Felt like the influenced by Batman movie. Touch of Bladerunner detective noir, dark rainy crime ridden city with emo rock like the crow, cat and mouse like game between the riddler like the Dark Knight... Great influences and I really liked the film, but I dont think it has its own identity, which will keep it from being considered a great movie.
Now that they've green-lit the sequel it might get it's own identity as a package of two or three or four movies. I think Honest Trailers makes a case for this being the most noir of the franchise, and that's a start on it having a unique identity.
Pan wrote:
Cast was excellent, and I liked a more introverted Batman we got from Patterson. Turturro proved, once again, he is a real underrated actor that out did himself in this film (so much presence!). Colin Ferrell's Penguin gave a real comic book almost Dick Tracy feel.
They were well directed and don't feel derivative of anything that's come before. Though I've not seen all of the pre-Nolan films... in fact, maybe only the very first one. It's just too bad that superhero and scifi films don't ever get proper recognition for their actors. Ian McKellen killed it as Gandalf in the first LotR movie but had no real chance of winning Best Supporting Actor.
Pan wrote:
I was disappointed in Kravitz catwoman, not by her acting, but I feel the writing let her down. The character felt like she was there to move the plot around and be a cosplay doll. Jeffrey Wright's Gordon had the same issue. How many times does Gordon repeat, slowly, exactly what the audience just saw, knew, and read before he mutters it out? Also, why does anyone in the police force put up with Gordon? They clearly hate him and his friendship with Batman, but they just allow Gordon a wide berth.
Cosplay doll (aka Selina Kyle) was Catwoman's persona to be able to move in the underworld unnoticed as she planned out her next job. This movie is really the setup for Catwoman as a main player.
I saw Gordon as a guy who has no internal monologue and so mumbles out-loud what he's thinking. I expect he's tolerated on the force for two main reasons. One, he has dirt on most of them. Two, he's an effective, if eccentric, detective.
Overall, a good solid addition to the Bat flicks.
Kudos for the director for making a 3-hour movie that didn't creep along.
.
thejeff wrote:
At least to start with - you can bring in the gadgets to help cope with the more extreme supervillains that come along. Not like a jobs program would really help with the sometimes super-powered monsters that Gotham attracts.
A jobs program isn't really comics accurate either. That would be a whole different movie. Nor, IRL, does something like that actually solve the problem. Helps maybe if instituted among a plethora of other efforts, but even then doesn't "solve it". People are too complex for that kind of fix. Bill Gates rather proved that with the billions of dollars he spent on education. IIRC his schools were audited a decade later and got a "C" grade despite all the money and latest tech being thrown at the kids.
I finally saw this yesterday. It was overall really good, but I was really bothered by how often Batman gets shot and just doesn't care. At least three times, he gets shot and keeps standing there. Batman getting shot should at least get a reaction. Ideally, Batman uses stealth and brains to take out gunmen before they shoot.
He's an angry young man. By the time he's Batffleck he's well past his MMA phase and more into defeating opponents via 4D chess.
:D
Best film of the year so far. Best film noir (albeit in color) in my lifetime.
Okay, maybe it's tech companies proportion non-COLA raises according to where employees fall out in the company rankings and then cut from the bottom when there's a need to RIF.
As for teachers, I grew up next door to two and another lived across the street and down one house. Nice neighbors and I had friends who were in their class(es) and liked them. They weren't living in the worst neighborhood, far from it, and they always had at least one late model car around. Solidly middle class. I remember my mom talking with the next door teacher one summer and her saying that the toughest part of her job were the parents. Looking back on my middle school experience and you couldn't pay me enough to teach the middle grades.
Between the unions, totally disengaged parents and the helicopter parents, I don't know how the situation gets fixed because that covers a large majority of kids.
Parents of some means often home-school or private school their kids and I can say from my college experience those kids were always among the top students. Still, your kids will have to live and work with the majority.
Knowing the actual categories available for nomination is a broadly useful skill. Just sayin. Try it sometime and you might see it works for you. Clearly it can't hurt.
