Contentious C

I clearly hate myself, because in addition to the constant slog of watching new movies, I'm re-reading Wheel of Time because 1 interminable hobby apparently isn't enough. I think I expressed my feelings about the show enough; it's very 'two steps forward, two steps back' in its handling, though it cut the flab of the first book. The second book isn't one I like much - I think the 4th one was probably my favorite - but it's a good stage-setting book for the things that are to come. This is the first time I revisited it since the only time I read the last 5 (ugh!) books, so it's sort of interesting to see certain characters in their true light from the beginning. I was reminded that I kind of had a crush on Moiraine while reading them when they first came out, and I'm also reminded that that gross-ass May/December cradle-robbing motherfucker Thom Merrilin can go fuck himself with his flute. Bad shipping, bad shipping!

Oh, don't worry, all 8 of them are doing that sort of thing already by standing outside NIH & Walter Reed with "Fire Fauci" signs.

For those who have played it, how much is AssCreed: Odyssey really like Witcher 3 or Skyrim (the two closest comparisons my Steam account draws)? I've never played a single entry in the series and I'm not exactly sure I'm missing anything to begin with. But I could go for a Witcher-y game that isn't Geralt.

There's a certain kind of joy that only comes from seeing an expensive shitshow of a team puke up a hairball at home. Ja Morant fed the Nets some castor oil tonight. I hope there's some shot they can get past Phoenix and/or GS, because I'd love to see this team go deep in the playoffs. Hopefully they can keep things together long enough to make it to the next level.

Maybe, but you figure he had to learn that kind of Uncling from someone.

This is correct. I'm trying to watch Shadow & Bone while I still have Netflix for another week-plus, but man, it's just not - it's not anything. It's not funny, it's not different, it's not well-written or acted, it's not quirky. It's not terrible, either, but it's just lukewarm across the board. Of course, I could probably watch the lead actress read the phonebook, but as soon as it goes to one of the other plot threads, I lose interest. It's also yet another "Being the Chosen One is SOOO HARRRRD" thing that I would love to see vanish from the face of the Earth. But hey, if you're into generically-executed Steampunk/Alternate Earth history/Specialized Magic fantasy shows, you might not be as bored as me.

I came to the last page and had to backtrack, thinking there was some *even crazier* Antonio Brown-related drama with his own family that was the "aunt/uncle" situation, but this is kind of better. But let's face it, AB probably does have something at least that weird going on in his family, and we're just not privy to it.

Wednesday's pre-emptive news: Jalen Hurts out with COVID...

That's kind of the understanding. I've also heard "sex card/bromide collectible game with occasional rhythm combat sections" as a description for Witcher 1. There are a couple of lengthy, full-blown playthroughs of it on Youtube that make it clear how the story isn't even that good, or at least suffers from a number of serious lapses that aren't typically present in # 3. You can skip conversations with major characters like Zoltan and Dandelion and then enter a later conversation where it seems like you're talking about something you never talked about before, because it's just convenient to the plot to discuss the thing you never actually discussed during the meeting that never happened. I couldn't get into # 2 after playing # 3, because even then the combat and movement felt too clunky. Say what you will about certain AAA studios and their RPG/FPS games - and I have - but at least their controls are smooth, and I'm terribly spoiled on them. I'd love to see CDPR update both games, but I doubt they ever will unless they are desperate for cash.

Maybe so, but it looks like someone on Iowa State wants Clemson to cover the spread with that baffling tip up instead of batting it down. Of course, DJ is also fucking terrible, so there's that perpetual fly in the ointment.

