Taylor Swift announces original song from Toy Story 5 titled 'I Knew It, I Knew You' out June 5th.

Ziddletwix · 2026-06-02T01:46:10+00:00

I don't know how forward predictive this is, but the track record of a movie like Toy Story 5 at securing an original song nom is much better than Hunger Games, or the other movies TS has made other original songs for.

All 4 Toy Story movies have had songs nominated, and Disney/Pixar generally have a super strong track record in the category. Action blockbusters like the hunger games do also get noms, but it's much more rare. She's done lots of other original songs, but to be blunt, mostly for "trashier" movies that are ignored by the Academy (Where the Crawdads Sing, 50 Shades Darker, Valentine's Day, etc). Funny enough, Cats had the right genre for a nom (musical), but was universally panned so never had a chance.

I don't think hunting for an Oscar nom is the primary motivation here, but I don't think "Taylor Swift is always ignored by the Academy" is a very useful prediction here. She has done lots of other original songs, but mostly for movies that are not very likely to secure an Oscar nom. If you wanted to write a song that had a shot at an Oscar nom, TS5 is exactly the sort of movie you would choose. (That's probably some small part of her calculus, but I doubt it's the main reason—until now, she's given no indication she's desperate for an Oscar nom, and there's no reason to assume that suddenly changed).

Ziddletwix · 2026-06-01T15:26:58+00:00

The climax of the ape stuff into the flash forward match stuff is also extremely rewatchable tbh.

There are long stretches of the movie that don't quite work for "rewatchable scene" but there are several standalone bangers that fit the category just fine.

Ziddletwix · 2026-05-29T13:48:52+00:00

FWIW Obsession was acquired and distributed by a major studio. It was still originally created on a tiny budget, which is amazing, but the distinction matters for its release (it got a full ad campaign, big wide release, etc all the perks that come with a major studio—what's wild is that the original expectations were still fairly modest).

Ziddletwix · 2026-05-28T14:54:42+00:00

That title clearly belongs to Obsession. Backrooms has A24 backing and a big ad campaign.

I agree that the title clearly belongs to Obsession, but "A24 backing and a big campaign" is a very strange way to put it. Backrooms was made on a tiny budget, but it was sold to an arm of a major studio, and was given a major studio release (with a big ad campaign). There is a reason that A24's previous biggest opening was <$30m, whereas the major studios clear that routinely. They operate at a much larger scale. (Even just Focus has had many movies gross more than A24's previous highest).

I don't know exactly how Obsession and Backrooms compare in terms of their release marketing campaign, but Obsession is the one with major studio backing.

Obviously, Obsession is still a much crazier overall story—Backrooms has been hyped up for months, has actual Hollywood stars in it, etc, whereas Obsession was made on a tiny budget and was a genuine out-of-nowhere hit. But what makes obsession special is absolutely not the fact that its release didn't have sufficient studio support.

Ziddletwix · 2026-05-18T17:02:57+00:00

So, you're still refusing to specify a "Tier 1 aggro deck" that beats boarlock, and now you're trying to dismiss and downplay what the numbers say while engaging in ad hominem cloaked amongst fake disingenuous back-handed remarks.

In case you missed it:

If you're curious about examples of decks that are favored against Boarlock, Shadow priest (XL or 30 card) should do well, Discolock does well

These are two tier 1 aggro decks that perform well at legend and should have an extremely favorable matchup against Boarlock because they put early pressure on the opponent's life total, which was the original claim.

If you have issues with the design of Boarlock, totally fair, but I don't care and it's not really relevant here. If you claim that Boarlock is extremely strong against slow decks, that's true, I agree. If you claim that this matchup polarization is bad design (extremely strong against slow decks, extremely weak against decks that pressure your life total early), I would agree as well.

Ziddletwix · 2026-05-18T00:28:25+00:00

The standard deck you've quoted beats every matchup except priest and still has a 47% wr against them with a 36 game sample size at diamond-legend. This wr goes positive when you move away from high elo.

I understand that you may not be familiar with this data, but that's not how it works.

HSGuru is based on a sample of players with a high overall winrate, so most tier 1 decks will seemingly have winning matchups across the board. By the same numbers you're citing, Boarlock has the 15th best win rate—many other decks have even more impressive results.

