Chindie

Haven't really had chance to play for a few days but in the meantime I've been absentmindedly watching ENBs blind play through. I understand he's a decent player with a big thing on the lore of the series, which makes him playing this blind on the one hand very interesting, because most of the lore is lost on me, and on the other the most irritating thing imaginable. Because of his familiarity with the series he's constantly walking around going 'well I know this is going to happen to now' and I swear he's been wrong every time. But often he's so certain he then misses huge chunks of things. He's currently in the catacombs, and he's worked half of the bridge out (because the game basically told him), but because he missed the prompt to climb down, leading him to die, he's decided that that can't possibly be the way down, so he's spent at least 20 mins running around bits of the area he's already done because 'the entrance must be over here!'. It's absolutely infuriating to watch. But I can't stop myself watching each day's new vid. I'm sure he'll find stuff I've missed, either lore or straight up items and areas I've skipped, but right now seeing him waste ages running around through his own hubris is maddening, but also in some respects hilarious.

Good episode again. This series, unusual for the show as a whole, isn't messing about. Loose ends tied up, plot development everywhere, and even a scene with the world's second most dull plotline that wasn't completely shit. Bravo Game of Thrones.

I also saw Captain America Civil War yesterday. Civil War was a summer event in Marvel Comics about 10 years ago, written by Mark Millar, who has seemed unusually able to get his stories adapted for screen (he also wrote Kick Ass, Kingsman, etc etc). The story concerned the fallout of a disaster caused by some superpowered teenagers that destroyed a school, after which it is decided that super powered individuals could no longer be allowed to remain anonymous and would have to be registered, and effectively employed by the government. A bunch of heroes decide this is a good thing, notably Tony Stark's Iron Man who is personally touched by the tragedy when the mother of a child who died confronts and blames him, and a bunch go rogue, under Captain America, who's belief in liberty and distrust of powerful organisations controlling people sparks him to rebel. The series ultimately leads to pretty much every Marvel character becoming embroiled in the conflict, with tragedy scattered throughout. Which makes adapting the story interesting. In essence, you can't, at this moment in time, adapt a perfect version of Civil War. Rights issues mean significant characters are off limits, the build up and development of the conflict spanned literally hundreds of pages, the MCU doesn't have secret identities really so the initial spark for conflict has to change, some moments simply wouldn't work on screen, etc etc. So Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely didn't. The writers of all of the Cap films so far (as well as a Thor 2, and the upcoming Avengers Infinity War double bill) take some elements of that story, and carefully wind in elements of the ongoing Cap story to create a great narrative that pushes the MCU forward with aplomb. It's impossible to talk story, even in broad terms, without some spoilers for Winter Soldier, so if you haven't seen that (and you should, it's great), don't read any of the following. Go watch Winter Soldier, and ideally the first Cap as well, and then go see this. Anyway... the film opens with a flashback. Its 1991, a Siberian base, a Hydra base, is opened by Russian soldiers who bring the Winter Soldier out of deep freeze and task him to retrieve something, with no witnesses. We cut to the present day, the new Avengers team, formed after Age of Ultron (Cap, Falcon, Black Widow and Scarlet Witch) are chasing down Cap's former colleague, Brock Rumlow, aiming to prevent him stealing a biological weapon. In the process, they inadvertently kill a number of innocents, and that, coupled to the damage and loss of life caused by Cap and co over the events of the Avengers, Winter Soldier and Avengers 2, leads the UN to demand the Avengers become a sanctioned group answerable to, and acting only on the orders of, the UN. Stark, shown the harm he's caused, chooses to agree to this course of action, whilst Cap distrusts the power that could be held by a supranational organisation. Twists and turns see Cap become personally entangled in the conflict, perhaps unable to be objective, new players enter the game with their own agendas, and nobody may be right. The immediate fear with any of the team up movies in Marvel's Cinematic Universe is they descend into a mess, with characters having no time to breathe and the whole thing creaking the weight of it's own mythos. The Avengers movies have got away with it by carefully taking their time and being quite light on their feet. Given that Civil War is helmed by the Russo brothers, only on their second blockbuster feature, and tasked with not only taking a huge story that asks for characters to depart their usual positions and mannerisms, and introduce 2 new characters with their own back stories, you'd certainly be concerned. Those fears are, however, unfounded. The writers and Russo brothers have been careful to give strong through lines to the plot, safety lines the rest of the movie grabs onto and, even when it's descending into completely overblown action, you can understand why they are stood over there and why he's trying to stop them doing that. And that overblown action is great. We get a brilliant almost Bond like scene setter opening set piece where we see the new Avengers team actually working as a team, a fun chase sequence that whilst simplistic is heart pounding, a couple of close quarters punch ups that have weight in more ways than one, and, at the centre, a superb set piece which may be the best action sequence in any super hero movie, that cleverly recognises what each of these characters brings to the table and actually has compelling ways of showing how their powers and abilities can work together and against each other. I can't overemphasise how good this sequence is. It has surprises, emotional weight, laughs and spectacle by the bucketload. Despite