Lurker > v_charon

GANON1025 posted...

Evil Dead 2 - I watched this for the first time last weekend. Very fun movie, I can see why it became such a cult classic. Much better than the first... in fact, this feels like basically a remake of Evil Dead 1. Ash is such an iconic horror character, so it was great to see his full origins here.

Genny and I got to watch this on the big screen last night, pretty fun.
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Very strange to watch what's essentially the third part of a continuously storyline without having watched the other ones first.
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1. Candyman

2. Spiral

3. Halloween Kills

4. Don't Breathe 2

5. Malignant

6. Escape Room: Tournament of Champions

7. The Night House

8. Quiet Place II

9. Old

10. The Forever Purge

11. The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It
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1. Candyman

2. Spiral

3. Don't Breathe 2

4. Escape Room: Tournament of Champions

5. The Night House

6. Quiet Place II

7. Old

8. The Forever Purge

9. The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It
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PrivateBiscuit1 posted...

Man I cannot agree with that review at all.

i didn't think the narration was that heavy handed at all, and I thought the execution was nearly perfect. It kept me on the edge of my seat the whole time and I had no idea where any of this was going, and I loved how it left what it did open ended enough. Just the absolute perfect story about grief and contending with thoughts of suicide. Just tremendous even to the closing line.

The closing line was good, and the boat scene itself was as well. The writing here would have been a perfect fit for a film that was more ambiguous during it's final act.

But the bit with the Night House being out in the woods, the fact so many other characters verified her suspicions and even contributed their own, unique ideas is what did it for me. It wasn't subtle enough to achieve the effect I feel it was intended to go for; that none of what she was experiencing was real and that she created this narrative as a coping mechanism for her grief and perhaps as an excuse for her own death. The problem was that so many elements were introduced and I had a hard time simply believing what was shown on screen wasn't just what actually was happening. You had the neighbor giving her an account of her husband cheating on her, you had the mistress in town not being all that she initially expected. If we're to believe the encounter was only in her head or some byproduct of grief, then one would expect that when she confronted this mistress that she wouldn't have learned the things she did and that instead, we'd get to see what she believed the truth about their relationship to be, because she went there believing it and even flatly said the line "you slept with my husband and I'm asking you nicely", when that character continued to deny it happened even until the end.

To me, it falls into the category of many other TV shows/movies/games where the narration simply tries telling you "all this stuff you just saw, it wasn't real!". Obviously not in an extremely negative way like many other forms of this style of storytelling, but I still got a little taste of that vibe. I also just really didn't like the personification of Death and intended to be real or not, how an omnipotent being like Death could be fooled for any amount of time into thinking all white brunette women are the same.
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1. Spiral

2. Don't Breathe 2

3. Escape Room: Tournament of Champions

4. The Night House - Not as good as the first 2/3rds painted it out to be unfortunately. Still solid, but the narrative was too heavy-handed to really leave you mystified or doubting what really happened. It wasn't a twist I saw coming at all, I'll give it that much, but it didn't feel like it should have happened the way it did either. I've read commentary from the director stating that the intention was to let the audience believe that either ghosts are real, or that they aren't, and you'll imagine whichever you find scarier. It's a good concept, but it takes too much suspension of disbelief to believe the main character simply imagined all the bodies in the house or explain away the encounter she had with her husband's "mistress". For me, it was too heavy handed and I wasn't super into the film being about what's essentially the Grim Reaper. That said, it captivated me for most of the way and it's still a pretty decent offering.

5. Quiet Place II

6. Old

7. The Forever Purge

8. The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It
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Adding in two more films to my 2021 rankings now.

1. Spiral

2. Don't Breathe 2 - Very enjoyable even if flawed. I realize the common complaint of making the former villain into a sort of protagonist, but I felt compelled enough to root for him anyway. The originality of the first film was lost, but it's still a good time.

3. Escape Room: Tournament of Champions

4. Quiet Place II

5. Old - I'll always be a fan of his, but Shyamalan's offering gets more and more convoluted the more videos I watch about the film. I think I've resolved myself to not checking out any more about it at this point. It's, as it often is with his films, a great concept in theory but at times crudely executed.

6. The Forever Purge

7. The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It
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Rank of 2021's Horror Films (so far, of what I've seen):

1. Spiral - A surprise, to me at least. Chris Rock plays a role that works for the type of actor he is and the story is surprisingly engaging. The Saw franchise really needed something new, I think, and while it wasn't perfect I do feel it breathed some much needed life into the mythos.

