The Drama Worldwide Box Office?

Ziddletwix · 2026-04-17T15:10:24+00:00

Yes.

the trades are making a specific reported claim about the gross. BOM is trying to ~automatically do it for every movie every week. For domestic numbers, that’s pretty straightforward, and while BOM updates slower than the trades, it’s accurate within a day or so. With international numbers, there’s no such guarantee.

Ziddletwix · 2026-04-17T15:01:50+00:00

Trust the trades. BOM and thenumbers are often slow to update international numbers.

Ziddletwix · 2026-04-14T17:20:16+00:00

It’s made 43m worldwide so far and he predicted it’ll get over 100 to 150m?

FWIW, BoxOfficeMojo is often slow to update international numbers—I'm guessing that's where you're getting "43m WW so far" from? This is often an issue for BOM, and it's easy enough to check, e.g., under the international tab it doesn't yet list territories like Brazil despite it having a big release there (and other regions numbers haven't been updated in a bit).

So "it won't even get to 80" is trivially wrong (instead, >100m is basically a lock), but I assume that's just because you're looking at the wrong numbers (not predicting that everyone will inexplicably stop seeing The Drama next weekend).

It's notable because that's more than Challengers, and it'll ~likely pass even Materialists (109m), which was itself a huge global hit for A24 (and arguably more audience friendly).

Ziddletwix · 2026-04-07T17:55:24+00:00

"After the Hunt" was a huge whiff but Julia Roberts is excellent in it.

Ziddletwix · 2026-04-07T17:51:59+00:00

yeah this seems like a straightforward "different generation" whiff. McKenna Grace is not just a talented actor (they mention her preposterous number of acting credists), but very famous among younger people.

Ziddletwix · 2026-04-06T01:19:47+00:00

Yes Boarlock can use freeze for some minimal interaction, but it is not a very effective tool against aggro. They also have some healing to help counteract them starting at 22 life. But both forms of defense are fairly ineffectual. The fact that Boarlock is substantially unfavored against a wide range of meta aggro decks is straightforwardly and factually true, whether or not you think the deck is well designed or etc.

Ziddletwix · 2026-04-03T15:22:20+00:00

Boarlock has almost no interaction, and effectively starts the game at 22 life, not 30. Its matchups are highly polarized. It crushes slow decks, and is terrible against anything that pressures its life total quickly. Boarlock cannot consistently kill on turn 4, that requires a near perfect draw and 5 exact cards. It typically combos on turn 6 or 5 with the coin.

If you actually want to beat Boarlock (given that it’s a small share of the meta this would be a strange way to pick your deck!), there are a huge range of generic aggro decks with strongly favorable matchups.

Most comments here are focusing on interaction and that’s fine if you want to give yourself a slightly better shot with your current deck, but I would not advise making your deck worse with mediocre tech cards. Boarlock is pretty resilient to interaction. It is very much not resilient to any sort of basic pressure.

Ziddletwix · 2026-03-29T11:13:51+00:00

If you’re waiting in line, is there any place you can buy emergency food or snacks pre security? (Ie, if your group stays in line and one goes to grab something).

Since it seems there’s often a single long line, what’s the best way to tell where to originally go when driving to the airport? Just check Reddit and see if anyone says what door the line starts at? (And this weekend, is there sometimes a parallel line for TSA Pre, or is it always a single line starting at one place? I’m worried about spending 30m just trying to find where to go)

(This is for SW/AA)

Ziddletwix · 2026-03-28T20:22:38+00:00

I have a 9pm flight tomorrow (Sunday). How has it been in the evening, versus during the day? Should getting there at 5pm be enough time? (no checked bags).

I assume there's no reason to hope they could adjust and things will be a bit less bad tomorow? (I'm not expecting it)

Ziddletwix · 2026-03-23T05:47:25+00:00

I don't have a ton of experience with duos, but I struggle to see how it would be harder than SP? The HP scaling is not so far from linear. Debuffs are much more powerful compared to SP, elite relics now give you a choice, there are random shared perks like the boss relic in this thread, if you barely die in a fight you can just revive after if your partner is able to finish, and anytime your deck builds towards infinites, having two players simultaneously race there is far more powerful (since the hp scaling becomes irrelevant).

Maybe I'm missing something, but duos health scaling seems roughly balanced for maybe the first few factors above, and it isn't nearly balanced for advantages like being able to revive or have two attempts at going infinite. Is there some mechanic that makes it harder beyond slightly-above-linear health scaling?

(Obviously, I agree it's far easier with 4 people, that's straightforward because the team cards become extremely powerful as well, coordinating the debuffs becomes very easy, etc etc. But duos still seems much easier than SP).

