Just learned that Dikembe Mutombo died earlier this week. He was only 58. I’m not a basketball guy and you may not be either, but if you’re my age, you probably played him in NBA Jam #aside
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Just learned that Dikembe Mutombo died earlier this week. He was only 58. I’m not a basketball guy and you may not be either, but if you’re my age, you probably played him in NBA Jam #aside
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Lidl were sold out of Football Special so I ordered a case online and… it’s grand. Like red lemonade mixed with cola, or a milder Irn-Bru. It’s no Dr Pepper or root beer, the kings of soft drinks, but I’ll take it #aside
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The crows and rooks outside are going nuts ’cause there’s a hawk with an entire pigeon in its talons trying to make a quick getaway #aside
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The only scandal here is implying that Michael Larson cheated when all he did was be smarter than TV networks believed their daytime audiences to be. More…
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Janet Weiss has started a GoFundMe for Unwound drummer Sara Lund’s breast cancer treatment > https://gofund.me/eb7b2815 #aside
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Rescued a frog from the back garden a little while ago; little thing covered its eyes when I picked it up like “Ahhhhh!” #aside
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No way the Wachowskis didn’t take inspiration from this one. Also, there are so many fuckin’ guns here. Like, a preposterous number and variety of guns. Albert Pyun must have been at the prop warehouse yelling “Gimme all ya got!” More…
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Limited-edition reissue of Double Nickels on Coke-bottle clear vinyl? I’ll be having that thanks very much #aside
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Had to knock off work early today (I wanted to pull all the teeth out of my mouth) but catching up on the Geoguessr World Cup is making me feel better #aside
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Aldi changed their cola bottles that used to be vegan with that lovely mushy texture and now they’re just bog-standard chewy gelatine ones, bleh #aside
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Just saw the trailer for the Smile sequel and boy, they really turned that one up to 11, didn’t they? #aside
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Just renewed my website’s SSL cert for another year. I made it easier on myself by remembering to keep a step-by-step guide, but what a convoluted process this is! #aside
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Randomly checked the site where I got my trail runners a few months ago; saw they’re having a sale and bought another pair. You never know, right? #aside
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I have been outside. Despite the dew point not matching the temperature, it is very humid #aside
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RIP to Sid, the master and ruler of the world #aside
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#NowPlaying Melt-Banana - 3+5 (the new album, their first in over a decade, and it’s a great one) #aside
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Right, that’s the Dutch Grand Prix done; now for six hours of wrestling live from Wembley #aside
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This same realisation may or may not have induced me to panic-buy a complete DVD set of DS9 #aside
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This came to mind upon seeing an ad on YouTube with a clip from Stranger Things and realising I’ve never seen even a minute of an episode, and most likely never will, I have almost zero frame of reference for it, and that’s the way things are now #aside
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Remember, in The Old Days, you’d click around channels on your TV and maybe happen upon a series you’d heard about but never caught when the hype was big and you watch for a few minutes to see if it’s for you, and maybe you’d do that a few times and discover things you ended up loving? Yeah, that kind of thing does NOT happen anymore #aside
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The story goes that after the success of Death Race 2000, Roger Corman asked Paul Bartel to make another car picture, but this time more ‘real’. Bartel had no interest but he needed the money, hence this rehash that strips out the dystopian setting and vicious satire — as well as the gore and mean spirit — for a lighter action jape across America, loaded with cameos and familiar faces and one especially witty scene (Bartel’s favourite, as it happens) where the director plays a Cole Porter pastiche on the piano while Dick Miller gets the shit kicked out of him. More…
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Managed to get ahead on a big work project that I thought would have me frazzled till the end of next week. I deserve this weekend! #aside
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Someone outside is burning smoky fuel and irritating my throat something fierce; besides that being illegal and all, it’s not even that cold yet? It’s still August? #aside
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Far too much being made here about the whole ‘they never mention climate change lol’ thing, as if no one knows the climate in which movies like this are made. The producers picked their battles and went with the unscrupulous developers angle, which in itself is fairly radical for a summer popcorn flick that’s meant to convince the denizens of flyover country to hand over their dollars. More…
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A ‘teen’ movie that only features two teens (played by 20-year-olds, so almost) and is mostly built around a cadre of military men of advancing age debating the ins and outs of computer-assisted warfare. Because that’s what the kids really want. Also, I can’t help but think about how Aaron Swartz got hounded to his suicide because he downloaded some journal articles, so just imagine what they’d do to the likes of Matthew Broderick’s phone-phreaking hacker today. More…
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Twenty-some-odd years ago, I ordered a Burmese CD from Andee’s label tUMULt and he included a very nice thank-you note, which he absolutely didn’t need to do but it meant so much that I still remember it now. That’s the kind of people these are, no bullshitting. (Shame about the Jef Whitehead bits, though.) More…
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I’ve been watching a lot of air crash investigation videos lately (it’s my thing) so you think I’d be inured to it but that plane falling out of the sky in Brazil today gives me chills #aside
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#NowPlaying a pristine, almost-original coloured vinyl pressing of the Meat Puppets’ Huevos #aside
