A Green Mushroom

Galaxy Reavers is my latest little mobile time waster on iOS.  In it you get a squadron of ships to command on an isometric 2D plane in real time. It's basic ship to ship combat stuff with the hook of upgrading your ships or swapping out their equipment between battles. It's pretty fun and I played it for a week or so before slowly pulling away from it. It suffers from the typical free to play catch of having a ton of downtime between activities at higher levels.  Or you could just pay to skip that.  Or pay for a random chance at some better gear.  Or pay to unlock a new ship.  Basically, it really wants you to pay. So I'm done with Galaxy Reavers but if real time ship combat is your thing it's free to try out on iOS.

I really liked Bloodline.  If you follow me you know that I read almost every Star Wars book that hits the market.  This one is right up there with the best ones I've read. And it didn't really surprise me that it was.   Bloodline is by Claudia Gray, the same author who wrote Lost Stars which is my favorite Star Wars book to date. Bloodline follows Leia sometime about half way between Return of the Jedi and The Force Awakens.  It fills in so much information about the politics of the New Republic, hints at the formation and structure of the first order, and let's us see a key point in Leia's political career.  It's a fantastic book to start bridging the gap between Episode VI and Episode VII. While I'd love to learn more about what Luke and Ben are doing during this time period I never felt like this book had to go there.  There are enough interesting events going on with Leia that I was captivated throughout. If you're a Star Wars fan I recomm...

After the horribleness that was re-watching Thor Dark World, I decided to give the original Thor another shot.  I remembered the main story and how it interacted with the rest of the MCU but I had forgotten most of the plot. Having now re-watched it I have to say Thor is a much better movie than Dark World.  It has a coherent plot and a consistent tone.  It has characters that are interesting and who's motivations are understood.  It's overall a good introduction to Thor. I don't think it's a great movie, but it's somewhere in the middle of the pack for MCU movies.  I was pleasantly surprised to find it better than I remembered.

Oh The Flash, how much I loved your first season. Season 2 has been... I don't want to say bad.  Inconsistent is probably a better word.  There have been really good episodes and interesting plotlines but mostly there have been slow or boring plotlines and episodes that fall flat. After the fantastic episode that was done by Kevin Smith I thought the series was in a great place to finish strong at the end of the season.  Instead there was a an overly convoluted plot that led to the final confrontation of the season.  I couldn't actually believe some of the sentences that the characters were saying with a straight face... and I'm not typically one who has trouble suspending disbelief. I thought the final few episodes were mostly dumb.  I wanted to love them but I just didn't.  I was really sad to see where the series was at the end of this season compared to how much I enjoyed the first season. But then in the last 60 seconds of the season The Fl...

The Marvel Cinematic Universe In this episode: The Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) is one of the biggest franchises in movie history. We love it. Love it love it love it. Beej and Void discuss everything from what works in the MCU (and why), their favorite properties and recommendations, and which TV shows or movies, they’d be fine with never seeing again--or at all. But a decade ago, we weren’t all enamored with it (yet). Lots of people had no idea who Iron Man was, and comics fans like Beej wondered why they would bring their B-team to the screen. Comics dabblers like Void weren’t excited because of the lackluster comics movies like Daredevil and X3. If you haven’t seen Jessica Jones on Netflix, go binge watch it. We’ll wait. It’s worth watching even if you’re not into the MCU at all. It’s not a typical superhero show in the same way Battlestar Galactica isn’t a typical science-fiction show. Sure, there are people with superpowers, but they are background to the personal s...

I don't watch a ton of documentaries but this one came highly recommended from a friend and I saw it on some "most underrated movies" lists so I thought I would check it out. The Barkley Marathons is really good.  It's about a crazy marathon that most people consider to be the most difficult marathon in the world.  It consists of five loops through a 20+ mile course in the mountains of Tennessee. It's an ultra marathon that's grueling and runs for 60 hours.  The participants have 12 hours to complete each loop of the course. Did I mention that the course is unmarked?  And mostly off trails?  So not only are you covering that distance, you're also navigating through the wilderness while you do it. When you get back to camp between loops you can take a break but you need to get back out there and get started on your next loop soon. I didn't know what to think going into this documentary but within the first 10 minutes I was hooked and throu...

I've started swinging back through the Marvel Cinematic Universe after watching Civil War because I realized that I had seen some of the movies only once. Re-watching Ant-Man didn't stir up many thoughts, although I liked it still on the second viewing.  I think knowing what to expect made that movie better. Thor Dark World on the other hand... I feel like this is clearly the worst movie in the whole MCU.  It doesn't know what kind of movie it wants to be.  Sometimes it tries for humor, other times it's super dark, sometimes it's cosmic.  The tone of the movie is really hard to pin down and the pacing swings wildly. This is one of those movies where I'm glad I watched it again because I wanted to remember what happened but I didn't actually enjoy my time watching it.  There are a handful of MCU movies that don't live up to the others but this one is so far below them for me personally. I'm actually really curious about this so I started a...