johnzo

I had no idea he was going to be in it, when he turned up for that quarter-second shot I was like "wait is that Wedge?" and then we stuck around for the credits to confirm.

I thought it was pretty good, much better than I expected. It didn't feel like a 2.5 hour movie, the pacing was so relentless that it flew by. It was a nice mix of the familiar and the novel, well-acted, great action scenes, and it didn't feel emotionally hollow. I thought it was definitely the best of the modern trilogy, it wasn't a hot mess like TLJ or unwarmed leftovers like TFA. The kiss was an ... interesting choice. The way I see it in my head, these are both confused kids who've both just almost died, they have a weird lingering mind-link, and they share experiences of weird powers that no one else can relate to, and that healing thing was pretty damn intimate as well with weird force soul energy going back and fourth between them. It read to me more as more an animal response to trauma thing than a romantic thing. But I can totally see why folks would be squicked by it. For everything I wrote in the other thread about how I didn't want yet another goddamn planet killer, I actually liked that this movie offered 10,000 planet killers. Escalation is good. The only overt TLJ ****-you I noticed was the presence of Anakin / Luke's lightsaber, unless I'm missing something about that. That lightsaber has been lost and destroyed so many times and it keeps turning up ... you know that it is digging its way out of its Tatooine grave... Loved Hux's reveal as the spy. It's always good when a big twist is both surprising and 100% true to the character. Of course Hux is going to try to set up Kylo Ren. Of course he will **** it up. Hux is 100% fuckup. Really liked how C3PO was forbidden to translate the Sith runes because of his programming. That's totally how software works, something that starts off as a good and sensible hamstrings you later on in a way you'd never anticipate. Headscratching moments: - who made the sith dagger? - why did they need a ground team to take out the tower when the tower is just sitting there exposed and Rogue One showed that snubfighters are really super good at blowing up targets that are just sitting there exposed? - Same thing with the command ship, it's just another big unshielded hunk of metal with the critical tower sticking out of it, should've been easy meat for Poe, who is shown shaving star destroyers of their weapons in every movie he's in. - It's okay to melt C3PO's brain to save the galaxy but it's also necessary to press the pause button on the mission to save the galaxy to go rescue Chewie? Damn, droids' lives suck. But then, when you add it up, the galaxy is saved basically because Rey is nice to a couple of droids, so at least the movie is kinda aware of how ****** up the property status of droids is and rewards folks who are kind to them. I ******* hate how droids call their owners "master." WEDGE CAMEO! I caught it, he's a gunner on the Falcon. Also saw Ghost or a ship of the same class whizzing by during a dogfight. Palps vs. Rey is a real nice callback to Palps vs. Luke in Jedi. Only Palps has a way better offer for Rey than he did for Luke. Luke gets "kill your father and then we'll see how things go" whereas Rey gets "your friends are dying and I can put you in charge of the fleet that's killing them." And I liked how Palp's plan had a couple ways it could have gone well, either he gets to be PalpRey or he gets to be full-on Just Palp once he force-vampires Rey and Ben. Either way, he wins, which is how real supervillains plan their strategies. And I like how the Final Order fleet was like "oh ****, we have a single point of failure that the Rebels are targeting again" and they have a backup ready and standing by. Can't have credible heroes without a credible heel.

and man just look at this beautiful play ... a Bomber on every Al, Streveler legging out the fake, Yoshi getting to the second level and erasing Muamba, AH33 one-on-one with Lokombo which is a nice matchup for the good guys. I wanna do a post of my top ten favorite Bomber blocks from 2019 .. gotta rewatch the season...

you bet man .. you look at the giant gaping holes the line is opening ... the big guys getting out in space and blowing up DBs downfield... the guys coming in late after Harris is wrapped up,making the defence pay for letting them run free after the play moves downfield ... all glory to Harris but man did Lapo put together a sweet running game here and our guys executed it with great precision and spirit. My favorite block so far is Bailey torpedoing a ticat DL at 2:23, the TD that got us rolling in the Grey Cup. The ticat dude looked like he was mainly concerned about playing contain on Collaros and he was a bit flatfooted and Bailey took full advantage.

Meanwhile, in Washington State: https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/politics/washington-state-rep-matt-shea-engaged-in-domestic-terrorism-against-the-u-s-says-state-house-inquiry/#comments The WA state government is thoroughly democratic, but the state GOP has kicked Shea out of their caucus in response to the investigation. When you inspire such bipartisan unity in this day and age, you are a special person indeed.

I'm def gonna go see it in the next couple of days, I'm a hopeless mark for most things Star Wars. The only SW movie that was completely devoid of all enjoyment for me was Clones. As much as I **** on Force Awakens, I was completely with it until the bad guys had yet another goddamn planet killer that needed to be blown up in the nick of time by snubfighters. That **** was old in 1983 when Jedi repeated it, though jedi gets a big pass from me because the Luke/Vader/Palp scenes are so dope, they justify the lazy plotting and the ewoks. Praying to baby yoda that yet-another-superweapon isn't the plot of Skywalker. See you in the spoiler threads.

well to be fair the Bombers don't currently have any QBs under contract for 2020 and maybe dude thinks they will ... forget to sign one or something?

