Hot Heart

The Rewrite Another watch with the family and in which I was vaguely interested because I thought this was supposed to be the "good" latter-day Hugh Grant film because he actually plays someone who's a bit of a dick and it has Marisa Tomei but no... it sucks. Looking into it, it feels autobiographical as it's by the guy who wrote Miss Congeniality but has churned out nothing but shit and Hugh Grant vehicles since. And so Hugh Grant is a washed-up Hollywood screenwriter who begrudgingly takes a job teaching screenwriting at some university across the other side of the country, almost immediately sleeping with a young, attractive student upon arrival. He tries to do the minimal possible, gradually falls for the Marisa Tomei character, blah blah. For all its meta screenwriting stuff, its first act is too slow and boring and the character development is extremely on-the-nose in that it literally says outloud their issues being expressed through their writing. And his main success as a teacher is... passing on the details of a kid to his agent because the kid already wrote an amazing script without any need for the class. Early on my sister was loudly protesting at how "unwoke" it is and I was in agreement but figured it's all part of him redeeming himself later but, ultimately, it's just so weak. It doesn't feel like he really learns anything at all and is rewarded for the smallest of things. You'd think the film were written by a man going through a mid-life crisis but you'd be wrong. It was written and directed by a man going through a mid-life crisis. Marisa Tomei, Allison Janney and J.K. Simmons are wasted on this.

Hello, My Name is Doris My grandfather passed away on Friday, so we were keeping my mum company that evening and we needed to find stuff for the family to watch on Netflix. Hence, this. Sally Field is always great and does a very good job here of carrying the character of Doris. It's an unconventional romantic comedy in that she's an old woman who becomes infatuated with a young man at work. It plays it equal parts twee and cringey without going overboard and is entertaining enough. It just never quite escapes the creepy early development on which it hinges, where she creates a fake "Facebook" profile to befriend the man and learn more about him; which probably could've been played a little bit differently and still worked. Also, Doris' brother and his wife are so ham-fistedly written as the "antagonists" that the development that happens there feels uneasy.

7 Wonders is 7! So they released some mini-expansions of 15 cards each. Some cool new Leaders and City options.

Interesting changes on the way. Guess we'll see how it pans out. https://www.bungie.net/en/Explore/Detail/News/46504

Stranger Things S2 kicks off with some great songs. Then it has Ted Nugent... but that's for the asshole character, so understandable.

Yeah, it's a general problem for most of the Marvel shows but I think JJ had some decent twists and turns compared to where it just feels like they're usually spinning their wheels.

Okay, I finished it. It's really good; might possibly be my favourite of the MCU-Netflix shows. LET'S RANK THEM. A Tier Jessica Jones The Punisher Daredevil S1 B Tier (although, it's a substantial drop from A) Daredevil S2 Luke Cage The Defenders F Tier Iron Fist

Now just over the halfway point of The Punisher and... it's really frickin' good. I mean, there can be pacing issues at some points and there's still time for it to go to shit like some of the previous Marvel shows, but what's been done so far has been great. I wasn't sure what to expect, really, so it's all a nice surprise. The main thing is the group of characters around (or besides) the protagonist, which is what the Marvel shows live or die on, really, and the dynamic they have going on between them. I can't say much because I don't want to spoil it but the core relationship (so far) for Frank is actually multi-faceted and throws up some tricky situations even if you can sort of see where it's headed. At first, I was worried most of his character stuff was going to be "constant flashbacks of his family interrupted by murder BUT IT'S HIM WHO IS THE MURDERER" but it actually finds smart ways to grow the character. And it's "smuggling" its themes in, as Scorcese would say. Well, it's not as subtle as calling it that suggests, but it's got stuff to say, for sure. Whether it holds up to scrutiny in the end is yet to be seen. And, yeah, the action has been pretty good if not at least serviceable so far. Haven't got a "corridor fight scene"... yet. The main cast is also really strong. Although, I'm not 100% sure on Barnes. He's good, no doubt, but we'll see. Anyway, Bernthal is brilliant and Jaime Ray Newman is really pretty.

