chokeout

59 minutes ago, MungoChutney said:

When he goes I fully expect Johnson to very quickly settle into right wing media, potentially in the States.  He'll go down a storm at Republican rallies. Farage done very well out of that and he had nothing to really build it on. In their eyes Boris Johnson will be the man who stood up to both the EU and Putin. Matching red hats on order for him and Trump. 

I’m sure Trump would happily roll out the ‘my very good friend Boris’ line but when you remember his greatest hits are funding for the NHS (well talking about it at least) and rolling out the  vaccine combined with him being posh he’d be fucked in front of a pro trump crowd. He’ll just collect millions sitting on the boards of drugs companies as he uses his connection to get them slices of the NHS

Ralphy, that's my dream garden. You and your dad should be proud. 

Don't worry about killing the garden. Established gardens are usually very strong and will look after themselves as long as you keep on top of weeding, watering and, when you feel brave enough, pruning.

If you've got a greenhouse then tomatoes, peppers and chillis should grow huge quickly with little effort and are great for a novice to be able to see progress. You'll get better crops when you spend time looking after it but that's not important at the start. Spring onions are good and don't need lots of room, Beetroot, radish and shallots are all quite easy in beds and beans have a quick turnaround if you like them.

Oh and herbs. Most of them you'd really have to go out of your way to kill. They need almost no care once they are established. 

Plants and flowers wise lavender looks great and is also almost indestructible. You're late for summer flowers now but geraniums, begonias and marigolds are all easy one to grow from seed and fill beds next spring. 

Yep. Should hopefully flower in the next month or so, they’re already at 5 foot so they are close to collapsing under their own weight

9 hours ago, scratchdj said:

When me and my wife started dating back in 1998 we’d go and visit the arcades and spend hours trying to get as many Pokémon key rings out of the 2p machines as we could afford.

It’s 24 years later and the pier near us reopened last night. This cheers me up no end and probably always will.

My girlfriend can happily spend a few hours on the 2p machines, she loves them, although she'll never go to the arcades in Blackpool, where she's from. 

There's a small arcade on the beach where I'm originally from and on Christmas morning about 4 years ago we went for a walk past the arcades. They were obviously closed but they'd thrown out one of the huge hexagonal 2p pushers and she legit wanted me to roll it the quarter of a mile back to my parents for my dad to fix. I have no idea what she planned to do with it after but she constantly reminds me of my failure to get it for her. 

Moved house in October and the garden had been stripped back to bare soil. Was weird starting a garden from scratch after having an established one for so many years. I kind of caved in and just got as much stuff as I could in to give it some colour so it's a bit messy but hoping by next year I'll have a nice mix of annuals and bedding and some better pots. 

Should be a lot more colour in the next couple of months as the bulbs come out. 

At the min my money is on it happening with last minute card changes, even more UK talent and a tiny paying crowd. 

3 hours ago, Devon Malcolm said:

Even I liked it!

Devon lurking in the comicbook thread

I don't think i'll ever get rid of my DVD collection. I had about 15 years of buying up  and watching as much as I can and good collectors editions are worth keeping, because streaming doesn't seem to have (or want) an answer for what to do with decent bonus material. Almost every great DVD release has a mini documentary that isn't available anywhere else, some are works of brilliance in their own right. I know Disney+ has half heartedly added commentaries and a few deleted scenes / extras on their platform but I love those sets that throw literally everything they can find onto the bonus discs. 

John Carpenter and Kurt Russell getting pissed recording the commentary for The Thing

Arnie doing the literal bare minimum of just turning up for the commentary of Total Recall 

I can watch Lord of the rings on at least 2 streaming services but there's not a whiff of the hundreds of extras anywhere online.

Blade Runner having a 3 1/2 hour documentary on it

Spinal Taps in character commentary 

The original Alien Xenomorph / quadrilogy collection with its behind the scenes and workprint cut of Finchers version of Alien3....Tap them straight into my veins.

Sadly the bubble has burst on creating these extras and we'll probably never get that investment and passion projects again, despite living in a time where it is easier to capture behind the scenes than ever before.

Think that sums it up perfectly. He's not been given a list of points to hammer home and spin. He's clear why they're striking and what his members have done / achieved and isn't getting drawn into arguments. Even if you don't agree with him and the union he's coming across as the perfect person to represent them, although opposition will probably start trying to paint him as arrogant, rather than knowledgeable. 

'No apologies for the armed forces, Nick?' 

Bloody hell you know you've lost an argument when you have to start throwing shit like that at the wall. 

His composure is a thing of beauty, it's like krytonite to MP media training. Theyre already on their second round of soundbites (what about the key workers, Mick!!!) they'll regroup and amend ready for tomorrow's continued media appearances. I'm guessing they'll push more towards how much a ticket will cost the average person and how he's basically robbing the poor. 

11 hours ago, LaGoosh said:

This week's episode straight up stealing exact scenes from Jedi Fallen Order. 

 

Last 2 episodes will just be him having to run back through every previous scene because there's no fast travel. 

I’ve loved stranger things so far. Not been a fan of everyone being split up and the story being fragmented, especially as some have had very little screen time but I’m assuming that’s a mix of shooting during lockdown and the cast having more and more work. The only plus point of it is I’m guessing it’ll lead to

It’s not an exaggeration to say Hader has been a revelation as a director. He’s throwing out everything from emotional monologues to action scenes and nailing it like he’s been doing it for years. I can’t see him staying away from films for too long. 

2 hours ago, Loki said:

.

