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Kevin Klemme
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Mycelia Board Game Review

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River Wild Board Game Review

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Outback Crossing Review

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

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15 May 2022 18:44 #333057 by dysjunct

WadeMonnig wrote:

ChristopherMD wrote: Doctor Strange Stephen and the Multiverse of Madness - I'm not a big Doctor Strange fan but I like Sam Raimi's films so not too surprising I liked this.

Sam Raimi really Sam Raimied the hell out of this movie. It's filled with his signature touches.


I saw this last night and really enjoyed all the Raimi-tastic action. I didn't know until about an hour before the movie that it was a Raimi joint. Loved the Bruce Campbell cameo, the '73 Olds cameo. The music dropping out at key points and the camera zooming in on the actor's ragged breathing. So good.

As far as everything else, it was a fine Marvel movie that advanced the metaplot of the MCU just fine. Acting was great, effects were hyper-kinetic.
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15 May 2022 23:40 #333065 by hotseatgames
I watched Old on HBO. Resort-goers wind up on a secluded beach, only to discover that they are rapidly aging. Hijinx ensue.

I won't spoil anything, but I'd say this film is squarely average. Your time could be worse spent, and could also be better spent. Maybe flip a coin.

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16 May 2022 10:54 #333076 by Gregarius
I saw Everything, Everywhere, All at Once over the weekend, and loved it. It competes for one of the most accurate titles, because it is just all over the place. It's comedy, drama, sci-fi, action, kung-fu, horror, absurdism. And it all comes at you at an astounding pace. It's amazing your brain can keep up, but the writing/directing is so tight you know things without understanding how you know them.

I would say it's big-screen worthy just so you can get the full immersion without distractions, but honestly that's how I feel about every movie. Going to the theater is a ritualistic experience for me.
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16 May 2022 12:46 #333081 by jason10mm
Firestarter on Peacock. This is the Blum house on with Zac Efron. It is a pretty faithful adaptation I think, much like the Drew Barrymore film from the 80s. I can no longer seperate the book from that film regarding the ending, but this film deviates from the 80s film and I'm not sure it is book accurate either. Sequel perhaps?

Anyway, the tight Blum house budget is on display here, it feels cheap. Unlike the slick Invisible Man this version just plods along, not really diving into anything or playing with the themes other than a faint acknowledgement that pyrokinesis is kind of a superpower. A bit disappointing to be honest and not as fun as the 80s version.

The real star here is Zac Efrons face. A stoic, immovable, plastic mask that I initially thought was just bad deaging but nope, that's his face now. He's still in his 30's, right?

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17 May 2022 14:15 #333097 by the_jake_1973
I had the opposite reaction to the new Firestarter. Where I remember Drew Barrymore seemingly more emotionally believable, the new actor was decidedly not. I agree with the poor RT score on this one.

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17 May 2022 15:18 #333099 by Shellhead
Not all comic book movies features superheroes. Ghost World (2001) is a coming-of-age story featuring Thora Birch, Steve Buscemi, and Scarlet Johansson. Birch and Johansson are teenage besties who have just graduated from high school with no plan except to get an apartment and become roommates. Instead, their friendship fades as Birch's character rebels against everything in sight while Johansson's character embraces normalcy. Birch becomes fond of an eccentric older guy played by Buscemi, who introduces her to some classic low-fi blues music. I have mixed feelings about this movie. The lead character is a selfish, stubborn pain-in-the-ass who disappoints everyone around her, but the writing and the acting and the wry humor elevate the movie to a point where I would describe it as good but perhaps not for everybody.

