1992 SF, middle volume of a trilogy. Saint Butterflies-are-free Peace Sincere, a smuggler pilot without a ship, has nearly got her inconvenient protégé back to safety… but it's never that simple.
1957 aviation disaster, dir. Hall Bartlett, Dana Andrews, Linda Darnell: IMDb / allmovie. Looks like you picked the wrong week to quit smoking.
1999 audio adaptation of Christie's 1942 mystery, in one 90-minute episode. The blonde dressed for a party turns up, stone dead, on the floor of the library at Gossington Hall…
The longest, and I think the best, RPG campaign I've ever run has reached its end.
1954 disaster film, dir. William A. Wellman, John Wayne, Claire Trevor: IMDb / allmovie. A 2,000-mile overwater flight is no place for an engine to explode.
2012 thriller novelette, prequel to the series Her Royal Spyness. "Georgie", cousin to the king but really of no importance, is coming to the end of her Season with no offers. She doesn't particularly fancy Prince Otto of Prussia, but going to a Halloween Ball (an American innovation) should be harmless enough…
1980 drama, dir. Martin Scorsese, Robert de Niro, Joe Pesci; IMDb / allmovie. The boxer is on the way up, then he's on the way down.
I’ve been doing the Weekly Challenges. The latest involved splitting arrays and strings. (Note that this is open until 26 September 2021.)
1904 revenge-fiction. They laughed at George Arthur Rose at the seminary, but now he'll show them – he'll show them all!
The 1 Player Guild is a group of solo game players, communicating through BoardGameGeek. This was the sixth "proper" get-together for the UK contingent (some virtual meetings helped span the gap), and we were back in the upstairs room of the pub in Silverstone, a year and a half after the last one.
2015 historical fantasy, fifth in the Order of the Air series. Late in 1935, Alma, Lewis and Mitch are showing off the new Catalina at an air show in Palermo, while Jerry is across the Med in Alexandria following magical hints to the lost tomb of Alexander the Great.
1978 horror, dir. George Romero, David Emge, Ken Foree: IMDb / allmovie. The dead are still rising, and they're still hungry.
2019 American Regency-ish romance, part of a loosely linked series. Thea Knight disguises herself as her sister Helen, so that Helen can elope with her beau. Lord Luxborough, set to watch Helen, realises what's going on, and works out that if he marries the woman under a false name he can get access to the family money he needs without the inconvenience of a wife he doesn't want…
I’ve been doing the Weekly Challenges. The latest involved more binary trees and linked lists. (Note that this is open until 19 September 2021.)
This Meetup-based boardgames group remains on-line for the moment, though we may try the pub next time depending on numbers. For now we got together on Jitsi and then played some games on BGA, as usual.
1968 horror, dir. George Romero, Duane Jones, Judith O'Dea: IMDb / allmovie. The dead are rising, and they're hungry.
2018 SF, second of its series. Adda the hacker and Iridian the engineer travel with the infamous pirate Captain Sloane to his base on Vesta… which has been grabbed out from under him while he was away.
More boardgames played from home. (There was a plan for barbecue, beer and boardgames for some of the local gamers, but it turned out to be the first two and not the last one.)
1979 war, dir. Francis Ford Coppola, Martin Sheen, Robert Duvall: IMDb / allmovie. Captain Willard is sent upriver to assassinate Colonel Kurtz, who's fighting the war just a bit too well.
2018 YA science fiction, last of its trilogy. When Kerenza IV was invaded, some of the inhabitants escaped; a few survived on the surface. Now the escapees' only option is to come back, but the invaders are still there…
I’ve been doing the Weekly Challenges. The latest involved more binary trees and linked lists. (Note that this is open until 12 September 2021.)
2008 science fiction, dir. Scott Derrickson, Keanu Reeves, Jennifer Connelly: IMDb / allmovie. The aliens land with a message for humanity, and the humans immediately shoot one of them.
2021 science fiction. Three travellers get stranded at an inn by bad weather, and for once don't pass the time by telling each other stories.
Essen SPIEL are doing a better job than UK Games Expo did, but I've very reluctantly decided that I'm not going anyway.
1899 novella. Charles Marlow takes a steamboat up the Congo to the aid of the ivory-agent, Mr Kurtz…
1992 audio adaptation of Christie's 1933 mystery, in five 30-minute episodes. Lord Edgware has been denying his actress wife a divorce; she's been talking about killing him; and then he's murdered, and his staff say they saw her enter the house. But she has a perfect alibi…
1959 science fiction, dir. Ed Wood, Gregory Walcott, Bela Lugosi: IMDb / allmovie. The aliens land with a message for humanity, but that message is apparently "Your stupid brains!" Original vt: Grave Robbers From Outer Space.
I’ve been doing the Weekly Challenges. The latest involved finding submatrices and counting trains. (Note that this is open until 5 September 2021.)
2013 thriller, eleventh in the series about Charlie (Charlotte) Fox, former soldier and currently private bodyguard. Charlie's in Colombia, helping a disaster relief crew after an earthquake. Not really her thing? No, but her employer is also concerned about the rumours of large-scale thefts that seem to be following this team around the world, and the previous security guy has just mysteriously died…
Some trailers I've seen recently, and my thoughts on them. (Links are to youtube. Opinions are thoroughly personal. I still hate everything.)