Random links

Ganymede

Game of Buckeyes.

Thenomain

I have no idea who let Dayton become a thing. I mean, at least it isn't Toledo.

surreality

@thenomain If you want squint-worthy: any time I try to google some location in my state, Delaware, I have to tell google that no, I don't mean Delaware, Ohio, goddammit.

Now that is sad right there.

Arkandel

http://comicbook.com/tv-shows/2018/01/24/supernatural-scooby-doo-crossover-tease/

Bobotron

@arkandel

Just... why?

Thenomain

@bobotron said in Random links:

@arkandel

Just... why?

Because meeting up with celebrities to solve mysteries is what Scooby Doo does.

edit:

Batman & Robin. C'mon, the real question is why didn't this happen sooner?

Ganymede

@thenomain

Hey. Go fuck yourself, man.

I mean this nicely.

ThatGuyThere

Batman and Robin is just the tip of the iceberg, in Scooby Doo Team Up they have pretty much met the entire DCU.

Arkandel

https://qz.com/1188058/netflix-explains-why-badly-reviewed-bright-killed-with-viewers/

Relevant quote: "Netflix nixed its old star-rating system last year because people used it to rate the quality of the titles, like critics do, rather than how much they enjoyed them. For example, people usually gave movies high ratings, but watched sitcoms more often, Netflix said at the time."

Lisse24

@arkandel said in Random links:

https://qz.com/1188058/netflix-explains-why-badly-reviewed-bright-killed-with-viewers/

Relevant quote: "Netflix nixed its old star-rating system last year because people used it to rate the quality of the titles, like critics do, rather than how much they enjoyed them. For example, people usually gave movies high ratings, but watched sitcoms more often, Netflix said at the time."

So .... people like trash? I buy that.

Arkandel

@lisse24 If that's what you want to take from that, sure. But I look at it like this - people appreciate quality stuff but they consume fun stuff.

We keep complaining about how Hollywood keeps making the latter but from a producer's point of view there is simply no choice to be made; the upside of making content people appreciate but don't watch is very minimal. Like any investment they need to appeal to what the market wants.

What's even more interesting in this case is that this is Netflix we're talking about. There's no price differential here - both critically acclaimed and guilty-pleasure stuff are a click away, already paid for... yet people still chose the latter.

ThatGuyThere

@arkandel said in Random links:

There's no price differential here - both critically acclaimed and guilty-pleasure stuff are a click away, already paid for... yet people still chose the latter.

Slight correction, there is no monetary price differential. There is still the expenditure of time. A movie will usually run around 90 minutes with the potential of going longer. A sitcom episode without commercials runs 21-22 minutes.
Now a more fair comparison would be a quality film vs Adam Sandler movie of a similar length.

surreality

@arkandel It wasn't brilliant -- or even... particular bright <ducks> -- but it was a fairly interesting take on something close to a Shadowrun-ish setting, just with lower tech levels than predicted by ye olde setting docs. It could have been so much worse. (For instance, all of Will Smith's kids could have been in it, too... I guess they're saving that for the sequel.)

Ganymede

@arkandel said in Random links:

What's even more interesting in this case is that this is Netflix we're talking about. There's no price differential here - both critically acclaimed and guilty-pleasure stuff are a click away, already paid for... yet people still chose the latter.

I liked Bright. I think critics need to shut the fuck up most of the time.

Things can be critically-acclaimed and guilty pleasures. Daredevil shamefully did not get the attention it should have, and I am pissed off that The Punisher got nothing while Stranger Things Season 2 got recognition.

(I liked ST s2 a lot, but The Punisher was brilliant in the same way that The Wire was, and notably had an impressive number of women writing and directing episodes for what is ostensibly a man's revenge-fantasy character.)

No doubt, critics will have a mouthful about The Witcher when Netflix releases it, but I am comfortable and confident that it will be one of those critically-acclaimed / guilty pleasure things for me.

WildBaboons

I had read a couple of reviews for the movie and it seemed like the critics weren't even critiquing the movie, but had just read a synopsis of it and stated that they weren't interested in the theme. The movie certainly wasn't great, but it wasn't terrible either. Had I paid to go see it in a theater I wouldn't have felt robbed and am looking forward to see what they do as a sequel.

surreality

My main takeaway from it was: 'this may be on the fun side of OK for a movie, but a whole shedload of people would probably play the shit out of this as an RP setting.'

Arkandel

@wildbaboons I admit I've have a major against professional movie critics for years. My peeve was born all the way back when The Fellowship Of The Ring was first coming out and, wouldn't you know it, fantasy movies back then were just usually horrible so it was typical to disrespect them.

I was reading a newspaper (yes, this was a long time ago, we've been over this) and the reviewer gave it something like 1.5 stars out of five... fine. I kept reading to see why, and when I did I quickly realized he hadn't actually watched the movie - he only saw like, a few scenes here and there. He was talking about 'hobgoblins' and 'dwarves made to be turned into toy figures', but he had enormous misconceptions about the plot ("they went on a quest to find some magical rings" - uh, what?).

And this was a well respected critic. He loved obscure European films, that guy did.

That guy can fuck off, and so can the rest of his ilk. I'll watch things I enjoy watching. </angerManagement>

Auspice

Someday I'll get to finish The Punisher. $:\$

surreality

Speaking of Netflix and critics and controversial things: https://news.artnet.com/art-world/damien-hirst-created-fake-documentary-venice-show-can-see-netflix-1192922

This is actually really pretty damned neat, even knowing it's all a weird fusion of art+performance art.

According to the 90-minute mockumentary, the vast Venice spectacle was not the 52-year-old artist’s highly anticipated comeback exhibition, which took 10 years and cost a reported $65 million to produce.

Instead, the film suggests the show was the debut presentation of long-lost treasure discovered by a team of archaeologists and divers off the coast of east Africa. The trove—so the story goes—had been assembled during the 1st or 2nd centuries by a former slave turned voracious collector, Cif Amotan II (an anagram, it turns out, for “I am fiction”).

As most of us are story people, this might be more fun a watch than you'd initially expect. I am a geek for absolutely all of the things it's about -- art, art history, mythology, elaborate hoaxes, treasure hunting, marine biology -- so this one had my name all over it, but its very existence makes me smile.

Aria

@surreality said in Random links:

@thenomain If you want squint-worthy: any time I try to google some location in my state, Delaware, I have to tell google that no, I don't mean Delaware, Ohio, goddammit.

Now that is sad right there.

I live in Philadelphia. Yet every time I type my home address into Google to get directions from my house, it somehow assumes I'm looking for a house with the same street name/number in Ewing, New Jersey and tries to autocomplete that address. Apparently, far more people are conducting searches for <blank> Road in Ewing, a relatively small town, than in Philadelphia -- a city of over one million people.

What??