Plane and Carry On

Movies about airports and aircraft.

Plane

In an effort to save fuel costs, a commercial airliner attempts to shortcut through a storm and soon finds themselves emergency landing on a small Philippine island controlled by violent rebels. Good thing their pilot and main protagonist is played by Gerard Butler though, because he's literally the deus ex machina that keeps this unintentionally hilarious film going. While there's an ok amount of action the plot is silly, the main bad guy who gives the orders can barely speak proper Tagalog, and the whole emergency landing thing near the start should have been a crash and burn instead. Only recommended if you are a huge Gerard Butler fan, otherwise don't board this one.

Carry On

Taron Egerton stars as a "going nowhere" lowly airport security guy who finally gets a baggage scanning job only to be manipulated by a bad guy who pressures him into letting a particular carry on bag to be let through. This film actually has lots of decent action scenes (and soooo much running) as well as hilarious exchanges with the bad guy but its main flaw is the massive logic leaps it uses to actually get the bad guy's Batman gambit started. If the protagonist had a spine from the start the movie would be over much quicker, but no - he has to grow that as the movie progresses. Other than that it's an ok watch, but only if you've got nothing better to see.

World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King (board game) and Uno No Mercy

Games of wrath!

World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King

In this 1-5 player cooperative game, each player is a character from the World of Warcraft setting out to stop the Lich King who is spawning stationary ghouls and up to three abominations who actively pursue players. He also wanders around making things hurt more if he's in the region. To win, the team must complete three random quests (out of 9) and then complete a final quest at the Lich King's castle by rolling dice and maybe having cards with the right symbol to help push the progress tracker along. 

Combat plays much the same way. Players lose if the despair marker reaches the end of its track: moving twice for any player "killed" and once for each figurine you needed to spawn but have no more of. But how does the game actually play? Almost exactly like Pandemic. 7 hand card limit, do four actions per turn, ghouls spawn in location cards drawn, bad cards wait in player card pile to make things worse. I do quite like that you don't need to do the five of the same cards business this time around which makes it different enough to be interesting for me, but I also think it makes it much easier than any of the other Pandemic games in my collection thus far. :P

Uno No Mercy

This competitive card game is just like Uno in that you want to be the first one to get rid of all your cards and have to say "Uno" once you're down to one. The no mercy bit comes from all the +plus cards in the deck, like +2 means the next player draws two and loses their turn - BUT the +plus cards stack, so if you have a plus card you can just put that on, and on, and on, until someone needs to pick up a +32 or something. Also, if you ever get 25 or more cards in your hand, you're out which opens up another path to victory: kill all your opponents. Expect tears if played with younger kids. Not the type of game for me.

Yellowstone and Territory

TV Series that depict cattle wrangling as a tough business.

Yellowstone

The original series from which the shows 1883 and 1923 spun off from, again the focus of this drama is on the Dutton family and their controlling patriarch (played by Kevin Costner) who fiercely fights off any and all challengers to his substantial property (in the modern day, just to be clear). Through its five seasons we get to see a tiny bit of character growth from a just a few of the characters but the plot, acting and scenery is good enough to command attention anyway. I quite liked all the cowboy parts which really didn't need to have such a focus, but it was something different and really cool. It also helps that I do like horses. :P Anyway, big thumbs up for this one and an easy one to recommend.

Territory

This currently one season show feels like the Australian copy of Yellowstone. A family who owns the largest cattle station led by an angry patriarch (played by Robert Taylor but the main protagonist is his daughter in law, played by Anna Torv) has to fight off competitors and companies trying to carve parts of their land away. While the stakes feel much lower and there are far fewer horses (most rustling is done with dogs and buggies) its still an alright watch. Especially as there are only six episodes (so far).

Witch it and Deceive Inc

Multiplayer hide and seek.

Witch It

This is a multiplayer "prop" hide and seek game where one team plays as witches who can fly in short bursts and transform into "props" (tables, chairs, cheese, etc) to hide against the other team composed of potato throwing hunters. There are slight game format variations but for the hunters to win they have to find and KO all the witches before time runs out while the witches who have no real way to fight back but only win if time runs out. Cute concept though the graphics are intentionally poor. Multiplayer wise there were only a few lobbies open that were waiting for more players. Either the other lobbies were all full and running games or there was hardly anyone on when I checked.

