Josh

A shot of Logan Roy from Succession

Nothing tastes like it used to, does it?

I've been watching a lot of direct-to-video Japanese action movies from the '90s lately and we've really lost the art of naming movies.

When's the last time you saw a new movie with a name as good as "Crime Hunter: Bullets of Rage" or "Female Prisoner Scorpion: Death Threat"?

2.1 Lenses, Not Boxes I wondered whether this section was necessary, but games discourse seems to repeatedly find itself adrift in questions of whether _ counts as a _. We have seen the question repeatedly: Do games count as art? Do games without goals count as games? Is The Sims a game? Are hypertexts interactive fiction? Are Twine pieces literature? In fairness to the researchers cited here, all of whom I respect immensely, many of these sources pose or imply the question rhetorically. Still, the necessity of such a framing frustrates me. "Is _ a _?" is, in my opinion, a fruitless question. The question can never be answered to anyone's satisfaction, and it often serves as either a provocation to espouse politics or as a cover to institute gatekeeping. Its agenda is usually opaque to onlookers and bewildering to those trying to advance the field from across disciplines. We should be thinking in lenses, not boxes. It is always more interesting to ask "If we think of _ through the lens of _, what do we learn?" We know it is more interesting to ask "What do we learn by considering Tom Stoppard through the lens of poststructuralism?" than to ask "Is Stoppard's work poststructuralist?" And while some works may be more or less fruitful when examined through different lenses, sometimes the most unlikely pairings of lenses and objects are the most rewarding. Certainly any of the questions above would be much better served by reframing them in this way.

Wow we’re having “games are art” discourse again! Just gonna leave this here.

From my dissertation:

‘Superman’ Test Screenings Asked ‘Why the F— Is He Saving a Squirrel?’ and James Gunn Originally Cut It Out: ‘I Put the Squirrel Back Despite Protestations’ James Gunn says "Superman" test screenings revealed audiences hated when Superman saves a squirrel. He refused to cut the moment.

Sometimes in focus tests you get a phenomenon where instead of articulating a real feeling they had, the test audiences start to self-consciously look for stuff to critique and so give a bunch of weird notes that don't match any real audience sentiment.

variety.com/2025/film/ne...

I love how even though there are no real points of reference in the frame to compare him against, Galactus looks gigantic here. The movie captured that sense of scale so incredibly well in his first scene. I dug how they added some Giger-esque touches on top of the Kirby vibes too.

The new Fantastic Four movie's approach to Johnny Storm really impressed me. The comics have a bad habit of rebooting his character progression every time a new writer comes onboard, only to do the same arc of him growing up. It's refreshing this movie starts him off already at the end of that arc.

Ha, I had that exact same Invisible Woman toy! It might still be in my mom's basement somewhere...

The movie's biggest problems are:
- pacing and energy. Loved the montage at the beginning, but felt like one more setpiece showing them in action in that first 40 minutes would help.
- not enough Ben Grimm! Ebon did a good job but he's got nothing to do, and the Natasha Lyonne subplot... confused me

Just hoping the whole franchise doesn't get sucked into multiverse crossover land never to return. There are a lot of fun places these characters and this world can go on their own.

The Fantastic Four were my favorites as a kid, so I'm super happy to say: the new movie is pretty good! And the most accurately the spirit of the comics has been captured! Great aesthetic, loved the cast, Galactus was terrifying. Not much more I can ask.

Mock-ups of a couple of work-in-progress cards for the solo ttrpg RUNE: one for the Lost Knight and the other for the Skeleton. They don't look great, candidly!

The same mocked-up cards, this time marked up with blue text to highlight some of the many shortcomings of this iteration of these cards. These include: - making note of awkward empty spaces - areas where border art is too busy/drawing attention - suggestions to introduce greater clarity by organizing the movement/attack/block icons in a consistent way

Finally had a bit of free time (work is busy!) and I thought I'd poke at the Rune stuff I was working on a little bit. Mainly I wanted to try mocking up a couple of cards with actual text and stats to see how badly things fell apart.

