After many years, I finally got around to watching Avengers: Endgame. For the most part, I thought it was a pretty good movie. Though the first half hour just seemed so depressing to me.

And, I realize that it was supposed to be a final movie, so there would be a lot of loose ends to tie up at the end. Still, I wasn't expecting a finale similar to Return of the King ​​​​​​, where it seemed like the movie went on for at least another half an hour after the heroes winning.

All in all though, I am glad that I finally decided to watch it.

I finally carved out three and a half hours to watch Avatar 2. Then I was having device issues with both D+ and HBO, which added another 20 minutes to the evening.

Anyway, it was fine. Pretty much what I expected: Nice effects, good action, and way overlong for the story it was telling.

I saw the original Avatar on a giant IMAX 3-D screen, and that knocked me out. Watching it at home later was pretty meh.

Watched 65, wasn't bad with an interesting enough premise. I guess Pedro Pascal was too busy?

Board Game Weekend was lots of fun - played lots of games *and* watched a few movies to boot. My grandson is a huge Jurassic Park fan (because of the dinosaurs) and wanted to watch the last Jurassic World movie (Dominion - which I have on BR and was planning to watch at some point this month anyway). So Friday night we took a break to watch the movie. I managed to get in a couple more as I was up before everyone else so just watched shorter 50s SF fare waiting on them to get up.

Best "New to Us" game played was "King of Tokyo" - a Yahtzee like "King of the Hill" type game where one person is "King of Tokyo" and the other players are trying to take them down. The "King" is also attacking the players outside Tokyo and, if they get hit by someone, can choose to leave Tokyo forcing the player who damaged them to become King. You win by either being the last person standing *or* by getting to 20 points before anyone else. When I got home yesterday afternoon I went to my daughter's house to play games with them and took "King of Tokyo" along. It was a hit at their house, too.

I watched the new 4K release of Blade Runner: The Final Cut on Saturday, and it looks spectacular. Ridley Scott builds a world that is so incredibly grim and gross, yet I weirdly wanna live in it. I realized that I've never watched anything other than The Final Cut. Are the other cuts worth watching?


King of Tokyo is so much fun! I'm glad y'all enjoyed it! I had some family over on Saturday, and we played a very long game of Arkham Horror, a cooperative board game based on H.P. Lovecraft's Cthulhu mythos.

Worst movie of my challenge so far is Future World, a C-grade Mad Max rip-off written by James Franco and featuring him and Milla Jovovich in scenery-chewing supporting roles. Lucy Liu and Snoop Dogg also appear.

While you're avoiding Future World, also avoid The Guardians (2017). It's a Russian rip off of the MCU films - mostly a Fantastic 4 and X-Men mash up. There's a martial artist girl who freezes things and can turn invisible, guy who turns into a bear (no superpowers in bear form outside what a bear can do though has a huge gun that appears out of nowhere), a speedster/martial artist who wields some ridiculously large, sharp, and curved blades, and a guy who can control rocks - assuming there are any around (so the system who brought them together as a team create a "rock suit" for him). They're brought together to take down the man who initial gave them their powers as he's gone off his rocker and full tilt rogue bad guy (a Bane clone - so there's some DC tossed in for good measure).

Supposedly it did quite well in Russia - must have been a very cold night with too much vodka being consumed... I couldn't remember just where I purchased my copy so checked Amazon to find it has 4 stars from almost 5000 reviews... I read a few. They must have seen a much different movie than what I watched or, like the Russian audiences, were too stoned to tell good from bad. I then remembered I got it from Hamilton Book ($3 - why not - it wasn't worth it).

I started with the English dub track only to discover on both the 5.1 and 2.0 tracks the voices are so low that you can barely hear them - and they were *very* bad voice "actors.". Realizing it's a Russian movie I then switched to the original language track (I was already using SDH just to know what was being said and I don't have any problem at all watching a foreign language movie with subtitles) to find *that* track had a decent balance of voices to music/sfx. Didn't help the film be better but at least I wasn't annoyed at the incredibly poorly done sound mix.

Anyway - it's quite generic and quite bad, yet still has an IMDB rating 0.5 higher than Future World... That must mean that Future World is *really* bad... wow... and after watching its trailer I thought it might be somewhat passable...

I mean...it was written by and starred James Franco. I think it's a given that anything with/by him will be fairly awful.

Sorry I haven't been super active on here lately. I'm on vacation with my family and just have been spending time off line lately. I'm still checking in at least once or twice a day (I also have email notifications enabled) so if you have questions or comments, I will see them!

I've been slowly watching the DC series The Flash. It really started out good and has kind of declined as it's gone along. By S6 (the season I've watched so far in this challenge) it feels like a superhero soap opera with lots and lots of recycled ideas and villains (and there are so many minor supporting "super" people/characters that it doesn't much feel like it's about Flash any more). I really, really, got annoyed when the creators were so creatively bankrupt that they co-opted the Queen song "Flash" (aka Flash's Theme) from the 1980 movie Flash Gordon for an episode. It just doesn't fit the series at all and was apparently selected for the line "Savior of the universe." Sigh... OK... so the lyrics are quite generic in nature and somewhat worked in context of the episode. It's the principle of the thing as the song's about Flash Gordon, *not* Barry Allen's Flash. I'm guessing they counted on the "normal" audience for the series not having a clue as to the song's origin.

