Author: Press Room

The season 2 finale of Peacemaker, “Full Nelson,” just dropped on HBO Max, and the consensus is that it was…fine. Initial fan ratings on sites like IMDb are well below what they were for prior episodes, if still respectable, and I can see where those reviewers are coming from. The finale has some issues. But before we get into that, I’d like to celebrate a very successful season of TV that invigorated my interest in superhero shows, which is no small feat considering how many have worn me down over the past several years. How has Peacemaker managed to stay…

Kodi isn’t just another streaming app like Netflix or Hulu. It’s a powerful open-source media center that allows you to organize, stream, and play almost any type of content, including movies, TV shows, live channels, music, and even photos. I love that Kodi is entirely customizable and keeps everything arranged within a single, intuitive interface. Unlike the built-in apps that come preloaded or are installed on most smart TVs, Kodi doesn’t confine you to a single brand’s ecosystem. If you have your media files stored externally, whether on a hard drive, NAS, or online, it organizes all your files into…

There are a lot of bad movies out there, and most are bad in pretty predictable ways: they’re boring, uninspired, or forgettable. A movie has to be a special kind of bad to be “so bad it’s good.” Where exactly is the line? Can a movie be so bad it’s good if it’s trying to be bad, or does it have to earnestly strive for greatness and fail miserably? Let’s look at a few examples and see if we can hash it out. The Room (2003) Watch The Room on AMC+ Let’s get the obvious one out of the way.…

Lego House is the self-styled ‘home of the brick’. A brick’s throw from the buildings Lego started in, it’s a gleaming institution that dominates the centre of the company’s home town of Billund in Denmark. Although there are plenty of large Lego displays, including an alpine scene, giant dinosaurs, a huge waterfall of bricks and a multi-floor spanning tree, the majority of the 12,000 square metre house’s spaces – all built using the proportions of the original brick – are for people to create stuff in using many of the 25 million Lego bricks on site. But those people haven’t…

Amazon’s Fire TV Stick is one of the best tech purchases that I have ever made. Especially since it can turn my old dumb TV into a smart one, it has its own perks, including easy plug-and-play setup, a smooth UI, and a vast app library. All in all, the Amazon Fire TV Stick is a handy and sleek device that can enhance your everyday experience. However, there are instances when I felt that my Fire TV Stick could be improved. At first, I thought I had to live with those shortcomings, but then I tried several apps, and most…

This January, HBO will debut a new show set in the Game of Thrones universe: A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms, based on the Tales of Dunk and Egg novellas by George R.R. Martin. All signs point to it being the pick-up this beleaguered franchise needs. It’s a badly needed change of pace Lighter and brighter (but still bloody) Game of Thrones was defined by its complicated plots, sky-high stakes, and layered characters. The cast was massive; it was one of those shows you watched for the ensemble. The spinoff show House of the Dragon, which is also coming back…

I’ve bounced between pretty much every big-name music streaming service out there — Spotify, YouTube Music, Apple Music, even Deezer. Each one promised better recommendations, better sound, or better exclusives that would finally make it “the one.” What I got instead were creeping prices and algorithm fatigue. Then one day, while scrolling through an FOSS forum, I stumbled on a post about a streaming music app that caught my attention right away: OuterTune. I grabbed the APK, sideloaded it, and was surprised by how refined it looked. A week later, I realized something funny. I hadn’t opened my paid streaming…

ChatGPT is famously polite (and so are we). It agrees, elaborates, and rarely challenges you. Its lightning-fast answers make us feel productive. But after a while, the responses sounded smart but safe. I realized the importance of making AI stop agreeing with me. I didn’t want it as an echo chamber, but a thinking partner. One day, I typed: “Play devil’s advocate and argue against my idea.” With this tweak, ChatGPT went from agreeable assistant to critical partner. It uncovered weak arguments, questioned my logic, and even highlighted blind spots. Since then, the “devil’s advocate prompt” has become one of…

Right now, YouTube Shorts are awash with a dual-horned scarlet character making pixel-perfect jumps in a bid to ascend a murky cavern, all the while avoiding spiked floors, making use of shelled enemies to bounce off of and desperately clinging onto tiny safe spaces on walls desecrated with thorns.  This is Hornet, lead character of the latest Metroidvania game Hollow Knight: Silksong, and she needs to ascend the bug-infested land of Pharloom by jumping fiendish platforms, negotiating labyrinthian cave networks and violently parleying with monstrous insectoid bosses.  After ascending continuously using a furious repertoire of double jumps, wall jumps and…

I finally got around to watching the new version of The Toxic Avenger, and it pretty much delivered what you’d expect if you’ve seen the original. I’ll admit I’m actually not a big fan of the 1984 original because its commitment to gore outdid its sense of fun. The new one is not much different in this regard, but I found that director Macon Blair made it much more stylish, and the cast is just great. But this got me thinking about other superhero movies that just full-on embrace the gore and violence that you don’t really see in the…