Three Days of the Condor (1975) nicely captures the paranoia of the post-Watergate period in America. Robert Redford was 38 at the time, but easily passes for late 20s in his lead role as a CIA researcher who accidentally gets caught up in intrigue and treachery within the agency. Faye Dunaway is fine as a bystander who is pulled into the mess, and Max von Sydow gets a few good lines as a mercenary assassin. The story strains credibility as the bodies pile up, and the ending feels like a tidy deus ex machina due to an inability to translate the entire book into a two-hour movie. Redford is good here, and makes a solid case for his subsequent casting in All the President's Men. If you squint, Three Days of the Condor possibly works as a prequel to Sneakers (1992).
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18 May 2022 15:40 #333124 by Gregarius
I love both of those. Ghost World is definitely on a unique wavelength, and may not appeal to many.

If you haven't seen it already, The Conversation is an excellent companion to Condor.

Additionally, Soderbergh's recent KIMI is an updated combination of those two, and is quite good.
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19 May 2022 22:23 #333155 by ChristopherMD
Everything Everywhere All At Once - I'm not sure I got the point but it was a good movie with some fun stuff. I like that Michelle Yeoh is 59 years old and still kicking ass in starring roles.
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20 May 2022 12:11 #333171 by hotseatgames
I watched Dear Evan Hansen on HBO. This is a theatrical conversion of a Broadway musical, and focuses on suicide, depression, anxiety, etc. It is sad, but quite good. If you hate musicals, this will not sway you.
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21 May 2022 21:16 #333189 by Legomancer
This past week I went through Letterboxd and logged as "watched" every movie I've ever seen. Not a tremendous undertaking, the final tally comes to around 830. That's an average of 16 a year.

I just don't see a lot of movies I guess.
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23 May 2022 06:44 - 23 May 2022 10:31 #333212 by sornars
I saw Everything Everywhere All at Once this weekend. I'll admit that I went into this with a bit of trepidation thinking this was being hyped up beyond what it could deliver but I ended up being blown away by it. I'm really glad I had an expiring gift card at the cinema I needed to use! I think it's better to go into it without much context so I won't go into details but I really found it incredible. It does such a fantastic job of capturing the first and second gen immigrant experience.
Last edit: 23 May 2022 10:31 by sornars.
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23 May 2022 12:27 #333223 by dysjunct

dysjunct wrote: The Spawn Cultural/Historical Education, Movie Edition (SCHEME) project continues apace:

ALADDIN (1992). Never actually saw this before, I was a teenager when it came out and too cool for Disney. Had the Disney cultural depiction warning at the front and I can see the need — everyone except Our Hero and Heroine had a prominent accent and the villains were so, so swarthy. But boy, what a movie. The plot and songs were fine, but absolutely gorgeous animation, so fully realized and really a complete worldview expressed dynamically onscreen. RIP Robin Williams and Gilbert Gottfried. Both of them took the movie to the next level.

THE JUNGLE BOOK (1967). Another disclaimer movie, I guess because the monkeys spoke some variant of AAVE? Didn’t seem as necessary to me as the one in Aladdin, but no one’s hiring me as their cultural sensitivity reader, so don’t trust me on this. Has kind of a picaresque feel to it for large parts of the movie, which makes it come off as a bit random. But the two main songs are stone classics. Gorgeous animation, although you see some hints of the decline coming that would plague Disney for the next 20 years.


Continuing with taking the spawn through the classics:

THE ARISTOCATS (1970). Decent enough, but still suffers from the episodic slapstick elements that really sum up the Disney Doldrums of the 60s-80s. Makes it feel like a Saturday morning cartoon -- I love the golden age of Warner Bros. and will still watch the Bugs Bunny classics today, but it's not what Disney is best at. The (literal) jazz cats are great.

101 DALMATIONS (1961). Better -- the backgrounds really do it for me in this one, lovely stippling and sponge work to make both dreary London nights, breezy London springtimes, and the dour countryside where the pups are held captive. Amusing fun fact: the brief wedding scene (where the humans are married, along with their dogs) was changed to be more secular at the last minute, due to fears that people would be offended if dogs exchanged religious vows.
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23 May 2022 13:16 #333226 by Shellhead
For a very long time, I have been intending to watch The Last Waltz (1978), the Martin Scorsese documentary of the farewell concert of The Band. I finally saw it via Amazon Prime, but they may only have it for a limited time because it was a free sample from some other streaming site.

