Tobyc

The highlight of tonight's Family Feud:

The Secret Life of Us, season 2

The original Wicker Man (1973, directed by Robin Hardy, written by Anthony Shaffer, starring Edward Woodward and Christopher Lee) is a legitimate classic and one of my favourite horror films of all time. The 2006 Nicolas Cage version is a So Bad it's Good mess that mostly repeats the plot of the original scene-for-scene without understanding why any of it worked, replacing a slow burning mystery accompanied by ideological conflict, with a succession of jump scares and no such conflict. The Wicker Tree, though, is a 2011 spiritual sequel by Robin Hardy. It has the seeds of a good idea (see http://1000misspenthours.com/reviews/reviewsn-z/wickertree.htm for details), but it's shockingly badly acted and directed, again without being entertaining.

Not so much that as just not wanting to break from the whole "keep my journey in sync with Ash's as much as possible" thing. I could have paused the DVD in the middle of the League tournament and then come back after grinding, but it would have ruined the exercise for me, however pointless it may have been. In any case, I've beaten them and completed Platinum to my satisfaction before. I may come back to it if I need something for a later Pokedex (not that I ever expect to actually complete one).

On the home stretch of my Pokemon Platinum replay, and it's clear I'm not going to be able to beat the Elite Four with my best team before the DP final. Seems appropriate, really. I may come back to it one day, but I've got enough unfinished (and unstarted) games to be going on with. After three weeks of Pokemon Go, I've got 21 in my Pokedex, only two of which are evolved. No gym battles yet, since I can't find a gym that isn't slightly out of range of the few public Wi-Fi hotspots I know of.

Miraculous Ladybug

Brisbane I would think, and I'm not sure they would hate each other.

Over the last few days I've made a start on both Loom and Grim Fandango after finding them on Steam. I've also tried and failed to get anyone to ask me about them.

Sailor Moon R, in the Viz dub

http://www.news.com.au/national/federal-election/election-has-been-one-of-shocks-and-surprises/news-story/74586ce2498fa7a282cfc59f06eb3fbe Pauline Hanson back in Parliament (albeit the Senate this time)? I don't like it. Looks like we may be heading for another hung Parliament.

My guess for Nanase's book is some kind of field guide to squirrels.

http://www.theage.com.au/federal-politics/federal-election-2016/election-2016-scott-morrison-says-he-too-has-faced-hatred-and-bigotry-for-his-conservative-views-on-samesex-marriage-20160622-gpovck Anyone ever get the feeling someone's bribing these people to be terrible at politics?

Sailor Moon, in the new Viz dub. Up to just after Makoto/Sailor Jupiter's introduction.

Aside from some already mentioned, I want to recommend the Deltora Quest books and the Rowan of Rin books by Emily Rodda, if you can find them. Also, for a non-Fantasy series, John Marsden's Tomorrow When the War Began and sequels. Actually, anything by John Marsden.

Murder on the Orient Express comes to mind (though I preferred the later David Suchet version, including David Morrissey's take on Connery's character). Also The Untouchables, The Rock, The Man Who Would Be King, the first Highlander and maybe Marnie. That's stretching it, since there're plenty of fans of the book, myself included, who thought it was as good an adaptation as could be expected. And I say this as someone who hadn't finished the comic at the time I watched the movie. Last movie I watched that wasn't merely disappointing but almost irredeemably crap, The Wicker Tree. Roughly as inept as Neil LaBute's Wicker Man and nowhere near as entertaining, and this is despite coming from the director of the original Wicker Man.

Fargo, season 2

Pokemon: Galactic Battles, still trying to sync it with my Pokemon Platinum replay, with some success. Right now I'm up to the Team Galactic climactic three-parter.

http://memory-alpha.wikia.com/wiki/Matthew_Dougherty

Actually, we'd never seen Dougherty before that movie. Firstly, nowhere in the movie are the Ba'ku presented as not wanting to share the planet. All they wanted was to not get kicked out of the small fraction of it they were actually using (and incidentally, I would argue that they have as much right to that fraction of the planet as the Federation do to any of their own colonies). As has been pointed out, it was the Federation who shot down the option of colonising elsewhere on the planet themselves, for the benefit of the Son'a. Secondly, harvesting the radiation like that would be a terrible plan as far as the Dominion war goes. It's not going to save people dying on captured planets, it's not going to save people after their starships have been destroyed in battle, and the relative few (out of the billions of projected casualties) who could be saved with the medicine aren't going to be any less vulnerable to dying the next time they're sent into the field. And even if I agreed with the rest of your assessment of the Ba'ku (and I'm really not seeing it myself), it still wouldn't excuse what the Federation were doing or the horrifying precedent they were setting (ie, essentially giving themselves the right to shut down any non-Federation colony, regardless of how long its been there, as long as its at that moment in "Federation space"), and I would still be firmly on Picard's side.

Any specific examples of that? By which I'm hoping you don't mean the crew siding with the Ba'ku against the people trying to kidnap and rob them? The Quickening is somewhere among my twenty most hated movies. It might be lower if I liked the original more than I do. Can't comment on the TV series.

The only Star Trek movies I'd call even close to terrible are The Motion Picture and The Final Frontier, and while I don't particularly like Insurrection, I don't share the common complaint that everyone else here seems to be drawing on. My most hated movies are The Last Airbender and The Legend of the Titanic.

Mickey's Christmas Carol

http://www.news.com.au/national/politics/will-refugees-really-take-australians-jobs-like-peter-dutton-said-this-morning/news-story/b782ac23492b324366dc140b13f83965

My Pokemon Platinum replay continues, and I'm outside Snowpoint City waiting for Ash to arrive. Anyone have any thoughts on the Sun/Moon trailer and the starters? Can't say any of the three have grabbed me the way Fennekin or Tepig did. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kn25hijDL7c&feature=youtube_gdata_player