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Dave wrote:

Martin Smith wrote:

Would I need to have seen the first one to follow it?

I’m not sure how serious this question is, but no, not really. There are a few characters that return from that movie and a bit of backstory but it’s all recapped in this one.

There wasn’t even a fighting tournament in the first one – that happens in this one – so in retrospect the whole first movie feels like a glorified prologue for this one.

It does mean though that there isn’t much of Scorpion and Sub-Zero in this sequel as they were the focus of the first movie.

It was a serious question, though I realise it sounds a bit silly, as I’ve not seen the first but I understand it focused on some new character (Cole?) rather than the ones from the game.

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Dave

Would I need to have seen the first one to follow it?

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Dave

Oh, one more thing: that clipping BB opened of Ben writing about Fisk; that can’t have happened, surely? Fisk wasn’t outed as a crime boss before he killed Ben, was he? He killed Ben after Ben found his mother in the care home, which was when Fisk had outed himself as a philanthropist, but before the crime stuff was broken, IIRC.

I’d be disappointed if L&O is cancelled, but it’s really not as good as the original run. I watched a random episode of that recently (Everybody Loves Raymondo’s, I think it’s called) and every scene was dripping with wit and charm. The new one… not so much. And as much as I like Maura Tierney, I don’t think her lieutenant character works that well. They’re trying too hard to give her more to do than the squad commander usually gets and it just feels try hard. They should have just hired her as lead detective.

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Todd

That sure was a lot of stuff that happened.

Only thing I really found interesting was Heather’s unravelling mental state.

Hopefully that Punisher thing next week will be better, as will whatever it might be (if anything) that picks up with Luke and Jessica (and Danny?)

lorcan_nagle wrote:

Ben wrote:

Trump and Putin are going to die, and you can bet neither have any succession plans.

I know I keep saying it, but the satirical movie about the power vacuum after Trump dies we’re going to get in 20-30 years is going to be spectacular.

There’s definitely going to be a scene of his flunkies tearing off the shoes he makes them wear and putting on ones that fit, certainly.

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Todd, Ben, lorcan_nagle, Dave

[Martin Smith]

University of Sussex overturns £585,000 fine as high court rejects free speech breach claim.
The University of Sussex has overturned a £585,000 fine from England’s higher education watchdog after the high court rejected claims that the university breached free speech regulations in a case involving a former professor.

The ruling is a damaging blow to the credibility of the Office for Students as the court rejected the regulator’s lengthy investigation involving Kathleen Stock’s 2021 resignation, which came after protests over her views on transgender rights and gender identity.

Mrs Justice Lieven found that the regulator’s decision was biased towards punishing Sussex as an example to other universities.

Lieven wrote that the OfS’s final decision to fine the university a record £585,000 “was vitiated by bias because the OfS approached the decision with a closed mind and had therefore unlawfully predetermined the decision”.

The judgment also found that the OfS misapplied concepts of freedom of speech and academic freedom, exceeded its regulatory powers and refused to consider any changes made by Sussex or similar cases at other universities.

“The evidence supports a finding that the OfS had closed its mind to anything that would lead to not finding breaches and being unable to therefore sanction the university,” the ruling concluded.
…
The judgment was highly critical of Susan Lapworth, the OfS’s previous chief executive, saying she wanted to investigate Sussex to send a “strong signal” on freedom of speech to other universities, and that Lapworth’s “mindset from the outset appears to have been that she wished to use the university as a tool to incentivise the rest of the sector”.

…

The result also calls into question the role of Arif Ahmed, the former University of Cambridge philosopher who took over the investigation into Sussex as the OfS’s first director for freedom of speech and academic freedom.

The judgment referred to correspondence between Ahmed and Stock before Ahmed’s OfS appointment in 2023, with the pair exchanging compliments and criticising a non-binary US academic. It also showed that despite concerns about Ahmed’s potential conflict of interest, the OfS eventually enabled him to take a role in the investigation.

Lieven cleared Ahmed of influencing the final decision, saying: “The die had already been well cast by then.” But the judgment noted: “If Dr Ahmed had been the decision-maker I would in all probability have found that he had predetermined the decision by reason of having a closed mind.”

 

• This reply was modified 1 week, 5 days ago by Martin Smith.

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lorcan_nagle, Todd

The thing with the governor in this last episode summed up some of my problems with this season. Fisk needs the governor out of the way so he can have her compliant Lt Gov installed in her place. So instead of digging up dirt on her (admittedly they said she was too clean for this, but given she’s working with Shaggy from the CIA, that seems unlikely) or entrapping her in a compromising position as he did so much in s3 (like with Foggy’s brother the butcher) he just has someone go and kill her. It’s so… dumb, even if you take Fisk’s grief not making him think clearly and artfully, it’s just really fucking dumb.

Similarly, in the previous episode, why did Matt go to the mayor’s residence to confront Fisk. What was the point of that other than to set up a completely arbitrary fight scene?

I genuinely didn’t know Newsarama was still going. I’ve not heard anyone mention it in years.

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Dave, Todd

The single issue market is insane now. Surely it’s not in any way sustainable for much longer and they’ll need to switch to an OGN format?

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Todd

I’ve been increasingly underwhelmed by this season. It definitely hasn’t been as entertaining as the first. While there’s been some highlights – Swordsman was fun, especially his Reign of Terror commentary on his trial – it’s far less than the sum of its parts and feels like it doesn’t actually know how to escalate tension or stakes really. Matt and Karen just seem to be in a constant holding pattern, even when they’ve been doing stuff.

Jessica’s appearance this week was particularly limp. Given they put her in the promotional material before the series (which even trying to avoid things, I saw) I was expecting her to be more of a factor, part of Matt’s resistance movement (which the end of s1 really felt like it was setting up to be this big network and it’s really just Karen, Matt and occasionally someone else). But not turning up til episode 6 and then just doing a completely arbitrary fight scene? And her house arbitrarily attacked by a random CIA wetworks team for no fucking reason? What was the point? I can take or leave Jess having a kid now (it really doesn’t tally with MCU Jess, but I guess it’s been a while since we’ve seen her) but it seems like they had no idea how to actually use her in any meaningful way. Which is what this showrunner accused the original s1 team of doing to the Punisher, IIRC, and they rewrote those scenes. Maybe Jessica will prove more relevant to the plot in the next few episodes, but at this point I’d rather they hadn’t bothered.

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Todd

Porsche’s new Gen 4 Formula E car for next season (starts end of this year/beginning of the next). I think this is just a test livery – the dazzle pattern is a bit of cliche on that front and kinda pointless given the series has spec body work that all the teams get from the same supplier – but still, it looks gorgeous. Big improvement over the Gen 3 and almost as nice as the Gen 2. I hope Porsche stick with that shade of purple for one of their teams.

Gen 4 is a big opportunity for FE. The cars will have 600kW of power (over 350 on the current cars) which is about 800 brake horsepower, 0-60 in about 1.8 seconds and it should get up to about 200 mph. In a period where F1 has alienated a lot of people with its new ruleset, hopefully FE can capitalise. Probably not, given that electric power is being made the scapegoat for F1’s problems, so an all-electric series likely won’t appeal to people put off by it, I guess.

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Todd

I’ve been buying a lot of stuff from Japan recently. Mainly Beast Wars tat, video game stuff (GameCube controllers in Japanese exclusive colourways but also a complete copy of Kid Icarus for the Famicom Disk System. I do not have a FDS), but also blu-rays of the Ginger Rogers & Fred Astaire canon.

I first watched them all around 2012, when BBC filled the resultant void of putting all its kid programming only on the dedicated channels with old movies, and really loved them. Ginger Rogers especially is a brilliant comedic actress. Weirdly, of the 9 films Rogers and Astaire did together, the only one that’s had a blu-ray release in the West is Swing Time, in the Criterion Collection. I rented that a few years back and was surprised by how much I remembered being in it wasn’t. In Japan though, most of them have been release on blu-ray by IVC. I took a punt on getting one in my first proxy shopping shipment and it turned out to be region free, so I’ve scooped up most of the rest (can’t find a copy of Top Hat unfortunately and I might just get the Criterion release of Swing Time, as the restoration on these Japanese releases isn’t stellar).

I watched Shall We Dance last night, and turns out, all the stuff I’d thought was in Swing Time – the dance on roller-skates, Let’s Call The Whole Thing Off, Fred dancing with loads of women wearing creepy masks of Ginger – it’s in Shall We Dance. Which is fine, just a fluke of my poor memory. But it does make me question even more why Swing Time is the only one that got the nod from Criterion. It can’t be a rights issue, because all but one of them (which they did for MGM years after all the others) are in the RKO catalogue, so have the same ownership. So they must have purposefully picked Swing Time, even though it’s not the most famous (Top Hat), arguably not the best (Top Hat or Shall We Dance) and has a whole blackface dance routine they have to acknowledge. Or maybe that’s it. Maybe they picked it *because* of the blackface routine so they could do the commentary and special features about it.

