The Swanton825

Batista has been one of the most pleasant acting surprises of the last decade. He's become such a great actor that I actually get excited for a movie if he's been cast in it. On the topic of great acting, I highly recommend Drive if you haven't already seen it. I don't know if it's just because of Ryan Gosling or what, but Drive and Blade Runner 2049 almost feel like companion films.

Blade Runner 2049 is sooo good! It's one of those movies I feel bad about not seeing in theaters.

The movie version of the rings take their design from iron rings, metal bands associated with Chinese martial arts. I can't remember which Gordon Liu film it was (I want to say 36th Chamber) but it opens with him showing off multiple weapons he's proficient with, including iron rings, plus a few other kung fu movies have scenes where the hero trains with them. This became good as visual shorthand for "this guy punches really hard" in Hong Kong cinema (and I believe some anime as well). I think this was a (probably accidental considering the massive dump on Chinese culture that was the Mulan remake) brilliant change. Considering as well that The Mandarin was originally created as Stan Lee's take on the Fu Manchu, "Yellow Peril" caricature, leaving the rings as finger jewelry leaves part of that "exotic evil from the Far East" stereotypical design intact, while a simple change to iron rings helps further ground the setting in Chinese culture to those who are familiar. Sorry for that wall of text. I actually knew something about a topic for once and just kept typing.

I'm starting to think I'm cursed or something because crap like what's going on with the Suns owner always seems to happen whenever I become a fan of something or someone.

I really should read the book. I used to be a really avid reader but it's like my mind refuses to let me focus on reading anymore.

Watched Dune and I adored it! I had to struggle to not pause the movie multiple times just to geek out over the visual design to my brother. The acting is great (well, Rebecca Ferguson's acting in the first act came off stilted to me but it got better once they reached Arrakis) the direction is fantastic and Hans Zimmer finally managed to make another soundtrack that doesn't make me think of Inception. If part 2 is as good as this, I would like to nominate Denis Villenueve as the new king of sci-fi films. Between this and Blade Runner 2049, he's filmed the unfilmable twice now.

Well since my Vikings are bound for mediocrity and a Mike Zimmer contract extension once again, I might as well keep an eye on another sport. Usually I pay half attention to the Jazz and Nuggets since I grew up near there but I think I'm pulling for the Suns this year because their playoff run last season was so fun and chaotic for the Western Conference.

One of the sequels in the original continuity tried to explain it away by making him powered by ancient Celtic evil surrounding Samhain or something like that. Nobody liked the explanation so I think everybody just kind of shrugged and went with "Michael Meyers can do what he does because he's Michael Meyers".

Happy to hear everything's all good now! Sorry I haven't gotten any new bios to you. I managed to write about page's worth of a story today, the most I've written all year, so I'm hoping I can brainstorm some new character.

Bug Fables - Nintendo refuses to make a normal Paper Mario game, so an indie studio decided to make their own with bugs! Greedfall - Underrated Bioware-inspired Action RPG set in a fantasy version of the Age of Discovery. Psychonauts 2 - I was never as in love with the first game as everyone else seems to be, but this is straight up the best platformer since Mario Odyssey with a fantastic story. Tim Schaefer finally showed he's still got it! Supraland - First-person metroidvania starring tiny toys in a kid's sandbox. Wasteland 3 - Classic Fallout for modern sensibilities. Also has a killer soundtrack. Yakuza: Like a Dragon - 2020's Game of the Year if you ask me. Awesome JRPG with charm and heart for days. Highly recommend the rest of the franchise if you enjoy classic beat 'em up games like Streets of Rage or Final Fight. Extra kudos to the devs for the bold/insane choice of a radical genre shift for Like a Dragon. Yooka-Laylee and the Impossible Lair - The game everyone expected nothing from yet still delivered on being a great spiritual successor of Donkey Kong Country. EDIT: Totally missed the line about nothing too resource intensive! I don't think Psychonauts 2 or Wasteland 3 should be a problem, but Greedfall and Like a Dragon might be a bit too much. Sorry about that!