Deceive Inc.

Is a spy version of the hide and seek game where everyone can camouflage themselves as NPCs in a level. Usually each spy or each team has a goal of retrieving a well guarded item and then extracting, so using the camo actually helps them traverse zones without getting NPC aggro but as all players can attack I don't see how this will always just devolve into a shooting fest. This one has sharp graphics but zero lobbies available to play in when I checked. That's what happens when you rely on other players to be the games content.

The Penguin and Honey Bunny

TV Series that additional content to their respective franchises.

The Penguin

This crime drama is as dark as "The Batman" movie which it continues from. Here we follow Ozwald Cobb (wonderfully played by Colin Farrell) as he weasels his way from being a lowly underling to the crime boss better known as the titular Penguin. While there aren't so many action scenes the plot, acting and effects are very well done making this so far single season show really easy to recommend. You don't really have to know anything about Batman, Penguin or the movie preceding it to enjoy it either. Big thumbs up!

Honey Bunny

This is actually the second spin off for Citadel, but unlike the first one this is a prequel series set in India and they won't let you forget it with all the synth music tracks and silly Indian humor peppered through out. In it we follow a struggling actress who gets into the spy game and while there are some good action sequences in here the story itself is weaker than its peers. Combined with the fact that its all happened in the past makes it a bit of a non starter. Feel free to skip this one.

Elden Ring: Are you ready?

[Part of my Elden Ring journal]

One more return trip to the previously flooded church district lets me find an elevator I turned my back on the first time I came through and subsequently forgot about. Turns out this is very important since it leads right to a giant rotten sunflower boss that actually respawns twice during the fight! It takes a few goes to realize the holy club and range are no good here - indeed the sunflower excels at range, so I need to get in there with the great dragon hunting katana to chop it up and when I finally manage to do so it drops Miquella's great rune - the item I can use to counter that two-hit instakill!

Now I'm all set, I return to Radahn wielding the antspur rapier (he's weak to scarlet rot) and decked out in Moore's heavy armor and tower shield with the +3 Crimson Medal (max bonus HP), +3 Viridian Medal (max bonus stam), Two-Headed Turtle Talisman (stam recovery boost), and Kindred of Rot's Exultation (bonus damage when near scarlet rot). Turns out to be a simple matter of blocking and stabbing to absolutely cane him, which is great because it actually took me around 30+ attempts before trying this combination lol.

Finally stabbed him to death!

Thollier does not survive the confrontation but neither do Radahn and Miquella, while Sir Ansbach dies from his grave injuries afterwards. Thumbs up Elden Ring, everyone died! Though I think I died the most? :P That concludes the adventures here once more. Unless there's another DLC that comes out... Oh look, what's Night Reign? :P

Elden Ring: Seek map

[Part of my Elden Ring journal]

After numerous failed attempts I can get Radahn to phase two consistently, but don't have enough stam to block or dodge to survive beyond that. There's also the small matter of Miquella's two hit insta-kill in phase two that I don't have a counter for, so I opt to go off to train and finish the map first, starting by hopping into a coffin and the base of the drained church district of Shadow Keep to ride it down a waterfall (fitting since Radahn kept killing me anyway).

Well that's different...

Down there I slay a Rakshasa, an entire fly man village, two more hippos and find the Darklight catacombs which is slightly annoying in that its pitch black, but at least there are light switches to turn on the torches and a really nice Viridian Amber Medallion +3 to help with my stamina issue. After beating a shady inquisitor at the bottom the path continues to the Abyssal Woods, which is so scary that the horse cannot be summoned. This is because the whole area is a stealth section as there are a few enemies that can't actually be hit. Crouch walking and tall grass are you friends!

There's a big, well designed mansion down here (with looping shortcuts) with a madness theme and a pretty simple boss who is holy club spammed which is the same solution for the Maddening Hand invader who is great in close quarters but not so much if you can ping him off at a distance. With the woods mapped I only have one more missing segment in the top left, an annoying one to find since it requires going through a tunnel behind a lake some distance away from the spot but there's not much to report down there that I haven't already run into. More spider scorpions, bears, another death knight etc.