Figure I should squeeze in another one of these now, especially since this has a handful of double-dips and rewatches in it. Plus it means I can kick off 2022 with one of these around the 5th or 6th when the new thread is here. Day 167 and counting of Movie Watching in Place of Having a Life, It's Christmas and We're All in Misery Edition. Hot Garbage Serendipity - I fucking hate Christmas movies. I fucking hate schmaltz. I fucking hate Molly Shannon. I fucking hate movies I could have written on the back of a napkin while drunk. This checks all the boxes. There is literally one scene of this film that works, where Kate Beckinsale tries to rush to stop John Cusack's wedding, but gets there "too late" or so she thinks, and she brings it for once (she's usually not much for being believable, or good, or anything besides stupefyingly beautiful, let's face it). Otherwise this is 90 minutes of people being stupid for the sake of the plot and then it's blessedly over. I blame High Fidelity for making this movie possible, though it would have sucked with anyone, not just Cusack. Destination Wedding - They probably should have gone with the alternate title for this. This is actually pretty funny when it's just Winona Ryder and Keanu Reeves savaging each other with withering remarks, but the problem is they're the only two speaking roles in the whole movie. Eventually they have to just be catty at other people, and...that doesn't work. You don't get any reaction shots, you don't get anybody veering away from them at all costs, you just get the two of them saying misanthropic stuff that seems charming to each other, and, welp, that's the entire goddamn movie. This is about 15% of a good idea that somehow got stretched way out of proportion. The Proposal - Man, I fell out of the rom-com tree and hit all the ugly branches on the way down this week. This came out 2 years before the vastly superior Dan in Real Life, and it tries so so so so hard to hit some of the same notes. The vacation home, the extended family, the sneaking around; not a single bit of it works here in this charmless, lifeless snoozefest that possibly marks the beginning of Ryan Reynolds Doing Ryan Reynolds Things rather than acting. He's definitely on the Mount Rushmore of "I'll Be Myself Turned to 11 Rather than Learn My Craft". When even Betty White is not funny in something, you know you have fucked up mightily. Hudson Hawk && - Obviously a rewatch, because who hasn't seen this a billion times on TNT, right? But let's face it, there are two things that are true about this film. First, it undeniably belongs in the Hot Garbage category. They start screwing up the premise from the word go: they say da Vinci's stuff happens in 1481 and Eddie gets released "exactly 500 years later" - so, what, this movie released in *1991* is actually telling us events from *1981*? Yeah right, you just done fucked up. And it doesn't exactly improve from there. The second thing that is true is that this movie is the epitome of a movie that's so bad it's good. It isn't funny when it intends to be, but it's uproarious when it isn't trying. The characters wouldn't be believable in any world, any reality, anywhere at any time outside this crackpot scenario, but somehow they kinda work together. This is still what I think of when I think of Richard Grant, and it's probably my favorite Andie MacDowell role despite the fact that she's been significantly better in lots of films. Tell me you can keep a straight face during her pretend-to-be-drugged scene and I'll call you a fucking liar. I think what really struck me this time, since I probably hadn't watched it in 20 years, is that everyone knew it was a lark and clearly had a ton of fun making it, even if it bombed and the critics hated it. I, for one, am glad it exists. Kingsman: The Golden Circle - Ugh, this was dumb all around. I figured these movies were going to be James Bond for Chavs, and I wasn't 100% wrong, but they're more like Austin Powers for Chavs with ballsier stunt work. I mean, what else would you expect from the guy who also gave us Wanted and Kick-Ass? There's a part of me that has a hard time believing he also wrote Old Man Logan. I just watched this today and still can't tell you much of anything about it, which is an indication of how little impression it made. Seemed like a waste of Elton John, and definitely felt disappointing we didn't get a Merlin/Ginger Ale hook-up scene. Acceptable Kingsman: The Secret Service - Slightly less dumb, slightly less obvious, slightly more memorable, but only just. It felt too focused on the winnowing of trainees, because prior to that, it had a fairly different vibe. The early Harry/Eggsy bits feel almost like someone tried to take Good Will Hunting and turn it into a big, dumb action movie, but then it does away with even the pretense of having something worthwhile to say about class or power or anything like that because why not just blow shit up instead? But the special effects are pretty good for 2014 non-Marvel work, the characters play off one another well, and it's nice to see something that doesn't take the dead-obvious route of having the two recruits sleep together and actually let them have a respectful, friendly relationship (which of course they fucked up with the sequel). I liked the consistency to Richmond Valentine's aversion to blood, too. Midnight Run - See? Here's where you can go back to hating me for writing this stuff. I really don't see why people have made a big deal about this movie. There's