Nappi

After the first episode, I was afraid that throughout most of the show all the main players - primarily McAdams' and Farrell's characters - would be playing against each other. Not that it couldn't lead to some interesting plot developments; I just personally find those sorts of shows very frustrating to watch. Now it seems that Velcoro might be done playing the corrupt cop, or at least Vince Vaughn's corrupt cop (I will never learn these names at this rate), because he just doesn't care about anything anymore. I'm looking forward to him trying to make good on his suicidal promise to "burn this entire city" while trying to prove to himself that he is not "a bad person" as his ex-wife called him. To be clear, I'm not expecting - or in fact even hoping for - Ani and Ray to become perfect cop buddies. I'm just glad that it now appears that Ray might not be actively sabotaging the investigation for most of the season for his own selfish reasons. I don't know what to think about the end of the episode, except that I'm quite interested to see how the thing is resolved. My very first impression, based on the fact that Farrell's character will almost definitely be alive and "functional" in the following episodes, combined with what appeared to be calm professionalism of the attacker, was that Velcoro is left alive for a purpose, perhaps of the "stop chasing me, and instead expose the corruption of Vince Vaughn's character and that mayor guy" variety. It is probably not that, though, seeing that the corruption is obvious to the viewers and the body is the intriguing part of the show so far. Anyway, I'm feeling much more positive on this season now than I was after the first episode. Also, with an animal-masked shotgun wielding killer cleansing the city of corruption one person at a time (well, one crooked city developer at this point, and I have no idea about the killer's real motive), I couldn't help but think of Hotline Miami.

This is the kind of first episode that would make me stop watching the series if it wasn't for my enjoyment of the first season, this excellent podcast, and my HBO Nordic subscription. I'm not suggesting that it is possible to make any actual judgement about the quality of the entire season based on the first episode, but things like the widespread, violent corruption in the city and the ludicrously dark backstory of the fucked-up cop just aren't things that usually appeal to me. At all. That said, I'm still hoping this series goes someplace interesting. At least there is an intriguing corpse in the end... That line could definitely have been uttered by Philip Marlowe (or most any character in Raymond Chandler's novels for that matter, because the stories seem to be set in the fictional part of LA where almost everyone is a master of cracking wise). It was one of my favorite moments in the episode. My actual favorite moments of the episode were the Leonard Cohen song during the opening and Nick Cave's incredibly oppressive cover of All the Gold in California during the end credits.

Found one that I simply couldn't help buying, and now I can finally dive into Dune. Really early on, but I'm enjoying the feeling of finding myself in the deep deep end in terms of history, economy, politics and religion. Related to that, what would be the best point to read the appendices (The Ecology of Dune, The Religion of Dune, Report on Bene Gesserit Motives and Purposes, and The Almanak eb-Ashraf)?

I wonder if they consider the sexy latex assassin nuns to be one of the best parts of Absolution. (I hope this game will turn out good.)

Yes! Starlee Kine seems to be incredibly talented at striking up interesting conversations with random people.

I only started listening to This American Life a couple of weeks ago, so I don't mind the reruns. Actually, I'm quite pleased with them because I assume that the producers have selected some of the more interesting episodes for that purpose, so - you know - less work for me. But you are right about it being hard to know which episode is a rerun and which is not. I listened to "Super", thought it was interesting, then searched for a list of "essential" This American Life episodes, and was surprised to see that episode on that rather old list.

Not at all. Thanks for taking the time to pointing out the major differences to me! After this, I'd be interested in seeing the animation style of Cuphead subtly improve from level to level. Then again, that could get too gimmicky really fast.

I know nothing about the history of cartoon and animation, but I would be interested to hear more about these differences. (I quite like the visual style of cuphead)

Hmm.. seems to me they have worked on several PC ports including Arkham Origins and Bioshock Infinite.

Interesting. Who decides if they are fixed?

I like it mainly because a web player is convenient in terms of my listening habits. Not a ton of features or settings. Just Discover, New Releases, and In Progress views and simple playback controls. I'm new to this business, I don't know what other podcast listeners look for in a player.

I switched from iPhone to Android phone, downloaded Pocket Casts, discovered the web player, and now suddenly I have subscribed to a ton of podcasts. I probably can't keep up with all of them, so I'll just listen to the episodes that sound interesting. So far the The Bugle and Mystery Show have been excellent, Futility Closet is interesting, This American Life and Radiolab could be great depending on the episode, and Here Be Monsters is at least intriguing based on an episode with a raving white supremacist. Yet to listen to Lore (Edit: Not my thing). So many Squarespace adverts!