Why? I don't care what they call a given category. They change all the time. As long as I got the bases covered I'm good.
While I fervently argue in favor of higher pay and better working conditions for good teachers, articles like this one depress me at the state of education today, and how many teachers really need to be fired.
The TL;DR version: A girl transferred out of a San Francisco public school. In spite of never showing up, she got a report card anyway. The report card included two A's (social studies and P.E.) and at least one "pass".
If a student never once attends class nor turns in a single bit of homework, and you give them an A, you deserve to be fired. Period. (One of the A's has mitigating circumstances, but the other has no explanation beyond incompetence.)
One of my advisers for undergrad Uni never gave a grade lower than "B-" so as to avoid all the whiny parents, and the occasional whiny student.
Public K-12 are already generally understaffed and/or underpaid. Firing incompetent teachers won't change anything until they get directly compensated for their work. Maybe look at student improvement from beginning to end of the school year. The more improvement the more pay they get.
High paying tech companies are known for cutting the bottom n% from their staff each year. But then they typically pay better than public K-12 schools.
Any word on what charter or private K-12 schools pay their teaching staff?
Oh, I thought the complaint was about there being only 17 categories listed. Hence listing a few that were inapplicable to represent all the inapplicable ones.
At any rate I was simply listing the possible ones originally.
You know, "real shot" ≠ "must be nominated".
Reading for comprehension is a broadly useful skill. Just say'n. Try it sometime and you might see it works for you. Clearly it can't hurt.
Wizards of the Coast booked $952 million in tabletop game sales in 2021.... tabletop games accounted for 74% of the nearly $1.3 billion in sales for the segment in 2021, and grew at a blistering 44% rate.
I have been disappointed by many things in my life, but finding out that JRR Tolkien's name was not "Jolkien Rolkien Rolkien Tolkien" is probably top of the list.
Well there ya go! You've decided what to name your kid.
I enjoyed the episode, but I wish they’d have left Boba Fett’s show to Boba Fett.
Spoiler:
It was great seeing Luke again, and seeing him train Grogu. I hope that continues, but I doubt it’ll happen. Unfortunately, Disney seems bound to lock the current storyline into the crap future they previously showed.
I’m glad Luke got to meet Ashoka, but that’s something I wish they’d shown a lot more of.
Holy crapcakes on fire!!!! Cad F&$@ing Bane!!!
I hope Cob Vanth will live to fight another day.
Still, it seems like things are quickly escalating, with that last scene and all.
Spoiler:
Tying all all the character threads together, however tenuously, is a great way to cut down on the advertising budget and it allows the creators to show facets of known characters we haven't seen before - Luke talking to Ashoka e.g.
As for Cob Vanth's fate - Favreau and Filoni have learned from Lucas not to kill off named characters with speaking parts.
Even their bad episodes are curb-stomping the DCU TV-verse.
Still dominating the box office and is getting close to doubling the gross of the #2 movie from 2021. The movie is good but not that good. I can only explain it from the dearth of quality MCU releases prior.
I don't really feel the latest episode belonged in this show. Really, they should have saved this episode for The Mandalorian and basically only had the last scene with Fennec in BoBF. It was fine, and the mechanic is always a treat. I do wonder how Din knows where Luke and Grogu are. IIRC he didn't exactly tell anyone where he was going with his super secret Force baby.
Huh, I always thought it was merely a trope that super heroes with secret identities can't keep them secret when the plot requires. Which is virtually in every story. OTOH Mark might be onto something with the contractual angle.
I always think of the MCU/DCU movies like live-action cartoons and just go with it.
Thanks. That's why I wanted to ask. Still, sounds like I might have a new series to watch.
It's a cartoon so everything but the swearing I find odd to complain about. The art style isn't even particularly realistic. "Nudity" LOL!
It's rated at "16+" if that helps.
If you liked Amazon's Invincible you might like this.
I found the first episode to have an odd mix of scatological humor, sexual elements, hyper-serious character backstory and physics-defying combat to really get into it. I might watch the rest of it at some point but won't be setting aside time to make sure I do.
