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April / May ’24 Movie Roundup · Pick Up and Deliver

• 0:00
  Welcome to Pick Up and Deliver, the podcast where I pick up my audio recorder as
• 0:07
  I stop out the door and deliver an episode to you while I walk the dog.
• 0:11
  I'm Brendan Riley.
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  [music]
• 0:21
  Welcome, morning listeners.
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  It's a lovely day here in suburban Chicago.
• 0:24
  The sun is out and it's Father's Day.
• 0:27
  My birthday was recently and I'm now 47 years old so if I sound crusty and old and
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  wizened it's because I've now passed from 46 into 47.
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  So take that for what it's worth.
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  We had a nice birthday.
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  We went, looked at some birds, played a lot, a nice fun game of Ark Nova with my wife
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  and son, had a good nap.
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  It was a lovely birthday.
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  I also got the Honey Buzz expansion which I backed on Kickstarter a very long time ago and
• 0:55
  was happy to see that show up so that's fun.
• 0:58
  I didn't know it was coming either so what a delight.
• 1:03
  Okay, well if I might have my count wrong because I may have, I may be one episode behind
• 1:09
  but I think that I've caught up to my backlog and that means this episode is going out soon
• 1:15
  and I believe it's episode 629.
• 1:17
  It turns out about once a month I'm doing one of these episodes or not whatever.
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  So for this episode I'm going to be talking about movies I saw recently.
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  That's right, it's time for our next movie roundup.
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  If you're not interested in any of my movie commentary content, this would be an episode
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  to skip but I hope you stick around.
• 1:36
  What I like to do in the movie roundup episodes is that I will talk about movies I've seen
• 1:40
  recently.
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  Talk a little bit about what I thought of them and then generally try to connect a game
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  with the movie so that if you're feeling like doing a movie and game experience you
• 1:50
  can do so.
• 1:52
  So that's kind of the approach that I like to take and what we'll be doing here.
• 1:56
  So this is my April and May roundup and I haven't marked which movies were April and which
• 2:02
  movies are are May on my little sheet that I'm using while I'm walking here but I have,
• 2:07
  I will have marked that on the show notes page by the time this episode goes live.
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  So if you're curious about when I watch each episode you can go over to the show notes
• 2:15
  page which by the way if you haven't visited our page at rattleboxgames.com you will find
• 2:21
  that we have a delightful archive of pages for every episode of this podcast and on those
• 2:28
  pages I have links to the games, the game pages on board game geek that I've talked about.
• 2:34
  So if I ever say the name of a game and you miss it you can always go to the show page
• 2:39
  and look it up.
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  On episodes like this or the reading roundup I will also put links to my reviews
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  of those things on either letterboxed for movies or good reads for books.
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  I don't write long reviews in most of those places but generally that's the approach that
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  I take.
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  So if you want to look up anything related to the episode remember you can always head over
• 2:59
  to board game geek or two.
• 3:01
  You know I head over to rattleboxgames and look up the page of the show notes.
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  So for April and May was those were two very busy months in my life and so I did not have
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  a ton of time to watch movies.
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  In fact I got only to watch, I only recorded six movies that I watched.
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  I guess it's possible that I watched a seventh or even an eighth movie
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  and forgot to record them but I'm generally pretty, pretty, pretty dutiful about recording
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  these movies.
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  So I think six is probably correct for how many movies I watched in April and May.
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  So I'll just go through them and we'll talk a little bit about each one and what I thought
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  of them.
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  So the first movie I watched is called Damsel in this movie.
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  We have a fantasy land in which a kingdom that is without many resources and going through
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  a drought is sends an envoy to a wealthy country where they propose to have a marriage between
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  their daughter and the prince and that marriage will result in a huge dowry for the kingdom
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  which will save the kingdom but she will end up living with these people.
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  And something goes terribly wrong.
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  I don't really want to reveal too much of the plot because the plot is, the movie is
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  good but the plot is a key part.
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  Something goes terribly wrong.
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  It turns out there is a sinister motive for the group that's marrying a thing and then
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  it becomes an adventure in which the princess has to save herself from various and destructive
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  encounters.
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  The film has a number of really interesting choices.
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  It turns out this is not something that she's the first one that's this happened to and
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  so the kind of record of other people who have gone through this is really interesting.
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  It makes for good storytelling and gives us something to look at while the character is basically
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  by herself.
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  We also have a number of other choices that the other characters make that I think are
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  interesting and effective.
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  There are big parts of the movie that are just really dumb.
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  I like the overall idea of the story but there's a lot of things in it that don't make sense
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  or they didn't work for me or just kind of the way things happen don't really make sense
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  or take a big leap of faith or blind itologic.
