TwinIon

Yeah, I could hardly devise a worse way to watch something I'd otherwise really want to see. I also can't imagine paying a monthly fee for something that is basically mobile only. I pretty much watch zero video on my phone longer than 30 seconds. There must be some kind of generational gap here that I fall into, but I don't think my parents want to watch this stuff on their phones either. Based mostly on the names involved, I feel like they're making a lot of content aimed at people over 30, but the audience for content of this length delivered in this way is primarily appealing to much younger people. Aka, people who really won't shell out for a subscription service with ads.

Amazing that the Academy misspelled "Uncut Gems" as "Joker" eleven times. Ford v Ferrari is exactly the kind of movie that I'd expect to get nominated for Best Picture, if it was a better movie. It was perfectly adequate, but certainly not BP worthy. So many movies I'd rather see in that spot. Jennifer Lopez really should have been in there for Hustlers, and both actors from The Lighthouse should have been nominated. The Best Supporting Actor category is filled with powerhouse names, but I feel like Pesci is the stand out performance. I love that Knives Out at least got a Screenplay nom. Margot Robbie got nominated for the wrong movie, even if she was the best part of Bombshell. Oddly enough, I think Production Design is a interesting category this year. All the noms are deserving, but 1917, Once Upon a Time, and Parasite are all very deserving. I'd have liked to see Apollo 11 in Docs. After all the love for Bohemian Rhapsody, it's crazy that Rocketman didn't get any love. I'd argue it's a better movie in every way. I'm impressed that Jojo Rabbit has gotten so many awards nods this year. Not that it's entirely undeserving, but where was this love for Waititi pre Ragnarok? Hunt for the Wilderpeople had better child acting, a better supporting performance, and was a better overall movie. I guess there's something about the Academy and Nazis. I wonder if this is the year for Tarantino. Once Upon a Time is probably the most awards friendly movie he's made, even if it's not his best. I didn't realize until I just looked it up that it's the first QT movie nominated for Picture, which really makes me think he's got a good shot. I'll be rooting for Parasite, but I'd be happy enough with Once Upon a Time winning a bunch. I feel like there are certain people we should just give Oscars every year, just to spice things up. Streep (she wasn't nominated this year, but could have been), Deakins, John Williams. It might be a bit early, but we might need to put Saoirse Ronan on there too.

It looks like Noah Hawley's movie won't involve the current Kelvin cast. While I like the cast, I also wouldn't mind seeing a Trek film that wasn't about the Enterprise. Like Star Wars, it might be time to move past the same stories we've been seeing since the 60s.

