The Sword and Laser discussion
TV, Movies and Games
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What else are you watching?
Trike wrote: "Here’s my list of the top 20 Time Travel movies.Wut?! No Timerider: The Adventure of Lyle Swann?
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0086443/
Rob wrote: "I'm not sure how I'd rank time travel movies. I don't really care that much about the "science" so long as they are consistent within the rules they set out."Same.
I’ve seen Primer. I just didn’t like it very much. Same reason Donnie Darko didn’t make the list.
One of the considerations for favorite movies for me is how much I’ve rewatched them. Except for FAQ About Time Travel and Predestination, I’ve seen those other movies at least 5 times each. BttF 1 & 3 I’ve seen at least 20 times each. Same with Terminator and Endgame. Since I’ve only seen Primer twice, it doesn’t make the cut.
Primer is one of those movies that I appreciate more than I enjoy, if you catch my meaning.
How about Time Loop movies like Groundhog Day? For me, I can only really come up with six that I really like. A couple that show up on search, such as The Girl Who Leapt Through Time, I haven’t seen. (But it sounds pretty cool.)1. Groundhog Day
2. Edge of Tomorrow
3. Boss Level
4. Happy Death Day
5. Happy Death Day 2 You
6. Run Lola Run
I love Boss Level, so it’s a toss-up between that and EoT for the #2 spot. Superb use of one of my all-time favorite songs, Foreplay/Long Time by Boston.
The real surprise for me are the Happy Death Day flicks. They are way better than I expected, and are very funny, too. The sequel pushes the idea into new territory without violating what happened in the first one, much like Aliens did for Alien.
Mod
Yeah, that's a good way to put it. I haven't found myself wanting to rewatch the movie a lot. But it's one of those films that's well done in terms of time travel, especially on the budget they had.
Mark wrote: "Trike wrote: "Here’s my list of the top 20 Time Travel movies.Wut?! No Timerider: The Adventure of Lyle Swann?
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0086443/"
It’s just a little too goofy, what with his fake motorcycle jargon.
Trike wrote: "How about Time Loop movies like Groundhog Day? For me, I can only really come up with six that I really like. A couple that show up on search, such as The Girl Who Leapt Through Time, I haven’t see..."Edge of Tomorrow really surprised me; it was a lot better than I thought it would be. Partly because I'm not a Tom Cruise fan but Emily Blunt made up for that. It did a good job of conveying that (view spoiler) sense.
I really liked that time loop Star Trek The Next Generation episode "Cause and Effect".
Trike wrote: "Edit: Yep. Some of these aren’t Time Travel. Cryosleep into the future isn’t Time Travel, it’s just sleeping through the calendar. So I wouldn’t consider Planet of the Apes or Idiocracy to be Time Travel movies. I would seriously debate including some of the others as “best” but at least they’re time travel flicks."The original Planet of the Apes isn't time travel by that definition, but the movie series as a whole is a time travel story -- I think it's a closed loop.
Mod
Their use of time paradoxes and anomalies to solve problems is brilliant in its absurdity.
=1 to Trike for mentioning Time Bandits. A much underrated movie that doesn't get enough love. It's a movie I quote from time to time.
It someone asks me "How long ......?". My go to answer is "4 foot 1" 😉
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vh17L...
Do movies like The Family Man with Nicolas Cage count, where he goes into an alternate reality where he settled down with a family instead of being a big business man? Don't forget the one with Nancy McKeon (Jo from Facts of Life) called Comfort and Joy.
Tamahome wrote: "Do movies like The Family Man with Nicolas Cage count, where he goes into an alternate reality where he settled down with a family instead of being a big business man? Don't forget the one with Nan..."Those are Alternate Timeline or Alternate Universe stories. Examples include movies like Sliding Doors and Deja Vu, and TV series like Loki, Awake, Fringe and Primeval, and the Broadway musical If/Then. There is frequent overlap with Time Travel stories, but the ones where it’s more like the multiverse idea of “I turned left instead of right and that changed my life” where there are typically only two versions of the story/character are, to me, the purest examples.
The Map of Tiny Perfect Things was adapted from a Lev Grossman (The Magicians) short story. That has a time loop.
Tamahome wrote: "The Map of Tiny Perfect Things was adapted from a Lev Grossman (The Magicians) short story. That has a time loop."Interesting. How did I miss that? That’s the girl from Quantumania who plays Cassie. The trailer strongly implies she (or someone close to her) is dying of cancer or something.
https://youtu.be/ZOxsfKQWrUg
John wrote: "This seemed the right place to post this article from The Guardian titled "The 20 best time-travel movies – ranked!"https://www.theguardian.com/film/2023..."