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Todd, lorcan_nagle

Uncle Retrospective wrote:

Martin Smith wrote:

It’s almost like airing shows out of order is never a good idea or something.

I watched the first season when it aired and gave up because I had no idea what the fuck was going on.

What the fuck is wrong with these people?

You’d think that people who work in television, of all people, would understand the importance of being able to coherently follow a TV series, and yet…

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Uncle Retrospective, lorcan_nagle

I’ve started watching Don’t Trust The B In Apartment 23, which is a delight. Unfortunately, I got about halfway in in before I realised Disney+ has got the episodes out of order (they’ve gone with air date order and ABC showed them in a seemingly random order it seems). It completely messes up the running plot threads, the build up of relationships etc. I can see why anyone watching it at the time would have been thrown by that and how it could have led to its cancellation. You know, like it did for Firefly. It’s almost like airing shows out of order is never a good idea or something.

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lorcan_nagle, Uncle Retrospective, njerry

Arjan Dirkse wrote:

Argos is a radio show/ podcast in the Netherlands

Wow, that’s weird they branched out to that from the shops they have over here.

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Dave

Who is that Artemis Four pin-up by? I can’t make out the signature.

Dave wrote:

Karolina looks like she’s standing against her will.

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Todd, Dave, lorcan_nagle

https://www.channel4.com/press/news/channel-4-extends-its-reign-uk-home-taskmaster

Channel 4 has extended its deal for Taskmaster and, crucially, expanded its selection of international ones. NZ, Australia and Canada all to stream, including on the C4 youtube channel.

I had a set of the Narnia books as a kid, which I skimmed (I was terrible at reading as a kid) and there’s two bits from The Last Battle that stick with me: The dwarf that is in heaven with them all but thinks it’s trapped in a dungeon or something so can’t appreciate/acknowledge it, which even as kid I found kinda spitefully written. And then that because Susan got into *gasp* wearing lipstick she’s too much of slut to go to heaven with the rest of them. Which again, even as a kid I found dodgy..

Weird they’re printing that Kyle Rayner GL collection again. I don’t think they even bothered with the solicited v2 and 3 last time.

lorcan_nagle wrote:

Todd wrote:

Christian wrote:

I’m interested in this IQ drop issue,

A cognitive neuroscientist testified in front of US Congress, attesting to the fact that Generation Z (and Generation Alphas after them) are the first generations ever to decrease in cognitive abilities.

And it’s worth noting that in the US, this is by design.  The education system has been thoroughly sabotaged over the course of decades by the religious right

That and a very misguided approach to teaching kids how to read for decades.

Pakistan are apparently negotiating a ceasefire between the US and Iran at the moment (no mention of Israel in the reports I’ve seen, which seems like a big omission). And, honestly, the Iranians would be mad to agree to anything. There is practically no chance the Americans will stick to anything they say. Trump has already shown the worth of his word on all those “trade deals”, like the one with the UK, which suddenly became irrelevant the next time he had a tantrum and wanted to change tariff rates.

I’m no fan of the Iranian regime, but it’s hard to see how they’re really at fault for much of anything in this conflict. The Americans have achieved the impossible in making the Iranian government seem if not sympathetic then at least in the right. I kinda think the Iranians should just stick it out and wait for the Americans to crumble. Trump’s negotiating position is highly dubious.

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Todd, Ben, Christian

Christian wrote:

I’m interested in this IQ drop issue, so I’ve had Perplexity give me a quick overview

::sideways look at camera::

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Todd, Ben, Dave

Ben wrote:

£100k cap on political donations and Reform be squealing foul.

It’s as if Megatron went into politics, he who cares not for rights now pleads for them.

Another potentially really good bit of (lower case) reform is a public interest test for all contracts over £1m for public services, to see whether they’d be better served kept in-house rather than out-sourced. Which admittedly still might not do much if people just hand-wave through the test, but if applied properly, it could really cut down on the out-sourcing empires of the likes of Capita etc.

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Todd, Ben

Sean Robinson wrote:

Originally developed by Chinese alchemists in the 9th century who were trying to create an elixir of immortality, it was later discovered to be explosive.

The one thing they didn’t want it to cause!

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Sean Robinson, Todd

Todd wrote:

Tongue depressors and popsicle sticks become craft supplies

Right, but people still have lollies. And tongues.

I woke up today thinking about pipe cleaners (no, I don’t know why and I think it’s probably not even worth investigating). It took me years to realise they’re for cleaning tobacco pipes. Whenever they were used for crafts on Blue Peter or Smart or whatever, I assumed they were for cleaning pipe pipes, you know plumbing, which was confusing, because they’re far too small. I think I only made the smoking pipe connection while watching Bargain Hunt, where someone was showing off some pipes.

Anyway, what this led to me think about is how strange it is that an ancillary product that existed solely to service something else has ended up with an entire other life and purpose (as a staple of fair naff kids crafting items) while the main product is practically extinct. I’ve been trying to think of other examples of that, but am coming up blank. Anyone got any?

I wonder how much Hungary’s shithousery to Ukraine is affecting Orban/will be an element in the election.

I enjoyed s2e1.

lorcan_nagle wrote:

Huh.

You missed a few letters from your huzzah there, Lorcan.

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Todd, njerry

Wonder Man is getting a second season! Huzzah!

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Christian, Todd, Dave, Uncle Retrospective

Dave wrote:

It also feels like they haven’t really reworked the style of comedy for a British audience either,

Maybe it should be half an hour a week

So it should just be every other British sketch show ever made?

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Todd

Oh, I thought it was a screen cap of Andrea Martin from Great News at first glance.

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Sean Robinson

SNL UK launched last night and I thought it was pretty good actually. My main concern had been Weekend Update feeling a bit pointless given all the other topical comedy around in the UK, but by keeping it relatively short and also going quite dark and borderline bad taste, it actually felt valid.

The rest of the show was solid. A few wobbles, the usual SNL thing of not always knowing how to end a sketch, but it certainly wasn’t an embarrassment to the format or any kind of demonstration that the format won’t work over here. The fake ad was an all-timer, the cold open was pretty good political satire, Boovies Goes To The Films was good.

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Todd, njerry

I am getting increasingly hyped to see those “new” episodes of Dalek’s Masterplan at Easter (when even is Easter?!). I hope they haven’t screwed them up “restoring” them with AI though. The season 21 Collection blu-ray came out this weekend and that is apparently as badly afflicted as season 13, even though they said they’d “taken on feedback from the reception to 13” and adjusted it accordingly. I’m still vainly hoping it’ll be corrected before the standard edition releases (with replacement discs for everyone who bought the LE – sounds crazy I know, but they’ve just done that for season 20, which had some issue with juddering on certain players. Anyone with the LE can get replacements of pretty much every disc in the set, which are just the ones in the SE release).

The other three episodes comprise a brand-new box set (release date to be confirmed) in which the Tenth Doctor teams up with some of his other incarnations.

I wonder if one will be the 14th Doctor.

Huh. Well, I doubt anyone predicted that. Will it work though?

Curious as to how bad this must have been to not ever air.

Zhao seems a terrible choice for it though. Admittedly I’ve not seen her other work, but Eternals was dire and the MCU has, broadly, a very similar tone to Buffy, so if she couldn’t manage to work in that, I don’t see how she could have done Buffy successfully.

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Todd

Great news!

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lorcan_nagle, Dave

I’m actually getting somewhat optimistic about SNL UK. There’s some great people involved. Grainne Maguire and Humphrey Ker on the writing team, for instance.

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Todd

The UK version of the Floor ended last night and it was a final episode that rather highlighted the flaws in the premise.

The actual gameplay – two people naming things in pictures on a chess clock – is fine. Fun to play along with at home. And one duel last night, on US states, showed how good it can be when competitive. The winner only had two seconds left and I genuinely wondered if they were going to run out of states.

But that was one duel and a lot of the others showed the opposite end of the scale and how the show can struggle: when one or both people don’t know anything about a certain topic and have to muddle through. A key rule of game and quiz shows is that they’re not very fun to watch if the person playing is completely useless at them. (There are exceptions to that, of course: Taskmaster, House of Games.) That really is true of the Floor, especially when it’s a subject you’ve been looking forward to for the whole series. Formula One was on the board and finally came up last night, but played not by the person who brought it, but instead one guy who happened to know a lot about it and one guy who really did not. It’s not that fun watching a guy say “Damon Hill? Oh pass.” half a dozen times in a row having clearly given up the will to live. Even worse was a woman, who had dominated the last two episodes, defending on countries and not being able to recognise Canada and Brazil on a map.