all that though, this is a story about Steve Rogers. And Chris Evans is absolutely excellent. He's been great as Cap since the get go and here he just continues that. Cap can be a bland character, but placed into situations where he can't be a boy scout, his honourability takes on a new facet and we get to see that here. Downey Jr is back as Iron Man and brings the best performance he's given since the movie that started this whole series. I like Stark as a character and RDJ is always good fun in that role to my mind, but this movie steps away from the Whedon-ised version, which can be a walking quip machine, and brings a slight element of pathos - this is a Tony Stark that's tired of being Iron Man, whose life is starting to lose it's sheen. He still is fast with the one liner or sarcasm, on occasion, but he is refreshingly less cocksure. The rest of the returning cast are all excellent, with particular mentions to Sebastian Stan, who has a fairly thankless task effectively playing a Terminator that was slowly remembering it was a man once, Anthony Mackie, who's Falcon continues to grow into this universe, and Paul Rudd, who has an argument for stealing the movie under everyone else's nose. We also get a bit of fleshing out for Scarlet Witch and Vision, who are both characters that can be taken to places the series hasn't quite attempted yet, but this is a step on that road. And it's great to see General Ross back, a nice cameo for William Hurt, from the forgotten MCU movie, the Incredible Hulk. We also have 2 notably new players, Chadwick Boseman as T'Challa, a prince of a mysterious African nation called Wakanda, that produces the metal Cap's shield is made of, and Tom Holland as Spiderman. Boseman is superb. T'Challa is a difficult part, he's both regal and wrath filled, a man not to cross, but Boseman manages both sides of his personality brilliantly and he adds a brilliant wildcard to proceedings. The film is careful to show he actually is a threat, as the character can be a little overly silly, and they do just manage it. Holland is the best Spiderman we've had, and the best Peter Parker too. Andrew Garfield was 80, 90% of the way there, but Holland smashes it. His Parker is a teenage geek bestowed with power, he moves and acts like Spidey should, theres genuine joy in his fighting style and his banter, and finally we're shown that Spiderman is actually a force to be reckoned with. The suit also grew on me, it's not quite the, in my view, perfect ASM2 one, but it's close enough to classic that I really like it. I'm greatly looking forward to both of the individual outings for these guys, and Black Panther in particular should bring us something a little different. Finally we have a new villain. Marvel famously has a problem with villains. They've wasted loads of them. Cap's nemesis, the Red Skull? Vapourised by the Tesseract in 1 movie (I have hopes they'll bring him back, as he's THE Cap villain, but I doubt they will). Iron Man? Killed the Iron Monger, killed Whiplash after about 15 minutes screen time, ruined the Mandarin to the extent they've half-heartedly retconned it. Etc etc. The only ones they've managed to do anything with that have let the villains develop beyond a 1 movie nemesis is Loki and arguably the Winter Soldier. This movie almost fixes that. We get a different villain to those we've seen before, and by his nature we're never quite sure of them. The character has inspiration in the comics, but pretty much in name only which isn't necessarily a bad thing. This has a downside though - they're a bit absentee, but this helps the movie's other moments breathe. But they're played very well, very good casting, and hopefully a sign that Marvel might finally be able shift into recognising that a good villain in these things is priceless. I saw Civil War yesterday and was mulling over where exactly it stands in the MCU. Some have said it's a weaker movie than Winter Soldier, and I can see why you'd make that call. Winter Soldier is very singular, the story is fairly straight and tight, has that 70s conspiracy vibe, has a fantastic reveal, and shakes up the MCU to break way from 7 films of status quo. Civil War is more vanilla super hero story, albeit one with a clever basis (effectively the same basis as BvS, but this knows how to do that story properly, and benefits from doing it with 8 years of back story to mine), it's reveals are more spectacular but they don't change things. But Civil War feels so much bigger. It feels like a smart way of taking this mass of characters and giving them internal doubt and seeing what would happen... and in doing so changes the universe on a fundamental, character level, so it feels more special than Winter Soldier in that facet. Is it better than the Avengers? That's a big call. The Avengers was that special moment. We'd never seen anything like it. 4 years of build up, enormous spectacle, a fun villain, directed by a true comic book guy, funny and engaging. It's still a great movie, even it's sequel couldn't quite grasp the lightning in a bottle effect. But Civil War takes that movie and strips a little of the over the top lightness away. It has a little more depth to it, the Cap in the Avengers doesn't argue with Stark like he does here, had Stark and Cap suited up in their Avengers squabble their fight would not be the fight we have here. The whole thing is a little more grounded, with a little more bite. Civil War is the best movie in the MCU. It's brilliant. For reference, there are 2 post credit scenes. The first acts as an epilogue to the movie and ties up a minor loose end and establishes where things stand for a couple of characters. The second is short nice moment for a character that doesn't really add anything, so if you're desperate to run to the loo, don't worry too much. On that note, this is a long movie, it's 2 and a half hours and there are lots of characters talking to each other scenes between the action, which many younger children are not going to enjoy. It's a 12a and follows on from the Winter Soldier in terms of violence, in that it's a little more grounded (a little less lasers, a little more people smacking each other with bits of metal), there are a couple of visual references to suicide and theres a bit of blood in some climatic scenes.