 

Dr No (1962)

Accommodation?

One thing I've noticed in the first few films is how much screen time is devoted to Bond checking into and using his hotel rooms - there's usually a scene at reception, then he sweeps for bugs and often takes a shower. The writers must have spent a lot of time on the road.  So I'll keep a track of this as we go forward.  A large classic suite here with ensuite bathroom - and a valet to mix him a martini which is a bonus.  No sweep for bugs but Bond fixes the room so he can tell if someone looks through his things which is a nice touch.  Some light flirting with the receptionist.  There's also a classic scene where they try to kill him in his hotel room with a tarantula.  

 

This was mentioned on a podcast I listened to not so long ago (possibly the book cheat episode on From Russia with love) and there's an obvious reason for it.. People never used to go on holiday abroad. The idea of foreign hotels and travel was just as fantastic as the spy stuff to working class Brits at the time. They probably could have filled 30 min with him just going through the complimentary toiletries and describing the smell and it would have had them on the edge of their seats. 

1 hour ago, The King Of Swing said:

 

It's Osprey that I'm dreading.

I'd be happy for them to use him as long as he's against Trent and it ends with Sue getting a new van and Osprey being told to fuck off. 

Can't talk about that till the investigation is finished

Can't talk about that till the investigation is finished

Can't talk about that till the investigation is finished

[Investigation finished]

.....Why you still going on about that. It was ages ago! Let's just get on with things

The mid season finale of Better Call Saul was a gut punch of an episode. Up there with the best of Breaking Bad for leaving you emotionally spent. Not a bad performance in the entire show. Perfect Television. 

On 5/21/2022 at 9:30 AM, Nick James said:

I suspect the snide part of them being suspended, is that WWE will also pause their contracts.

No idea what the end goal is with all of this from WWE's perspective.

 

Sasha will be a member of SAG if she's worked on The Mandolorian.lets see what they thing about extending contracts and independent contractors. Would love something so petty to end up in court. 

Al Franken being named in that list is an odd one as he's one of the few people that accusations had a massive impact on. Being forced to resign when there were other people in US politics accused of far worse who were just left to get on with their lives was a very odd time. Not justifying his actions at all but it was a weird little hypocritical bubble that summed up American politics at the time.

On 5/16/2022 at 12:21 AM, Devon Malcolm said:

Fuck.

 

Holy shit this is amazing. 

The TV version having the hokey boiler and topiary stuff which takes it from bad to laughable but as Chris says it's obviously his most autobiographical so I can understand being annoyed when they stripped out the humanity of a character that is basically him in the movie. 

Metacritic isn't the best for rating the films. The 237 doc opens up mentioning how badly The Shining reviewed when it came out. They marketed it as horror and people went in expecting a slasher film, rather than the slow burn. 

There was that period in the 90s were they seemed to be obsessed with churning out TV versions of his stories, probably due to the success of IT. The Langoliers always stands out for its (even by the time) dog shit effects. But at least we got Max von Sydow as the devil in Needful things. 

21 minutes ago, Ultimate Hitman said:

 

But one thing I’m sure of is that the guy is a creep in real life, I’d be shocked if he hasn’t a load of very questionable skeletons in his closet. Whether we’ll ever hear of them is a different matter but I get serious danger vibes from him. I’d say he’s top tier involved in all sorts of weird & heinous shenanigans.

He was a self confessed arse hole when he was deep into coke and booze but by all accounts sorted his shit out, has a close family and sells rights to his books to students and film makers for $1. He also donates a silly amount to charity every year. Think you might be a bit off the mark there. 

He's popular for a reason. He writes great characters but as mentioned above, he never has any idea where his stories are going when he starts and you can pin point when he stops giving a shit. It's probably why he's been so successful with his short stories. 

Every story he's had adapted has been made better by someone coming in and cutting out the bloat and weird shit but having free reign comes with being successful. He's probably easiest to compare to Tarrentino: cracking idea / set up, fantastic at balancing multiple characters, needs someone to tell him to chop it down by a third. 

There's 2 points I always go back to when people mention Kubricks attention to detail as if everything he did was intentional. He either makes mistakes or he doesn't and the Shining shouldn't be held on a pedestal on its own. 

1 is that his films are full of unintentional mistakes, usually continuity because his shoots got longer and longer and his obsession with performance being exactly how he liked it took priority over everything else. I know it's easy to pick on Eyes Wide Shut and it was later in life and a mess of a shoot but he left the entire crew in a shot in reflection. Full metal jacket swaps locations for its key scene when Pile kills himself between angles. Alex switches hands with the drawer between shots in CO (an almost identical error to The shining coming out of the freezer but that one is just seen as a fuck up rather than a mind fuck) , Crew members in shot, errors in period and props, clapper loaders visible in the transition in Lolita. They aren't the actions of a man who's commitment to detail goes down to obsession and doesn't make mistakes. I get the motif of mazes and 100% believe the carpet and it's patterns are there to represent it but I'm convinced the layout is purely practical. 

2 at no point does the crazy layout play into the film. We never take the same journey and end up in a different location. There's no intentional jumping the line or continuity breaks except for maybe the car nearly hitting them on the way into the hotel (like Shutter Island for example that are obviously intentional but are so jarring that they are highlighted as mistakes, almost the opposite of what people do with Kubrick). Fans will cry subtletly but If they are indeed intentional they are so insignificant that they weren't picked up on for 30 years and are only referenced by fans with hindsight and the Internet. 

Sometimes great films have mistakes.