TwinIon

So here's a question: If we assume that Lockhart launches alongside the Series X, and that the specs as we know them now, are about right. Lockhart pushes ~4TFlops, One X ~6TFlops, and Series X does ~10-12TFlops. Will MS keep selling the One X?

I think that just comes down to people still talking about good shows, but I would still argue that the conversation surrounding those shows is very different given their release strategy. Stranger Things might actually be the best example. If it was a weekly show, there would be tons of conversations dissecting each episode, theorizing, and building anticipation for the next. It's a popular show, so those kinds of conversations happen between seasons, but I think conversation is hampered because all the questions a season will answer are available day one. Again, I prefer the viewing experience of the way Netflix does it, and as long as a show like this finds an audience to Netflix's satisfaction, I'm good. I just think that some of these shows succeed despite Netflix's model, not because of it. I'm also aware that my experience of discussing shows online, seeing threads on twitter or visiting a subreddit, puts me in a minority. So it's quite likely that what I perceive as buzz has no real impact on any metric that Netflix would consider when renewing the show. So it's mostly a battle between how I want to discuss a show and how I want to watch it.

Yep. That certainly seems like the expected outcome.

I think it depends on what they're selling alongside the Series X. If the cheaper choice is to buy a One X, knowing that it won't get the newest games, that's a problem, and I think you can't price the Series X too high. If the cheaper choice is a Lockhart that will get all the new games, you can price the Series X pretty high without pricing consumers out of the next gen. The same can be achieved if you launch without Lockhart but make it known that the One X will keep getting the newest games. Of course, the PS5 price is also going to largely factor into all this. All of which is to say that pricing out the components is almost the least important part of all this. It's almost backwards, because MS will probably be determining a strategy and setting the final specs around that price, not setting the specs and then coming up with a strategy to sell them.

Watched through For All Mankind. It's an odd show that is horribly paced. It's just all over the place and I don't feel like it get's a good handle on what it wants to be. Both between and within episodes it makes odd decisions about how much it wants to be a space adventure and how much it wants to be a serialized riff on The Right Stuff. That's not to say it's bad. I think it's generally pretty good, but I feel like it could have been better if it was longer or made different decisions. Series spoilers Still, I like the show. Assuming the next season comes out after my free year is up, I'll be tempted to pay for a month to catch up. Thanks for that! I completely missed that there was a post credit sequence. I also had never heard of that rocket, so thanks for pointing it out. Very cool.

I saw some of this conversation on Twitter, and I can't help but agree that this series would have benefited from a week to week release schedule. I personally enjoy binging through a show, so I won't necessarily advocate for Netflix to change their model, but I do think that this show could have generated more conversation and buzz if people were waiting for a new episode every week. I think that model works really well for HBO, and it's been keeping baby Yoda memes going for a while. It's kind of hard to imagine any Netflix show getting GoT like conversation when released all at once.

I agree that Dunkirk is his best film, and I think it'll probably always be. It feels to me like the movie that only he could or would make, and I think its economy of character helped curb his worst impulses. That said, I really like his sci-fi nonsense. I think Inception and Interstellar are both great, and if he can take some lessons from Dunkirk and slim down another original sci-fi blockbuster, maybe he'll get better. I also saw the IMAX preview, and I enjoyed it. No sci-fi stuff yet, just very TDK opening like action.

Certainly seems like his contract won't get extended. It shouldn't be.

The Snyder Cut may or may not be entirely finished. Snyder seems to say that the VFX and score are finished, but also says that it's not 100% finished yet.

How is Glass not on the list of hits? $20M budget, $247M global box office. Original property. It wasn't a great movie, but it's box office success should be recognized. Also, Knives Out is a bigger hit than Rocketman, but where Rocketman underperformed compared to (perhaps unreasonably high) expectations, Knives Out overperformed. I also suppose that you don't want just cover the MCU, but Captain Marvel was sure a big hit, even by Disney standards, and I'd say there's a cultural impact there.

Perhaps, but if we're ranking them as disappointments, then you're taking the context into consideration. TDKR, Godfather III, and T3 were all sequels to instant classics, and Revolutions was slightly removed from one. Watch Godfather III by itself and it's a fine film, but watch it after the first two makes it a rather disappointing experience. With that in mind I'd put Alien 3 on this list as well. It's not terrible, but it's a big disappointment after the first two. Maybe it's just recency bias, but Glass should also probably be on this list. I wouldn't consider either of the first two classics, but as a culmination to a trilogy that wasn't obviously a trilogy, it was a real let down.