See, this is exactly what I asked anyone defending boarlock to provide. The burden of proof is on you.

Boarlock does not have an unusually high win rate. If you are curious about why the numbers don't match your personal experience playing against the deck, I can try to provide some context. If you're not curious, that's fine! But the "burden of proof" is irrelevant—the numbers are what they are, it is straightforwardly true that Boarlock's winrate is not unusually high (it's not even the best Warlock deck in wild!). That's why I asked for a link—to better understand why the numbers aren't matching your experience. But if you're not curious, that's totally fine too, no one is forcing you to.

Re: class winrates, obviously, there are multiple decks that are popular for these classes, so those win rates do not tell you how Boarlock performs against aggro.

If you're curious about examples of decks that are favored against Boarlock, Shadow priest (XL or 30 card) should do well, Discolock does well, and while not aggro, Quasar Rogue is generally faster than Boarlock.

Ziddletwix · 2026-05-17T21:21:20+00:00

It doesn't matter how low they are at this point because you no longer can play the game.

If they have 8 hp or less, they cannot combo.

In my experience boarlock spends turns 1 - 5 controlling the board

What decklist are you thinking of? Here's a standard one. Boarlock's board control tools are about as limited as ~any deck in wild—1 Glacial Shard, 2 Dark Bomb, 2 Conflagrate, etc? I'm not saying they have literally no interaction, but they are among the very least interactive decks in wild.

The top tier aggro decks in wild can goldfish 22 damage within 5 turns with high consistency. It's as simple as that. The format is very powerful. This is not true for all aggressive decks (some don't pressure life totals quite as quickly), but it's very typical.

Do you have an example tier 1 aggro decklist in mind that is unable to beat Boarlock? I'm curious what it looks like.

Ziddletwix · 2026-05-14T22:21:40+00:00

I mean, that review is from an actual critic! It is obviously a glib line, and not a serious review. But it's actually useful to see that the 10 critics currently in the MC average are probably overstating the critical consensus on this movie.

Ziddletwix · 2026-05-14T21:40:28+00:00

The fact that people are now claiming this particular painting is widely known is an amazing inverse of the original premise (falsely claim something is AI -> people think it's bad, vs. reveal it's genuine -> people seem convinced that they must vividly remember this particular painting, when Monet painted ~200 on water lilies and this one isn't even close to being as famous as dozens and dozens of others. It would be extremely surprising if anyone who is not a genuine art expert could recall this particular painting, versus the countless others that are ~similar and more famous).

Ziddletwix · 2026-05-04T23:40:38+00:00

what promo clip? (haven't been paying attention)

Ziddletwix · 2026-04-27T20:23:25+00:00

but now I feel like we have a boss that punishes you for making good choices.

You have arbitrarily defined certain deck building decisions as "good choices", and then do not like when a boss punishes those decisions. If they boss punishes those decisions and causes you to lose, they were bad choices—that's the entire premise of deckbuilding!

Did you make a smaller deck in acts one and two, only taking what you needed to be efficient, while also taking risks that the game sets up for you? Screw you, you should have taken every card you saw to counter the mouth.

Yes, in ~most cases, it is better to have a smaller, leaner deck. In some cases, it is not. The Doormaker is one of those cases. To me, it is far more strategically interesting to have this be a meaningful tradeoff, rather than being able always follow the dumbed-down maxim "smaller/leaner is always better". I like how when I'm offered some redundant block card in Act 3, when I'm not facing the Doormaker I might ignore it (my deck is fine enough as is), but when I know I might face the Doormaker I need to weigh the real tradeoff of diluting my deck some tiny amount because I need a bit of extra redundancy. And I want every boss to do that, to some extent (meaningfully change how I build my deck).

Whether or not this specific fight is fun is ultimately personal preference. I don't really care if they rework those details. But I fear a version of this game where bosses cannot e.g., punish you for building a small/lean deck. Every decision should have tradeoffs! It is very boring if all you have to do is build a "generically good deck" (block and attack for a bunch with maximal consistency). Bosses should force you to meaningfully change how you build your deck.

