And the Oscar goes to…

Well, not me for losing my Oscar bets this year. You probably remember from last year that I upload my predictions via YouTube and challenge viewers to contradict me. Two users did so… and I lost against both of them. However, the small number of challengers can be seen as  a good sign. And really, while I was right about only half of my picks last year, I made it to an incredible 16 out of 24 categories properly predicted this time around! That’s 2/3, guys! I’m rather content, honestly.

However, a bet’s a bet and I agreed upon certain punishments should I lose. Let’s take a quick look at all the categories and where I was wrong:

Best Picture: "12 Years a Slave"

Best Supporting Actor: Jared Leto, "Dallas Buyers Club"

Best Supporting Actress: Lupita Nyong'o, "12 Years a Slave"

Best Director: Alfonso Cuarón, "Gravity"

Best Actor: Matthew McConaughey, "Dallas Buyers Club"

Best Actress: Cate Blanchett, "Blue Jasmine"

Best Original Screenplay: "Her"

Best Adapted Screenplay: "12 Years a Slave"

Best Animated Feature: "Frozen"

Best Foreign Feature: “The Hunt”

            Instead: “The Great Beauty”

Best Visual Effects: "Gravity"

Best Cinematography: "Gravity"

Best Costume Design: "American Hustle"

            Instead: “The Great Gatsby”

Best Documentary Feature: "The Act of Killing"

            Instead: “20 Feet from Stardom”

Best Documentary Short: "The Lady in Number 6: Music Saved My Life"

Best Film Editing: "Gravity"

Best Makeup and Hairstyling: "Jackass Presents: Bad Grandpa"

            Instead: “Dallas Buyers Club”

Best Music (Original Score): "Gravity"

Best Music (Original Song): "The Moon Song" from "Her"

            Instead: “Let it Go” (“Frozen”)

Best Production Design: "Her"

            Instead: “The Great Gatsby”

Best Short Film, Animated: "Get a Horse!"

            Instead: “Mr. Hublot”

Best Short Film, Live Action: "The Voorman Problem"

            Instead: “Helium”

Best Sound Editing: "Gravity"

Best Sound Mixing: "Gravity"

And here are my two challengers:

CnAFilmsandAnimation:      Best Foreign Feature: “The Great Beauty”

                                               Best Makeup and Hairstyling: “Dallas Buyers Club”

                                               Punishment: I have to do a haiku about them

Seargent363:                         Best Picture: “American Hustle”

Best Foreign Feature: “The Great Beauty”

Best Make-Up and Hairstyling: “Dallas Buyers Club”

Best Music (Original Song): "Let it Go" (“Frozen”)

Best Production Design: “The Great Gatsby”

Best Short Film (Animated): “Mr. Hublot”

Best Original Screenplay: “American Hustle”

Punishment: I have to sing and dance to ‘The Gummy Bear Song’

So expect some more random awkwardness in future videos!

My Thoughts on: 'The Wolf Among Us Episode 2: Smoke & Mirrors'

Spoilers ahead!

So the second episode of TellTale’s magnificent cartoon point-n-click adventure ‘The Wolf Among Us’ has been out for some time now and I finally got around to watching an LP of it. While the player’s decision has a heavy influence on the developing story, I’m assuming certain aspects remain the same. Still, I will focus on the conclusions in the very end of the episode and throw out a few wild guesses as to what they might mean.

As you know from watching the second episode (or will know now from ignoring my spoiler alert), the body of Snow White found at the end of the first episode is actually not Snow herself, but instead some random troll lady covered in magic (aka ‘glamour’) to make her look like Snow. The murder site is quickly discovered, where someone seemed to have re-enacted the classic fairy tale from the brothers Grimm, with a half-eaten apple, a pretty dress and flower petals all around symbolising the glass coffin. Serving as the big cliff-hanger for the episode, the sheriff discovers an envelope below the bloodied bed with several pictures of ‘Snow’ sleeping on the still-clean bed and then one photograph of Crane (a sort of mayor of all the fabled characters and boss of Snow White) groping under the sleeping Snow’s skirts with a disgusting smile. Crane himself watches the discovery via the magic mirror and proceeds to smash it. End of episode 2.

Now of course the case is clear as day, right? Crane had a thing for Snow, but being the weirdo he is, he paid a hooker to act out his fantasies with her instead… until he murdered her in rage for not being the right woman. Someone needs to stop him!

But hold on! Ignoring our meta-knowledge that they probably won’t reveal the true killer at the end of the second episode (of 5 or 6 parts all in all)… why would Crane bother to sever the troll’s head, dump it in front of the apartments, proceed to hide the body in a river but forget to clean the room? Why on earth would he leave some pictures of him at the crime scene? And for that matter: who took the picture of him getting intimate with the troll? Certainly not himself.

Another thing that bothered me was the ‘coffin’. The troll was asked to lie down on the bed, surrounded by flower petals. Apparently that’s where she died, given all the blood on the bed. However, the circle of petals was only broken at the foot of the bed, indicating that the body was dragged off here. But how could someone (especially someone as weak as Crane) chop a woman’s head off without her struggling and thereby destroying the ring of petals? Wouldn’t the bed or mattress be destroyed where her neck was if he had chopped through her throat? Or did he drug her somehow just to go through a careful operation removing her head without touching the surroundings?