We've been using DnDBeyond for our 5e campaign, and the die roller has been epically bad. (My elf cleric hasn't managed to roll over a 5 on any knowledge check in around 7 sessions, leading to all kinds of blonde jokes.)
After we nearly died from bad rolls last session I created a spreadsheet and entered my rolls: Bottom 4%. Put in Shiro's character's rolls. Bottom 1.7%. We're already at a 1/750 chance of the two of us having such bad days together, but it's been consistent: Last session was no worse than any of my other sessions!....
You only need to get to ~1/10,000 before it becomes a legit complaint over a quirk, IMO.
API seems vanishingly unlikely in terms of monetization, IMO.
Precisely! What's not to like?
As my fav reviewer points out, if only it gets an opening in China it'll break the $2 billion mark. And I'll gloatingly note that her rankings match my plumb perspicacious prognostication from last week.
:D
I have that actually for a couple of the services but watching movies on my laptop with buds is not my preferred method. My cousin has a ridiculously nice* entertainment center and a comfortable couch.
*As in so nice that it's not practical to maximize the experience, not even close, for all the "noise" neighbors tend to complain about.
Dear Safeway,
If you have a store selector on your online shopping web site, then maybe, just maybe, you should require your shoppers to shop at that store!!!
Safeway Apparatchik wrote:
Dear NobodysHome,
The price point for that level of customer service exceeds the limit we've established. We thank you for your concern and please direct further suggestions to the nearest tualet.
FWIW - I've been shopping groceries in the middle of the night since before the pandemic. Staff always outnumber customers at those hours and, if your convo is pleasant, they'll even retrieve items from the dock that are apparently out of stock.
I'm assuming you pay a lot less if they split things up between two subscription
Not sure, but you definitely pay a lot less if you watch all your streaming content over at your cousin's place - the one subscribed to all the streaming services. It's practically free that way.
I participated in one campaign that totally imploded because the GM insisted on using WBL and yet clearly did not understand it to a functional degree.
Just watched it and I liked it quite a bit. Not in my MCU top 5, but that's a high bar. I don't really get why it didn't resonate with so many people though....
What if that's the point? Like, what if the whole movie is a satire of movies, or these kinds of movies? I don't know...
My dad's friend explained it as being like the final episode of the old Seinfeld sitcom - basically a big bleepyou to the whole shebang. "Oh, so you liked these characters did you? Well let me show you what big so-and-sos they were, and then show you some more, and then show you some more, and then rub your noses in it, and then do that some more...."
Having not seen any episode of Seinfeld that I can recall, I'll take his word for it.
I thought the chase with the mayor's assistant and the cyborg kids went on too long. It looked pretty cool, for sure, but they could have shaved about a minute off and use it for something else.
It did indeed feel like filler.
DungeonmasterCal wrote:
I don't think we've seen the last of Krrsantan. If he's written like most fans have come to regard Wookiees he's not going to just shrug off Fett's letting him go. Chances are if he comes back, he'll be on Fett's side. I do wonder why he doesn't "speak" like how we've come to expect Wookiees to do.
There's a lot of acting nuance that is necessarily missing from being trapped in a costume. If they were to rely too much on the same cues I think it would make Wookies seem like Clone Troopers - "Just another one of those mooks".
DungeonmasterCal wrote:
I suspect The Twins aren't going to just fade away, but the Pykes will very likely be the real heavies for the remainder of the season.
Yes, as long as there's another season. And yes, definitely.
I'm definitely going to get a short-time test done Sunday and will likely get the more in depth one, as well. I have some other health issues that might be exacerbated by the virus so I really try to stay on top of it.
For those with risk factors it's definitely the better move to 'over test' than under.
At first I figured he was the Denzel Washington of a prior generation. Then someone at the lab had the radio set to NPR and they did an extended piece on him. So he's more like the Denzel Washington + Morgan Freemen + Spike Lee of his generation.
Anyone find a N95 mask that is comfortable to wear for hours?
