So as not to bury the lede: ladies and gentlemen, for those who play tabletop role-playing games, my friend Brett and I have founded a new tabletop gaming company, Tossing Bones! We’ve just released our first product, a toolkit of drop-in adventures and lore called “Leveled Lairs - Aboleth” compatible with Dungeons & Dragons and Shadowdark. If you sign up on our mailing list, we’ll give you a free 1st level adventure: Acid Over Thornbay, also compatible with Dungeons & Dragons and Shadowdark.

Supergirl is a fun roller-coaster of a movie. Part True Grit, part Mad Max, it’s pacing keeps it moving even through emotional moments and flashbacks, the needle drops and score keep the emotions high, and the direction makes the action gritty and exciting. Milly Alcock makes a wonderful Supergirl. She brings the “true grit” aspect of the movie, the down-and-out drunken fighter who befriends a youth (Ruthye) and ends up traveling with her in search of revenge and justice.

I never owned the toys as a kid. I knew of them and had friends that did. I’d watched some of the He-Man cartoons (and the rebooted shows, and the excellent recent Kevin Smith reboot on Netflix). The Dolph Lungren 80s movie. In other words I’ve enjoyed He-Man/Masters of the Universe, but it wasn’t “my” franchise. This is relevant. But boy, did I love the 1980s Flash Gordon movie. It was vivid, exciting, campy in the best way, solid special effects for the era, and had an absolute bangin’ soundtrack by Queen that elevated the movie.

George Lucas named the old 1930s Saturday morning Western adventure serials as one of his main inspirations for the original 1977 Star Wars movie. The initial text crawl labeling it “Episode IV” and catching the audience up on an ongoing story were designed to evoke that same feeling of going to the theater to catch up on the adventures-in-progress of your favorite action hero. The world building and operatic sweep of Star Wars propelled the franchise to be far more, and the movies (especially the post-Lucas movies) left that initial inspiration behind.

Stadium shows are touch and go. The right performers are able to make an enormous venue feel…well, maybe not intimate, but at least personal. Thankfully, Nine Inch Nails were able to use the space in the 20,000 capacity Honda Center in Anaheim incredibly well. The show began with German-Iraqi DJ Boys Noize (the stage name for Alexander Ridha) spinning hard electronic beats, sometimes with snippets of 80s synth tunes from the likes of Depeche Mode and early Nine Inch Nails, other times incorporating voice samples (in what sounded like English, German, and Arabic).