maybe a kernel or 5 of character development between DeNiro and Grodin, and the ending kind of makes sense, but it isn't particularly funny, it isn't particularly well-written, and it isn't particularly well-performed. Grodin has a few good scenes where he grumbles the last word about something or other, but otherwise a lot of this felt pretty flat to me. And then there are the moments where the soundtrack overdoes it and I thought, "Jesus, this is some real Beverly Hills Cop-quality schlock here," but hey, turns out they had the same director. No wonder; never liked that movie, don't think a whole lot more of this one. While We're Young - This is another "ran out of steam too early" sort of film, and the ending is definitely a bit flat, but at least the first 45 minutes or so of it work well before the unraveling pulls you down a different direction. Ben Stiller's character is an interesting one, at times sympathetic and at times too much of a loser to think he deserves anything but what he gets in this movie. Naomi Watts is her usual self, but the real moneymaker here is Adam Driver (I know, you're just as surprised as me), who should have taken a few notes from this before playing Kylo Ren, because at least this character is believably corrupt. It has some interesting things to say about judgments and ageism and the way we represent ourselves, but I don't know if there's one single moment in the film that truly drives home any of that well enough that you come away thinking about it deeply after the fact. Rope - Today, this feels more like a compelling experiment than a movie with something to say. Its importance is basically impossible to miss, since there's only one true cut in the whole film, so stuff like Before Sunset and 1917 owe their existence to Hitchcock showing everyone how it's done. But, then again, when didn't Hitchcock do that? This might also be the rare film where the 4:3 aspect ratio benefits the movie, since it makes the hidden cuts easier to hide. It's also funny to see the Criterion blurb that talked about the "queer subtext" in the film, to which I would respond, "Pretty sure that was supertext, there, buddy." This would be kind of an interesting double feature to do with It's a Wonderful Life on Christmas, if you really need your Jimmy Stewart fix. Awesome The Power of the Dog - Reading some of the commentary about this made me wonder where some film critics have been the last 15 years. It's strange to see people gush over Jane Campion using big landscape shots to create a feeling of isolation and loneliness, like we didn't just have Chloe Zhao win Best Director for doing the same thing last year. Or, you know, literally tons of other directors doing the same thing lately - Cary Joji Fukunaga in Jane Eyre and True Detective, Chloe Zhao also in The Rider, Denis Villeneuve in every single thing he's committed to film besides Polytechnique - I mean, come on already. Campion isn't doing anything new with that; if anything, she's desperately playing catch-up. But this is still masterful work from one of the best. Not her best, necessarily, but still great. If Benedict Cumberbatch doesn't win Best Actor for this, I'm going to start calling the Oscars the Lillards or the Hardens or something for being total frauds. Granted, he is famous almost exclusively for roles similar to this one, but there's so much more rage and white-knuckle desperation to what he's doing here that it makes his role as Sherlock look like an episode of Robot Chicken. This is probably the best thing Kirsten Dunst has done since Melancholia, as well, and the two of them on screen together is just...wooof. Really compelling, difficult, creepy, strange, powerful stuff here. Winner Winner, Leftover Dinner Incendies && - I first watched this in 2012, probably, when I borrowed it from the campus library at my grad school. It was my first introduction to Denis Villeneuve, not realizing I was going to devour everything else he ever did. I don't think I even knew he'd done this until after seeing Arrival and thinking to myself that I should seek out his other movies. And then I thought, "Oh yeah, I saw that, and it was really good; wish I could remember what happened, exactly." Mostly I just remembered having a crush on Melissa Desormeaux-Poulin. Ugh. Obviously I blocked out what happened because...ugh. This film. Man. I think the timeline of events feels...not quite right somehow. I think it would be better if it explicitly stated how old the twins are at the beginning. But if Jeanne is supposed to be a teaching assistant in a high-end math class, then chances are she (and by extension, Simon) is no younger than 21, because even if she's a whiz, those classes are nothing to sneeze at. And that almost works when you put the other pieces together. It feels like maybe things needed to be fudged a little at the back end, making Nawal younger when she has her affair with Wahab. That's the only set of details that make this film difficult to believe. And that's...hoooooooo boy, you will wish there were more details that made this difficult to believe. Watch it and you will understand why. I was a total fool for not rewatching this for the 2010s list, because this is a Top 20 film easily. Desormeaux-Poulin carries the here-and-now scenes, and Lubna Azabal gives one of the all-time gutsiest performances you'll ever see with the string of horrors she has to endure. Just a thoroughly wrong, awful, devastating film, and a beautiful, valuable, important, devastating film.