When will I learn... I purchased a copy of Moonfall (2022) because it sounded like a possibly interesting train wreck of a movie. Well... it was. BUT had I noticed that Roland Emmerich both co-wrote and directed the film I'd likely have not made the purchase. I find the majority of his work to be rather laughable (and typically more so than what I was expecting) with the only film he's done I like and rewatch on occasion being Stargate. This one was no exception with even more ludicrous ideas on display than those he put forward in Independence Day. The visuals/vfx are very well done but the story... whew! Let's just say that science and logic were nowhere to be found. And it ends on a cliff hanger of sorts. I looked it up to find he originally planned a 3 film series. Maybe parts 2 & 3 are coming but I can't imagine anyone offering to fund the films due to how poorly this one did (bomb is not a good enough word - numbers I've read indicate earnings of 1/3 of its production cost, not including promotion). It's based on a conspiracy theory that the moon is a megastructure built by aliens for the purpose of seeding humanity. The most interesting character was the one played by John Bradley (Sam of Game of Thrones fame) with most everyone else being rather forgettable. Donald Sutherland makes a very brief cameo (and got star billing for it). In the end it feels like yet another implausible disaster movie.
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For a while I was playing catchup with all of the "Arrowverse" DC shows, watching them on Netflix in air order. And looking at my Netflix queue, it seems I stalled out after Flash season 6 (and Legends of Tomorrow and Supergirl seasons 5). I didn't feel there was a giant jump the shark moment, but like you my enthusiasm just gradually wound down over time. Though I'm probably going to pick them up again sometime. At least Flash and Supergirl, which stopped after 1 more season. I don't know about Legends though. Cast turnover has always been a thing with that show, but losing Brandon Routh feels like a biggie.

Do they still do the crossovers after I stopped watching (with a once-a-season "big event")? Or did that stop when Arrow stopped? While they could be cool, it made it hard on viewers playing streaming catchup.

I really couldn't say about the crossovers... I remember a couple in Supergirl (I've finished that series) so the ones, so far, in The Flash are nothing more than repeats for me (they include the entire crossover on the discs with each series that was included). I've only seen S1 of Arrow so far so have no idea about its crossovers and which other series are sucked in. I don't even try to watch these series concurrently as if I were watching as they aired - it's just too much to juggle and, outside those few crossover events (which I don't much care for), there's little to tie them together.

That's interesting about Legends losing Routh - I've seen S1 and enjoyed it enough to purchase S2 & S3 but likely won't purchased more until I watch those based on what I've read about each season pretty much being a self-contained story. I like that as I'm pretty burned out on all these series-long continuing story line series but it's still a longer story arc than I tend to like. I generally prefer TV series to have mostly stand-alone episodes with the occasional 2-3 parter. From what I've seen of newer series, writers don't know how to do that any more, no matter what genre is involved.

My grandson (20yo) walked through this afternoon while I was watching an episode of The Flash and said "That one was pretty good up to around season 4. I didn't much like it after that." and I have to agree. Like you said, it hasn't "jumped the shark," it's just not as good.

The only Arrowverse show I watched was Supergirl, and I think I abandoned it before the last season or two. I did watch some of the crossovers and got the gist of them. The musical one was pretty good.

Fair enough on Franco. I’m still working on clearing out my Netflix physical disc queue and honestly have no idea why I threw it on there sometime over the last few years, I’m prioritizing the queue according to the challenges as best I can.

And no worries about summer being family time!

If you haven't seen it already, you might be interested in checking out episode 8 ("The Scientist") of Arrow Season 2. It was a backdoor pilot to Flash (co-starring Grant Gustin as Barry Allen). Brandon Routh's Ray Palmer spun off of Arrow too (looks like he debuted in the season premiere of Season 3). Like it seems with all of these shows, I thought Arrow started off strong peaking in seasons 2 and 3 before falling off. You might want to check those seasons out.

I'm finishing off my Blu Ray set off Space 1999 this summer. Season 2 isn't as bad as some make it out to be, but it's a comedown from the first season. It's an example of a show being massively retooled by executives at the expense of quality. More of it feels like an ordinary sci-fi show of the era instead of the unique vibe season 1 had. Swapping Catherine Schell for Barry Morse is a pretty transparent attempt to upgrade the show's sex appeal (as is changing the main security character from Paul in season 1 to Tony in season 2).

They do make the most of Maya's shapeshifting powers though. But like the Wonder Twins (from the old Superfriends cartoon) she doesn't always seem to make the best choices She can turn into a super-strong giant monster for fights ... which makes her choice of turning into a normal-looking mid-sized dog for a fight in another episode puzzling.

It's still fun seeing familiar names pop up behind and in-front of the camera from time to time. David Prowse was a guest star in a recent one I watched. Not that you'd see his face, but when the 7 foot tall monster pops up, you know it has to be him!

