dium

Phaedrus' Street Crew
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Posts posted by dium

  1. Posted

    On 2/18/2018 at 11:44 PM, Patrick R said:

    God help me I think I'm gonna see Black Panther in theaters. I can't believe I'm going to fall into this again but I at least have faith in the production design and cast, if not the Disney machine. 

     

    Based on nothing but having read some of your reviews and heard some of your podcasting, and having just seen Black Panther myself, im gonna guess you won't be very into it. Except for the production design and cast, which are both undeniable.

  3. Posted

    Yet another +1 for The Good Place, which I started watching this week, totally coincidentally.

     

    I don't watch a lot of currently-running TV (now or ever), both due to the daunting prospect of catching up ("there's already 10 hours of this show!"), and the fact that it usually takes several episodes for any show to really make its worthwhile qualities apparent to me. I felt the same way watching the first few eps of The Good Place that I usually do with well-recommended TV, the sorta-ambivalent "I can tell this is probably good" feeling, and I'm so glad that I arbitrarily decided to keep watching anyway.

  5. Posted

    Enemy Within includes the base game (Enemy Unknown); I'd definitely get Enemy Within.

     

    EW is a significant improvement over EU, in my opinion. The changes are entirely additive, though, so EW is also significantly more complex; somebody could argue that a strategy game newbie might have a better time with the older version for that reason. I don't know if I agree with that, personally, but the point is mostly moot because Enemy Within includes Enemy Unknown.

  9. Posted

    Last year I actually played through and/or spent a lot of time with several video games. This year I regressed into the bad old habits, and didn't really give games their due time before moving on to the next thing. 

     

    That said, Breath of the Wild is my no-contest GOTY, and probably my favorite game in several years. I suspect I will end up double-dipping and buying it again for the Switch.

     

    Runners Up:

    XCOM2 War Of The Chosen, although I only just started it this Thanksgiving and haven't finished a campaign yet

    Heat Signature, which I also really need to spend more time with, ugh

     

    Literally Every Other 2017 Game I've Played That I Can Remember:

    Persona 5, which I liked a lot initially, but I stopped playing for some reason and never felt the urge to go back... and looking at it now, I was probably less than a quarter of the way through!

    Pyre, which I impulse-bought but haven't really given a decent chance

  10. Posted

    I think that's a much easier perspective to take now than at the time. Maybe some of the outcry was performative, but I think people are and were much simpler creatures than that: endless eight tested patience that they didn't have. I agree, the variations on a theme are compelling (and the specific kind of tension it plays with is... singular, maybe?), but it was also 3 hours of repeating story beats spread out over almost three months. Even for the minority of viewers with the kind of patience for that, the nuance of difference between each cycle is lost in the wait week-to-week. I don't mean to say I think it was a failed experiment artistically, because I love endless eight. But I don't think it should be baffling why so many people bounced off so hard.

     

    FWIW, season 2 of Haruhi was the only season of anime I ever fully watched as it aired. I don't think it's contradictory that I both remember those episodes fondly and also remember my main takeaway emotion being frustration.

  12. Posted

    I agree that rating art is dumb and reductive, but I've been doing it for the last year as part of keeping a film diary and I've found it a useful catalyst for critical thought. I tend to enjoy almost every movie I bother watching (because the internet is a well-optimized recommendation engine, and because I want to enjoy things, and, I guess, because I'm easy to please), so the meaning of my scale is slightly different: if I truly dislike a movie it gets 1-star, with anything higher than that a degree of 'good'.

     

    ★★★★★ - An unreserved favorite. This movie's 'flaws' are wholly endearing to me.

    (The Big Lebowski, Casablanca, Road House)
    ★★★★ - A movie that I like a lot.

    (Raiders of the Lost Ark, most of the Christopher Guest mocumentaries, Josie and the Pussycats)
    ★★★ - A movie that I like, but that I don't feel strongly about liking, or that I like with some significant caveats.

    (The new Star Wars movies, most of the Fast and/or Furious movies, plenty of old classics that I'm too young & dumb to fully appreciate)
    ★★ - A movie that I may have enjoyed watching, or that I like some aspects of, but overall find disappointing/off-putting/something-negative.

    (Hook, Bringing Up Baby, Wild Wild West)
    ★ - I don't like this movie at all.

    (Crocodile Dundee)

     

    When I started rating movies, with no previous personal ratings to use as points of reference, it was easiest to disregard half-stars. Now that I have a hundred or so movies rated, the temptation to dip into half-stars is surprisingly great... I gave both Baby Driver and Napoleon Dynamite ★★★ but I like the former notably more than the latter. 

  15. Posted

    1 hour ago, clyde said:

    The more I think about this movie the less I like it.

