WarGalley

I'm late to the party but I'm 4 episodes into The Rings of Power. It's visually stunning and the high quality of the production is very apparent. I love the absolutely gorgeous scenery and cities, costumes, races, and the (visual) depiction thus far of magic. Unfortunately that's about as deep as it gets. I don't find my self caring for any of the storylines, and I'm not sure I even know what the story is beyond "there is an evil rising." I don't find myself really caring for any of the characters even though I want to root for a show that appeared to spare no expense except perhaps in the writing department. Literally the only reason I keep playing the next episode is because of the eye candy of it all. I plan to finish the season and I hope it grows on me more as it goes on.

I do recommend the book if you haven’t read it.

I bought the Nintendo Switch during the pandemic solely for Breath of the Wild. First console I've owned since N64 and first game I've owned since Halo 2 back in college. Even though I've beaten the game, I still have one last section of the map to unlock which I had been saving until Tears of the Kingdom was released. Welp that day has come. I definitely got my money's worth out of it and am looking forward to TotK. Also, I bought Skyrim (for Switch) a couple of months ago and have played it like twice. It just hasn't grabbed me. The mechanics and camera tracking feel so clunky and I can't fight for shit. Anyone else have that problem when they got started? Feel like I should power through it since I paid for it but I'm probably just going to jump right into Tears of the Kingdom.

I too was skeptical but there’s no sex in the movie and the age gap is a central premise with the female character being highly aware of it. We also see her background life and experiences with men of her age and older and the overall development of her character does feel natural. YMMV.

I watched Licorice Pizza on Amazon Prime. I really liked this movie despite being skeptical about a coming of age drama that focuses on the relationship between a sheltered 25 year old woman and a suave and confident 15 year old teenager. The movie really immerses you in 1972 San Fernando Valley and includes a couple of great character performances from the 2 leads and an excellent soundtrack. I totally bought into the culture of the era and into the possibility of this kind of relationship blossoming amid their unique lifestyles. I recommend.

I didn’t have that issue. Maybe it was the screen the image was being projected on?

I genuinely thought this was a video game trailer.

Continuing my fantasy binge, I've been watching Campaign 1 of Critical Role on youtube. I started randomly on episode 49 after watching the series on Amazon Prime, and now I'm on episode 78 approaching their confrontation with Thordak. I cannot believe I am watching other people play a table-top game.. much less one where each episode is ~4 hours and I've now burned through 29 of them. It's strangely addicting and wonderful. Despite being a fantasy fan, I never thought of myself as being into something like this.. I'm not a gamer, don't think I've ever used Twitch and have never played DnD or any tabletop game beyond Magic: The Gathering when I was in junior high school. The Critical Role cast members have great charisma and team chemistry. The humor is genuine and funny and the plot keeps moving in interesting ways and fascinating settings. I want to join them on any given gaming session and I feel like I'd fit right in.

ESPN has an NBA bracket you can enter into for free. They've hidden the prize awards as far as I can tell but my friend says it's worth it (I think you can even win tickets to the finals). http://www.espn.com/nba/bracket

Man even though I've seen The Batman, I'm still amazed by that make-up job. Definitely got Sopranos (crossed with Al Capone) vibes.

I haven't seen S4 or S5 yet but I'd probably put Gomorrah on the top tier as well.

I saw Dungeons and Dragons over the weekend with a big group of friends. During the first 30min - 1 hour, I had fears that it would be worse than Cocaine Bear (which we had all gone and seen a couple of weeks ago to mixed reaction). However once they got the character introductions, backstory and world setting out of the way, the movie became much more enjoyable and actually funny in places (though I may have missed a few DnD references/jokes since I don't play the game). There is a wagon heist scene in the middle to 3/4 way point of the movie which was pretty fun and I generally enjoyed the generous and creative use of magic throughout the movie. Worth checking out overall in my opinion especially if you're going to see in theaters with a group of friends.

Best scene

I think you're thinking of Peter Mensah in Spartacus.

Holy shit! I was a senior at Stuyvesant on 9/11 too! Liz and I had lockers pretty close to each other senior year and I knew a couple of others in the IMDB cast list as well (though not very well).

Yeah this looks just like a Netflix movie. I also wonder why Evan’s even left Marvel if he’s going to do projects like this. Surely being Captain America pays better than this dreck.

Rome has a lot of good scenes but I think my favorite (at least with Vorenus) is “I AM A SON OF HADES!!”

Coming off the Vox Machina binge, I was looking for another fantasy show. So I watched The Witcher: Blood Origin. Terrible. Bad acting, cheap production, stupid character decisions and rushed arcs. It did not satisfy.

Cocaine Bear was a terrible movie. My expectations were already low going in but it was worse. I don't think I laughed for the first 30 minutes and many of the jokes afterward didn't land.

Finished Season 2 of The Legend of Vox Machina. Loved it and agree the second season was better, I think because of the villains and because they were able to juggle all of the character personal journeys with the main storyline. It generally felt like one long journey versus an episodic storyline of episodes. I particularly like the high fantasy setting of Exandria (I don't actually read a lot of fantasy these days) and the combination of creatures and settings were great to see visually. The raunchy comedy and some of the dumb humor was also a great entertaining relief amidst the drama and lore being explored. I particularly liked the visit to the Fey realm and the Archfey Saundor. Did anyone else think his (Saundor) depiction was Spoiler S2E08 - Echo Tree

Gotcha. Was Scanlan getting a broom one of those times?

I'm enjoying the second season and have never played DnD. I don't even know how to play. I started watching some of the Critical Role game sessions behind Campaign 1 just to learn more but still have no clue.

I watched The Many Saints of Newark. This was ... not good. After watching it, I was so mystified I had to double check to see if David Chase was actually involved in it's production. The movie tried to shoe-horn in these references to the series that just did not work for me (like the 'makings of a varsity athlete' line). I also felt like they were trying to re-create character ticks and mannerisms for purely nostalgia purposes. Watching the actor playing Paulie felt like watching an amateur night audition. And what the fuck was up with Silvio's hair? I know Chase probably wanted to address the fan reaction to Silvio's artificially-perfect hairdo from the series but if the TV show ending was flipping the bird to the audience, this hairline thing was something on the level of public indecency. It's been awhile since I've re-watched the TV show but some of the events surrounding Dickie Moltisanti didn't feel right even if perhaps the show was meant to mislead us. Rather disappointing.

Man I was looking forward to this one entirely because of Kang and the possibility of him being far more developed than Thanos was going into Infinity War. But 55% on 114 reviews on RT is the worst Marvel movie rating I can remember in quite some time. They're all almost all over 80% fresh despite being very formulaic summer action movies. I was planning to see this one in theaters but now I'm reconsidering.

I'm in the middle of watching Season 1 and I too was quite surprised by how much I've been enjoying this show -- which is weird since it's adult fantasy. I also absolutely love the idea behind it's creation. A bunch of voice actors just started filming their DnD campaign and then turned it into an animated show via crowdfunding. Whole concept is feel good.