ThaOGDreamWeaver

Technically, they are comic book heroes - and superheroes (check out the properly ridiculous Phantom Of The Park movie, as well as their actual Scooby Doo movie that sent it up...) So KISS played their last-ever show at Madison Square Garden. But as they vanished, they suddenly appeared above the audience, declaring their fans had made them "immortal." https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-67611691 What they're gonna do is use the ABBAtar robotic technology pioneered for London's Voyage show, projecting digital images onto physical mannequins. I'm not gonna give away exactly how they do it, because it's pretty impressive - it's a very very old bit of stage magic given a whole new lease of life with technology, and a highly controlled environment. But while the Swedish crew wanted to make the show as realistic as possible - and according to my partner who's seen it, there's still a lot of Uncanny Valley going on - KISS have been trying to do the exact opposite for the last 50 years. So they're going to... let's say... embrace all the possibilities. So, theoretically, between physical avatars and digital reconstruction, there's a lot of actors and musicians that we could bring back to life. And with the cunning Ukrainian folks at Respeecher, you can make them say what you want (singing... not yet so much.) Some people are good with that: https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2022/09/james-earl-jones-signed-darth-vader-voice-rights-to-disney-for-ai-use/ Question is... do we want to? One of the only bad bits of the fantastic Rogue One was bringing Peter Cushing back from the dead. Even without the flaws in the CGI recreation, it made it much harder to suspend disbelief - for me - than if they'd used the actual actor they'd used for mo-cap and voicing, with some decent aging makeup. And as you may have heard, one of the key sticking points in the recent SAG-AFTRA strike was actors wanting to be protected from future AI use without their permission (and without royalties). So admittedly this tech is moving really, really fast, and I'm not sure where we'll be in a few years. But would you watch a movie, gig or TV show knowing its stars were either dead, retired, or didn't want to be in the show?

Giving this thread a quick Stimpak, because we have a big update. Vanity Fair has a First Look and interview: https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2023/11/fallout-first-look ...and there's a THR video. If you get locked out of VF or just want a quick TL;DR, here goes. Bethesda didn't want the show to be retreading an existing game - so this is an original story by Jonathan Nolan, developed with Bethesda's writers as consultants. It's set in a relatively unexplored area of the Fallout world (Los Angeles), and is officially canon. And Bethesda are slightly jealous of some of the stuff the TV writers came up with - so there's a possibility of a TV-to-game adap. We have three intersecting lead characters: Lucy (Ella Purnell - Never Let Me Go, Arcane, Maleficient) is a Vault Dweller from Santa Monica's relatively luxurious Vault 33 (compared to some of the more horrific experimental Vaults we've seen in the games, anyway... and definitely compared to the world outside.) She's nice, naive, slightly "spoilt", and not quite ready to face the terrors she needs to. Maximus (Aaron Poten - Father Stu, Emancipation) is a squire to one of the power-armour Knights of the Brotherhood of Steel. Definitely more of a survivor, but also desperate to prove himself to his Knight and the Brotherhood. And then there's The Ghoul (the fantastic Walton Goggins - The Shield, Sons Of Anarchy, Hateful Eight, tons more). Described as "The Good, The Bad, AND the Ugly." Feels slightly similar to the role of The Man In Black in Nolan's other big show, Westworld: an antagonist, sure, but very aware of and intelligent about the world, how the world he lives in came to be, its deepest secrets, and has become both hardened and comfortable in it. Has a certain swagger and charm. Ruthless, but with a certain code of honour. Whatever their initial motivations - Lucy trying to fix a Vault problem, Maximus's quest to be a knight, the Ghoul out bounty hunting... ...there is a McGuffin of some sort they all wind up chasing, that could radically change the balance of power in their univerzzzzzz... ...what? whassat? Okay, quest show. We get it. Not the most original plot, I suppose. But like Last Of Us, how they get there, how the key characters interact, and where they wind up is going to make or break it. Supporting cast includes the mighty Kyle McLachlan as Lucy's dad Hank, the Vault 33 Supervisor: mysterious nerd specialist Michael Emerson, pulled over from Nolan's earlier Person of Interest, as a scientist: and fine journeywoman actress Sarita Choudhoury as a warband leader. The released photos - seen in the vid above - make the production values look pretty darn sparky to me. The Ghoul gets an origin story - making him over 300 years old - as does Vault-Boy. Still no Ron on the IMDB listing. Which is disappointing. But again - it's not a difficult gig to record a V/O. Release date is now April 12 2024. So what do we think?

