Multiple decades on this earth, decent schooling, undergraduate degree in history, and yet today is the day I discover why the cotton gin is called that. Wild. Thank you for sharing.
It strikes me as a quintessential post-9/11 movie, just like Independence Day's rah-rah, feel-good American exceptionalism feels intrinsically tied to the mid to late 90s. Dated, sure, but dated to the period of its release. However, I don't know if I've seen it since release, so perhaps I'm misremembering aspects.
Picked up the 4K HDR release as a "treat yourself" Christmas gift.
In my sea of geeky qualities, chief among them is the fact I let out an audible "Oh, wow..." after the opening cut to the LA skyline. Stunning is the only adjective I can think of to describe the visual feast the movie lays out, and this new transfer captures aspects of the sets, costuming, and overall texture which I've never noticed before. In fact, the degree of clarity is such that it belies the constructed nature of the world at times. You can see micro-inconsistencies in scale which reveal buildings to be miniatures, and the seams between said miniature cityscapes and matte paintings are easily detectable. Not that any of that matters. By the time the Tyrell Corporation headquarters is revealed, I had become fully immersed in the cyberpunk future of 2019.
However.
While this is undoubtedly the best the movie has ever looked, I'm also beginning to understand what Harrison Ford meant when he said (of the director's cut version in 2000) "They haven't put anything in, so it's still an exercise in design." Previously, it was easy to chalk that up to Harrison Ford being a grump, but, on this viewing, it became clear how little energy the film spends on developing Rachel's character, which, in turn, makes Deckard's whole arc fall flat. Granted, ambiguity is a big theme of the movie, so we were never going to get these characters to sit down and have a forthright conversation with one another about their wants and needs. I can sort of sketch in some details about why Rachel might latch onto Deckard, but it feels more like idle speculation than textual interpretation, and I have even less to go off of for Deckard's interest in Rachel. Not to mention the slap-slap/kiss-kiss dynamic they have early on. I get that Scott is playing with film noir tropes and what not, but some things should stay in the 1940s.
So, as far as it goes as an "exercise in design", its 5/5, top tier, awe-inspiring stuff. As a narrative feature, well, it's got flaws, but they're well-worth pushing past to enjoy everything else.
Final tidbit: Rutger Hauer is just amazing here. Some of the things he is asked to say are so navel-gazey and maudlin, but he manages to pull it off (with assistance from the movie's elegiac tone, which helps the pretension go down).
Agreed. I had a little bit of fun with it, just cause I'll always find the premise of "a movie about idiots making movies" to be fun, but I don't feel like they made good on it. Not that a comedy lega-sequel needs to be a serious metatextual analysis, but I hoped more of the humor would derive from low budget movie making. The whole thing was like a lukewarm TV dinner. I'm not above it...but I'm also not enthused about any portion of it other than the two tablespoons of overly sweet apple crumble for dessert (this would be the cameo at the end, which was pandering and ridiculous, but also kinda funny).
Also, "Buffalo Sober" got a real good laugh out of me.
While I do think there's are some sly bits of movie magic to be gained from the early Bonds, you're bang on the money that it's hard to view them with modern eyes as the balls to the wall action movies they were intended to be.
Still, as every expensive travelogues of fancy locales frozen in amber, they're pretty neat. The slow editing pace helps with that. I'm thinking of one of the Istanbul scenes in From Russia with Love in particular. If I remember right, the camera is plunked down on a tripod, and, in an unbroken take, we see Bond and Bond Girl enter a hotel, walk across the lobby, check in at the front desk, and then walk to the elevators. For better or for worse, this scene would be chopped to bits in a modern movie. But, in 1963, you have all the time in the world to look around at the architecture and costumes and extra business going on in the periphery. Admittedly, I'm a history geek, so I understand that this may sound like, "oh you're bored by watching paint dry? Have you tried watching grass grow?", but it works for me!
Yes, modern movies do occasionally employ oners, but they are usually employed for specific stylistic or narrative reasons. I've not seen 1917, but I have seen Children of Men, which I believe has similar rationale behind the choice, i.e. the characters are in intense, overwhelming, violent and chaotic situations, and the technique is to allow the audience to experience the environment in a way which approximates how the characters are perceiving it. Even if you don't buy my back-of-napkin film theory, you can surely agree that memorable oners from modern movies typically keep the audience's interest by having lots of stuff happen in-frame, managing energy through blocking rather than editing.
