Bayesian

If memory serves, it was mentioned in another thread here that JW enjoys Johnnie Walker Blue Label.

He sure is! And we're not going to disappoint him this time, like we did with Last Duel, are we?? We're going to plunk our ticket-buying asses into those recliner-loungers for Napoleon come Thanksgiving, dammit.

What I've read is that the relationship between Napoleon and Josephine is the driving force of the movie's narrative and the (several) battles are effectively Napoleon's version of flowers and mash notes. You're right that his life and exploits are too much for one movie. But if anyone is going to come close to pulling it off, it's Ridley Scott. I cannot wait for this movie. If it weren't for JW scoring Indy 5, this would easily be what I'm most anticipating this year.

No kidding. If this was coming from any other person, I'd be super skeptical. But for MV to write that? What are we completists supposed to infer from this?? I hope we learn more about this situation before Tuesday.

Rusted Wave and 1984 had better have some kind of purchase limit or some asshole will buy 100 of these right off the bat and turn around to sell them on eBay for $80 each. @Thor, as an Elfman completist, I intend to be on either website at 1:00 eastern on the dot to order my copy. I’m happy to order a second one at the same time (assuming either site lets me) for you. I’m sure USPS tracked shipping to Norway for a single CD is a lot less than $35. I don’t trust people enough to believe that a run of 500 discs will last more than a few minutes once they go on sale. I hope I’m wrong, but better safe than sorry.

I'm taking an extended lunch break during my WFH day to watch this heretofore-unknown-to-me movie on Disney+. The Star Wars vibes come across immediately with the pre-credits music and the droid copycat and the holograph. After reading the Wikipedia entry on this movie, I'll admit I'm not expecting much, other than from the score maybe.

I enthusiastically agree with this statement! Add to the list American Pie, Sleepy Hollow, The Haunting, The Matrix, South Park, Three Kings, The Mummy… it goes on and on. Good memories.

Yeah, I've read good things about Beef and plan to check it out soon. Meanwhile, Succession season 4 is rolling along great. It's hilarious and discomfiting at the same time to see Tom and Greg individually -- and so pathetically transparently -- work every Roy they can to grab a lifeline, with no success. I never much liked Tom as a character, so it was awesome to see Karl destroy him in front of the old guard when he had the temerity to suggest he could be interim CEO. But it's Shiv who I guess deserves the most sympathy (relatively speaking; all the Roys are awful in their own ways and would deserve no sympathy from us plebeians if they were real people). She once again gets sidelined and gets to wonder how she'll get fucked over by her family -- which almost certain to happen because neither Ken nor Roman have any backbone when a good deal is offered to them. Really enjoying this show. Just six more episodes before it's all wrapped up!

I forgot about Star Trek, my bad!

I can only think of two: Alien and The Muppet Movie. I understand The China Syndrome is supposed to be good.

Working my way through season 2 of Flight Attendant. Currently done with episode 5. What a chore. The show has turned into flatly unswallowable nonsense that could have worked if the writers didn’t try to make us believe that the CIA could be that incompetent, that Annie’s hacker boyfriend could pull off his hacker shit in mere seconds, that iPhones never need charging even though they are used almost constantly around the clock, or that someone as absurdly indiscreet as Cassie could ever continue to be used as a CIA civilian asset. It also gets tiring watching Cassie freak out about her life spinning out of control over and over and over. And Blake Neely’s irritating score is mixed way too loud. On the other hand, the costume and set design is sharp. And the way alcohol dependency is used as a plot driver (with the multiple Cassies competing for attention in her mind) was innovative. Also, it was refreshing to see a character actually suffer realistic injuries (tinnitus) after being exposed to an explosion at close range. It doesn’t seem like there’ll be a third season. Probably for the best.

At the risk of embarrassing myself, can someone explain the joke? It’s a sweet sixteen bracket, yes, but that’s the only thing I can figure.

If we don’t get any new JW expansions from intrada this year, I know in whose direction I’ll be looking!

I wonder how badly soured the friendship between JJ and JW is. It seems like JJ is a decent guy and he clearly is a huge fan of JW. It’s be a shame if they’re less friendly now after TROS, especially given that it wasn’t all JJ’s fault.