Quibi has been making waves for a while now, but while they've raised $1 billion, they've been largely secretive about the final product. While we still don't know a lot, we finally got our first look at the Quibi service, and a few details about how this streaming service is trying to stand out. Quibi is being headed up by former Disney Studios boss and founder of Dreamworks Jeffrey Katzenberg, and former CEO of HP and eBay Meg Whitman. The idea is to build a streaming service focused on short (10 minutes or less) videos aimed at mobile consumption. They call these videos "quick bites," which is where the name Quibi comes from. Launching on April 6th of this year, it'll cost $5 a month with ads, or $8 a month without ads. By focusing entirely on mobile, Quibi insists that it's not competing against Netflix and Disney and HBO, but things like Tic Tock or Instagram. They're pushing the narrative that there are two things that will help them stand out. One is quality. They've been putting that billion dollars to work hiring big name stars and directors. Steven Spielberg, Jennifer Lopez, Zac Efron, Idris Elba, Kristen Bell, Chrissy Teigen, Kendall Jenner, Tyra Banks, Steph Curry, 50 Cent, and Avengers: Endgame directors Anthony and Joe Russo all have Quibi projects in the works. Katzenberg says their competition might spend $100 a minute on content. Quibi will be spending $100,000 a minute, putting their productions on par with early Game of Thrones episodes. They're also putting out a whole lot of content. They intend to have more than 175 original shows totaling more than 8,500 quick bites in the first year. The second differentiator is a signature technology they call "Turnstyle." The idea is that Quibi doesn't just stream one video to your phone, but two simultaneous streams: one in landscape and one in portrait. You can rotate your phone any time to seamlessly switch between the two. It won't just be two differently formatted versions of the same video either, Quibi creators will ship two instances of the video that have been framed entirely differently. In one example the landscape view is shot like a typical show, but the landscape view shows you the screen of the protagonist. Regardless of who they get to make this stuff, in the end you're still asking for people to spend money on a service to watch short videos on their phones. As an elder millennial, maybe I'm just too old for that to appeal to me. If I have 10 minutes to watch something, it hardly takes any time at all to bring it up on a TV. Between apps on my streaming box, chromecast, and airplay, if Spielberg directed something, I'm probably just going to watch it on my television, not my phone. If I'm out and about, wasting time on my phone, odds are I don't want to pull out some headphones and try and take something in, I'll probably just scroll through twitter or reddit. If I click a link and a video comes up and is 10 minutes long, I'm probably just going to close it and move on. Turnstyle is an interesting tech, and I can imagine some nifty ways to use it, but it also seems like something I won't actually want to use. With shifts in distribution platforms, we've often been promised new ways to watch things. With DVDs, Blu Rays, and then with streaming we were told all the ways that they would change the viewing experience: multiple angles, picture in picture, interactivity, live commentary; gimmicks all of them. Turns out that if you have something you want to watch, especially something really well crafted, it's usually the best experience to just sit there and watch it, not constantly screwing around to see what you might be missing from some other angle. Still, a lot of money is being thrown at this, and a lot of very capable people are making things for it. Quibi is planning on raising another billion dollars to make more content. Don't you want to watch a Spielberg movie, split into a dozen 7-10 minute chunks, with a week between each one, that you can only watch at night. Well, don't you?

Looks potentially great, or at least like a ton of fun.

I don't think that's been proven out at all. If we set aside the morality of the assassination itself, the ultimate question for the US becomes "are we safer in the world having taken this action." Based on the initial blowback, I'd argue that to not be the case at all. I don't think we've seen the end of the repercussions from this act, but from what we've seen so far, it might push us out of Iraq, or at the very least severely injure our relationship with the government there. It seems to have made Iran entirely abandon the nuclear deal, and destroyed any possibility for further diplomacy under this administration (and possibly future ones). We don't yet know if the missle attack was the full extent of direct Iranian action against US forces or if it was merely an opening salvo. At the absolute least I think it's far too early to say that this has decreased proxy attacks against the US. Just because we haven't had an immediate attack doesn't indicate a real sense of ongoing security.

This is what I've suspected and it'll be interesting to see how it works out. I think it's largely up to Halo Infinite to lead the way. How do you make a title that both sells your expensive new console but also plays well on 7 year old hardware? You really don't want to just have nicer textures and a few more polygons, but if you build to a gameplay scale that requires the new CPU or SSD, it may not scale down well. If Microsoft can provide the blueprint of taking advantage of the Series X power while also building a game playable on a launch Xbox One, they could have a big advantage moving into this next generation, seamlessly transitioning players in a way consoles haven't really done before. However, if they hold back their new games and Sony doesn't, it could hamper the output of all these new Microsoft studio games. Personally, I'm not too worried, and I probably make it out as a bigger challenge than it is. PC games have been scaling across generations of hardware for forever. Most big games are cross platform anyways, and it's hard to think of too many examples of games that just straight up wouldn't work without the newest tech.

That's what doing everything the hard way and shooting it all on 66mm/IMAX film will do. It's also the kind of trust you get after having Nolan's track record and fan base.

Clearly they know right from wrong, so the logical conclusion is that it's exactly the kind of company we should let regulate themselves. Of course the reality is that Boeing is too big to fail. They're too far integrated into the US government, and they have no real competition in the states. They'll get some slap on the wrist, maybe a few more execs will get pushed out with golden parachutes, and things will continue on as usual.

I've read that they might make more Witcher games, but without Geralt. I haven't played the end of the games, but assuming that they don't want to go forward in the timeline without him, maybe it does make sense to take advantage of his newfound popularity by remastering the older games.