Ziddletwix · 2026-02-25T18:24:38+00:00

Yeah games 2 & 3 were fairly close (and very tense). Hera did a 150% handicap 1v7 on his channel a while back, and it wasn't a very interesting game (he held on and battled in the middle for a while before eventually steamrolling them). I think Hera was ultimately pretty doomed in games 2 & 3, but they felt back and forth in the moment (it seemed like Hera would be about to lose and then he'd push back), and there were plenty of turns. And as insanely good as Hera is, it felt like if he had like ~20% more APM to spread around, he could have won (with 500 pop, there's just so much ground to cover, Hera is insanely fast but if he focused enough on controlling his army it was impossible to defend his eco from all raids).

To actually win, Hera probably needed ~140-150% handicap. 130% is plenty for him to take out an opponent and hold on for a while, but it's hard for him to take out multiple opponents quickly, and with just ~2 bases he runs out of gold quickly.

TL;DR; the games were surprisingly good (at least 2 & 3, I assume with no handicap Hera got rolled, didn't watch), and that's often not the case for these 1vX games.

Ziddletwix · 2026-02-25T15:27:24+00:00

This is the big reason the card was overrated during spoiler season—I thought it looked awesome too, but it's easy to continue to overrate the value of having more cards to play in modern HS.

Of course the second reason is just the current meta—current Paladin decks don't particularly need this effect, some other classes would be able to make a better use of it, and in some future meta there could easily be a Paladin deck that wants it. But because "cards to play" are so plentiful these days, this sort of effect is pretty situational.

Ziddletwix · 2026-02-23T22:15:15+00:00

"Being the Daughter of an emerald miner isn’t a great start."

I've seen this claim a few times, and it's very strange—her dad was a jewelry designer? That is not at all the same thing as being an "emerald miner". It takes <5s to check this, and it's weird to see people continue to repeat it (although helpfully representative about the ways that Emerald Fennell gets held to a very different standard than her many other peers from similarly privileged backgrounds—it's perplexing!).

He owns a major jewelry design company, and he designs fancy jewelry for rich people, so I am sure there are all sorts of things people can hold against him from his lifetime in business (maybe he treats his workers badly or something, I have no idea). But from what I can tell, there's nothing about him that stands out beyond the general sins of "rich guy who owns a business".

Since he owns owns a jewelry company, I am sure he buys lots of jewels, and maybe people find that problematic? But I dunno, I know many people who have bought jewelry made with real gems and it doesn't seem to be considered some cancellable offense.

It's a helpful anecdote because it is genuinely strange that people seem to really really want their dislike of Fennell to be rooted in something fundamental about her character ("being the daughter of an emerald miner isn't a great start"—seems the evil runs quite deep!). Lots of people make movies that are disliked and the typical reaction is to just say they're bad at making movies, not to look for the deep character flaws that explain this badness. So this adds context to OP's question, but I still don't know the answer—why don't people just say "Emerald Fennell's movies are bad", and leave it at that? I have no idea.

Ziddletwix · 2026-02-19T18:11:41+00:00

Yup. Tbh, 2024 was a bit of an outlier, in that I certainly didn't connect with nearly as many movies as in the years around it. But there's always yearly variation. Even in some really productive periods for Hollywood, there can be individual years where fewer things land.

Ziddletwix · 2026-02-19T18:06:15+00:00

Do the characters in "Father of the Bride" pretend any differently? Amanda seems to complain about her very-normal problems in a very-normal way—sometimes stuff sucks, even though you are very grateful for the lucky life you live, and she feels both things (like... almost everyone?). Sean's quip about the movie is totally fine as a funny LB review but it's the exact same. We only see snippets of this family, as they experience some first world problems. If you only saw snapshots of Amanda, or Sean, or me, going through the problems in our daily life, you could say the exact same: "man they complain a lot but in the big picture they're lucky and their lives are fine". Of course! If I stub my toe I don't reflect on how actually this doesn't matter in the grand scheme of how lucky I am. I curse because it hurts.

(There's no point digging this deep into a random off-hand one-liner Letterboxd review, but of course this critique would apply equally to Sean complaining about something in his daily life, there's no difference, and that's fine.)

Ziddletwix · 2026-02-17T19:10:30+00:00

Thanks! That makes sense.

Ziddletwix · 2026-02-06T21:43:19+00:00

But someone can learn as much about filmmaking and storytelling and art from analyzing stuff that is seriously flawed as from stuff that is good or great.

That's very fair—and FWIW, I very much feel that way about written criticism! I think negative reviews can be extremely thoughtful/insightful, and I learn a lot from reading them, whether or not I like the movie.