Notably, modern oners aren't typically done by rooting the camera in place, and having a mundane scene play out with minimal movement, intrigue, or information being communicated. It's not unheard of, see Zemeckis' Here, or It Follows, but in both cases that decision is informed by the movies' premises. In the case of the latter, it actually wrings tension out of the mundane by using dramatic irony to show things to the audience that the characters are unaware of, and the long takes let you marinate in dread.
However, this is not the case in From Russia with Love. In the scene I mentioned, I don't recall any serious exposition being delivered, or anything of note being shown off by the decision to not cut. Instead you're just watching Bond check into a hotel from the middle of the lobby. Rather it was just the style of the time to let scenes play, regardless of whether or not it was serving the story. In a modern movie, you would accomplish the same thing with an establishing shot of an Aston Martin pulling up to swanky hotel, a cut to Bond and Girl at the counter for perhaps a bit of witty repartee, and then a cut to them in the room. If there's no narrative or stylistic reason for the audience to see the logistics of how characters get from here to there, it's excised.
Like I said, I like em, but it's because these choices make it feel like I'm watching somebody's grandparents' Uber expensive home movie from a vacation they took in the 60s.
Brad Arnold, the founder and lead singer of the 3 Doors Down has died following "his courageous battle with cancer," the rock band announced Saturday on social media. ...
You would take this frozen juice concentrate, mix this with copious amounts of whiskey, and then set it in the freezer. Because of the high alcohol content, it would not freeze like regular liquid. This was in anticipation of a family get-together around the 4th of July. Without judicious monitoring, the adult men would drink all of the punch before it was ready to be served.
Idk man, could be I'm just projecting on you conversations I've had with myself, but fondly remembering the sense of discovery you had with the Infinity Engine games while being sour on BG3 because it was "spoiled" for you seems like it has a lot more to do with your sense of nostalgia than any rational critique. Don't get me wrong, I'm the sorta person who will break out my soapbox to yell about Morrowind's virtues vs Oblivion or Skyrim, and I've also attempted to cajole several friends into giving BG1 a shot in the lead up to and wake of BG3's release, so I'm sympathetic to your broader point. I just think, unless you've been out here reading reviews, watching Let's Plays, opening discussion threads, and sucking down all in-house marketing Larian did, you vastly overestimate how much of the game is spoiled for you. And, frankly, if you've been doing all of those things, then the real culprit is how you spend your time online, not being online in and of itself.
Besides, the game is massive. Even watching multiple Let's Plays of Act 1 would still leave room for discovery, simply because there are so many paths to pursue, many of them mutually exclusive. Hell, my big critique of the game is that I find the plethora of choices to be overwhelming, as I'm the sort that likes to consume all content in a single playthrough, and that's literally impossible.
In North America, we have McCain hashbrowns that are tiny cubed potatoes you find in the freezer aisle. In Australia, hashbrowns are hashbrowns patties, and we don't have the cubes. I haven't been able to find them anywhere. ...
Hashbrowns (cubes) with fried onions and capsicum.
all fried potatoes have a place in my heart (lodged into the arterial walls, secured with cholesterol glue), but I'll always insist that hashbrowns are shredded potatoes, not cubed. don't get me wrong, I'd happily house this entire bowl and ask you for seconds, but these are what I usually picture.
did you hand cut the potatoes? they're very neatly done. I'm useless at consistency when it comes to anything smaller than 1 cm dice.
I hear you. I'm blessed with more choices for potato ingestion than I need or deserve in the supermarket aisle. a benefit of living in middle-America, I suppose. I've heard that you can approximate them by squeezing as much moisture as possible out of grated potato using a cheesecloth or tea towel, and then freezing the shreds before frying them off in a pan, but that degree of foresight and prep work doesn't factor into most of my breakfasts lol.
I've always liked to cook, but I've never really delved into baking. It always seemed so fussy. However, as they say, the first step in being kinda good at something is being really bad at it, so I decided I should try anyway. All said, pretty pleased with the result, especially the evidence of laminated layers.
