Ran

Did not know anything about Transformer One. So basically applying the LEGO Movie formula to Transformers... could work.

All of the novels are worth reading, IMO, but my favorite remains Fevre Dream despite what flaws it has compared to Armageddon Rag which really is a very, very strong book. But the short fiction is the best stuff of all. In the 70s, George had a run there where I've seen critics opine that he was among the top short fiction writers in the genre in that era. "The Way of Cross and Dragon", "Seven Times Never Kill Man", "Bitterblooms", "The Stone City", "Meathouse Man", and on and on. Dreamsongs is a great book to pick up if you're interested in the short fiction.

Watched The Sympathizer, Park Chan-Wook's adaptation for HBO of the Pulitzer winning novel of the same name by Viet Thanh Nguyen. Robert Downey Jr. features as a CIA agent who interacts with the lead character, known only as the Captain, played by Hoa Xuande, who is a North Vietnamese mole inside the South Vietnamese secrete police. It's shot with Park's typical verve and style, cutting back and forth in time, and features a pretty nail-biting sequence as the Fall of Saigon begins and people are rushing the American air base to try and get one of the last flights out. It's quite good.

For All Mankind renewed for a 5th season... and getting a spin off titled Star City, showing events leading up to the start of the first season from the Soviet perspective. It's described as a "paranoid thriller".

Very strong penultimate episode. I know GGK is watching the show, or at least he was when it started airing, but there were passages in this episode that reminded me of his work, and makes me wonder if Clavell was any sort of influence on him. (Kay's a much, much better prosodist, of course.)

I find that strange. I think the major elements that make it identifiable now, like its spire and stained glass, should stay as they are... but I don't really see any reason why plain glass windows that are unremarkable and that no one remembers (except in that they don't compare to the stained glass elsewhere) can't be replaced. Hell, they probably have been replaced, as glass cracked or broke, and are more Theseus's Ship than anything.

Even to upgrading the north tower windows? Remember, the spire and stained glass are from the mid-19th century. Nothing says that the Cathedral needs to be entirely stuck in the mid-1800s. Something that's a clear upgrade seems reasonable.

It is, but there were debates about it, and Macron has been a big proponent for adding modern touches. He wanted a modern spire, that was vetoed, then he proposed replacing the (perfectly intact) stained glass from 1859 with modern stained glass, I think that's also been vetoed or at least people aren't keen. I saw a nice proposal of replacing the north tower's plain glass windows with contemporary stained glass as a way to update.

Heartening to see members of the public joining efforts to save the artworks in Børsen, though. I think I read that they were able to save quite a lot, between the efforts to contain the fire and the efforts to get things in danger to safety. Shame about the spire, though. Such an awesome design.

Decided to Google and Reddit surfaced this idea of MIRVs coming in, both by night (very clear) and by day (less clear, but still, you'd probably be able to see it with the naked eye as they streaked down out of the sky):

Speaking of Conan, he featured in probably the greatest episode of Hot Ones of all time:

Right. But even if they didn't, would we really see an atomic warhead coming in before it exploded at the distance we see the city at? I don't know. Maybe not.

The one thing I wonder at when we saw the explosions was... would we actually see the bombs falling before they hit? Probably not. I guess they'd just be MIRV style warheads, right, on ballistic trajectories? I tried to rewatch the scene to see if they CGed a blip of dark something plummeting to the ground prior to each explosion, but no.

Finished Ripley, a new adaptation of Patricia Highsmith's The Talented Mr. Ripley, written and directed entirely by Steven Zaillian (writer/co-writer of Schindler's List, Searching for Bobby Fisher, Clear and Present Danger, Gangs of New York, Moneyball (with Sorkin), The Girl with The Dragon Tattoo, and The Irishman). It's an absolutely gorgeous show to watch, shot in sumptuous black-and-white by cinematographer Robet Elswit (There Will be Blood, Good Night, and Good Luck, Bologie Nights, Mangolia, Punch-Drunk Love, etc.), with really great production design capturing 1961 Italy. Zaillian uses some very formal camera work and tropes -- I particularly love all the shots of people going up and down stair cases, sometimes brightly-lit Italian village cliffside climbs, other times dark interiors of old palazzos. I do think at eight episodes it meanders a bit -- it feels very "European" -- and the biggest flaw, in my mind, is the casting -- everyone is too old for this story. Andrew Scott's Ripley is reptilian, a cold sociopath who hides behind vague amiability, but he's at least 20 years too old for the part. Johnny Flynn (younger half-brother of GoT's own Jerome Flynn, aka Bronn) is also about 15-20 years too old, and his performance is that of a very mediocre, kind of whiny trust fund baby, nothing like Jude Law's lively, 1000-watt presence in Minghella's The Talented Mr. Ripley, but the TV show follows the line of the books closer in this regard. While it raises one question for me -- why would this nebbish Dickie Greenleaf let Tom hang around for months if neither he nor Marge likes him; this is a question Minghella's version fixes by making Dickie wilder and Tom capable of easy latching on to his obsession for jazz to appeal to him. Also featuring is Dakota Fanning as Marge, a quieter and more studied performance compared to Gwyneth Paltrow's, but it works well. Alas, the show does not have a Philip Seymour Hoffman to inhabit Freddy Miles, his loud, smarmy cruel frat boy who makes a big entrance and steals every scene he's in. They go a very different direction with Freddy (perhaps closer to the novel), where he's a sophisticated Brit, a "playwright" allegedly, but a wealthy dilettante mostly. He's played by Eliot Sumner, the non-binary child of Sting (the singer, not the pro wrestler), but there's no toying with the idea that Freddy is anything but a male on the show (we get a glimpse of his passport at one point). He's much quieter in his sneering, more sophisticated than Hoffman's character, but in the end Sumner's is among the least of the main performances. Anyways, it's very sumptuous, and fun. I prefer Minghella's film because it's more direct and I think the changes made to the story really work, but if you want to see something much closer to the novel (except I gather it veers strongly at the end to do its own thing), this is it. Though I have seen people say the 1960 French film Purple Noon, with a young and beautiful Alain Delon as Ripley, is worth watching. (Oh, also, John Malkovich has a cameo in a cute nod to the fact that he played an older Ripley in Ripley's Game.)

