War with Madonna

Madonna('s video channel, operated by... who knows, some corporate hire) has just released the director's cut of American Life. You might recall the video for that, it has Maddy in front of a lot of flags, and a minor bit where she raps about her terrible life where she has three nannys and a chef and stuff.

But this is that one. This is the original video, planned and filmed. Which is slightly... political message. Which the entire album was supposed to be, but she didn't quite get there. Still some good songs on there.

But yeah, this is what she started with, before it got pulled.

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Creeed 3

Just noticed that Creed continues the Roman numbering scheme. Huh.

Jonathan "Dame" Majors gets out of prison (a fact that may precursor real life events, we'll see), and gets together with his old buddy Creed to do some boxing. Because they were big friends back in the day, in a backstory that we only found out in this movie, but that's standard for sequels. But Dame fights too hard, so Creed gets out of retirement to have a scrap, as they have decided that boxing is the way to settle this, even though they've proved by that point that they are willing to actually fight in real life so willingness to deal with it in the structured rules of the ring is a bit of a "this is how the movie works".

Good performances around, from Michael B. Jordan and Jonathan Majors. Others are also in this movie, such as Tessa Thompson, but frankly the movie is all about those two so the rest of the cast are a bit of an add on.

The story is rather basic, just a few big moments, although I am surprised this is the shorted Creed film so far, it feels long. And I can't recall the previous movies, so call backs to that, and returning characters, went over my head. Perhaps a rescreening would have been useful? But then the movie should be able to stand on its own.

Decent enough movie, certainly a worth entry in the series.

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Aavvaa-tay-tah

I only saw the first movie once, not in the theater. So far, keeping that streak alive!

In the first third of the movie, we meet JakeSully and family in their forest surroundings. Then in the second third, they head out west to the sea. Then in the last third they get into a watery battle.

So, there was that one bit where the blue kid did something, and then there's the other bit where that blue kid did something, and the blue kid did a thing. Can you guess that I couldn't really tell who was who? Yes, that is correct, and I don't care. In that I couldn't bring myself to be invested in any of this. We didn't need three hours of this, and it felt rather generic, and the main reason I knew what was going on is that I watched other people talk about it so I knew who various characters were.

Is this an impressive use of technology in all its CGI ness? They say the best CGI is when you don't notice it's CGI, but there's no change of that happening here. I was more wondering how well the human actors were given guidance for interacting with all the blueness as I saw some eyelines didn't quite work. But hey, I might just be picking on it because I can.

Lots of people are excited by this. I'll sit back and wait for the next one and just watch from afar.

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Tetrus

It's that movie based on the video game that everyone is talking about!

This is a documentary in the same style that Argo was, to whit, a dramatisation of events. To whitter, there are some moments that genuflect towards the actual events, and then a whole lot of Hollywood is added on top to make it more exciting. (Especially that ending, which really reminded me of Argo!)

I knew some of the history of Tetris, but can easily believe it's as convoluted as what is presented here. Certainly, I know that Alexey Pajitnov got hosed nearly completely, so that certainly is realistic. I gather the KGB was more subtle about their machinations, in that they were involved, but not quite as overt and antagonistic as what we get here. But I'm guessing the majority of the story is accurate.

Taron Egerton is the main lead, but it doesn't feel like this movie needed him. We are supposed to be here for the people, not the actors. That said, it's nice to see Toby Jones doing things... but I can't say I recognised the others.

Decent movie overall, if somewhat hyperbolic. If you aren't reading history of Tetris books, this gives the ideas.

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Miss Sing

Everyone says "this is the spiritual sequel to Searching". And while true, it deserves to be considered as its own thing.

A teen is fed up with dealing with her mother, but when her mother goes on holiday but doesn't return, she starts asking questions. And so we have our search via computer to trace back what happened, with websites and facetime with people to provide the people talking. And... I'll admit, I did not see the plot twists coming at all. Like, none of them. They all work, but caught be completely by surprise, and yet they all flow naturally from what we've been given. No mean feat, that.