I have a whole stack of DVDs of those - all the freak-of-the-week smouldery-vampy-detective series. It was a whole subgenre for a while: Forever Knight, Moonlight, Blood Ties (the books are much better), and of course, Lost Girl. Any I missed that I need to check out? Plus the Nic Cage-produced Dresden Files, which made a few changes from the books, but captured the spirit of it fairly well - and told some great original stories. It had one imaginatively nasty episode - pushing the limits of what you can do on TV - about the Hand Of Glory...

The Pogues - Streams of Whiskey🥃☘️

The only woke issues I had with Quantumania was staying awoke through it. Yeesh. It's kind of puzzling how this has warped into a whole win/lose/zero sum thing with the movies, not to mention a lot of other things. Time was, there would be movies that appealed to one kind of audience but maybe not this other one, and that would be okay, both financially, and with the press and politicians not being overly bothered... ...unless it was really nasty/juicy/transgressive stuff. I'm not quite old enough to remember when Exorcist, Brazil, VideoDrome or Life Of Brian came out. But I do know those got fun, and for some slightly better reasons. Marvels is not the Messiah, it's a very... slightly half-baked popcorn movie with a bunch of adorable cats in it that needed better editing. And more cats. Nothing more insidious than that. Financially, risking a studio's rep and future on big-swing franchise tentpole movies that you haven't given time to develop properly is getting to be a risk. MGM/Sony killed Bond partly for that reason. But also creatively, that character had run its course and needed a rest and refresh. If we're looking for a less-PC, more testosteroney* example, Fast X is a franchise movie, a mess (EXPLODING HAMSTERBALLS!), and the lowest-grossing in the series. It's allegedly just scraped into profitability, though what kind of profitable depends on who you ask. I've yelled enough about rolling breaks and other quantum accounting techniques they use in Hollyweird. If you really wanna know, look it up. The death of the Franchise Movie has been long foretold by prophets of Profits Of Doom. It ain't happened yet. Like serial killers (and their franchises), it always seems to rise just when you think it's gone. But making smaller bets on smaller, story-led movies and shows - like Loki - for a range of different audiences? That might be a better time creatively, financially, and give everybody their own theatre to head into at the 'plex. Well, at least until the next Tom Cruise flick comes out. *Testosteroney: the other San Francisco treat.

Side note: if you like your beat-em-ups, Omni-Man (voiced by JKS) is now in MK1 as a DLC character. And gets some suitably choice lines. He'll also be joined by Anthony Starr as Homelander, John Cena as Peacemaker, and one Jean-Claude Van Damme.

...you had to ask, didn't you?

In before the vault lock for once. Keep up the fine work, heroes.

Kids. They grow up so fast these days.

See also: goth aunties...

Being a Mac fan, my knowledge is somewhat limited - other than the new Metal-chipped Macs are something else compared to their predecessors, and knock seven bells out of the average business or lower-end gaming laptop. (Worth getting a cooling fan pad though). If you're looking for a tablet that isn't an iPad, the Galaxy range is cute but overpriced, and Google Pixel is more reasonable but tends to age a bit more quickly. If you're planning on upgrading your phone/contract soon, though, a bunch of phone dealers will try and throw one at you at a bargain price in return for your eternal soul customer loyalty. Bargain hard. If you're a little more adventurous in your Amazon adventures - or your purchase might need to survive less-than-delicate handling (ie: kids - or outdoor use, or anyone who might be a tad too klutzy for a shiny shiny glamour model), I can happily recommend Blackview Rugged devices. Picked up a couple years ago for a friend who works in building and offshore engineering. Decent price, decent looks (if you like black), and most importantly, it's survived everything that's been thrown at it / it's been thrown at. Standard-issue Android interface - takes a little getting used to if you're switching from iPhone, but good stuff. BTW, when buying Android, especially for kids/elderly relatives: do remember that while Google have finally started doing proper security checks on stuff that goes through the Play Store, it can be bypassed by various sneaky means. Unbox it carefully, turn on all the security settings, consider getting Malwarebytes or similar paranoia reassurance apps, and teach them the drill about scam sites/apps.

Beedle The Bardcore - Yeah!

I'm not usually good with these kind of rants, but this was genuinely interesting. Thoughts:

Skindred - That's My Jam 😸

Massive Wagons - Generation Prime

Natalie Holt - Ascension (Loki Finale)

Let's hope she gets showtunes.

No inventing AI robots until you've invented the shotgunaxe.

Addressing a point from the orange spoilery one...

Not-entirely-spoiler: Kahhori is all new. I remember in the last versh of this thread we had this 'splainer handy... https://www.marvel.com/articles/tv-shows/what-if-kahhori-new-super-hero Whether or not she arrives in live-action is another question, but I guess it depends on how this ep goes down with everybody - and, of course, if they can find an appealing story to tell. (Prey's fantastic Amber Midthunder immediately springs to mind, though she's Sioux, not Mohawk, or Devery Jacobs, who's Canadian Mohawk and is appearing in the upcoming Echo.)

