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Much stuff in one week...
Mar. 1st, 2014 06:59 pmSo, the Lego Movie actually doesn't suck, so thanks to Empire and a couple of friends for persuading me to give it a go. Bits of it are laugh-out-loud funny (which is rare for me), a lot of it is very clever, none of it is awful and only a few bits and pieces don't quite connect (see what I did there?). It's gloriously bonkers and takes an odd shift towards the end that I'm not quite sure about (perhaps a little heavy-handed on the message and also perhaps a bit too world-breaking for me, but I can see what they were trying to do and it mostly works). Great voice cast, too.
One Shot (next in the Jack Reacher books) was interesting to listen to because it's the one they based the Tom Cruise movie on, so it was all vaguely familiar but different. The main thing I noticed was that there were four distinct and quite well-drawn female characters in the book (only three of whom were devastatingly attractive), which is impressive for a Reacher book - and they were amalgamated into just one character in the movie, who fulfilled all their different roles. So, the move-makers took a Jack Reacher book and made it less gender representative - quite a feat! Hey ho - it's a fun story, and it didn't have the problem I usually have with these books of working out what was going on well before Reacher, because the information wasn't there for me to figure out in this one, so I discovered all the plot twists along with him for a change.
Games from a really great weekend in Llandudno:
Shadows Over Camelot - heard a lot about this but never played it before. Better for me than most "who is the traitor" games because there was other stuff to do than work out who was lying, but still not really my kind of thing.
Forbidden Island - wholly co-operative game, racing against time to find treasure and escape before the island sinks. Good fun, and an interesting combination of character skills that meant you really had to work together to figure out what best to do. It was pretty easy, but has harder difficulty levels that would make it more challenging.
Attribute - a game involving cards with sheep on and the necessity to match or not match adjectives to nouns people come up with, depending on what sheep you have - annoying when none of the cards fit so you automatically lose. Also annoying as it involves grabbing stuff from the middle of the table and I'm always too slow.
Apples to Apples Dice - more stressful necessity of grabbing, and also more requirement of using brain power to come up with words than in the original card game.
Deadwood - quite fun, but went on too long, too late at night, so I got a bit frustrated with it towards the end. Didn't seem to be very easy to achieve much, but the movie studio theme was quite fun and a lot of the flavour text was very silly.
One Shot (next in the Jack Reacher books) was interesting to listen to because it's the one they based the Tom Cruise movie on, so it was all vaguely familiar but different. The main thing I noticed was that there were four distinct and quite well-drawn female characters in the book (only three of whom were devastatingly attractive), which is impressive for a Reacher book - and they were amalgamated into just one character in the movie, who fulfilled all their different roles. So, the move-makers took a Jack Reacher book and made it less gender representative - quite a feat! Hey ho - it's a fun story, and it didn't have the problem I usually have with these books of working out what was going on well before Reacher, because the information wasn't there for me to figure out in this one, so I discovered all the plot twists along with him for a change.
Games from a really great weekend in Llandudno:
Shadows Over Camelot - heard a lot about this but never played it before. Better for me than most "who is the traitor" games because there was other stuff to do than work out who was lying, but still not really my kind of thing.
Forbidden Island - wholly co-operative game, racing against time to find treasure and escape before the island sinks. Good fun, and an interesting combination of character skills that meant you really had to work together to figure out what best to do. It was pretty easy, but has harder difficulty levels that would make it more challenging.
Attribute - a game involving cards with sheep on and the necessity to match or not match adjectives to nouns people come up with, depending on what sheep you have - annoying when none of the cards fit so you automatically lose. Also annoying as it involves grabbing stuff from the middle of the table and I'm always too slow.
Apples to Apples Dice - more stressful necessity of grabbing, and also more requirement of using brain power to come up with words than in the original card game.
Deadwood - quite fun, but went on too long, too late at night, so I got a bit frustrated with it towards the end. Didn't seem to be very easy to achieve much, but the movie studio theme was quite fun and a lot of the flavour text was very silly.
