Heartofice

Hilary Cass: Weak evidence letting down children in gender care The full Cass report is out now detailing the mistreatment of children who were questioning their gender.

That is supposed to be a musical right? Are they underplaying that aspect for the trailer?

There is your answer. They have been making these movies, they were shit and nobody watched them. There have also been a ton of sci fi movies made, they just tend to also be reboots of older franchises, because that is the only risk Hollywood is wanting to take. The real question is how did Dune ever get made, given how unlikely it was that it would money. That it did make money is also a sort of miracle.

My list of top games over the past 20 years would just various versions of Football Manager, Civilisation and Total War and nothing else.

Yeah Dark World is a hugely forgettable movie. I didn't think it was outright bad, I just thought that most of it didn't land. However as you say, Thor and Loki are always good, and I liked the stuff with Thor's mum. In the same way Ironman 2 gets a lot of shit, but it has some good bits, it has Justin Hammer and Micky Rourke being weird for starters. I just don't think Quantumania has a single thing to recommend it.

Baldur's Gate 3 dev calls industry layoffs an "avoidable f*ck up" Seems relevant to someone like Sega basically gutting their business, based heavily on betting on future trends that didn't come to pass. Seems insane the way Hyenas was handled, and we are seeing the outcome of that now. This is similar to what I was saying earlier, but what if you can't get any more growth, because there is none to be had, well then if you want to satisfy the shareholders you need to cut costs to make things look better.

Well he's sitting in a room using a machine in pretty much the first few minutes of the show. After that he does basically no science. That was hardly some revelatory big brain thinking. Anyone off the street could have made that guess. He also has glasses.

Yeah Ant Man 1 was a pretty mediocre movie that was elevated by being quite funny at times and really leveraging the use of scale to make some amusing fights and situations. The bath scene and the train scene are both pretty memorable and the supporting cast brought in a few laughs. Ant Man 3 has none of that. The sense of scale is gone because everyone is the same size, the humour has completely disappeared and the visual effects are much worse. I don't agree it wouldn't have stood out. I think if Quantumania was in phase 1 or 2, we might not be looking at an MCU.

United are 11 points behind Villa, and one point off West Ham with a game in hand. That highlights the way the league is going right now and is a better indicator of their level than their position. United should be even lower though, too many games this season they really have not deserved to get the points they have. If they were 11th or 12th I don't think it would be too undeserving.

I agree, but I also think this is the problem. I'm making assumptions, but it does feel like this has all been dumbed down rather a lot, D&D thinking they need to make it appeal to everyone to make it work. Maybe that is true, but it feels like it's lost something. Sure, but there are limits. Right now it's like they have brought some absolute random guy off the street, a guy who can barely tie his own shoelaces, to solve the problems of the planet. That does stretch the realms of believability somewhat.

I think the point being made is of all of the Oxford 5, it's really only Jin who is shown to be 'smart', or at least comes across that way. It's her solving most of the problems during the show and she is the one doing the reasoning. The rest of the characters are mostly just wandering through the plot and dealing with their personal issues, or moaning about things. Jin couldn't be the one who was picked, but they could have given Saul more during the season to demonstrate that he is actually a smart dude, that he is able to think about things and there is a sort of reason why he might be picked.

Bruno also being the last man in defence later in the game just shows the way he's playing the game. I'm sure United fans have a better idea of what to make of him, but personally he doesn't seem to be an overall positive to the team. I get that he is highly skilled, and does at least try, but he doesn't have discipline and does too much. I also don't know how much his emotionality is useful.

I can very much imagine a version of the show where that character comes across as smart, but with some personal issues and not an obvious choice, but also not a totally unbelievable one. I think it's an issue with the way the show has spent it's time. I didn't get a sense that any of the Oxford 5 were especially smart or good at their jobs, despite the show telling me. It's partly that they spend so much time just doing interpersonal stuff, talking about relationships, sitting around taking drugs or drinking. It's also the language they use I think, which I would describe as 'TV Sitcom' language. They don't talk like smart people, they don't act like smart people, and they don't look like smart people either. They look and act like people acting in a show. I don't know what it's like in the books, but it very much feels like a D&D thing. A desire to make characters relatable and more 'human' just makes them bland and cut out tv tropes.

United are so terrible, but are somehow in 6th. It makes so little sense. Bruno's goal kind of sums it up, the whole side has no plan or cohesion but they have a handful of very gifted players who just seem to pull the team out of a hole. It just happens so often it's infuriating.

The problem is show don't tell. He is described as very smart, but acts like some layabout stoner who barely says an intelligent thing the entire show. So when he gets picked it's almost as if they just chose some guy off the street with no skills whatsoever. Yes the show highlights that he is this wildcard choice that doesn't make a ton of sense, but it seems very extreme because of the way they have depicted him the entire time.

Don’t think Marvels is anywhere near as bad as it was purported to be, but it’s not good. Really, it’s got everything I would expect in a modern blockbuster: - A chaotic, irrelevant plot that has no impact - A bunch of storylines that go nowhere and compete for time - Some over stuffed CGI fueled action scenes that you barely care about. - Everything is played for laughs, rarely actually funny. A lot of it is lowest common denominator style humour your mum might chuckle along to. It doesn’t stand out as especially bad I think, because the bar is so damn low these days. If this has come out after Winter Soldier I’d be gobsmacked at how awful it is. But now? It’s not exceptional at all. Then, the other point. If this was a phase 1 or 2 movie, it might be able to get away with being shit because it was a building block to a much bigger, better Avengers movie. But in some ways, The Marvels IS the big movie that was being built up to. It’s the culmination of 2 not great tv shows ( 3 if you count Secret Invasion) and a not great movie. Those were these setting this up. That if anything is highlighting the issue Marvel have.

BBC must be compromised by ‘vested interests’

Dawkins says he likes some of the cultural artifacts that Christianity produced such as cathedrals and art, plus I guess some of the philosophical and cultural influences on general western society. I don’t think there is anything particularly wrong in anything he said. He’s also been consistent in this opinion for decades.

If anyone asked me 'Hey what's it like to live in the UK?' I'd just show them this.

Yeah, I'm sure that is true, but it also kind of misunderstands one of the greatest pulls of the MCU was that it was all tying together and it rewards viewers who can 'do their homework'. I'm sure Disney execs were looking at numbers and charts and seeing all this untapped potential of people who don't normally go to watch Marvel movies and were thinking about how they can pull those people in. Which misses the point, because if you lose your core audience, and don't really manage to bring in a new audience, then you are going to lose out.

Good post. I think it just shows that the real issues plaguing the MCU are more strategic and coming from a higher level, and this all just feeds down into making worse movies as well. The Multiverse concept was just a bad choice on a number of different levels, but primarily I think because it removes any sense of continuity within the MCU, which was actually maybe its greatest strength. If nothing that happens actually matters then why bother even watching it. Where audiences might go see a 3/5 movie simply because it all ties into the big picture before, now all they have is isolated 3/5 movies. I looks like business decisions overrode creative ones somewhere. Multiverses allow for more content, they make it easier to tie in concepts and characters owned by other studios, they give you an out if you kill off a popular character. Doesn’t mean that’s what people want to see though.

Must be those mysterious ‘vested interests’ we keep hearing about

No, he said a different universe.

Yeah I should have added ‘people won’t go watch a superhero movie just because it’s a superhero movie ANY MORE’

Yes.