Lumines Remastered
Played 23 December 2019 – 15 January 2020 on Nintendo Switch
It’s cool, but I’d rather just play Tetris.
March 2020
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Don’t forget: disasters and crises bring out the best in people
thecorrespondent.comSome welcome positivity from Rutger Bregman:
For every antisocial jerk out there, there are thousands of doctors, cleaners and nurses working around the clock on our behalf. For every panicky hoarder shoving entire supermarket shelves into their cart, there are 10,000 people doing their best to prevent the virus from spreading further. In actual fact, we’re now seeing reports from China and Italy about how the crisis is bringing people closer together.
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Reply All #158: The Case of the Missing Hit
gimletmedia.comA man in California is haunted by the memory of a pop song from his youth. He can remember the lyrics and the melody. But the song itself has vanished, completely scrubbed from the internet.
This is a perfect podcast episode, and now I really miss Mystery Show.
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The Outsider, Season 1
Watched 13 January – 9 March 2020
First half was great: intriguing mystery and plot developments, great characters. Then the mystery is completely resolved, and the second half is mostly seeing the characters catch up with what the audience already knows and doing lots of talking in cars. It ended with a whimper, and I was disappointed.
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Picross S
Played 12 January – 11 March 2020 on Nintendo Switch
I love me some Picross, but they really phoned it in with the UI and controls in this one. No touchscreen support and no option to use the right stick means you can never really play one-handed, and that’s just incredibly frustrating for such a simple game.
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Celeste: Farewell
Played 9 September – 23 December 2019 on Nintendo Switch
Not many games have rewarded me with such a deep sense of accomplishment. Celeste gives me life.
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Wonder Woman
Watched 8 March 2020
I’m glad women can use violence for good too, but this movie is… kinda basic? It’s as if they couldn’t get approval for “girl power” without putting in some bad tropes and clichés to balance it out. Yes, representation matters, but it depresses me that this is what we’re settling for as progress. Excusing it as an escapist piece of pulpy action would be fine, but I don’t think it’s very good at that, either.
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Behind the Soundtrack: ‘Uncut Gems’ with Daniel Lopatin
youtube.com
Alongside filmmaker Josh Safdie, composer Daniel Lopatin sat down with us to detail the creative discoveries behind his synth-packed score for ‘Uncut Gems.’
The score is such a big part of the cosmic magic in Uncut Gems, and this short documentary does a great job at exploring some of its highlights in detail.
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Casino Royale — How Action Reveals Character
youtube.com
Lessons from the Screeplay:
An action scene, just like any other scene, should help expose a character’s true self. But in the case of “Casino Royale,” the opening action sequence needed to do even more than that. It needed to introduce the world to a whole new James Bond.
So today, I want to dissect the film’s freerunning chase sequence to see how it uses action to develop the characters, to examine how it forces the protagonist to make choices which reveal his key characteristics, and to demonstrate how its underlying structure brings Bond’s deepest flaw to the surface.
Casino Royale is the best.