Add flour, sugar, baking powder and salt to bowl. Take your very cold butter, and grate it into the dry ingredients using a box grater. Quickly work the butter into the flour mix with a fork or your hands. Add a portion of the milk, and mix until a shaggy dough forms, adding more milk as necessary (I did not use the full allotment). Turn out onto a work surface dusted with flour. Knead with your hands until you have a solid mass which does not stick to your work surface. Roll it into a rough ball/lump, then flatten it out into a rough rectangle approximately 1 inch thick. Fold one half of the rectangle on top of the other half, and then knead it back out to a 1 thick rectangle. Turn the dough 90 degrees, and repeat a couple times. I think I maybe did 5 reps. Once you have your final rectangle, cut out your biscuit rounds if you have the tool to do so. I did not, so I just cut the rectangle into thirds and then half using a chef's knife. Lubed a baking pan with cooking spray, hucked the bits of dough in, and set into a 425 degree F (~220 C) oven. Baked until the dough had puffed up at least twice it's initial size, and the surface was dry and unyielding to my finger (roughly 15, 20 min? I don't know, tbh, this was all feel at this point). Notably, the biscuits had not acquired much of any color other than their bottoms. I was worried about over cooking them or scorching the bottoms if I let it go until the tops were golden brown, so I brushed them down with butter and then hit em with a full broiler grill fro several minutes, until the coloration seen here was achieved. Reapplied more melted butter, cracked over some fresh salt, and voila.
I sympathize with you entirely. While I know there's a perfectly reasonable explanation for almost every baking mishap (too dry, too wet, too much gluten, not nearly enough, overworked, underworked, and on and on), I can't help but feel that some loaves are just cursed by fate
Salt! I used salted butter, so I had not added any to the actual dough. My first sample told me I needed a little more salt to balance out the sweet, so I spread a little more melted butter on top and cracked over a bit of salt. Vast improvement!
The other reply is correct that I used a knife to cut my final rectangle of a dough into 6 pieces. Like I said, I very rarely bake, so I don't actually own any biscuit cutters. Plus, part of the exercise today was to get me to let go of the block if have in my head about baking being fussy, so this was a (somewhat) intentional rustic approach to the dish. After cutting the dough into individual pieces, they all fit into the bottom of that square pan, with a couple centimeters to spare between most of them. I figured that if they expanded against one another, that would actually help push the rise further vertically, so I wasn't bothered by merging if it occurred. However, it turned out that the majority grew straight up rather than out, and most of them were fully freestanding when done baking.
Indeed! I felt like a mad man when I was dusting my counter down with flour, but thankfully I was able to do so right next to my sink, so cleanup was just pushing the leftover cruft into the sink and giving a quick wipe down. Still, definitely not a breakfast fit for a workday, that's for sure.
Add flour, sugar, baking powder and salt to bowl. Take your very cold butter, and grate it into the dry ingredients using a box grater. Quickly work the butter into the flour mix with a fork or your hands. Add a portion of the milk, and mix until a shaggy dough forms, adding more milk as necessary (I did not use the full allotment). Turn out onto a work surface dusted with flour. Knead with your hands until you have a solid mass which does not stick to your work surface. Roll it into a rough ball/lump, then flatten it out into a rough rectangle approximately 1 inch thick. Fold one half of the rectangle on top of the other half, and then knead it back out to a 1 thick rectangle. Turn the dough 90 degrees, and repeat a couple times. I think I maybe did 5 reps. Once you have your final rectangle, cut out your biscuit rounds if you have the tool to do so. I did not, so I just cut the rectangle into thirds and then half using a chef's knife. Lubed a baking pan with cooking spray, hucked the bits of dough in, and set into a 425 degree F (~220 C) oven. Baked until the dough had puffed up at least twice it's initial size, and the surface was dry and unyielding to my finger (roughly 15, 20 min? I don't know, tbh, this was all feel at this point). Notably, the biscuits had not acquired much of any color other than their bottoms. I was worried about over cooking them or scorching the bottoms if I let it go until the tops were golden brown, so I brushed them down with butter and then hit em with a full broiler grill fro several minutes, until the coloration seen here was achieved. Reapplied more melted butter, cracked over some fresh salt, and voila.