This really came to a head in the end game. That is structured as best two out of three, on each of the subjects the contestants are holding and then a “neutral” third as a tie-break. Both contestants last night had inherited categories – cricketers and James Bond – and it became immediately clear that they’d given up on those and just wanted to go for the tie break. The guy with cricketers just didn’t even try on James Bond and passed his way through (and he really could have named some of them if he’d actually thought about it), while the woman struggled on cricketers for a bit, saying some random surnames a few times, before just giving up and doing the same.

So the whole series just came down to UK Tourist Attractions (which weirdly included 10 Downing Street, which I would argue is really not a tourist attraction, but heigh-ho), with the guy winning. “You’ve earned £50,000”, Rob Brydon told him, to which my reaction was, well, had he? Because he’d taken part in the second duel of the first episode and then fuck all til midway through the final episode. I mean he did a lot of great standing around! But ultimately he won largely from random chance rather than skill, which doesn’t really feel right. He gets £50k for winning three rounds, whereas other people did five times that and got, in some cases, nothing (or £5k an episode for having the most floor space). There were people who got to the final episode having literally done nothing. It made the whole thing feel somewhat arbitrary and chaotic, in a bad way. Less than the sum of its parts. The Risk-esque domination format is interesting, but flawed, given it repeatedly just ended up with the biggest area changing hands on a single round. The “name-the-picture” gameplay is fun, but doesn’t feel… weighty enough, I guess, to be what the tactical stuff turns on. Contestants bringing their own categories is a cool idea, but the way it’s structured means you’re too likely to end up with people who don’t know anything on one floundering entirely.

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paul f

It does look cool, although the head just makes me think it’s Grimlock. Isn’t it like £30 though?

I picked up some stuff last month that I keep forgetting to talk about.

So Mattel has been going cross-over mad lately. There’s Transformers Hot Wheels and Hot Wheels Transformers (that is Hot Wheels cars of Transformers alt modes and Transformers figures of, erm, “famous” Hot Wheels cars), Turtles of Grayskull, which asked the pressing question “what if a lot of He-Man characters had random mutations and some Turtles characters lightly cosplayed as He-Man characters” and MotU x Transformers, where some He-Man characters are cosplaying as Transformers (which look fucking awful but props for doing Scareglow as Starscream, I guess).

But there’s also MotU x Thundercats. Which initially I dismissed out of hand as being the same as Turtles of Grayskull – entirely inessential and rubbish. The only figure that caught my attention initially was Battle Cat Man, which is Battle Cat as a Thundercat, a brilliant idea. Not Mattel’s own, it must be said, as someone’s been making customs of that concept for years now.

I thought I’d missed out on BCM though, as I could only see it available from import dealers at an eye-watering £30~, but then it popped up on Amazon and a couple of other places (I ended up ordering it from Rarewaves). And in looking into that, I gave a closer look to the rest of the line and realised it’s actually better than I thought. Because while there is a He-Man with a cat chestplate and slightly leonine hair, most of the figures are Thundercats characters. But they’re not really cosplaying as specific MotU characters, they just have Eternian styled accessories, which you can just entirely disregard, leaving you with MotU Origins style Thundercats figures. Which it turns out I am into.

Cheetara is the perfect example of this. Here she is with all the Eternian bits.

And they look pretty rubbish, frankly. But throw those in the bin and you get:

A classic Cheetara. And it’s really good. Mattel have totally got the articulation pattern down well for this line (it helps that they reuse so many parts, I guess). The ankle jointss are a little weak and I think I stressed the feet swapping out the lower leg parts (will definitely heat treat to loosen them next time), but otherwise it’s great. And having it in scale with the MotU Origins figures is nice, even if I only have He-Man and Skeletor (and who else do you really need? Well, She-Ra and Hordak, obvs).

Skel-Ra is slightly more involved. He’s a bigger figure and the concept is Skeletor getting the powers of the Ancient Evils that Mumm-Ra uses or whatever.

Which is fine, I guess. You have to pull the figure apart at the waist to swap out his loin cloth, which is a bit daunting, but again, a nice thing about Origins figures is that they’re designed for exactly that, for some reason. Pop off the nice Skele-head, reverse the bat wings and add in some other accessories and you get:

A pretty fucking rad Mumm-Ra. That’s a great head sculpt. He’s bigger than the other figures, which is a good feature (no idea if Origins has been doing figures this size much – I assume not). Just a really solid figure.

I got both of those off Amazon Italy (worked out cheapest – Skel-Ra was in a damaged box) and they arrived before the main event: Battle Cat Man.

He’s a simpler figure in that there’s no real “transformation” element. You can remove his armour, but frankly, there’s not much point, as he just looks naked (maybe if they’d added a Cringer head it would have more appeal). Still, the concept alone, and the solid execution is all you need. I maybe would have liked another weapon, as the claws – which are based on Battle Cat’ armour of course – are a tad underwhelming and connect only in a fairly vague way. But that’s nitpicking.

There’s three waves of the series so far, with the aforementioned naff He-Man, Tygra, two versions each of Lion-O and Panthro (cartoon and toy deco versions) and a redeco of Battle Cat Man as Panthor making up the rest of the line. I’m definitely looking to get the rest of the T-Cats. Hopefully they’ll go on and do Wilykit, Wilykat, Pumyra and others (that guy who is a blue redeco of Tygra seems an obvious choice at least) but there was no news of the line at Toy Fair, so I fear it may be done, which is a shame. Would have been interesting to see what they’d done with Snarf. Maybe dress him up as Orko?

These figures have renewed my interest in MotU Origins somewhat. I bailed after that first He-Man and Skeletor as I was a bit pissed off with the way all the promo images showed He-Man with a proper sword, but then he only came with half a sword that combined with Skeletor’s (which looks naff) which was then switched to a proper sword in a running change. But I might dip back in and get some of the cartoon classics, especially the 200X ones they’re doing at the moment.

I’m also a little interested in some of the first He-Man Origins cross-over figures they did: Masters of the WWE Universe, which is classic WWE wrestlers with He-Man gimmicks (so the New Day as Man-E-Faces, which is genius). They’re all OOP and expensive though. Turns out they’ve done another WWE line in the Origins style though (called, unhelpfully, WWE Superstars, which is impossible to search for online successfully), which are just straight gimmick-less figures. They also seem to have ended and are also stupidly expensive online (about £30+ per figure) but I happened upon Tatanka, of all people, for £10 in a small chain toy shop in Worcester recently. He’ll do for designing resin stands for those figures at least.

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Todd, Dave, lorcan_nagle

I feel like if it came from any other country it’d have a decent chance at coming about 8th or 12th.

Hasbro teased a Studio Series 86 Prowl but haven’t delivered. A weird omission given how far into the weeds they’ve gone on characters from it now.

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Andrew

I’m watching that Chevy Chase documentary. Incredible really that, in a documentary that he’s fully involved in, he comes across as such an asshole. Not even in a warts-and-all historical sense, even in the bits of him interacting with the (off-camera) director/interviewer.

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njerry, Uncle Retrospective

Arjan Dirkse wrote:

Prison abolition lefties when there’s a school shooting: we have to jail his family!

I’ve never seen a “prison abolitionist leftie” say that after a school shooting.

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Uncle Retrospective, Todd, Al-x, lorcan_nagle

This is quite surprising: Richard Osman is leaving House of Games after the next season (which is currently filming). They’re going to replace him as host, but it’s not an easy role to fill, as Pointless has proved with its guest hosts. The hit rate on those is quite low, as there’s a fine balance to be struck between banter (or schtick in some cases) and being informative. Even some people I really like or you’d assume were safe pairs of hands for TV light entertainment have been awful at it (Konnie Huq always springs to mind for that – you would not believe she’d been on Blue Peter for over a decade with her work on Pointless, where she seemed so unprepared and frazzled it was like she’d never been on TV before). Even the ones who are decent at it rely too much on the canned facts from the laptop (which I suspect they’re pushed to do). Weirdly the best of the Pointless co-hosts IMO has been Alex Brooker of all people.

House of Games has a similar delicate balance. It’s really not a typical game show presenting job but you need someone who can be personable with all the guests without being too luvvy. The only suggestion I’ve seen that feels like they’d work well is Dave Gorman. But it’ll probably be Paddy McGuinness.

<arrested development open marriage meme>

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Ben, Todd, lorcan_nagle

Nothing like a pointless war in the middle east to show everyone how well your Presidency is going!

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Todd, Uncle Retrospective, Ben, njerry, lorcan_nagle

Uncle Retrospective wrote:

There’s going to a new Neon Genesis Evangelion series!

https://x.com/d0nut2x/status/2025919964444557448

Argon Genesis Evangelion?

Neon Exodus Evangelion?

Neon Genesis Evangetiger?