Also: if Beauty was working as front clerk while the troll got slaughtered in the hotel, why didn’t she recognise Crane when he walked in? Was Crane using glamour to hide himself, as well? And why would he want to draw attention to Fabletown by dropping severed heads on his own doorstep, just to bail the sheriff out with more expensive glamour?

I’d say the pictures are just a distraction. Fair enough, Crane’s a pervert and has a thing for Snow White. Doesn’t really prove anything. However, someone murdering fables and then conveniently leaving proof at the site of the murder all pointing at Crane so as to send the sheriff on the wrong track sounds like a good strategy. What appeared to me as the single-most valuable piece of information we got in this episode was TJ’s observation of one person dumping the troll’s body in the river and then ordering a possibly second person to suppress their laughter. I can’t really think of any classical fairy tale characters whose laughter is their prime feature, maybe apart from Rumpelstiltskin. So this shall be my guess until I get more information in the third episode. Any objections?

Gothic Hiatus and New LP

As promised in one of my early channel posts this year, I am working on a new Let's Play, with the first episode going online tomorrow. It's an adventure made by Telltale, but not the title you're thinking of right now.
Also, I might be taking a small hiatus from my Gothic LP. Despite the Gothic franchise still being one of my favourite video games series, I never really liked the last third of any of Piranha Bytes' games. I tried a few recording and they all ended with me giving up dead as a doorknob and completely frustrated. I might have to spend a few training days off screen once more before I'm ready to continue with the main story line.

'Tis the Season...

... to be quite stressed out.

Work's hell for me at the moment. You (hopefully) noticed that I haven't been uploading anything in the last few days/weeks. I do still have a few spare episodes lying around, it's just that I'm never at home. Lately it has been all 'Sleep - Work - Buy Presents - Sleep - Work - Meet Friends - Sleep - Work - More Bloody Presents'. I was planning on a special Christmas episode with me doing something traditional christmas-y in my usual awkward slowliness, but this project shared the same fate as my planned scary video for Halloween... meaning it has been delayed for next year, of course!

However, things will get back to normal somewhen after the holidays. Hope you're alright and have a great time! Merry Christmas!

Videos vs. Melancholy

I've had a pretty awful day. Watching funny videos on YouTube sometimes helps, but to be honest, my list of favourited videos that I keep consulting in such moments is rather small. So do you guys have any funny favourite videos that always cheer you up? If so, send them to me via YouTube or send me a link to cptgreenbear@gmail.com!

November News

Some news regarding my channel:

1. I'm currently on vacation far from home. I was smart enough this time around to prepare some episodes and take them with me so as to upload them from my new location. However, I wasn't smart enough to take the correct episodes with me, so Gothic -72- will be skipped in favour of uploading the next one in line. No worries, that video will get online as soon as possible and nothing significant happened in those 15 minutes other than me trading items.

2. Therefore, there will only be an upload every other day or so... and no thumbnails for now. You may still contact me via comments, PM, Gmail, Twitter etc. In fact, please do so. I have a lot of spare time on my hands right now =P.

3. YouTube is changing its policy once more. The change comes with a heavy emphasis on copyright and apparently my partner programme (TGN) is quite anxious about it. Over the last few months I kept receiving copyright complaints regarding my Saboteur LP. I deleted the first few episodes in question and tried to summarise their content in the next videos' descriptions, but the complaints keep coming and I fear I would have to delete the majority of this LP eventually, anyway. Since I always thought that the Saboteur LP was my lamest one I am not sad to announce that I will now delete the entire bloody thing to avoid any future hustle with YT and EA.

Hope you people are alright.

Help?

I've got a little problem on my hands that I cannot solve on my own. Maybe one of you knows a solution?

As mentioned before, I got auto-connected with Google+ some months ago. G+ was kind enough to create a brand-new page for me that is essentially just mirroring everything I do on YouTube. Owner of this page is my old G+ account that I created with my real name back in the day when Google+ came out and some friends thought we should give it a chance. Since then, I haven't used G+ for anything. The account is just lying around like dead meat and same goes for the auto-created CptGreenbear-page.
Of course I could just ignore this waste of webspace, if it wasn't for the fact that this forced marriage significantly messed up my YouTube website appearance. My inbox was hidden in favour of half a dozen G+ features that I don't need or want.

Using Google (oh the irony!) to search for a solution shows me that I'm not the only one with this problem. 
The simple answer: disconnect the page via YouTube settings.
The tricky answer: this option only works within 14 days of the forced connection. Afterwards, it is permanent. This, of course, is nowhere mentioned on any Google support pages. Oh, and did you ever try to contact the Google support? They state on their feedback side that while they cannot answer any requests personally, they will make sure to mind the feedback in future updates. Yeah. Right...

I then thought I might be able to just delete the page itself. You know, since I'm the owner of the page and all. But no, G+ tells me (and this must have caused quite some laughter at their evil headquarter) to either delete my YouTube account or disconnect it first. The latter being a link that leads me nowhere.

So this is where I am now. I really want to get rid of this connection without sacrificing my YouTube account. I own the YouTube website, the Google+ CptGreenbear page and the old G+ account that funtions as owner to said page. The latter two may get deleted for all I care. Any ideas? Let me know on YouTube or via cptgreenbear@gmail.com!