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Kevin Klemme
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Mycelia Board Game Review

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December 12, 2023
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December 07, 2023
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River Wild Board Game Review

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November 30, 2023
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Outback Crossing Review

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What MOVIE(s) have you been....seeing? watching?

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16 Dec 2019 10:44 #305158 by jpat
I can see dissing The Irishman some, though I think I liked it better than some here, but Pain and Glory is probably my #1 or #2 film for the year.

I suppose there's some self-fulfilling prophecy here, but I was not all that impressed with A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood. I found Hanks sometimes genuinely moving in the role, but Mr. Rogers was mostly a supporting player in his own movie, with the main focus on an outsider perspective that was far from fresh, engaging, or even baseline likeable.

It seems like my wife and I were one of the few who saw the second remake of Black Christmas, as it's doing very poorly and has received a D+ CinemaScore from opening weekend audiences. I honestly about walked out after about the halfway point until I saw what it was trying to do, and then I was just dismayed--not because I disagreed with the sentiment but because of how leadenly it was handled. It's obviously possible to have both horror and social commentary, but this film fails at being persuasive at either.

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16 Dec 2019 12:31 #305163 by Shellhead
Re-watched The Man with the Golden Gun for the first time in years. It flips the standard Bond script a bit, with Bond seemingly the target of someone else's mission. The redneck sheriff from Live and Let Die returns for a cameo, and is still fun. The villains seemed familiar, and then it clicked. The original Fantasy Island is the divergent timeline where Francisco Scaramanga and Nick Nack retire from the assassin profession and use their wealth to host a setting where guests could live out their fantasies for a price.

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23 Dec 2019 13:12 #305454 by Shellhead
Over the years, I have drifted in the direction of watching more television, because modern television is great for telling longer stories. More character development, and stories are told at a reasonable pace instead of frantically hitting a certain number of plot points within 90 to 120 minutes. And to the extent that I still watch movies, I have spent a disproportionate amount of time watching genre movies, especially science-fiction, superhero, and horror. In recent days, I pushed myself to watch more mainstream fare that I have previously overlooked.

Love, Actually was interesting, as it served up a wide range of rom-com cliches with a star-studded ensemble cast of variously connected characters. Even more interesting was the way the movie shamelessly tried to manipulate my emotions despite some very dodgy circumstances. I work in HR these days, so I was disturbed by the number of storylines in Love, Actually involving co-workers dating. And at least one of the stories seemed more than sympathetic to cheating. Still, the movie managed to really stick the landing and left me with an illusory sense of satisfaction and holiday spirit.

Almost Famous was excellent, with a great cast that was almost famous at the time of filming. As a teenager, I thought that I wanted to be a reporter when I grew up, so I took a couple of journalism classes and worked on the school paper for four years. These days, my writing is often a sloppy afterthought that I squeeze in with my multi-tasking, but I took my writing very seriously as a teen. So I could really identify with the William Miller character. I never got to interview a band, but I did write some concert and album reviews, and once got to interview a popular local disc jockey. Anyway, the movie is great at peeking behind the curtain of fame, raising interesting questions about stars, fans, and fame. Billy Crudup is an under-rated talent who should have broken through after this movie. I normally dislike Kate Hudson, but she was utterly charming as Penny Lane. The soundtrack (arranged by Nancy Wilson of Heart) could easily have been the soundtrack of my youth, and there were several times when the music was perfectly matched up with a scene. I'm not a fan of Frances McDormand, but I respect that she took on a challenging role and did a great job. Patrick Fugit was an outstanding choice for the lead role, able to convey both youth and maturity in just the right mix that each scene required. Like any great movie (and even some frauds like Love, Actually), Almost Famous transcends the immediate subject matter to deal with the human condition and the full range of human emotion.
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26 Dec 2019 10:29 #305515 by DarthJoJo
I guess it's my duty to start this conversation. Rise of Skywalker was a mess. Still better than any of the prequels in that any of the characters were at all engaging, but the writing was even sloppier than Lucas' efforts. Too much was happening too fast for any of it to mean anything. They may as well have started with this movie and just broke it up into a trilogy of its own for as little as anything that happened in Force Awakens or Last Jedi mattered to this one. It's not even hard to find the natural climaxes of these theoretical movies.

It's just disappointing. Disney assembled a really solid cast with great chemistry and squandered it. The first movie was too safe, the second too bold and the third too much an overcorrection. If you're going to make movies by committee, make movies be committee. If you're going to give the reins to auteurs, give the reins to auteurs. You can't do both. It's amazing that the same studio that put together something so much more complex in the Marvel movies couldn't keep it together for just three films.

