ThaOGDreamWeaver

It's a slightly odd way to wrap up that big plot point, to be sure. Speaking of which, suddenly realised there's only two episodes left to wrap these arcs up in a neat little bow. Both are written by Favreau (with Filoni on #23), and directed by Rick Famuyiwa, who's delivered three of the better eps to date (the Grogu intro, the Train Job, and the other Train Job/Wages Of Fear one.) Should be in safe hands.

Straight into the new ep. BTW, do not Google this ep before watching or go on the Twitters. When you're ready...

Definitely looking forward to this. One of the best Spidey-incarnations going.

Just rezzing this one because people have been talking about it on Excel, and because I want my Selina Kyle toon, dammit. (Y'all can do the one with the guy named after the dog.) I have slightly different ideas for the high end powers, mind. All re-use existing animations where possible. The signature power and its two chained powers would be a little tricky to code, I admit... but definitely built for fun. Tier 1: Stinger (Corruption). Short ranged power, high end of Light damage, fast recharge. Tier 2: Crack Whip. The set needs some kind of AoE at a decently low level. High end of Moderate Damage. Tier 3: Lash. Pretty much as is. (Stalkers swap this with Assassin's Garrotte, which uses a point blank Hell On Earth animation coupled with choke emote on target, followed by a Rib Cracker finishing blow from Street Justice.) Tier 4: Build Up. ...now here's where we get dangerous.... Tier 5: Stringer: a signature, short-ranged, high-Mag Hold, using the Hell On Earth Animation, for Moderate DoT. A successful hit activates tier 7 and 9 while your Hold Duration is active, but you cannot use any other powers in this set until the Hold expires. (Or if the devs want to be REALLY mean at the expense of giving themselves more work, any other Ranged, Melee or PBAoE powers.) Tier 6: Taunt/Provoke Tier 7: Slinger: yank your Held opponent directly towards you (GET OVER HERE!) onto a Knee Cracker animation, causing two Moderate smashing damage hits and knocking them down. Cancels your Hold. Tier 8: Cobra Strike: Sniper-styled but short-ranged interruptible strike, dealing Extreme single target damage and low chance to Stun as an alpha, or High damage when used in main battle (yellow ring). Animation is basically Crack Whip again, possibly with a little crouch to build up. Tier 9: Swinger: catapult yourself towards your Held opponent, planting your foot in the nearest available part of their anatomy (Jump Kick animation), causing High damage and knockdown, with a chance of Minor damage and knockdown to those around them. Basically Savage Leap crossed with Shield Charge. Cancels your Hold.

Finally caught up with most recent two eps - that one with the doc really put me off, and I'd been getting my Pedro fix elsewhere... glad I'm back.

YET ANOTHER SPOILER from the D&D PR team, but this news made an awful lot of old nerds happy when I put it on General Chat.

Started a thread earlier about surprisingly good things... then this shows up.

I know we - well, I - moan about flicks a lot on here. So to flip that around... when were you last surprised by a movie that was much, much better than it had any right to be? I'd been unsure about the D&D flick but heard good buzz and outrageous audience scores. (Which may have been a little OTT given what the actual flick was like, but that's me.) The one I'm going to put forward for your attention is Game Night. So, three assorted couples - well, two, plus Ryan and his ever-changing date - host a regular, very suburban party night where they play any board game, mystery game, or so on they have to hand. While trying to avoid their hypercreepy cop neighbour. Our host's a**hole elder brother shows up, takes over, and offers to host the best game night ever - a kidnap mystery. Humiliating, sure, but... well, what could go wrong? Or how could this fairly tedious-sounding movie be any good? Well... unless you don't want to spoiler yourselves...

