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Mycelia Board Game Review

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Outback Crossing Review

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What TV SHOWS are you watching?

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15 Jan 2018 15:31 #261000 by Shellhead
English has evolved as a a language. That's why it is so challenging for a modern English speaker to read Shakespeare.

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15 Jan 2018 16:37 #261003 by RobertB
The knowledge I've picked up today: this sort of discussion always drags me into the Great Vowel Shift, which everybody knows about :). But going on right now is the Northern Cities Vowel Shift . Who knew? I didn't.
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15 Jan 2018 17:39 #261009 by Black Barney
One of my bucket list things is to have Amy Hoggart call me stewpid to my face

I feel like it’s easily achievable

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15 Jan 2018 18:06 #261013 by Colorcrayons
I want Amy hoggart to get stewpid on my face.

I mean, whaaaaaat?

On topic, just started Electric Dreams on Amazon. It seems quite promising.
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18 Jan 2018 16:38 #261422 by Michael Barnes
Watched almost all of Black Mirror 4 last night.

- USS Callister was GREAT and easily the best show that I've seen of this lot. Such a neat mix of dystopia, satire, and loving homage. It was grim, but weirdly hopeful. I'd rank it as one of the top episodes, and it easily could have been a feature.

- Arkangel was OK, but some elements felt repetitive with previous episodes. What if phones but too much. The blurring out thing was in White Christmas, and that was such a strong concept there, not sure why Booker went back to that.

- Crocodile was interesting- while I was watching it, I was pretty meh on it. But as a sort of Hitchcockian thing with only a very slight (but hugely implausible) sci-fi angle, it worked. I found myself liking it more than I thought I did. Interesting that John Hillcoat directed it.

- Hang the DJ was fucking terrible. What if phones but too much. I guess folks like this one because it is like that one in the first season I also don't like, The Complete History of You or whatever. I do not really like the sex episodes much, I guess. San Junipero was VASTLY better than this one in terms of the "uplifting Black Mirror episode about relationships" category.

- Metalhead felt more like a short student film than a fully realized episode of an expensive TV show. I liked the ruthless, Kojima-like mini-Metal Gear and the horror angle was cool. But it also felt empty and sort of pointless. Black Mirror can tell much more interesting stories than "man versus machine". I mean, it had about the same message as The Terminator. It seriously felt like something someone would upload to Youtube to get the attention of producers.

Fell asleep right as Black Museum started.

I also tried to watch the Netflix Godzilla anime, it was TERRIBLE. Sooooo boring. It's like they tried to copy Battlestar Galactica but somehow make it a Godzilla thing. The Galactica is actually in it, I swear.
-

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18 Jan 2018 16:51 - 18 Jan 2018 16:53 #261424 by charlest
Black Mirror Spoiler Warning....



What I liked about Hang the DJ was the implications and irreverence of the whole thing. So we've developed a complex AI that's able to model human interaction and entire worlds, and what are we using it for?

And you have this complicated simulation that's a test, which is passed by breaking the system. It's like a self-referencing allegory.
Last edit: 18 Jan 2018 16:53 by charlest.

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19 Jan 2018 15:19 #261536 by Shellhead
I finished Season 4 of Game of Thrones, and have waited a few days to reflect upon it. Season 3 and 4 together were addressing the events of book 3, A Storm of Swords. Many of the book fans consider Storm of Swords to be the best book in the series, but despite having two seasons to cover it, the show opted to cut out some of the action in favor of more talking scenes. It's a necessary evil, because the show can't just give us exposition and inner thoughts of the characters, at least not without resorting to dubious voiceover techniques.

Overall, the show is doing an admirable job with the adaptation so far, and the differences have all been plausible extrapolations from the books. For example, Brienne never even met the Hound in the books, let alone fought him. But their fight scene was fine on the show, because it was as brutal as the fight scene with Rorge and Biter that we didn't get (because the Hound and Arya fought them instead), and both Brienne and Hound were true to the skill levels and capabilities shown in the books.

I remain disappointed by many of the supporting characters. Sam doesn't seem as intelligent. The show's version of the Onion Knight is flat and boring. Podrick should be unintentionally funnier due to his awkwardness with Brienne. The Red Viper should have been a more vivid character. Etc. I have given more thought to my objection to the word SteeYouPid, and I realize it's not so much the pronunciation as the anachronism that bothers me. Likewise, I am growing annoyed with Littlefinger's accent. It was brilliant but maybe too on the nose to cast Aidan Gillen as Litflefinger, given that he had already become famous for playing an ambitious politician on The Wire. Somehow Gillen was able to overcome his Irish accent to play a convincing modern American, but his attempt to play a medieval resident of Westeros has been really bad Irish brogue so far.

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19 Jan 2018 21:55 #261547 by Cranberries

charlest wrote: Black Mirror Spoiler Warning....



Warning: Spoiler!

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24 Jan 2018 12:24 #261969 by barrowdown

barrowdown wrote:

Michael Barnes wrote: I find myself oddly intrigued by the new, morally repellent and lascivious Devilman: Crybaby anime that Netflix has produced. I've always loved Go Nagai's style but other than bits and pieces (and lots of Mazinger) I've never caught much of the older Devilman.


I watched the first four episodes last night entirely off your mention that it was Bakshi-like. The devil animation and transformations are great. Just about everything else is not. I have a hard time wrapping my head around the general animation style because some of it is well-done traditional anime, some is the gorgeous, disgusting pseudo rotoscoped Bakshi stuff, and some is terrible.


