Ran

This article on Peterson's work is quite good, not least because it is well-researched and recognizes some points where his version of consistency leads him to deviate his created language from what the original creators obviously intended (dracarys and dragons, obvious survivals of specific Arabic words ten thousand years in the future)

Rewatched Die Hard, after listening to the Blank Check podcast with Kevin Smith as a guest discussing it. Really holds up in a lot of ways. Watched the first season ofResident Alien, as I'm a big fan of Alan Tudyk and the first episode really hooked me. Linda Hamilton appearing as a guest was pretty awesome. That said, as the show went on it more and more heavily focused typical family sitcom melodrama in a way that made me wish it was a half-hour show so it could more tightly focus on Harry. Netflix here had only the first season, not sure when they will get more of it Finally, watched the Oscar-nominated documentary Bobi Wine: The People's President about popular Ugandan musician Bobi Wine (his stage name, his actual name is Robert Kyagulanyi Ssentamu) becoming a central figure in the political opposition to the rule of Yoweri Museveni, particularly when he had his party amend the constitution so he could run for a fifth term. The documentary features some pretty catchy Afrobeat political music from Bobi and compatriots like Nubian Li, but also shows the struggles they face. A lot of police brutality on display, and Wine himself would be imprisoned and even brutalized on more than one occasion, but he carries on. I will say that the last section of the documentary seemed to have little new to say or show, so I feel like they missed the mark a little there. But I hope Bobi is right that one of the nations with the youngest populations in the world can effect political change and win freedom from corruption and despotism. ETA: Also just finished Perfect Days, Wim Wenders' latest film. Sorry, @Darryk, another film I can promise is not for you. But it's a lovely, humanist, quiet film about a Japanese man who lives a very simple, quiet life -- he gets up, he goes to work (diligently cleaning public toilets in Tokyo), he listens to cassettes of music from the 60s and 70s (Lou Reed, Patti Smith, Van Morrison, Rolling Stones, and more), he takes photographs of trees and plants with an old black-and-white camera, he reads, he goes to sleep, and it starts over. Each night we get a kaleidoscopic black-and-white montage of images, the fleeting remnants of dreams and memories hinting at other things. There's no twist, no real plot, no great reveal, and the film hangs most on the performance of Kōji Yakusho as Hirayama, the lead (some may remember him from his leading role in Shall We Dance?, which if you haven't seen it I highly recommend -- really lovely film!), and also I think on the cinematography from Franz Lustig which captures Tokyo vividly. There's a scene near the end, at night, where the bokeh turns all the distant lights into huge floating globes in background, and it's magical. Just a sweet, gentle film. Richard Brody, that old sourpuss, is constantly complaining that films don't explore things he wants to see explored, but it's Wenders' film, not his, and I think Wenders got across exactly what he wanted to get across. Also, the last scene, strangely, seem to be another entry in conversation with Call Me By Your Name and Portrait of a Lady on Fire.

There's a Netflix anime named Yasuke loosely (very loosely) based on his life.

Confirmed by The Intercept and other media sources.

This thread had gone very far from discussing the books, folks.

Have you cleared cookies? Make sure to restart the browser as well. The initial 400 error you guys saw for a bit there was when we tried a change that actually made things much worse (I got it as well), but now we fixed it, I think, to increase the limits well beyond what they were originally.

We have done some configuration changes that will hopefully fix this problem. If it happens still right now, make sure to clear all cookies for the forum. And if it persists after that, please let me know.

So you're fine with someone celebrating the deaths of these individuals on the basis that they were perhaps sociopaths? And if you died in service, would it be all right for people to assume in all likelihood that you were a sociopath and celebrate your death? If you say yes, yes, that's a left-wing rabbit hole, and you're down in it too.

How have I not heard of this? It looks spectacular. Variety says many of the performers are formerly-incarcerated, although obviously the film is anchored by Colman Domingo. Which reminds me, need to see Rustin.

I’ll just echo that this sort of view is infantilizing at best, racist at worst. It’s really bizzare that you don’t seem to recognize it.

This belies that many of the countries in Africa that have laws against homosexuality are majority-Muslim, and indeed Nigeria would be an interesting place to look: the mostly-Christian southern Nigeria has prison sentences for homosexuality, yes, but the mostly-Muslim northern Nigeria has the death penalty (by stoning). The key factor in the rise of anti-homosexuality attitudes in Africa is that it's reactionary to the liberalization of attitudes in much of the rest of the world, and you'll see this again and again in the rhetoric (including the argument that homosexuality was brought to Africa by Europeans) Highlighting differences is used the world over by demagogues, nationalists, autocrats, and dictators to further their own political ends. It's no different in Africa.

Yeah, Carbonell's terrific in this. If I had to ding the show on anything, is that I'm surprised that the fight sequences are as static and uninteresting as they are, when so much else is top-notch. Very basic choreography, camera tends to be locked in place from moment to moment, etc.

Andor getting a Blu-ray set releasing on April 30. No deleted scenes or commentary, but some featurettes on the behind the scenes and the world-building. Oh, yeah, Obi-Wan, too, for whoever cares.

Alien's depiction of the far future as a life of dangerous corporate drudgery, with its really industrial set and ship design, was as trend-setting as Blade Runner. Scott basically gave the world two of the absolutely most important science fiction films of all time, just in term of impact on the genre that spread not just throughout cinema but into the literary world as well.

