This is what happens when you willingly exile yourself to a niche demographic.

Nintendo slashes operating profit target.

I had a feeling when I bought my Wii that it was going to be the last Nintendo console I purchased. Nintendo made a choice to play up the "family" "fun" angle, and got mashed out of the market by Sony and Microsoft.

Now all it's got left is the intellectual property rights in the Mario, Zelda, and Metroid franchises. And Super Smash Bros., of course. Sorry, Nintendo, I'm kinda done with platforming, and Skyrim and Mass Effect kind of cover the other two titles.

Pack it in, Hollywood

I have just heard that they are going to remake The Magnificent Seven, which is itself a remake of The Seven Samurai. Now, I'm going to be honest here, I didn't think that highly of The Magnificent Seven. It was all right, I guess, a better team-up movie than The Avengers (that none of the characters had baggage from previous films was a major plus).

Still, I don't see the bloody point of remaking it. Does Hollywood think people suddenly love Westerns again? Or are they just looking for anything with name recognition?

Yeah, I'm going with "B" there too.

Saints Row: Gat out of Hell

Zany fun that never takes itself seriously.

My parents always host my mother's side of the family for Easter and Thanksgiving at their house. They have a pretty sweet sound system, and I'm the one in charge of putting together the playlist (let me tell you this is just about the greatest responsibility I could ever want, aside from possibly the responsibility of Watching All The James Bond Films). 

Anyway, right now, the first three songs on the 2015 Easter playlist? Two metal songs and a hard rock song.

Yeah, go on, ask if that's still the case when I get to the final draft.

"It's a good idea to have your hero and villain meet some time before the climax to heighten the emotional stakes." - Conventional Dramatic Theory

"A pox on that." - William Frickin' Shakespeare

I feel like there's the potential for a post titled X Times Joss Whedon's Shows Would Have Come Under Fire From Anita Sarkeesian But For The Fact That He Gave Her Nerd Cred.

Off the top of my head (spoilers for stuff that's at least 5 years old):

• Turning Willow gay instead of Xander on Buffy, because lesbians are hotter.
• Firefly - while both Mal and River are shown naked, Mal is totally cool with it, but River is all vulnerable.
• Dollhouse. Like, f*cking all of it.
• All of the (mortal) female characters on Angel die, while at least one mortal male character is still kicking at the end of the finale. 

A Blog of Thrones (Chapter 58) Eddard XV: Loved I Not Honor More

Previously on A Blog of Thrones, we changed the title of the post at the last minute. It was originally going to be "Meet the New Boss," but that's a line from a song called "Won't Get Fooled Again," and, well...

A Blog of Thrones (Chapter 57) Sansa V: Barristan Selmy Quits Like A Boss

Previously on A Blog of Thrones, we met the Lannister patriarch, talked about hair, and posted a picture of Daniel Craig for clickbait.

In which I torture meself

Here are the Billboard Top 50 Mainstream Rock Song list for 2014. I was going to actually subject myself to the whole list, but it turns out that only a select group of songs are playable. And I'm too lazy to actually plug a bunch of crap I don't care about into YouTube's search feature. So I'm not going to do that. Instead I'm going to talk very briefly about the number-one mainstream rock song of 2014.

(By the way, just looking at this list, "mainstream rock" has apparently become an absurdly fat synagogue, hasn't it? Anyway...)

Who's gonna be the next James Bond?

There was a big to-do a few weeks back because a certain Big-Name Right-Winger said Idris Elba can't be the next James Bond cuz he's black, and Fleming wrote Bond as white.

Fun story: Fleming pitched a fit when some brute Scotsman was cast as a character he'd imagined as David Niven or Hoagy Carmichael.

Then Fleming turned around and made Book!Bond half-Scottish because the films were Just That Good.

Days of Future Past

I saw the first two X-men films and barely remember them. I watched this one because of four words: Jennifer Lawrence in body-paint.

Sploilers

I'm old enough to remember...

Reminder to Disney: I'll go to see Star Wars Episode VII: Feed Our Money Tree if and only if you release the original trilogy, completely untouched, on home video before the film's theatrical debut.

See, I like choices. They did this thing on the Doctor Who DVDs for at least a little while where you had the option of watching either with new special effects or the old crappy ones. If some no-budget TV show can do that, so can frickin' Star Wars.

