The Harry Potter series is not only a favorite film collection, but a true achievement in the translation from text to big screen.

I'm one of the few people I know that never read the Harry Potter books. Seemingly all of my friends have read the series and are huge fans. Due to the sheer number of my friends who read the series, I always found myself going to the Harry Potter movies (sometimes even midnight premieres). And I have to say that the movies do almost nothing for me. It's one of those odd things where I can see why people would love it, but I just can't get excited about it. I don't know if that's because I never read the books, or if Harry Potter is just one of those things that's massively popular that I just don't "get".

I think the Avengers movies are up there for me. Throughout high school I would talk with my friend about how awesome it would be if they signed actors to their characters instead of just one film series. I've enjoyed each of the movies so far, and hope that they can continue to put out great movies.

[Spoiler]

And the fight just didn't show anything which made me think "oh he is powerful" - well in the second fight he does punch cement and break it but that was awful late in the movie to convince me. 

I remember Bane doing several (little) things throughout the movie which hinted at just how strong he really was.

Spoiler for Hiden:

In the first scene he almost effortlessly breaks out of his handcuffs. They might have been zip-ties, but either way it was impressive. Later he crushed a guys neck with his hand, caught batman's punch, crushed his helmet, etc. etc.

It was enough that very early on in the movie I had the thought that this was the most "comic booky" of the trilogy, and Bane was way stronger than anyone else in the films. Batman has done some crazy things, but he also has a suit that allowed him to do some of those things, like bending a gun barrel in the first film.

Hi guys. I need some advice on a wireless router. I've been using a Linksys Wireless G Router (WRT54G2 V1 model) for several years now. I bought this when I was living in an apartment, but now I'm in a bigger house and we are looking to upgrade the router so that it can reach the opposite side of the house.

My step-father went out and bought a Linksys E2500 Dual-Band N Router. I checked out some reviews for it, and one of the knocks against it was that it had a very limited range. The CNET review said it should be limited to a small apartment or dorm. Does anyone have any experience with this router, and can you confirm if the range is as bad as the review makes it out to be? Do you have any suggestions for a router we can look for?

Thanks!

Sad. Heard that on the way into work this morning after going to the premiere last night.

I didn't have any problems understanding Bane, but I also don't think it was mixed well with the rest of the dialogue. It was a little too loud, and sounded like it was completely done in post.

I just got back from the midnight premiere. It was a great movie, but it really had no chance of being better than TDK.

Now I just have to keep myself occupied until I go to work in two hours. Yay borderline irresponsible all-nighters! I thought I left you behind with my early 20s.

Happy Birthday!

Glad to hear things went about as smoothly as they could. Hopefully the pain becomes at least manageable soon.

I think it would be awesome, with a dash of terrifying.

Good luck Pete.

I did take July 19-20 off. I'm not sure if I can still get a ticket to the trilogy showings that Thursday (and given that I've seen BB and TDK a hundred times on TV and DVD, maybe I don't even want to), but I do hope to see a midnight show as I did for the previous two films. 

I already have plans to go see the midnight premiere, but I found out a few days ago that I'm going to be getting up at 4:30AM that week for work. So... do I stay up after the midnight premiere and pull an all-nighter, or do I get an hour of sleep?

I work in Martin County, where West's new district is. The county is heavily Republican, and will eat up everything he has to say. Actually, his comments aren't surprising to me because I hear versions of this stuff every week.

I like the consolidation. I never went into the PC forum even though I know there were threads in there I was interested in. Having everything in once place is going to make it a better experience.

[Spoiler]

I've been listening to the Giant Bomb podcasts from E3 during work, and there was a hilarious story told about the presentation for this game. The big hook at the end of the presentation was:

Spoiler for Hiden:

You can play as Sherlock's dog!

Not that I would have gotten this anyway, but from what I heard during the podcast I wont be playing this. 

Nice! I enjoyed the first episode. I'll be downloading this as soon as I can break away from Civ V.

Thanks!

Im also disappointed with losing the ability to use tapatalk. I don't have time to check the forums when I'm on the pc, and tapatalk was how I did all my lurking.

Ads don't normally bother me, but this sounds awful.

I hope you get better soon KD.

Let's see. I work two jobs 6 days a week. I usually work from 8:30 to 1:30, then I rush home and workout for an hour (entering 2nd month of P90X), then go to my 2nd job until 7:00 at night. By the time I come home and eat, I'm usually exhausted and I spend the last couple of hours before I go to sleep playing games, watching TV and movies, and/or reading. So... I guess the answer is "no".

Now I'm sad.

I haven't been following this too closely, but after reading through the thread and watching the trailers I'm now very excited for this. My biggest problem with the last few games has been the developers cramming in unnecessary "improvements". With the change of setting, the changes will make sense. If they can pull it off, this should be a lot of fun.

It's an awesome movie, but it's not the best superhero movie ever.

It's on my personal short list. I loved the iron man, Thor, and captain America movies, and this one is better than all of them.

I would put it top 3 with the dark knight and the watchmen. The Dark Knight gets the top nod, because it's a great movie that just happens to have a super hero in it. The Avengers wisely doesn't try to do that. Its just two hours of raw super hero action. I can't think of any other movie that matches it.

Maybe I'll adjust my rankings as time goes on. The last time I enjoyed a super hero movie this much was spider-man, and I can barely watch that now.