Will Oliveira be ready to go at training camp next year? Heartbreaking what happened to the guy this past year ... really rooting for him to be back. Don't see him listed on the CFL 2020 FA list so he's still got time to go on his Bomber contract, right?

from your mouth to god's ears Mark. somewhere someone will develop a vaccine for Type 2 diabetes out of old tires and microplastics, but CNN will be like OH BOY TRUMP TWEETS DUMB **** and so no one will notice. it is goddamn amazing the power that narcissists have to dominate the discourse. I've been around a few real top-level narcissists and even when you're sick of talking about them you wind up talking about them.

hero is searching for reclusive Jedi to aid in fight against space fascists hero is captured by bad guys in lightning bad guy raid. Bad guys are terrifying and good shots hero stows critical information in droid droid wanders the desert looking for help person with mysterious parentage and boring marginal lifestyle winds up in possession of the droid person with mysterious parentage is, in fact, strong in the force person with mysterious parentage is gifted a lightsaber by wise & mysterious elder captured hero is rescued from bad guy's installation by good guy dressed as stormtrooper heroes blast out of desert planet aboard Milllenium Falcon bad guys have a planet killer bad guys blow up NPC planet with planet killer bad guys point planet killer at heroes' planet but planet killer is vulnerable to snub fighters! heroes run around planet killer base, shooting stormtroopers and trying to sabotage its workings. bad guys can't shoot for ****. snub fighters blow up planet killer with seconds left to go! amid the action, dark wizard confronts his nemesis one-on-one heroes watch helplessly as beloved older-generation character is slain by dark wizard I'm sure there are more but I'm out of time. I mean, seriously, even for Hollywood, where everything is a copy or a sequel, that is some really photocopied plotting, way way beyond homage. It's like JJ got the wrong directions, instead of "Make a Star Wars film" he got "Make Star Wars."

Anyone who watched Lost to the end knows that JJ is a total hack. The Force Awakens was the laziest possible photocopy of Star Wars, dusted with lots of dumb JJ ohhh-soo-mysterious plotting. Like when the casino lady asks Han who Rey is and the scene cuts .... that's lazy ass filmmaking. If TLJ dumps a lot of TFA in the garbage, that's fine. Nothing of value was lost.

Holy **** people are still soooo mad about TLJ? Y'all got triggered hard. I thought it was a flawed gem. And porgs are awesome.

This is gorgeous, nice work!

WF vs. the riders prob. looks a lot different if they don't try to make their wounded QB run a lateral sneak on a long 3rd-and-goal in the 4Q. You wanna talk about an OC overthinking things...just a terrible terrible call. I think we were full value for the wins against the cats and the stamps, but we really needed a couple decisive lucky breaks to win in the WF. That's fine, I don't think our cup needs an asterisk or anything.

GOOD NEWS HAIKU TIME canuck mafia stomps the stamps. dickenson is no Untouchable

all these declarations about how Pierce will be a certain kind of coordinator who will have a certain kind of offence and how he'll be able to develop players in a certain way ... are laughable. we haven't seen one play of a Pierce-run offence yet and people already know how it's gonna go with him there.

dunno how much future Davis has with the redblacks considering that Lapo kept him around for a couple seasons as the QB2 and heir apparent. Then when finally he got his shot when Nichols got hurt in late 2017, he lasted like two quarters and suddenly the Fever was starting (and winning) the We Beat Calgary On The Road With A High School Offence game. you know, a typical stubborn O'Shea team move, sticking with their plan no matter how badly it goes.

they're drunk

I've watched every episode of the Fabulous Blue Bomber show but I don't think I had really seen fabulous Blue Bombers until today.

that whole thing where you go nuts at the Bomber store when you get back to Winnipeg .. yeah. this came home with us in 2016. Tag says it's the jersey is a small, our pooch is about 18 lbs and long wiry but it still fits pretty tightly. The fun part is that people in Seattle are endlessly confused about why our dog rocks a blue University of Washington sweater. U-W has a very similar block-collegiate W logo but they're purple and gold. Wonder if Nichols gets the same thing if he wears Bomber gear when he's at home in eastern WA.

Love the Maston signing. He was the guy who blew up the Riders' 4Q 3rd-and-goal sneak in the WF. Clutch!

Hope that Collaros gets a nice pregame Grey Cup ring presentation ceremony or something the first time he comes back to Winnipeg. From broken-down castaway QB to out-of-nowhere Grey Cup hero, that's a great story to add to Winnipeg's football lore; give the fans another chance to applaud him.

awesome for Kongbo. Hate seeing the Blue lose players, but always happy to see a Blue alum get a shot at a bigger stage, and while I know very little about coaching DL I sure as hell noticed Kongbo when he was on the field. Saw him in on quite a few downfield tackles, just love seeing DLs rev up their motors and chase plays from behind. go get em, JK!

in her position, I'd be thinking about Year 2, because I'd be worried about ZC suffering a career-ender in 2020 and being a free agent by cutdown day, not even cashing his full 2020 salary and not cashing any more QB money ever, because football treats its players like complete ****. I've got lots of friends who do lucrative but unreliable freelance work and having that stable income from the partner is the thing that makes it work at all.

Loved watching Hobart as a kid, he made a lot of exciting things happen on the field. He's not nearly as physically dominant as Streveler, but he was definitely big for an 80s QB and he could sure run in the open field. The last thing he did in the CFL was back up Damon Allen in Ottawa. Whenever Allen went cold the fans would get on him by chanting HOOOBART. I've heard that Hobart actually encouraged the fans from the sidelines. Gotta wonder what that did to the room. Here's some Hobart playoff action, in 1985 he absolutely destroyed the Concordes in the EF throwing for 400 yards and five TD passes. He was a career 49% passer but just could not miss on this day. Also watch for young Wally Buono turning up as a coach on the Concordes sidelines. He looks about fourteen years old. Didn't work so great the next week, though. Started the Grey Cup as a rookie and Don Matthews' bunch humbled him.