2. Escape Room: Tournament of Champions - The movie excels at being tense and dramatic. I didn't like the cast as much as the first film's; really only Nathan I found interesting. It will be curious to see if the franchise continues where it goes from here, but I do like the lead actors and their characters. It has yet to really cash in on ALL the potential it has in theme, but I feel like among mainstream horror films lately, few have managed to be as tense from start to finish.

3. Quiet Place II - It's a well made, well acted film, but it just didn't need to be made. It didn't really tell a story I felt needed to be told. The characters themselves are good and all, but didn't really feel like they were growing. Also the new male lead was shoehorned into the film and it really showed.

4. The Forever Purge - Surprisingly, despite ranking it low right now, I like the film. It's well acted, the story is fairly engaging and I like the cast of characters. This was another franchise that needed something a little different, and it did it well enough I think.

5. The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It - Fantastic; well, the first act anyway. It goes downhill a bit after that, but never to like La Llorona levels of bad. The main villain wasn't all that compelling and the scariest moments were all pretty early on.
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I once was moderated for saying I had to ban people (not people from Gamefaqs, mind you) from my own website for breaching that particular site's TOS.
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The update isn't likely to be out this weekend if any still hasn't saved the last update.
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Welcome to the neighborhood.
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Now all that's left is to get rid of Kemp in a couple of years.
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Yes
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The December update will probably be at least another week away. The big Cyberpunk 2077 character addition is on the horizon!
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Rook
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Sadly, Donald Trump
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Personally speaking, not even close. I got married and I currently have more money in the bank than any point in my lifetime, and a stable job that is continuing to pay extremely well. I've been able to spend a lot of time doing hobbies of mine this year as well since they don't require the access to the public other things do.

Obviously there have been downfalls, personally speaking that is. We didn't have our honeymoon, she was out of work for quite some time and there are things we'd have liked to do that we could not. But in a personal way, I couldn't rank 2020 that low in terms of my life years. Obviously it's the worst year for the world in my lifetime but I don't think this topic is asking that question since it's a foregone conclusion.
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I really like Torghast, but I do have a few issues with it.

-It SHOULD be soloable and group friendly as well. Why force people to group? You already have content for groups of 5; they're called dungeons and have existed forever.

-It really, really, REALLY needs cosmetic rewards akin to Island Expeditions. To make it more fun and replayable, I really want to get random drops like pets, mounts or cosmetic gear.
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Where's the Star Wars Holiday Special?
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TomNook posted...

I don't understand what I'm looking at.

Also is this a group project or something you do by yourself?

It began as a group game people played by using a screen sharing program, usually something like join.me. I don't know if Discord ever got theirs together because gauntlets basically died before that happened. It's in general something done solo these days, though there's nothing stopping people from playing together if they wanted to.
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Maniac64 posted...

Do you guys still so gauntlets? I really enjoyed the couple I was a part of.

Whiskey_Nick posted...

I see Pokemon hasn't been updated since 2016

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https://i.imgur.com/WSZJJWg.jpg

I ran my update from the 600 new. Mostly focused on the new Amnesia, Little Hope and WoW this month. Lorelei is a cool game from 2019 I discovered in the last month or two as well.
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New Zealand.

Pretty respectable choice.
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Here are some gauntlets I've run to determine my favorite yearly character. I'm not done yet of course.

https://imgur.com/a/ECKVuuw
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It's been a while since this sort of topic was on b8 itself, so I decided to make it. This isn't intended to be a social style topic, but rather one that shares the gauntlets have have been created over the years and to post updates on those gauntlets to share with the board in general.

What is a Gauntlet: A lot of people probably know but I'm assuming many probably don't as well. Probably somewhere close to a decade ago now "gauntlets" came to board 8, I believe the first was probably the Pokemon gauntlet. Basically it is a simple javascript that pits things against one another and you (or if you're playing with others) select which one you like more. You continue selecting what you like the most until the end, where you find out what you liked the most overall. These days there are many different gauntlets you can play.

https://www.mediafire.com/folder/5g69ci9dc6a7d/Gauntlets

It's as simple as downloading the associated file and running the GauntletApplication within. I mostly wanted to make this topic to share my continued updates to the one gauntlet I personally update, the Video Game Characters gauntlet. If I was asked to pick what's my "legacy" in terms of board8 this project would be second to my marriage in terms of "what are you most happy with about your time on board 8". Though I did not originate the gauntlet, I adopted it many years ago and have been updating it ever since. It's sort of a "life's work" project for me now. The inspiration to create a massive database of video game characters was probably born from Giant Bomb but I like to think this gauntlet is one of the most comprehensive databases for video game characters around. It'll never be complete obviously since games are always releasing and there are always new gems to be found that have been missed over the years, or forgotten characters suddenly remembered from years gone by. But I like it that way. I update this gauntlet once per month or so, usually with the previous month's new releases and stuff I discover from the past as well. Currently as of this version, I have 27,800 unique characters in the database. Obviously, playing a regular gauntlet with this gauntlet is very difficult and I applaud anyone that's able to play it the original way gauntlets were played.

