While I appreciated that the first Guardians of the Galaxy was trying to do something new, I didn’t particularly like it and therefore watching this sequel wasn’t a high priority for us. Still, as a good Marvel fanboy I duly trooped to the cinema and the result was pretty much in line with my expectations: passable comedic entertainment that isn’t awful but really anything notable either.
Honestly the premise for this game sounds like it could be incredibly exploitative and edgy but you have to admit that it’s original. I can’t think of anyone who has tried applying the tycoon formula to the building and running of prisons before so I had my eye on it even while it was in Early Access. Surprisingly when it was finished the game was received fairly well. It turns out to be a somber, serious and thoughtful take on what goes on in prison. I even liked the game’s story, simple as it is. I say that for very few games these days.
So this is a major animated feature made by US studios that has zero chance of ever making it to our shores. It has a decent enough budget to look comparable to other CGI cartoons in terms of quality and it even has a long list of famous names providing voices including James Franco, Edward Norton and Salma Hayek. But this is an American cartoon very much made for adults and is certain to cause offence almost everywhere so it was released only in Western countries.
We’ve been on a bit of roll lately in watching period British productions, starting with the famous 1995 BBC production of Pride & Prejudice and now moving onto Downton Abbey. Due to how much my wife turned out to love them, I thought that this recent adaptation of yet another Jane Austen work would slot right in. Note that this is actually an adaptation of the novel Lady Susan and not Love & Freindship.
I believe that this is the first Chinese documentary to be featured in this blog and I’m pleased that it’s very much a modern one, as much about China’s coming of age as that of the young man that is its subject. It’s directed by Du Haibin who has already made several such documentaries.
I decided to continue with my economics education with this course on the Economic History of the Soviet Union, motivated in part by the fact that I’m very pro-capitalism without actually having much knowledge of its greatest ideological rival, Marxism. Plus of course one of our closest friends is a big fan of Marxist philosophy and it might be useful to have some intellectual ammunition. Although it’s hosted on Marginal Revolution University, this course is taught by neither Tyler Cowen nor Alex Tabarrok but instead Guinevere Liberty Nell. As far as I can tell, she has never been a professor at any university but is a scholar who has written several books on this topic.
This film was added to our list last year when its director Andrzej Wajda passed away and eulogies of him appeared in a bunch of places. He is considered one of Poland’s premier directors and this is apparently one of the more notable of his works though he has directed many films across a long and fruitful career.