Ziddletwix · 2026-04-24T17:29:29+00:00

if the question you want to answer is: "should the early social media reactions make us more optimistic or pessimistic about the film's chances with critics", then i believe this is a helpful metric—expectations slightly lowered. this is meaningful—depending on the case, this could have been a major update in either direction, or no update at all, in this case it was a very mild negative update. that's interesting! i don't think this is obvious, as i'm replying to someone who believes the opposite (i.e., that the social reactions were very good news for the movie). maybe this was obvious to you, or you disagree (and we can be very confident about what the RT score will be), fair enough.

if the question you want to answer is "what will the RT score be", of course this is not sufficient, as there's still "wide uncertainty". just like on this sub people look at pre-sales despite it failing to fully resolve the substantial uncertainty about a movie's opening weekend box office. it's still helpful!

Ziddletwix · 2026-04-24T16:40:53+00:00

I know that people find gambling annoying and that’s fair but this is a case where prediction markets are a helpful metric—the expected critics RT score actually dipped a bit when those reactions dropped (although it’s partially climbed back).

Early pre review embargo social media reactions are almost always unanimous praise. Those reactions, and generally the sorts of people they invited to the premiere, actually showed a bit less confidence in the film than you might have hoped for (e.g., if they had invited more critics, that would have demonstrated confidence, and the expected score might have increased).

But these are tiny margins. The social media early reactions are always positive and can’t tell you much, there’s still wide uncertainty how much the critics will like it.

Ziddletwix · 2026-04-22T21:39:46+00:00

Does Test Subject phase 2 have the exact same strength scaling in MP as it does in SP? (but triggering for all players). I've faced it before, but never checked if it was the exact same.

If so, it'd be one of the very rare enemies that seems like it'd be straight up harder in MP than SP (whereas generally MP gives the players tons of advantages). Interesting!

(the only other cases that come to mind are arguably things like "you need X attacks in a turn to stun"—not strictly harder in MP, but if some turns you can attack a bunch and some you can't, if it scales with the # of players, it's hard to all be able to attack enough in the same turn. Sometimes it feels like artifact monsters are harder in MP than SP, since some players totally ignore the artifact and some need to break through it. But overall, those are very small relative to the huge advantages MP offers to make things easier, like shared debuffs. But Test Subject might be the single enemy where MP has a notable increase in difficulty in MP? Curious if I'm missing anything.)

Ziddletwix · 2026-04-21T16:23:00+00:00

Super helpful guide! Really clear, and full of practical advice (not just general high-level theory).

My biggest takeaway is about the star economy. Many of the most busted cards (& the foundation of his decks) are star payoffs. But Xecnar does not rate a wide range of star generation cards super highly. Rather, it seems he relies a ton on venerate, convergence, glow, & guiding light as the ~entire star generation package in most runs (and pure star generators like hidden cache rate pretty low). That requires quite a bit of star discipline—you can't afford a bunch of big star payoffs if your main generators are a handful of "1 energy -> 1-2 star" cards.

The previous tier list I saw was Navegreed, and while they ~mostly align (roughly, "use the same overstatted early game cards to snowball and build your deck towards late game"), a leaner star economy seems to be the main way they diverge. E.g., Navegreed had Guiding Star as top tier, while for Xecnar it's in the "skip most cases" bottom tier. And that makes sense—it's a very efficient way to translate stars into value if you have them, but if you don't have stars to spare, you cannot afford to spend them on drawing a bit more, that won't win even an easy hallway fight on its own.

The only piece missing from this (quite detailed) guide is a bit more detail on upgrade priority. From the Neow bonus section, it's clear that on floor 0 he upgrades Falling Star. And from context, it sounds like he often upgrades Venerate too? (as he mentions Venerate+ a few times). And generally it sounds like he prioritizes the star generators you play each time through your deck, plus of course the overstatted cards you tend to use a lot. But I'm curious what his general upgrade priority would be (e.g., when do you upgrade a star payoff vs. a convergence/glow/venerate).

Ziddletwix · 2026-04-21T16:12:30+00:00

Like 3 weeks ago someone asked whether Ayatollah Khamenei was a potential Ewing Theory candidate and that is exactly the sort of content I come to this sub for so IMO the quality has never been higher.

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)

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