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Todd

lorcan_nagle wrote:

the biggest thing it did was light a fire under me to check out Strikeforce Morituri, which I’d been meaning to do for the longest time…

I read the first tpb of that a year or two back and was really surprised by how great it is. There was an omnibus released last year, which – despite really not being an omni guy – I’m tempted by.

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Todd, Dave, lorcan_nagle

Has anyone heard about those new solar-powered postboxes the Royal Mail is rolling out?

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cgln72rgrero

One has just been installed in my village. It’s replaced the post box that’s outside the Post Office, which seems slightly less useful than elsewhere in the village, but given that the running of the Post Office has gone to shit over the past few months (all the competent people left and now there’s always a massive queue) it seemed like it’d be a nice quick alternative.

However, I thought the solar-powered element was in order to create proofs of postage, so you can get the benefit of the Post Office experience at the post box. It isn’t though. The solar panels are powering a barcode scanner, but that’s solely just to unlock the drawer to let you put the parcel in. Nothing else. If you want a proof of postage, you have to use the RM smartphone app. That needs to use location services to recognise that you’re by a post box and then… well, I’m not sure, because it wouldn’t acknowledge that I was standing directly beside a post box. There’s an option for not providing a posting location, but that just says “we’ll provide a proof of postage when your item is scanned within our system”. You would think the barcode scanner on the solar postbox would count for that, but seemingly not.

So all these solar powered post boxes actually do is lock access behind a barcode scanner. They don’t actually offer anything useful beyond a normal, non-solar powered parcel postbox (which aren’t very common, but do exist – there’s one in the industrial estate outside my village). Think I’ll stick with the Post Office.

Is Grant the one that has been involved with the Dave revival or the one that hasn’t?

I finally watched Sinners, which I enjoyed. But pick a fucking aspect ratio, my dude.

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Todd, Uncle Retrospective, Dave

The Day The Earth Blew Up finally got a UK release this weekend and I saw it today.

It’s a mixed bag. Animation-wise it’s a tour de force. There’s a whole musical section in a Soviet workers propaganda style (I’m blanking on the name of the movement) which is great.

The story though is a little underwhelming. Not bad, but it wasn’t nearly as laugh out loud funny as I’d hoped.

Worth seeing if you get chance though.

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Todd

Yeah, same. I’ve seen them as “set dressing”, essentially, in a barcade and well… beats Pop Vinyls, I suppose.

Pre-order listings have gone up for these on Entertainment Earth. They’re ReAction+ figures of Leoric and Darkstorm. From what I can tell, ReAction+ are basically just o-ring figures like 80s Joes and indeed Visionaries (although Visionaries were 4″ and these are 3.75″) and is what they do for their Joes now, as well as TMNT and Back to the Future. And they don’t look too bad?

That’s from some idiot’s YT video, comparing them to the original ReActions (and complaining that they’re “very smooth” seemingly missing the fact they’re meant to look like the cartoon versions). Seem to have all the poseability of “proper” O-ring figures. Faces are a bit bland, but not awful. Oh damn, am I getting mildly optimistic about these?

I’ll be interested to see what they do about accessories and holograms. I imagine they’ll just do shiny stickers like the Revolutionaries Leoric – which I’m fine with but I know some chuds will complain about – but the power staffs will probably have to be scaled down to stay within the budget for these (as most figures don’t have any accessories).

 

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Todd, lorcan_nagle

Yeah, Super7 figures generally suck. They’re either the ReAction ones, which are basically “hey, what if this thing you liked was a shitty 5 poa figure from the 70s” or the 7” Ultimates, which pale in comparison to figures in that kind of scale by Hasbro, Mattel or others, but are stupidly expensive.

Oh, on a related note, Super7 also have the Visionaries license now. Pray for me.

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Todd

The biggest news from the Toy Fair.

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Todd

I’ve been reading DC Finest: Hawkman – Wings Across Time recently. Still got a little bit to go, but I thought I’d talk about it and how weird it is.

So, Silver Age DC super-hero reinventions were all about science fiction. The Flash went from a guy who might as well have been magic to a scientist with pseudo-science powers. Green Lantern went from having a literal magic ring to a space guy with a super-science ring that might as well have been magic. Atom went from being an angry short man to a guy who used pseudo-science to change size and density.

The key thing about all those reinventions was that the original creators weren’t involved. New creative teams had free reign to completely rethink the characters. That isn’t the case for Hawkman (and Hawkgirl) though. The GA Hawkman was co-created by Gardner Fox while the SA Hawkman is created by Gardner Fox, along with Joe Kubert, who drew the Golden Age strip near the end. I think it’s fair to say Fox doesn’t achieve any distance from his creation in the update process.

The GA Hawkman is Carter Hall, an archaeologist who finds Ninth Metal, which allows him to create a pair of wings, which he uses to fight crime, along with priceless archaeological treasures “weapons from the past”. He’s assisted by his wife Shiera, who becomes Hawkgirl.

The SA Hawkman is Thanagarian police officer Katar Hol, who along with his wife/partner Shayera, comes to Earth chasing a criminal. Their police uniforms coincidentally include a big pair of wings powered by Nth Metal, which lets them fly and looks otherwise identical to the GA Hawkman and Hawkgirl costumes. Arriving on Earth, they meet the police commissioner of Midway City, who suggests they take human identities and jobs in order to learn Earth policing methods. His brother has just retired as curator of the Midway City Museum, so he sets Katar up with that job (immediately get a sense for how Midway City is run) and Americanises their names as Carter Hall and Shiera. They fight crime under the names Hawkman and Hawkgirl and, arbitrarily, decide to use “weapons from the past” (ie any old shit lying around the museum) to aid them.

It’s a bit of a mess really. The sci-fi elements are constant – their Thanagarian ship hanging around in orbit gets a lot of use, as does their Absorbascon, which summarised and implanted all knowledge from Earth in their heads when they arrived – but they don’t really add that much. It really feels like Fox just wanted to seamlessly carry on/revive the original Hawkman in the new era – as the characters that hadn’t gone away like Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, Aquaman etc had – but had to bolt on a few contrivances to appease an editorial mandate. As a SF focused reinvention of the character and concept, it’s weak as hell.

But it is late 50s/early 60s DC, so my expectations weren’t high, especially for a Gardner Fox comic. He had a special talent for writing the most scientifically illiterate nonsense possible and then presenting it as if it’s the biggest, galaxy-brained thinking imaginable rather than just a contrived twist. If you wrote a summary of the plot of one of these issues and had someone read it, they would have you sectioned. And yet, Fox is drawing on real science at times. There’s one story where he utilises thermal wake from submarines. Another where the plot hinges on “cold light”, which is silly in how it’s presented, but is really the concept of low-energy lightbulbs decades before it became mainstream. It’s an odd mix of arrant nonsense and the occasional smart idea.

Even having read some Silver Age Gardner Fox comics before though, nothing could prepare me for the fact that Hawkman and Hawkgirl can talk to birds. I had no idea this was part of their power-set! How on Earth do they get a free ride for this while Aquaman is constantly ridiculed for telepathically commanding whales? At least Aquaman’s not dressed as a giant fish.

As I often do with mediocre old comics, I find myself thinking about how this could have better. And I think there is the bones of a decent concept in here. There’s too much that’s just hand-waved away or given a ridiculous explanation. For instance, the Thanagarian police uniforms being giant wings and hawk helmets is explained in a story where it’s revealed the wings were invented by Katar’s father to help fend off a race of space-faring giant birds wearing human face masks that were looting the planet. The police service was set up in the aftermath of this, using the wings and wearing hawk helmets to… remind them of their origin? It’s just silly. I think they’d have been better off breaking the fourth wall a little (as Flash had already done) by having Katar and Shayera get to Earth, use the Absorbascon thing – with possibly it not working correctly – and they chose to emulate the costume and wings of the GA Hawkman and Hawkgirl that they learned of from comics. They’re essentially play-acting their lives anyway in the Carter and Shiera identities, why not go the whole hog? Or the weapons from the past conceit could be the result of them only having remote, out-dated information about Earth so they’ve only previously researched/trained with ancient weapons, not guns or whatever.

Which isn’t to say what is here is terrible. I’ve ragged on it, but the stories are largely enjoyable in a hokey way, it’s nice seeing Hawkgirl be almost Hawkman’s equal and the art by Joe Kubert and Murphy Anderson is pleasant. But neither of the leads have any real personality, it’s all very low stakes, there’s next to no continuity. There’s so much potential for something more interesting here.

One hypothetical that often crops up in comics communities is the old “if you could swap two characters between Marvel and DC” thing. Usually that’s taken as happening now, but I’ve always thought it would be more interesting if looked at a hypothetical for when the characters were created. And in that context, I think Hawkman would be a prime candidate. This would have been great if done by Lee and Kirby. Ok, Hawkgirl probably wouldn’t have come out of that as well as she does here, but it would have rocked.

