Fantastic Den

Over the past few months, I've made some fantastic additions to my den. 

Marvel Titan Hero Series : Sherry bought these for me for Christmas.  They are still boxed, but they won't be forever.  I plan to play with them with James and any future grandchildren, as the grandchildren become of an age where it's safe, and they think it's fun.

Magic: the Gathering Legacy Collection figures.  Six Planeswalkers.  They were an impulse buy -- encouraged by Sherry, in fact.  These guys might stay in their packaging, or they might not.










There Be Dragons:  The Dragon has lit my imagination since my earliest memories of childhood.  Now that the toy/game world can produce such excellent draconic figures, I've started to buy them.  Whether just figures, or from games, I have a decent set of them now.  And my Dungeons and Dragons players get to encounter them on occasion, including in our very next gaming session!

Movie Micro Reviews: Edition 105 - X-Men and Me

While on vacation, we did a marathon of X-Men movies.  Today's Micro-reviews gather all of those together.  I want to caution you:  I am Very Easy when it comes to X-Men movies.

The X-Men were, by far, my favorite superhero group while I was growing up.  My first X-Men comic book was the beginning of the X-Men renaissance, Uncanny X-Men #94, which was the introduction to the new team -- well, except for Giant-Size X-Men #1, which was very hard to find once the new team took off.  I was among the group of comic lovers who got swept up by Storm, Nightcrawler, Wolverine and the rest. 

The way I remember it, that particular issue was among a short stack I brought along on a vacation with my family in 1975.  I'll have to check with my parents, but I think we were visiting Canada, though it might easily have been a Lake trip.  In any case, the story was thrilling, I read it many times on that trip and in the ensuing years, so these characters -- these X-Men -- have been a part of my life for a long, long time.

(They also have a connection to my marriage, but that's a story for another time.)

You will see below that I have down-graded some of the ratings over time.  (And raised a couple, too.)  But I am still pretty certain I rate them higher than most other reviewers.  And, you know what? I can live with that.  These micro-reviews are my reactions to movies, not some assignment for a film criticism class in college.  So, here they are: the collected micro-reviews of the X-Men movies, to date.

X-Men	92 88 82	[I meant to review this way back in Edition 8, but apparently never did. Last rating was back in Edition 91, the last time I did an X-Men movie marathon.  We’re doing it again.] OK, Batman was darker, and more stylized.  But I can't say it was better.  Certainly this was more true to the characters.  It whets my appetite for more.  Oh, and I was wrong: Hugh Jackman and Wolverine were the center of the movie for good reason.
X-Men 2: X-Men United (aka X2)	90 84	What a fun, intense story!  We get Nightcrawler!  We give Phoenix a reason to arise.  We get some of Logan’s mysterious past, but not all of it.  And we see just how dangerous mutants can really be.  Loved it.
X-Men 3: The Last Stand	85 68	Re-reviewed. Sadly, it doesn’t hang together.  Some good scenes; some good concepts; but as a complete story – sorry.  My initial excitement at Dark Phoenix carried me away. --- (initial review) --- Excellent movie for traditional comic book story and action.  Characters sometimes acted out-of-character, though.
X-Men Origins: Wolverine	88 83	Very fun, and since I didn’t know most of the story ahead of time, I got to be surprised.  “The best X-Men movie?”  Not quite.  But very good.
X-Men: First Class	82 84	A worthy entry in the genre. I liked the Xavier/Lehnsherr relationship.  Kevin Bacon made a good villain.  Mystique as a teenager – loved it.  Consistency with the comics must be sacrificed.  A couple of cameos made me smile – even laugh!  Rating: Remember this – I am “easy” when it comes to the X-Men.  Always will be.
Wolverine (The)	77	Wolverine had two loves of his life.  This is the story of the second.  Pretty good, too.  I like the tie-in with Japanese history.
X-Men: Days of Future Past	80 85	I didn’t believe they could have so many heroes and villains in one movie and still make the movie flow.  They did it!  The time travel aspect was well done, the key actors got good work, and the action and story were quite comic-book fun!