Knives Out, in contrast, was pretty great. The dumbest car chase in history was a delight as was the final twist and "moral" of the story, if you will. I think the lead got a little lost amongst all the acting going on by Daniel Craig, Chris Evans, Jamie Lee Curtis, Don Johnson, Michael Shannon and all the rest, but I also think that was kind of the point as she wasn't supposed to be like them. Someone a little ways back said that it might be better to wait to see this one at home on DVD, but I enjoyed it on the big screen. Every shot was filled with details that would have been lost on anything much smaller.
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26 Dec 2019 10:58 #305518 by Josh Look
I was kind of hoping we could just...not...talk about Star Wars. I wasn’t disappointed by it, but I’m just so damned tired of talking about Star Wars. Never thought that would happen.
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26 Dec 2019 12:00 #305520 by Joebot

DarthJoJo wrote: I guess it's my duty to start this conversation. Rise of Skywalker was a mess. Still better than any of the prequels in that any of the characters were at all engaging, but the writing was even sloppier than Lucas' efforts. Too much was happening too fast for any of it to mean anything. They may as well have started with this movie and just broke it up into a trilogy of its own for as little as anything that happened in Force Awakens or Last Jedi mattered to this one. It's not even hard to find the natural climaxes of these theoretical movies.

It's just disappointing. Disney assembled a really solid cast with great chemistry and squandered it. The first movie was too safe, the second too bold and the third too much an overcorrection. If you're going to make movies by committee, make movies be committee. If you're going to give the reins to auteurs, give the reins to auteurs. You can't do both. It's amazing that the same studio that put together something so much more complex in the Marvel movies couldn't keep it together for just three films.


It's really shocking how sloppy the sequel trilogy was under Disney. That simply should not happen. The other trilogies (for better or worse) had a consistency to them because they all came out of George Lucas' head. Why didn't Kathleen Kennedy just walk down the hall, knock on Kevin Feige's door, and ask for some basic pointers on how to do this? How can Disney: Marvel be SO GOOD at the Big Picture stuff, but Disney: Star Wars be so bad at it?? It's insane.

I don't have much to say about Rise of Skywalker beyond just the unfortunate realization that I got old. Simplistic, kinda dumb space adventures probably aren't for me anymore. I know people are going to say, "They're just fun movies! Turn your brain off and have fun!" I get that impulse, and I'm sympathetic to it. But even so, I still need characters who have goals and obstacles, and who change and grow. What was Finn's goal in this trilogy? What was Poe trying to do? I need plots that strive for some thematic resonance beyond just "Remember that thing you liked as kid? Here's move of it!"

Abrams is a gutless coward and a fucking hack who has one mode: nostalgia pandering. Every potentially bold and interesting and emotional moment in this movie is walked back (sometimes within the next scene!). He's scared to death of facing the consequences of his own story.

I'm just glad it's over. I'm curious to see how The Mandalorian wraps up, and then I'll be fine with no more new Star Wars content for a while.
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26 Dec 2019 12:18 - 26 Dec 2019 12:19 #305521 by Josh Look
Hey, guess what? It’s not up to you how successful these films were! It’s not up to me, who liked them all, either! Nope, like it or not, it’s up to the kids who grew up on them. How do I know? The prequels have a noticeable fan base now. And I don’t mean the apologists who accepted them when they first came out because it was Star Wars and speaking ill of them would somehow make them less of fan in the pre-social media era. No, I mean people who legitimately love them, love them over the OT and the ST even. Shouldn’t happen because they’re objectively terrible, right? Yet here we are, the kids for whom the prequels were “their Star Wars” are grown up and those movies are by far more accepted now, and no, it isn’t in light of the ST being “so bad that the prequels look good.” In 10-15 years, these movies will have the same legacy, bolstered further by the adults who also liked them when they first came out and TLJ will be considered a top tier SW film.

No, I’m not falling back on the tired “they’re for kids” argument that suggests they’re beyond criticism, what I’m saying is that the criticism of them is ultimately pointless.

Sorry, I don’t make the rules!
Last edit: 26 Dec 2019 12:19 by Josh Look.