I finished the series up over the weekend and... I really liked it. The final three episodes were excellent
Warning: Spoiler!
.

It's not something I could actually recommend to anyone, but I thought it was a great series and I am still thinking about how it all wrapped up. The first episode certainly lays out the extremes the viewer can expect so it is definitely not hiding how far it is going to go.

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24 Jan 2018 12:27 #261971 by Michael Barnes
Against my better judgment, I watched several episodes of Rick and Morty. I figured it was such a massive cultural force that I should at least familiarize myself with it. And I have had friends of taste, class and dignity recommend it as a "great sci fi show".

Well, here's the thing. If it weren't so exhaustingly vulgar and gross, I would probably love it. The characters are really well written and more complex than you'd expect. Some of the smarter comedy is great. The sci fi stuff is awesome- bizarre, weird, and really imaginative. And I like the general "Doc and Marty" gone horribly wrong setup. But it just always loops back to the really juvenile, gross-out humour stuff that makes me feel like I am too old to be watching it. And I do not like to feel too old to do anything.

I do like it, and I will probably watch it all...but the scatological and sexual stuff is just really overdone. Not that it can't be "adult"- there are some aspects where the MA rating is good, like I really liked the concept of the planet ruled by women that throw out sexbots for the idiot, war-mongering males to impregnate to continue the species...it was more detailed and well-thought out then you'd expect in a show that that previously had a crude semen joke.

There was one thing that really did shock me and in a way that I thought was really effective and completely out of nowhere because it was DEAD SERIOUS. I guess it's a spoiler here so caution...in the one where Morty gets to "lead an adventure".. they go into this tiny restaurant on these giant steps in front of a giant courthouse (long story). While they are there, Morty goes into the bathroom and there's this jellybean dude in there. Typical R&M goofy shit. The jellybean is kind and talks to Morty. But then, the jellybean gets handsy. And then RAPEY. It's like the whole thing goes from grooming to sexual assault in the blink of an eye and it is NOT funny at all. Morty shoves the jellybean into the toilet and slams the lid on him repeatedly. He goes out and Rick is all like normal and obnoxious, Morty is visibly shaken and traumatized and just wants to leave.

So all of that I thought was a total WTF moment...but then it continues. It turns out the Jellybean is the king of this fantasy land, and when he shows up in town to meet the heroes (Rick and Morty), they escape with a portal gun. And then Morty's arm comes out of the portal and shoots the jellybean dead.

So that was shocking too...but then there's MORE. In an epilogue, it shows these two villagers. One of them comes up and says "I found these in a lockbox" and shows the other some photos that we don't see, and he is repulsed. They burn the photos and agree to never tell anyone because "what he meant to people was more important than what he actually was". Camera pulls back to show a memorial statue of the jellybean king with his arm around a kid holding a balloon.

WHAT THE FUCK. That all just kind of blew my mind. Suddenly the show just went completely pitch black to make a comment about pedophilia in high places. I'm sure some folks probably laughed and thought it was grimly funny...but I'm pretty sure the writers intended for it to be dead serious.

Anyway, I'm more of a Gravity Falls guy I guess.
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24 Jan 2018 12:31 #261972 by hotseatgames
I have watched the first 3 episodes of Electric Dreams on Amazon. It isn't bad... I'd describe it as "Black Mirror for people who can't handle Black Mirror"

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24 Jan 2018 12:47 #261977 by Shellhead
I watched one episode of Rick and Morty a while back, shortly before the Szechuan sauce fiasco involving McDonald's. Like Barnes, I had similar mixed feelings even though it wasn't as extreme as the jellybean dude episode. My cat was completely enthralled and watched the entire episode with his full attention. I have heard that many fans are disgruntled now that there is a female writer on the writing team. Rick and Morty seems to attract sociopathic fans, so I haven't felt the urge to watch any more episodes.

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24 Jan 2018 14:15 - 24 Jan 2018 14:20 #261993 by Gary Sax
I'm there with you. Rick and Morty is very good for just those reasons, Barnes, moments like that. I really did not want to like it when I watched it. I have no affinity for it and I wasn't like way into it as a fanboy at day 1, but my wife said we should watch it like 4 months ago and we watched the first season. It was extremely good, especially with moments like that.

That said, we haven't watched season 2 yet. I actually find the show very overwhelming and heavy. It's the same way I haven't been watching some other great but stressful shows.

It reminds me of the polygon post about the szechuan thing.
www.polygon.com/2017/10/9/16447460/rick-...mcdonalds-fans-anger

There's this really dark, disturbing undercurrent to Rick and Morty and it sort of shocks me that the people who are Such Huge Fans don't see it. I mean, I guess not because fans are bad and this sort of nerd on the internet is dumb as fuck. Anyway. Rick is *bad.* The show goes to great lengths, without directly yelling about it and giving some visual clue or something, to tell you that he's very bad. He's a selfish waste of a person. Even Morty's shitty family at least has values, wants something. Rick is basically the ultimate version of "clever cynical guy with no values or agenda." He's like the perfect, most capable twitter poster. He's extremely disturbing; I think that the showrunners are trying to say something about what everyone seems to be striving for these days in terms of being cool, caustically sarcastic, and what the ultimate endpoint is.
Last edit: 24 Jan 2018 14:20 by Gary Sax.

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24 Jan 2018 14:41 #262000 by hotseatgames
Okay.... forgive my ignorance because I have never had the chance to see Rick and Morty. Which one is Rick and which one is Morty?

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24 Jan 2018 15:08 #262009 by Gary Sax
Rick is the disgusting old man with all the tech.

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