one-armed dwarf

Watched 3 episodes of Shogun, it's a 10 episode miniseries which is a sorta remake of an older 80s miniseries by the same name. That older one has Toshiro Mifune in it, the guy who's in like every Kurosawa movie, which had me well interested until I read they kinda do it from the perspective of the main character (who's an Englishman) and don't sub or dub any of the Japanese parts. Sorta a 'Lost in Translation' kinda thing, which sounded a bit dated

This new show isn't like that. This new one has Hiroyuki Sanada playing Mifune's old role, who I mainly know from Ring but checking his wiki he's been in tons of action blockbusters like Avengers and John Wick. It interweaves all the different perspectives. The premise is it's set around this period in Japanese history which I've a vague idea of, this civil war that happened between the death of Toyotomi Hideyoshi (he's a baddie in Onimusha, that's how I know his name) and the rise of the next shogun. The way they do it here though is they take a leaf out of the book of Pro Evolution Soccer and change everyone's name and loosely adapt real history into its own fiction. The main dude, Yoshii Toranaga is based off a guy called Tokugawa Ieyasu (if you're inclined to view history as being a 'spoiler', maybe don't click that link, but it's interesting imo). Meanwhile, there's some intrigue from the colonial side with Portuguese Catholic missionaries trying to establish their own sphere of influence through the region. For some reason, all the portuguese speak English. I suspect it's a decision they made cause an entirely subtitled show is a hard thing to get eyeballs on in the anglosphere. It's fine, no biggie really.

So it's all about this political power struggle, and this English guy called Blacktorn gets mixed up in it. It's pretty good, got lots of exciting action in it but requires a hefty upfront investment of your attention span for the first episode and a bit as it lays out the power and political structures. However it balances that out with some violence and nudity, so you know.

I'm not entirely on board with the insane hype it's gotten but it's solid and kinda dovetails with a lot of stuff I've been watching recently anyway. 

The reviews for this have been quite good, and the demo turned me around on it in a way even though it's really janky so I think I'll buy it. It's Metal Gear Rising 2 at home so maybe that will do

Besides the reviews though, I found this writeup from Gene Park interesting for while it doesn't necessarily defend its character designs it gives some important context that isn't really included that often in the culture war around it.

If you want to get around paygate

https://archive.ph/v5g00

Well I am not a mortal nemesis of nobody, so I would recommend this listing instead. Very high seller rating, higher than the dreamcast guy

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/315314329904?itmmeta=01HW5GKDJ1YZGF7CBFW8C0RWY4&hash=item496a32d930:g:fGwAAOSw0hxmIntS&itmprp=enc%3AAQAJAAAA4D8wCaijYinu3hgxld8fpNbsJE5RqkykdTGMDDQX%2FwOYEluT6Pk8QYRAKGUvT8UCJabCMBVIEMWZGZXYTqw1BQuA79%2Fz7GWzCg8DdlexmsOiVW2dJ76e5JojPRd2lkMQP91j%2FYMY5WhqAQYcAteTex5SjoLLGq59SSig%2ByrZ0C3UJKk7D6NjqOTz2s20t8mmPRmYvCgD8MPS2BQsrcydC5b6gldbmcMLhcSiB08XIpUHkuKiMwW7SnAQi1sC9VeyZEr7zWO87Q2lRDQDdc2lDVFpkPazSCdNA3cKI9cVvu8M|tkp%3ABk9SR7DZzbDhYw

I watched Naked (1993) which stars David Thewlis going on a sort of Odyssey* around London for a few days/nights. It's like what if Leopold Bloom was a dickhead. It's a film I really didn't like at all, despite its great acting performances. Thewlis plays this very loquacious but abusive as fuck asshole, especially to women, kind of a narcisstic emotional vampire with how he seduces people with his quick wit but then mistreats them to feed his own ego. I know there's additional layers here but it didn't really work for me cause it wasn't the film I really needed to watch right now.

*he holds the book up at one point saying "you know what this is about, yeah", so it's kinda on purpose. Meant I could even predict the ending, sort of. 