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njerry, Todd

Christian wrote:

He’s making the categorical mistake of reducing the writing to the dialogue and captions, though. The writing is the art of telling the story, and if you don’t do that, a portfolio is indeed what you are left with.

This is what annoys me when artists say they’re the most important part of a comics creative team (not necessarily untrue) and that they don’t need a writer. If you’re making sequential pictures that form a story, guess what? You’re the writer. They haven’t eliminated the need for one, they’ve just taken it on themselves.

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Vikram, Al-x, Todd

Better than MacFarlane, I guess. And as Mattel have the DC licence from next year or so too, we might get some fun cosplay crossovers.

ToyFair this week, so there’ll probably be an announcement of who’s getting the TMNT license after Playmates lose it (assuming anyone does, given dozens of companies already have one at the moment anyway).

Also, Hasbro have announced they’ve got a wide ranging Harry Potter licence, for anyone wanting to get TERFy wizard figures. I’m curious as to whether they’ll be doing a line with likenesses to the movies or if they’ll go for the new HBO series or just stylised ones.

The one thing they didn’t want to happen…

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Dave, Todd, lorcan_nagle, Sean Robinson

I probably go with dee-kal, because it’s only a term I hear Americans use for the most part.

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Todd

Oh, also, it may just be a hollow rebranding (reversing a previous hollow rebranding) but it’s nice to have the name Sky One coming back.

The ones in there I’ve heard of, I like. Of course, for true SNL, they should mostly be unknowns (though that’s never been entirely true through SNL history and increasingly isn’t, with new hires having online careers). I’m not confident in the show working, but I’m willing to give it a go.

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Todd

the companies insist that the beer is not only safe to drink, but actually tastes good.

Always a great footing to start your campaign off from.

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Todd

Nice to have Mock of the Week back tonight. Works well at an hour format.

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Dan, Dave

Sooo… Trump shat himself in an Oval Office presser the other day. You can hear it happen in the video.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u_6kGluvINg

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JRCarter, Todd

Was it Cory Booker who did that filibuster last year for no particular reason and then still voted to confirm Trump’s nominees?

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Ben, Todd

I finished Wonder Man this evening. I was a bit concerned by them burning it off in one drop rather than weekly (which is what they did to Echo, which was also part of the vague Marvel Spotlight branding IIRC), but I loved it.

Abdul-Mateen is great and Trevor worked surprisingly well long form (though Kingsley’s bad Scouse accent got grating at times). I thought they did really well taking the essence of the character and applying it to a reinterpretation of his actor status quo from the 80s. I’m curious and excited to see what they do with him next.

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Ben, lorcan_nagle, Todd

njerry wrote:

Wait…did Martin just post part of the redacted Epstein Files?

Far more explosive and ill-tempered.

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Todd, Ben, njerry

Walz has been increasingly disappointing over the past month or so.

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Uncle Retrospective, Todd, Ben

I finally played Return To Monkey Island across the last few days. I was little hesitant about it because I was burned by Ron Gilbert’s last adventure Thimbleweed Park. It had been really enjoyable, but then absolutely disappeared up its own arse, making a load of not-as-clever-as-it-thought-it-was meta-commentary about the limitations of the game and the quirks of Kickstarter stuff so for instance one of the Kickstarter rewards was getting your name in the town phonebook, which a lot of people did. In the game’s finale, this is called out as one of the things that doesn’t make sense about the world as the game, as the phone book has far more people in it than the population of the game. This is as the world of the game is revealed to be a video game and your player character turns it off. There’s also a thing where the sheriff, the coroner and someone else are all the same person using different vocal tics, which works as a kinda fun weird quirk of a strange town, but then at the end the character that’s seen through the fourth wall points out that it’s a limitation of the game’s budget or somesuch. It was really unsatisfying to spend hours invested in a game and then have it just go “oh none of its real! None of this matters!”

But with my PC upgraded, I thought it was time to return to Monkey Island, a series I adore (except Escape, obviously. I’m not mad). Gilbert wouldn’t burn me twice would he?

I really enjoyed it for the most part. The art style absolutely isn’t what I would have picked, but it is undeniably well made and animated. The voice acting is mostly excellent, with a huge amount of returning actors (the only problem I had is the replacement voice for LeChuck. Weirdly, minor character Gullet sounded more like classic LeChuck than new LeChuck did). There’s some properly funny lines, as you’d hope, and the puzzles were generally pretty good and not too obtuse. I made good, steady progress and was entertained.

But then I finished it tonight and my immediate reaction was “oh fuck off“. Because yes, Ron Gilbert did it again. Does the story have a satisfying conclusion? No because Ron decided that rather than actually craft a proper ending, he’d just do another bit of pseudo-intellectual msaturbation. As Guybrush descends through Monkey Island after LeChuck to open The Secret, he arrives back on Melee Island, but it’s a theme park type place with characters you’ve met previously just cardboard cut-outs and animatronics. Stan appears and gives you the keys to turn off the lights and lock up. You open The Secret and it’s a t-shirt (a callback to a running gag in Monkey 1) and Guybrush goes off with Elaine, like a middle-aged sadsack leaving an escape room/low rent pirate Westworld. It then cuts back to the framing narrative, of Guybrush talking on a bench to his kid, who complains that the ending doesn’t make sense and Guybrush spouts some bollocks about the nature of story telling and the Secret means different things to different people and… just fuck off Ron.

It’s not that I’m expecting some grand reveal of what the Secret Of Monkey Island finally is. I’ve not been on tenterhooks for 30 years to learn that or anything. It’s clearly a macguffin that can never have any satisfying explanation/reveal. But I’m not the one who created a brand new story explicitly about said Secret. I just wanted to play a fun pirate adventure story with some characters I love, but apparently I need to get some condescending bit of homespun “the journey is more important than the destination” bollocks instead of a satisfying conclusion to the narrative I’ve been engaged with. Which I’m not convinced Ron actually knows how to do. It’s like he’s stuck living in the shadow of barely anyone understanding the ending of Monkey Island 2 – which he very obnoxiously taunts people with here by having the opening seemingly pick up from it, only to turn out to be Guybrush’s kid and his friend play-acting the story of Monkey 2 in the future – and keeps leaning into it in the hopes that, I dunno, people will get this one and hail him as a deep thinker or something?

Seriously, going “ah but the true value of a story is not the ending, but what you take away from it” is not big or clever. It’s the cheap way out of actually giving your story a meaningful ending. It’s absolutely worse for video games where you have to be more actively engaged and for longer than you would a movie or possible even a book.

[Martin Smith]

Thoughts on a few things I’ve bought recently.

Transformers Legacy Metalhawk

I’ve been on the fence for this for ages. I like the character, but never felt compelled to pick this up. Then it got recoloured with nicer greys and I still didn’t pick it up. Both versions have been hanging around on mild clearance for a while and I needed to suggest something I’d want for my birthday.

And I picked the “wrong” one. I’ve got the one with the lighter greys rather than the charcoal ones and… look, it’s fine. I’m not sure that darker grey would actually be better, but there’s something about this lighter shade of grey that just makes it feel like it’s unpainted. Maybe it’s all the resin I’m printing in the exact same colour.

That colour scheme is mainly a problem in alt mode. I don’t think the colour design for that works at all really, as you get a blue jet with red highlights and then just random grey panels. It’s far less of an issue in robot mode and Metalhawk is a cool figure. I’d forgotten that he’s a retool of Kingdom Cyclonus and that’s a good base to work from.

So yeah, it’s nice, it just feels a like some metallic paint/plastic would have boosted it.

Transformers Age of Primes Quickstrike

Another one I was on the fence about because from pictures it doesn’t look that different from the original Beast Wars one. Which obviously not everyone is going to have, but I do, so did I really need the upgrade?

Well I went for and I’m glad I did because it’s awesome. It’s bigger than the BW original (which was a basic class figure), about twice the size and with that a lot sturdier. It is the same basic transformation pattern, just with ~30 years of improvements in design. It’s replaced the translucent plastic of the original with a nice shade of goldy-yellow that gives the impression of being metallic without actually being metallic (except when paint on the chest).

It looks absolutely look the character did on the show and there’s a variety of blast effect and 5mm ports (not that I have much of any to put in them), replacing the water squirting element from the original. A really great figure.

TMNT 88 Remastered 6 Pack

Last year, possibly 2024, Playmates released four “remastered” 88 Turtles, a bit like Transformers Missing Link. These were recreations of the original Turtles figures, but with better articulation. They also gave them nice stands and, for some reason, horrible textured skin. I passed (easy to do given, as with so much of Playmates stuff, it wasn’t available in the UK).

Late last year they revealed this 6 pack. It’s the four Turtles figures again but with smooth skin and joined by Splinter and Shredder. I found a place importing the set (a Target exclusive in the US, I think) for £50, so went for it. And then waited several months while it kept getting delayed, only to turn up almost out of the blue.