here is the process that i used this morning. the other posters are correct that American biscuits are apparently quite different than what biscuits are elsewhere. as someone else shared with you, I've often heard that the closest European equivalent would be a butter scone, but I've also heard folks who care more than I about these things that that's also not exactly 1:1. in any case, it's a very lightly sweet and buttery quickbread. it has a crispy exterior, and a very soft, tender crumb interior, sometimes with distinct, laminated layers (similar in principle to a croissant). it is equally at home in both savory and sweet applications. this morning, I ate them with elderberry jam, while I served them as a side for beef stew this evening. I used it to sop up the remnants in my bowl. equally delicious.
since you brought red-eye gravy up, are your familiar with its preparation? I've read that it's often made by frying up a ham steak with maybe a little supplementary fat (butter, lard, or bacon grease) and creating a roux from the drippings. rather than milk, as might be done with sawmill/country gravy, the liquid added is strong black coffee.
this combination of ham, coffee, and roux has long fascinated me, as I imagine a real roller coaster of flavors there. however, I've not had the opportunity to order it in a real Southern diner, so I don't know if I'm off-base here, especially because, as I think about it, I'm pretty sure the first time I came across the dish as a concept was in an alternate-history novel in which racist South Africans time travel to the American Civil War and hand out AK-47s to the Army of Northern Virginia. In other words, citation very much needed lol.
you're very welcome! I posted the full recipe a couple of times elsewhere in the thread, and I can recommend it if you've got an hour and want to try something different for breakfast. easy enough that a total novice was able to get good results!
Comic: 1945 "Hey France, who do you think contributed most to WWII?". France to USSR:"Well you of course USSR". 1994 America:"Ahem", France:"I mean of course the USA". USSR in front of a picture of the battle of Stalingrad:"... what". Below a poll showing exactly this
Another suggestion for an in-universe way to tip the scales in your players' favor would be to invent circumstances where your players' "quick thinking" (read as: heavily signposted narrative elements) could lead to their enemies fighting with some form of disadvantage, without necessarily requiring a good roll.
As an example, say the party have found the bad guys' base in an industrial area of town. They're at the Moston Molasses Market, and it's an unseasonably warm day in the middle of winter (I don't know, let's call it January 15th or equivalent). When the players arrive, they immediately notice that there are these enormous liquid storage silos lining the courtyard, where several mooks are milling. Additionally, without rolling because it's obvious, one tank is literally bursting at the seams, with these long, dark brown streaks oozing out of the rivet joints. Maybe they need to make a skill check to determine this for sure, but it's a reasonable assumption that striking that tank will cause it to burst. Given the size of the object and the foregone conclusion that this thing is gonna burst at some point with or without getting whacked, I would not ask the players for an attack roll if they chose to utilize my signposting. Instead, auto-success, the tank bursts, a wave of molasses escapes, and now the baddies that aren't engulfed in a semi-solid wave of sticky goop at a minimum find themselves fighting in difficult terrain.
Obviously, that's a hyper specific example born out of reading a certain Wikipedia article earlier today, but I hope it illustrates my point. As the architect of the world, the only limit is your creativity when it comes to what challenges your party face. Maybe, before their terrible stealth roll reveals them to the trio of trolls hunting them in the woods, the party overheard two of the trolls discussing how their companion isn't allowed to cook their meals anymore, cause they've both got indigestion. Uh-oh, party gets found, but two of the three enemies have a level of exhaustion (or whatever other nerf you want to slap on that simulates having bubble guts) and their heart isn't really in this fight, so they'll bail at the first sign of resistance. Or, if a player is attentive to your narration, they might describe how their character aims a blow right in the belly of the troll that mentioned their stomach issues. If it hits (and, honestly, if it were me, I'd grant auto-success for the player's listening skills), the troll's eyes go wide, and he flees on his next turn. Depending on the tone of your story, more scatological narration may be included in that action.