Hot Tub Time Machine deserves to be Top 5.
Jennifer wrote: "Trike wrote: "Here’s my list of the top 20 Time Travel movies.So happy to see Time Bandits ... on your list..."
I second that - when I first saw that film I was too young to appreciate the genius of Terry Gilliam but it was such a crazy fun movie I fell in love with it so hard #filmcrush
Just watched We Have A Ghost on Netflix. I liked it a lot.
John wrote: "Jennifer wrote: "Trike wrote: "Here’s my list of the top 20 Time Travel movies.So happy to see Time Bandits ... on your list..."
I second that - when I first saw that film I was too young to app..."
My mom took us to see in in the movie theater when it first came out. :)
I think it's funny how no one has listed the original The Time Machine movie. Morlocks, Eloi, and three books to save the world!
I am watching Picard Season Three. Most of the main characters from Star Trek: The Next Generation are back for this season, the final season for Picard. All the band is back together, and it seems they are setting up for a great finale.I’m watching The Mandalorian Season 3. It’s as great as the first two seasons so far.
I’m also watching Season Three of American Gods on A DVD from the library next. The series was originally on Starz. There should have been a fourth season or a movie to complete the plot from the novel, American Gods by Neil Gaiman. I’m disappointed that they will not make a fourth and final season of the show.
There are a lot of shows that are on my, to be watched list. I’d like to watch The Last of Us Season One, Sandman Season One, Willow Season One, and Star Trek: Strange New Worlds Season Two starting on June 15.
My son (20) and I saw the Dungeons and Dragons movie this afternoon and we both enjoyed it.I've been playing D&D for over 40 years and there was a ton of references and Easter eggs for someone like me, from the settings and spells to quick shout-outs to the 80's cartoon and Critical Role, but my son, who only has a passing familiarity with the game, still got it.
Even without all that there is a lot of humor and some heart and just a general fun fantasy time.
Phil wrote: "My son (20) and I saw the Dungeons and Dragons movie this afternoon and we both enjoyed it.I've been playing D&D for over 40 years and there was a ton of references and Easter eggs for someone lik..."
My son and I went today as well. We both thought it was so fun.
Cross post from Discord, one about Mando and one about Red Dwarf.Caught up on Mandalorian now. Pretty good adventure story this week. We're now moving towards WWII battle stories from the spaghetti Western / Lone Wolf and Cub feel of the first two seasons. Seems like the next step is the Battle for Mandalore. I've kinda had enough of Bo-Katan's booty armor tho. And the boob posing and ass shots are getting really gratuitous.
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Red Dwarf S11 Ep4 has a bio-printer that prints crew. Makes me wonder if Mur Lafferty is a Red Dwarf fan. Altho the episode was only a few months before Six Wakes came out so they probably came up with the idea simultaneously.
I haven't seen the new D&D movie, but there is a prequel to read if you're interested.Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves: The Road to Neverwinter by Jaleigh Johnson
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0B1WDJQVB
EDIT: make that a couple of prequels
Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves: The Druid's Call by E.K. Johnston
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0B...
Watching Bad Batch season 2 - now up to ep 4, why do I feel it's kinda boring, I was so looking forward to this! I hope the plot picks up soon. And a Taiwanese crime drama, The Copycat Killer, at Netflix.
I'm complete capitvated by "Yellowjackets", think Lord of the Flies meets Alive, but with a high school girls soccer team, with adult portrayals of the survivors. Barbarians on Netflix was enjoyable as well, Season 1 ends with Teutoburg Forest, the "barbarians" all speak German, the Romans all speak Italian, English subtitles
Just finished a rewatch of Stargate Atlantis and have moved on to Stargate Universe. Which is like moving from light into dark.
Anyone else watching Mandalorian? I'm caught up after yesterday's episode. Been trying to get a discussion going on Discord but no luck recently.
John (Taloni) wrote: "Anyone else watching Mandalorian? I'm caught up after yesterday's episode. Been trying to get a discussion going on Discord but no luck recently."I literally forget that Discord exists until someone mentions it. How on earth did that mess ever become a tool everyone wants to use? I can’t find anything on there and it’s ludicrous to navigate.
I feel like if you aren’t on there 24/7 then the conversations are impossible to follow. Here we have nice, tidy topic threads, not just one stream of logorrhea.
Mod
I completely disagree, but to each their own. I don't really post here much anymore and much prefer chatting on discord instead.
It started with gaming. My guilds have been using it for a long time to manage things outside of WoW.
Our server isn't nearly active enough to require a 24/7, but if you're used to forums it is a different format.
I use slack and mattermost (an open source alternative to slack) as well as Microsoft Teams for work. Plus I grew up on IRC, so I find it very easy to use.