The Turtles themselves are pretty great. They really look the part as the original 88 figures (which I’ve bought most of in the last year or so – just missing a Raphael) but with nicer articulation. The originals had swivel joints at the neck, shoulder, elbow and then a more flexible one at the hip. These have ball joints or rotating hinge joints at the neck, shoulder, elbow, wrist, hip, knee and ankle. They’ve all got the same body with different heads, which is fair enough. The belts have been redesigned a bit, so that they’re not connecting on the buckle. Their signature weapons are all included, now in accurate colours (with colour coded handles) rather than uniform orange-brown. No stands, but given they’ve all got flat feet now (rather than a mix of flat feet and tip-toes) and more articulation, they’re not too hard to get to stand (although weirdly I’m finding it harder to get Don nicely posed on the legs than the others, which is weird given they’ve got the same bodies).

I did have to get a heat gun out to reform most of the hands (softer plastic than the originals) so they’d hold their weapons properly, mind.

And then there’s Splinter and Shredder, who are… weird.

Splinter is really cool. Vinyl kimono rather than the original cloth. Has his stick sword and bow and arrow (no paint apps on the bow and arrow, but it’s a really nice sculpt with a surprising amount of flexibility). Really great head sculpt too. What it isn’t though, is anything to do with the original figure. Completely different mould entirely. And as I said, it’s not a bad mould, but it’s not really a “remastered 88” one. It’s just a completely new figure in the style of the early card art, maybe the cartoon.

It’s the same with Shredder, just with worse results. The new Shredder figure fixes some of the problems with the originals – brim of the helmet painted correctly and not as his forehead? Check! Able to stand upright rather than in a persistent back-breaking hunch? Check! But it’s not great. It just feels really weedy. The paint apps on the face are weak and bland (just eyebrows and black dot eyes on white, but there’s no expression there). As with Splinter, the original cloth cape is replaced with a big heavy, wide vinyl one, which mainly serves to highlight how thin the body feels. Oh but they did keep the weirdly posed left hand that looks like it should be for holding a shuriken but doesn’t really hold them well.

It’s just an odd choice. 88 Shredder is, I think, the one figure that would most benefit from a Missing Link style remaster. Proper paint apps on the helmet, a hinge joint in the chest and some knee joints, so he stand up straight for once. But instead, there’s just this entirely new, bland stand-in. Maybe it was a scale thing? I imagine straightened out 88 Shredder would tower over everyone else, even later human figures from the original line, but still. Just feels an odd choice.

Shredder comes with a couple of swords (and I had to heat his hands too). The set also has one each of that weird pizza looking stabby thing in the above picture (which I always thought was a bit of pizza, as a kid), one of the bigger punch daggers (which I always thought was some kind of pie slice for pizzas), a five pointed shuriken and a four pointed shuriken. And that’s it. Feels slightly miserly for six figures, but honestly, who is ever going to display a Turt holding those if they’ve got the signature weapons? It feels like a required formality. The proper punch dagger is much smaller than the original though.

Overall, £50 for four really good Turtles, a nice “imposter” Splinter and a so-so “imposter” Shredder isn’t bad. I’d be interested in more of these (Rocksteady and Bebop, April, Usagi – basically the ones I’ve bought originals of recently) but I guess that won’t be happening given Playmates have (despite literally everyone else on the planet having one) lost their Turtles license from 2027 on.

• This reply was modified 3 months, 2 weeks ago by Martin Smith.

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Dave, lorcan_nagle

Kash Patel is coming to the UK for a meet-up of Five Eyes (the joint intelligence sharing association of the UK, US, Canada, Australia and New Zealand). But instead of going to offices (in secure buildings) for his meetings, he wants to do them while off having jollies. He’s demanding that he (and his girlfriend/secretary) be taken out jetskiing and to Premier League matches for these meetings. Yes, this genius wants to have classified intelligence sharing meetings in football stadiums and on open water. I despair.

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Ben, Todd

Finally, a good riff on the pagliacci joke!

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lorcan_nagle, Dave, Sean Robinson

To be honest, given it’d been in development for 7.5 years, that Prince of Persia remake wasn’t sounding too encouraging. It shouldn’t take that long to spruce up the game (which is all it really needed).

Christian wrote:

That show of support, that clapping for the nurses, was always bullshit. Well, no, that’s maybe too harsh.

It absolutely was bullshit, as underlined by the many of the same people being against pay rises for healthcare workers not long later. As my mate who worked for the NHS said at the time, “I can’t pay for food with claps”.

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Al-x, Uncle Retrospective, Christian, lorcan_nagle

I went through a big John Hughes phase when I was at uni. I wouldn’t say he’s my favourite film-maker but I do think he’s incredibly interesting.

Since then though, I’ve not rewatched many of those films – just Breakfast Club and Home Alone really – and I’ve had some sitting on my DVR for a while that I’ve been hesitant to go back to for varying reasons.

Weird Science, which I actually watched a year or so back, I had mixed memories of. I mainly just remembered the talking shit monster bit, which was good. But that I actually found really enjoyable, and I think it uses Lisa in a way that isn’t objectifying (or at least not solely). She always has agency and power.

Sixteen Candles, which I watched the other day, I couldn’t really remember much of at all, but had heard loads in the interim of it being racist and rapey. And, well, it is. Though I’d say that beyond the name, Long Duck Dong isn’t too bad. Ultimately, it has to be looked at as the transition point for Hughes between doing sub-Animal House bawdy Lampoon comedies and his teen comedy-dramas. It’s got both of those shoved in there together and it works better than it really should.

And then lastly Pretty In Pink, which I watched tonight. The reason I’d been hesitant about this is because I remember thinking it wasn’t really all that. But I think I’ve been mixing it up to a degree with another film Ringwald and McCarthy did called Slow Horses or Fresh Horses or something. So, gave it another go.
Boy it sucks. McCarthy’s character Blaine is just a big ol’ streak of fuck all. There’s nothing to him at all. It’s hard to see what Andie’s meant to be attracted to initially (beyond looks I guess) but it’s even more baffling that she’s then thrilled to be asked to the prom by him given their one date is a disaster that she clearly didn’t enjoy. And then on the other hand you’ve got Duckie, the pining best friend who is a stalkery bellend. I absolutely don’t understand anyone who thinks Andie should have ended up with him. Apparently that was the original plan and somehow that would worse than the dreadful ending the film has where Blaine gives an awful apology, Duckie suddenly gives his blessing and Andie goes off with him.
The only redeeming bits of the film are Ringwald generally, especially her scenes with Stanton (more should have been made of that), James Spader looming and lurking around as an entitled prick and Annie Potts as Andie’s boss, bit even the she gets the same “conformity brings happiness” treatment Allison got in The Breakfast Club.
There’s a much better film waiting to have been found in the bones of this.

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Todd, Uncle Retrospective, lorcan_nagle

Weird they’re doing this around the same time as there’s a DC Finest volume of the Demon coming out.

A modern Blake’s 7 could be excellent with the right team. But I’m sure this story gets repeated every 7 years or so. I’m not holding my breath for this to appear.

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Uncle Retrospective, Todd

I’ve started playing a game called En Garde! which is  student thesis project that got funding to become a proper (indie) retail release and it’s quite fun. It’s swashbuckling sword-fighting game vaguely in 17th century Spain, I think. It’s heavily influenced by Prince of Persia and Zorro with a dash of Monkey Island (stylistically, not gameplay). It’s a little unpolished in places, mainly presentationally, but it’s solid. Quite tough – or I’m just not good at it. You have to do a lot of parrying and dodging and it keeps saying you need to be slow and tactical, while my instinct is to rush things. When you’re up against a group of five soldiers it can get really tricky, especially if they flank you. There’s a lot of environmental stuff you can work to your advantage which mixes it up.

I’ve been playing Zelda: Oracle of Seasons lately. Just finished the fourth dungeon and I kinda hate it.

It’s built on the engine of Link’s Awakening DX (which I like fine but have never understood why some sickos say it’s the best Zelda game) but made by Capcom and they just don’t get Zelda really. The broad strokes are there, but ineffably wrong. You use a wand to change the seasons, which works as a four-part equivalent to the light/dark world set-up from Link To The Past or the young/old Link in OoT. But it’s so unfocused. Instead of starting in one world and then eventually gaining the ability to move to the alternate(s) to aid exploration, the game world is all jumbled up between them. You gradually gain the ability to set the season, but only for ill-defined chunks of the world and they’ll switch back seemingly arbitrarily if you stray too far. It’s nowhere near as elegant as the dark world, where you’re in control of your exploration and can find bits in one to then explore in the other. This is really just a gussied up tool to solve a few environmental puzzles.