Then I watched The Lobster (2015), which is directed by the guy who did Poor Things recently and The Killing of a Sacred Deer. It's set in this sort of dystopic future where being single is illegal, kind of like a Logan's Run situation. If you don't have a partner, they take you off to this hotel where you have 45 days to partner up or you get turned into an animal of your choosing. People pair up based on superficial similarities, like having a nice smile but also things like being short sighted, having a limp or suffering from nosebleeds. Everyone speaks with this kinda flatness of affect in their dialogue and has this sort of autistic kinda way of relating to each other and the world. 

I thought it was really funny in that deadpan way that this director's films are. It's sort of like what if David Lynch directed an episode of Father Ted, or something. Colin Farrell is great in this type of surreal-bordering-on-horror-comedy, hope he keeps doing these types of films. I prefer Sacred Deer though cause it veers more in the direction of absurd horror than comedy. 

This scene made me lol but it's NSFW

Looks about on-brand, seems neat and will catch on streaming

On the integration of X-Men, I dunno if the idea here is they just chuck in a bunch of 'variants' into the existing universe or try and do it from the ground up. Tom from Cruises make it pretty clear this is some other Logan, I mean I guess that's inevitable  

I don't really agree on it being too long tbh.

edit, putting stuff about themes in a spoiler

I mentioned this when Nag replied sarcastically but I actually do think that The Act of Killing is something worth watching at some point and comparing to this, it's about the same thing (I'm fairly sure that it was reading material for Zone of Interest tbh).

Not immediately though, gotta space that shit out with a couple Adam Sandler films or something. Give the evil some time to breathe.

That's very undemocratic of you

Mad boring episode, I'm going to save up the last 4 and watch them together. Aint here for a drip feed about bird people in space

I thought this was an interesting article. It has spoilers for episode 5, quotes from one of the creators (guy who left before the show got released, for reasons)

Synecdoche, New York (2008) Starring the late Philip Seymour Hoffman, it's about a tortured playwright trying to make his masterpiece. While watching I figured that it must be by the Being John Malkovich guy and it sure is except he only wrote that film whereas this one he directed and wrote. It has that sort of 'mindspace' thing going on where time is very subjective and seems to collapse inwards. 

There's great moments and it's conceptually very cool in how it constructs its narrative but it's very fatiguing. The subject matter was like being shoved into a mid life existentialist crisis and pressing the fast forward button but also the rewind button at the same time. Which is sorta the point I think. This was a double bill with something else I watched and it's a shame I didn't pick something a bit more life affirming to watch after it, lol. 

Good film but leaves you in a funk

I don't like this whole remake 'purism' type arguments. Feels really pushy. Lisa Trevor is literally an 'OC' that completely changes the canon of the game. What are we doing here? lol

This stuff is way too dogmatic when it's framed this way. All approaches have their own pros and cons, faithful remakes or not. It doesn't have to be this hill to die on all the time

I like the idea of doing an old style 32 bit game. It's something they could possibly do, Maf posted a video somewhere with a game that had that very stylised isometric look but was 3d

I mean, I've played it before. Being real about it?

No, it doesn't have to be 4k realistic anything. tbh I don't want to get into the to and fro about it, my point is more I find cosmetic remakes like that FFIV one very uninteresting and redundant. But something transformative, which makes a new game out of something old or gives it a very different spin, I'm more into that. Especially as I have zero trouble going back to play the original anyway, and it can offer a lot more flexibility. That's the main point I was trying to make

You're not going to change my mind on that anyway so I'll just leave it at that.