Purely what I think will win. I think if I had to make a list of what I want to win, the main differences would be supporting actor (Mark Ruffalo; Downey's winning it as a lifetime achievement award, IMO), original screenplay (Past Lives is my personal choice, by a hair), animated feature (The Boy and the Heron), and ... maybe Score (Killers of the Flower Moon).

This Ukrainian site offers an estimate on the cost of Russian losses. Note, however, that it appears to draw it data from the Ukrainian military and a Forbes Ukrainian-language article that tries to estimate the values. This site doesn't try to estimate values, but does track equipment losses by both sides based on open source intel. I'm sure there's probably some Russian site doing the same is estimating cost of Ukrainian losses, but I admit I've not found anything at all like the above sites. I suspect partly this has to do with the disparate sources of equipment Ukraine has, whereas most of the Russian equipment is domestically produced and part of long-established supply chains.

Sugar is intriguing, neo-noir but everything I've read repeats that it has a "genre-bending science fiction" element that is pretty wholly invisible as far as this trailer goes. Hmm... The most interesting thing, IMO, is that executive producer and director of the show is Fernando Meirelles, who directed the phenomenal City of God and also The Constant Gardener. ETA: The Wild Robot trailer was wonderful, but I looked and it seems that the robot and animals all have voice actors attached, which is a shame because a mostly-dialogless film along the lines of Wall-E or The Red Turtle -- which the trailer implies -- can be very powerful. Also, corrected the information I had about Sugar. That makes a lot more sense, but it's still pretty invisible (though the bits with Sugar having strange visions and disorientation are probably a hint.)

My predictions: Best Picture: Oppenheimer Best Director: Christopher Nolan, “Oppenheimer” Best Lead Actress: Emma Stone, “Poor Things” Best Lead Actor: Cillian Murphy, “Oppenheimer” Best Supporting Actress: Da’Vine Joy Randolph, “The Holdovers” Best Supporting Actor: Robert Downey Jr., “Oppenheimer” Best Adapted Screenplay: “Oppenheimer” Best Original Screenplay: “Anatomy of a Fall” Best International Feature: “The Zone of Interest,” United Kingdom Best Documentary Feature: “20 Days in Mariupol” Best Animated Feature: “Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse” Best Film Editing: “Oppenheimer” Best Cinematography: “Oppenheimer” Best Visual Effects: “The Creator” Best Production Design: “Poor Things” Best Costume Design: “Barbie” Best Makeup & Hairstyling: “Maestro” Best Original Song: “I’m Just Ken” from “Barbie” Best Original Score: “Oppenheimer” Best Sound: “The Zone of Interest” Best Animated Short: Haven't seen any. Best Documentary Short: Haven't seen any. Best Live-Action Short: “The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar”

There were 22 million people in Japan, according to estimates, in 1600. Ronin, masterless warriors, would not exactly be carefully tracked, especially as they'd come from throughout Japan -- which was not really "unified" -- and so no one person would be aware of what numbers went off to act as mercenaries overseas. As to how many ronin there were, an account of one battle in this era said as many as 100,000 ronin took part, so ... even that number is very big. As it happens, accounts from both the Portuguese and Spaniards from that era show they did employ ronin as mercenaries, sometimes in large numbers. So, I don't know, I don't feel like this specific idea that the Portuguese have quietly hired ronin mercenaries to protect their secret base in Macau and that someone like Torenaga isn't aware of it (at least not to the scale and import of it) is all that strange. Nor that the Japanese had very limited knowledge of Europe and most of what they had came from the Portuguese and Spanish who had self-serving reasons to present only a partial picture.

Watched Winter's Bone again recently, what a breakthrough performance by Jennifer Lawrence. Have to say, John Hawkes almost stole the movie from her in every scene he was in. Also watched a documentary called Pianoforte, following a number of young pianists taking part in the 18th International Chopin Piano Competition, held every 5 years. It's one of the most prestigious piano competitions in the world and can basically make an aspiring concert pianists career. Incredible amount of dedication needed.

Jesus, people seem dedicated to just showing off their terrible film opinions ATM. WTF is in the water wherever you guys all are?

De gustibus non est disputandum. De gustibus non est disputandum. De gustibus non est...

Yeah, have run into people who just don't like films about the mob or criminals in general, regardless of their quality. Linda doesn't care for them, for example. De gustibus non est disputandum and all that.

As the source of the quote, George did praise the Mereenese Blot essays, and I think what he praised foremost was that the piece picked up the themes he was exploring and grappling with, but I don't think it should be taken that George necessarily meant that the actual plot accuracy and predictions the essays make are right. I'm sure I have the full recording somewhere still, but I'm pretty sure we got to that because the topic of how sometimes George's themes are misunderstood by people, which makes him wonder if it's a failure on his part or not.

Sonny's death is a moment of heightened reality to reflect the enormity of Sonny's assassination, and the larger-than-life nature of Sonny himself, although this aspect of things is much more explicit in the novel. James Caan was an average-sized guy, while Sonny Corleone in the novel is a massive hulk of a man, not especially tall (just short of 6') but built like a bull (also, hung like one, but that's a subplot that Coppola, uh, snipped.) He essentially exists on a kind of grandiose, heroic scale, a man of excesses -- excesses of violence, of anger, of pride, of lust -- and dies in a suitably grandiose, excessive way. Coppola was right on the mark, IMO.