I'm pretty surprised to read about the technical issues on PC. Arkham City and Arkham Origins ran quite smoothly on PC if I recall correctly. Did they up the Nvidia CapeWorks or something? What is the preorder bonus / DLC situation? Does it keep reminding you that you are missing a significant portion of the content because you did not preorder? Most importantly for me, how are the boss fights handled? I'm not a big fan of big boss fights but the "exploit the weakness of the boss x3" type of stuff in Arkam Asylum and Origins was fine. The boring boss fights of Arkham Origins (along with general Batman fatigue) was one of the main reasons why I never finished the game.

I have finished the main questlines in Velen and Novigrad and I'm almost done with the one in Skellige. This marks the end of act 1, I believe. How do the act breaks work in this game? Will they lock some of the sidequests? I will probably play through (almost) all of the side quest at some point but I'd prefer to alternate between those and the main quests.

25 min of gameplay with some spoilers (with warning): Looks nice and they seem to give you enough tools and paths for stealth to be viable option still. Is there any word on how the boss fights are handled? I'd imagine that they learned their lesson and gave you more ways to deal with those situations this time around.

It just felt to me very much like one of those action adventure movie scenes where the bad guy finally gets it in a long, gory and elaborate way.

I spent the rest of the movie wondering what exactly had she done to deserve a classic action movie bad guy death.

What a pleasant surprise. Really looking forward to the podcast! This has probably been discussed before with every new podcast, but how do these things work with Pocket Casts? Do you have to submit the feed there as well?

What? Jesus, I'm 35 hours in and I haven't even gone to Novigrad yet.

I was hoping to find that scene on Youtube. I would refer to it every time someone is confused by 2-by-4 not measuring 2x4 inches.

Yup, that was exactly what I thought when I first opened the map in Velen. Also, I think I'm addicted to Gwent...

This is my third time watching Twin Peaks, but first time watching the movie. I think I avoided it the first two times because the reviews were so bad, and I was afraid that it would sour my feelings towards the series even more than the latter half of season 2 did. I watched the movie yesterday in what I think are the optimal conditions: after midnight, drinking good strong beer. Scattered thoughts follow. One of my main fears regarding the movie was that it would be just this brutal and cold depiction of Laura's downward spiral leading up to her death, which would have been too much for me to stomach. I don't know where I got this idea – probably Inland Empire and his coffee commercials – but I was glad that my fears were completely unwarranted. Fire Walk With Me is brutal for sure, but far from "cold". That scene was a testament to that. Simply beautiful! This. I was in awe of her versatility for the entire latter part of the movie. There were other great performances as well. Man, that dinner table scene with Leland more menacing than ever, Laura scared to death by him and Sarah absolutely horrified at Leland touching her daughter. (Incidentally, is the implication that Sarah knew or suspected that something horrible is going on between the two or that Leland is – or is going – insane?) It took some time to get used to the completely innocent-eyed Donna after the (occasional) femme fatale of the series. She was an excellent choice for the Bang Bang Bar scene, though. I'm not sure if Lara Flynn Boyle could have portrayed the feeling of clearly not fitting in but still acting as if you do as well as Moira Kelly did. She might have, but Moira definitely nailed it. Me too. I also found it interesting that Laura did not mind bloody Annie in her bed or the fact that she suddenly had a ring in her hand, but lost her shit when both of them disappeared. The bar scene was fantastic, not least because of that song. The minimalism and repetitiveness reminded me of bands like Earth and Pharaoh Overlord, though of course the songs themselves sound quite different. The atmosphere of the FBI investigation part was fantastic and made me wish that David Lynch would direct a more traditional film noir-ish movie at some point. However, it definitely felt disconnected from the rest of the movie. Still, I actually appreciate the contrast between the typical cold young drug addict murder investigation and the entirely different kind of investigation on what type of hell a soon-to-be young drug addict murder victim might have been going through. Thanks for linking that piece. I will read it at some point. Oh wow.. I don't think I agree with any of those criticism.

Holy shit this game is huge and beautiful and good! Really enjoying my time so far.

Skepticism?

Mad Max: Fury Road was nice.