Hooray for more trailers! This time it’s a trailer for the next Spider-Man movie, which is the next film in Phase 6 of the MCU. Tom Holland is crushing it as Peter Parker; I might even say I like him better than Tobey Maguire. There is a caveat before you watch this trailer; if you have not seen Spider-Man: No Way Home, the context of this trailer might seem confusing.
Let’s talk more after you watch.
While I remember the events of No Way Home, I should go back and watch it again anyway, in preparation for this film. However, other things look exciting about this movie. Number one on that list is Jon Bernthal returning as Punisher! If you haven’t watched The Punisher series, you should definitely check it out. He’s a great cast for Frank Castle.
Spider-Man: Brand New Day will be in theaters on July 31st.
“The screen is a magic medium. It has such power that it can retain interest as it conveys emotions and moods that no other art form can hope to tackle.” – Stanley Kubrick
The 98th Academy Awards have concluded, so let’s go over the results and how I did compared to last year. There is another great acceptance speech that is just as wonderful as Kieran Culkin’s was last year. I will talk about it a bit later.
To spoil it a little, I did a lot better this year than last. In fact, I was surprised by how well I did this year. It probably helped that I watched several of the movies that were nominated this year, specifically those nominated for Best Picture. I’ll also admit that a couple were just lucky guesses. I will break it all down after the results.
Disney has released the (Darth) Maul Shadow Lord official trailer. We got the teaser trailer for this a couple of months ago, and now we have the full-length trailer. I know it’s unusual to share trailers for animated series, but I really enjoyed The Bad Batch, and the animation style is very similar. As I said before, it’s exciting to have Sam Witwer back for the animated voice again. Check it out!
As we used to say in the 90s, this show looks “tight”. I think the nomenclature used today would be that it looks “fire”? Anyway, enough of me trying to sound cool (it never worked for me in the past).
I’m not sure where this takes place in the timeline. It’s obviously after Order 66 but before he is slain by Obi-Wan in Rebels. He has to have his robotic legs, but they’re not exposed as we saw in the Solo movie. If he’s trying to build a new crime syndicate, is this after Crimson Dawn? I will have to hunt around for more clarity on where we are in the Star Wars canon timeline.
This may become an “every February” thing, since most Best Picture nominees are dramas. I rarely see any of the nominated movies, so this is a great opportunity to rectify that. Also, since I am trying to play the Oscar game again, this can help me make my predictions. If you want to see my predictions, you can head over to that post. In any event, here is the list of Best Picture movies I watched.
It’s Oscar season, folks, so it’s time for me to post my predictions for the 98th Academy Awards. I didn’t do very well last year; I hope I can change that this year.
There is a new category this year, “achievement in casting”. This category is long overdue. There have been some great casting choices, and the folks responsible for those decisions deserve recognition. There are countless movies where I’ve said, “So-and-so was a great casting choice”. The right person in the right role can really affect how the audience relates to the movie.
Again, I have not had the opportunity to see all the movies on the list, but I’ve tried; they are my picks for Drama Month. Look for that post early next month. Believe it or not, of all the movies I saw in theaters last year, none were nominated. You can head over to the Oscars website to see the list of nominees.
The second part of wrapping up another World of Warcraft expansion is to go over the numbers from my spreadsheets. At the beginning of the expansion, I had 22 characters at 70; 4 of which were created during the Mists of Pandaria Remix event. I also started with 6.8 million gold (across all toons) and 620 mounts. So now that the war (within) has ended, let’s get into the numbers.
Alts, Gold, and Gear
As I said, at the start of the expansion, I had 22 characters at level 70. The goal was to get all of them to 80 before the expansion ended. Before the launch of the expansion, Blizzard alluded to the fact that we would only have a year before the next expansion. It was actually about 18 months. Be that as it may, I leveled all 22 characters in just under a year (July 7th is when the last character hit 70).
A quick note before I talk about the gear. When the Midnight pre-patch launched, the item levels were squished. It was a difference of approximately 560 item levels. So when I talk about the ending values, it is based on a calculation of the pre-patch item level plus 560.
The average item level of a fresh level 70 was approximately 540.08. The average item level of my alts at the end of the expansion is 686.59. My raiding character (ie, my main) reached an item level of 714.31, which means the difference (of the average) from my main was 27.72. At the end of Dragonflight, it was 27.05. It’s interesting that I hit about the same number.
At the start of the expansion, I had about 6.88 million gold. I am finishing with approximately 8.85 million, which represents a net profit of just under 2 million gold. The only large expense was another 100k for the augment rune and the countless thousands of gold I have already dumped into housing. If housing hadn’t been introduced in the pre-patch, I’m sure I would have made a profit of over 2 million gold.
Mounts and Professions
The mount haul in The War Within was outstanding. During Dragonflight, I obtained 154 new mounts, including those from the Mists of Pandaria remix event. I started the expansion with 620 mounts, and I’m closing out The War Within with 833 mounts! That is an increase of 213 mounts; so I blew last expansion’s count out of the water.
Siesbarg was the most difficult mount to obtain
Legion Remix introduced 44 new mounts, of which I obtained all of them. If Simple Armory is accurate, of the 92 mounts available in The War Within, I obtained 65 of them, which is 71% of the mounts available in the expansion.
The most difficult mount to obtain was Siesbarg. It required a drop from a rare that started a quest. Several quests followed in which you had to obtain thousands of quest items from mobs all around the quest zones and the raids. It took quite a while.
My fondness for the changes made to professions did not grow with this expansion. It’s still tedious to obtain the knowledge points, and the amount of materials needed to craft certain items is obnoxious. I did manage to max all 11 professions this expansion. I’m sure a lot of that was due, in part, to the consolidation of materials in the warbank and the introduction of patron crafting orders.
With that said, 64% of my characters maxed out their professions, and all of them have profession accessories and tools with a minimum of uncommon quality (i.e., green).
And with that, it’s time for Midnight.
For the Alliance!
If zombies attack the world, everyone will run and hide. Except for us gamers, of course. We’ve been waiting for this all our lives!
