TwinIon

I don't think there's anything that special about Bond, from a legacy point of view. I do think you could make the argument that there's something of a legacy to be had by creating a blockbuster that is also well loved by critics and audiences alike. There's a relatively small club of people that made some of the biggest movies of all time that are also revered as great films. People like Lucas, Spielberg, and Cameron. I'd say Nolan is right on up there, if not in that group then trailing right behind. He's done his franchise time, made (at the time) the second biggest movie of all time that also got best picture buzz, and has gone on to make critically and commercially successful films without existing IP.

I've been enjoying the hell out of these reviews. I want to point out that The Guardian review is a riff on a T. S. Eliot poem called The Naming of Cats that is one of the musical numbers in the play. Yes, 2019 was the year that the Skywalker and Infinity sagas came to a close. It was the year of Joker, The Irishman, and Parasite. But perhaps most of all, this year in film may well be defined by Cats. A Jellicle year if there ever was one.

I suppose my larger point is that these rankings are either being gamed or are meaningless. What is a anyone supposed to glean from this list when it specifically says "consumer spend." Are we supposed to think that consumers spent more on Tinder than on Netflix? That they spent more on Pandora than any of the missing music apps? That's certainly what it seems to indicate, but neither is remotely true. You're right, Pandora is #1 in the play store right now. In Q3 they made $315M in ads and $132 from subscribers. Spotify made $1.7B from subscriptions and $189M from Ads. Maybe, despite the title of the list, it includes ad revenue and Pandora's ad revenue gets counted and Spotify's revenues largely don't, or maybe there is some other reason that they show up so high. Both Google and Apple have a section for "top grossing" apps, but we don't really know what metrics they use for those lists or even if they're correct. We do know that none of these companies specifically report this data, so everyone is guessing to some degree. So if we don't know how they guess at the numbers, and the verifiable numbers we do have suggest a different conclusion than the list, I don't think it's worth putting any stock into it.

According to Wikipedia, "the The National Minimum Drinking Age Act is also seen as a congressional sidestep of the tenth amendment." I agree that there doesn't seem to be any real difference between the two. Maybe Congress just thinks that no one will bother challenging the constitutionality of this, or maybe they're hoping for it? Looking through that wiki brought me to Gonzales v. Raich. Reading that decision makes me think that this federal smoking age would probably hold up in court. So maybe that's why they feel like they can do it now?

That chart seems more than a little suspicious, especially since they obviously need to extrapolate (or completely guess) the actual spending. Pandora has just over 6 million paid users. Spotify has 113 million. I really don't see how Pandora is the top grossing music app, much less the 6th highest grossing app overall. I know Spotify has made it difficult or impossible to pay through iOS, but I thought that changed and that you could on Android. Even if you can't pay Spotify a dime through the app store, Apple Music still has 10x as many paying subscribers. YouTube being so high up is another red flag. YouTube Premium and Red before it has been a complete failure. The only number I could find on subscribers was 1.5M from 2016 (Spotify had 30M at that point). I suppose people rent movies on there, but I really doubt that's enough to put it at 5. I'm also 100% sure that Google hides all YouTube revenue so much that we have no real idea how much it makes. Also, while it's hard to say how much of Netflix's income comes from App Store revenue, Netflix makes about 10x the revenue of the whole Match Group. Tinder is ~50% of Match Group's income. I suppose Tinder's income is 100% from app stores and Netflix isn't, that's still a ranking I don't think is correct. Maybe my problem is that I'm looking at total revenue and they're trying to guess at new revenue through app stores. So Spotify just had most of their users sign up years ago and they don't count anymore, or something like that. Still, Disney+ added more paying subs in November than Pandora has ever had in its history. I have no insight into people signing up via app vs on the web or through anything else, but I just don't see how Pandora is so high, and I know there is no way to verify YouTube numbers, so it makes me question the rest.