The Band is one of those lesser-known but highly influential bands, somewhat like the Velvet Underground. Originally known as The Hawks, they were the backing band for Canadian rockabilly singer Ronnie Hawkins in the late 50's/early '60s. In the mid-60s, they backed Bob Dylan for a couple of years, then did several albums on their own. Their music ranged from folk to country rock, and they had three hits that you may have heard: The Weight, Up On Cripple Creek, and The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down. I have nothing nice to say about the Confederacy, but The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down is such a great song that I forgive the sentiment every time.

The Last Waltz was intended to be their final performance, and included a Thanksgiving dinner for the audience of 5,000 fans. The documentary is excellent, with camera shots from a variety of angles and nice coverage of individual singers and instrumental solos. It's like the musical equivalent of good hockey coverage, with a camera crew that is adept at following the puck. The Band only had a few hits, but this concert was amazing for the killer line-up of guest performances, including: Bob Dylan, Joni Mitchell, Neil Young, Emmylou Harris, Muddy Waters, Eric Clapton, and Van Morrison... with most of them in their prime. Each guest star performed one of their own hits, with the Band ably backing them up.

Country rock isn't one of my favorite genres, but I enjoyed nearly song in this movie due to the quality of the musicians. Band member Robbie Robertson steals the limelight in most of the intercut interviews between each song, but it's understandable because he is reasonably articulate and photogenic compared to the rest of the group. I also didn't mind because I am a fan of Robertson's first two solo albums.
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23 May 2022 14:09 #333228 by jason10mm
An odd req from me but the new D+ Chip n' Dales Rescue Rangers film is a rather grown-up look at celebrity, fame, nostalgia, hollywood, bootlegging, drug addiction, social media whoredom, police corruption, and muppet fights all set in the Roger Rabbit universe with a BAZILLION cameos, sight gags, nostalgic smart bombs, and juuuuuuuust enough kids stuff to keep the little ones sorta entertained while the geeks in the room revel at the ET/Batman crossover event you never knew you wanted, how horrible the Sonic movie might have been had they not tweaked his look, just what Rocky from the Paw Patrol COULD do to someones balls, how does a sock puppet walk around, could gumby kill a man in a fight (answer is mostly likely yes), does a mouse and a fly couple lay mammalian maggots, eggs, or what, on and on. This is one of the most densely sight gag laden films (kinda like Ready Player One but a little smarter I think) I have ever witnessed and the actual movie itself ain't half bad even if kids will be totally bewildered at the criminal's plan.

This is a bizarre film that walks the line between family fun and adult appeal in an amazing way. It is 100% safe for all ages because it uses double entrendres, adult level inference, and "blink and you missed it" jokes to hint at everything so there are very few "daddy...what does that mean?" awkward conversations other than trying to explain what a bootleg is.

If this is the end result of amalgamating a trillion IPs under one roof, bring it on! (though it hits plenty of non-Disney owned things so it mut be using some other form of pprotection from infringement like being a parody or something)
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23 May 2022 14:14 #333230 by Not Sure

Shellhead wrote: Country rock isn't one of my favorite genres, but I enjoyed nearly song in this movie due to the quality of the musicians. Band member Robbie Robertson steals the limelight in most of the intercut interviews between each song, but it's understandable because he is reasonably articulate and photogenic compared to the rest of the group. I also didn't mind because I am a fan of Robertson's first two solo albums.


Being the only one not absolutely wasted may have helped there too. This is the film that was famous for having had to rotoscope the gigantic coke booger out of Neil Young's nose during his closeups (back in the pre-digital age).

Great film, damaged people. My favorite line will always be Richard Manuel saying that he wanted to call the band "The Honkies". I've had the chance to see this in an actual theater, which is more important from a soundtrack perspective than visual. If you're watching it, use the good speakers.

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