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lanky316

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Posts posted by lanky316

  1. 19 hours ago, Keith Houchen said:

    The BBC spoiled The Apprentice this week. They ran a story on their news site this evening of how a candidate (who they named and had their picture in the thumbnail) wouldn’t be on You’re Fired due to alleged antisemitic social media posts. 
     

    The candidate had previously made posts that were anti Zionist and the Board Of Deputies Of British Jews complained saying they were antisemitic. The candidate vehemently denied this was the case and has said they will continue to speak out about genocide. 

    Kind of glad I'd missed that one, as although as the task unfolded it felt like an "obvious" firing I thought the person involved was going to go a long way based on the fact before the series had started a few papers had covered stories about a candidate who'd had to undergo "sensitivity training" for the above reason and I'd thought the candidate was going to go a long way and it was future damage limitations.

  2. It's been a real run of shitty answers and responses. Of course some sections will talk about how much he schooled people but near enough every answer and response has been particularly poor even by the low standards he seems to set.

  3. It's depressing but not a surprise. Thomas Partey was publicly outed as a rapist. We saw evidence in which he admitted to it and laughed about it. No punishment, played on and largely forgotten about. It's bullshit and add in the pathetic partisanship of football support and "our lads can do no wrong" type mentalities just paints a more depressing picture.

  4. One factor also is that, ultimately, nothing like that had been done before at the time. The idea of doing a single 12 hour film and splitting it into three releasing a part each year wasn't done. Now everything seems to feel like it needs to be part of a franchise and shared universes and all that sort of nonsense and people will release a part 1 with a part 2 to follow for what feels like any old shite. For better or worse LOTR was a hugely ambitious project that hadn't really been done before so it made sense that they'd reward it all at the end rather than (theoretically) throwing everything at it every year. The earlier films in the trilogy did pick up things but could understand why they held off on Best Picture until it was done even if it wasn't necessarily the best of the three.

  5. Sterlings silly run seemed to affect his legs a lot more than usual yesterday. The number of times he fell over with nobody near him and looked lovingly at the referee for help was embarrassing. Back in the days when a referee showed yellows for "simulation" he'd have actually saved Romero (for about 3 minutes before Romero lunged in on someone else) while heading off for an early bath.

  6. Just now, PunkStep said:

    Still, good on Ange for being 'brave' and sticking with that high line.

    That made it such an entertaining game. The sensible thing would have been, especially with the injuries on top of the sendings off, to have tightened up like Liverpool, work hard and maybe get someone away on the break (before Dier heads into his own net). Instead, Ange said "fuck that" and played the game with 8 out of 9 in the opposing half, Vicario showing himself to be one of the best sweepers in the world and they had three great chances near the end that could easily have got them the point before a couple of late goals put it to bed. What a mad game that was.

  7. It looks plausible by what's going on around various other festivals during the season and with that lineup in various permutations being close to a few of them with the odd switch. Guess we'll find out for sure soon enough.

  8. 13 hours ago, CharlesTuckerTheThird said:

    Huge fan of Warmaster, shame they dropped it so quickly. Had an Undead force, the definition of a Glass Cannon!

    It's still being kept alive with a decent tournament scene! Like a few of the old specialist games (Blood Bowl, Necromunda and Warmaster... maybe others) when they removed things from the store Rick Priestley largely handed it over to a rules committee but still works with them on ideas and they've been working with the game and keeping it going. These days there's plenty of 3rd party sites who near enough recreate the sculpts. Obviously you're buying "Noble Elves" or the like but they're recognisably old swordmasters and so on. The rules aren't massively different the only real tweaks are that there's more armies available. From a historical perspective when most of the old guard left GW and set up their own company "Warlord Games", they've basically kept Warmaster alive with the games Hail Caesar (ancient battles through to medieval) and Black Powder (umm... the black powder era....) which are ultimately the same ruleset with a few tweaks.

  9. I've not really played a lot of GW stuff for a long time, aside from the odd game of Warmaster. I did play a lot of Blood Bowl over the years and still occasionally play online (on fumbbl, not the Cyanide games, the fact they never got the rules right bothered me more than it should) but it's drifted out of favour more recently although I'd still put it up there as best games out there. 

    With Space Hulk being mentioned I've got that but not played in years, one of my fonder memories is from the PC game in the mid 90s that was (for the time, no doubt aged poorly) fantastic. FPS where you had to manage your squad of marines, either by orders or directly but ramped up tension and kept you on edge. You'd be controlling one then just hear screams over your comm link and find out that one of the others was down. Worked as a nice horror title as well as lots of dakka and evil beast slaying.

     

    The game that has finally taken over Blood Bowl as the main game at our club is one that is kind of more suited for this sort of forum... Rumbleslam. It's by TTCombat who mainly do scenery pieces but also do some games these days. Rumbleslam is essentially the same as BB in that it's "fantasy races play this sport", in this case wrestling. The game is fairly quick and easy to learn and is usually a lot of fun but the best thing is definitely the minis and characters full of pop culture and wrestling references. Including but not limited to the hard to hit lizardman "Ceneleon" (you can't see him, of course), goblin Bushwackers, a group of vampires called the "Bleeding Heart Foundation" and so on. 