I know these things can't really be compared directly, but the RT ratings for Star Wars are: 1: 53% 2: 65% 3: 80% Solo: 70% Rogue One: 83% 4: 93% 5: 94% 6: 82% 7: 93% 8: 91% I don't expect a lot from 9, but I'll be surprised if it's worse than the Prequels. I feel like the worst case is it's another Solo (though I personally wouldn't rate Solo quite so high as it's RT score).

It's not much, but it's something. Still, I have a hard time imagining that real problem on this issue is that we don't have enough science. I'm always in favor of more science, but if decades worth of scientific consensus isn't enough to convince the GOP on climate change or vaccines, I don't suspect a pair of studies will move the needle on gun control.

Anyone know what canon sources is he pulling from for this video? Comics? Novels?

It really seems like the screen functionality should just be obvious in the OS, making it largely unnecessary. However, my biggest complaint about it would have been that it makes the whole thing too expensive, but at only $30, that doesn't seem to really be the case. I've never used a controller with buttons on the back, and don't think I really need something like this, but I'm sure there's a market for it. I think it's kinda nifty.

Something I'm kinda curious about. So the Church is very much allowed to funnel all their profits ($1B a year!) into this other company Ensign. That company is still allowed to be a non-profit, as long as they do any kind of non-profit work with it. The scandal here is that the only things they ever did was bail out a couple private, for profit companies. I'm pretty sure they wouldn't have been allowed to do that even if they were doing non-profit work, but since they weren't, it was that much worse. Their stated reason for hoarding $100B is that they wanted those funds to be used in the event of the second coming. My question is, if they didn't use this money to help out these private companies, but they also continued not doing any charitable work at all, would it be legal for them to take all these donations and just accumulate wealth for the second coming tax free? Let's assume that they're not hiding it under their mattresses and that the money is being invested. Is saying "I'm waiting for the apocalypse my religion says is coming" enough to get out of any taxes? On the one hand, it feels like maybe it should be. You're not really hurting anyone, and if that's your belief, so be it. If we've determined religions shouldn't be taxed, then that kind of feels like it's covered. On the other hand, simply wielding that kind of investment fund represents an enormous amount of power. The teamsters pension fund that Jimmy Hoffa helped managed was only ~$2.4B (after inflation). This $100B fund would make it one of the largest in the world. I can certainly see the argument that there's a public good in taxing a fund like that.

Dark Waters - Dark Waters is, for better and worse, so very much a New York Times Magazine article brought to the big screen. It's an important story, dense with information and carefully molded by professional craftsmen, but it's also a bit dull. Based on a real life story, Dark Waters doesn't have the creative opportunities afforded other Lawyer investigatory dramas like Micheal Clayton. Still, despite it's message being far more relevant than something like The Report, it was difficult to connect. I'm far more likely to be slowly poisoned by chemical companies than I am tortured by the CIA, but there's a lack of urgency surrounding the core mystery that, even in the face of gross maleficence, couldn't quite raise the on screen drama. 3/5

He certainly is, but between the mask and the gadgets, there's some Batman in there as well.

Mando is Batman but there is no Bruce Wayne. For the show's purposes, I think that's probably just fine.

I guess it was 9 years ago yesterday that I joined. So much excellently wasted time.

Is there any way this movie will make sense? No, probably not. That won't keep me from seeing it though.

Got through a few more over the weekend. Episode 3 is easily the best of the prequels, but it's still a bad movie. That last lightsaber fight is great though. Solo is not good, but it's not terrible. If it wasn't a Star Wars movie it would be perfectly fine, but every pandering wink and nod still bugs me more than it should. Rogue One was a bit of a surprise. It's really solid. My wife told me half way through "it's nice to be watching a good movie again," and she wasn't wrong. It also might still be the prettiest Star Wars film. The one thing that doesn't really work is CG Tarkin. They do an admirable job, but it's still a good half step or more into the uncanny valley. I might have to revisit this one more often. A New Hope is still the best Star Wars movie. It's a masterclass in world building and adventure filmmaking. It's a wonder from start to finish. Empire is also great, and I love where it diverges from the story you expect it to tell. Rewatching it now made me think that if it had come out today, I can easily imagine it getting a very TLJ response. Return of the Jedi is fine. It's obviously the worst of the OT, but leagues better than the PT. I do have to say that the OT looks great in 4K HDR. They did a mostly wonderful job on the transfer, even when it so clearly shows it's edges. The added CG is just bad, and there are times when the matte backgrounds are distractingly fake. It also seemed to me like there was a pretty high variance in how much they could get out of certain shots, especially in 4. I felt like some shots were so clean they could have been shot yesterday, and then it would cut to another that had obviously aged a bit. It probably helps that most of my viewing of these movies has been on old VHS tapes, but I really appreciated the restoration work done. The production design and model work still holds up. Give em all another honorary Oscar or something. Current rewatch rankings: 4,5,RO,6,Solo,3,1,2