That was my first diagnosis.

Can certainly see the point. It's a bit of a commitment if you've not kept up with the series and want to jump in fit a specific movie. But I'd raise this. With Marvel, you're watching a series of movies that share characters and exist in an overlapping world to differing extents. Civil War is at one and the same time Captain America 3, and an continuation of character development that began in some ways 8 years ago. You wouldn't jump in to the Game of Thrones series at book (or series) 3, at least not without at least knowing what happened in the previous 2. The MCU breaks that down a bit because, at this point, there are 13 movies that share characters, but you can just follow series and immediately related films. You don't need to have watched Guardians to understand Avengers 2. You don't need to have watched Thor 2 to get anything from Cap 2. Etc. There's a comparison with book series that develop worlds. I'm an enormous Pratchett fan. He wrote dozens of Discworld novels over near enough 30 years, developing a world that had hundreds of characters that cameoed or were referenced across books. And within that individual series cropped up, a series about the adventures of a police force in a city, a series about a loose coven of witches in a satire of rural England, a series about the personification of Death and related people and concepts, and many more. You could easily just read the novels about the coppers and never touch the rest, you'd miss some references and some concepts would be dropped on you a bit but you could easily enjoy them. You could jump in to the police series 3 books in, when the characters were set and you could enjoy the books, but you'd have missed out on the development to get there and whole elements of those characters don't make sense (the main character goes from a dead end broken cynic alcoholic, to the forefront of a modernising force with ever vigilant alcohol monkey on his back, and even greater cynicism, with great disdain for many things he's encountered, and sudden stature in society he doesn't know how to deal with). The MCU does the same thing, but with a bit less subtlety, particularly with Cap's character.

I've somehow managed to get what I can only imagine is a tiny splinter in my toe. I can't see it, but my toe has swollen and gone red, and it feels like I've got a blister, but it isn't. So it must be a splinter. And I can't do anything about it. It's quite annoying.

Absolutely. I wouldn't right off Winter Soldier on the basis of disliking the first one (which I'd wager Stevo will ). You just need the first movie to develop context for a whole bunch of Cap's character going forward - pretty much every reveal in Winter Soldier is lessened to some extent (in a couple of cases, basically meaningless) if you're going in blind. But they are very different and while the first is quite light and very much an old fashioned afternoon adventure, the second is more a 70s style political thriller smashed into a blockbuster, with very different tone. Civil War is by all accounts a sequel to Winter Soldier in the first instance, so it's required viewing.

Skip the first one. It's a good movie but, on the basis you're watching to watch Civil War you only really need to take 1 thing away from it (you've already seen Avengers so you know what Caps character is like). Read the synopsis and you'll get what you need to know. Hell I can tell you now in a sentence. Definitely watch Winter Soldier. A significant element of Cap's motivations come from that movie, and it is genuinely great, has some great action and a political thriller flavour for as good chunk of it. Age of Ultron develops Stark and explains some of his motivation in Civil War. It also develops a bit of the animosity between him and Cap. Again you could probably get this from a paragraph about the plot. Ant-man just establishes his character, and powers, and explains why anyone knows who he is. Probably not essential.

You'll probably need to have seen both Caps, Age of Ultron and, to a lesser extent, Ant-man. The first Cap is good period silly fun, the second is genuinely excellent. You could probably get away with reading a plot synopsis of the first film but it's certainly worth a watch I think. It had a great atmosphere and tone, and being set in WW2 makes it quite unlike anything else they've done.

