out of the US which caused a lot of people to have same thought I had only they actually looked up the details I didn’t, details that lead to a lot of giggling.

'Anatomy of a Murder' is one of those movies that was shocking at the time in a way that it just isn't now. Thankfully it is still a solid drama.

Full ★★★½ #Review on #Letterboxd: https://boxd.it/dffftB
#Movies #Drama

There is so much good about 'Blue Moon' but I can't see myself wanting to spending 90 minutes with Larry Hart ever again.

Full ★★★ #Review on #Letterboxd: https://boxd.it/dd1htx
#Movies #Drama

So Jasmine Crockett (allegedly) had a reporter removed from an event, said she hadn’t and that the reporter had previously been sued for defamation (which would have made it okay?). Only the reporter has never been sued and had recorded audio of being thrown out. Not that that has so far effected Crockett’s response to questions.

'Miss Fisher and the Crypt of Tears' tries to give the series the big screen treatment while looking and feeling like a below average episode (that couldn't even bring back most of the cast). Full ★★ #Review on #Letterboxd: https://boxd.it/dbYZtB #Movies #Mystery

One thing that tends to get ignored in discussions of the Warner Brothers bidding war is that Paramount is trying buy more than Netflix. The WB board had previously announced plans to break the company up into two groups (whose proper names I don’t remember); Group A is movies and streaming, Group B is just the cable division (they had already sold off the bulk of the broadcast division). Netflix is just trying to buy Group A while Paramount want the whole kit and caboodle (A and B) which is why the WB board has turned them down. They feel that Paramount is undervaluing the cable division, that the difference in bids is less than what CNN is worth. What confuses me is why isn’t Paramount just bidding on the cable division? The part Netflix doesn’t want?

'Batman: Mystery of the Batwoman' has to be considered a lesser addition to the 'Batman: The Animated Series' franchise since it didn't rewrite the comic version of the character.

Full ★★ #Review on #Letterboxd: https://boxd.it/dbYY7T
#Movies #Animation #Adventure

A lot of discussion of AI advocates assume an adversarial framing; people love AI because they hate something else, they hate paying workers and think AI will replace them, they envy artist and think AI will make them obsolete. I think there may be more parochial interests involved. What LLM are best at, maybe the only thing they’re good at is the type of make-work that fills the managerial class’ day; how much time does the average junior executive spend summarizing reports no one has time to read because they’re all too busy writing their own reports that no one will ever read? If you’re one of those executives who has worked and trained all your life to do a job that doesn’t need doing you likely convinced yourself that it was important and difficult, for your psychological well-being if nothing else. If AI can do your “important” and “difficult” job it can surely do all the “unimportant” jobs you never had time for, if not your life might have been a waste.

'The Batman vs. Dracula' replicates some of the biggest flaws of its parent series. Full ★★ #Review on #Letterboxd: https://boxd.it/d7QUs7 #Movies #Animation #Adventure

I'm a big fan of Sci-FI Westerns even if you have to squint to see it. Full ★★½ #Review on #Letterboxd: https://boxd.it/d3CneR #Movies #ScienceFiction #Western

'Batman and Harley Quinn' could have been good if there had just been somebody making cuts. Even (most) the bad bits could have worked if they just been trimmed a little. Full ★ #Review on #Letterboxd: https://boxd.it/cXbBI9 #Movies #Animation #Adventure

So Jasmine Crockett’s take on the Colbert/Talarico interview is that Colbert should have just complied?

To be fair, she doesn’t use those words and if you selectively quote the first half of her defense of the FCC (which is what a number of news outlets did) it would be possible to believe she was trying to attack CBS for complying in advance.

But the fact that the back half of statement is all about how all the trouble could have been avoided if she had just been given equal time instantly makes her seem like a self-centered toady. You know, in “free speech is all well and good until it inconveniences me” sort of way.

'Retro Puppetmaster' is from an era when Charles Band was making more from renting his studios out to others than any of his own pictures brought in meaning each day spent on this cost him twice over... He would have given them less time he could have. Full ½ #Review on #Letterboxd: https://boxd.it/cUBwcH #Movies #Horror

I finally saw someone else say the bloody obvious; there is a large anti-establishment/status quo block voters that has more or less swung the last three presidential elections. If the Democrats want to win and keep these voters, not just ride the anti-incumbent pendulum to a single term in the White House (the way Biden did), they need to nominate a candidate that represents real change (not Gavin Newsom).