Kind of, but I was mainly thinking of ways they could compartmentalise the scope a bit (ie, mission based structure). They already have a character action game framework in FFXVI, and it's something that they could iterate on maybe. Albeit XVI is visually in a whole other league

I think the mis-step with FFVII is they tried to imagine doing their own type of MCU thing with it. The way each game 'sets up' a later installment, like a sort of building block and it gets you engaged in the hype cycle for the next release. But the two games that are out don't really have beginnings, middle and endings. They are each the beginning and middle and are paced and structured in a very strange way that seems to give no thought into how it feels to move through them. There's no sense of momentum or energy to it, which for all their faults aren't a problem shared with MCU films. The new plot twists in the endings seem to be part of a way around that, leading to speculation and theory crafting. But I don't think it's hit in a way that's really captured the zeitgeist like Square might have hoped. At least not beyond the comments section of a Maximillian Dood video anyway

That said I prefer even that to a remake which feels very 're-iterative'. I prefer an ambitious failure to a very familiar yet safe attempt because the latter is something I've already played anyway. Though I generally don't like how the Octopath stuff looks anyway, with the blurry DOF effect. 

Maybe what they should really look at is something more of a genre transplant. Like what if FFVI was a character action game or something. Some form of middle ground. Look at how Granblue's new RPG is designed, with multiple playable characters. It's possible, with some compromise

When I get a house I look forward to a giant ass TV being one of the first frivolous things I get after all the super expensive grown up boring things like appliances and flooring and shit, and using that thing just for films and games

This just got announced. There were a number of elements about the first that put me off, but this is a great looking trailer

The idea with it afaik is it's a RPG which is very into verisimilitude. Things being all realistic, even to a mundane and frustrating degree, but doing so in order to make its role playing feel immersive

I feel it's probably the kind of game I would like. The presentation here is pretty impressive, Witcher vibes

Prediction:

I don't think making games which appeal to an older audience makes much sense. There's been a lot of talk about AAA SP games seemingly being played less and less by younger people, a few recent examples, but none of it is accompanied by 'oh, also the game did great cause of that'. It's a really bad problem where the numbers don't really add up

The industry is in a bad spot, it's hard to put an optimistic spin on any of it tbh. I find this guy's letter dumb. You might as well ask for movie blockbusters aimed purely at older people (I guess Oppenheimer is kind of that, but not really)

So like, here's the thing I'll give it credit for, it navigates its world and lore-building in a way that makes it feel really dense and full of history. Which I mean it is, it's adapting the comics after all. But it does it pretty deftly and swiftly in a way that doesn't overwhelm you. Also even though it's rushed (again I think it's a budget thing) it somehow still sort of feels like it marches to its own beat in a way that you don't get at all from how formulaic the MCU films have been. There's like an element of creative freedom here which is refreshing from how stagnant the other Disney stuff is

I agree that the level of hype I've seen is hard to understand, I watched a podcast (CastleSuperBeast) and Woolie on it called it the best 30 minutes of TV he saw (ep 5). I think he should watch Barry. But like it's good to have things which do a good job with this stuff, cause they've really salted the earth pretty bad in the past couple years with lots of shitty films/series. Good to have something which is the opposite of that.

Also the best super hero stuff to me is the stuff which focuses on its villains imo, and gives them an inner life which grounds their villainy in more understandable terms. I stan Magneto

I mean my load is also unblown, but I mostly just appreciate it's doing things with this property that aren't endless franchise building blocks over and over. It's so tedious. So here they're doing their own thing in their own way and it works well on that level. 

You would hope between all the flops last year and the success of this that Disney might learn some useful lessons.

(I apologise for writing the sentence 'my load is unblown')

I watched the 5 episodes of X-Men 97 that have been released, tho at the time of posting it looks like there is a sixth but I guess the 5 that are out sort of form a unit by themselves anyway.

It's not really what I expected this to be, in that it's a continuation to a kid's cartoon that's much more about the relationships of the mutants than I would assume the 90s one could ever really get into, cause I think that one was for little kids.

It's very stylish yet also effortlessly retro. The animation is a bit strange, looks like Archer sometimes, but it's fine cause every big combat sequence has some sort of unique way of expressing what the different traits of the mutants are. Which, you know, it's actually kinda important cause I don't know who the fuck half of them are, like time travel man. That's the thing with it also, it doesn't drop you into the deep end but it does sort of expect you to keep up cause it's running forward from the position it was in nearly 30 years ago. 

