See ya round, beardy!

Thanksgiving weekend was a mass of travel and food, resulting in a lack of update. Nataku’s sudden but inevitable betrayal will continue next Monday!

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For those who predicted Atsumori’s fate, well, GOOD JOB. I hope you feel awful!

We went and saw The Arrival last weekend and it was damn good. For everyone sick of big dumb movies where all laws of physics are broken and the peril of the characters is intrinsically tied to dramatic plot moments and nothing else, The Arrival is like a life preserver in an ocean of blah. Even if it’s not the most complex story, and even if you do manage to see the twist coming early on, the journey there is still thoughtful, smart, well paced, and character driven. At no point did I think to myself “well, that was stupid”. In fact, the climax of the movie is SPOILERS someone making a phone call in a foreign language. It’s not overblown, bomabastic, or dumb. It IS tense, and exciting, and absolutely the movie I’ve been waiting for since being teased with scifi intellectualism by Interstellar. I’m not saying The Arrival is a perfect movie, as there’s a lot of science hand-waving, but nothing is dumb or contradictory, the problems dealt to the characters are all consistently worked out through a quality flow of logical deduction. So basically what I’m saying is go see The Arrival, it deserves your money and attention, because we need more stuff like this in theaters.

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Get with the program, Atsumori! We’re gonna win this thing!

Hey, I just saw that Doctor Strange movie! I don’t know if I have that much to criticize, it was a fun time. I mean, I’m kind of annoyed that Strange never gets called out for causing the car accident that ruined his hands, and also the movie probably gets too visually trippy for its own good. Also, who was the bad guy again? Some giant cartoon face from an evil dimension that uses evil energy to be evil? Oh well, whatever, it’s a comic book movie!

Probably my biggest disappointment in the film is that it glosses over Strange’s magic training quite a bit. That should’ve been the part of the movie that really established the rules and limitations of the magic in the film. Instead it just implies certain rules, and the resultant effective use of magic never feels clever, just plot driven. The lack of stated rules makes it unclear when someone is doing magic that’s wildly impressive or very mundane since we’re given little context for a person’s magical proficiency other than it being stated up front. Granted, this criticism is probably because I’m spoiled on Brandon Sanderson.

I enjoyed Doctor Strange more than I expected, and really loved the costuming and set designs. The movie has more visual flair than Civil War, which I found painfully bland, and I’m a sucker for Eastern culture/philosophy stuff even when it’s fictionalized and/or bastardized by Western media (not that I’d know anything about bastardizing Eastern culture…). So maybe go see it! It’s not like there’s been anything else this fun in theaters for the past couple months.

(EDIT: Also, it didn’t bother me in the moment, but upon reflection, the whole ‘white savior’ trope is so tired…)

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Eijiro’s very confident in his ability to conform Atsumori to his way of thinking! I’m sure it’ll work out great.

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As we all know, sons of Hirotomo are super into fightin’ wars! (EDIT: If Tadashii’ anger in the first panel doesn’t make sense, it’s because I realized that some of Honou-ko’s dialog had been omitted from the previous page. That has now been added back in!)

How bout that NINTENDO SWITCH, friends? It’s like an actual portable version of the WiiU’s second screen controller! Obviously we don’t know the system specs or the battery life, and, if we’re being totally honest here, a portable console isn’t exactly revolutionary outside of Nintendo’s insular logic. I mean, gaming laptops with HDMI cables? Smartphones with VR headsets? iPhones and AppleTVs? TV to portable gaming is faaaar from revolutionary, but that doesn’t matter in the slightest, because in the Nintendosphere, nothing could be more rad than the Big N combining its portable and console developers into a single device (well, okay, a unified eShop account would be more rad so I could stop re-buying Super Metroid). I mean think about it, the next Pokemon game will be a console game! It’ll have to be if Nintendo is merging everything into the Switch. I don’t even care about Pokemon games and I think that’s exciting!

So I have a dream scenario, and I’ve pieced it together through these simple logical premises:
* The PSVR headset can display any device that outputs to HDMI on a giant screen in VR.
* The Switch, we have to assume, will output HDMI for digital TVs.
* The Switch is portable and can play Zelda Breath of the Wild.

I WANT TO LAY IN BED PLAYING ZELDA ON A GIANT SCREEN DISPLAYED IN VR. LIFE COMPLETE.

(granted, it does occur to me that if only the Switch’s dock contains an HDMI port and not its portable screen, my dreams are waylaid…)

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Okay, I’m not pointing fingers, but who let that samurai into the bamboo forest? Now it’s RUINED.

I’m sure everyone’s seen the newest Rogue One trailer. Still looking super swanky! And sure, there are plenty of reasons why this movie might end up being terrible, I’ve certainly been burned by great trailer for sub-par movies before (Man of Steel), but for Rogue One I WANT TO BELIEVE. The trailer has a far more oppressive weight to it than any of the other films, the Empire exudes an overpowering presence, which I love. Also, and maybe these are hand picked for the trailers, but every shot looks like a painting pulled from conceptart.org. This movie is looking visually fantastic, and not just in a ‘nice special effects’ sort of way, but in terms of shot composition and lighting. Also I don’t see any silly cartoony action sequences that break my suspension of disbelief, which is SO refreshing. At this point all I want is for the movie proper to replicate the tone and pace of the trailers and I’ll be a happy fanboy.

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I know you’re all thinking “why is Tadashii standing shirtless in a forest with that creepy Honou-ko sneaking up behind him?” I assure it’s nothing weird probably!

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Hey, remember this flashback before it was so rudely interrupted by Ricardo’s proclamation on the acceptability of certain breakfast cuisines? Turns out there was more flashback to be had!

PSA, Red Letter Media’s Force Awakens Plinkett Review is finally out! It’s not as wildly entertaining as the prequels reviews, though, and that’s partly because Force Awakens isn’t a train wreck. But There are still come good points in there that I can get behind. I especially like their take on what the plot could have potentially been. Truly, the lack of a final scene between Han and Luke was a huge missed opportunity.

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I love how the soldier in the bottom left panel is sticking his tongue out while packing in the gun powder. It shows you he’s REALLY CONCENTRATING.

Confession time, I haven’t played, like, a REAL racing game, with actual cars (not karts), since probably Lamborghini on the N64. Seriously, I don’t play racing games. I’ve never even touched Gran Turismo (which I’ve been told is a dead franchise at this point), and since I don’t own an XBox of any sort, I’ve never tried the Forza games. Drive Club has gotten a lot of post release buzz as the best of the driving sims, but I’m fairly certain I’d find a ‘realistic’ driving game a frustrating experience.

But recently Microsoft has decided to dual release all its first party games as PC/Console digital crossbuys! This is great because I’m sitting here with a fairly high end PC and now I’ve got full access to all future Microsoft XBox games (in theory). And I’ve gotta say, something about Forza Horizon 3 has captured my imagination in the most gleeful way possible. Like, for the last couple of weeks all I can think about is cruising across the gorgeous Aussie countryside in my Lamborghini Centenario (which is the actual name of a car that actually exists), listening to some sweet eletrobeat jams. Something about the buzz words “beautiful location”, “open world”, and “arcade racer” have me entranced and I can’t wait to pick this big boy up on Tuesday (I believe it’s a 46GB download)! Hopefully it’s the racing experience I’ve been waiting for all my life, you know, if I’d been waiting for one.

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I always worry about people who smile when they’re holding a gun!

It’s been a late night, but I’m sure I’ll write more here tomorrow (well, technically later today).

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