Played a new game, and it's a goodie: Gloomhaven This is something my friend got the second edition of through Kickstarter, and was a pretty hyped game. It's a fully co-op, legacy style dungeon crawler. Sort of like a 100+ hours D&D campaign in a huge box. This means that you'll develop your characters in terms of skills and loot, unlock different quests based on what/how you do things, tear up cards and put stickers on a map board. Overall, the meat of the game is a sort of mixture of Descent, with an action card system a little like the Pathfinder Adventure Card Game mixed with Heroes Wanted. The actual combat side of things is actually really cool because while there's sort of a lot going on rules-wise, it's somewhat simplified and all flows really well. I'm sure the later missions will shake things up a little, but I think the general structure must stay the same to keep the pace. Essentially, you are fighting your way through rooms, killing bad guys as efficiently (i.e. as quickly) as possible. This is because of the action system and general paucity of cards your character has. Each character has a set number of cards they take into a mission. Mine was the lowest total of just 8. Each turn, you will usually choose two of these to play (resting is another option), using the top action of one and the bottom action of another while the "leading card" is used for its initiative value (and you don't have to decide which combo of top & bottom until your turn). This usually creates a move + attack combo but there are all sorts of special things going on within that, obviously. You continue doing this, discarding these cards as you go before you either take a short rest at the end of a round or a long rest during the round; which means you shuffle up the discards and randomly "lose" one for the rest of the fight (losing 1HP to mulligan once if you wish). The long rest also helps reset exhausted items and regain 2HP but puts you dead last in initiative order. What all this means is that you only have a limited number of turns to clear a scenario before you are out of cards and become "exhausted", which means you have to sit out the rest of the fight (rather than permadeath, this also happens if you lose all HP). Within that mix of actions there are really powerful options that go straight into the lost pile rather than your discards, really shortening your "lifespan". As a Spellweaver - essentially, a glass cannon wizard - I had numerous cards that did this if I chose to use those effects. SPOILER: I DID. A LOT. "Brightest flame burns the shortest" right? However, the Spellweaver has a pretty cool ability on one card that is to regain all lost cards. Of course, this being the first game, I'm not sure I really nailed that element because, while I'd burned through my big cards to decent effect, I used it before having lost any cards through a standard rest action. HOWEVER, somehow, I just about made it to the end of the scenario while pulling off a few awesome multi-kills and sparing two teammates from death with some handy heals along the way. And that's something I really loved within the structure. I mean, I hated that feeling of being rushed when playing Mice & Mystics but the way it works in Gloomhaven really maintains a great deal of tension and escalates beautifully. While I had a big start, slow middle and big finish, everyone else was pulling out the big guns towards the end and doing really cool stuff. The enemies themselves are controlled through a really cool AI system that has the basic ruleset which is then modified by their own action cards round-to-round, which usually saw them swarming a single lead hero but also do stuff like get some extra defence and counter-attacks. Note: we played with them 1 level more difficult simply because we were playing with 5 instead of 4 and it worked just fine. Areas got a little crowded but they would have been with 4, really... Overall, it's really enjoyable and I haven't even touched on the personal quest stuff (you can retire your characters and begin new ones) or the little explorer goals that can sort of run contrary to the party's needs (e.g. mine was to open a door... which would usually mean I was the glass cannon charging into the lead) or even the cool little stuff on action cards like side effects such as charging the battlefield with certain elements which can then boost other actions or gaining exp just for performing certain actions (this is partly why I was burning my big cards early on). It all means that it's a sort of co-operative puzzle meets dungeon crawler but the personal and team elements mix together so there's no way you can get bogged down in team-talk or suffer from an alpha player. And there's no dice! The closest thing is an attack modifier deck which sort of simulates a D20, with simple +/-1s and 2s, 0s, a miss and a x2, along with an implementation of 5e's advantage/disadvantage system. Great stuff.

You probably know why it's such a mess, but just in case people aren't aware: Snyder left production partway through due to family tragedy, Whedon stepped in, there were a bunch of re-shoots and then, after all that, the film got an hour lopped out of it. I mean, that's not to say it wasn't headed towards being a total mess anyway given what I've heard about BvS, but it probably makes the bajillion plotholes and disconnected scenes thing more understandable.

It's fairly cheap and sounds p cool and looks pretty. It's essentially a take on the Carcassonne genre of "tile-laying". We have Kodama already, which involves using cards to build lovely trees but this should be less swingy in the scores. In Kodama, there are score-multiplier cards you play at the end of each of the three rounds, which vary wildly in how and for what factors they score. They do require some "medium to long-term" planning but a lot can depend on what you're dealt. For example, one player might get a couple that max out at 12 points (usually involving one of each symbol) while another player could get a couple of cards that can easily score 20+ points with minimal or even less diverse planning. Anyway, I think it should be a nice relaxing but still puzzley game of the type the group will enjoy.

Considering I just finished S1 and really got into it, this is some alright news. http://deadline.com/2017/11/deadwood-hbo-movie-david-milch-ian-mcshane-casey-bloys-1202206774/ Definitely got that NYPD Blue vibe off it, just in terms of the great group of characters and they way they interact along with the general grittiness and those monologues (usually to fill episode time, funnily enough). Funny that Andy Sipowicz and Al Swearengen share the same initials, considering the latter was a real person, too. Also, I finally got around to watching Stranger Things S1. At first, while I liked the general premise, I was a bit bored by the really cliche things, particularly the teen romance bit but that had a nice development with Steve. And it's funny looking at it, having seen the stuff people picked out, and realising how relatively minor it was. I suppose it was more a marketing-led thing and just amplified via Netflix Twitter exposure. Funnily enough, the '80s homages and references didn't really bother me that much once it got going, even when it was really heavy-handed. Weirdly, my sisters nor cousin got that dressing El up to get into the school (and the general riding on Mike's bike) were ET homages. The child actors were all pretty good, surprisingly; Eleven, especially so. Plus, I really like Hop and was touched by his own little personal tragedy.