A great finale to a great season of television. The only thing I was worried about was the seventh Cav somehow being capable of killing Manhattan, so I'm glad that they didn't. They found ways to wrap up pretty much everything plot wise that I thought was important, and thematically they concluded it wonderfully. I think that Veidt's story was much more fulfilling than I expected. Somehow that he had a specific plan all along made it much more compelling, and I love the idea that he concocted his own adversary and still wasn't pleased in whatever challenges he brought. Even though Dr. Manhattan was only a real character in a few episodes, his story was compelling and beautifully concluded. I like that they left Abar's fate a bit of a mystery. The only thing that bothered me was that Veidt got knocked on the head. I think thematically it's good he got some comeuppance, but in an episode where you see that he's still capable of catching a bullet, getting knocked out by a dude with a wrench didn't feel very fitting. I would be perfectly happy if we never got any more Watchmen content, seasons of this show or otherwise. This was an amazing addendum to Watchmen, and certainly the best thing on TV this year.

I like the current cast, but I'm continuously surprised they keep making these movies. I feel like the only reason they do is that Paramount just doesn't have any other franchises.

So the Judiciary Committee has released a longer report on Impeachment which specifically accuses Trump of multiple federal crimes including bribery and wire fraud. It's 182 pages pages of new material, plus hundreds of pages of previously gathered or released materials.

Personally, I think the impact of all these generalities has been significantly lessened by the universal adoption of PC architecture. It's not like we need to rely on one great water effect to prove a console is powerful while devs figure out the arcane secrets to unlocking a shocking new and different piece of hardware. Yeah, there will still be novelties pushed to make the console look good (my bet is ray tracing), and yes having a dedicated platform to optimize for does make it seem more powerful than a direct PC analog, but I would guess that the differences there are likely to be smaller than ever.

This has got to be the fastest they've ever done a balance patch that wasn't fixing some unanticipated OTK or something. I certainly appreciate the new, more responsive HS team. Unfortunately, I don't have all the cards for the other decks that are currently competitive with Shaman. I don't have the Hunter Quest (though I'm skeptical that deck will last long), I don't have all the stuff for highlander mage or the new warrior legendary weapon. Since I've gotten to 5 I think I'll just play some battlegrounds until the balance patch hits and the meta settles a little more.

I would expect most first party titles be released across both gens for quite a while. If it can work on a PC, it should work just fine on a One X at the very least. I'd suspect that Indies cross release for a very long time, at least anything not terribly demanding. It's not like you even have to cross compile it to ARM or support a new input device or anything, it's all still very much the same. I don't know if it'll be the same digital SKU, though I would think they would be, but it sure seems like any digital only games should probably work on the older X One consoles. The more I think about it, the more I wonder where that line will eventually be drawn. Eventually most of the audience will have migrated to a new gen console and it just won't be worth the time running all the QC tests and what not, but that's at least a couple years into the generational life cycle, and with the existence of the One X, maybe longer.

These two should be on my "I need to revisit them again" list. Lady Bird, Sicario, and Shadows were all films I was thinking about as well. Upstream Color is one of those that has stayed in my head ever since. I really need to pop the Blu Ray back in. I feel like when I put these lists together directors end up competing with themselves. For myself, I don't know if I'd put The Master in over Phantom Thread, but I'd consider both worthy. Your list did remind me of another one that I missed, Melancholia.