(Card text is blurred out since the copy doesn't belong to me.)

This whole era is just so fun. Impossible Man is also hanging around the Baxter Building and won't leave. Agatha Harkness is there as Franklin's nanny and doing magic stuff for... reasons? It's such a maximalist era, a truly nutso superhero soap opera that keeps unfolding and developing each issue.

I love that after spending so long thinking he was a repulsive monster after getting his powers, Ben Grimm suddenly had every slightly weird woman in the Marvel Universe wanting to jump him. Also it feels weirdly realistic that that would happen??

A panel from a Bronze Age Marvel comic where The Thing is being snuck up on by Tigra. Her speech bubbles read: "Hi there, Rocky! Mind if I join you?" The Thing's thought balloon reads: "OH FER CRYIN' OUT LOUD!"

One of my favorite micro-periods in comics as a kid was the stretch of Fantastic Four where Tigra & Thundra were both extremely hot for Ben Grimm. This whole era right in the middle between the Lee/Kirby run and the Byrne run is not particularly well-remembered, but it's so fun and so Marvel to me.

After reading some really solid Superman comics and enjoying them well enough but not ever liking the character nearly as much as I liked Corenswet's Supes, I'm starting to think what I enjoyed about that interpretation of the character is that it's the closest he's ever been to Spider-Man.

They walk such an interesting line with him and Lois where she never comes off as being in the wrong for challenging him.

And it's important to note: it's not that he gets ANGRY. I've seen angry Superman before. This is different and much more mundane.

And it makes total sense that he would! This is a guy who's not used to limitations. Of course he'd be bad at handling them. He doesn't have much practice.

I've been trying to figure out what makes David Corenswet's Superman feel so much more human and interesting than any other incarnation and I think I've got it: he gets *frustrated*, and he gets frustrated in very human and petty ways.

They gotta do a Red Kryptonite plotline with David Corenswet, man. He'd be so good at being evil.

Rosewater, my Wild West adventure game, has been out nearly 4 months and has been very well-received!

But I also feel like it’s reached a fraction of its potential audience.

If you can spare a repost and help spread the word, it would be greatly appreciated!

www.grundislav.games/Rosewater.html

One thing I think is undeniable about Superman is how it made the DC Universe feel big and weird and interesting and worthy of exploring more deeply. I walked out wanting to go pick up an omnibus at a nearby bookstore.

That said, my thumb is very up overall and I really appreciate one of these movies that wastes no time on origin story and just assumes you already know who all of these people are because we all do

Okay so characters, vibes, visuals, individual scenes, theme, sentiment, all an A+

But plotting-wise the vibe is like over-caffeinated kid telling you a story, there is just so much goddamn stuff in this movie. It feels like the messy third movie in a trilogy or something.

This will be the third Superman reboot I've gone to see in theaters alone in my lifetime, which is either a measure of Superman's popularity or mine

I'm seeing Superman today and I'm excited for it mainly because I have absolutely no idea what my opinion is gonna be. From everything I've seen about it, it's a real "could go either way" situation.

Just got out of The Important Cinema Club podcast's screening of Detour at the Fox Theatre in Toronto and man, I love that movie.

Watching it with a crowd was really great because you feel this electric jolt pass through the whole audience when Ann Savage shows up.

The price is reasonable, their curated collections are fun, they clearly know their online and offline audiences, and they don’t have a dogshit algorithm or terrible original content. It feels like a labor of love, and it’s the best streamer by a country mile bsky.app/profile/will...

Saying that somebody "is not involved" ala James Austin Johnson's Trump impersonation ranting about how Scooby-Doo should be called "Velma" because the dog is not involved in solving any of the mysteries.

One of the most exciting things about being in my mid-30s is the (maybe embarrassingly late) realization that I can just explore things I'm interested in without needing to feel bad about not being an expert in them or making them my whole personality