If we're comparing CK3 to CK2 as it is now then CK2 definitely has more features, but that's after almost ten years of expansion packs and other assorted DLC. However, I had the displeasure of playing vanilla CK2 when it first came out and it was a threadbare mess. CK3 was solid from the start and (hopefully) will just get better as the years progress and bigger mods start coming out. I would still recommend anyone who is considering buying CK3 right now to wait until the Royal Court expansion comes out, because Paradox has a nasty habit of occasionally releasing DLC that breaks the game in some way or another. Good rule of thumb is if it's "mostly positive" or "mixed" on Steam, it's just people whining that their exploit doesn't work anymore, but if it goes below "mixed" you might want to wait a bit. Now that I got that rant out of my system. I really should give State of Decay 2 another shot. It was one of the first games I tried when Game Pass first showed up on PC and I was enjoying it, but then the app kept making my computer reboot and it took troubleshooting it off and on for about a year before I got the stupid thing to work. By then there were so many other shiny new games on Game Pass that distracted me and I forgot about State of Decay 2.

In my case it was more annoyance with an old, tired joke everyone drove into the ground ten years ago. If you'd like I can break out the old Brook Lazer & Kirk Angel meme. That one's so stale it's covered in mold!

The one mod I got super into was After the End. Feudal post-apocalyptic America where knights wear football helmets, mercenary companies are often styled after college sports teams and Disneyland is run by a group known as The Tribe of the Mouse, complete with Mickey Mouse ears on their coat of arms. The worldbuilding is so much better than it has any right to be and I'm so antsy waiting on the CK3 version.

<blockquote data-ipsquote="" class="ipsQuote" data-ipsquote-username="Jaysin" data-cite="Jaysin" data-ipsquote-contentapp="forums" data-ipsquote-contenttype="forums" data-ipsquote-contentid="28397" data-ipsquote-contentclass="forums_Topic"><div>I might be the only one excited for this, but I just got an email from the Square Enix newsletter thing saying they're releasing a complete port of Finally Fantasy Legends/SaGa trilogy for the first time. I sunk so many hours into them on Gameboy back in the day and I'm really excited to replay them.</div></blockquote><p> </p><p> I've heard so many back and forth takes on FF Legends/SaGa that I don't know what to believe. Some people say they're super hand-holding and basic, others talk about them being seriously fun and addictive. </p><p> </p><p> And speaking of Square Enix, they also recently popped out a remake of ActRaiser with zero advertising. I'm really hoping it does well enough to get Quintet's other SNES games remade or remastered.</p><p> </p><p> </p><blockquote data-ipsquote="" class="ipsQuote" data-ipsquote-username="SanX" data-cite="SanX" data-ipsquote-contentapp="forums" data-ipsquote-contenttype="forums" data-ipsquote-contentid="28397" data-ipsquote-contentclass="forums_Topic"><div>CK2 was built for GoT. Every system in GoT fits the game perfectly, not to mention the AGOT mod is really fantastic. One the best saves I have ever had was getting Baelish dynasty to the throne by schemes and marriages.<p> </p><p> Game is one of the biggest timesinks though, hours pass like minutes.</p></div></blockquote><p> CK3 is just as bad. I've somehow sunk 600 hours into it in about a year and I have zero clue where those hours went. God help me when the expansion pack comes out.</p>

I forgot to mention that if you enjoy Nosferatu the Vampyre, Werner Herzog and Klaus Kinski made some other great movies together as well. Aguirre, Wrath of God in particular is one of my all-time favorite movies. I even almost recommended it above Nosferatu but besides Klaus Kinski being terrifying as usual it's not really a horror movie.

Didn't Matt develop some intestinal issue that makes it extremely hard for him to stay thin no matter how much he exercises unless he stays on a very specific diet? I imagine COVID-related shortages have made a lot of diets next to impossible to stick to.