I don't think anything was said that would indicate too much, but I think that was the industry expectation. I don't really play Forza, but I was under the impression it kind of already is there. Halo going the Destiny route makes sense. Gears also feels like it could support that model.

No chance they keep that shape. It'll be a box, and that will be fine.

So this is about the Benioff and Weiss series? Sure seems suspect. If it is true, I'm fine with the setting. There is such a wide range of what could be done that the setting alone is far from enough to have any expectation of if it would be any good or not.

Do they know what a catch is? or what constitutes pass interference? The point after rules are fun, but it also feels like they'll end up determining a lot of games.

Finished going through The Imagineering Story and it was interesting but it also pulled some real punches. I kind of wanted them to go more in depth about the founding of Disney World and Epcot, but that wasn't really within the scope of the story they were telling, so I understand. It was pretty up front about the failures of some of the other Disney parks, but when it came to recent developments, they really didn't go into the competition at all. Still, purely as a "isn't some of this stuff cool" show, it was fun enough.

It's mostly bone stock Tegra that they grabbed off of nVidia's back shelf because they desperately needed to get the console out the door. Still, it's a chip that was always designed to be a mobile gaming platform. It's biggest sin is that it's just old, but it at least does well enough on thermals and battery life. This alienware thing, like the many that have come before it, would almost certainly just be running some random intel laptop processor.

I suppose some people do want portable gaming, but there's nothing very interesting to me about this. There's something off putting about single purpose PCs in general to me. It's like a switch, but with the overhead of windows and without any custom chips to take advantage of the form factor.

I was very wrong about how popular the Switch would become, but I do stand by my initial criticism that Nintendo should have waited and put in a better chip. 6 months and they could have had a much more powerful console, but now they're going to be stuck supporting the underpowered first gen for a long time. I just don't expect much from any update. There is a lot they could do, but they clearly don't need to push it much, so I don't believe they will.

That was a good weekend for football. Two games in OT. Patriots lose to the Titans. Saints become the first 13-3 team to lose in the Wildcard round, getting beat by Kirk Cousins. That said, Seattle seems like the only mildly dangerous team to play last weekend. I have no expectation that the other winners have much of a shot in the next round.

I think it's more notable for Disney+ to lose things than for Netflix or HBO. I realize licencing deals are odd and they're going to have a bunch of them even for the foreseeable future, but the implicit promise of Disney+ is that it's everything Disney in one place. You really don't want to muddy that issue with movies coming and going. I do hate it when things leave a streaming service without warning. I'm watching through Battlestar Galactica again, and I was watching it on Amazon Prime, but it left Prime when I was half way through the first season. Funny enough, I have it on Blu Ray, but it was so much easier to watch it streaming.

It's always a bit odd when a movie like this can win a bunch of awards before most people have a chance to see it. You also have to consider that the voting body probably watched it at home on a DVD screener. I've got my Dolby Cinema tickets booked for Friday.