It's all on Storm Reid to hold this movie, and she does excellently. While I might have questions about the justification for seeing her on screen, she gives a great performance and keeps you watching what she's going through next. We also get Ken Leung and Joaquim de Almeida, so we definitely have star power in this as well.

If you liked Searching, definitely check this out. If you didn't see Searching, definitely give this a go. If you didn't like Searching... try this anyway! Thumbs up all around!

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Just Cause 3: The Onliniest Game Evah!!!11!

Then there is the worst part of this game. It has a CONSTANT need to be online. Like whenever you boot the game up, it logs onto the servers. And when the servers are busy, it disconnects, and then insists on asking if you want to try logging in again. No matter what you are doing. Ultimately, you might decide to go into OffLine mode, but as soon as you something, such as look at the map, boom, it's reconnecting again. And why? So it can tell me that "puppygod22 did something better than you". I Don't Care! And this also brings home the point of "what if the servers go down?" Fortunately, there is offline mode, but it will still likely keep trying to connect. I don't fancy facing that day.

Still, I did about everything. 47 hours in all. There are various challenges I can't be bothered to do, so I'm definitely not getting all the achievements here. Still, I did a lot, but now I need to do something else.

Until Just Cause 4...

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Just Cause 3: It collects!

But...there is a lot to do outside of the main missions. All the areas to free, various encounters to do, lots of challenges, and... the collectibles. So many collectibles. (Although from memory JC2 was WAY worse.) In this game, you need to "pay" to use fast travel (once unlocked), although if you do all the Shrines in the region, you can then fast travel for free there. Aside from looking them up, or stumbling across them, you aren't going to fine the shrines naturally. Fortunately, after you free an area, you get markers for where the collectibles are, including the shrines... and, side bonus, you can travel for free from that area now. So yeah, by the time you get all the shrines, you don't need the shrines. But I got them, and all the other collectibles anyway.

And there are extra side missions, aka the DLC. You can tell which bits are the DLC because the main story doesn't ever refer to them, and the cut scenes are just static images instead of full blown animated bits. They also are the same of "start the DLC mission, free areas (similar to everything else), then do the last mission". Also, big bonus, you basically get game breaking items. One mission gives you free flight. One mission gives you a big mech. And one mission gives you a big gun. Like I cruised through the last story missions easily because of that gun. Game breaking indeed. (But, hey, if they didn't want me to use it, they shouldn't have given it to me.)

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Just Cause 3: It Begins!

So I played a lot of Just Cause 2, and was always going to get around to Just Cause 3. And now I have. One thing about JC2 is that I cheated to have infinite health and ammo, and I came damn close to doing so again, but there was one aspect of the difficulty setting that never quite tipped me over (although I got damn close).

There is no difficulty setting. What you play is what you play. But I'm bad at video games, so won't I die over and over again? Yep. (I have no idea if the game made things easier in the background with lessening guards, etc., after dying. It might have done.) But one thing the game explicitly did: keep your progress. When you free bases/towns, you blow up objects (not fuel stations this time) and sometimes people. But once you've ticked them off the list... that's it. If you die and come back (with ammo replenished) you can keep going. Purely by attrition you can free the various bases/towns until you win! Some of the missions didn't quite work that way, but the open world stuff did, and that made it bareable.

(Outside of load times that is. I don't know if the program is bad, my computer is bad, or I should have used an SSD, but when you die, and you just want to get back to blowing up things, you have to wait for it to reload everything. Although that's not the worst part, more later.)

The story is the same as this and the Far Cry games... there's a dictator at the top, and you need to slowly free the various places from the bad guys until you've done enough for the story missions. The actual story is Rico (the hero) going back to his home country and freeing it, but aside from the setting, this is rather generic. And the ending fight is just silly (like I recall from the previous games).

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