In short, if you're concerned the experience of your players prevents you from just tweaking numbers from behind the screen, all you have to do is bend the world to justify your tweaks. Hell, you don't even have to have this ready to go ahead of time. Maybe you planned to have a super easy encounter with a couple of feral wolves on the way to the next village. Nothing challenging, just a reminder that the players are in with wilderness. But, uh-oh, the dice are turning Lassie and friends into Hellhounds with a taste for PC spleen. Rather than letting the campaign end with a whimper, as the heroes of Wherever wind up as puppy chow on a random stretch of dirt track, all of a sudden, the animals cease their attack and perk up their ears. In the distance, between their ragged breaths and the sound of their heartbeat pulsing in their ears, the party hear a howl. The wolves respond in kind and melt into the woods. Maybe with a roll, maybe without, your call, the players realize that the direction of the first howl just so happened to be exactly in the direction of the village they were travelling to. DUN DUN DUNNNNN!
From the your perspective, it was a random encounter gone sideways due to poor luck, and you had to invent a deus ex machina on the fly to prevent an anti-climax. However, from the player's perspective, you have seeded a new narrative hook without relying on dry exposition, and it's one that they might have some personal investment in. You're under no obligation to dissuade them of the error in their assumption. Heck, in spit-balling what could have caused the situation, they may even give you ideas for how you're going to incorporate this new dynamic into whatever you originally had planned for them at the new village.
Idk if any of that is of any use to you, but I hope it at least gives you some ideas for levers you can pull which affect difficulty that are a little more nuanced then, "oh shit, uhhhh I guess this monster's AC is going to be 12 for the rest of this fight".
In defense of Reddit (yuck), if there's been one constant in all the years of its existence, it's been that their search is the worst. Not saying it's not intentional, cause it probably is, but damn if they've not worked hard to establish plausible deniability.
Picture taken on a playground somewhere in Hamburg, Germany at almost freezing temperatures with my Canon A1 on Kodak Gold 200. No Idea how this little dude got there. It looks like it’s taking a walk on the film , I think otherwise it wouldn’t be in focus.
If anyone's curious, they actually wrote a song addressing that whole kerfuffle a few years after the fact called "Not Ready to Make Nice". In so far as pop-country goes, it's pretty good.
Also, "Gaslighter" is a bop, while I'm recommending songs of theirs.
Hi. I've been watching Reacher a lot lately, but I'm looking for more vigilante shows or crime-fighting shows. It'd be great if it was about fighting nazis or taking down the alt-right, but regular crime-fighting is alright too. Something like The Boys. Here are some of the shows I watch. ...
You might like Burn Notice, depending on your tolerance for network television tropes of the mid-aughts. It's a "monster of the week" format, rather than the serialized approach of Reacher, but it typically includes a scene or two referencing the season arc in any given episode, so you still feel like the narrative is advancing, even if the majority of the episode was a side quest.
The gist is that a US government spy gets "burned" and turned loose in Miami. He, and the few contacts he has who will still speak with him (which include his mother, an ex-gf with a bombastic personality, and Bruce Campbell at the height of his smarmy powers), attempt to figure out who burned him, while also getting wrapped up in "favors" for various folks about town that inevitably wind up more complicated than was initially let on. Antagonists run the gamut from international terrorists to con artists who target the geriatric (it is, after all, set in Florida).
It's not high art, but it's got a winning cast, decent action (for network television), and, on occasion, I think some pretty clever solutions for problems which leverage the "spycraft" gimmick. Worth a shot.
I don't disagree that it was a very quippy movie, but I'm not sure it's a bad thing? I feel like tables which have a consistent, dramatic tone throughout a campaign are much more the exception than the rule (and often populated by professional creatives). In my experience, most campaigns wind up being occasional islands of drama surrounded by a nonstop stream of attempts (of varying quality) to make each other laugh. Sometimes, you can even hold the drama. Idk, like I said, I understand why it would annoy you, given the wider movie landscape, but I also feel like it was authentic to an "average" game of a 5e DnD, and therefore it didn't bother me.
Don't get me wrong, I love the more earnest takes on epic fantasy that have been set in the Forgotten Realms / DnD, but I also get that coming out treating DnD as Very Serious Business (TM) was going to be a pretty tough sell.
Not saying you're wrong, but praising the giant robot attack on New York before swerving into critiquing the latter half of the movie for being ridiculous is a funny juxtaposition.
I admit that I saw Sky Captain once, many many years ago, so I'm not going to be able to back this up with too many specific citations, but you've also not said specifically what rule they set up and fail to follow, so we're even.