Guardians of the Galaxy Trailer 2

See, the thing about Marvel Studios is this: they GET their properties.  They get that Tony Stark has to be egotistical, but still likeable.  They get that Thor isn't enough on his own - he needs Asgard and, yes, Loki.  They get that Captain America needs to keep to the moral high ground, not simply follow orders.

And what else does Marvel Studios get?  They get that the Guardians of the Galaxy have to be a bit on the campy side.  The way cool, blow-stuff up, sexy but silly campy side.

Need proof?  See trailer 2.

Favorite Foto Friday - Goblin and Doom

From our trip to Universal Studios, Islands of Adventure.

The Only Winter I Want Now

I spent a long time writing yesterday's post.  So today, you only get a video.

But it's a good one.

I have been looking forward to "Marvel's Captain America: The Winter Soldier" for a long time.  And it's getting so close!



Falcon! And the Winter Soldier!

Hey, if you don't know the Winter Soldier story -- do yourself a favor:  Don't look it up before the movie!  Just go to the movie and see what they do with it.  I bet you'll like it.

And sure, they might do an Iron Man 3 "Mandarin" thing with it.  But I really, really doubt it.

And if you don't understand that '"Mandarin" thing' reference, then I bet you enjoyed Iron Man 3 even more than some Iron Man fans did. 

(But I really enjoyed Iron Man 3.  And to you party-pooper Iron Man purists, the '"Mandarin" thing' was almost ironic.  Plus, Marvel "fixed" it with "All Hail the King.")

Games of Christmas 2012

Here it is!  The annual "Snippets and Wisps" recap of the games which were played over the long holiday vacation. (See 2009,  2010 and 2011)  


This year, it seemed as if there were fewer individual games played, but we certainly spent a lot of time playing them.

By now you realize that the world did not end with the supposed Mayan Apocalypse.  What you might not have realized is that this non-catastrophe was brought to you by the as-yet-unnamed group of superheroes consisting of Anastasia, Foil, Solo, Toymaker, Phoebe, Phoenix (no, not that one) and Icebird. Superworld  is the traditional game of the holiday season at the Will house.  We've been playing this Superhero Role Playing Game for over 20 years on or around New Year's Eve. This year's scenario took parts of two evenings, but involved every single character, forcing us each to face our weaknesses and work as a team to survive the trials and stop the Earth from losing its magnetic field.  Way cool!

Magic: the Gathering.  Though this is one of the favorites for many of us, we do not typically get to play many games of it over the break, because it does not involve enough of us.  That was true again this year for the times when a large group of us was around, but there were several times when fewer people were available, and then we Magic players played.  In fact, during the weekend before Christmas, Troy and I were able to play 13 games.  Then, Paul and I had about four duels, plus three 2-Headed-Giant games were played, and one Three-For-All.  I remember the Three-For-All best because I played overconfidently at the end and lost to Paul.  But it was a blast!


 Dominion. This is the boardgame I have been most interested in for the past year.  I wrote about it  before in this blog, but never owned it until this Christmas.  I'm very excited to own my own copy of the game, plus an expansion which my boys don't own!  I haven't played that expansion yet, but I'm sure I will soon.



The Great Dalmuti - Again, a New Year's Eve tradition. It's not fair, but then again, life is not fair. And we all play for fun.  We called Mike as we started to play, to wish him a Happy New Year and a big Huzzah! There were several people crowned Great Dalmuti, but I was not one of them, so I was always part of the crowd wishing the new Dalmuti Huzzah!





Skip-Bo is an old stand-by and must be played every New Year's Eve. We introduced the game to Amelia, and she even won when partnering with Marisa. Sherry, of course, won a game, too.  There is no better Skip-Bo player in the family.

Small World is a really fun game I encountered because of the new web series "Tabletop" on the Geek and Sundry YouTube channel.  I bought it immediately and played it soon after.  As we were looking for something to buy Adam which was not on his Christmas list, this was an easy choice.  He, of course, wanted to learn it, so we took the opportunity to teach a few people over the break.  What a fun, funny game!