It’s also just grindingly, boringly tough. I don’t mind challenge, obviously, but I spent so much of my time with it constantly scrounging for health. There’s no potion items or bottles you can put fairies in, so it’s just a constant need to dig or break pots to refill hearts. There’s an unpolished meanness to the difficulty. Go up stairs to a new room in a dungeon and you’re set upon immediately by enemies with no ability to react or dodge in time to switch items (which you constantly need to do). Same in the overworld. You have to use this stupid winged bear dude to traverse large gaps (which doesn’t work as reliably as you’d like – sometimes he just decides to give up and plummet to your deaths no matter how much you hammer the a button) but you can’t attack while riding him. There’s no break from enemies though, most of which in the areas you’ll need the bear just come up out of the ground with no warning. So you’ll probably be set upon as soon as you land and then you can either dismount and fight them off, hoping you don’t accidentally remount the bear in the course of doing so (weirdly easy in cramped conditions) or just try to barrel through and take the damage.

What makes this worse is that Capcom’s only real new idea to add to format is just RNG bullshit. You can get special seeds called Gacha Seeds. You have to plant them in patches of soil across the game world and after something (time, enemies killed, seasons changed – I’m not sure. You’d think it’d be the latter, but it doesn’t seem to be) they’ll sprout a fruit in which you’ll get a random reward: a piece of heart, money or a ring. You have to get the rings appraised and they offer stat boosts, mainly (some change you into monsters for some reason, or just do nothing especially useful). From what I can tell, the usual upgrades to damage dealt and damage protection aren’t found through new swords, shields or armour but these rings. So a whole lot of rigmarole and random chance. You can only change which rings you’re carrying at the ring shop as well, so you’ve little flexibility with them other than just turning on or off the one (later three if you find a bigger box) you’ve equipped.

But even then, it’s not as simple as just “damaged halved”, as you get ones that are “reduced damage from spikes” or “reduced damage from beam weapons” which are so niche as to be pointless. I didn’t get any useful rings, just one niche damage reduction one, one that’d turn me into an ocotorok and a cursed ring which *decreases* attack and defence. Wonderful. And it’s not even as simple as “you get an equal random chance from each seed”. Ah no. There’s tiers of reward from the Gacha and what tier your resultant fruit is in is set by where you plant it (so 1-3 near the starting village, 3-5 in a far-flung area) which means you have to go plant your seeds in one of two difficult to get to plots to even have a chance of getting the good rings.

Another random thing is encounters with a witch called Maple. They’re triggered after you kill a certain number of enemies and you have to bump into her to make her drop a load of items so you can race to grab them before her. One of the pieces of heart is locked into this, but it’s – you guessed it – random if it’s even dropped and you still have to beat her to it, if you even can. The only time I got her to drop it, it landed on the other side of an obstruction I couldn’t pass. That’s not a proper bit of Zelda design, that’s just grinding.

I find it really puzzling that people think this is on a par with Link’s Awakening, let alone a great Zelda game. Mind you, I felt the same about Minish Cap (Capcom’s GBA Zelda) which has all the same problems, and I seem to be in a minority in that too.

It’s just so odd to me that Nintendo farmed these out to Capcom, who don’t even make this type of game normally (apart from Goof Troop on the SNES maybe). Why make them at all if none of their own departments were available? Why not give them to a developer they have a stronger relationship with (Intelligent Systems, Hal, Rare) or who makes action RPGs.

I love bonus frog!

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Bruce

Bizarre it’s going to be on TLC, but it’ll be nice to have it back. Hopefully it won’t drag at an hour.

paul f wrote:

The format is that 81 contestants have a square on a big digital floor (interestingly, this and all other adaptations are shot in the studio of the original production in the Netherlands, so it must be an expensive floor.

The US one, hosted by Rob Lowe, is actually filmed in Wicklow, or at least the first few seasons were.

Really? How strange. Is there a studio audience in the American one? I thought it odd the UK one has one, given they must be Dutch locals. I know English is pretty common in the Netherlands, but still, going to a long day’s record of a show in a foreign language is a tad odd.

Two episodes into ITV’s new quiz show import THE FLOOR and it’s strangely compelling.

The format is that 81 contestants have a square on a big digital floor (interestingly, this and all other adaptations are shot in the studio of the original production in the Netherlands, so it must be an expensive floor. More expensive than at least 82 return flights on EasyJet) and have brought their own specialist subject. THE FLOOR randomly selects a starting contestant, who has to challenge one of their director neighbours (horizontally or vertically, not diagonally) on the opponent’s special subject.

Those challenges are, on paper, trivially easy. It is literally just a case of naming things in pictures, on a chess clock system of 45 seconds each. You’re not penalised for giving a wrong answer, you can keep going on the same picture, but you lose three seconds for passing. And yet, there have been some complete implosions. One woman confidently challenged another on “moguls” and clearly didn’t understand what the word meant, because she spent 10 seconds not being able to name Richard Branson. One guy defended his own category of fashion icons and got absolutely demolished, not knowing who most of them were. It definitely feels like it’s been cast for personality rather than quizzing skill. Still, that “I can’t believe they’re that bad on their category” element is sort of compelling, possibly not long term.

Winning a duel eliminates the opponent and merges your square with theirs. If you’re the defender, your category is gone and you inherit the specialist subject of the losing attacker. You then get to decide if you want to attack further, or pass to another randomly selected contestant. At the end of each episode, the contestant with the biggest area gets £5k (split if it’s a tie). The same contestants are on for the full series (I get the feeling it was filmed in one day, two at stretch – they didn’t even do an outfit change between eps 1 and 2, despite having them all come back out to THE FLOOR again at the start of ep 2). So the tactical element lifts it a bit as well, even though I would say the best tactic is quite obvious: if you’re lucky enough to attack without having defended first, take out all your opponents whose categories you like, then back off and wait to defend on your (theoretically) strongest subject when someone comes for you. Seems the best way to get the five grand early on at least. Despite this, a lot of people have been backing off immediately, stuck with an inherited subject they don’t like, which I don’t see panning out for them.

The show’s hosted by Rob Brydon, who is a safe pair of hands. Very personable, hamming it up like mad and able to do a good reaction shot when someone passes on something they really should know. Ultimately, it’s an enjoyable bit of fluff for a Sunday evening. The way the format’s set up, you have a tease for categories that are coming to come up at some point and seeing some of those (and how badly they get screwed up, potentially) is enough to keep me coming back, for now at least.

 

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njerry

Christian wrote:

That’s a pretty cool topic! And it does make a lot of sense that most traditions would’ve been invented later than their supposed origin.

(And I say that as someone living in a city whose famous “gothic” cathedral was actually mostly built in the late 19th century.)

Yeah, a lot of it is perfectly reasonable, like the Welsh eisteddfod. Do they bear any relation to what the old bards actually did? Probably not. But they’re as much about promoting what the country wants itself to be now as anything and that’s perfectly reasonable.

The clan tartan thing is much funnier though, because it is all pure bollocks made up by a combination of royal-wannabes and clothing manufacturers.

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njerry, lorcan_nagle, Christian

I’m currently reading The Invention Of Tradition, which is a collection of essays from the 80s (I think – possibly the 60s). After an incredibly dry and academic introduction that had me doubting I was going to manage the whole book (various uses of “inculcate” and “promulgate”) it livens up a bit. The first chapter basically tore down the Scots (deconstructing the myths of highland culture, kilts, tartan), the second went for the Welsh (the fabrication of Druidic culture in the 18th century or so, mostly) and I’m just at the third, which is going for the royal family and their pageantry. It’s like an academic version of an insult comedian or roast.

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Sean Robinson, lorcan_nagle

I’m a few hours into Metroid Prime 4. I’ve got two of the five macguffins, but I don’t think I’m 20% of the way through. (Hope not anyway). I like that they give Samus someone to talk to early on. It’s not that different from having ADAM in Fusion and Dread really, just telling you where to go. Plus, that fact that Samus doesn’t actually talk to him makes her silence a choice rather than just coincidence because she has no-one to talk to. That said, I think having her completely mute (so far) is a little awkward. There are a few moments where it would have flowed better if they’d just had here say the odd word (for example, “here”, when she’s giving a USB type thing to the guy to plug into the computer, because he essentially just divines that she’s trying to pass something to him without looking, as it is) and played up her physical acting a bit. A few heavy sighs or rolls of the eyes felt even with an obscured visor, that kind of thing.

On the other hand, I like that they’ve turned up the immersion of the first person view a bit. In the earlier games, you’d occasionally get a glimpse of Samus’ face reflected back at you in her visor. Here, it happens every time you go into the map screen (suggesting it’s an in-visor screen she’s looking at) which you could argue is overegging a subtle little touch, but it’s nice to see.

