I just picked up Control yesterday on a decent sale. Love it. Less of a game and more like watching a really good cable drama series (feels very much like FX’s Lesion). The gameplay is smooth and enjoyable, but not challenging—and I don’t really want it to be. It’s just a necessary bit of grind to pace out getting to…

I watched the whole series. It’s enjoyable. I’d call it a B-.

The fleet of civilian ships arriving worked for me because it had shades of Dunkirk (a real life story of civilians volunteering to the rescue — albeit as ferries, not fighters). The fact that it reminded me of a true story helped me forget what a predictable trope it was. 

People in my theater gasped “WHAT?” when the kiss happened. I’m not a theater talker, but that was precisely my reaction. 

I just watched it tonight. My criticism (comment #670) is less that it trades in the comforts of the original trilogy, and more that it doesn’t weave them together into a coherent story. The Force Awakens absolutely trades in nostalgia, but moved me. It was a compelling story, in which all the characters had purpose…

Regina King was a revelation for me, in this. I know she’s been in some other good things, it’s just mostly not stuff I’ve watched. Going through her IMDb history, the most recent thing I probably would’ve seen her in season 6 of 24, but I watched that a really long time ago, and I doubt she was given much to do.

Update: I watched it. I think the script is really bad, the pacing is odd (the first two-thirds of the movie is flashbacks—about half way in Reynolds says “now that you’re all caught up, suggesting the flashbacks are over, but then they carry on for another half hour), and the characters are somewhat thinly drawn. But…

I thought the same thing, but I have some head canon to resolve it.

Bay’s movies are a guilty pleasure, which makes Netflix the perfect place for them. I wouldn’t be caught dead at the theater watching one of his brain dead, misogynistic, violence glorifying films, but dammit he does have an eye for spectacle, and tends to put on a pretty entertaining show. I remember seeing the…

They award the Golden Globes. The Oscars are voted on by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, which a selective club of people working in film. Remember there was controversy about the lack of diversity in the Academy a few years ago.

There’s a popularity contest element to these awards, which are voted upon by the same community of people that receives them. A lot of the nominations where I was scratching my head favor Hollywood royalty. In addition to the noms for the Aniston/Witherspoon vehicle, we also have Cloony directed Catch-22 getting a…

The Stranger Things tonality of this jumped out at me, too (and others in the comments below)—probably with a big assist from the presence of Finn Wolfhard, though the parallels run a lot deeper than that. I see others jumping on the lack of comedy, but Stranger Things has a lot of jokes! And I expect this to be funny…

John’s synopses of the commercials are some of the best comedic writing I’ve seen anywhere. Sean O’Neal also had a gift for it when he was writing Newswire articles, but John just slams them out of the park so consistently. That synopsis of the Downy commercial should win some kind of prize. 

As a late addendum, since people are still going through these episodes at their own pace, IGN tweeted today that Baby Yoda’s backstory would be explored in Season 2, and I leaped out of my chair in joy that he would remain a character on the show. Then I clicked on the article and it didn’t mention a fucking thing…

Not over yet so I don’t want to jinx it, but I don’t think it wound up being an especially bad year for celebrity deaths? We had a lot of that “this year has been awful” social media stuff in 2016, 2017, and 2018, but this year, to my memory, wasn’t as bad.

I’d pretty much forgotten about the Cats movie, in the way I instantly forgot about Avatar, but I don’t recall anyone who watched that trailer complaining about, “what kind half-baked special effects are these! I want my human-cat cat-humans to be more... [?] lifelike! [??]”

Sean O’Neal had a touching tweet about L’il Bub.

At my local multiplex last night it was playing in one theater (out of like 16). It was packed to the fucking brim, there were people who couldn’t find seats, and everyone there seemed to enjoy it. They seem to have miscalculated the demand. Now today, it’s playing in two theaters.

But this TV show is 25+ years behind the third trilogy.

I’m the exact opposite, Mando + Baby Yoda is a well that I don’t think can ever run dry. I’m actually stressed that the finale sets something up for the movie involving Teen Yoda, and that it’s going to foreclose a second season of the adventures of Mando & Baby Yoda. They will be tugging Baby Yoda away from me like…