  10. 22 minutes ago, Chris B said:

    You're also probably not messing around with Visa and tax implications. Some wrestlers are just visiting and sight-seeing, honest, guv.

    I can't remember the exact bit I have vague memories of Chris Hero (I think) being on one of those customs/airport security reality programs where he was held up in immigration over questions around his Visa and the rather conspicuous wrestling belt that he was carrying with him.

  11. 20 minutes ago, Lorne Malvo said:

    I've got a mate who isn't a div by any stretch of the imagination, but he can't tell the time from an analogue clock.

    This is something that appears to be becoming more and more common. On Puzzling, there would be questions that popped up like "what is the time in the mirror?" or the numbers being replaced by a couple of letters with the question like "who is the author at 3:35" and it was surprising how often people got them wrong on a surprisingly high brow quiz. As it's becoming less likely that people come across analogue clocks it'll become more common people struggle with telling the time that way.

  12. 2 hours ago, Tommy! said:

    From what little I've seen of the really modern stuff it's fine enough, it's not series 2 to 10 but it's serviceable family friendly light entertainment.

    The ones I can't watch are the run of series after that early peak where seemingly every episode felt like it was built around the thought it'll be hilarious for homer to be both an idiot and a massive cunt each week with little else spooned in for plot, depth  or humor.

     

    All a part of the aforementioned Flanderization of characters. Homers idiocy is funny so let's play that up, and forget that while Homer has always been an idiot but his heart is in the right place. Having his stupidity leading to him being painfully selfish and obnoxious become his main trait and forget the heart of it all and it's neither particularly funny or offer any chance of poignance. In the past you'd get the odd episode of difficulty between Homer and Marge, due to either internal or external factors, but the love was so strong and evident that you could see why Marge keeps him around due to how loving and caring he is despite his flaws.. In later episodes the "why does Marge put up with him?" becomes a lot harder to explain away.

  13. I guess if you've got a room of a dozen comedians the theory is "well we find it funny, I'm sure it'll work out fine with audiences". So when it came to throwing out random references from wherever there'll be a "yeah not all will get it but those who do will be howling". As was said before, the strength was that the point wouldn't be laboured and that there'll be something else soon enough. Similar to how guest stars would fit in - while many love "the softball episode" I blame this for a decline in part with trying to recreate the magic - they'd either be playing someone else or in a small part moving through. Later, they would try and shoe horn more in like the - often outdated pop culture references and memes - usually with a "tongue in cheek" comment from someone along the lines of "wow Marge, it's star of that tv show people like, insert name here!". A far cry from the days of Lucius Sweet who was "as rich and famous as Don King!" I know they couldn't actually get King in for the cameo but like Wolfcastle as a quick gag was far better than how when they could get in seemingly whoever they wanted it would be forced in. On that note it's worth taking into account that some of the worst episodes were celeb heavy. I'd still put the Gervais episode as the worst. episode. ever.

  14. This conversation reminds of one of the absolute lowlights of recent years Simpsons. The response to "The Problem With Apu" was one of the most painful fourth wall breaks in tv and completely missed the point. I'll concede to not really thinking about the issue, voice acting is voice acting so people playing different genders/races and so on wasn't something I really thought about and had grown used to, nor had I thought about the cultural impact of it being (especially in America) near enough the only character of South Asian heritage and the bullying that would come with it - white male privilege and all that, I'd just essentially "dismissed" it as being one of the many over the top stereotypical things that the background cast was full of without thinking about it. Once the issue was raised in a higher profile manner however I did get that moment of "fuck yes, I can see how that has a major negative affect on people" and understood why it was an issue.

    That's why when the response was... Marge trying to edit an old book from her childhood to be more "modern" for Lisas ears and the two of them looking at a picture of Apu and saying "something that started decades ago suddenly becomes offensive and politically incorrect, what can you do?" and deadpanning straight into the "camera"... What the actual fuck was that? Especially with people from the backroom then being vocally critical of the film and dismissing it as a plot by what we'd now call the Liberal Elite Wokerati. It essentially took Azaria himself to come out and say he'd stop voicing the character, before 2020 and George Floyd and The Simpsons deciding to try and (re)cast performers of respective backgrounds for those sort of roles. I can accept things sounding a bit different - as weird as characters may sound after literally decades - especially when a lot of characters (in "fairness" Apu did get some fleshing out... admittedly usually with other stereotypically Indian elements which certainly didn't help) are still largely one note stereotypical background characters used for *insert cheap gag that works in this moment* despite their episodes in the sun.

  15. 24 minutes ago, SuperBacon said:

    A fair point Loki, but that's The Simpsons. 

    Someone (probably lots) has watched 80 episodes of Two Pints!!! 

    I actually watched a recent episode of The Simpsons (blame the 10yo) where Bart wants a pair of trendy trainers (Slipreme...LOLOLOLOL!!!) and Homer gets him a snide pair which fall apart. It was alright.