     

    I don't necessarily agree with everything you wrote, but I'm definitely with you wrt liking this less the more I think about it. There's a hypothetical draft of this movie – that isn't terribly different from the one we actually got – that could've been one of my favorite sci-fi movies ever. Instead, I feel... complicated.

     

    (IDK how careful I have to be in here about spoilers, but I'm using the tag just in case.)

     

    Spoiler

     

    I really do wish this movie was less white. I'm not usually one for demanding representational checkboxes-checked before I can enjoy a movie, but in this case, with the social caste themes (and the Asian exoticism inherited from the original) there's just too much dissonance there to ignore.

     

    And then there's also a lot to say about how this movie treats women (I don't suppose anyone here doesn't know what I'm talking about or hasn't read any of the online criticism from women). But suffice it to say, a lot of feminist concerns about this movie coincide with its storytelling shortcomings. Joi was particularly underserved, and I think that goes hand-in-hand with how her arc felt hollow and perfunctory. I can understand the intent – there are some interesting concepts that Joi and her relationship with K represent. Potentially. But I don't suppose any of those concepts are really explored. They're just... presented, really, as if gesturing towards high concepts makes up for the regressive role she plays in the actual narrative. Because we don't get enough time with Joi to understand her beyond her role as a romantic interest / comfort woman for K, moments that should feel resonant are just awkward. The inventive sex scene, which could've been something truly special (and a rare example of positively-portrayed sex work), ends up just feeling like a techno-fetishistic threesome fantasy. And of course, ultimately, they just fridge her. 

     

    But maybe this movie simply didn't need a romantic B-plot at all, and instead we could've had more meat in other areas. I loved whenever K was doing detective work, those might've been my favorite parts of the movie. But once we fully know what's going on, I'm much less into it. There's some sort of underground resistance, but we don't get to learn anything about it. As far as we're concerned, "Deckard and his baby are special" is what we're meant to care about in the final act, and... meh.

     

    That said, I think the fight scene in the water was completely amazing. And K's death scene was actually somewhat affecting. So like I said, I feel complicated.

     

     

  16. Posted

    In my case, the analogy with the MCU is very direct: the last Marvel movie I've seen was Guardians of the Galaxy three years ago. I like GotG, and in fact I didn't dislike most of the MCU movies I saw. So my lost interest wasn't due to a dip in quality. The market saturation is simply overwhelming.

  17. Posted

    For all their faults, I don't think the prequels were safe or derivative. They were new stories. They were new BAD stories, but at least they were new.

     

    I saw Force Awakens in theaters twice, so I clearly enjoyed myself when that came out. But the backlash against that movie makes a lot of sense, and while I *think* I'd enjoy myself if I went back to it now, I'm not completely sure. It's only been 2 years, so, that's not a fantastic sign.

     

    For me, even if all these movies were fantastic (I like SW7 well enough and was disappointed in R1), a Star Wars movie every year is just waaaay too many. I'm the sort of person who is likely to enjoy these movies, genuinely, and even I can't bring myself to care.

  19. Posted

    Uh, so, it's good and I liked it. I mean, it's hard to throw unreserved enthusiasm behind

     

    Spoiler

    an American movie about slavery and a slave uprising in which all the principle actors are white

     

    ...but I agree that it is remarkable for all the reasons people have listed here. I might like it just about as much as I like the original – which is to say, a lot, but with some big caveats. Although I suspect I might come down a bit on it later, after I come down from the audio-visual high.

  22. Posted

    Really? 

     

    They're not great. But I could sit through them. They're watchable. 

     

    I can only get through Encounter at Waypoint FARPOINT if I convince myself to think of it as camp, or if I'm watching it from an introspective – look at where all these characters came from – sorta way. It's only any good in hindsight, put into context of the great show it became, and otherwise it's just embarrassing. Really embarrassing.

     

    Emissary actually isn't that bad and I could maybe walk back that statement wrt Emissary. But I'm thinking more in terms of other early DS9 episodes, where several of the characters/performances I actively dislike before they eventually become my favorites.

     

    That said I probably should watch ep 2 of the new show before making these kinds of statements; I have not.

  24. Posted

    Here's a fun video of some rando i don't know having a good time in Heat Signature:

     

     

    This game is very good at making me feel like a badass. Not consistently – and sometimes it makes me feel like a clumsy doof – but often enough.

     

    It's also the sort of game that really benefits from an exploratory attitude with regards to equipment and mechanics... forcing myself to utilize specific different equipment load-outs has led to really great moments.

     

    One mental hurdle that I had to get over to really dig my teeth into the game is: you can't be afraid to just use the limited use items. Just use 'em. You aren't gonna be playing this character for very long anyway, so you'll lose the item whether you use it or not.

     

    With games like this I'm always afraid that the game will run out of """content""" before I'd like, but usually that's a silly thing to worry about preemptively, so I'm trying not to listen to that little voice.