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26 Dec 2019 12:40 #305522 by Shellhead
I loved the original Star Wars movie. I can't call it A New Hope, because that's a boring suburb of Minneapolis. The Empire Strikes Back was interesting, but it really bothered me that the first and only minority character to that point ended up being a traitor. I hated the Ewoks so much that I skipped the prequel trilogy with zero regrets. I went into The Force Awakens with an open mind, but it turned out to be nothing but a rehash of the original movie. I genuinely enjoyed Rogue One, so I went into The Last Jedi with an open mind. But it was a hot mess, combining some really good and really bad ideas. And the backlash from the more toxic members of the fanbase alienated me. So I told myself that I would only see the final Star Wars movie if the reviews were good. The reviews are not good, and I don't take the box office to prove anything except that a lot of people don't have any standards for their entertainment. So I'm not going to see the new Star Wars movie, ever. I would rather hang on to my remaining positive memories of the original Star Wars. I also don't plan to watch The Mandalorian, which sounds like a straightforward ripoff of Lone Wolf and Cub. To hell with Star Wars, it's been a weak franchise since 1980 and there are so many better science-fiction stories that deserve adaptation.
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26 Dec 2019 14:11 #305524 by Ah_Pook
Hot star wars takes!

My hot take is I'll see the new one at some point, i liked the previous two pretty well and in sure this one is precisely more of that. Itll be a fine way to spend an afternoon, the fx will be nice, whatever.

I watched Muppet Christmas Carol and National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation with my wife yesterday, as is our tradition. Those are A+ good movies to watch on Christmas.
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26 Dec 2019 14:18 #305525 by Michael Barnes
I have LOTS of opinions about Rise of Skywalker. But like Josh, I just really don’t want to talk about it. I have a TON of things to say about it. Some good, some bad. But nope, I’m just not going to get into it either way.
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26 Dec 2019 14:32 #305527 by jeb
I wanted to see LITTLE WOMEN or RISE OF SKYWALKER but youth carried the day and we say SPIES IN DISGUISE yesterday. It's so utterly there. Like all these Pixar ripoffs. HOME, ICE AGE (same studio), SHREK, HTTY DRAGON, &c. Just boring bleh films. Cashing in on kids and their parents like me with minimal effort. The only standout for me has been ZOOTOPIA, which still follows the formula, it just has better jokes. Anyway: kill the mom, nice beats might, dick jokes, poop jokes, &c.

Trying to get some of the family together for YOUNG SHERLOCK HOLMES, which I loved as a kid. Maybe it's not aged well. It's on Amazon Prime.
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26 Dec 2019 15:33 - 26 Dec 2019 15:34 #305529 by WadeMonnig
Young Sherlock Holmes is still great. Not sure if it invented the post credit scene but i like to think so.
Last edit: 26 Dec 2019 15:34 by WadeMonnig.
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26 Dec 2019 18:59 - 26 Dec 2019 21:00 #305534 by Gary Sax

Joebot wrote: I don't have much to say about Rise of Skywalker beyond just the unfortunate realization that I got old. Simplistic, kinda dumb space adventures probably aren't for me anymore. I know people are going to say, "They're just fun movies! Turn your brain off and have fun!" I get that impulse, and I'm sympathetic to it. But even so, I still need characters who have goals and obstacles, and who change and grow. What was Finn's goal in this trilogy? What was Poe trying to do? I need plots that strive for some thematic resonance beyond just "Remember that thing you liked as kid? Here's move of it!"


Yeah, this resonates with me, too. I've been catching the Disney ones later and later, though I found the second movie pretty brave for such a big budget movie. Keeping it vague, I was very disappointed to find out that lineage "mattered" in the third film after the second film did such a really effective job, to my mind, of making the other movies' focus on heredity and lineage feel sketchy and distasteful.

I mean, you're perfectly allowed to do it but I can't say I understand the takes "I have lots of thoughts but you can't know them" or "I don't want to talk about star wars and it doesn't matter what you think about star wars because it doesn't affect their success" in a thread explicitly about people's takes about movies after seeing them.
Last edit: 26 Dec 2019 21:00 by Gary Sax.
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26 Dec 2019 19:28 - 26 Dec 2019 20:18 #305535 by Josh Look
It’s just exhausting now. And it’s pointless. These movies are probably going to endure. I’ve been to Disney World, I’ve watched how kids react to the sequel trilogy, like it or not your opinions, like my opinions, on Star Wars don’t matter. It’s not going away and I don’t want it to.
Last edit: 26 Dec 2019 20:18 by Josh Look.

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26 Dec 2019 20:59 #305537 by Gary Sax
What is the purpose of criticism? Is it just to affect sales?

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