[Games] Legendary: Villains - A Marvel Deckbuilding Game

So our dedication to the Legendary franchise has just about come full circle, in a manner of speaking. From just wanting to try out the game, we're now super invested in the franchise and have been working on addressing the remaining gaps in our collection. With most of the heroic Marvel sets already safely tucked away, we've finally come back around to Legendary: Villains, where the bad guys take center stage.

To be fair, we actually got to play this game a few times before we got around to buying it. An officemate of Tobie's was nice enough to lend us his copy for a few nights and that helped us decide to eventually get the game. However we did opt to focus on all the heroic sets before we cam back to this one.

But there was never a doubt that we were going to add this game to our collection. We were already having too much fun with all the heroic Legendary games that it was only a matter of time before we'd finally get the Villains in order to further diversify our games.

[Movies] Spectre (2015)

I was pretty sure that the Daniel Craig era of James Bond movies had pretty much reached its peak with Skyfall, but I guess I was wrong to think that the folks behind the movies were going to walk way from such a lucrative franchise that easily. But it feels like such a shame since that movie presented a rather nice end t things and even felt like it connected nicely with the older James Bonds movie (at least most of them) as a sort of prequel.

But here's Spectre, the fourth movie that features Daniel Craig as the world's more famous spy. As much as Daniel Craig is rather easy on the eyes and a very compelling actor, I really felt like this movie just wasn't all that necessary.

But hey what do I know - I'm not exactly that deeply into the whole James Bond franchise and there are still far more movies in the series that I haven't seen than vice-versa. And I tried to go into this movie with an open mind and an eagerness to see what they could come up with. But in the end, I think I realized how much I missed having Dame Judi Dench as M.

[TV] Mozart in the Jungle: Season 2

So Tobie and I really enjoyed the first season of Mozart in the Jungle for so many reasons. The team behind it certainly put together a very strong show for a first outing and they made sure that it would be memorable for fans of all ages. And I was happy to know that the show had been confirmed for a second season quite soon after the first.

Coming back to Mozart in the Jungle after a fairly lengthy break did make for a nice change of pace, although initially there was definitely that sense of things not quite being where we wanted them to be right off the bat. It still feels like the writers are still trying to figure out what they really want to do with this show and thus there was a degree of experimentation and diversification in terms of direction for the various episodes.

On the whole it's still an enjoyable experience but the show needs to figure out its niche. It's not your typical sort of comedy since the jokes are subtle and definitely quite witty or even high brow at times. But there's still a lot to be loved about this show and I hope it gets to continue on.

[TV] Parks and Recreation: Season 5

For one reason or another we took a bit of a break from watching Parks and Recreation. It wasn't because we didn't like the show - if anything it was quite the opposite. We decided to slow things down in order to give the show time to build up more of an episode buffer before we'd dive into things.

One thing led to another and the effort to buffer episodes took a bit too much time and the show as a whole finally came to an end. And since we had some free time over the holidays, we finally got around to finishing the last three seasons of the show. And yeah, the whole experience was quite glorious.

As much as this show was clearly designed to have the feel of The Office, it took a while for the show to really find its voice and determine the sorts of stories it wanted to tell. These later seasons are just comedy gold with the writers clearly being more than willing to try out new ideas and express themselves in dynamic new ways.

And they're really funny.

[Movies] The Zero Theorem (2013)

Terry Gilliam movies live in a world, or maybe even a universe all to their own. They range from the thought-provoking to the absolutely crazy but either way you end up with a memorable cinematic experience. And I can totally see how this movie may not be the sort that might get universal praise, especially given what a head trip it is.

With a title like The Zero Theorem, you know you're in for something head heavy and not necessarily mass market. Throw in the fact that it's a Terry Gilliam movie starting Christoph Waltz and you really have a quirky movie experience ahead.

Up front I have to admit that I didn't exactly love this movie, but at least I didn't hate it either. It's one of those movies that is just so strange and unusual that it's hard to form a solid enough opinion whether for or against it. There are bits that are funny and there are parts that are disturbing. And you have all the other bits that you aren't quite sure how they all come together to tell a single story. And yet they still manage to do this to some extent only to culminate with the sort of vague, uncertain resolution that I really wished the movie hadn't done.

[Movies] Magic Mike XXL (2015)

The first Magic Mike movie was, well, memorable but not exactly amazing. They had a concept and they certainly ran with it but it really had a paper thin plot that would make some pornographic movies seem almost intellectual. But of course we don't exactly watch such movies for the richness of the plot.

But then they decided to put together a sequel in the form of Magic Mike XXL, although I have no idea why they decided to go in the direction they ended up. As much as many of the primary (shirtless) cast came back for this movie, it's not like it had a really solid base to build on.

