Dungeons & Dragons Honor Among Thieves (2023)

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My son and I watched Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves over the Memorial Day weekend and really enjoyed it. I honestly didn’t expect it to be very good. But it was fantastic! And, to be honest, I’m not even sure what makes it fantastic. Okay, let me back up a bit before I try to figure that out. Even as much of a fantasy fan as I am – generally speaking – I’ve never been that big on the D&D stuff. Definitely never played the table games. And only have a passing acquaintance with the movies that have been made in the past. OfRead More →

Star Wars 1977

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Yes, Star Wars was originally released on May 25, 1977. Notice I did not say Star Wars: A New Hope because that was not what it was called then. Anyway, my children and I were talking recently about what made Star Wars such a cultural phenomenon. Looking back it’s really difficult to explain exactly what it was like when the first movie came out. That has less to do with the world at time than it does with the movie itself, I think. No one knew what to expect and what we got certainly wasn’t anything like what we might’ve imagined. So where to start?Read More →

The Wonderful Wizard of Oz by Frank L. Baum

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Having grown up on the 1939 movie, literally every Christmas, it’s easy to forget that it was based upon a fairly lengthy series of children’s books by Frank L Baum. The first book, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, was first published on May 17, 1900 and was illustrated by W. W. Denslow, a long time collaborator of Baum.  Having finally gotten around to reading the original books in recent years, I thought it might be fun to celebrate by comparing a couple of images from the original book to the same scene from the 1939 movie. Dorothy in the tornado Okay, honestly those are nothingRead More →

Aang and Po

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Yes, I will admit it, I absolutely adore both the Avatar: The Last Airbender TV series and the Kung Fu Panda movie trilogy. Possibly even more than Scooby Doo. I mean I devour most things Scooby Doo but I also know they have their faults. These two animated “series”, however, are almost perfection personified. Both have to do with martial arts. Each has a level of depth and character development for a children’s series that is incredible to behold. Depth not always found in so-called adult fare, either. The people who put these two series together didn’t just throw some fun at kids. They tellRead More →

The Addams Family

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So have you watched the new Wednesday series on Netflix yet that’s based on the daughter from The Addams Family? If you haven’t, you may be the only one who hasn’t. Just saying. This was really good and I’m not entirely sure why. I know I liked it. My son and I stayed up until around 3 am one night during the holidays to watch all of it. It was one of those “just one more episodes and we’ll stop” situations. Only we didn’t until we were done. So, yeah, I enjoyed it. Although, why? I’m not sure exactly, so I started checking out someRead More →

The Wizard of Oz

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Okay, I’m not even a horror fan but I’m still intrigued. I mean I’ve read the Oz books and I can see where one could find horror in the subject matter. Especially in the later books, there is a lot more downright horror elements than one would expect in fantasy supposedly created for children. So, yeah, I can see it. Now we’re not talking about a feature film here but a short crowd-sourced project. Honestly, I think we’re going to see a lot more crowd-sourcing of creative content in the future. People are just downright fed up with some of the insane decisions major studiosRead More →

Let's get comfortable!

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On the fantasy side, I’ve been spending a lot of time lately reading The Wheel of Time (WoT) series. I’ve honestly decided I’d like to finish the entire series by the end of this year. Well, it’ a goal anyway. Which means I’m trying to read a couple of chapters a day. At least! Since I’m already almost finished with the 8th book (The Path of Daggers), it’s . . . doable. Maybe. The problem is that I think I’m in the middle of what the fans not so fondly call The Slog – the point in the series where Robert Jordan got really, reallyRead More →

binge watching

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Yes, zones. Plural. When I’m in the mood to read, romance novels are my favorite pick. I have authors and series that I’ve read so many times I could probably recite some of them. Since this entire site is devoted to that activity, I won’t go into any particulars here. When I’m in the mood to play, my favorite games bounce somewhere between building and adventure quest games. Which is honestly a weird place to be. Put it this way, I love the stories and puzzles of quest type games but can easily spend hours on good building games. Put the two together and I’mRead More →

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It was nice taking some time off. Didn’t get a lot of reading done but did watch a few new movies. Plus I discovered a couple of new-to-me detective series. We were able to watch both Sonic the Hedgehog 2 & Chip ‘n Dale: Rescue Rangers together as a double feature family movie night. Let me put it this way, they are both very good. But one of them is an absolutely fantastic non-stop action adventure. The other is more “what da heck did I just watch?” meta deliciousness. And yet still very good in its own weird way. Ya only get one guess asRead More →

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I have been fighting my allergies the last few days. I’m either stopped up and can’t breath or constantly have a tissue at my nose. Yech. As a result I haven’t done a lot of anything this week, mainly because my eyes feel blurry half the time. So, while being a couch potato the other day, I was digging around on HBOMax and realized they had The Da Vinci Code. Been so long since I’d seen it, I couldn’t remember exactly what happened in it. So I watched it. Then watched the next one, Angels and Demons. It made for a nice enjoyable evening ofRead More →

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Because I have so many things I want to do on the site right now but my life has been chaos lately. Seriously it’s gotten so bad that I finally had to sit down and go over the “in-progress” stuff I’m supposed to be working on for the site. Mainly because I couldn’t remember some of them and wanted to make sure I still wanted to work on them right now. Oye.  Which kind of turned into an idea for a post. I don’t like doing these “a little bit of everything” posts because I prefer to concentrate on one thing at a time butRead More →

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I do have a couple of longer posts in the works but they aren’t ready yet. Plus, I’ve been having some shoulder problems the last couple of days and not really feeling like doing a lot of typing. So I jumped at the chance to do a quick post even if it is about The Wheel of Time. Again. Anyway, the New York Comic Con 2021 is going on this weekend and a bunch of people related to the new WOT TV series are speaking. As a result a lot of news is dropping. Hourly. This one is of particular interest: My initial reaction? Nice! VeryRead More →

The Wheel of Time

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I had almost decided to skip this week’s post because right now I am on a serious binge of reading the Wheel of Time. So not much else to talk about and several recent posts have already been about WOT. But then I finished Lord of Chaos (#6), started on A Crown of Swords (#7) and wanted to share a couple of thoughts about Robert Jordan’s writing style. Before that, though, let me admit that going right into the next one of these books is unusual for me. They are so big I tend to want a break before starting the next. I didn’t this timeRead More →

The Wheel of Time

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The Wheel of Time book series by Robert Jordan has an immense and devoted fan base. To the point that there are so very many fan sites and channels out there. To put it bluntly, It’s difficult to know where to start. Especially if one hasn’t even heard of the books before. So I thought I’d share the main sites that I – a relative newbie compared to my super-fan son – use to expand my own knowledge. WOT 101 First, if you are a complete newbie to the Wheel of Time – haven’t read the books and/or know basically zilch about them – thenRead More →