My only real problem with the game is that it hasn’t struck a decent balance on tutorials. If you have the tutorialising on, it keeps not just explaining how to do new techniques, but prompting you to do those in battles or when you’re faced with certain puzzles, which I really don’t want. I’d like to be able to work it out for myself. But when I turned tutorials off, the game just straight up didn’t tell me anything, such as how to do anything on the Vi-O-La bike when I was in the blimmin’ tutorial section for it.

Beyond all that though, it’s fun and feels like a valid continuation of the series after a long interval.

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Ben

I did like his line in that rant of, paraphrasing, “oh so I’m the guy at which you suddenly decide it’s not ok for people to get fit to play a superhero?” Because that must have really stung for him, but also he kinda is that straw that broke the camel’s back, really. That even a beloved everyman comedian felt he had to fashion himself into some unattainable Adonis shape to be a character in an ensemble superhero movie.

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Todd

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/dec/23/epstein-unredacted-files-social-media

People examining documents released by the Department of Justice in the Jeffrey Epstein case discovered that some of the file redaction can be undone with Photoshop techniques, or by simply highlighting text to paste into a word processing file.

It seems they essentially redacted sections by just highlighting them in black, which doesn’t destroy the text.

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Todd, lorcan_nagle

I finished playing Hitman 3 the other day and, well, it was bit underwhelming.

Possibly it’s because I was kinda time-limited in wanting to be done with it before Christmas (though I started in mid-November), possibly it’s that three games into the series the novelty of the format has worn off a bit, but it didn’t grab me as much as H1 and H2 did.

I think a good part of it is that it tries to vary the format a lot – which is laudable for the third game in a successive trilogy – but it’s not very satisfying to play. Pretty much all the missions in the previous games have you guided off-screen by Diana, Agent 47’s handler. I think only one here does. The rest you have either a different character or in a couple of cases, no-one, which just doesn’t work as well. This is all due to story reasons, which is another problem with this instalment. The story isn’t something I particularly paid attention to in Hitman 1, certainly, and it started to encroach in H2. Here it absolutely dominates and ruins the game a little. The little animated powerpointy type things before each mission explaining who your target is and where you’re going are mostly absent and instead you just get cutscenes pushing the story along, which isn’t terribly interesting at all (and ends with a damp fart).

None of the levels here are as good as the best of H1 and H2, I think. A couple are outright bad – the train finale is just crap, certainly and I didn’t get on with the Berlin power station-turned-nightclub. A couple of levels open with these “cinematic” starting locations, seemingly entirely so there’s an option for a director’s commentary (not bothered with, myself) and they don’t really add anything to the levels. Wisely, once you’ve completed the level once, you get an alternate starting location that cuts them out, but it’s a weird focus of attention.

Despite the over-bearing of the story, story missions (which used to be called something else, inspirations, maybe) are thin on the ground. These are the waypoint guided options for completing a level that all hand-hold you through some of the best set-piece kills, like the exploding golf ball in Sapienza and backfiring supercar in Miami. They’re a great way to learn a level so that you can later go back and be more freeform and inventive, going for the other challenges or playing escalations etc. The levels in H1 and H2 had multiple in each, yet level in H3 have three at most (and many are focused on being ways to forward the main story as much as anything) and some have absolutely none. I think it speaks to IO of losing sight of what makes the previous games work so well.

Another thing is that there’s an annoying reliance on a new camera item, which you have with you at all times. This is the game’s photo mode, but you also have to use to disable certain electronic locks (two levels rely on that heavily) and it’s just a bit of a pain because you have to switch into first person mode to do it, aim, wait while it activates, and it just breaks up the flow of gameplay, especially if you’re trying to do a quick infiltration while a guard’s back is turned.

To be fair to the game, there are some other modes, which I’ve not delved into too much. Freelancer is a career mode type thing where you array of weapons and tools is budgeted and you have to buy/scavenge on each contract. I’ve not touched that. The Elusive Target mode is interesting – I got to kill Sean Bean! – but it’s got a high skill barrier that I’m just not at, frankly.

Stargirl: The Lost Children

This is such a weird comic.

I’m not the greatest fan of Geoff Johns generally, but I do love Todd Nauck’s art and seeing that Secret from Young Justice was in this was enough to get me to bite.

And in one regard it’s great. Nauck’s art is possibly the best it’s ever been. He absolutely kills it here, with loads of crowd scenes that would break a lesser artist. Plus, there’s loads of new character designs in here, most of which are great (I especially like The Boom, although I’m not sold on her name).

Unfortunately, the reason behind all those new characters is less compelling. Part of the problem I’ve always had with Johns is that he’s a very regressive writer. His work is always about looking back to some halcyon past and rewinding comics to it, from bringing back Hal Jordan and Barry Allen, to reviving the JSA and ditching all the cool 90s reinventions like the android Hourman with facsimiles of the Golden Age originals.

His big idea for this mini-series is similar but of a slightly different approach. He seems to have decided that every Golden Age superhero should have had a kid sidekick (you know, that trope that went out in the 60s) and so retcons loads more into existence, even for heroes that no-one particularly cares about. Did anyone really think Dr Fate was missing a sidekick? Or the Dan Garrett version of Blue Beetle? Or the Red Bee?!

Quite what the point of all this is, I don’t really know. Apparently this is part of a wider thematic event – The New Golden Age – though there’s no mention of this anywhere on this collection (which is maybe for the best, as it probably would have deterred me from it). Is anyone going to make any further use of Cherry Bomb or Sparky outside of a crowd scene? It seems unlikely and most of these characters don’t get to do much here (Secret seems present entirely as fan service for Nauck and/or his existing fans, but at least it’s the same version of her from Young Justice, for whatever continuity matters these days). The entire premise of this series seems utterly self-indulgent and pointless.

It’s not a terribly satisfying story really. Although Stargirl gets to keep centre stage, Red Arrow gets increasingly marginalised through out, drowning in a sea of sidekicks. The plot doesn’t really make much of any sense (not helped by taking half an issue to have someone wang on about Flashpoint) there’s an island, whose beach is made of ground up Miraclo, on which loads of forgotten sidekicks have somehow ended up. Stargirl and Red Arrow, after being involved in a time-bending event, think Wing is still alive and follow in the footsteps of Dan The Dyna-Mite to said island, where a Baba Yaga called the Childminder is holding some of the kids and trying to capture the others, to deliver them to her buyer, who is the android Hourman from the 90s, except he’s working for Corky the Junior Time Master (who turns up to help the kids)’s evil adult self, who needs Wing to still die in the temporal event that killed him original, but not let any of the other kids back into continuity, for reasons. But he has his own time machines, cos he’s a Time Master, so I don’t get why he’s using Hourman nor Childminder, why they need Jay Garrick’s retcon daughter The Boom running on a treadmill to power something or other, nor why/how most of the kids ended up there beyond just “Flashpoint did it”.. And while I can buy Stargirl caring about the fate of Wing (the Crimson Avenger’s sidekick apparently), I’m not totally sure why most readers would. The attempts to build a theme around being forgotten and unloved doesn’t really work because, despite throwing in something about her biological dad, it’s not really relevant to Stargirl. It is to Red Arrow, but as I said, she gets increasingly displaced from focus.

Still, looks gorgeous.

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Todd, lorcan_nagle

Yeah, it’s a little weird he did this chunk of the season. There were rumours he was leaving over the summer (though there was for everyone, frankly). Also, can’t believe it’s his eighth season (well, seventh on screen) already.

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Todd

Arjan Dirkse wrote:

Twitter automatically goes to the “for you” tab now, when you reload it. And the for you tab is giving me 50 % of Ruski propaganda and 50 % AI slop of cats driving cars.

Maybe stop using it then?

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Al-x, lorcan_nagle, Todd, Sean Robinson

How did writing the series as a co-writer with Russell T Davies work?

Russell and I have known each other for ages, so it’s always a joy working with him. He had written episode one before he wrote any of the 60th anniversary Doctor Who specials. So, quite a long time ago he’d written it and it kind of sat on the shelf. And then when I had delivered my first draft of my Doctor Who episode, Lucky Day, he said, there’s something else that I’d like you to have a look at. Do you know, do you want to be involved? And I read this script and thought it was extraordinary. And of course I was involved. Absolutely. From reading page three or four, I was in!

We were filming Doctor Who at the time, so we didn’t have a lot of time to plot stuff. Russell had broad ideas about where he wanted the show to go. So for every episode, we would just sit down and snatch time here and there, an hour here, an hour there, and talk about what we think might happen. And then I’d go away and write, and then we’d come back together and, you know, move certain things around. So, for instance, some characters that I established in episode two, we would then go back into episode one and seed them there, so they’re established in there. I knew that he would be writing the finale, so I had to write episode four, leading towards certain plot points and knowing what was coming. But it was just a really lovely, close working relationship, and we just laughed a lot. It was never a drama. And yeah, it was great fun writing.

But yeah, sure, keep minimising RTD’s involvement to suit your own narrative.