ThaOGDreamWeaver

Well, invest in one... From the Financial Times: ...little early for April 1st, isn't it? Once you dig into it, it's not the most insane financial product that's been on the market lately. And if someone can rig me up that flying skateboard I've been after since 1989... me happy. Have you seen any evidence of alien activity around lately?

Here's the SuperBowl game trailer (and that big Starship track...) Small update: a tweet (Xeet, whatever) from Marvel Studios Japan explains that asterisk. Maybe.

Ah, James Gunn has a Superbowl Super-tease for us, I wonder what it coulGAAAAHH MY EYES THE GOGGLES THEY DO NOTHING ...seriously, the way James gets away with being this mean to people he calls friends is almost British. I'm impressed.

I’m Scottish, and even I’d say that (a) “best” is relative and (b) this is against the Geneva Convention. (There’s an old hack’s tale that British forces leaked a story to Argentinian papers about “sonic death weapons” in 1982, just before the Falklands landings…)

They're certainly being quite smart. For example, if you're wondering what the weird arrows are for... ask Ed Sullivan. (They're not gonna go full Partridge Family and sing, are they?)

ScarJo goes full Tomb Raider, and digs up an ancient franchise thought lost. Trailer has the Greatest Hits of JP if nothing glaringly original. Fairly standard quest line, slightly dumb ante-upping (oooh, they're too dangerous for the original park?), and slightly too glossy reboot premise (Earth's oxygen levels are lower than they were in the original dino era, so with added pollution, they die out except in very remote locations). Oh, we get a new crew too. Not buying Bridgerton's Jon Bailey as the scientist: Mahershala Ali shouldn't have any trouble as a cheerful smuggler. And there are kids. Hopefully not irritating. That said... ...this is from the original JP scriptwriter, David Koepp, so he should know what he's doing. It also gives Gareth Edwards the big damn toybox he's wanted since his self-produced flick Monsters, which brought him to the world's attention and earned him the chair on Godzilla, followed by Rogue One and The Creator. Not exactly the longest CV in the world - he's still busy consulting on VFX the rest of the time - but damn if it ain't solid. So it's well-trodden territory, but do we think those two - plus ScarJo - can park your backside and your popcorn for another go-round?

I've also heard that the F4 world is its own specific universe - which is why they get drawn into the universe-collapse plotline. (Along with Doom, who may or may not be this 'verse, Deadpool and his 'verse, etc. BTW, there was a full launch party at the US Space And Rocket Museum (which is pretty cool, being a space nerd...)

Caught in a Bad Romulance...

What I picked up was that it was a confident, authoritative, paternal Reed, not the nervous, self-effacing nerd we've seen in other flicks. It's possibly because this Reed has already been through some... stuff... and it's changed him. This may also be why the family are under pressure - from celebrity, the expectation to deliver the world (repeatedly) from increasingly weird forms of eeeebil, and so on. And the Fantasticar does look amazing. Wonder if it comes in black, maybe with some purple pearlescent...

And here we go... Thoughts:

...cheerful stuff... So I had a quick surf through sci-fi movies that were set in the next few years. If you need cheering up, I wouldn't necessarily recommend Children Of Men, though it is a damn fine bit of filmmaking: and the Giorgio Moroder cut of Metropolis is set in 2027. (So even if that turns out to be a dystopia, we get a Freddy Mercury/Adam Ant/Pat Benatar soundtrack. Groovy.) There is one very odd/funny parallel though. Spike Jonze made a rather good little flick called Her set this year, about a nerdy creative slowly falling in love with his AI assistant... played by Scarlett Johansson. Siri was already around when that flick was made, so it's not a major tech leap. But fast forward a few years,and one Sam Altman wants a female voice for OpenAI's assistant Sky. And it sounded eerily like ScarJo. They swore it wasn't ScarJo. Couldn't be ScarJo. Was in no way voicecloned from ScarJo or matched on waveforms. Eventually, they said it was absolutely definitely a different actress, who lives in Canada, and no you can't talk to her. (Haven't heard that one since I was in middle school.) And they took it down. But I'm still not sure they've learned that lesson.

Lady Gaga - Abracadabra …y’know, I always wondered if the Dirge Of Chaos would drop serious beats…

...no wonder they left. Even if they got the fish first. Reminds me, I really need to reread So Long... and probably Last Chance To See as well. I don't want to go back to Mostly Harmless, since Adams admitted he was in a thoroughly miserable, blow-it-all-up place when he wrote it. BTW, is the Eoin Colfer final-final-final-1-FINAL.pdf (2) chapter And Another Thing any good?

Loki is also rumoured to make a guest appearance in these movies. To create Battleworld from the remnants of collapsing universes, Doom steals the power of the Beyonders. What if they swapped the Beyonders - who would take quite a chunk of movie to introduce - for Loki? EDIT: if they run the whole Battleworld concept, Doom's brute squad is... the Thor Corps. That's a whole lotta Hemsworths.

Jody Reynolds - Tarantula

At the moment, yes, because things are being a bit stressy, so 4am wakeup is normal. If I'm lucky, back to sleep by 5am, if not, have to just try and rest till my partner wakes at 7am. Things I've found that help me a bit, YMMV: HTP5 tablets, with or without Valerian extract (check for interactions, but should be OK with most things. Easy to find at most supplement/healthfood stores, probably cheaper on Amazon but check the brand) Late night short intense workout (HIIT 12 to 18 minutes) Warm drinks - decaf or herbal teas (some green teas are very much not decaf), or low-cal hot chocolate (not for diet purposes - sugar rush isn't good either) Before sleep, or if you wake up at night and your brain's fidgety, try an audiobook, relaxing music or hypnosis tape on low volume rather than doomscrolling or gaming good luck…

Small casting updates: Confirmed: Wyatt Russell returns as US Agent, Anthony Mackie as Sam, the new F4 crew, and of course, RDJ. Rumoured: Hayley Atwell as Peggy Carter, possibly in a SHIELD flashback or her What If? Watcher incarnation Chris Evans guests as Captain Hydra (meh) ScarJo as Madame Hydra (could be fun) ...and the one bit of casting I'd be genuinely pretty pleased with if true, Lou Ferrigno as Maestro Hulk. Plot: still thin on the ground, but could be the Battleworld arc: the MCU Multiverse begins to collapse (oh, good) due to extradimensional incursions. A single, twisted merged universe survives as Battleworld, ruled over by God-Emperor Doom. Filming starts late March/early April at Leavesden. Production will be back-to-back with Secret Wars. (Nearest decent pubs if you want to try celeb spotting are the Unicorn, and the Hammer In Hand. Good name if Thor's going to drop in, I guess.)

Confirmed that this ended theatrical run with $59m, making it the worst-performing of the Sony Spideyverse movies, and the only one not to beat its baseline budget. Remembering that once the theatres and distros take their cut, the studio gets maybe a third of the gross take, that's a $90m flat loss, plus marketing budget. Yikes.

Cleo Sol - There Will Be No Crying

The Toasters - Don't Let The B***ards Grind You Down

Brothers Osborne - Ain’t My Fault

I’m wondering if the guys from PennyArcade still hang out here from time to time… https://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2025/01/24/dirty-one