I've always somewhat disliked the hulk. The movies were ok at best, and considering I don't remember anything from them they were probably pretty bad. And I could never get into the comics. So I didn't have high hopes for the hulk going into the film.

Having said that, I think he was my favorite part of the movie. They managed to put a lot of character into a giant green monster. I still don't think I would want to see a solo movie with him though.

Wasn't there a trailer that showed him getting bitten by a spider? I admit I haven't been following the film all that closely, but I swear I have seen a shot in one of the trailers with Peter in the lab with a spider coming down and biting him.

Given the differing origin stories, and that I haven't read the comics, what is Spiderman's origin?  Is this film making it up completely, using canon from the comics, or something else entirely?  I recall watching Spiderman cartoons as a kid and recall his webslingers being engineered, not biological, but I have no recollection of secret agent parents or a manipulated conspiracy.   

In the comics, he was bitten by a radioactive spider and gained the super strength, ability to climb walls, and spider sense. He then built his own web slingers. Running out of fluid at the worst moment was a staple in most of his stories.

From what I've seen of the trailers, this new movie will follow the original comics storyline much more closely than the first trilogy did. I'm not sure if that will be enough to save the film though.

I went to the midnight show last night, and it was incredible. The movie was amazing, and it was a great crowd that cheered at all the right times and stayed quiet during the rest of the film. Lots of comedy, and packed with action. The movie was so good that even waking up to a flat tire on just 2.5 hours of sleep couldn't ruin my good mood.

The last movies had spidey sticking to walls because he had shit growing out of his skin, and yet his rubbery suit didn't prevent him from clinging to the side of buildings. And in the comics, there's never been anything (that I can remember) preventing him from sticking to stuff. I even remember a panel where he was sticking to the ceiling from his head!

I have low expectations for this movie, but not because of this.

It's on already? Nice.

I will be downloading these this afternoon, but I probably wont get a chance to play them until later tonight.

You can't be as bad as me. I'm 0-7.

New maps on Tuesday? Looks like I have until then to finish up Uncharted 2 before I get pulled back in to MW3.

If you want a game against someone who doesn't appear to be that good at this thing, my username is msteelers.

Be warned, I might take hours and hours between turns, even if I'm not sinking into a frozen lake.

I've got a busy weekend, but will be able to sneak in an hour or two of gaming early Saturday. I've been playing the first Uncharted. I'm not as hooked as I thought I was going to be, but I'm still enjoying it.

Thanks for the suggestions. I assumed the God of War Origins stuff was the first two games from the PS2, but if they are the portable games I'll probably rent them. And I completely forgot about MLB: The Show. I loved this game when I played it on the PS2, and every summer I regret not being able to play it. Now that can change. 

I'm exchanging gifts with the family on Christmas, and notice that my pile is significantly smaller than the rest. This didn't bother me, as I'm a highly evolved American Adult Male who doesn't need a lot of christmas gifts, but dammit I've been good all year! Clearly the only logical conclusion was that I was going to receive one really good gift, that would put all other gifts to shame. I might have taken a quick peak outside to see if there was a Lexus with a bow on it, but sadly there were too many cars in our driveway to be sure. Finally as the pile of presents were winding down, one was shoved my way. And lo and behold, it was a PS3!

A PS3 bundle to be more precise, with Ratchet and Clank: All 4 One and Little Big Planet 2. What are the big PS3 exclusive games I should play? I know the Uncharted series is popular, and picked up 1 and 2 already. Heavy Rain is another game I've been wanting to play. And I played the first few God of Wars, so I'll probably play God of War 3 at some point as well. What else is out there?

I spent a few hours with a trooper, but didn't particularly care for it, so I started a Jedi consular. I got him up to level 10 today, but I won't be able to play again until middle of next week after the holiday.

I ordered the game, but haven't had a chance to play it yet. I might get an hour or so this afternoon, but that will be it until tomorrow at the earliest.

Stupid question, but what server is the gt guild on? I fell behind in the thread, and came back to a ton of unread pages.

[Spoiler]

I finally finished this yesterday, and I'll give it a resounding "meh". AC1 was boring, AC2 was great, and Brotherhood was fun and moved the story forward a lot at the end. Revelations falls somewhere between AC1 and Brotherhood.

The new gameplay mechanics were largely useless and not fun. I really didn't like the tower defense game, and while I enjoyed sending assassin's on missions in brotherhood, I just didn't care for it here. I think taking over cities and having to micro-manage them wasn't intuitive and largely unneeded. The game became much more enjoyable once I had finished up most of the random side stuff and focused on the final couple of sequences. Of course I also blasted through those last sequences in a few short hours.

The game also does little to advance the main story. It's nice to see Ezio chasing the clues that Altair left behind, but the payoff left me confused.

Spoiler for Hiden:

Is there more than 1 apple? I thought Ezio had the apple from one of the earlier games, and don't the assassin's have that apple in the present? I got the impression that Desmond was going to bring them to Masyaf to get the apple that Altair hid and Ezio left behind.

The biggest knock against Revelations is that I know I could go online and find out the answers to my questions, but I don't really have the drive to do that yet. The first thought that went through my head when I finished was "Bring on Skyrim!!"

I saw the muppets last night. I was afraid after the first half of the movie that I had made a horrible mistake. The music numbers were overly cheesy and the story was dragging. But it improved immensely in the 2nd half, and I was in pain from laughing so hard at certain points.