It's a problem the character has always had, it's very easy for his storylines to devolve into 'the Punisher brutally murders nondescript gangster of the week' which burns out very quickly. He also doesn't 'work' very well universe wise. A character that straight up murders villains running around a universe where characters fight their nemesis for decades doesn't quite gel.. But Netflix have done pretty well so far and the character was done well in Daredevil so I've every hope for it.

Literally the only downside I can see for that is the question of whether the character can sustain a 13 part series. He's a great character, and Bernthal smashes the role, but the Punisher is a fairly one note character overall and tends to benefit from bouncing off others his approach is opposed to. But I'll happily watch Bernthal in that role again. Excellent.

Seeing it tomorrow afternoon.

Oh certainly. I've never seen the original movie, but given that I believe it was supposedly based on one of their first 'investigations', which if I remember correctly was about a house that had weird goings on due to things, even trailer tells you it's complete horseshit. I actually might see if it's on any streaming services, the missus saw it at the cinema as a horror movie lover and hated it so maybe we can treat it as a comedy... The sequel being based on the Enfield case is irritating because, even though it was a hoax, the Enfield haunting is creepy as hell, even though you know its a couple of kids playing up. It doesn't really need to be turned into a 'quiet quietBANG' horror. I suspect the adaptation from last year with Timothy Spall, which attempted to use the story to tell a horror story and investigate the mindset of Maurice Gross, who was the first investigator of the case, will blow whatever James Wan does out of the water.

The Conjuring is 'inspired' by real life paranormal investigators the Warrens. You can tell it was only inspired because, despite the mythos built around the Warrens, the only paranormal thing they are supposed to have witnessed first hand if I recall correctly was a toy move. So they put it in a case and claimed it was possessed. The sequel is inspired by the Enfield haunting. I've no doubt it'll have absolutely nothing to do with the original hoax.

Skyward Sword is the one main series Zelda I've not played either. Heard too much of it being a long winded tedious slog to bother at the time it came out. I'd probably play a remaster today though. Which might happen. The Twilight Princess remaster didn't take that much effort seemingly.

I was in the Holte for that game. The worst game I can remember. Dreadful. I thought we wouldn't outdo the Blackpool game at home under Houllier, where I distinctly remember looking down at the pitch and realising that Blackpool, of all teams, were parked in our half and we couldn't do a thing about it. But that Bradford game. I think I've still got the flag somewhere, just to remember a freezing dreadful 3 hours.

I've certainly had some NPC quests where I don't have the faintest idea what's going on with them. I've had a character appear in Firelink randomly twice and never return, the despondent knight has come and gone and now entirely vanished... The female knight and her companion I had spoiled so I've been following their quest as it seemed interesting, but I doubt I could have followed it without that heads up and guidance. Equally Siegward I met the second time completely by accident, and had I not discovered a decent farming run in the same place for the early mid game I'd never have found him. I've also seemingly missed loads of NPC invasions and I've no idea if I can make them pop somehow after the fact or return to the earlier ones that killed me to grab their gear second time round.

Ah OK. Not quite there yet I think, just beaten the boss in the Garden first time out. Probably call it night there. I might try the suggestion on a second character if I fancy another run through.

Well I've just beaten the boss I'd heard a lot struggle with, the Dancer. Beaten at about the 5th attempt. Nice fight, punishes you severely for mistakes. Spoilers for an approach to the game... Onwards and upwards...

I suspect there are shitloads of Labour MPs who are anti-Israel. I don't think there will be that many that are genuinely 'anti-semitic'. I'm pretty anti-Israel, I couldn't give less of a rat's arse about Jewish people, the same as I don't really give a damn about any people, except for the general disdain I'd have for any religionists. According to many in the last few days that seemingly makes me an anti-semite (it doesn't, in reality, there is just the common tactic of calling anyone who doesn't believe Israel is above reproach anti-Jew instantaneously to shut down dissent). Ken Livingstone has seemingly opened his mouth before fully engaging his brain. And has been suspended for it. I've no idea what the other MP is supposed to have said, presumably something stupid. Cameron knows full well there isn't a 'anti-semite' problem, no more than the Tories have an 'X' problem.

It seemed to be a repeat of the Crystal Sage, but harder hitting. So tactic was basically rush down and hit hard.

Aldrich down at first attempt... I understand the next boss is a word removed.

Gwent is shite.

Literally did it next attempt. Never, ever again.