Contentious C

I guess it's a good thing ESPN covered the ESPYs by talking about how Lee Corso gave a "heartfelt" speech. God knows he can't feel it in his face after all that plastic surgery.

Evidently Nintendo has their leads for the LOZ movie that's supposed to come out in a couple of years. Must be a pair of dream jobs: one role that's in the title and crucially important but appears on-screen for 46 femtoseconds, and the other who's there all the time but never utters a word besides "Ggghh!" and "Hyah!"

Kawhi Leonard's final, career-ending knee injury now comes from breaking his foot off in Beal's ass?

Well, they do call the smuggled MacGuffin in S1 an "Imperial" Starpath unit, but there's also the fact that whatever faction won was going to repurpose equipment en masse, so it could have been a "Republic" unit prior to that. I blame Lucas a little bit for not giving them a long enough runway. Made all the worse by the fact that even as a kid, I could tell Mark Hamill was old as dirt compared to what he should have been (he was 29 when ep 4 debuted, 35 for 6). Or you could just handwave it as "long ago far away", meaning accurate records didn't survive.

I liked this a lot but didn't love it. It felt like the film had a lot of (I don't know if this is the right term or not) "motion smoothing" look to it, like it was shot digitally the whole way with 60 fps in mind and was something you'd see on a TV show, not a projected film. It was incredibly distracting to me and I've had an issue with it elsewhere. If anyone sees it in standard and in IMAX and can tell me that IMAX looks different and more film-like, I'd be interested to know that. This also just didn't really spend enough time at the Daily Planet; it could have been grounded more in Clark actually being Clark, rather than a blip of a scene and then the Big Stated Out Loud Plot being that he has to Choose Clark. And it needed more Lois. Granted, I'm an unabashed Rachel Brosnahan fan, but their two real scenes together didn't feel like enough. And most of the side folks besides Jimmy Olsen, Pussy Magnet didn't really work because there wasn't a sufficient investment in even getting a sense of who they were or what their power dynamics were like. Wendell Pierce chomping a cigar in no-smoking zones doesn't cut it. And can we just be FUCKING DONE with Superman and plots involving black holes? JUST FUCKING DONE??? But I liked that the message here is just as unsubtle as the message in X-Men '97 was. The people who have a problem with it seem to forget that "the American Way" is the third thing mentioned in the catchphrase, because it's less fucking important than the Truth and the Justice. among all the other things they've forgotten. I dug all the other JL members, and yeah, Edi Gathegi really does steal the show. I didn't know where they were going with the Engineer from the trailers but that was actually a pretty good villain. I'm also eagerly awaiting Good setup for the future. But they're going to have to nail whatever they do with Batman.

Yep. It'll probably be a thirty-second insert of Doom wrecking them and then moving on to something else. Best-case scenario is we get Secret Wars specifically *because* Doom finds a way to get them out of whatever extradimensional prison we saw. Best-best-case scenario that Marvel doesn't have the imagination to film is that the Council of Kangs is actually a Council of Reeds gone horribly wrong and it's part of why Doom opposes him.

I used to be Team Sydney in the unhealthiest way possible (Ayo Edebiri plays her like she somehow read the mind of one of my ex-girlfriends, which is both comforting and terrifying), but, Francie Fak Fan Forever over here. Also, I used to be in the minority of liking Claire - I think mostly because I really do not at all see the appeal of Jeremy Allen White as some kind of sex symbol when he's got that Resting Morty Face, but Molly Gordon makes sense with him - but I'd be fine with her just going away with some finality. The worst of it for me is that most of the times the musical cues and stingers are so good (Kate Bush! St Vincent!), but they had some real hit-and-miss stuff this season, largely with all the older songs. "I Got You, Babe" was the only one of the pre-1975 things worth keeping because it was a callback. But The Who and Zeppelin? Nah. Save your budget instead of licensing that stuff. And that matters for Claire because we're well beyond the point where "Strange Currencies" does anything but annoy because they've overused it so badly for the two of them.

Francie fucking Fak. I've never thought spin-offs were a good idea, but... spin-off, somewhere, somehow? Not with her, but it's just fun being with this group. I don't know how I didn't realize Robert Townsend was Sydney's dad for this long, maybe because it's such a sedate role for him, but he's been the quiet guest star MVP for a couple years now.

The last sentence in the ESPN article made me wonder how large the non-zero number is of people that call the Tampa Tarpons the Tampa Tampons.

Pretty funny in Bear S3 to have Richie rip off the "flying fuck into a rolling donut" remark so I'm already immediately thinking "Friedkin" a minute before Nat says it. What does NOT make sense at all is Computer. Partly because, y'know, that shit isn't that hard to do anyway. But this allegedly rational "take your medicine" guy is a RAIDERS fan?!?!?! Not someone taking his own advice, then.

It also left Rogue One with a couple of pretty crazy goofs. "This is the first time for me" - no, sorry, Cassian, you've definitely been in prison before. And I'm guessing claiming that you've been "in the Rebellion" since you were six is supposed to tell us that the Imperials showed up on Kenari when he was that age and slaughtered/enslaved all the adults, leaving all those children to fend for themselves until he was 10 or 11 or whatever he was when Maarva found him. Also really disappointed it didn't actually resolve the stuff with his sister in any way whatsoever, even to just demonstrate more definitively that, yeah, Kenari is now uninhabitable and there were no logs of anyone within the Empire even trying to visit for however long. You'd think that's the kind of thing Luthen could have asked someone to dig up at some point over the course of 4+ years, and that it wouldn't have raised many flags. I get that it's supposed to make him seem more committed, but that was never something I totally bought from him. Always felt like a toe or three were out the door until you get to Rogue One and there's no way out left.

A touch out of place, but Rebekah Del Rio, who most of you would know for covering "Crying" in one of the pivotal scenes of Mulholland Dr. has died. Fuck cancer as ever.

SNL should send a strongly worded letter to AG1 for ripping off Colon Blow.

Well, the way they're going, a PS5 is certainly easier to swallow than a new desktop rig. Mine started being a bit too old in 22, and dumbfuck crypto was already making GPUs untouchable. Looking back on it, I was probably lucky to get the one I got in 19. So when that one component costs more than an entire console...easy choice. (Don't talk to me about gaming laptops, I can't take that shit seriously)

I picked up a physical copy of Clair Obscur due to Gamestop having staggered rollouts of PS5 stock. Probably only going to play this on easy mode since I can't stand parry systems (although I got pretty good at it on Ghost of Tsushima). Worst case is that I toss it on eBay if I end up finding it frustrating.