That said, the VGC gauntlet has tags you can use to narrow the field and play different sorts of gauntlets within it. You can browse the tags yourself but as an example, you can input "ff" to play a gauntlet of all the Final Fantasy characters. Or "t" to find your favorite character beginning with that letter. Or "1997" to play a gauntlet that features characters debuting in 1997 (the year tags are not yet complete, I still have a few more years to finish tagging, 2006-2017 namely). Anyway, I just wanted to share the project(s) with the board since it has been a while.

I just updated this gauntlet tonight. You can play any of my updates, prior to me making a new update, with the "new" tag if you'd like. There are 600 new characters this month since it encompasses both October and November's new releases. Feel free to share your results with a screenshot if you wish!
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No Silent Hill again.
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Yes
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The TV Network
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The reason I prefer turkey to chicken in terms of like, a whole roasted bird, is because turkey is more plentiful. With chicken, it's just gone too quickly. By that I mean I favor breast meat and don't really like dark meats as much so when the chicken breast is gone, then I'm left with things I don't like as much and I won't be full yet. With turkey, the breast is more than enough to feed several people and let's you have as much of one type of meat as you desire.

In terms of dark meat, turkey legs are a lot better than chicken legs too.
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red13n posted...

There are plenty of ways to make steak good that don't involve slathering it up with basically another dish.

I feel like people give you the same advice about turkey each year and you purposefully ignore it so you can make this topic again the following year. Turkey isn't even that hard of a meat to make flavorful/moist; I'd argue it's easier than steak even though it has a longer cooking time. If you don't want to use a deep frying/flavor injector method, you can use a brining method for oven roasting which will work great.
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banananor posted...

Out of curiosity, what server are you on? I've been playing at slightly odd hours, but emerald dream US has been okay

Any time I've attempted to play on a high population server has been just fine. I've yet to experience one problem.
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Death is by definition not considered a "symptom", as much fun as it is to answer with that.
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I'm enjoying the experience so far, story-wise I feel it's above average and more interesting than the last expansion.
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Very sorry for your loss. That's terrible
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PotD
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Chevrolet
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Yes
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Johnny Depp
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lul
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Johnbobb posted...

He still is a belligerent asswipe
who is rude to everyone and rants about medical conspiracy theories like some right-wing blogger

A bit harsh considering there was truth to what he was saying.
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TotallyNotMI posted...

Out of the 20ish movies I've seen from the last, this would have been my last place.

I hated that movie so much.

Had you seen Another Gay Movie?
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Still holding on to 4 members of my bottom 10 I think, kinda high for me at this stage. Hoping #39 is dropping soon. That said my top half is still intact and survives being eliminated in the bottom fourth, pretty good.
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Goldfinger
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Hey now, tangerines are great fruits what in the hell Karo.
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Rammstein - Amerika
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Somehow the only person who didn't have AGM in last is almost at the bottom in outlier now >_>
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I think these two bottom films were the most offensive films on the list, from like a depiction of LGBT culture standpoint. One film is overly stereotypical and portrays gays in a light that yes indeed they're all sex-crazed deviants, not to mention older males are groomers. The other film portrays gays as freaks and social outcasts whilst trying to paint the picture that people who crossdress just didn't get enough attention when they were growing up from mommy. Honestly, I think Glen and Glenda is more offensive than Another Gay Movie by just a hair in terms of how it actually presents gays because while it is tasteless and I still ranked it last on its merits as a bad film otherwise, AGM at least doesn't feel as if it were made by bigots. It's more likely it was made by juveniles than that I think. Glen and Glenda actually presents this "homosexuals are bad" vibe to it.

Oh and no one mentioned the scene where they show the "savages" from Africa and speak of them if they're primal beings or animals? Where the guy wears the tribal adornments and does the dancing? I almost forgot that happened. Even in this LGBT project they snuck in a little racism, how cute.
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Also last place got 357/360 total possible points. Gee... wonder what it is.
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Not even close on last OR first place here. Wow.
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Yes
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