After reading this article (contains spoilers), I imagine that many of my questions are answered in Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker: The Visual Dictionary. The fact that the shattered lightsaber's mending is only mentioned in that book is pretty annoying.

I think it's an interesting concept, but I didn't enjoy the execution in this movie. I think the important thing emotionally is that they are linked by the force. The idea that the force is balancing itself out through them is fine, but the sequence amounted to a bit of exposition and little else. We already knew they were connected, putting a special name on it didn't raise the importance of that connection for me. Still, what stuck out to me was that this was somehow news to the Emperor. He's been remotely managing the galaxy for decades, his puppet Snoke bridged Rey and Kylo. The strength of their connection shouldn't be a surprise to him, and it definitely wasn't to us. It felt like a pretty weak excuse for Palp to suddenly have a plan B that didn't require Rey to kill him.

I thought the Hyperspace tracking they used in TLJ required an active tracker, it wasn't just a "we can track anyone through hyperspace now" or the Falcon wouldn't have been able to get away at the end. Also, the Falcon does plenty of jumping later in the film where they're obviously not being tracked. While not stated, it felt to me like there was something about skipping that allowed the TIEs to follow, like their hyperspace tunnel was still open or something, but it was all so vague and fast that may or may not be the case. It's never particularly useful to get too into the weeds on "how does this Sci-Fi fantasy ship work," so I guess I just wanted to make sure I didn't miss something that the film actually made clear.

What are the most recent examples of films that have become cult classics? Is it just movies that didn't do well but are now widely held in great esteem?

Two nitpicky questions: 1- Hyperspace skipping. What is it exactly? Is he just hitting lightspeed without all the proper calculations? How are the TIEs able to follow him through each jump? It looked cool, but I couldn't make sense of how this is supposed to be working given what we know about light speed in Star Wars. 2- So the Emperor's plan was to get Rey to kill him and basically take over her body (it was slightly unclear to me if it was like an Avatar thing where he'd be in there a little bit as a past life, or if it would literally be him in control), but either way I'm pretty sure the basic idea was her killing him makes her a Sith. She then kills him and nothing happens. I can come up with a lot of potential reasons she didn't immediately turn, but did anyone feel like the movie was giving us a direct answer? I feel like we're just mean to forget that part of his plan, but it's not clear why it didn't work.

Wife and I had a lot of down time this weekend and burned through the whole thing. It’s not the next big thing, but it’s pretty good, especially once it gets going. We definitely agree with the prevailing sentiment that it takes a few episodes to get going. There are a lot of names, many of them odd and not clearly spoken, and many which will never be important again. The timeline is confusing for the first few episodes, and Geralt isn’t exactly the most charismatic guy from the onset. Still, we stuck with it and ended up enjoying it a lot. It’s a bit campy, a bit odd, but overall it’s a good fantasy tale. It really does feel like chapter 1 of a larger story. I’m glad it got picked up for a second season, and it’s reinvigorated my interest in the games. I never did get through 3 and I’m compelled to give it another try.

It seems from this deal that there won't be a hard border IN Ireland. They're effectively making a border between Northern Ireland and the rest of the UK. Still, it makes me think they could be a first mover here. They're immediately going to feel as though they already have left the UK, but they're still in a position to be dragged down by a Brexiting UK.

So the solution to Ireland is to put a border between Ireland and the rest of the UK? If Brexit goes badly (and it could easily go pretty badly), I wonder how long Northern Ireland still feels like part of the UK.

It's currently predicted to open around $15M. For a nearly $100M film, that's not good. However, The Greatest Showman opened to only $8M and went on to gross $175M. That's clearly what Cats is hoping to emulate, but it sure seems like a stretch. Showman went up 530% in its second weekend without opening in any additional theaters exactly because it was competing with Star Wars. So I'd look to that second weekend to tell the story of its box office.

So now Pelosi is considering not handing over the impeachment to the Senate unless they agree to play fair, and McConnell's response is to consider just not recognizing the House's impeachment at all? It's hard to even predict what crazy decisions SCOTUS is going to have to make by the end of this.

Time travel always makes me nervous, but I still trust in Nolan. May as well book my IMAX ticket now.

We force car companies to hit efficiency numbers. Sure seems like we could force energy companies to reduce emissions.

She should have been canceled with the release of Fantastic Beasts.