At work I often use the phrase, “Chocolate and peanut butter.” It’s become shorthand for things that people like but that shouldn’t mix: Two great tastes that don’t go great together. If you grew up in the 80s, you know where the idea comes from, but it takes a little disambiguation, as I’ve inverted the meaning. For those of you deprived [...]

They’re making a D&D movie! Well, not really. Gathering of Heroes lifts all the tropes of D&D: healing spells, characters who represent different classes, and even drow—or as they are calling them “deep elves.” It’s a pretty obvious homage to D&D and maybe to World of Warcraft (but since WoW rips off so many tropes of D&D, it’s hard to [...]

I’ve not been able to get into the Dragon Age games. They exist somewhere between a turn- and team-based fantasy game and a third-person fantasy masher. I’d prefer one or the other, and even then chances are good that the game would do something minor that would tweak a nerve and cause me to toss down the controller, never to [...]

The Box of Delights is a strange and strangely charming series. It has something of the The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe about it—not the major Hollywood productions of course, but the old BBC The Chronicles of Narnia series. It doesn’t make a ton of sense. There’s something about a magic box that lets you travel through time (and [...]

Since when did Christian Bale and Christopher Lee get together and make a fantasy movie? Why, in 1987 of course! This weird little fantasy film was a co-production of Sweden and the Soviet Union. Maybe the third Red Scare in the eighties was the reason I never heard of it until a few years ago. Finding this movie can be [...]

Solomon Kane is a bleak, boring film. And it’s a damn shame too. I was intrigued by the controversy of it not getting a wide release. Folks saw it (or clips of it) before its release and were wowed enough to clamor for it. From what I saw of the preview, it looked like fun. Boy was I wrong! Basically, it [...]

Once called The Bear and the Bow, Brave has already caused controversy, and we barely know anything about it. Being made by Pixar, Brave was to be directed by one of the women responsible for writing it. The female director would have been a first for Pixar (whereas other animation studios have a better track record). Yet for reasons that [...]