The Gaming Den

I don't know about rocked, but I was impressed by both series of Derry Girls.

As an aside, they did recycle a joke (James interrupts Michelle to state that they all understand her innuendo, Michelle clarifies it anyway), got me wondering, when does re-using the same joke turn into a running joke?

EDIT: Fixed my tags before anyone called me up on them, woo!

Shazam was fun with my kids. I don't know if I'd want to watch it on my own, but I'm be happy to have it in the rotation of movies they like to rewatch.

I'm liking season 5 of Black Mirror on Netflix. I usually start out thinking I know exactly where it's going at the start of each episode but stick around and receive pleasant surprises. It's my routine lately when kids and missus are in bed that I'll watch one episode as my wind down before going to bed myself. I wouldn't call it "feel good" by any stretch, but somehow I feel good and enjoy it each time. (edit: ok, some are downers, but I really liked the Ashley Too one which was the most recent one I saw)

I haven't even seen all of the first 4 seasons, so I'm looking forward to watching those too once I finish with this season.

With the exception of the Dystopian Uber Episode, the new season of Black Mirror was a huge step up from previous seasons.

I finally watched the first episode of the new Voltron on Netflix with my children. They all really enjoyed it. I used to watch Voltron but it was before the days of streaming so I'm sure I never really saw episodes in the proper order. I enjoyed it. In the first 50 minute episode they established what the Lions are, what Voltron is, why this matters, etc.

Knowing things from the original cartoon, I'm expecting some changes to the pilot line-up. I find it interesting that Lance is the blue-lion pilot instead of the red-lion pilot.

So I took the kids (12, 8, 4) to Spiderman: Homecoming. Other than a preview that included an alligator eating someone, nothing too scary (the youngest ADORES super heroes). Everyone enjoyed the film. I'm not super-up-to-speed on decades of comic lore, but I could tell that the post-credits scenes included some major reveals.

I don't know enough about them to say much, but here's a link. Spoilers included.

An alligator eating someone...?

You mean the Wilhelm scream?

I suspect he means they saw the trailer for Crawl before the main feature.

angelfromanotherpin wrote:I suspect he means they saw the trailer for Crawl before the main feature.

That looks... awful.

Shrapnel wrote:

angelfromanotherpin wrote:I suspect he means they saw the trailer for Crawl before the main feature.

That looks... awful.

Yeah - that's the one.

I saw a longer trailer at a different movie - this one was really short. But the point of the movie is that a man and his daughter are stuck in their house during a hurricane and a giant man-eating crocodile is in the house with them.

Re: Far From Home, I felt that the computer animation never detracted from the film. Although I liked Black Panther, the 'final fight' among the Vibranium Ore trains had me rolling my eyes the whole time. There's a limit to how much obvious animation I can take in a live action film. The animation I noticed in this film was primarily animation of robots rather than people, so it didn't take me to the uncanny valley in the same way.

Minor spoiler about motivations in the next section.

During this movie Peter Parker is trying to balance his desire to do normal kid things (like get a girlfriend who likes him for who he is, not Spiderman) versus what he feels is his responsibility to embrace the hero's mantle and save the world. It's a more convincing dilemma than it would be for an older superhero.

Shrapnel wrote:

angelfromanotherpin wrote:I suspect he means they saw the trailer for Crawl before the main feature.

That looks... awful.

It looks amazing.

Spoilers for Far From Home:

I don't know how I didn't guess in advance that Mysterio would be a perfect fit as fake news: the supervillain, but it worked really well.

Chamomile wrote:Spoilers for Far From Home:

I don't know how I didn't guess in advance that Mysterio would be a perfect fit as fake news: the supervillain, but it worked really well.

Major spoilers included in a question regarding antagonist motivations below...

So I get that establishing himself as a hero would give him a seat at the table to influence the world, and he sees himself as an improvement over Stark, but he surely can't believe that there will be OTHER real threats that will need to be solved. Saving London seems like it might help get him established in the short term, but what does success look like when something else bad happens?

An army of Drones projecting visual illusions could fuck up a lot of threats. It would have solved the original Avengers army of Chitari problem.

I was pleasantly surprised by Stranger Things 3.

I was pretty meh on seasons 1 and 2, and watched them more out of boredom than anything. I'm genuinely not sure what specifically was different about ST3* that made me actually enjoy it, but it's definitely the high point of the series, so far. Hopefully they keep improving (better treatment of the characters who aren't white cishet males would be cool).

*Rn all I got is that Hopper was depicted as the complete asshole I always knew him to be.

I watched Toy Story 4 with my younger children this evening. I don't know anyone who doesn't like the movies, and this one works as well as any of them.

My Eight Year Old: "This movie is touching my heart."

The movie also included a longer trailer than the last one I saw for Frozen 2. I'm actually pretty excited about it - Frozen isn't a bad start for some D&D inspiration. The trailer included this line spoken by one of the trolls:

We have always feared Elsa's powers were too much for this world. Now we must hope they are enough.

I'm excited to see it.

Prak wrote:I'm genuinely not sure what specifically was different about ST3* that made me actually enjoy it,

Russians and meat monsters. That's your answer.

The 8th episode of Revolutionary Girl Utena.

It had the best kind of stupidity while I was stressed out.

Also Saionji and Touga look like pallete-swapped versions of each other to me, so seeing them together makes me less confused.

Detective Pikachu didn't suck! And my son watched it all the way through! And he liked it, too!

I’m really enjoying John Green’s podcast, Anthropocene Reviewed. It’s informative and funny.

I have fallen in love with the new Fab 5 from Netflix's Queer Eye reboot.

They're not just more diverse in ethnicity and religion, but also in job. It was smart of them to put a social worker on the team to help deal with people's psychology. The new Fab 5 are also not perfect - they are often challenged as much as their existence challenges. I am in love with the positivity. It really brightens my day to watch.

So, I got around to watching Tuca and Bertie, which is good. It's not great for my anxiety (or probably yours), but it's really funny in doses I can handle. It's two idiot friends who are also birds, dealing with anxiety and the worst parts of modern society.

Also, we only get one season. They just cancelled it.

Oh, so I saw Crawl (the movie with the trailer where someone gets eaten by an alligator before S-M:FFH). It was actually surprisingly good, I mean, yeah, it was a movie about alligators eating people but it was really well done overall.

Basic synopsis- a super heavy hurricane hits Florida, a woman has to go to her parents' old house to find her dad, and they get trapped in the crawlspace by an alligator. Water rises and they have to find a way to get out.

The movie does a really good job of making you care about its main characters. It provides plenty of gore with alligators killing people other than the mains, the mains are in real peril, and get beaten up, and they could die at any moment, but they survive. The movie doesn't waste the build up.

My only real issue with the movie is when main swimmer woman outswims multiple alligators, because she's a competitive swimmer with a strong drive.
...note, even Michael Phelps' top speed is, like, a third of the top speed of an alligator.

So, this is old, but I just discovered it today and am going to share it with you all.

I present, Chumbawamba's The Day the Nazi Died song.

Thanks.