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  So from the sort of narrative construction piece I did not find this movie as satisfying
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  as I would hope but it was an interesting story and I enjoyed having watched it.
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  I have fond thoughts of it now rather than unpleasant thoughts of it but I would say
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  if this is a genre that you're interested in and you haven't checked out the Joey King
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  movie I can't remember what that one's called.
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  It might just be The Princess.
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  There's a Joey King movie where she plays a princess whose castle gets taken over and
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  she basically goes around like it's an action movie and she kicks butt.
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  The action scenes in that movie I thought are much better created and the overall effect
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  I think works better in that one.
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  So if you're going to look for a movie like this and I would recommend the Joey King movie
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  rather than this one.
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  Although Damsel was an enjoyable time and I don't think you would suffer for having watched
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  it.
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  That was my take on Damsel.
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  Now if you're going to watch a movie with that or you're going to play a game with that
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  and you want to think about what would you play I don't know.
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  Legacy of Dragonholt perhaps.
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  Legacy of Dragonholt is a tabletop sort of RPG light game that you play with a group
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  of people and it's got a narrative campaign and you resolve things.
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  There's not really much dice rolling you choose to use stats that you have available and
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  if you run out of those stats and then good things good and bad happen it's kind of a
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  choose your own adventure style narrative in that there's a book full of different choices
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  and as things happen in the story you're going to read different entries and you keep track
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  of things on paper.
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  It's a really good game and very well made and has a feminist and queer friendly ethos
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  that I think fits the ethos of this movie Damsel.
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  All right.
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  Next we showed my daughter dead poet society which is a movie I haven't watched for a long
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  time.
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  Boy this movie doesn't even come close to passing the Bechtel test and there's some stuff
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  in it that is really bad by today's standards.
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  There's a young Josh Charles plays a guy who's fallen head over heels for this cheerleader
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  at the local public school.
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  There's about a bunch of kids at a private school who are sort of learning to explore their
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  passions in a buttoned down serious world.
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  There are some elements in it that still ring really good but the overall environment
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  of the story I think is feels so dated now.
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  It already did when it came out but feels so dated now that it loses some of its punch
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  in being just set in such an archaic time.
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  The overall narrative arc is good but I always think also of my film teacher who really
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  didn't like the movie because she thought that the main character had done a moral disservice
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  to one of the there's a central drama in the movie where the teacher gives some advice
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  to the student in a way that is not that does not succeed.
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  And results in some pretty disastrous outcomes and my mentor in college blamed him.
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  She thought he really made a mistake in how he talked to this kid about what was going
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  on and that it was a significantly his fault what happens.
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  And I don't entirely disagree.
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  That said it's got some inspiring stuff in it.
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  It reminds us that poetry can be lovely and some of the elements in the film really work
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  well.
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  I mean if you've never seen Dead Poets Society I think it's worth checking out. It's got some
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  sort of lyrical and poetic fun ideas but it probably feels pretty dated by today's standards.
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  On the other hand you've got Robin Williams playing a very delightful serious role which
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  sometimes he doesn't play those as well as I would like.
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  So that is Dead Poets Society.
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  Hard to say what game I would play if I were going to watch Dead Poets Society.
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  I mean if you wanted to play a game about private school perhaps Miskatonic School for Girls
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  you can solve the problem of the school for boys thing by having the school for girls or
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  I do have the game I still haven't played yet which is Miskatonic School for Boys.
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  In both those cases you have a private school as the center story.
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  It doesn't overlap much in terms of the love of poetry.
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  I guess you could do poetry for Neanderthals as well if you wanted a game focus more on the
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  poetics part of it.
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  That's Dead Poets Society.
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  Next up I watched the movie Wrath of Man.
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  Wrath of Man is a sort of Jason Statham vehicle directed by Guy Ritchie.
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  This came in when I never heard of it until I came across it on whatever streaming service
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  I watched it on.
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  I was sort of in the mood for a dumb Jason Statham movie and I mean it's not entirely dumb
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  but it was a reasonably good Jason Statham movie about a security guard for an armored truck
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  company and some people who were causing heists of different groups including the armored truck
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  company.
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  So the film has a lot of sort of twisty turning storytelling elements and it backs up
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  and moves forward and I don't want to say a lot about those elements.
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  I will say I thought Jason Statham did a pretty good job.
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  I like Guy Ritchie's directing style and this sort of feels like a good mid-tier example
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  of the kinds of stories he likes to tell.
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  Lots of colorful criminal characters and the world where criminals just kind of run around
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  and do whatever they want and law enforcement is either entirely absent or is sort of incompetent
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  is part of the nature of this kind of story.