I thought it was a bit more of a crossover... (Spoiler below...) Now on to some wild speculation and/or actual spoilery leaks, upon which we may hang more wildly inaccurate posturing. The episode titles for S2 (or S1pt2, or whatever) are said to be:

After a very long pandemic-induced wait and worries about cancellation,the back 9 episodes of What If...? drop for Christmas. ...and yes, Tony is wearing a Santa outfit. Because there's a Christmas episode. I like this series because it gives writers absolutely free rein to play with everything in the Marvel toybox, invent some new toys, and even break some of it. As well as the promised Haudenosaunee NA-dubbed episode - which I've been looking forward to as a Thor-meets-Prey kinda deal, we get T'Challa's dad, Hank Pym and the OG Wasp teaming up, what looks like Sakaar-based Wacky Races, and a few more surprising things I can't identify. But there are far better nerds than me here who may be able to...

*Glares at Marvel PR team* STOP WITH THE DAMN SPOILERS IN EPKS, AND BAN ANY SITES THAT SPOILER ENDINGS / POST-CREDS. Then again, it's hard when there's a whole industry of auto-generated article bots grabbing every little detail and rumour and trying to blow it up into a screaming headline article. Also, ya gotta remember that the entire cast were on strike until one day before release weekend: and the Big Bad Mouse were pretty unlikely to get a promo waiver from SAG-AFTRA. So it also hurts a movie when you can't have your actors out there beating the drum on late-nights, using their social presences, or doing those lucrative-and-surprisingly-effective-if-bloody-embarrassing promo deals with car dealerships / fast food joints / biscuits / sanitary products / whatever. I've only seen one tie-in advertised and that was for a security company: it's gotta be a really hard sell when you can't get an actual actor to punt your product. This would have a similar impact to The Flash last year - but for a very different reason, where its lead would have had to be rolled onto any talk show set strapped to a trolley Lecter-style (not that Jimmy Fallon hasn't had worse psychotics on...) Wondering if Marvels will see an uptick second weekend on word-of-mouth, and if the Marvel PR machine can get back into gear? EDIT: if there's been one fun thing out of this strike, it's the amount of proper Hollywood folks doing the kind of gaijin ads they only used to do for Japan (see: Lost In Translation) in UK markets to keep the ol' cashflow up. We've had Samuel L Jackson shilling crumpets, Gillian Anderson punting mattresses, Owen Wilson and Helena Bonham Carter frothing over sofas, and Benadryl Thunderbox trying to sound even slightly enthusiastic about a dodgy fantasy mobile game... and failing badly. Any more you guys have seen? I think Melissa McCarthy's Booking.com one might have been international...

I'm not sure whether I'm an outlier on this. But as I do have D+ - and the release-to-streaming windows are so short now - I don't feel it's essential to block out 2/3 hours to catch it in the cinema with filthy mouthbreathing humans, when I can watch it in my own home with my own sensibly priced, diet-friendly snacks at a time that suits me. However - and this is my worry for the future of flicks in general - that's pretty much my attitude to every flick these days, not just the MCU. Even the whole Barbenheimer thing breezed by me: the last flick I saw in cinemas was GOTG3, and that's because my partner particularly liked that series. The whole rash of new, odd little movies that are popping up in cinemas due to the strike delaying the big-bucks content are interesting and encouraging, but again, not essential - pretty sure they'll be on the 'flix or Prime right after next Cannes deal week. And no, I'm not seeing the Tay movie either, though that's been a phenomenal success: give it a few weeks and I'll be able to indulge privately, with no risk to any goth cred or my eardrums. The rest of the time, between erratic work hours, taking care of niecelets and generally surviving the 2020s as best I can... I've not fallen out of love with the movies, but I can't make the time for them right now.

Spoilery mini-thoughts: More spoilery stuff at the link below. Pretty good Q&A from Esquire - including where Eric thinks everything landed, a surprising fact about how they designed that period midwestern McDonalds (which was an old roadside Indian restaurant in the middle of nowhere 100 miles around London - so yes, probably an ex-Little Chef as well), and a series of evasive but nonetheless interesting answers about Jonathan Majors and the future of the MCU. Mainly because the Majors cases are still active, and also he'd like to eat lunch in that town again and/or not get assassinated by K.E.V.I.N's spoiler-hunting killdroids. https://www.esquire.com/entertainment/tv/a45433773/loki-showrunner-season-2-finale-interview/