7th Station ~TV, movies, games~

[Zunu]

Nope it's on my shelf (as is Player of Games) but haven't gotten round to it yet. Stephenson's encyclopedic tomes are a major investment.

[Celedam]

It's now all over the financial and entertainment news sites for breaking a bunch of Kickstarter records. It passed $3 million — four times its goal — within the first eight hours.

Last night, from what was supposed to be a simple Q&A to promote the Kickstarter…



EDIT: Currently at $4.5 million after 24 hours.

[Celedam]

"I promised to fight for the living. I intend to keep that promise."

[Celedam]

Tonight I went to see Alita: Battle Angel with my friends.

While the basic setting and characters are faithful to the manga (1990–1995) and anime (1993), the tone is completely different. The original was a cyberpunk thriller with more than a little body horror — what the kids these days might call "grimdark". In contrast, this movie is a standard-issue YA adventure story, complete with a high-energy soundtrack and a romantic subplot. I didn't mind the YA melodrama too much, but then I'm the sensitive Liberal Arts major in my particular circle of friends. The other guys, who are all engineers of various types, were visibly bored or uncomfortable.

On the positive side, the CG is amazing. Most of the cyborgs are seamlessly integrated into the live action, and these are not just actors in robotic-looking body suits. You can see into and through many of them. Moreover, Alita herself is designed to epitomize the "uncanny valley" effect (and there is an in-story reason for it), but I stopped noticing it after the first half hour. It was weird: she looked more artificial during the all-CG fight scenes than she did during her normal scenes with live actors.

On the negative side, this movie really feels like it should have been broken up into a mini-series of shorter episodes. The typical movie might have a three-act structure, but those three acts still make up a single story. This was three separate stories (at least), with a painfully obvious and somewhat rushed cliffhanger ending that they hope will leave you wanting more.

At least James Cameron finally got the job done. He's been wanting to do it forever; the Fox television series Dark Angel (2000–2002), which launched the career of Jessica Alba, was supposed to be this.

[Celedam]

It's now all over the financial and entertainment news sites for breaking a bunch of Kickstarter records. It passed $3 million — four times its goal — within the first eight hours.

Currently at $4.5 million after 24 hours.

$6.6 million after four and a half days.

Critical Role Team, After Record-Breaking Fan Crowdfunding Response, Vows to Make ‘The Best Goddamn Cartoon Anyone Has Ever Seen’
https://variety.com/2019/digital/news/critical-role-record-breaking-kickstarter-vox-machina-1203158561/

Kickstarter’s previous record-holder: Joel Hodgson’s effort to revive “Mystery Science Theater 3000” in late 2015. The “MST3K” campaign closed out with a total of $5.76 million raised and led to Netflix picking up the show.

[JonCC]

The only thing I know about Ultraman is that Tsuji Nozomi's husband played the role at some point.
Suffice to say I've never watched any incarnation of the show.



Pretty sure that's about to change, because the Ultraman anime that's coming to Netfix on April 1 looks really good from the footage released so far.

[Celedam]

"Whatever it takes."

[aerosuffly]

The only thing I know about Ultraman is that Tsuji Nozomi's husband played the role at some point.
Suffice to say I've never watched any incarnation of the show.



Pretty sure that's about to change, because the Ultraman anime that's coming to Netfix on April 1 looks really good from the footage released so far.

No! That’s Persona-cyborg hybrid is not Ultraman.

[Celedam]

"I promised to fight for the living. I intend to keep that promise."

Seen in the comments: "In the end Jamie Lannister and Bronn fuse together to create LeBronn James who defeats the night king"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rlR4PJn8b8I&lc=Ugz_sMinW4otYIaygRR4AaABAg

(i dunno, it made me laugh.)

[Celedam]

From a while ago…

Game of Thrones S07E06 (20 Aug 2017)

I'm just wondering how long Jon's company was on that islet. I think it's silly to complain about travel times in a show like this — not just because it's fantasy but also because there are obvious time jumps between scenes — but in this case there definitely was a clock running.

So let's say a day for Gendry to run from the company back to Eastwatch, three days for a raven to fly from Eastwatch to Dragonstone, and then another two days for Daenerys to fly to the company's rescue. (I think those are reasonable estimates, based on calculations that can be provided upon request.) Do we believe the company was trapped there for six days?

The editing certainly implies there was a long wait, at least long enough for the lake to refreeze and for Thoros to die from exposure without anyone noticing, but we were never shown anyone camping or sleeping. It seems like everyone (except Thoros) stood watch the entire time.

This is what I don't like about this season. It's rushing to a conclusion and getting sloppy in the process. It's all very cinematic and crowd-pleasing, but that means it's also significantly dumber.

viewtopic.php?p=226008#p226008

Well, the writers have finally broken their silence! <gasp>

https://ew.com/tv/2019/03/19/game-of-thrones-season-7-pacing/

TL;DR – "Yeah, it was sloppy, but so what? Only nerds on the Internet care about stuff like that."