Cloth masks are apparently in the neighborhood of 30% effective if worn properly but I can't find the N95 type that doesn't pull my ears off or put creases in my face.
So here's an open question for FaWtL: Have any of you as players ever enjoyed the standard "Mirror, Mirror" trope?
Yet again, our otherwise-excellent GM is trying to control the PCs rather than the world, so he's secretly asked several of us to come up with "opposite" versions of our characters. So if you're playing a Good-aligned character, you need to play them as Evil. If you're playing an Evil-aligned character, you need to play them as Good. Etc., etc., etc.
I've been gaming and running games for 47 years now. I've had many GMs insist that "players love that trope!"
I have yet to have a single player say anything enthusiastic about it. About the best I've heard is, "Yeah, I can do it. But I don't really like it."
But my vast experience only encompasses around two dozen players, all local, so I'm sure there are many many other opinions, and I'm interested.
Note: Had to look up "Mirror, mirror" trope.
I think you're right. That trope is fun for an audience - people participating passively. Like for a TV show. It's no accident that the trope comes from TV and not TTRPGs.
In fact, you answer your own question:
"MY job, and ONLY my job, is to tell you how my character interacts with this world."
So if you have buy-in from players as DM to play out the trope then it works. Otherwise no.
I knew a guy who was awful at actual role-play or character background as a player. Brilliant in those respects as a DM.
How is that^ possible?
There's been a spat of "news" items around the Thwaites glacier recently. Even though it's been hitting the news from time to time for many years now. I think what's driving the news this time is the fact that the water measurements near the base of the glacier are about 3.6°C, whereas previously it was estimated to be about 2.0°C (see first video link above).
But the issue goes deeper than this mere mis-estimation of temperature (see second video link above). Sure, that will increase dramatically the rate at which the "plug" of Thwaites pops out. And as Thwaites goes, so too does the Pine Island glacier and indeed virtually the whole of the West Antarctica Icesheet, resulting in a global sea level rise of at least 10', and that before the end of the century. Eric Ringot is on record as saying it is difficult to know what a "tipping point" is but quite clearly we know not only that the "fuse is blown" (his words) and that we are well past anything like a tipping point for West Antarctica.
But the issue is yet deeper! Previously I learned that AGW would take ~1,000 years to modify the global thermohaline circulation, particularly working its way through to the circumpolar current around Antarctica. While that's still true, in a pedantic sort of way, it's also significantly untrue in the sense that rather obviously that mechanism was bypassed. Bypassed to the tune of ~100x the melt rate than heretofore estimated. Oopsy!
In other related news - the world is estimated to have burned a record amount of coal last year. This won't be coming from from NA or the EU to any significant degree. In fact, those areas are continuing their ablation of coal power at record setting rates. This then highlights the real issue for all things AGW as we head into the coming decades.
Namely, it matters almost entirely what China, India, Brazil, the rest of S and SE Asia, and Africa do. And essentially not at all what new reductions happen in the USA/Canada, Japan, or the EU. The issue is no longer up to the "West" to solve to any significant degree (with the small possible exception of Australian coal).
I'll draw a parallel to Lennon's song Imagine. It's a popular tune and got a bit of a celebrity boost last year. The lyrics are really quite nice, a perfect mix of longing and ennui, but they are terrible anthropology. At scale, humans don't act like the lyrics in Imagine tell us to and never have. Because we can't. So, while it sounds good to 'sound the alarm' in the "West" about our coal and other fossil fuels use, like the lyrics to Lennon's song it's really is a distraction from the real solutions we'll need over the coming few decades. Let's hope the deciders at COP27 can address the issue head on and not simply imagine a solution that merely sounds good.
I'm just putting my faith in Dave Filoni and trusting him and his creative team to put out another great Star Wars product. "The Book of Boba Fett" could still fall completely flat on its face, sure. But the folks who worked on the various series he's helmed seem to have a greater grasp on what makes Star Wars tick than the ones who put together the sequel trilogy.
This^
BTW - This guy seems to live to keep an eye on all things SW. You might check his video selection out.