Forget the brass chorale (which is lovely, to be sure)— what about the flute chorale at 2:52?? If that isn’t the most embouchure-destroying writing for flutes in Hollywood scoring history, I can’t imagine what would be.

I haven't watched the new trailer yet (I told my wife weeks ago any new trailers we'd watch together, and she's asleep at the moment), but I'm loving the official poster. I especially appreciate that JW's credit is placed in the first possible position in the credit block. Maybe that was mandated in JW's contract, maybe not, but it's a classy touch that only the world's biggest film nerds and we on this forum would notice.

The marketing for this movie is pretty great! I’m guessing the actual Barbie boxes describe the doll inside just like we see here. I like how Ryan Gosling looks like an actual plastic doll more than any of the others, lol

Very excited that this movie will get an exclusive theatrical run -- a film of this scope deserves it. Now we need a trailer!

No way, the Manhattan Project is fertile ground for a serious film treatment. But I definitely agree with you that Nolan appears to have become more than a little self-important in his filmmaking.

Last we heard, in 1996, the guy was gonna be sent away to an Alaskan radar station or something. I’d be funny if that’s where we find him 27 years later, lol.

I hate to say it, but I disagree that the ending of Ep. 9 was good. Don’t get me wrong, everything up until that last conversation between Joel and Ellie was brilliantly done and it’s no small feat to make the viewer sympathetic to both sides of the sacrifice-Ellie-for-the-greater-good argument at the same time. What bothers me is that Joel lied for no good reason. He could easily have told her the objective truth of the situation — that the fireflies always intended to kill her to get at her brain and had no compunctions about it, how they already made that decision for her, etc. Ellie is strong, she would have understood it. Instead, he spins a tale he needs to keep up about how the cure effort was doomed — and in so doing, painting the fireflies in a better light than they deserved. I feel like Joel would have been cynical enough by now — as well as respected Ellie enough by now — not to make up a lie to spare Ellie’s feelings. By the way, did it strike anyone else how shabby the fireflies’ moonshot effort to find a cure was? At the end, all it was was a surgeon resident, by the look of it, and two assistants working in a a grimy, underlit OR. That was what Joel and Ellie fought halfway across the country to get to? I was expecting we’d see something like a militarized hospital district with a small army of lab coats and surgeons’ gowns inside. Maybe that was the point, though—as viewers, we’re meant to understand that the fireflies were never up to the task. Joel was right to shoot his and Ellie’s way out of there (although it might bear noting he’d made that call before he saw the OR…)

OMG, yes! The story of the rise and spectacular fall of Blackberry was always ripe for a cinematic dramatization and this one looks awesome. I remember following Blackberry's struggles in the late 2000s/early 2010s through a website called macdailynews.com I read regularly at the peak of my Apple/Steve Jobs fanaticism. The editors there were maybe a little too schadenfreude about Blackberry's missteps and failures but they were right that Blackberry very thoroughly underestimated the way iPhone was going to change personal tech. If the CEO hadn't been so distracted by trying to bring another NHL franchise to Toronto, he might have had the bandwidth to stave off disaster at his company. (On a side note, I don't think any reason for Blackberry losing the plot could be more Canadian than that.)

I'd never really given much thought to this, but it does seem like a good way to make use of breezier scores. I'm giving the Better Living score a run-through on YouTube and, yeah, it's a got a great vibe that'd be perfect for a dinner party -- thanks for the inspiration, @Tom Guernsey! I'm going to give that and Sideways a try sometime. I feel like Claude Bolling's jazz piano trio albums for various solo instruments would do nicely too as social gathering background. He wrote a bunch of them, all on CBS Masterworks or Milan. Cello, guitar, trumpet, violin, even chamber orchestra... and of course, flute (the most famous one).

I I should learn to read all the digits in a date before replying…

I love that folks are sharing Elfman's upcoming concerts here -- the only thing is I wish we could have more than a week's notice, which might allow time to prepare to get to them! If anyone does make it to these concerts, please post about it here afterward!