I’ll go further and say it’s also a better Silent Hill movie than Return to Silent Hill.

Okay, so my review is very much incoming still, but I’ll put this out there…

I think Exit 8 might actually be the best adapted movie based on a video game.

Seriously.

Now sure, that's less possible nowadays with the multitudinous spread of social media, and parasociality is the tithe food of the internet age, but I preferred the days when people PRETENDED to like their followers and audience, rather than just ignoring their entire existence.

This has been a personal bugbear of mine even pre-YouTube and Social Media days.

I grew up back in the days of the PC Gamer forums where the writers literally jumped in and chatted with the readers DAILY.
It was normal, and welcome and fun.

I'm not making ANY comment on the quality of their content, or their personality etc etc, but if you're only here to flog your wares while ignoring anyone trying to engage with it, then I don't think you're really here to engage, just to profit, and as a result I also have to suspect the sincerity.

Like, there are legit people who post many times a day, often with controversial takes or asking questions, but then they literally NEVER reply to any replies.
e.g. Folks who are on BlueSky and their "replies" section is nothing but replies to themselves.

If I see that, I just stop following.

There's something that rubs me the wrong way about people who post a LOT of content, and never ever engage in the comments or the replies.

I get WHY and that if you are "building a brand" or and audience, and want to hit the algorithm with "CONTENT" but it feels icky to me.

Literally your first sentence... "Elden Ring movie is probably the stupidest videogame adaptation project yet"

Not to be a broken record, but why on earth is Ed Balls there interviewing his wife's work colleagues about a scandal involving the government department she currently runs?

You’re probably right on both counts, but as someone who has not and likely never will play it, what’s the reasoning in both cases?

I haven’t read it I’m afraid! But the whole Russian espionage plot did seem to jar uncomfortably with the kids playing pirates stuff.

I expect they were thinking it was all too low stakes for modern day family entertainment.

Screenshot from Mastodon, white text on black background: Erik Uden @ErikUden@mastodon.de Once libraries are nonexistent any modern fascist movement wouldn't even have to burn books, but flick one switch and they'd be remotely deleted from your Amazon Kindle or similar digital "library". Capitalists are already building the infrastructure to do this through DRM, so stop believing tech is apolitical - the defunding of libraries and paywalling of information are all part of this.

A reminder during #NationalLibraryWeek, libraries are our best and last defense against the fascist monopoly on knowledge and information

Yes, the version with Kelly MacDonald and Rafe Spall.
It's a shame, clearly they had the locations, actors, sets and the crew to make it but the script has no spark and the whole affair is just a lacklustre drag with no atmosphere.

Backtracking is such a normal part of gaming that it wouldn’t even occur to me that no-one had tried it.

It’s something occurring in another video game-movie adaptation I may be currently watching.

So… it’s always been kind of bizarre to me (as one who plays teh vidyagamez) that the plot in Ready Player One revolved around the idea that no-one ever thought to go backwards in the race.

Something that many gamers have observed would have probably happened on Day 1.

Do non-gamers not see that?

Theatre review: Starstruck from Scottish Ballet at Theatre Royal, Glasgow Theatre review of Starstruck (Choreography by Christopher Hampson & Gene Kelly. Music by George Gershwin, Maurice Ravel & Frédéric Chopin) from Scottish Ballet at Theatre Royal, Glasgow - reviewer: Gr...

I reviewed Starstruck, the Gene Kelly inspired work from Scottish Ballet, for @britishtheatreguide.info.

Theatre review: Starstruck from Scottish Ballet at Theatre Royal, Glasgow Theatre review of Starstruck (Choreography by Christopher Hampson & Gene Kelly. Music by George Gershwin, Maurice Ravel & Frédéric Chopin) from Scottish Ballet at Theatre Royal, Glasgow - reviewer: Gr...

Theatre review: Starstruck from Scottish Ballet at Theatre Royal, Glasgow

www.britishtheatreguide.info/reviews/star...

Finishing up Swallows and Amazons, there’s the germ of a good movie here but the direction is just so flat and lifeless, the blocking is messy as hell and the result is just a bit dull.

Now I like JDATE, it's a good book, the movie is fun as well, I'm just citing it as an example of a decent book with a flaw.
But similarly, if your book is just THINGTHINGTHINGTHINGTHING without room for the reader to breathe that ain't good either.

That's a kids cartoon created in a sugar binge.

Sometimes it's also about pacing.
I'm re-reading John Dies at the End, a book I read previously about 20 years ago.

What's striking me is that the back third of the book is just relentless. Chapters of almost constant insane & inane events happening. It's actually kind of exhausting.

LRT: I think that's one of the most interesting points about modern writing that I see failed constantly, particularly in "big media entities".

The failure to not "waste the audience's time".
The irony is most of the time it's through people trying to do the opposite and making things facile.

this is it right here. AI violates Vonnegut's number 1 rule for writers: "Use the time of a total stranger in such a way that he or she will not feel the time was wasted." AI shifts the burden of effort from the writer onto the reader/audience and that is unacceptable

There's probably a huge market for that. It's why whenever a new MCU or Star Wars or Stranger Things property drops, there's a flurry of video essays, and podcasts of people loving or hating it.

It's algorithm food, sure but also people have short attention spans and little free time.

There's a lesson in there, I'm sure. But it's also a thing I've seen in other avenues of interest. It's why "a popular youtuber/influencer writing coach type who will go unnamed" only ever seems to talk about... ATLA.

(also I am not ragging on people for having populist opinions, enjoy life)

It's one reason I stopped commenting on, and ditched the Discords of a load of YouTube movie video-essayists I used to watch all the time.

It always turned out their most active audience rarely watched anything other than Netflix, MCU movies and whatever else was #1 at the cinema that month.

Like... if someone asks this question and you're answer is... the biggest horror movie of last year, and it's actually like a 7/10 but you just didn't like one scene or didn't "get" the plot.
Then... well, it just makes me tired.

I literally yelled "WHAT?" outloud in the cinema at that point. A candle fell over on a church altar and it burst into flames.

Nothing makes sense.

So I am actually joining in, the only one I can think of was Godsend, a truly terrible film from the mid-2000s.
It's a weird ass movie about mad Dr Bob Di Niro cloning his dead son through a couple's IVF treatment.

But also at one point actual stone catches fire. It's THAT bad.

What always amazes me about the responses to this sort of question are how "normie" most of the opinions are.

It's something I used to see a lot on the "bad place" and it's here as well. You notice that the vast majority of people really don't see that many movies. So responses are usually dull.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m sure it’ll make a billion dollars but… is Doctor Doom REALLY going to suddenly be a cultural reference point?