Chindie

From The National members Bryce and Aaron Dessner's enormous Grateful Dead compilation of covers by various artists in aid of HIV/AIDS research, Day of the Dead, out today.

Cate Blanchett, Jeff Goldblum, Tessa Thompson and Karl Urban have joined Thor 3 as Hela, the Grandmaster, Valkyrie and Skurge respectively, joining Mark Ruffalo as Bruce Banner. Thor: Ragnarok is going to get bloody weird on the basis on those. But makes sense in the scale of things with this film apparently doing a bunch of legwork for Infinity War. It's being directed by Taika Waititi of Flight of the Concords and What We Do in the Shadows to add to the oddness.

I don't think he'd heard of Aston Villa 18 months ago.

I think those things you go with and accept as part of the universe, even if it it's completely unrealistic. They even make jokes about how the shield doesn't obey any law of physics by now. But the timelines don't quite fit and you can't get round it. You can't really handwave how character ages and eras work, so they bank on you not noticing.

It is revealed in to Cap in the second movie. He's briefly shown a headline and photograph in that montage. The photograph causes a slight issue with the timeline but frankly the moment you start to consider timelines in the Marvel series it quickly falls apart.

You could wring the martinis out of him like a wet towel.

Seems they will be looking for a new Bond. Craig has supposedly turned down obscene money to carry on for another 2 movies according to a bunch of reports today. Hiddleston is the front runner with the bookies but, much as I like him, I don't see him as Bond. He'd be a fantastic villain for Bond, but he's too... Posh nice for Bond himself. Fassbender, Dan Stevens, or, never in a million years, Hardy would be great in the role.

The plane apparently swerved sharply before it crashed. Could be anything. Mechanical failure leading to loss of control, hence the swerve, if it was a bomb and it broke up large sections of the plane can dramatically change course and still be picked up on radar, could be the pilot... etc etc. 3 Egyptian security service guys on board as well. Edit - as per usual, the media loving this. Sky News at the moment, have an aviations expert on, and completely expectedly, the host is desperately pushing the idea it was a bomb, even with the expert basically saying 'here's all the things that say it might not be a bomb'.

It's usually a toss up between 2 and DOFP as the best. 3 is poor I'll agree there. I think I'd disagree on all on those points (though I can't recall any of the jokes) so they're probably just not for you. Deadpool is a weird off shoot, it's relationship to the other movies is fun but slim.

You're really against the grain on that one as said before What is it about the X-Men series that you don't like particularly? I'm obviously partial to this stuff but I don't like them that much really, but I'd struggle to sit down and list out why someone might hate 2, unless they just hated anything of that sort. There's nothing that I can think of that's genuinely bad about it.

This, along with Asylum, are being re-released in July for current gen consoles with all DLC, if anyone cares.

X-Men franchise... X-Men 1 - decent early modern comic book fair, bit undercooked but good ideas and a good cast (generally). And some famously dreadful dialogue. X-Men 2 - Genuinely good movie, takes the good from the first film and ramps it up, picks up a common thread from the comics, that mutants are subject to discrimination from normal people, and makes a good yarn out of it, with Brian Cox making for a decent villain X-Men 3 - Bryan Singer leaves, Brett Ratner takes over, they decide to take another of the series big ideas (a mutant cure) and ramp up the spectacle, and it's shit. First Class - Reboot back to the 60s. Originally 2 movies, First Class and Origins: Magneto, generally good cast, the Magneto stuff is genuinely excellent, First Class less so, undercooked again but gets away with it due to the charm of the cast of Fassbender/McAvoy dragging it along. Days of Future Past - Take a classic time travel story, smash the old cast and new cast together, and it works. Really good. Origins: Wolverine - Absolutely, entirely without merit. Dreadful. Awful CGI, rubbish plot, weak cast, takes the Deadpool character and completely bins it.., hopeless. The Wolverine - Decent Wolverine yarn, gets increasingly silly but a fun ride. Deadpool - budget R-rated satire of a comic book movie whilst being a comic book movie, great but absolutely divisive. The series has basically been decent all along and occasionally great, occassionally dreadful, they stumbled on Hugh Jackman (it was originally going to be Dougray Scott playing Wolverine...) who despite being nothing like the character smashes it. That has become a flaw of the series that takes it away from it's roots, the X-Men have always been about the way their powers interact and as a result it's an ensemble, whereas the movies generally decided that Xavier and Eric are pretty much plot framework and Wolverine is the main character surrounded by some reasonably boring bit part additional characters. They've suffered for villains badly - Magneto is THE X-Men villain but his story and the performance by McKellen/Fassbender makes him too likable/understandable to out and out make him evil, so they pretty much fudge it, benefitting the character and his sparking off Xavier but killing his threat. Apocalypse was supposed to change that with a genuine big bad entering fray... unfortunately he's so 90s it hurts... I'm seeing Apocalypse this weekend, can't say I'm expecting much.