Bazaar - This is a very old, very good game which involves just a little luck. The concept is simple to understand when you see the game. It's a logic game, with advantages to people who can think several moves ahead, and it is a fantastic way to teach children to reason, while also being a game adults will love.  I have three images for this game: the image on the right is the way our box looked, way back when we bought it from Discovery Toys.  Today, the box looks like the one on the left.  The game itself is pictured below.

The game involves two randomly-selected cards of "equations" (the two big cards in the center) which show, for example, that you can trade one blue gem for one white gem and one yellow gem.  Or, from the second card, you could instead trade that blue gem for a red, green and yellow gem.  The object is to trade your gems to get the smaller cards shown in the four piles near the big cards.  You get more points for harder cards, and more points yet for having very few gems left over when you trade for those cards.  I understand the newer versions of the game use plastic chips instead of glass gems, but the concept is the same.  This has been a favorite in our house for over twenty years.



The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess. Sherry and I were playing this for the fourth time when Leah came home for vacation.  Since Leah had never seen it, we started it again, and we are trying to finish it before she leaves for New York.  It's so imaginative, with unique mechanics and ideas which also work well with the franchise.



Nintendo Land is the game which came with the Wii U when I bought it.  I had only tried it for a few minutes before the vacation, but on recommendations from Adam and Lucas, we tried several of the multi-player games which really take advantage of the new controller to allow one player to play games against a team of other players.  It's innovative, and very fun to play as a group.  I am hoping -- of course -- for a new Zelda/Link game for the Wii U, and I did get the newest Mario game for the Wii U for Christmas.   But so far, this is the extent of the content I have for this system, and as a party game, it's a good buy.

 Here's a new group game which Sarah and Troy got for Christmas so a group of us tried.  The game pits the men against the women, in a very interesting game involving trivia and other party-game competitions.  The twist here is that the game comes with two boxes of cards -- one for the women to ask the men, and the opposite.  The question boxes are full of items which the asking sex typically knows more about, but which are stereotypically things the other sex would not know.  So, for example, the women ask the men about cosmetics, and the men ask the women about cars.  There are personalized questions, as well, which makes for a test of whether a wife can guess what a husband would say, for example.  It worked out pretty well when we played it.  It's not going to be a game we play all evening, but it was funny and we had a good time.

I have a feeling I have left out a game or two, but as I mentioned, we spent quite a bit of time playing Superworld this year, so the sheer number of games played was lower.  Still, as you can see, the Will House is a very game-filled house over the long Christmas-to-New-Year's-Eve break, and we enjoy those games quite a bit!

Graphic Novels: The Guild Volumes 1 and 2

 If you are a gamer, and especially if you are a MMORPG gamer, you probably already know about the web series "The Guild."  I have been a fan of this series for quite a while now, and when I heard that the creator of this series -- Felicia Day -- would be taking the characters in the show to graphic novels, I knew it was only a matter of time before I bought and read them.

Using gift money from Christmas, I finally did.  I read them.  I enjoyed them.  And I am not surprised.

"The Guild" centers around a group of people who retreat into the online fantasy world of The Game -- a Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game which is amazingly similar to World of Warcraft.  Felicia Day created the series using her experience as a gamer as a basis.  As the series starts, Felicia Day's character in the show has already developed an online relationship with her Guild -- a group of other characters who band together to go on missions and complete quests.  But, as the show begins, she has never met any of them in real life.  Their real-world separation does not last long, however, and there have been five exceptionally funny, and sometimes touching, seasons of a show which is by, for and about gamers.  I love it.

The graphic novels, in the version I bought, are collected into Volume 1 and Volume 2.  Volume 1 contains the story of Felicia's character from just before she joined The Game, until the point at which the web series starts.  It's a three-part story, and it fills in her backstory very nicely.  Volume 2 does a single-issue backstory for each of the other five main characters in The Guild, and again, it is a measure of her creativity that Day is able to make each of these unusual people fit very nicely into her main project by giving them an interesting and fitting history.