Til' Tuesday - Voices Carry

Ryuichi Sakamoto - Oxygen🔦

My reaction:

Slight industry side note: Bob Iger has first sidelined and then abruptly terminated Marvel chairman Ike Perlmutter, who was, according to reports, trying to lead a palace coup against Kevin Feige. What also didn't endear Ike to Bob was using his shareholding to help an activist investor join the board (trust me, they can be trouble.) The comics division Ike was relegated to will be folded into Disney Entertainment. One hopes they find a nerd who knows what they're doing with them. Even if QM doesn't seem to have caught fire, Feige is still the golden boy and he has plans. I just wish he'd revise them a bit to make better flicks. The bigger story (on the FT, but paywalled), is that Disney needs to find seven thousand job cuts to balance the box - around 3% of their worldwide workforce - plus spinning off Hulu and ESPN to hit their new, partly activist-induced business plan. So QM underperforming at the box office - and potentially putting a question mark over the Multiverse franchise expansion - is now putting the almighty bottom line at risk and investors on guard. But to fix both problems, they need to take more risks, not less.

As the storm clouds gathered, and bright flashes of lightning split the sky, our party ventured out to a place they had not been in years... ....that dark, cavernous, mysterious space, wherein the dread guardians would first demand FOURTEEN BLOODY QUID EACH FOR A TICKET ARE YOU BLOODY JOKING? Sheesh. Some things have definitely changed at the flicks post-pandemic. As for the movie...

Confirmed on the @StarWars twitter. Yup, it's him, fully canon. And whether that was practical effects or CGI, that's a massive improvement on Cad Bane from the last series.

I'm enjoying the heck out of it right now. One odd question - I went Elec/Elec/Elec: wondering about dropping Tough and Weave in a respec and just getting the Elec resist in favour of more offensive powers. Whatcha think?

Just fancied a wrasslin' toon - and, Saraya Knight (aka Paige) being from my home town, she'd be my base character. What powersets would you pick? Street Justice seems like the obvious choice. Looking to build as much flair and fun into an all-out attacking, fast-moving playstyle as possible, rather than minmax DPS etc.

Having not had a chance to catch Quantumania yet, what I'd noticed - even before this flick - is that in the urgency to set up a universe, they forget that each movie has to work as a unit, with a beginning, middle and ending, and plot and character development along the way. For example, Empire Strikes Back hits all of those notes, and ties all but the two key loose ends - Han and Luke - up when credits roll. Audience satisfied but wanting more. DS:MoM worked as a complete movie, introducing the Multiversal concepts, and only glued on the next chapter tag in post-creds. QM seems more of featherlight amuse-bouche for whatever they've got coming next, but clearly not enough bouches are amused. VFX teams are unionising now - and without going full activiaaaaaAAAHHH [thump] ...sorry, trashcan incident - that is a Good Thing. 80 hour weeks with executives hanging over your shoulder, demanding individual details be tweaked or rerun without budgeting either time or money for creative changes, do not good product or happy teams make. Particularly if said execs haven't quite settled the creative look of the flick with the director, and have a marketing deadline to meet where cash has already been spent.

Samara Joy - Guess Who I Saw Today?

/em holdtorch I've read multiple tributes to the guy on socials, and the universal comment is - aside from his fine work - what an utterly lovely guy he was to be around. I know it's not a 100% guarantee, but... I think, based on the evidence, those tributes are probably right. The evidence: May he rest in light. Preferably somewhere where there's dogs.

What I do have a problem with... and this is the first time you'll hear me say this about Pedro content...

So, finished up series 1, with less emotional support drinking required for the last two episodes. So, a great series, so many candidates for standout performance, directing and editing. But where do we go from here? They've more or less 100%'d part 1 of the game plus the Left Behind DLC. Part II was greenlit on January 27th, even before normal humans got to see the Bill & Frank episode (but the critics had screeners by that point...), which is one hell of a vote of confidence. Thoughts:

WAIT how could I forget this one... ...Scoob's also had quite the guest list recently... plus KIss, Elvira and Bill Nye in the movies.

Having had a quick Google, there are quite a few more where real folks show up in comics: Eminem vs Punisher (not sure that's gonna go well for Detroit) Muhammad Ali + Superman Spidey + Barack Obama (I'd always wondered if he'd show up as a shield-wielding hero called Barricade. Though I guess it'd be tough fitting the ears under the Spandex) Charles Barkley vs Godzilla (still no match for the big lizard's 3pt game, though)