In which I rant about something only tangentially related to James Bond, Post I

Captain America: The Winter Soldier isn't really a superhero film, is it? It's more like a political-thriller-slash-Bond-film, right?

Well....

Let's think that one through. The Bond stories TWS borrows the most from are GoldenEye (baddie is an old friend back from the dead, they end up fighting as a signal's about to go out), Quantum of Solace (evil organization has penetrated deep into the "good" governments, easy to get the good guys and the bad guys mixed up), and the novel version of Moonraker (a new super-defense program is actually a plot to destroy freedom, the super-patriot in charge of it is actually a Nazi).

Well, Quantum is hardly "a" Bond film, innit? (Might be why I like it so much in spite of itself.)  Moonraker's elements didn't make it to the screen, and GoldenEye's plot isn't entirely original (cough The Third Man cough - and note that there are a bunch of dots ready to stop moving near the end of TWS...)

But still it does feel like it's really not A Superhero Movie.

I suppose part of that is because - and this is basically true throughout the MCU - there are no secret identities. Everyone knows who Steve Rogers and Natasha Romanoff and Sam Wilson (and Tony Stark and Bruce Banner and, well, Thor) are. Captain America's mask is there to protect his head, not his identity. There's none of that "you can't know who I am because you'll be in danger" stuff that infects the Batfilms and Spiderfilms. Cap is a smidge broody but not because his parents/uncle were murdered or his city is hunting him or whatever the reheated Spiderangst was, but rather because the world suddenly got a lot more cynical while he was on ice.

So what do I mean by "Bond film?" Maybe that's a good place to start. Cap doesn't seduce a lot of women or drive expensive gadget-cars or even visit exotic places; The first film took place in a studio backlot the Western Front and the second largely unfolds in D.C. There's a fair amount of covert ops going on in TWS, but James Bond ain't exactly covert. Cap never visits a casino, and his super-constitution basically precludes him drinking expensive martinis since they're not going to get him drunk.

Hrm.

2015 Bond Ramble #2: Is Moonraker Terrible?

No.

Longer answer: define "terrible."

It has a tone that isn't exactly on par with Yer Average Bond Film's tone, Bond does stuff he wouldn't normally do, he's not played by The Sean Connery, and the villain's plot is bonkers. But enough about OHMSS. Or Skyfall.

Moonraker is, if nothing else, hugely entertaining. I'm certainly not going to claim that it's one of the best Bond Films ever made: it's clear that the three locations were stitched together out of a desire to visit those locations rather than because anything there was unique to the plot, "Holly Goodhead" is the worst/best-worst Bond Girl name in history, Jaws' return was ill-advised, etc.

Perhaps it's the blatant Star Wars cash-in. Perhaps it's the commingling of a horrific scheme with an over-the-top execution of that scheme. Perhaps it's the lack of resemblance to the Fleming novel (a pity - Captain America 2 is a more faithful adaptation, and check out the praise that film got).

Whatever the reason, Moonraker gets a lot of ire. You weirdos. The score is fantastic, the visuals are astounding, and it's a testament to the screen presence of Roger Moore that he never looks swamped by the amusing and outlandish things that happen around him. Moonraker is great entertainment (admittedly, sometimes unintentionally, but so what?) You need a certain mindset to appreciate it, yes, but that's also true of OHMSS.

Jim's Bond Rant Of The Day

Courtesy of TvTropes:

• For a long time, the Timothy Dalton movies were seen as a Dork Age, with Licence to Kill being so gory and violent that many felt it barely resembled a Bond film. Nowadays, however, the Dalton movies are seen as prototypes for the Daniel Craig era, having had the bad luck of hitting about twenty years too early. In addition, the Bond that Dalton portrays is much closer to the Bond that Ian Fleming wrote: a stone killer and a womanizer with a hinted-at lust for violence. (Well, okay, all the Bonds are womanizers, but whereas Connery is the archetypal Bond-As-Playa and Roger Moore's just... well... Roger Moore, Dalton comes across as a sexual predator.) Craig himself can be seen as a Dork Age by the Moore or Brosnan fans since the plots had no science fiction plots by the villains for monetary gain which is seen as a detractor to some.

 (Emphasis added)

I don't even.  What?  WHAT?