    I think the problem is just how good peak Simpsons was, as it's not been able to keep up with that level it's made everything for a very long time look even worse. Don't get me wrong I'm not saying that new episodes are a masterpiece. I've occasionally caught new episodes during that "killing time before kick off to the evenings football/other entertainment" slot and while there have been episodes that haven't even raised a chuckle they were so bad, a fair few still get a couple of laughs even if they're not the 20 odd minutes of near solid laughter some of the old ones got. It probably has had it's day and could do with moving to a farm upstate somewhere, but of course they'd just keep bringing it back from the dead to increasingly diminishing returns like Futurama.

    In general though it is shocking when you realise just how many "long runners" there are, when you think of how some comedies that seem almost universally loved had short runs for whatever reason some of these you never heard any buzz (or nostalgic pangs for) stay on air for so long.

  16. I think the most hilarious thing of this whole saga is that people now seem to be reporting that despite all summer angling for the move and desperately wanting to go... Spurs have accepted the bid and Kane is now saying "nah mate, not interested". I don't really get it but it's perhaps the funniest part of the whole saga. I hope your heart is holding together Bacon, sure it's going to be a rollercoaster of a few days now!

  17. On 6/24/2023 at 8:43 AM, jazzygeofferz said:

    Anyway, I'm actually here because I was going to ask whether anybody else watched that new quiz show Puzzling on Channel 5 the other night. It feels a bit "I want Only Connect" "we have Only Connect at home". But it isn't too bad. 

    The only negative I had from it was that it seemed to be heavy on colour based things which being colourblind made it much harder. Wasn't expecting the maths round to be such a shitter as a particularly troublesome round to me.

  18. There's a guy at our gaming club who regularly says "oh we could play some Twilight Imperium"... We meet at 7 and have to be out at half 10 so that'd be getting set up just in time to get set up before packing away. A long day session is fine but not suitable for a quick game! It's a good game but the length it takes to actually play makes it hard to find the time for a session.

  19. 4 hours ago, sj5522 said:

    Any fans of League Two clubs about?
    I'm a Notts County supporter. We have some team and look good for consecutive promotions, but others may know the standard required better than I.

    Documentary FC Wrexham should be right up there too of course. Wasn't that impressed by the standard in the L2 playoffs personally and think both of us go up one way or another. 3 automatic promotion spots instead of 1 should be a huge factor.

    Not any more having seen Stevenage promoted this season! Over all though, as long as the team stay together and don't get gutted by other sides and any replacements/switches over the Summer aren't useless, I'd expect you to go well. Top sides in the conference should have enough about them to give promotion a push when they go up and with the points totals that you and Wrexham put together I'd not be surprised to see both of you up automatically. 

  20. The set pieces thing is kind of blockbuster routine but captures the "diminished returns" of films quite well especially as series run on. If you were to go back to the original JP, there's quite a few "stand out scenes" that stick in the mind and both Jurassic trilogies follow the same path of quite a few stand out moments in the first ones (less so in World than the original but... the original is rightly considered a classic of cinema history for what it did), then the second might have a couple of big things (LW with the trailer sequence, raptors in the long grass, city T-Rex/FK had the destruction of the island finishing with the shot of the original Brachiosaurus silhouetted in the lava flow and smoke/the haunted house super raptor hunt - lessened due to the fact by now you knew that a major character was immune to dino food) with the third in the trilogy being reduced to basically one bit (Spino/T-Rex fight and the city raptor chase to the plane) that stands out as a real "point" to talk about how good that was... shame about the rest. That sort of routine can be replicated across a lot of blockbuster franchises if you were to look over them. One thing I will give the original Alien quadrilogy credit for is that each director left a "mark" and made each film feel different even if it'd be open for debate as to if that style or decisions they made were actually good ones.

    I understand how it can be difficult with a franchise to keep it feeling fresh and why so many writers/directors are frightened of changing "what works" and losing that money printing license but from a viewers side of things it does lead to a lot of dross.

  21. 4 hours ago, BomberPat said:

    But mostly, it's dire. It's incredibly mean-spirited, the character archetypes (and particularly the gender politics of it all) are lazier and more dated than the characters in the first film

    The most amazing thing about the series, and Jurassic World in particlar is that the most over the top incredible kill in the series goes to... Some random girl who the main girl for the series dumps her nephews with. Now granted, I watched Merlin and know she turns a bit evil so it's for the best but throughout the series and all the characters she is the one they went overboard with for the massive death routine for?

    I did have to laugh about them bringing Dodgson of all people back to be the big villain in Dominion, after all those years of memes about "see, nobody cares" they bring him back and quite rightly, nobody cared. While I understand not following the book to the letter when Lost World was made, I've never been entirely sure why that subplot was so forgotten about - two things caused the failure of the park, Hammond being painfully cheap and the industrial sabotage by a rival company made possible due to the cost cutting - yet they waited nearly 30 years to actually do anything with it. I'm not saying any of the follow ups would have actually been great films but the shitty genetic engineered super dinos were so shite it made the first two Worlds even more of a slog to get through.

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