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  My Misspent Youth In Films... Darby O'Gill & The Little People Directed by: Robert Stevenson Starring: Albert Sharpe, Janet Munro, Sean Connery Released: June 22, 1960 A wily old codger matches wits with the King of the Leprechauns and helps play matchmaker for his daughter and the strapping lad who has replaced him as caretaker. What I Thought Then A magical story of Leprechauns in which two old men match wits against each other. The effects were so convincing that between this and The Gnome-Mobile I figured little people must exist somewhere. Also, there's a banshee at the end and it was terrifying, but not so terrifying that I didn't want to watch it again and again. What I Think Now You know what? It holds up rather well. The "little people" effects are well done for the time, using size-matched sets and composites with well-hidden matte lines. The banshee effects, on the other hand, don't look great. The pacing is deliberate, but it's not slow.

 My Misspent Youth In Films... Seven Brides For Seven Brothers Directed by: Stanley Donan Starring: Jane Powell, Howard Keel Released: June 22, 1954 In 1850 Oregon, when a backwoodsman brings a wife home to his farm, his six brothers decide that they want to get married too. What I Thought Then This was one that we watched a lot. It's fun, funny, and filled with fighting, dancing, and slapstick humor. I loved the barn-raising scene, and I especially liked Frank, the hot-head. After decades without seeing it, I could still rattle off the names of the seven brothers (Adam, Benjamin, Caleb, Daniel, Ephraim, Frank, and Gideon). A good time for the whole family. What I Think Now Let's just say that the sexual politics of film have changed a lot in six and a half decades. But before we dig into that, let's talk about the stuff that works. Structurally, it is a taut film, which is not what you expect from a musical made during the Hollywood musical boom. Keel and Powell have very

 In 2019 I blogged about music. Last year I wrote about board games. For 2021, I'm going to write about the movies I grew up on and how they've aged (as I have). I'll be going through them in the order in which they were released, starting a week from today with 1954's Seven Brides For Seven Brothers . The list is not finalized but it's going to be in the 60-70 range, which lines up really poorly with the weeks of the year. So I'm going to post on Fridays (because that's when new movies come out--or used to when I was a kid) and there will be some double-features, probably around summer of 1989, since basically everything came out that summer. Still working out the kinks, honestly. We'll see how it plays. I expect to find some hidden gems as well as some full-on cringe. I'm limiting myself to movies that I have re-watched (or will have been able to re-watch) in the last decade.

And we're done! It's been fun ride, and hopefully somebody reading this has discovered a game they hadn't heard of or reconsidered one that they had discounted before. Anyway, it was a lot of fun to write. Of course, I have discovered games since starting this list that I would not have been able to incorporate. So here are some of the games that I really enjoy that didn't make cut, mostly because they were too new to me. Arcana Rising (2021) Tableau- and engine-builder with drafting where different parts of your engine are triggered based on what round of the draft you're in. Lots of fun and scales very cleanly. It was on Kickstarter earlier this year and should ship in the spring or summer, but there's an official scripted version on TableTop Simulator if you just want to check it out. Horrified (2019) Cooperative survival game set in the world of the classic Universal Pictures monster movies. Smash Dracula's coffins, cure the Wolfman, break the Mummy'

🧩 Riddle Me This... 2001, 3-5 players Complexity: light/moderate From the weirdos who brought you Fluxx  and Pyramid Arcade , it's a game that's not so much a game as it is a competitive logic puzzle. Players will take turns building structures from blue, yellow, and red blocks, wedges, and pyramids to try to discern the secret rule that only the Master knows! Let's See It In Action In Zendo , you or one of your friends will take on the role of Master and present a puzzle for the other players to solve. The Master takes a card that has some options for a rule and chooses two options by putting clips on them (not all cards have two options, but each card has a place for two clips). The Master then builds two structures. One of them satisfies the rule and one does not. They are labeled with black or white discs to indicate their correctness. The other players will then, in turn, build a structure of their own to try to suss out what the rule is. Once they have build a struct

🐦 A Wing And A Prayer... 2019, 1-5 players Complexity: moderate Every now and then a game comes along and just takes the gaming world by storm. In 2019, that game was Wingspan . Stonemeier's perennially out-of-print lovingly-crafted engine builder was the must-have-can't-find item for board game enthusiasts and it is, in fact, still difficult to come across in the 2020 holiday season. Let's See It In Action In Wingspan , you and up to five friends will take turns attracting birds to your wildlife reserve. On your turn, you take one of four actions. Your first available action--and it is likely the first thing you will do each game--is to play a bird card from your hand by paying its cost in food tokens and eggs and adding it to your player board. Your board is divided into three zones--the forest, the grasslands, or the wetlands. Birds are limited as to which zones they can be played in, although several of the birds are capable of inhabiting more than one zone. These zone