ThaOGDreamWeaver

One of my brothers still complains about being dragged away from Doctor Who to come pick me up. I mean, being born Saturday teatime, so damn inconsiderate to the fandom...

AudioMachine - Worlds of Wonder (do click through and check out the rest of the album too...)

Siouxie And The Banshees - Dear Prudence

Thou Shalt Not - If I Only Were A Goth

Sounds like fun, but ours were closed closed. (If one of my local flick palaces had put on a midnight showing of Alien, I might have been tempted. If you ever REALLY need seven shades of sriracha scared out of you, watching Alien, late night, in a near-empty theatre, with just the hiss of the air conditioning and things lurking in the shadows... that'll work.)

Truth. D&D:HAT was the first flick I'd seen in a cinema since before The Dark Times, and the only reason I went is that opening weekend, UK word of mouth hadn't kicked in yet - so a Saturday showing was near empty. Not getting the 'vid again was a big deterrent for me. That and the diet. Mmmm, raisinettes or Ben & Jerry's? With delay times now much shorter than before, I didn't have the sense of urgency about seeing something first. I am still going to be seeing Dune Part II on the biggest screen I can, though, even if I have to build my own damn stillsuit to do it.

"Y'know, people can be really nasty. They say... he's just a robot. Covered in makeup. Talks a lot of nonsense. That's no way to talk about the President..." Why am I [redacted] years old and can't remember my keys, my phone or what I'm supposed to be doing half the time, yet recall being fairly small and laughing my backside off at the Sting interview and Max's somewhat unhealthy shoe obsession? Oh, and whatever the hellmahay THIS was...

CALL OFF THE SPOILER GOONS. Because at the point in time where the timey-wimey events will happen grr hackneyed writing device grr, Sinclair will be still very much his urbane, charming silver-foxy daddy self. Probably. Anyway. Here's the Hollywood Reporter anno story and a pic of the shiny shiny tooned 'up B5: https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie-news/babylon-5-the-road-home-voice-cast-unveiled-1235483312/ Never seen the Max Headroom series, but the original movie is... quite something. And if you liked Warehouse 13, but thought it needed more saucy Canadian models and werewolf sex in it, might I offer you Lost Girl? (Very similar vibe, if somewhat different plotting...) Or possibly Grimm, which is, let's face it, pretty silly but draws you in with a charming, effortlessly 'shippable core cast and the assorted Wesen lore.

We haven't had a book thread in a while (as in, y'know, the ones with lines of text an' all with no pictures, and you have to imagine your own speech bubbles. Bit weird, but some people like 'em.) Reason being: John Scalzi, of Old Man's War fame and burritos-of-mass-destruction infamy, is releasing a book that couldn't be more up my street if he parked there. Our hapless hero Charlie, a failing substitute teacher, is whisked across country to take over his late uncle's business, resulting in love, confusion, and general hijinks. So far, so Hallmark Christmas flick. Except that this business comes with a volcano lair, terrifying henchmen, an army of hyperintelligent talking spy cats... oh, and some very nasty enemies, including a polished-but-soulless bunch of vulture capitalists who give corporate raiding a whole new meaning. Ladies and gentlemen: Starter Villain. I've also previously recommended Soon I Will Be Invincible by Austin Grossman, which is narrated from the points of view of chronic Malign Hypercognition Disorder patient Doctor Impossible (redside, but genial and extremely nerdy) and Fatale, (blueside...ish cyborg). What other capery might you bring to my attention?

…so Neighbours is sci-fi? Explains a lot about Australians…

Also, just FYI, Straczynski is bringing out a new, animated B5 movie via WB, which should be on MAX. (For those of you who've been following WB's travails lately, the B5 movie is completed, edited and ready to go. And hasn't, as far as anyone knows, had a temporary or permanent death for tax reasons.) They're doing timey-wimey-malarkey [mutter mutter massive handwaves mutter], so pretty much all the cast who are still alive are in it, with new voices for Delenn, G'Kar, Doc Franklin and even Sinclair's back. Fringe might just be the one you want, then. Especially with the core performance by the mighty John Noble as Walter (but even more so as... wait, wait, no spoilers. Wait for that one. It's worth it.) Takes the phrase "brilliant, but completely mad" to new heights, depths, and levels of emotion. As with many of these kinda shows, S1 can be a little bit of a grind. But stick with it, as it completely pays off in S2 and beyond. The weirdo-of-the-week format might be an old, tried and true beast, but if you're into your esoterica, conspiracy theories, and history there's plenty of rabbitholes to go down. And even some of the characters that should be pretty much stock stuff get life from the casting: even a standard Hardass Boss, when inhabited by the late lamented Lance Reddick (Oz, John Wick, The Wire) gives Phil Broyles a combination of world-weariness, exasperation and sometimes genuine curiosity about just what the actual hellmahay his crew are up to. So, yes, a good choice... ...or am I just trying to influence you that way?

