Moments when a piece of entertainment completely rocked you.

[Thaluikhain]

Yeah, second that. Started reading the manga now, though not very far in, looks like the anime was scene for scene almost identical, at least at first.

[Stahlseele]

The Movie Redline.
It basically killed a Studio, but it is pretty good watching.
A completely over the top sci fi racing anime MOVIE not series.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ktotgj7 ... aWxsZWQ%3D

[angelfromanotherpin]

I was strongly considering doing a Let's Play thread of the Star Trek Lower Decks Warp Your Own Way CYOA comic, but it's not really a game, just explorable interactive fiction. It is, however, super good. Like the show, the references to previous material can be a bit thick on the ground, but if you can manage that it's a really solid thinky Trek story that effectively blends comedy, mystery, horror, and heroism.

[deaddmwalking]

Re-reading Catch-22

The chaplain had mastered, in a moment of divine intuition, the handy technique of protective rationalization, and he was exhilarated by his discovery. It was miraculous. It was almost no trick at all, he saw, to turn vice into virtue and slander into truth, impotence into abstinence, arrogance into humility, plunder into philanthropy, thievery into honor, blasphemy into wisdom, brutality into patriotism, and sadism into justice. Anybody could do it; it required no brains at all. It merely required no character.

[deaddmwalking]

Some things a man has to do, so he does 'em.

So I just watched Winchester '73. I had seen the title pop up when I was scanning through suggestions, but even though I like Westerns the title didn't really draw me in. I did notice it was highly rated, so it was at least on my radar, but when I saw it as part of the Criterion Collection at Barnes & Noble that raised the interest level. When I realized it starred Jimmy Stewart it shot up to the top of the list. I like the actor in just about everything he's done, and he's in the classic The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (which also inspired a fun song by the same title - it was finished too late to be included in the movie) and 'Bandalero! - a fun movie where he stars opposite Dean Martin and Raquel Welch. In that movie he meets the executioner on his way to mete out justice to his black-sheep brother (Martin) and he assumes the executioners identity and springs him. Then when the sheriff is chasing his brother, he takes advantage and robs the town bank. In that one he was playing a little against type.

Spoilers ahead for a 75 year old movie.

In any case, I really had no idea what to expect. I have mentioned elsewhere that I've been checking out a TV show called Dead Man's Gun, an anthology series that is supposed to be tied together by someone inheriting a particular gun in every episode, but in actuality the links are pretty tenuous. This is the movie that the show probably wishes it could be.

The movie starts with Jimmy Stewart riding into Dodge City, Kansas on the 4th of July. Wyatt Earp (a much paunchier and avuncular version than Kurt Russell's in Tombstone takes their weapons when they run into the man they've been pursuing. With the law preventing the settling of an unknown score the two end up dominating a sharp-shooting competition with the prize being an 1873 Winchester (a repeating rifle and one knows as the Rifle that Won the West - it features in the book Empire of the Summer Moon a well-researched book about the Comanche and the closing of the west). Anyway, Jimmy Stewart wins the rifle, but he's ambushed by his quarry who rides off with it but without their weapons and ammo. Stewart and his friend give chase.

The rifle passes from hand to hand. First 'Dutch' Henry Brown is forced to sell it to an Indian Trader who is planning on selling repeating firearms to the Indians. By the time 'Dutch' puts a bullet in him to get it back he's already dead - scalped by the Indians he was selling to - and the rifle is in the hands of Young Bull (played by Hollywood Golden era heart throb and closeted homosexual Rock Hudson). Stewart and other travelers (including a lady that made a living playing piano in Dodge City) find themselves with the Pennsylvania Ninth surrounded by Commanche and facing long odds. The repeating rifles the non-cavalry have with them end up making a decisive difference. Stewart rides off before he can be reunited with his prize Winchester, and it falls into the hands of another of the defenders. He has plans to meet up with 'Waco' Johnny Dean - the fastest draw in Texas - who oozes danger like Billy Drago from Brisco County Jr. When they do meet up, he ends up dead and his sharp-witted fiance ends up riding with him as he meets up with 'Dutch' to pull a stagecoach/back robbery. Stewart, who's been tracking Dutch, ends up arriving just in time to break the robbery up, but 'Dutch' escapes. By this point we know that 'Dutch' killed Stewart's father, but there's one more twist - perhaps best alluded to by the Marty Robbins cowboy classic Tall Handsome Stranger.

We've gone from Dodge City to the Sonoran desert and experienced some classic vistas (in black and white).

Compared to Bandalero! it's a more satisfying ending. I think this is a movie that can stand up with High Noon on any list of the greatest westerns ever. Interestingly, it has a 100% Rotten Tomatoes score compared to a 95% for High Noon. It was directed by Anthony Mann (probably best known for El-Cid starring Charleston Heston, or maybe for being replaced by Stanley Kubrick as the director of Spartacus after disagreements with star Kirk Douglass). Apparently that's a director that is lionized and known as a director's director.

From a Review by Kelly Vance, 2004
Winchester ’73 contains just about every one of the fundamental ingredients of the classic Western. It has Wyatt Earp, grizzled old coots in coonskin caps, plenty of saloon surliness, men skeet-shooting silver dollars, a card-sharping Indian trader with a beaverskin top hat (note the way he shuffles his cards so that the ace of spades always stays on top), and, of course, hostile natives on horseback. There are Civil War yarns (Lin and High-Spade fought for the Johnny Rebs), picked-on homesteaders, the humiliation of a coward, a foiled bank robbery, saguaro cactus in the Arizona desert, and a dancehall girl named Lola, to whom Lin shows gallantry (she’s played, in an appealing performance, by Shelley Winters).

There’s also a ricochet-filled shootout amid boulders, just like in The Naked Spur. The main desperados are named Dutch Henry Brown and Waco Johnny Dean. Rock Hudson appears as an Indian chief, and Tony Curtis breezes by as a young cavalry soldier. Sounds very much like a list of cowboy-flick clichés, except in Mann’s hands they come alive as if for the very first time. Ultimately it’s Stewart’s acting that ropes us in, a portrait of a man seething inside who still has enough folksy politeness left to chuckle at a group of Kansas kids admiring the famed rifle. Winchester ’73 is simply one of the finest Westerns ever made, in a class with the best of Ford and Hawks.

I made a mistake not watching this one sooner.

[Thaluikhain]

Been watching the LA by Night actual play of VTM 5, season 1, and it starts off a little slow, but gets going well. The best parts are where there's no dice rolling and it's telling a collaborative story rather than playing a game, mind.