“Pursue unification” means they are not unified and Taiwan is still not theirs. 😉

I feel safe saying the film is not for me, I couldn’t make it through the plot summary on Wikipedia. LOL. It just seems all over the place. Tried both the film and the original book Vineland.

Which one? One Battle After Another?

Like I say, I can’t speak to the film, just the vibe I got from the trailers.

https://youtu.be/feOQFKv2Lw4

Yeah, that’s rough. Most of it only becomes apparent in retrospect. The problem with WoT is that it was so long between books, it was hard to keep it all in your head when the next one came out.

I stopped reading them around book 6 or 7 figuring “You know what? Let’s just wait for it to finish and read the whole thing…”

Edit Book 6 - Lord of Chaos, that’s where I stopped. 1994. Scored an autographed copy though!

Series would finish 19 years later(!)

Then he died, and Sanderson finished it, and I never went back. Maybe some day!

Definitely depends on the book and the writer. I blew through Stephen King’s Insomnia in one sitting, 800+ pages or so. But Wheel of Time is a tougher pull.

If that were true, there would be no need for China to periodically talk about invading it or threatening military action against it. 😉 You can’t invade territory that’s already “yours”.

I’m vaguely aware, but yeah, he hasn’t been a director that interests me. I have Boogie Nights sitting around here somewhere that I really should watch one of these days but it just hasn’t grabbed me.

He kind of strikes me as a Richard Linklater style director, which is fine, just not something worth going to the theater for (didn’t see Blue Moon either).

If it looks like you won’t lose anything seeing it at home, it’s hard to get out and justify the theater experience anymore.

Speaking of Richard Linklater, I went back and re-watched Slacker not long ago and it was a tough re-watch. I remember loving it when it first came out, but it did not age well.

Each app does some things similarly and differently. You can leave notes about how a particular book made you feel, you can add tags and things. Track how long it took you to finish, that sort of thing.

There’s a social aspect where you can join groups, share reviews, and so on.

Fear of China:

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Sinophobe

That was a good line, I also liked “Welcome back to the Tiny Penis Theater… let’s see him put his name in front of that…”

I can’t speak to the actual quality of the film because I haven’t seen it, but in general, when I go to the theater, I want to see a spectacle.

Watching the trailers for One Battle After Another my reaction was “Yeah, I can wait for streaming…” I just didn’t see anything that screamed “see this in the biggest theater you can!”

Sinners should have also won best visual effects for all the dual Smoke and Stack scenes. Avatar looked great, but wasn’t dramatically different from the first two.

I’m happy for them, but I still think Sinners had the better song. 🤷

Kind of like when La La Land got nominated and the best song wasn’t even the best song in that film.

I was surprised to see Elle Fanning in the supporting category because I had just seen Predator: Badlands and I was like “Wait… what? WHAT?”

(she was really good in Badlands)

Looks like a pokemon.

We need a basic team with this, a quokka and a pika.

After hearing all these year end “I read xxx books this year”, I realized I never kept track. At my peak I could read a book a day, but I have no idea where I stand now.

So I picked up a couple of book apps that you can use to track your reading and write reviews.

Fable, Goodreads, Hardcover, and Storygraph.

So far, I’ve read 9 books this year, but I got slowed down by cancer surgery, just coming out the other side of it now.

Of the four apps, I think I like Fable the least, it’s a challenge every time to just go in and add a new book.

On the face of it, it sounds like a giant scam, doesn’t it?

I don’t know enough legal stuff… if someone witnesses a document and then later can’t be produced to say “Yes, that’s me, I signed that on that date.” Further, the addresses they gave as proof of identity prove to be fraudulent, shouldn’t that just be the end of it?

The only one I was really rooting for was The Singers in the best live action short category which it won in a tie(!)

SINGERS, not SINNERS. 😉

Glad to see Michael B. Jordan get the nod for Sinners, people focus on the dual role of Smoke and Stack, but he actually had THREE roles, Smoke, Stack and Vampire Stack.

Disappointed Avatar beat Sinners for visual effects. Avatar looked great, but didn’t really do anything the previous Avatars didn’t do.

Sinners should have won best original song as well.