The problem with Discord is that, unless the mods create topic channels, it's one long linear discussion. Contrast that to a forum like this where a regular member can start a thread on a topic within a folder. For example there are several threads about different aspects of L&L and people discussing one aspect of the book aren't interleaved with other people discussing another aspect of the book.
Discord has uses but it's fundamentally a chat service, not a topically oriented forum.
Discord has threads, nobody on S&L uses them.
Oaken wrote: "Discord has threads, nobody on S&L uses them."Yeah... but threads aren't the same as topics. Another Discord community I belong to has a channel that requires tags which do a really good job of organizing things within the channel and would be a better substitute for folder topics.
Watched the TV movie of Red Dwarf, the shortened "Season 13." That makes all of them! It's been interesting seeing the actors age 30 years as we watch them over the span of weeks. Probably Cat is my fave character, but really more early and late in the series when he's more cat like. In the middle he's kind of a wisecracking mean guy.The cat religion has got to be the best, as they worship Lister. For, apparently, good reason!
Round-up of what I’ve watched the past few months (probably forgetting a few things):Shadow & Bone season 2 on Netflix was good, not great.
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Mrs. Maisel season 5 on Amazon has been solid as always. Halfway done.
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Mrs. Davis on Peacock is really tedious, despite the attempt to make it snappy. (Mrs. Trike fell asleep, and I nearly did. One less show to watch.)
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The Mandalorian season 3 on Disney+ was a fun adventure.
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The Bad Guys animated movie on Netflix was terrific.
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Willow on Disney+ had such an awful first scene that I immediately bailed. Worst intro I’ve ever seen in my life.
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Warrior Nun season 2 on Netflix has been decent if not super compelling.
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Wednesday on Netflix did nothing for me. I don’t get the hype.
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Rollerball (1975) is still great.
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Nate Bargatze’s latest stand-up special on Amazon is a hoot.
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The Last of Us on HBO Max was… fine, but I lost interest.
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Last Week Tonight with John Oliver is really running out of things to get worked up about. Homeowners Associations and Timeshares? Really?
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Superman: Man of Tomorrow on HBO Max is a well-done Year One story.
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Wednesday can dance on my heart any time. 
I started Severance on Apple Tv. Boy, what a concept. Good so far.
Mod
I'm waiting for S2.
Tassie Dave wrote: "Severance is great. It is one of the few really excellent shows on AppleTV.I'm waiting for S2."
Slow Horses has been really good as well.
Trike wrote: "Round-up of what I’ve watched the past few months (probably forgetting a few things):..."I really enjoyed The Last of Us even though the first 6 seasons of Walking Dead did it better.
And, yeah, what was that with Willow? I didn't love the original film but it was fun. The series just sucked. Or at least the first episode did. I made it no further than that.
Watched Ghosted tonight on Apple TV. Not SFF but it has lots of our genre faves. The cameos are uniformly hilarious, and the movie overall is a lot of fun. Recommended.
I watched the first episode of “Silo” on Apple TV. I really enjoyed it. It’s been a while since I read Wool, but I think they did a good job capturing the atmosphere & mystery of the Silo. I can’t wait to see the rest.
Went to Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 yesterday. Might’ve teared up a bit because of cartoon animals doing emotions. Rocket’s origin story is more brutal than I expected.
Is ninth season of Dexter so good as previously seasons?And what do you think about House of Dragon?
Mod
Just subscribed to AppleTV for the first time, so I'm watching For all Mankind. Really enjoying it and have almost finished the first season.
Rob wrote: "I thought GotG 3 was excellent. Just subscribed to AppleTV for the first time, so I'm watching For all Mankind. Really enjoying it and have almost finished the first season."
For All Mankind gets better and better.
Watched Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves this morning, as it’s now streaming on Paramount+.It’s a standard Fantasy story elevated by the humor.
⭐️⭐️⭐️1/2
I'm told it has a lot of easter eggs if you play d&d.
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Books mentioned in this topic
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Authors mentioned in this topic
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But my top pick in terms of enjoyment is probably Back to the Future. I watch that movie at least once a year. Usually I watch all 3, but I don't like 2/3 as much.
However my top pick in terms of plausibility is Primer, which Trike doesn't even have on his list. That either means he hasn't seen it, or that his tastes are so different from mine that I can't take his list seriously. :-D.
But everyone's tastes are different, I'm sure if Trike has seen that movie he'll give me a long post about why I'm wrong.
Primer is super low budget and easy to overlook because it never really got the marketing it deserves in my opinion. If you haven't seen it, I'd recommend it. Unfortunately it doesn't look like it's on any streaming services, but you can buy/rent it digitally.