While channel surfing this morning, I discovered that H&I airs The Adventures Of Superman on weekends. I hadn’t seen this particular episode before, The Talking Clue, but it seemed like I had seen the villain in other episodes. Or perhaps just the same person playing him. A gangster named McKirk or something like that.

Today there was a Hunger Game marathon on TV. I caught the last two. Anybody else watch a series in random order? I have seen all of them before, if that matters.

Also, I mentioned earlier, I'm spending time with family and don't have full access to my film library. I got tired of the 10 minute long commercial breaks on TV so switched to streaming. I think the TV is still airing Part 2 while I finished it several minutes ago. I'm not a huge streaming/digital copy fan, but they do come in handy occasionally.

I was watching Spielberg's The War of the Worlds this afternoon when my grandson walked through...

Grandson: "Another quiet movie that's unnecessarily loud at times?"
Me: "No... a loud movie that's unnecessarily louder at times."
Grandson: Laughs
Me. "It's Spielberg's The War of the Worlds."
Grandson: "Never heard of it."
Me: (surprised) "Seriously?!? It's his remake of George Pal's The War of the Worlds which was based on the H.G. Wells novel of the same name which was written in the late 1800s."
Grandson: "I've never heard of it, or the book. What year was it made?"
Me: "1953"
Grandson: "Oh... a black and white movie." (He's not totally against BW movies - loves the classic Universal Monster films - but it *can* color his interest a bit)
Me. "No. It's in Technicolor... and a classic. You *need* to watch it with me and then I'll allow you to watch the remake."

He tentatively agreed... we'll see... there are already a half dozen SF/Fantasy titles I'm holding off viewing to watch with him... I'm going to have to prioritize them and not let him select... I think...

And... this is the 3rd time I've seen Spielberg's remake. I liked it better this time - maybe I've mellowed a bit... don't know. It was still mostly overly loud and obnoxious with far, far, too many convenient coincidences but I enjoyed it a bit more than the first couple of times. Mind you, it's still not that good all because of those coincidences.

All that Battlestar Galactica talk earlier reminded me that I still need to watch the remake. So, I ordered the Blu-ray last week. I grew up loving the original (had all the toys) and hopefully will enjoy the "new" one (which is now almost 20 years old) as well.

I watched Basil Rathbone's Sherlock Holmes movies out of order as well as the Japanese Godzilla movies. Neither of those hinge on continuity so it mostly didn't matter. I initially watched the Harry Potter movies out of order. I hated the fourth movie so much that I stopped watching. Then I went to see the last one in the theater for a friend's birthday so I went back afterward and watched the ones that I'd missed.

How to the Hunger Game movies hold up? I haven't seen them since the last one was in theaters.

Honestly? Not too bad. Lawrence's acting is a little much in places, but that was her character, if that makes sense. The CGI is pretty good and of course the subject matter is unfortunately still applicable to today's world. A bit scary how much so. I may go back and watch the first 2 sometime this month since the prequel is coming out fairly soon.

I watched George Miller's Three Thousand Years of Longing on Amazon Prime tonight. Not sure how this slipped under my radar ... I barely remember hearing about it (and I guess it's not surprising it bombed last year). Great visuals and Idris Elba and Tilda Swinton are good as always. Overall I liked it though it really fell down in the third act for me:


I'm close to finishing The Expanse (about half way through season 5). I've never read any of the books, but I've found the series consistently fantastic. I noticed season 5 was the first that seemed like a hard-R (lots of f-bombs, more graphic violence, and nudity) although it seems it moved away from SyFy (to Amazon Prime) starting in season 4.

For you readers, how many of the novels were covered in the show's 6 seasons?

While I normally choose physical media over streaming, sometimes it does have a place. Even though I have since bought the DVD collection of Voltron, I first had it on Apple TV. I was just scrolling through the apps on my Series X, and decided on the spur of the moment to open Apple TV and watch a couple episodes of Voltron. I watched the final episode of Yurak in command, followed by The Witch Gets A Facelift. The next episode not only has Yurak’s final appearance, but introduces Lotor.

Last night I watched an old favorite, The Cyclops (1957), but fell asleep on the last few minutes so I watched it again this morning. My wife and I are babysitting my son's 3 kids (he and my daughter-in-law are out of state for a few days) and my youngest grandson (age 9) heard it (I was watching on my laptop) and joined me. He really liked it! I wasn't expecting that due to it's age and being BW - he had no issue at all with it. Makes me happy!

Finally watched Tenet (2020) tonight and while I was watching it I realized it was an A-picture version (with a A-list cast) of Dimension 5 (1966). Not 1-1, but similar enough in some ways to jog my memory. It was a lot more of a spy movie than I had though it would be and it'll probably take another watch or two to get some the timey-wimey stuff straight.

I just finished watching Everything Everywhere All At Once. I think it will take quite a long time for me to figure out if I enjoyed it or not. I definitely caught the overlying theme of generational trauma. I just wish I hadn't watched it with my mother when they whipped out giant...well, if you've seen the film you know and I won't spoil it for those who haven't.

I think this is a movie where I'll have to digest it for awhile.