Look at this shit.

Anyway this veering off topic...

As said, we're not clean. I think we're better today than we were when settling Australia and I think were that to happen today the native Australians would be treated far better (I'm aware the Australian government has into quite recently treated them very poorly, and that's something Australia should be ashamed of) than we did over the years back then. But again... The Chinese Government is pretty much universally criticised for it's position on many things. Rightly so. Noone is clean in the fullness of time. Doesn't mean everyone's above critique in the cold light of day.

Nope, I definitely can see. It's just that, if I want to, today... In Birmingham, UK, I can do pretty much anything I want. I can criticise the government on anything publicly and not be imprisoned. I can research and educate myself using the gamut of the Internet's resources. I could decide I was any faith and not have that be a mark against my name and not have that potentially threaten me in anyway. I could plan for and have a family to any size I like. If I did do something wrong, the court would be a court that paid no mind to whether the Tories particularly like me or not. I wouldn't be executed. I'd have powerful and binding rights as a worker... Etc etc. We aren't saints. We can improve in many ways. But compared to us, China is a grim, grim state for it's people, who have little freedom and even less rights. Just because we aren't squeaky clean doesn't give China a carte blanche to be worse, whether them putting money into Aston Villa is good or not (if that is the case).

I'm not sure that because we may not be perfect excuses the Chinese government for it's significant stains on it's character. China in many respects makes us look like saints.

I think the shame at being owned by the Chinese government, should that be true and come to pass, is less to do with the financial good it does the club and more to do with the, er... character of the Chinese government.

Out, probably. I don't think the turnout will be particularly low however.

An entirely predictable farce.

Farage, shock horror, raising the prospect of a second referendum if Remain doesn't win decisively. Turkeys also found not to vote for Christmas.

Nameless King. Initial thoughts. It's a fight against a camera. That's not a good thing. I had absolutely no idea whether I was able to strike at it when I could see it due to the camera, and every time it moves, I couldn't see it at all, which inevitably leads to fire and death. Awareness of the fact that that's only phase 1 means I will not be beating this boss alone.

The online in this is ropey. I've messed around with a few covenants and almost every time I've suffered really badly with lag. Helping with the Dancer I was wailing on it and it was seconds later those hits were acknowledged. Accidentally joined a fight club and, despite never standing a chance, I was clearly hitting my opponent more than once, but nothing. A few times it's been alright and I was deservedly embarrassed, but usually I seem to be dogged with issues that make it essentially unviable.

She seemingly wasn't. It was supposedly an open secret she had a clause in the contract saying no more nudity and the series since 2 really they've avoided it. She's made some comments that kinda suggest she decided to do it as a 'rush' as she's not done it for a while. So who knows. But that is her.

Virgin expect to have a new 4k capable box on offer in the UK later this year, in a move that shocks no-one. If their customer survey from last year is anything to go on, it's going to do the same things as the Sky Q. Be interesting to see what they do content wise.