Molly Tuttle & Golden Highway- White Rabbit (Acoustic)

So. A thing about comedy / horror films and TV, and comedy generally... If you're gonna parody something and do it right, you have to do it as well or better than the real deal. Shaun Of The Dead is an obvious example - it's a straight, extremely tightly directed zombie movie that two British idiots and their friends happen to have landed in the middle of. Similar praise/plaudits for Attack The Block. But the recent masters of it on Brit TV are Reece Shearsmith and Steve Pemberton, plus frequent collaborators in crime Mark Gatiss and Jeremy Dyson. Following the terrifyingly funny League Of Gentlemen, they came back with a series of one-off stories called Inside #9. If you can find it where you are, give it a look. Especially this week's episode... For those of us that like walking the line between fear and funny, what would you recommend?

The Smiths - Barbarism (Begins At Home) RIP Andy Rourke

Keep getting punted New World when I'm on Amazon shopping. Not tempted. 1) Doesn't run on Macs and no plans to support or provide Wine-type hack for it. 2) Most reviews and boards mention the need for "grind" and/or "powerlevelling" before you expand into the main game and expand your character tree. If it's worse than Synapse, I ain't got time for that. 3) Botched the launch badly, with users queuing for hours or days to access a shard. Sure, many MMOs have faced over-subscription and queue issues. But this is Amazon. AWS is the absolute rock-solid core of their business model these days. Having worked for a number of big orgs, there are plenty of times when one part doesn't know/care/will suddenly get shirty about what another part of the org's up to. But if they'd even hung out with the engies for coffee and some light nerdery, they should have had a decent idea of the resources required, and turning on additional server power should have been a phone call and a couple of clicks.

If I had an argument, it's because even in the 25th Century, space is still hard, and if you're not quite smart and vaguely competent... (a) you wouldn't have made it through the Academy, let alone to senior officer status (b) you would quite likely be dead. Real-life equivalent of an ST problem would be the Apollo 13 incident, where they had to cannibalise bits of the ship, using instructions from a scratch model built on Earth, to fix the ship enough to limp home with everyone mostly alive. It's only because you had a bunch of very smart people, both up there and down here, plus a metric ton of luck, that they pulled that off. I'm reasonably smart, but anything I can't type instructions to is a hardware problem and I'd have been screwed. No RAC / AAA in space... (...though that was another Trek series idea I had - Starfleet Search & Rescue. Because what better way of going looking for trouble is there than pulling people out of it?) Thinking about it, it is still strange that every crewmember on every sci-fi ship knows enough about every part of that ship in order to use it. Even in Red Dwarf: Dave is one of the least competent humans in existence, even with every other human removed from existence. Basically he's a cleaner, yet can do electronics repairs, fly a shuttlecraft (badly, but still). I liked that Discovery's Jett Reno (more Tig please next season) improvised surgery and life support tools by reading technical manuals and guesswork.

Quick still from the new SNW series...

Those of us who lived through the 80s and 90s will remember much worse movies than Cutthroat Island, some of which we might have even paid money to see. Specifically, there were a number of musical artists who thought they could act or direct. Looking at you here, Madge, but also the mighty Prince. While Purple Rain's very watchable, the success of that flick gave him 100% free rein for Under The Cherry Moon... and may His Royal Purpleness rest in enlightenment and be praised for ever, but that flick just goes to show even genius has off-days. And that you need honest people giving you feedback. However. The OST album to Cherry Moon is better known as Parade, and sweet Freya in Asgard, it's as awesome as anything else he ever put out. Girls & Boys, Mountains... and of course, Kiss. Speaking of which, it's not just musicians who grab the directorial chair and fall out of it. That same year, Stephen King had a crack at it with Maximum Overdrive. He's given a frank assessment of his skills on that over the years, and I think he's been a bit hard on himself. It's very, very silly and a bit clunky but ludicrously enjoyable for what it is - an updated 50s drive-in movie played at least partly for laughs. But... if there's one thing he did get right, it's hiring AC⚡DC. Who Made Who only gives you one original song and two of the instrumentals from the flick, but the rest is basically your AkkaDakka Fan Starter Kit (ute, mullet and ratty Collingwood shirt not included.)

Or...

Watching Liv gear-shift from the ludicrously, puppyishly excitable Norfolk lass she is in interviews and documentaries to Deadly Serious Epic Gravitas Mode - or anything else she's up to, like Green Wing (look it up!), Hot Fuzz, The Favourite (even if you know about the stunt she pulled on Emma Stone) and my personal favourite The Night Manager is a bit of a trip. Always watchable.

Slightly related: I'm getting a similar but intermittent error from the Launcher that it can't resolve https://manifest.cohhc.gg/pkg/hc_live.json (or the http:// version.) Any ideas? I can open that address in Chrome just fine...

