Cobra Kai and Golden Kamuy 2

TV series that follow movies.

Cobra Kai

Set around thirty years after The Karate Kid, this show follows depressed alcoholic Johnny Lawrence (again played by William Zabka, antagonist from the film) as he tries start up Cobra Kai again, much to the dismay of his rival Daniel LaRusso (again played by Ralph Macchio) of Miyagi-do. While a lot of time is spent on the teen students of the various dojos the main heart of this series is the dynamic between this pair which makes for some excellent TV. As a bonus - yeah, the karate is ok too. 

My wife and I don't really remember the movies much but all the cameos and quick flash backs to them are super cool. Best of all, the story is completely wrapped up in Season Six which makes this a very binge worthy candidate if you haven't already seen it (and you don't need to have seen any of the movies to understand it). Big thumbs up, recommended!

Golden Kamuy 2

I ended my review Golden Kamuy by saying "Don't bother watching it until there's a Golden Kamuy 2", and lo and behold - here it is: a series directly taking place after the movie where our protagonists race to get all the pieces of a treasure map that's tattooed ON people! There are still some nice action sequences and a high frequency of bears but its like the writer gets distracted a lot and goes on tangents about cooking and the life style in that period (which for me is fascinating) but if you aren't a fan of Japanese style comedy this might be lost on you. 

For example, there's a killer who always gets a hard on after killing and they make sure the viewer knows about it in hilarious ways. Let's just say if you managed to make it through the movie then maybe this one is for you. We'll be waiting for season 2!

Behind the Frame and Them's Fightin' Herds

Games with excellent animation.

Behind the Frame

This very short and relaxed game is all about painting and puzzle solving. Despite the "painting by numbers" portions that let you brush paint everywhere, the art is really good with its anime style. Thankfully the puzzles are pretty easy to let you focus on the excellent story which will put a knife in your feels I enjoyed very much. Highly recommended, if you enjoy something that is more of a narrative than mechanics.

Them's Fightin' Herds

It's is like Streetfighter for My Little Pony, but the smooth animation and cute critters are very well done! There's also a story mode that plays a bit like an RPG Maker game interspersed with both jumping puzzle and (many) combat segments which is pretty cool, but the difficulty ramps up rather quickly and boss fights become a chore. It's a different one, that's for sure.

Annihilation and Transformers: Rise of the Beasts

Movies about getting wiped out.

Annihilation

In this sci-fi horror, a biology professor (Natalie Portman) volunteers to be part of a team of scientists (who apparently are also all firearms trained) to investigate an alien shimmering zone that is slowly expanding from a meteor crash site. Inside is much prettier than Stalker's zone of exclusion, but pretty much just as bad. Big thumbs up to the set design and digital stage creators for making an awesome visual display, but the actors rarely were looking at the right thing and the plot is predictable. I thought these people were meant to be smart? Only recommended for Natalie Portman fans.

Transformers: Rise of the Beasts

Talking about predictable plots... LOL. Prior to most of the other Transformer movies, a plot device was hidden away on Earth by time traveling giant robotic animals (Maximals) but of course bad robots are after said key and this gets Optimus Prime and his crew involved. As well as some broke dude who decides a life of crime is the only way to get money because there needed to be some human involved right? Alas outside of the impressive CGI, there's nothing really new here outside of adding more characters that the writers are generally too afraid to kill ("someone needs to think of the -children- fans!"). Would it be a better movie with a higher death count? Yes. All of them would be. Recommended only for Transformers fans.

The Pancake Adventure

A quick Forged in the Dark adventure I ran for Jim's family when we last visited. Due to time constraints and basically making the mission up on the fly I simplified everything and let each player start with two skills, and so our party consisted of Jim the gymnastic hacker, Trhia the driver hacker, Keira the karate astrologer and doctor salesperson Rose. Oh, and because of Keira's age, I tried not to make the story too grim dark. :P

While walking out in the neighborhood to get an ice cream, the team comes across a little girl asking for help in finding her missing cat "Pancake". She's next to a sign board with many other bits of paper of others missing their pets too. As the girl remembers some goons taking the cat into a black Daihatsu Thor, Jim tries to hack the police database with his mobile phone to track it down and fails so powerfully that his phone explodes!

Shaking her head with a "tsk, tsk" sound, Trhi does the same and succeeds finding there are only 2 of the said vehicle in town and the very first address they visit they spot it behind a massive gate with goons unloading animal cages before a three story house. The gate guard refuses them entry and Keira uses her karate to flying kick him into the gate, knocking the whole thing down!

Jim (acrobatically), Trhi (hacking the security cameras) and Keira sneak into the bushes beyond while more guards rush the gate where Rose uses both her doctor and salesperson ability to distract them and send a few of them with the injured man to the hospital. Keira is spotted, but manages to continue to distract her guard patrol with knowledge of astrology and brown dwarves (these guards are really dumb).

Using acrobatics, Jim climbs up to an open window and encounters a man wearing multiple black belts whom he tries to knock out but fails, getting into a scuffle. Trhia heads down an open exterior storm basement door and hacks her way past a digital lock to find herself in an underground laboratory and encounters a monstrous, howl-meowling dog-cat which starts beating her up.