There's one show that didn't even make your cut that I would still say is the best TV show I've ever seen, and it's not that close. Rectify. There are a lot of (now) familiar faces on there, as the cast has since starred in a fair number of other big TV shows. But I've never seen a show that had such a complete, well-done set of character arcs for everyone who mattered. There are only two things I would say are even remotely wrong with it - really, just one. The big mystery at the center of what happened gets sort of a cheap, unearned resolution at one stage that feels like a letdown compared to how tightly wound the writing is otherwise. The other thing is that the show is an emotional sledgehammer at times, and getting through it is not an easy process. But it's short, only 40 episodes in total over I think 4 seasons.

I like - and by 'like' I mean I have another reason to want the NFL to crash and burn - how this year's playoffs are going to come down to which team's unvaccinated dipshits test positive the latest.

The new Samsung Fold commercial continues to demonstrate that Imagine Dragons make everything worse. And it makes me glad I moved away from them with the new phone I bought this summer.

Oh fuck that right in its eye. I guess I disagree about the ending at the Eye being better, at least in a broad sense. It would have been neat as Hell to see the Green Man and introduce the Forsaken in a real way, since it would have cultivated the appropriate amount of "This is going to get WEIRD" for the show moving forward. Maybe they will do it later, but who knows what that would be used for (and I won't be watching anyway). I can see arguing that Rand's alternate reality dream sequence is better than his multi-part fight - it certainly was, though it was a flash of a scene from a later book that they lifted - but something so stripped down otherwise is...meh.

Funny, I was just looking at a similar one today that was the Seinfeld cast and "Death Grips" instead. Actually, I want to meet the guy whose entire t-shirt wardrobe is different riffs on the Black Flag design. I don't want to become him, though, as I like having a personality of my own.

And I was switching away from the Bulls smacking the Pacers by 18 because it wasn't competitive enough...

He'd certainly fit in with the front office.

Fat guy TD for Lane Johnson!

As good as Ep 7 of WoT was, the finale completely gakked up a hairball on the carpet, then rolled around in it. Just...nothing about it worked. They changed a ton of things and they were all for the bad. I'm not the type to get caught up in 1:1 replication of what was in the books, but they killed off a fuckload of characters who have important roles and skipped out on doing some things that would have been legitimately cool to see. I don't think I care if they do more of this or not.

But did you sing it Mariah Carey style???

No, there are 2 different types of LFTs, because calling things by their entire names is apparently too difficult. Liver Function Test and Lateral Flow Device Test. The 2nd one is for COVID. If we could test your liver function by swabbing your nose instead of drawing blood, we'd have been doing that for years.

Well, I fucking give up on Metroid Dread. Fuck this noise. If the Ghavoran Chozo is that hard, I have zero hope of actually progressing any further. If anyone wants to buy it off me, let me know. I have a few other Switch games I'm looking to part with, for that matter, and I don't want to give 15% to eBay or some other scumbag corporation.

Yeah, she was pretty damn good in both. I thought about talking about The Big Sick but thought it would detract, so I'll say what I was going to say in this space: I liked What If quite a bit better, because how do you have a movie where a guy plays himself and yet he's the worst part of the movie by far? But they're both still rewatchable.

Yeah, that was one of the few things that was actually funnier to me this time watching High Fidelity than in the past; it was clear Stephen Frears was doing some quality piss-taking by doing bizarro-world versions of the ghetto blaster scene. Out in the rain and shouting, out in the rain on a pay phone, out in the rain being a creep...