I second Dog Soldiers and Hatchet. Hopefully my list doesn't just repeat a bunch of recommendations I've made before. Nosferatu the Vampyre - Werner Herzog gives his own spin on the silent classic and Klaus Kinski's real life lunacy adds an extra creepiness to several scenes because you can tell he improvised something and startled the other actors. The Masque of the Red Death - Vincent Price at his best, 'nuff said. Tucker & Dale vs Evil - Fantastic parody of killer hillbilly slasher movies. Lords of Salem - Rob Zombie dials back his usual excesses to deliver a surprisingly good surreal horror movie. Suspiria (the original one) - A golden example of why Dario Argento needs to be listed among the great horror directors. All five Phantasm movies - Each film is different in tone but they all keep an unsettling dreamlike feel to everything on screen and anchored by great performances from two extremely underrated actors: Reggie Bannister and Angus Scrimm. Castle Freak - It feels like I'm insulting this movie to acknowledge it's straight-to-video. One of Stuart Gordon's (Re-Animator) absolute bests with Jeffrey Combs and Barbara Crampton being amazing as usual. From Beyond - Same thing as Castle Freak except this came out in theaters. Though I actually think Castle Freak is better. Dagon - My personal favorite Stuart Gordon film. Despite the name, it's actually an adaptation of Shadow Over Innsmouth. The gore might be a bit too much for some and there are a few silly moments, but I think it winds up part of what makes Dagon so memorable. Braindead (aka Dead Alive) - Hilarious low budget zombie movie from New Zealand directed by Peter Jackson before he became famous. Pumpkinhead - Criminally underrated monster movie with an equally underrated performance from Lance Henriksen. The Gate - Canadian horror film that shows you can do PG horror and make it good. White Zombie - Underrated Bela Lugosi movie with surprisingly anti-racist undertones for a movie from 1932 set in Haiti. Yes the metal band of the same name got it from this. The Invisible Man - Probably the only classic Universal horror film I'd say actually held up. The effects hold up great and when I laughed, it was with the movie, not at it. The Seventh Seal - I'm not sure if this really counts as a horror movie but it definitely has its spooky moments and it's just a really great film. (Bonus joke suggestion) Zaat - Made by an industrial safety company looking to branch out that is totally not one of the dullest things I've ever seen and definitely wasn't so bad that it made me regret even watching the MST3K episode on it.

W00t! Now we just need a new Riddick game announced to put this hype over the top!

She got the classic TNA treatment of "Do this dangerous spot or you're fired!" followed by, "Oh you got hurt doing a spot we forced you to do? Well what do you expect us to do about it? Pay for your hospital bills? Are you crazy? We need that money to lure in Hulk Hogan!" and then Daffney got fired because she wasn't able to work matches anymore thanks to the injury she suffered from a table spot she didn't want to do in the first place.

My friend is a huge Bucks fan and he has nothing but nice things to say about Giannis (even before they won the championship) and has sent me clips of him doing hilarious things like ordering exactly 50 nuggets from Chick-fil-a to celebrate ending the Bucks 50 year championship drought. Lesser men celebrate on private yachts, truly great men like Giannis Antetokounmpo celebrate by pigging out on fast food.

That reference is extra apt considering I grew up about an hour away from the real Deadwood.

I've always wanted to have a chance to talk to Lloyd Kaufman and pick his brain. It amazes me that a man responsible for so many insane movies intended to offend as many people as possible is as down to earth as he is. And just because it needs to be said, The Toxic Avenger is an American classic that deserves a place in the Library of Congress.

This one has to be my favorite. Makes me think "Luna Vachon meets Sherri Martel"

I think I'd have to revoke my wrestling fan credentials if I didn't know about wrestling's history on TBS. I just found it odd before seeing the insane amount of money that Warner is paying them that Dynamite was getting moved to a network that mostly broadcasts sitcoms major networks passed on and failed Seth MacFarlane cartoons. And I was concerned (because Turner networks do this all the time to shows I like) that they were moving AEW to another network to hurt their ratings and give the network execs an excuse to can their TV deal. I had honestly forgotten they still did MLB Playoff games. For some reason I was under the impression they only did regular season games these days.

An odd choice for a new network. TBS rebranded themselves as a comedy-focused network a few years back. I mean, there's still sports broadcast occasionally but it's never the big or important games.