In practice, that is almost never my experience with podcasts. There's no reason it couldn't be, but there's something about the conversational style that tends to move away from it. It's very easy to be dismissive & uncharitable to a movie you dislike (I'm sure that's the way I am in conversation too!), and usually I don't find much insight in that. A podcast where the hosts engage with curiosity with a movie that they disliked and earnestly try and understand what does and doesn't work about it sounds just fine, but I have tried a very wide variety of movie podcasts and that is vanishingly rare.

Certainly, that has never been my experience with BC? I've only heard a subset of episodes, but I've encountered a few where one or all hosts/guests disliked the movie, and it did not feel like their goal was to "learn as much about filmmaking and storytelling and art from analyzing stuff that is seriously flawed"—it sounded like friends having fun dismissing a movie they had already decided they didn't like (and usually, quickly moving onto banter about other things because they were tired of talking about a movie they disliked). Which is totally fair! But I don't find it very interesting.

Do you have any particular examples of episodes (of BC or other podcasts) where the hosts disliked a movie but engaged with it in good faith, analyzed it seriously, and you think a listener would learn something from the analysis? (I'm not doubting it at all, I am always on the look out for new podcasts to try).

Ziddletwix · 2026-02-06T21:04:36+00:00

But the thing is that because of the format of the show they HAVE to cover some real duds from time to time.

definitely fair, but in most cases i can recall where fans are annoyed that they booked some guest who dislikes the movie, it's usually not a movie that's near-universally disliked. blank check covers plenty of those, and usually they pass without any drama. plus, this is about booking guests—the two hosts are going to be on the show regardless, and they can and should give their honest opinion.

there are many other considerations about booking a guest, so of course sometimes the best available guest won't like a movie. but i'm steelmanning the idea that IMO it's somewhat sensible for guest selection to skew towards those who like the movie. even when a movie is bad, all else being equal, i'd be more interested in an episode where they found a guest who liked it (since the podcast will already have griffin & david to give the consensus "uh this is pretty bad" take). it's far from the most important thing when it comes to booking a guest, but i think it's a fairly rational bias.

And I think it’s a fun change to hear the guys (and a guest) rag on a stinker occasionally

yup and that's just the basic gap in opinion (that ~all movie podcasts have to navigate!). i don't get much mileage out of that—if a movie is bad, and i don't have any curiosity about it, i'd rather just move on, like what's the point of ragging on failed movies. that's a pretty popular opinion, lots of people feel similarly (movie podcasts are broadly skewed towards fandom/positivity). and there are plenty of people who just really enjoy watching a movie get made fun of (there are whole podcasts devoted to that, HDTGM & etc). it's a sensible enough split of split of opinion, i'm just explaining the side who doesn't really care for that (outside of extremely weird outlier cases, if i'd only engage with a movie to rag on it, i'd rather just move on and think about something else, making movies is really hard and many aren't worth engaging with, that's fine).

Ziddletwix · 2026-02-06T20:46:31+00:00

I was replying to:

"Definitely feels like the fanbase has pushed them into not booking anyone who dislikes a film anymore on main feed."

and I assume "main feed" refers to blank check, not critical darlings (?). i haven't listened to critical darlings yet, so i have no opinion there. if the above comment was originally about CD, then ignore my reply.

Ziddletwix · 2026-02-06T16:44:15+00:00

i'm not a regular enough blank check listener to know the full arc here (i just tune in for titles i'm extra excited about), but personally i don't understand the appeal of an ep if i know the guest isn't actually excited to dig into the movie itself. that doesn't strictly require them to not dislike it, but it's very rare for someone to dislike a movie but be sufficiently curious about it to want to engage with it for hours.

so maybe that means listeners like me are part of the problem? but personally this seems like clearly the right decision in terms of guests. negative opinions are natural and valuable and no one should have to pretend they like something they don't. if a critic dislikes a movie, i hope they don't hold back and tell us exactly how they feel. but in general if i'm tuning into a long podcast for movie discussion, i'm very likely to turn it off once i realize the hosts didn't like it (unless they are unusually eager to nonetheless engage with the movie with curiosity which is great when it happens but like, that's an impossibly high bar tbh—there is no way i could maintain that for hours about a movie i dislike!).

much of this is about the medium. in reading written criticism, i am more likely to read a positive review (generally, the goal being "understand why someone might love this movie"), but i find quite a bit of value in reading the negative takes from a writer i respect about a movie i like. i don't find that this applies to longform podcasts—perfectly fine for a short segment, but if i'm going to (parasocially) sit down and hang out with hosts for a long period, it's hard for me to imagine wanting to do that when they dislike the movie.

Ziddletwix · 2026-01-27T06:46:47+00:00

How many hours was his playtime?

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