4 Pics No Jokes

I play 4 Pics 1 Word... a lot... how much? Well, what can this picture tell us?

One is that this game doesn't do culturally specific jokes!

But also, I have done nearly 200,000 levels (indeed I am now on Prestige Level #43!)

I have more money than I need. I could fill in so many jokers and not notice.

And yet... I'm gonna play more!

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Bullat Train Exploision

It's Speed, but on a train!

On a Japanese bullet train, there has been a bomb attached, and if it goes below 100 km/h, it goes boom! The first half of the movie is about dealing with people on the train finding out about this, and the train company doing what it can to rescue people... leading to just a handful of people, ie the main cast, to deal with the second half. There's an actual twist I didn't see coming, and the movie is more about how people react under stress and revealing their true selves.

I have no idea how they did the outside train shots. I doubt they could just hire a train, so did they just film the train as it went about its business? CGI? Models? Bit of everything? Certainly well done.

The acting is fine. I'm not sure I entirely buy the acting from some of the characters, but I got the idea and that was enough.

Decent action movie, turned thriller, but ultimately rather disposable.

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Yes! George! Tadpole!

One of my favourite songs! And one of my favourite bands! They're back, baybee!

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A Woking Mon

This film already feels older than this year.

There's this guy, he's just a guy, doing a laborer's job... except he has a past. When the daughter of his boss goes missing, he has a special set of skills, and that involves killing everyone... You know, now I think about it, he was in wars, but given how he, as an older man now, goes around killing everyone, how was there anyone left in the war after he was there?

Anyway, that man is Jason Statham, acting in a movie that has Sylvester Stallone involve in the script. Given that Stallone has written some damn good movies, this one... is so very generic. Frankly, as you read the above, you probably thought of a dozen movies that summary could fit, and yes, this doesn't really do anything to stand out.

It's all fine, just nothing amazing. There is room for a sequel if they want to work the man more, or not, it's open ended.

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War of the 2025

You may have heard about the latest version of War of the Worlds, but ... it is BAD!

Will Radford is a DHS Government agent that spies on hackers and other nefarious people... and his own children. Because he is a parent and wants what's best. But then aliens turn up, and start sucking up data! ... wait, what? ... They came now because the government just launched Goliath, which will enable them to parent everyone, get it, there's a thematic connection! Now Will has to join with his hacker son to take down the aliens, and the bad government. The aliens may have taken out all electricity and shut down all the computers, but Will's computer is fine (how?) as is the internet (wait, what?), so they won't have any problems. And it is the microbes that save us all.. no wait, no it isn't, it is a virus they write. Did they even read the book or see any adaptations or anything?

Remember Searching? And Missing? You know, the movies that were done entirely on computer screens, with face time like videos with the actors? What if we did that with this movie! So that we don't need to spend a lot of time setting up full sets and getting a lot of people together, just have them on screen, that'll do. At least we have the tripods... oh wait, they look like ass too! At least we only see them briefly through bad security cam footage, so that saves the effects team from having to do too much work.

Ice Cube is the lead, with his "oh no you don't" and "damn", he is the everyman government agent that... hang on, why are we on his side? He abuses his power to invade his children's lives, but at least he's on the good government's side? That feels like an excuse to allow him to see what's happening around the world, because luckily you can take control of everything with just a few clicks of a button. Other actors agreed to be in this too, some big names like Michael O'Neill and Jim Meskimen, and hey that's Clark Gregg!

This is a movie about a dad trying to be a better parent... but unfortunately the movie gets in the way.

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Rebirthing Jurassics

Already streaming although still in cinema.. why are movies in trouble?

Let's pretend people don't care about dinosaurs, so we can do "people go to dino island and get into trouble." (Alan!) Evil Corp needs three different blood samples, from land, sea and air, and... getting them isn't that much of a problem. However, while doing that, they are stranded on this dino island, along with a family they picked up, and then they walk around the island for a while until they get to the end act where some action has to happen with this movies goofy looking dinosaur. Yay?

Something something metaphor for this movie franchise, and yes, when you just remake the previous movies over again, again!, then yes, people are going to get bored with it. At times, I was reminded of the Godzilla movie in which we followed the people and only accidentally saw the giant creature. That's not a good association!

Acting wise, it's all fine, they cover all the stereotypes and you can guess who will live and die as soon as they are introduced. The dinosaurs are also fine, but the D-Rex (the new one) does look extremely stupid.

I assume "Rebirth" means they are rebooting this series again. Maybe next time they'll try for a good one?

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Then and Now

Copaganda is alive and well. I watched some SWAT (2017) recently, which was based on SWAT (1975). So let's compare!

The main team: Back in 75, the SWAT team was five people, all men (of course) and diversity expressed by having one African America. Although possibly also one Italian? Racism is weird. In 17, we have six, with Hondo (the main lead) being African American, one being Asian and a Woman(!). Now they do point out that women have a tough time in SWAT and there is a plot or two about a second woman getting into SWAT, so they aren't shying away from that.

The secondary team: In 17, there's the Commander who is in most of the episodes, supporting them, and they've had another female character in charge as well (changing over the seasons). And Deacon is married. Back in 75 the only other character you see often is a woman.. and she's the lady selling food! Hondo is married, but only in season one. In season two, she disappears, possibly so the main lead can get some romance from the female lead of the episode?

Humanising the forces: Back in 75, quite often in the episode we would spend time with the bad guys of the episode, finding out why they are experiencing the lives they are. They aren't portrayed as angels, and often it's them ranting about how cops screwed them over, but we get their side. In 17, we get on-going soap opera of the main team, especially their romantic lives, going over several episodes. That's fairly standard for tv series these days, but definitely a different take back in 75.

Wrapping up: Every episode have a big action piece towards the end, of course. Got to have a shoot out to keep the action up. However, in 75 we might get a whole minute cap at the end to find out that injured people survived, or that the one playboy cop isn't getting date. Whereas in 17 we get the whole last act after the ad break (nearly 10 minutes) of wrapping up events, and dealing with whatever soap opera plot line was going on that episode. They are really hoping people are staying for the characters.

In some ways, yep it's the same show. But definitely a lot of changes over the years.

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