If you have seen "The Guild" and liked it -- congratulations, you are probably a gamer, or could be.  And, if you are, you will like these volumes.  I can guarantee it.

If you have not seen "The Guild" I cannot say how you would like the graphic novels.  I'm pretty sure most people would like Volume 1.  The story of Cyd Sherman, Day's character, dealing with her neuroses and her insecurities while being taken advantage of in the real world is one which resonates and makes us feel for her.  The eventual discovery of a certain amount of freedom and control when Cyd finds The Game might seem like it's unhealthy avoidance to some people, but to gamers, it will make complete sense.  And, as I have mentioned, the graphic novel is not the end.  It's satisfying as a story, but Cyd's life and story continue in the series.

The second volume, "Knights of Good" -- named for the Guild to which the characters belong -- is a little more series-specific.  Vork's story is a sweet, if frustrated, story of commitment and co-dependence.  But while Zaboo's story is funny and very "comic book" - it merely leads Zaboo to the moment the series begins --- excellent for fans, but I'm not sure it works for non-fans.

And that, by the way, is a Major Point of this series of stories -- both the graphic novels and the web series -- It Is For the Fans.  Felicia Day is not trying to make something for the masses, or for the literati.  It is for gamers, and as a gamer, I love it.

Favorite Foto Friday - Nighthawk and Batman

In a quieter time, the Caped Crusader enjoyed the company of a lovely heroine named Nighthawk.

Don't believe me?  I have a photo.




I thought it was appropriate to remind people, on the day The Dark Knight Rises is released, that life is not always tough for Batman.

Movie Micro-Reviews: Edition 85

Some really excellent films this time.

Descendents (The)	83	I’m sure real families have some of these same personal issues.  Clooney played the role of a father forced to finally deal with being a real dad, and did it well.
Hugo	81	My recommendation – don’t find out anything about this movie before you see it.  But see it.  You will like it.  There’s a little something magical about it.
Lord of the Rings: Return of the King	100	In the last edition, you saw we had seen the first two again. So you just knew you would see this, right?
Lockout	40	Cannot recommend this – wants to be “sci-fi” but the application of science is totally wrong.  Wants to be “action” but the editing puts shots together about ½ second too short each time, so the action is hard to follow.  We know Guy Pearce can be better than this. The only believable character was Maggie Grace’s
National Treasure	81	A clever action mystery.  Fun clues.
National Treasure: Book of Secrets	81	Another well-written mystery.  They followed the formula they created in the first movie, and it worked.  Fun!  We will own it.
Girl with the Dragon Tatoo (The)	70	Rooney Mara plays one of the most interesting characters in recent memory – Lisbeth Salander - with complete dedication.  The mystery was very good.  All in all, I liked the movie.  BUT.  But some of it is so disturbing, so graphic, so violent that I can’t recommend it except with that warning. I won’t see it again.
50/50	62	J G-L is a likeable actor, who seems to be able to handle most any role.  Here, as a young man faced with a 50% chance of surviving a cancer which is aggressively attacking him, he helps us put ourselves in that sad situation.  My main problem with the movie is Seth Rogan, who seems to play the same rude sex-obsessed “buddy” every time I see him.  Though he has some redeeming qualities, it’s hard for me to watch him sometimes.  That was the case here.
Avengers	94	Wow!  Such a good comic book movie!  OK, if you had not seen the previous movies, maybe you’d be a little lost.  But, of course, I HAVE seen them, and this movie is a fantastic result. Heroes with big egos fighting each other – because that happens in comics all the time!  Heroes dealing with their personal issues, both as strengths and weaknesses – a Marvel hallmark.  And action-upon-action.  Yet none of it would make the movie great without the humor.  So much humor!  Loved it!
Much Ado About Nothing	75	Shakespeare at his most accessible.  Kenneth Branagh makes the Bard’s words sound natural.  Emma Thompson is a wonderful Beatrice.  And Denzel Washington brings more life to Don Pedro than Shakespeare probably ever dreamed possible with the actors of his time.  Delightful.