With the release of the Witcher on Netflix, a $15 price on Steam, a Switch release, and the game making its way to Xbox Game Pass, the Witcher 3 is more popular now than ever. Watching the show and seeing the game pop up on so many "best of the decade" lists has me giving it another shot for the first time since release. I'm playing through Gamepass on a One X, and in 4K mode it holds up pretty well for a 5 year old game. There are some rough edges here and there, but nothing too hard to look past. Some sections remain downright impressive. I never actually got through the game last time, so this go around I'm trying to streamline my approach so I don't get too bogged down and give up again. The first time I played through I did most of the side quests, played Gwent with everyone I could, and generally progressed incredibly slowly. At some point I took a break from the game and the sheer amount of stuff there made it feel impossible to come back to. Even with a fresh start the scale of the game remains a bit daunting. I'm probably a good 8 hours or so into the game at this point, and I still get info pop ups on how to disassemble this or enchant that or navigate through this interface screen. It's crazy. I'm sure that the people that want to put 300 hours into a game appreciate the depth of everything, but for me it's all a bit too much. I'm ignoring most of it, but as inventories start to pile up and given how stingy the game is with skill points and gear, every gamer instinct I have is to min/max the hell of it all, but I also just don't really care. I just wish some of it was more streamlined. Where's my "sell all junk" button, and why do I have to go to a specific type of merchant and pay to disassemble gear? Why are some blacksmiths capable of things like repairs and others aren't? And why is the UI straight out of the year 2000? I could go on, but it's the cumulative toll of all this stuff that bogged me down on my first playthrough. That said, there are some conveniences that I'm really happy they included. Being able to call your horse whenever and have him right there is great. Why games like RDR2 or BOTW felt they needed to make transportation more difficult is beyond me. There are plenty of fast travel points, even to ghost towns, and you don't have to activate them, just get close enough. The controls are solid, and even though it's far from perfect, having a horse that follows roads is great (I just wish Roach wouldn't get stuck on small fences all the time). The storytelling in the game really has been appropriately lauded. There's a good reason it's been such a touchstone for these last 5 years, and I'm shocked how much of it I recall. There's no way in hell I remember anything from MGS5, a game which I enjoyed the hell out of and actually did complete that year. It's not nearly as pretty as RDR2, but the world feels like there's so much more to it. There's both a history and an inertia to this world, and you can see it both all over the map. Geralt is a fun protagonist to play and I have to admit that having watched the show makes me care a bit more for the other characters. I played a bit of Witcher 2, but don't remember much of it. I've certainly got enough to be playing, but I'm enjoying myself enough that I might actually make it through this time. Anyways, who else is revisiting The Witcher 3 or has some tips for those of us playing through for the first time?

I enjoyed the season, but I think it might be the worst one we've gotten so far. Everything felt rather disconnected this season. The show has always been about weaving disparate threads together, but so much of this season felt distant and small. The alien planet stuff was centered on only a very small number of people, and held the Rosinante and her crew hostage. The politics of Earth and Bobby's plight on Mars both felt like small potatoes. The Belter plot was probably the best part. Still, being the worst of a good show isn't a terrible mark. I'm mostly just glad that Amazon picked them up because it means that we get at least one more season.

I think the one that surprises me the most is The Irishman. I feel like it's one of those things that everyone would say they intend to watch, but never get around to. At least it's that way with a lot of people I know.

Bombshell - 3/5 - It plays like an Adam McKay explainer movie about sexual harassment, but it's obsessed with recreating Fox News. The makeup folks did a lot of work, but I don't think it makes the film much better, and it definitely doesn't help clarify the film's message. It wants to call out Fox as being a cult and Ailes as being a monster while also having them stand in for every workplace and predator, and it's just not deft enough to pull any of that off. In a film full of laborious facsimiles, Margot Robbie and Kate McKinnon stand out as the most human characters, despite being completely fictional. I wouldn't be surprised to see this movie get a lot of awards talk because it certainly has a lot of acting and a lot of makeup and a lot of directing, but it's not all put to any good use. Marriage Story - 5/5 - Where Bombshell felt like it was a ton of acting to no great reward, Marriage Story is almost it's opposite. Quiet and lovely, Marriage Story is superbly written and acted, and simply the most human story of the year. Adam Driver is stereotypically stellar, and Scarlett Johansson turns in her best performance yet. It's not the loudest or even the most emotional film of the year, but it's perfectly executed simplicity. The Two Popes - 4/5 - A textbook example of not letting the truth get in the way of a good story, Two Popes is (as far as I can tell) entirely fictional, but still quite touching. Go in with the understanding that this is how you'd like the world to be and not a vehicle to learn about how it is, and you'll find two lovely characters brought to life by two great actors, beautifully in some of the most iconic places in the world. It's the Once Upon a Time in Hollywood of the Catholic church, and another example of how fiction can be a powerful lens. Mike Birbiglia: The New One - 5/5 - I think Birbiglia's Sleepwalk with Me might be my favorite stand up special of all time, and while this one isn't quite as good, it's another great example of setups and payoffs and the power of good storytelling in comedy. Little Women - 4/5 - A charming adaptation that was impeccable cast and directed with an obvious warmth and care.