It tells a relatively complete story within its 8 episodes, with a couple of hooks leading to a next season. There's no reason someone shouldn't see it just because the 2nd season is an unknown.

Howard and the game's design director both say it's canon and imply people are jumping to conclusions about some things. Maybe there's a mistake or something, but the canonicity of the general story of the show does not seem to be in question. @Corvinus85 Probably a joke reference like that. I also liked how they basically look like oversized golf bags in terms of their shape, which is poking fun a the concept of Brotherhood of Steel squires caddying for their knights.

Pretty sure any uses of 'Wyl' without an article are just like Ned being called 'Stark'. I don't think we know his first name.

Re: Moldaver,

It's retrofuturistic, basically a representation of how people in the 50s thought the future would look -- kind of recognizably like their era, but with their aesthetics applied to the "futuristic" bits.

George went through and made corrections, additions, etc. to that section, so I think he felt it was an acceptable usage, at least in the context of a maester in Oldtown.

Done binging it. Linda and I both quite liked it (she could have done with less gore). It's not the greatest TV show ever, but it's very, very solidly entertaining, the pacing never flags and make you feel a scene is going on to long, and it's well-performed. It's an excellent genre show, an excellent adaptation of a video game, and (if I may say so) I probably prefer it to The Last of Us because the setting, if nothing else, is much more inventive. She preferred the back half to the first half, as it dove more and more into the lore and the grand design of the seasons started coming together, and I think there's something to that for me as well as we spent more and more time The way it's left with some major questions hanging and a foreshadowing of the future season also was a great way to go. Very surprised but pleased that at least one character I expected to die will be making it to the next season. There are some dangling questions that I'm not sure we'll get answered, Another one I think I can ask openly: are the Brotherhood of Steel people supposed to be extremely tolerant of pain through training, drugs, genetic manipulation, or what? Both Maximus and *other character* take significant injuries and either barely react or fail to crumple into screaming agony as would happen with most normal people. Or maybe this is a game nod, and the way characters can take massive wounds and then recover with barely a squeak? Finally, the finale does touch on the idea of

@Rhom Verify the integrity of the files.on Steam.

Linda recognized an actor and was trying to figure out where she knew him from. Turns out it's Chris Parnell, who (among many other things) does the voice of Jerry on Rick and Morty, which she doesn't even watch, but has heard me watching enough that she somehow picked up the similarity. I was totally thrown because I'd assumed it was an actor who performed in some live action show and didn't get it and assumed I couldn't place him because of

The one featuring Joe Pesci is the only one that's really stuck with me. I suspect that has to do more with his co-stars than him and his fate, though; I was 14 when it aired. Heh.

Fan estimates of the population of North America in 2277 range from 10 million to 25 million, with the NCR apparently canonically set at 700k people.. Boston has like 10k-11k people. Estimates of the entire population of North America range from 10 million to 25 mllion The EU Fallout map is explicit that it's speculative and includes fan-fic-created locales, apparently, to try and fill out the half-empty map. This is apparently a semi-canon map with only canon tribal and nation-state territory guesses... whole lot of nothing listed, though. If this is not a post-apocalyptic world, I don't know what it is. It still seems like a mostly lawless continent filled with undeveloped wastelands with pockets (yes, pockets) of tribes, cults, and glorified city-states. I can't answer as to force projection, but then Imperator Joe sends his forces hundreds of miles chasing after Furiosa, so... does having technology that let you travel large distances mean you're no longer post-apocalyptic? No doubt I'd have a different impression if I actually played the games.