And they got drowned out by comments saying that all Trump voters are sexists and racist… and Democrats need to cater to them by nominating a center-right white guy (Gavin Newsom).

Centrist Dems are allergic to learning.

#USpol

'Quest of the Delta Knights' is bad. Watch it with friends.

Full ½ #Review on #Letterboxd: https://boxd.it/cUBqWf
#Movies #Fantasy

How did I never make connection between cyanide (the poison) and cyan (the color) before now?

So botox reduces empathy.

Part of the empathetic process involves mirroring, replicating the observed expression (when you see a smile you smile back), you do this not for the benefit of the other person but rather it’s the only way your brain can understand, at a deep level, what a smile is.

This mirroring largely involves micro-expression, the small involuntary muscle movements that separate a true from a false smile, and what does botox target? The small involuntary muscles that control micro-expressions.

If you can’t mirror an expression you can’t understand it, if you can’t understand an expression you can’t understand the emotion behind it. Those emotions stop being real to you.

Several years ago a ‘Star Trek’ suit said something about how they were trying to satisfy both Old and New fans, and some series would lean more or the other; ‘Picard’ was aimed at a narrow wedge of established fans while ‘Prodigy’ was aimed at potential fans who weren’t even alive the last ‘Trek’ was on TV. Those were the only two series the suit mentioned but in theory you could place all modern ‘Trek’ series upon this spectrum.

If you do that they lean towards the new. As being somewhat near the Platonic ideal of ‘Star Trek’ ‘Strange New Worlds’ hits the mid-point, ‘Discovery’ is center/new starting out as ‘Trek’ for ‘Battlestar Galactica’ fans, ‘Lower Decks’ is a step further from center being ‘Trek’ for ‘Rick and Morty’ fans, and ‘Starfleet Academy’ is another step out being YA ‘Trek’.*

All of this is fine, good even. Not everything needs to be made for you, in fact things that aren’t meant for you but instead to bring new people into the fandom helps keep the fandom alive (increasing the odds that some “for you” will be made).

*I don’t know how to address ‘Section 31’.

#StarTrek

'Stop Making Sense' is basically the only concert film I could imagine watching more than once. Full ★★★★★ #Review on #Letterboxd: https://boxd.it/cTxqC3 #Movies #Music

‘The Mandalorian & Grogu’ Super Bowl spot is a parody of the Budweiser Clydesdales which I like but think is bad match for that movie; it would be a great teaser for a comedy, it’s the type of I’d expect to announce a new ‘Deadpool’ film, not ‘The Mandalorian’. But the online comments were insane. Half the comments didn’t get the joke, seemed to think it was an actual scene from the movie (voice-over and all) and thought the made the movie look bad, while the other half were mad that ad didn’t include twenty minutes of new footage to dissect.

“Orbital Data-Centers” sounds like the type of thing you say in a panic in the middle of an earnings call and then you try to steam-hams your way out of.

'Bye Bye Birdie' is a musical. With some likable parts. Full ★★ #Review on #Letterboxd: https://boxd.it/cLja7j #Movies #Musical

'Appaloosa' is a great looking bore. Full ★★★ #Review on #Letterboxd: https://boxd.it/cGxABR #Western #Movies

Cheap Perfume has a real X-Ray Spex feel to them... #Music #PunkRock https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZjRFDrwhduI

'Gammera the Invincible' is basically 'Gamera, the Giant Monster' with actors in place of whatever random white guy was in Tokyo that week. Full ★½ #Review on #Letterboxd: https://boxd.it/cGosWz #Movies #ScienceFiction

I used to watch ‘QI’, I still mostly listen to the podcast ‘No Such Thing As A Fish’, but I lost interest was seeing a guest repeatedly make false statements with zero pushback while other guests where being actively fact-checked. The fact based comedy show didn’t care about the facts when certain people were speaking which made me dislike both the show and the speaker.