Hearing the commotion Keira decides its time to put on her own black belt and beat up the guards to rush to Trhi's aid, but Rose gets there first and manages to pull her aside for some minor heals. Upstairs Jim is losing to belt man until he gets a fireplace poker and shoves it through belt man's skull, from underneath the jaw up. Belt man's head explodes because he was a robot!

After finding a deceased girl in an upstairs observatory with notes about revivication using animal blood, Jim takes the small elevator down to the basement and is joined mid way by an old looking scientist who is late in noticing Jim isn't one of the guards. Dr. Samurai X pulls out his cane sword and revolver and tussles with Jim in the elevator (and Jim hilariously scrambles around the tiny space like a squirrel).

Downstairs Keira's kung fu doesn't do much to the dog-cat as the creature blasts her away with a laser blast from its mouth (why not). This buys enough time for Rose and Trhia to find some tranquilizers which Trhi shoots into the monster, putting it to sleep. They lock it up and free the other surviving animals including Pancake just as Jim arrives, having knocked out the elderly doctor in the elevator.

Loading the animals into a car, Trhi drives out of there expertly and they return all the pets and finally get to that ice cream shop they were trying to go to in the first place!

The end. That was a fun and silly 1.5 hour session. :)

Elevation and The Mountain Between Us

Movies about being high up.

Elevation

This post apocalyptic action film stars Anthony Mackie as one of the survivors who lives high up in the mountains where the "horrible creatures who killed every one else" don't go because they have a hard limit to stop at 8000ft elevation. Of course, he soon has a reason to go back down the mountain because stories need conflict! :P Despite the simple story and low number of cast members, the action is decent as is the critter CGI (when they get to it). An ok watch but one that could have been better / feels like a missed opportunity.

The Mountain Between Us

When a pair of impatient travelers (played by Kate Winslet and Idris Elba) decide to book a small charter flight that crashes in a mountainous wilderness, they can only depend on each other to survive. Good thing they also packed some plot armor! This survival drama is much slower paced than Elevation but is alright if you're looking for a less actiony film that focuses on the relationship of the pair. Obviously I preferred Elevation because it has monsters and guns but that's a personal preference. 

State of Play: USA aligns with Russia?

It's now day 1103 of the Russia's two day special operation in Ukraine. While the battle rages on there it seems Russia is making some gains outside that theater, seemingly with the help of relatively newly re-elected USA president Donald Trump. In just around two months of his second time in office the USA has held "Peace Talks" with Russia without Ukrainian participation and decided to halt aid going to Ukraine after President Trump publicly clashed with Ukrainian president Zelenskyy at the Oval Office.

On top of this his high tariffs on Canada, Mexico (he also renamed their gulf) and China as well as sanctions relief for Russia some speculate he's building "the bridge" to trade primarily with the Russians in the future. This has sparked more than a few interesting comments of "Trump is a Russian agent" and "Congrats to Russia on winning the cold war". I suppose we will see if and how this changes the battle field but one thing's for sure: Putin must be pretty happy right now.

Viticulture World: Cooperative Expansion

An amazing game about making wines!

Prelude: The base game of Viticulture is a competitive one which we didn't play but is required to play this cooperative expansion. Made by the same people who created Wingspan, Viticulture World is a worker placement game with differing actions per season, across a time limit of 6 years (and differing "world" event cards change the flow drastically). By then each player must be at 25 victory points (or more) and the influence token must also have reached the "full" end of its track.

I won't lie, this was a bit complicated to get started with and the rule book could have used a full cheat sheet of symbols somewhere so expect your first game to be a really long one (especially if like us, you haven't played the base game) but once you've got it it's actually pretty simple! Simplified per season its just:

Spring: As a team you place your rooster on the "time" clock which determines what bonus you get right now (might be a card, money, extra worker or 1 VP) and what order you will be placing workers down for this year.

Summer: Place workers to get seeds, plant them, give tours, construct buildings, develop new tech (important if you want to win), and use summer visitors.

Fall: Move your roosters to the inner part of the time clock and either gain a card, money or age a grape.

Winter: Harvest grapes, turn grapes into wine (very cool), use winter visitors and fill wine orders to gain VP!

In addition to the main board each player gets their own player mat to keep track of their buildings, fields and most importantly grapes and wines, both of which get older each year to a max of 9, and turning grapes into wine makes retains their age (eg 3 year old grapes make 3 year old wine, unless you don't have a "3" slot which makes it reduce to a "2" slot etc).

Orders usually ask for a combo of wines at around 4 or just one of the 7-9 rank ones and having a discard down to 5 cards rule at the end of each year makes it important for you to trade with your friends to make the most of each turn. There's way more to it than what I've written but that's the gist of it.

Now buying the base game AND this expansion is a bit pricey, but if your cooperative group likes tough games with not necessarily a lot of combat (like the cooperative mode of Wingspan) then this is a good investment for you. If your group isn't cooperative then just the base Viticulture should do, but I can't comment on how good or not good that is. :P