The Gaming Den

I watched Ralph 2 and Lego Movie 2 each with trepidation since I read lackluster reviews, but had to see em with the kids anyway. Dunno if it was just due to lowered expectations but I enjoyed both.

Lego one was more recent obviously, but things I wanted out of it more were more musical numbers. I really liked the not an evil queen song.

I just finished the first episode of Sick Note.

It's a dark British comedy about a lazy lying sack of shit protagonist (I mean, whom among us hasn't...) who turns his life around when he's diagnosed with cancer.

For a show that jokes about having cancer (and a guy killing himself, and several other things), it's hilarious. I also laugh at It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia, and the first few seasons of Shameless, so...

Also, my deepest apologies to Nick Frost, who I got confused with Ricky Gervais for a bit. Nobody deserves that.

That sounds like a kind of british version of My Name Is Earl, no cancer but the show has a similar premise about a white trash american who is trying to turn his life around after a near death experience introduces him to the concept of karma.

I really liked My Name is Earl; I did not care for Sick Note.

When you're trying to create a redemption arc, you have to have a deeply flawed protagonist but you also have to have a reason to root for him. I didn't find the character of Daniel Glass to be likable enough to root for him.

I generally like Nick Frost, but I also found it hard to root for his character. There was an incompetent doctor on Scrubs that found his niche working in the morgue - it was cringe inducing that he was responsible for so many deaths; I think it's hard to find incompetent doctors funny.

I only watched the first episode.

Umbrella Academy is so good,I don't even mind that the shootouts look like absolute, utter shit.

rasmuswagner wrote:Umbrella Academy is so good,I don't even mind that the shootouts look like absolute, utter shit.

I enjoyed the first five or six episodes, but I found the plotting dragged more and more as the show went on. Typical Netflix original content, I guess. Also, I'm unsure whether the idiocy/incompetence of almost every character is meant to be a feature or a bug.

I saw How To Train Your Deagon with the girls. It was alright. They spent too much time with dragon mating rituals but the animation was good. For people who enjoy it, it wraps things up pretty completely.

The Captain Marvel promo yesterday where they just livestreamed the cat being a cat for like 53 minutes was marketing genius.

Cervantes wrote:Into the Spiderverse is real good.

I finally watched it and thought the same. My fam enjoyed it, too. Did they make this movie to shut up people who thought a black {insert superhero of choice} was against cannon?

rasmuswagner wrote:Umbrella Academy is so good,I don't even mind that the shootouts look like absolute, utter shit.

It took a lot of liberties with the source material, mostly for the better. The reduction of utter insanity for an increased focus on accessible psychodrama made for a stronger story.

I was disappointed that they changed Diego's power to something combat-worthy. His original mostly-useless talent made Vanya's exclusion that much more arbitrary.

Maj wrote:

Cervantes wrote:Into the Spiderverse is real good.

I finally watched it and thought the same. My fam enjoyed it, too. Did they make this movie to shut up people who thought a black {insert superhero of choice} was against cannon?

https://tfwiki.net/wiki/Cannon_(disambiguation)

(Aside: Miles gave Particle Man an eight-week old hamburger and in turn the latter restored Miles's mom back to life. That's... all I really know about him outside the film.)

Shrapnel wrote:

Maj wrote:

Cervantes wrote:Into the Spiderverse is real good.

I finally watched it and thought the same. My fam enjoyed it, too. Did they make this movie to shut up people who thought a black {insert superhero of choice} was against cannon?

https://tfwiki.net/wiki/Cannon_(disambiguation)

Oops. Canon.

Maj wrote:

Cervantes wrote:Into the Spiderverse is real good.

I finally watched it and thought the same. My fam enjoyed it, too. Did they make this movie to shut up people who thought a black {insert superhero of choice} was against cannon?

Miles has been around for eight years now.

Yeah, but the film has been four to five years in the making, and a lot of other things have happened in the Marvel Universe to piss people off (Kamala Khan and Jane Foster, for example). Spiderman just seems like a good place to start because there's so much there.

Shin Sekai Yori. Few shows have been able to make me think as much, from the implications of PK to the level your typical shonen shows in actual society, to the kind of measures you'd need to go down to actually maintain a society with a semblance of stability, to actually rooting for the fucking evil guy of the series.

Damn, I don't think I'll be able to re-watch that serie because of how heavy it is.

Shrapnel wrote:
(Aside: Miles gave Particle Man an eight-week old hamburger and in turn the latter restored Miles's mom back to life. That's... all I really know about him outside the film.)

That's Molecule Man. Particle Man is a song by They Might Be Giants.

And now I want TMBG to do a summary of the recent Secret Wars event.

Particle, Molecule, atom, mote, scotoplanes, Bryant Gumbel... it's all the same thing.

The Orville... I REALLY enjoyed S2, even more than S1. I'm not a cranky old man after all...

I finally watched Russian Doll, knowing nothing about it, other than that people who I consider to generally have good taste, liked it.

It was amazing, and I needed that story right now.

Cop-induced PTSD again yesterday, so I went back to Netflix to relax myself enough to be a semi-functional person.

Salt Fat Acid Heat is a relaxing show. It's like the combined Mr. Rogers with Anthony Bourdain. She is a chef who travels the world, learning about cooking and food in general from both grandmothers who cook in traditional ways, and food industry professionals (cheesemakers, salt vendors, etc.). Everyone on the show seems super happy to talk about their food, everything is really chill, and it's informative enough that I can sit and watch for the entire episode without thinking about other things. Exactly what I needed.

Salt Fat Acid Heat is a very good show, would recommend. She also pops up in a couple of youtube cooking vids.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8GxzGND1NnA

Would recommend the tuna.

Thirded. I love that show.

erik wrote:I watched Ralph 2.

Ralph 2 had three "rocked me" bits:

1. The surprise Stan Lee cameo.
2. The self-mocking, but yet affirming portrayal of the Disney Princesses
3. The way the climax is set up by Knowsmore's "only two answers" line.

Dredd, the 2012 movie. I had seen it before, and I was just cruising for light background entertainment. It kinda drew me in, and the moment the blast doors came down and Lena Headey was emoting at full blast, I was completely hooked and nothing else got done this evening.

Just saw the latest Marvel movie. I'd put it at a solid "1st Thor" in terms of "this thing is a pretty serviceable origin story with some fun action moments, but not much more impressive than that."

However some spoilery things I did kind of like a lot:

- The skrull not being invaders but refugees was an interesting direction to take them in.
- The part of the movie where Carol goes super saiyan was wonderful. The moment the audience realizes that the chip "giving" her her powers is actual a limiter, and then the moment when she burns it out, is exactly as anime as it needs to be.

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