Put in a relatively low bid for a brand new, sealed copy of this... and I actually won. I can only guess that the other bidder was otherwise occupied? ANYWAY, yeah, this. It's set in Fantasy Flight's "Android" universe (very similar to Blade Runner) which began with Android and includes such games as Netrunner and Infiltration. This time it's a sort of semi co-op negotiation game with shades of Battlestar Galactica, Dead of Winter and Archipelago. The basic summary is in the image above but, essentially, players take on the roles of capitalist pigs... umm, mega corporations who each have a hidden victory condition dealt from a deck, which is either beating another rival's total capital value (or getting above 25 if you draw your own) or they are the "traitor" role, which is a Federalist mole who wants to sow unrest and end the game that way as long as they're above 25 capital. Players submit and vote on different agendas for managing the city's production which can see unrest from workers, protesters, mafioso and general outages while trying to meet that round's crisis requirement. During this process there are also assets up for grabs which trigger off other effects but are generally QUITE GOOD so people can make all sorts of deals to get their way, whether it's bribes, threats or promises. On top of that there are Investments which encourage you to worsen the board state in some way in order to make extra money (spread disease or riots, etc.), which makes the traitor's work a little easier but just generally creates tension between the competing agendas. It's all cynically dystopian. I'm not sure if my group are 100% onboard with negotiation games but Sheriff of Nottingham fares okay and I think having a stronger mechanical structure behind a "semi co-op" helps it.

Decided to try some Warframe after hearing it's gotten a lot better. I remember playing it years ago on PC but not really having a clue what was going on. There seems to be a proper introduction with much more user-friendly systems now. I'm still just playing solo and clearing the first (possibly only?) "storyline" stuff to set up the game but I'm really enjoying it. I imagine you can do some super amazing stuff on PC with mouse-aiming but I seem to be doing okay with a bow on PS4.

The Death of Stalin It's a hard film to pitch by describing it as a "period black comedy/drama" unless you know Armando Ianucci's work (The Thick of It and Veep being the two most relevant examples). Based on real events following the aforementioned death, albeit on a far more condensed timeline and with a lot of liberties, it's absurd but also quite dark. It has a brilliant cast with the likes of Steve Buscemi, Jeffrey Tambor and Michael Palin while, thankfully, no effort has been made to do mock Russian accents or even consistent ones. So you've got Buscemi as Nikita Khrushchev with his New York accent, Tambor with his usual timbre and then Jason Isaacs... who shows up not with his real accent but a brilliant Yorkshire one. In fact, Isaacs and Rupert Friend (him off Homeland and that last Hitman film, yeah) while playing only brief roles are brilliant, with Friend playing boozy Vasily Stalin to great effect. Palin has a wonderful scene during a committee meeting that's very Monty Pythonesque as well and makes me miss seeing him in more comedies. Everyone is great, really, even Paul Whitehouse. Thor: Ragnorak Saw this one really late with almost no one else in the theatre, which actually meant it didn't seem as funny as it really was. I'm thinking, for some jokes, the timing felt off, perhaps, but there are lots of great gags in there. I particularly enjoyed Thor's story about Loki tricking him by posing as a snake. It's a visual treat and actually has a decent and moving story even if it rushes over some bits (the Banner stuff, for me). It plays well on the character history, which is what really helped Civil War as well. As for new characters, Goldblum was great and Blanchett hammed it up nicely, while Valkyrie is a nice addition.

Actually got through the first of the Dresden Files books after putting it off for so long. I liked it, overall. The various characters were pretty interesting but I wasn't too enamoured with Dresden himself... There's some great tension-building and almost comical setups towards the end but there's one early on that irked me, where he's "persuaded" to make a love potion he doesn't actually want to make, with no other justification other than the chaos it was bound to cause later on. Not sure if I'll continue with the series but I can only assume the writing does improve and it delves deeper into the lore of the magical side of things.

Yep, feels very much like House of Wolves era Destiny for me, which I liked. You arrange an evening or two with your friends to do a couple of activities (or run through Prison of Elders and Nightfall 3 times, like we did then) and then you can just do whatever for the rest of the week.

What? No way.

Goodfellas Never actually watched this before. It's pretty good and has some fine performances. I think it feels somewhat familiar and rote because of everything gangster-related that has gone since (in a Seinfeld Isn't Funny trope way). Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon Watched this years and years ago and remember not liking it as much as I thought I would (I just thought the middle flashback bit was kinda long and boring with Ziyi Zhang a terrible overactor), but now I'm older and (slightly) wiser, I enjoyed it a lot more.