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I guess I’ve set my bar pretty low as I found this poorly reviewed French buddy-cop comedy to be perfectly fine. The plot’s as clichéd as anything but they’re all tried and tested tropes. The action is on the tame side yet with a few impressive moments. The humour is broad but just enough to translate internationally (I think anyone can get the joke about people from Marseille hating Paris) while only stooping once into scatology (the American version of this would’ve been done with surround-sound farts and you know it). Best of all, it’s all wrapped up in around 90 minutes. More…
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This early Charles Band production wouldn’t be out of place as a ’70s Doctor Who story, cheapo production values and all — though I feel the BBC camera operators and editors would take a little more pride in their work. More…
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Had a blast with this one. Michael Rooker gives Stallone a run for his money as a fellow mountain rescuer caught up in the gleefully evil John Lithgow’s plot to retrieve three suitcases full of cash dropped from an executive jet onto the rocky peaks below (in an awe-inspiring set piece of the kind they’d blandly previz in CGI today). Sly’s plugged into the ‘climber with a crisis of confidence’ role for the star power, but the film’s got its own energy to spare, not to mention some stunning matte paintings and composites that more than make up for some mildly ropey miniature work. More…
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“Special effects”? Steady on there, chief. This movie has effects, sure, but there’s nothing special about it. More…
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A near-perfect blockbuster: high concept, relentless pacing, thrilling effects where the practical stuff grounds the digital in reality, a game cast that really sells the mission, and the kind of orchestral score that makes you wish you had a bucket of popcorn in you lap. Points deducted only for the very dated ’90s radio tuneage. More…
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Catching up on Olympics stuff and hey, they played fIREHOSE’s “Brave Captain” after the men’s street skateboarding final! #aside
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Rugby sevens is my new favourite sport: it’s fast paced, high scoring and, best of all, a whole match is done within 20 minutes! #aside
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Finally nabbed a good deal for something I’ve had on my Discogs wantlist for a bit #aside
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So, this Olympic opening ceremony… everyone put in a lot of effort, except the TV director who should be sacked #aside
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Subbed to discovery+ for the Olympics and we need quite the convoluted set-up to watch it because they can’t be arsed providing an Xbox app in Ireland #aside
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New song from Mamaleek, with a video directed by SST alumnus and Werner Herzog’s favourite axe-wielding scuba diver, Henry Kaiser #video
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Let’s be honest, this one drags a lot when the fire takes hold and it puts much of the drama on pause to document the procedural aspects of fighting such a deadly blaze (and Newman and McQueen roll up their sleeves as the men in charge). That adds a lot of valuable verisimilitude, such that beyond the fashions and decor that are decidedly of the time, this hasn’t dated very much at all. But obviously what’s sacrificed there is spectacle: everything you see on the screen is technically impressive, but not all of it is particularly exciting. They wouldn’t make it like this today, that’s for sure. I’m not certain they’d make it any better, either. More…
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Big Trouble in the South China Sea, more or less. Mostly less. The action is appropriately silly, and the practical effects gloriously gloopy. The CGI, however, is rotten. More…
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One small thing #AEW could do for me is merge the International and Continental titles. They’re useless as is (especially the latter) so make them one championship and make it mean something #aside
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I feel like this is one of those ‘the director wanted one thing but Golan and Globus wanted another’ Cannon flicks because the title and the main plot conceit are garbage but the production design and cinematography are actually fantastic. Nearly everyone looks like a junkyard New Romantic in an underground industrial nightmare shot in moody browns and blues, the kind of Brazil-nodding look that Jean-Pierre Jeunet would make his calling card a few years later. But this was Albert Pyun adapting a movie poster for lunch money so he was never going to get those flowers. More…
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Tonight I learned that the band on stage in MST3K favourite Hobgoblins features half the lineup of Surviving You, Always-era Saccharine Trust #aside
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RoboCop is absolutely a film that’s greater than the sum of its parts. But its parts are pretty great too, and this four-part, five-hour docu does a pretty entertaining job of breaking it all down to discover how the magic was made. It also really benefits from having so many of those involved in the production giving their piece, warts and all. More…
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Jessica Rothe got in absolutely rock-hard shape for… this? More…
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I have zero recollection of previously watching this, six years ago. But I stand by what I apparently said before. More…
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A paint-by-numbers thriller where you’ll figure things out far too quickly, mostly remarkable for being unnecessarily misogynist towards Eva Longoria (as if many of the male characters had never seen a woman before) and, in fairness, making Michael Douglas’ advancing age somewhat of a character trait that works. More…
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Plays like two distinct concepts shoehorned into one, to the detriment of both. I guess that was Cannon trying to save a buck. More arm wrestling might’ve helped; as it is, Sly barely does any before the big finale, as he and Robert Loggia’s goons spend most of the running time kidnapping a young boy from each other. In other notes, the presence of not one but three workers (Reggie Bennett, Scott Norton and of course Terry Funk) makes this a wrestling movie in my book. More…
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Forty years ago this week, both Double Nickels on the Dime and Zen Arcade were released into the world. An incredible achievement if it were only one of them, but two? Would that even happen now? #aside
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