It's a pastiche of pulp fiction concepts from the 30s-50s. Giant robots, airships, Nazi scientists, Shangri-La, dinosaurs, android assassins, the works. The whole thing is like a loving homage to Doc Savage's greatest hits. I don't see how any of that "breaks rules".
Like I said, I won't dispute your overall finding of the film being, "meh". I watched it once 20 years ago and haven't gone back since, so I'm not exactly leaping up to defend it's execution, but I also think "the rules kept changing" is an empty critique, as it stands currently.
You're under no obligation to continue the discussion, sure, but it seems disingenuous to me to open a thread saying "Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow is a bad movie because it fails to follow it's own internal logic". Then, upon having that assertion challenged, you jump to, "I'm not gonna argue about this." Like, why comment at all if you're not interested in discussing, and yes, maybe even defending, your take? Regardless, if that's not what you're here to do, have a good day.
Create a secondary title for a book you love!
What's your pitch for an X-Files 'monster of the week' premise?
E-bikes are just bicycles with a motor. Therefore, e-bikes are motorcycles.
What we have called “motorcycles” should actually be called “enginecycles”. Also, the engine on enginecycles is a four-cycle engine.
What are some movies released less than 10 years ago that already feel dated?
Weekly thread - What movies have you watched this week? 11/02/2026
Brad Arnold, 3 Doors Down founder and lead singer, dies at 47 ( www.cbsnews.com )
Brad Arnold, the founder and lead singer of the 3 Doors Down has died following "his courageous battle with cancer," the rock band announced Saturday on social media. ...
Guess who wasn't in the Epstein files...
Minute Maid is discontinuing frozen juices after 80 years ( www.usatoday.com )
https://archive.ph/1F5Ql
Per my last excommunication...
Take-Two CEO Responds to Stock Price Drop Following Google Genie Announcement: 'I Think People Are Confusing Tools With Hits' - IGN ( www.ign.com )
lightbulbs
Love this
its a 1999 nissan actually
She understands I'm sure
Homemade hashbrowns
In North America, we have McCain hashbrowns that are tiny cubed potatoes you find in the freezer aisle. In Australia, hashbrowns are hashbrowns patties, and we don't have the cubes. I haven't been able to find them anywhere. ...
today I baked biscuits from scratch for breakfast
I've always liked to cook, but I've never really delved into baking. It always seemed so fussy. However, as they say, the first step in being kinda good at something is being really bad at it, so I decided I should try anyway. All said, pretty pleased with the result, especially the evidence of laminated layers.
Obviously Britain did the most
Poll data source ...
Dealing with players rolling terribly in combat?
Everyone has bad dice days. Everyone has that one time you get a Nat 1 at a critical moment. ...
The slumbering pyramid
Reddit search is actively filtering out or hiding 'Alex Pretti'
The search autocompletes almost every other recent term I used. It's not a recency issue.
'Biker Chick' by Simon Bisley
There "mite" be something living on the inside of my Camera
Picture taken on a playground somewhere in Hamburg, Germany at almost freezing temperatures with my Canon A1 on Kodak Gold 200. No Idea how this little dude got there. It looks like it’s taking a walk on the film , I think otherwise it wouldn’t be in focus.
Why medieval city-builder video games are historically inaccurate - Leiden Medievalists Blog ( www.leidenmedievalistsblog.nl )
Zach Bryan’s anti-ICE song drew ire from Trump officials. Is country music waking up? ( www.theguardian.com )
Emerging stars are starting to critique Trump’s immigration crackdown – defying the genre’s legacy of conservatism ...
[OC] Finished zealot
Khruangbin - Live on KEXP (19.11.2025) ( youtu.be )
Khruangbin return to KEXP to perform songs from the "The Universe Smiles Upon You II"
Any good vigilante/crimefighting show?
Hi. I've been watching Reacher a lot lately, but I'm looking for more vigilante shows or crime-fighting shows. It'd be great if it was about fighting nazis or taking down the alt-right, but regular crime-fighting is alright too. Something like The Boys. Here are some of the shows I watch. ...
Outstanding in her field: cow recorded using tool for first time ( www.thetimes.com )
cross-posted from: ...
What are some movies that didn't deserve to flop?
What was your biggest movie let-down/disappointment ever?
Rise Against - Like The Angel ( song.link )
I'm sure we'll have posted the entire album here at some point 😁