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  But if you like you know there's some good gun fights and a little bit of fisticuffs and
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  entertaining criminals saying entertaining things.
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  So that's I don't have a lot more to say about Wrath of Man except that I enjoyed it.
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  And if you were going to make a movie sort of inspired by this I might say to or if you're
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  going to play a game sort of inspired by this I might suggest playing getaway plan.
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  Just the Vital Lacerda medium heavy Euro game in which you play a group of people who have
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  committed a heist and are now laying low before you get out of town.
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  And you want to take as much money as you can with you but you don't want to be the last
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  one out of town because last one out of town is stock.
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  Although I think everybody is possible for everyone to make it out of town and then it's
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  based on how much money you get but you also could might not make it out of town and then
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  you're definitely not going to win.
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  I liked Getaway Plan when we played it but I don't remember it in super detail.
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  You can check it out on an earlier episode of Pick Up and Deliver if you want to hear
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  what I had to say about that.
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  That was Wrath of Man.
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  Next up is Ghost Watch.
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  So I came across Ghost Watch.
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  I was not familiar with this film but I was talking with a buddy of mine about the movie
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  Midnight with the Devil which I think looks really interesting and I'm keen to see.
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  It faced a bit of an online backlash because they apparently used AI generated art in
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  a couple shots in the movie and some people boycotted the movie because of that.
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  I feel like we've got some complicated space that we're moving into.
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  I'm not sure I'm willing to boycott the movie because of that but I haven't seen it yet
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  either so we'll see what happens.
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  Then the last that movie is sort of about a TV studio where they have some sort of say
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  on or something and it goes terribly wrong and bad stuff happens but it's a found footage
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  film so it's shot in situ and as though it's real.
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  And I was telling this to a friend he's like well so I sort of like Ghost Watch.
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  I'm like I don't know what that is.
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  He goes you haven't seen Ghost Watch.
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  You got to see Ghost Watch.
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  So he loaned me Ghost Watch.
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  This is a British made for TV made for BBC British movie.
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  It was sort of like an evening feature.
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  Like ABC did the Tuesday night movie or whatever.
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  Sort of in that vein.
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  And the idea is that there is a house where there's a young girl who's sort of possessed and
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  the BBC is sending a film crew to the house to see what's happening at the house.
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  The idea is they're going to spend all night and see what happens in this haunted house
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  and explore the, explore what happens and you know they'll cut back to the studio where
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  they'll talk to people about ghost sightings and that sort of thing and then they'll be
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  conversations with the family and if anything happens they have cameras all over the house
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  and so on.
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  And it sort of, if you can kind of imagine what would happen in a story like that that
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  is based as a simulated found footage story that's what happens.
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  Now apparently what made this show particularly compelling is that it's formatted very much
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  like a real BBC special would be and the people in it are real BBC news presenters.
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  So like the guy, the main actor in the show is a guy who's an actual, was an actual BBC
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  news presenter.
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  So it would have been like if Anderson Cooper was in a fictional movie that appeared to
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  be a show on CNN.
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  Now it was presented I guess as part of a clearly fictional like night of TV but if you turn
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  down part way through it looked pretty real and it had, so it sort of had a war of the
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  world's kind of effect in terms of people calling and thinking this was real and wild stuff
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  was happening.
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  So and from that perspective it's, it's pretty cool.
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  It's very well made.
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  It's a little scary.
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  I mean I wouldn't call it super scary but BBC TV production values in the 80s were such
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  that you have to, whatever it is what it is.
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  But I really did enjoy the movie and I'm glad to have checked it out.
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  This does beg your question though, what game would you play to go with this kind of story?
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  And there are two depending on if you're in the mood for something creepy or something pleasant.
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  If you're in the mood for something pleasant I would say Mysterium.
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  Mysterium is a game about psychics trying to solve a murder by communicating with a ghost
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  and that ghost is sending messages to the psychics.
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  It fits very well with the theme of Ghost Watch especially if you're not looking for a game
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  that has sort of scaryness or tension.
• 15:42
  If you're looking for something scaryness or tension there is a game called I think
• 15:47
  Hana Oko.
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  I'll put a link in the show notes.
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  I don't remember if that's actually the name but I'll look at it and find it.
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  And it is a game about a sort of ring style haunting or the grudge style haunting.
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  Sort of Japanese creepy ghost living in a house and haunting the people who live there
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  kind of game.
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  And it's supposed to be pretty dang creepy.
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  I haven't played it.
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  I've only seen it once or twice but it is always a game that I've sort of been on lookout
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  for as a used game.
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  I don't know if I'd want to pay new prices for it but I certainly would enjoy trying it
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  at some point.