Hi all - existing Mac Launcher dies without launching after upgrade to Ventura 13.3.1. Going to try a reinstall. If that fails, anyone got any good tips? Here's the last few bits from the logfile: 2023-05-12 19:13:08 launcher: WINE detected 2023-05-12 19:13:08 launcher: Using basedir z:/Applications/coh 2023-05-12 19:13:08 bootstrap: Cached config loaded 2023-05-12 19:13:08 pstate: package hc_bin_live_win32:1.20230503.223513.5450 transitioned from unknown to installed 2023-05-12 19:13:08 pstate: package hc_bin_live_win64:1.20230503.223808.5450 transitioned from unknown to installed 2023-05-12 19:13:08 pstate: package hc_crashhandler_win32:1.20211104.184105.4643 transitioned from unknown to installed 2023-05-12 19:13:08 pstate: package hc_crashhandler_win64:1.20211104.184105.4643 transitioned from unknown to installed 2023-05-12 19:13:08 pstate: package hc_data_live:1.20230501.53728.5440 transitioned from unknown to installed 2023-05-12 19:13:08 bootstrap: Cached package loaded 2023-05-12 19:13:08 pstate: package launcher:1.4550 transitioned from unknown to installed 2023-05-12 19:13:08 bootstrap: Package is valid 2023-05-12 19:13:08 pstate: package i24_piggs:1.0.2400 transitioned from unknown to installed 2023-05-12 19:13:08 pstate: package hc_live:1.20230503.224356,1 transitioned from unknown to installed 2023-05-12 19:13:08 installer: Created shortcut Z:\Applications\coh\HC Launcher.lnk 2023-05-12 19:13:08 eula: Cached eula loaded 2023-05-12 19:13:08 bootstrap: Loading lua script launcher.lua 2023-05-12 19:24:01 launcher: Starting (build wine-x64-final-4550) 2023-05-12 19:24:01 launcher: WINE detected 2023-05-12 19:24:01 launcher: Using basedir z:/Applications/coh 2023-05-12 19:24:01 bootstrap: Cached config loaded 2023-05-12 19:24:01 pstate: package hc_bin_live_win32:1.20230503.223513.5450 transitioned from unknown to installed 2023-05-12 19:24:01 pstate: package hc_crashhandler_win32:1.20211104.184105.4643 transitioned from unknown to installed 2023-05-12 19:24:01 pstate: package hc_bin_live_win64:1.20230503.223808.5450 transitioned from unknown to installed 2023-05-12 19:24:01 pstate: package hc_crashhandler_win64:1.20211104.184105.4643 transitioned from unknown to installed 2023-05-12 19:24:01 pstate: package hc_data_live:1.20230501.53728.5440 transitioned from unknown to installed 2023-05-12 19:24:01 bootstrap: Attempting to recover from failure 2023-05-12 19:24:01 bootstrap: Fetching config from http://manifest.cohhc.gg/launcher/v1mac/bootstrap.json 2023-05-12 19:24:01 pstate: package i24_piggs:1.0.2400 transitioned from unknown to installed 2023-05-12 19:24:01 pstate: package hc_live:1.20230503.224356,1 transitioned from unknown to installed EDIT... okay, after a reinstall and a bit of playing around, found that the only bit that seems actively broken is the launcher shortcut app that loads Wine with /coh/bin/win64/launcher.exe. Accessing launcher.exe directly pulls up the launcher, and allows you to download/update game client. However, the first couple of launches the client may think you haven't installed the files yet. Clicking on the download icon refreshes its memory and it should load. Question: is there anything particularly useful in the actual Homecoming launcher shortcut that's needed to boot launcher.exe in any particular mode, or is accessing it directly to call WINE just as good?

Slightly off topic: how many times have you heard them playing or sneaking in Test Drive now? No more Scottish than that accursed Mull of Kintyre, and yet... yer heart still swells, laddie.

Ah, I was trying to remember this one a few months ago. I don't know whether this was pre Anthrax vs Public Enemy, but a really fun and interesting soundtrack project... tacked onto a B- survive-the-night movie. Essential part of the Nostalgic 90's Kid Starter Kit. ...aka Jerry does Raiders, for a rip-off of Raiders, which was... a rip-off of King Solomon's Mines thrown in the blender with classic 40s/50s pulp serials. It's got every Jerry signature in it you could ask for as well, brass triplets, big strings, sweeps... ...which brings me to a movie that I unashamedly love, for all its flaws: bringing back one of the OG radio-era and two-reeler superheroes. Had wild fits of imagination and beautiful period-meets-steampunk (décopunk?) design. And Tim Curry. Oh, and, of course, Jerry. (And a pinball machine that ate more 50p's in college than I should haver had sense for.) But never quite caught fire in the way it should have.