The storytelling is very crowded though, but in a kinda lopsided way. Some bits feel as slow as they should, and with appropriate buildup to specific big moments. Other stuff feels like they just rammed it in there and pushed the fast forward button. You just have to roll your eyes at some of it cause it feels like a cliffnotes adaptation of some older mythologies these characters have so it won't really leave its mark. It feels a bit like it's under some sort of budget pressure,  there's one ongoing thing with Storm which feels slotted in so inelegantly to everything else but also some pretty big things with Jean Grey which feel like they could have their own entire season. But there's also a lot of IMO cool creative things it does within those tight confines. It is what it is. There's one episode where they veer into some horror stuff, another where it's some 90s video game inspired shenanigans. They make it work somehow

Magneto is great but I've always liked this character in every iteration I've seen him him, especially that Nazi hunting shit he was doing in First Class. Great scene. Episode 2 and 5 of this also have great scenes with him demonstrating his power, but also giving him some story developments which take him in surprising directions. He doesn't just fuck things up, he also fucks. Even if you're not caught up the cultural osmosis will stop it from being impenetrable, you don't need to know what that cloud guy thing is in the post above. 

I do wish though they were able to take their time a bit with the pacing here, and that they replaced Wolverine's voice actor cause he sounds fucking ridiculous. Ray Chase plays Cyclops, aka Noctis. I've seen some people call him robotic but I think he's fine. 

I finished it now. I'm all over the place on how I feel about it, it's got plenty of peaks and valleys. I'd say it's the best video game adaptation for the reason that the makers deeply understand the thing they're adapting (as mentioned) but also are completely unafraid to leave their own mark on the property and take massive swings

That said, it relies really heavily on this type of drip feed storytelling I've grown to really dislike, from other TV shows to FFVII Remake to this, this kinda 'mystery box' stuff where they draw out a mystery to keep you tuning in, and do it really slowly. I hate this type of storytelling cause it just feels like episodes pass you by with nothing interesting being said in them. Westworld did it too I think, which is what these guys worked on previously. I'm glad this was a binge drop, cause I would have dropped it otherwise. It's pretty clear to me IMO that the show is not actually intended to be binge viewed, they wanted to do a weekly thing to get engagement going cause of the big megatons it drops towards the end. But I'm glad I didn't have to put up with that nonsense cause in this day and age it sorta feels a bit of an artificial thing considering the way on-demand viewing works. At the same time, I bet the show's viewing figures would have benefited with that (not that it's hurting in that regard)

I think towards the end it gets a bit too serious and dour and forgets to have a bit more fun with the setting, cause of the things mentioned. But even with all that it's actually a great installment in the Fallout series, a sort of Fallout 5 in a way. It made me resume my New Vegas playthrough and put Fallout 1 on the backlog for an isometric RPG to play at some point. I don't love it, there's bits that fucking suck, but it's just a much more interesting work than The Last of Us was. It's not a facsimile like that was. It's pulpy, but in a good way. While the video game coding of its world can be distracting at points, it's also just sort of part of the deal that you should be ready to accept anyway cause it's not embarrassed about its video game origins either, and they find innovative ways to integrate aspects of that gaming language into plot developments but also its narrative expression (try to tell which karma alignment each of the main characters is supposed to represent, and which way their moral compass tilts overtime)

Yeah, sales on PS5 are slowing down I think so this is clearly for a small group of crazies who already have one cause prices refuse to go down for any of this stuff

I've sort of had my fill of FFVII Rebirth so I don't feel the urgency as much now, but when/if they make that third one I might reconsider

1 hour ago, Maf said:

Oh, well. I'm downloading Fallout76. The show made me really want to play one of those games, so it was successful in that way 

Why howdy there pardner! I see you have downloaded and installed Fallout 76. A good choice! However I do not mean to be untoward partner, but did you actually mean to download Fallout New Vegas? It's an easy mistake to make pardner, so I thought I should remind you that Fallout New Vegas is also available on gamepass! 

Just go to manage storage and clear that space away and make room for Fallout New Vegas, it's easy! Anyway thought I would just try and help you out there pardner, it's an easy mistake to make. Don't be afraid to holler if you need anymore tips on installing Fallout New Vegas! Happy trails!