WRUP: The best movies of the 1990s recorded off television onto overused videocassette review edition

    
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Be kind

A League of Their Own: After 15 minutes of footage from Hard Copy discussing the Tonya Harding-Nancy Kerrigan incident, this movie begins with a choppy, grainy recording that had us originally believing that the main character’s name was Sandwich. This was not helped by the advertisments for Subway that played at least once per commercial break for the movie’s entire run time. Unfortunately the end of the movie was taped over by Kendall’s soccer championship in which she kicked the ball off the field and cried that she wanted to go home. Two and a half stars.

The Fugitive: This one was actually taped off of HBO, so the entire movie was there in a terrible aspect ratio and one bit of garbled tape which made it sound like Harrison Ford said “I didn’t wife my wife” so we all spent a lot of time laughing about that. Four stars.

Jurassic Park: I really didn’t remember this film being shown on television, but I guess it must have been because there were a bunch of commercials in the middle for some burger joint I’ve never heard of. Also they cut to a commercial break midway through advertising Friends reruns. Wait, was this real? Did I actually just buy Spielberg’s new Nostalgia Cut of the movie? Wasn’t there an ad in here for Troll dolls? Eh, whatever, three stars.

Apollo 14: This one was actually a made-for-TV movie with a budget of about seven dollars that would qualify as a mockbuster except it was just trying to cash in on name recognition. There’s a part where you can hear the Smithsonian security guards yelling at the film crew that they will be arrested. In summary, you are now going to try to find out if this was a real thing because of this What Are You Playing entry, so I’ve done my part.

Bonus question: What’s the most out-of-place item in your living space that you wish you could move elsewhere?

Brianna Royce (@nbrianna, blog): Still hooked on Guild Wars 2 here. I’m still stalled on Janthir because I wait for my duo partner, but I’ve been playing alts a bunch. Been playing my old Mesmer pulled out of mothballs and geared for her competent era. Who am I?

I’m a very “every object should have a home, and that home should be somewhere hidden so I don’t see it until I want to” person, but the hardest thing to hide is wires. I cannot stand wires that poke out and ugly up everything. We have most of them hidden – I single-handedly keep Wire Hiders Co in business – but you can’t do much about the ones actually attached to devices you need. I wish I could banish all wires forever.

Chris Neal (@wolfyseyes, blog): With Shinrarta Dezhra under attack and my best friend’s stored items in danger as a result, rescuing her stuff and attempting to blow up aliens in Elite: Dangerous is very likely going to be a primary focus. Beyond that there will be some occasional dips into Final Fantasy XIV and some continued progress through Nightingale; more to come on that soon.

I don’t know that there’s too many things that are out of place in my apartment, honestly. Not to suggest that we’ve got a fully realized decor scheme or some feng shui thing going on, but considering three people live here, some consensus has to be met. So, yeah, I think we’ve got things pretty well aligned in that regard.

Eliot Lefebvre (@Eliot_Lefebvre, blog): I’ve finally started a couple of belated projects in FFXIV and I will be doing that, but I also have a bunch of single-player stuff I’d kind of like to lose myself in. Will I actually do that, or will I just sit and stare? Time will tell.

My cats’ litterbox is definitely an unpleasant outlier in my living space (there’s just no good place to put it in this apartment), but equally problematic is my printer. It has to live in the bedroom, far from the computer, because there’s nowhere else good to put it, and that means that turning it on and printing requires basically walking through the whole apartment.

Justin Olivetti (@Sypster, blog): I have two leveling goals this weekend: To power-level my baby Brawler in Lord of the Rings Online (by punching all the things) and to use timewalking dungeons in World of Warcraft to zip my Druid from level 70 to 80.

Sam Kash (@thesamkash): I keep pushing off the completion of the Harry Potter: Magic Awakened storyline. Maybe because once it’s done there really won’t be a reason to log on anymore or maybe I’m just losing the motivation on my own. I’m hoping to complete Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown this weekend too. I beat one of the final bosses this past week and that biz was tough! But they just released a DLC yesterday! Although since it dropped as I’m getting closer to completion, there’s a better chance I’ll actually play it. If I don’t now, I probably never will.

Bonus: I just moved the cat litter box to a new closet, which meant moving the suit cases in there next to my computer desk. I really don’t like it but there’s not a lot of room for these things!

Tyler Edwards (blog): Like Justin I am leveling WoW alts through Timewalking, except in my case it’s a monk and a demon hunter.

Bonus question: The portable air conditioner in the middle of my apartment. I live on the top floor and have a large west-facing window, and the heat of the afternoon sun in summer is far more than my building’s central AC can handle on its own, thus necessitating the portable, but man this thing takes up so much space.

Every Saturday, join the Massively OP community and staff for What Are You Playing, our roundup of what MMORPGs and other games we’re hoping to play this weekend (with a bonus question or two for our amusement). Tell us what you’re up to! Go off-topic! And don’t forget to have fun!
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