Let's face it, this was a movie franchise that started with a rather shallow story hook and was somewhat successful. But then the folks behind the movie decided to stretch things a bit and create a sequel and they ran out of runway pretty quickly. This movie starts with even less of a plot than the first movie had and it almost felt like there were less performance numbers - or the ones that were still in the movie just weren't quite as fun as we'd have liked them to be.

[Movies] Pixels (2015)

While the lines between generations often blur, I find that I most identify as a child of the 80's more than anything else. There's just something about the culture of the period that really spoke to me on a different level, even though you could argue that more of my conscious childhood took place during the 90's or thereabouts.

So you'd think that a movie about 1980's video games invading the Earth would be something I'd totally love. And really, I wanted to love Pixels, too, on some level, since it promised to celebrate a key part of my childhood and the younger years of many others.

But then it's also an Adam Sandler movie, which isn't always the greatest comedy genre for me. I respect that there are people who find his brand of humor funny and there are some movies of his that I've enjoyed. But in recent years it feels more and more like he has been following a formula of sorts that isn't exactly proven to be super successful all the time.

[TV] Scream Queens: Season 1

I wasn't quite sure what to make of Scream Queens when it first came out. After investing in shows like Glee and American Horror Story, it was already clear to me that the creative team that is Ryan Murphy and Brad Falchuk can be more than a little crazy. Their shows tend to involve a lot of strange, out of left field sort of plots twists on a regular basis with a mad scramble to keep things coherent every few episodes. This can make for great entertainment or rather desperate efforts attempting to find meaning.

As much as we had quickly quit Glee after a few seasons, we're still invested in some of their other efforts and we were curious to see what he would do with a show of this nature. And what we got was an interesting celebration of camp, old horror movies and quirky comedy in a unique package.

And campy humor can be tricky since a lot of times it just turns people off who associate the more complex with somehow being automatically better. But it's hard to achieve the right balance for good campy comedy, as I've stated repeatedly on this blog, but I think they were closer to being right than wrong this time around.

[Comic] The Sandman: Overture

It was thanks to Tobie that I finally read Neil Gaiman's The Sandman series and it was quite a significantly wonderful experience. Each volume was a brilliant new exploration of a fascinating world that was dark yet colorful and everything else in-between. I don't know what it had taken me so long to get around to reading the series in the first place.

25 years after the initial release of the comic, Neil Gaiman decides to create a prequel series that explains why Dream had been in a weakened state at the beginning of Preludes & Nocturnes. And I actually decided to wait until The Sandman: Overture before reading it since I wanted to go through the whole experience all at once. It took some discipline, but the release of the hardcover deluxe edition over the holidays made it all worth it.

And the end result - words fail me. It's already January and I'm still reeling from how much I enjoyed reading this book. It was like opening the first issue of The Sandman all over again And to achieve that sort of a feeling or even that experience takes a truly brilliant creative team to execute well.

[Games] Spider-Man Unlimited (Android)

So I'm really late to the game when it comes to Spider-Man Unlimited, as the game has been around since 2014 - especially given how I'm still quite the Spider-Man fan at heart.. But I was in search of a casual game to kill some time and finally ended with this recommendation thanks to a friend. And given my past history with another Gameloft game, Despicable Me: Minion Rush, it was pretty easy to slide into this game.

And yeah, the fact that the game still exists on my phone is a good sign that I'll be playing a while. So let's talk about the game.

[Movies] Joy (2015)

The end of the year typically means we see a bunch of different heavy and serious movies that are clearly vying for awards next year. This isn't necessarily a bad thing - we do end up with some pretty good movies after all. And instead of watching this movie after the various award nominations have been announced, we actually got to watch this over the holidays because reasons.

Joy is actually a biopic, interestingly enough. And while the decision to cast Jennifer Lawrence is quite a brilliant one although it comes with certain preconceptions based on her prior roles. Just looking at her claim to fame, this being The Hunger Games movies, and that does make you think of her role there and certain parallels when you compare her to her character here.

There's sort of a positive message here, although one that's quite tied to the stereotypical American dream, I suppose. She's certainly portraying quite the strong woman here, albeit not necessarily the most likable one. But hey, you don't need to be loved to get ahead in business, right?

[Movies] Spy (2015)

There was a lot of good buzz about Spy when it first came out, which was rather surprising since it looked like just another silly comedy. I guess there may be some truth to the notion that the truly inane comedies rely on the puffy red font for one reason or another while others don't, maybe?

And movies have been a little hit or miss for me when it comes to Melissa McCarthy. She's certainly funny and is quite the skilled actress, but many times I feel like they've typecast her into a horrible stereotype. They're always eager to write her into scenes where she's involved in some pretty crude slapstick humor.

This movie started out with her in a somewhat different role with some variations here and there. And while some of the jokes continue to fall into the trap of the usual stuff they subject McCarthy too, on the whole it's still a great experience. If anything there were a good number of moment in the movie that were actually quite surprising, and in quite a pleasant way indeed.