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  And it looks delightfully creepy.
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  So that's Hana Oko or Oko Hana.
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  I don't know.
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  Look on the show page for the details and check out Ghost Watch if you think that's
• 16:30
  interesting.
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  I guess I was on a horror kick because the next movie I watched was The Blackening.
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  Now The Blackening is an interesting film.
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  It is a movie about a group of friends, African-American friends who go, they rent a house
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  in the country and they go there and they find a sort of slasher style serial killer ready
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  to murder them.
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  But it's also a sort of play a game for to survive your life kind of murder situation.
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  And the game is all about sort of Black history but framed through really horrific racist
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  stereotypes.
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  So but the movie is also very funny but funny from the perspective of the Black characters
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  is made by writers and directors from that community.
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  So it I guess it has its bona fides.
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  It doesn't feel to this middle-aged white man that it is being offensive or that it is
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  treading ground it shouldn't -- it feels like a story told for a community by that community
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  and in that context it's very funny.
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  That said, I don't know how much I get to say about this movie, right?
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  It's not for me in the same way that I'm not going to watch a romance movie that's aimed
• 17:45
  at people who like romance movies.
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  It's about a lot of time talking about what I do or don't like about it because it really
• 17:50
  isn't for me.
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  I hope to the filmmakers don't mind me watching it and enjoying it.
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  I did.
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  And I think it's great and you should watch it if you get a chance.
• 17:59
  It's really pretty good but it doesn't fit the stereotype or it doesn't it doesn't aim
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  for me as a but it doesn't aim for me as an audience and so I don't think I don't really
• 18:12
  feel comfortable commenting on it beyond saying I think it's pretty good and should be
• 18:18
  worth checking out if you get a chance.
• 18:20
  Now if you're in the mood for a serial killer game, I think Last Friday is probably that's
• 18:26
  the only one I've played where there is a marauding serial killer going around killing the characters
• 18:32
  and I think that one would fit very well.
• 18:34
  I guess you could also play Final Girl if you're in for a solo game.
• 18:37
  I did not really, I was not super into Final Girl but I only played it one time at a con
• 18:43
  so I don't know if I didn't give it enough of a chance or whatever because I do like
• 18:47
  Hostage Negotiator so you would think I would like Final Girl but there it is.
• 18:51
  I haven't had a chance to give that a go again.
• 18:54
  Nonetheless I think The Blackening is great if you get a chance to watch it
• 18:59
  definitely do so.
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  Finally the last movie I want to talk about is ISS.
• 19:02
  I got this from the library off the Lucky Day shelf.
• 19:05
  ISS is a science thriller in which you have United States and Soviet astronauts on the
• 19:15
  International Space Station and they're there to conduct scientific research and a nuclear
• 19:21
  war breaks out down on earth and the two groups suddenly find themselves at odds or at odds based
• 19:30
  on earth based politics.
• 19:32
  It's a tense thriller with pretty good acting, not entirely unpredictable plot beats but
• 19:38
  reasonably well done.
• 19:40
  Some of the special effects are not great but they're probably as good as you can expect
• 19:45
  for what they are.
• 19:47
  And man there was one huge plot hole that I just found so infuriating and in terms of one
• 19:55
  of the characters who is out doing a spacewalk out on the outside of the station and the
• 20:00
  way that he acts in terms of his own safety is so infuriating that I almost couldn't finish
• 20:06
  the movie I was so mad.
• 20:07
  Other than that I thought it was pretty great and pretty good, not great.
• 20:11
  It was good.
• 20:12
  Intertaining if you like a sort of techno thriller particularly if you want one where you don't
• 20:16
  have to use a ton of brain cells on it and you can kind of do something else while you're
• 20:20
  watching.
• 20:21
  ISS is right up there for you.
• 20:23
  It's enjoyable and tense at parts and while the plot beats are relatively predictable they're
• 20:27
  not entirely so and so you can enjoy the narrative surprises at the heart of the movie.
• 20:33
  And I think you should.
• 20:35
  In terms of what to watch or what to play while playing ISS.
• 20:39
  I suppose one game you could play would be actually it seems like the game you should
• 20:45
  play would be oh no it's the game I bought I haven't played it yet but it's about a station
• 20:51
  fall which is about a space station falling back to earth.
• 20:55
  So like in ISS and Stationfall different players have different motivations and different
• 20:59
  goals in terms of resolving, escaping the station or saving it or whatever and I think it
• 21:06
  would probably be a good matchup.
• 21:08
  Well thanks for joining me on my walk today.
• 21:10
  I hope your next walk is as pleasant as mine one.
• 21:12
  Bye bye.
• 21:13
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• 21:33
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• 21:38
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