PicnicBasketSam

I've made the 4 Wizarding World sets that came out last month already, when I have completed the 3 released yesterday (plus the little polybag) I'll upload them, that should be done pretty soon. I'll also build the summer wave of Technic sets but 42082 is going to take a considerable amount of time. EDIT: Just uploaded the whole Wizarding World wave, the whole process was very smooth so I'll definitely be uploading more sets in the near future.

I've never watched a single thing related to the Teen Titans except the trailers for Teen Titans Go! To The Movies, which honestly looks like it might be a lot of fun. This show looks absolutely dreadful, though. It's almost embarrassing how hard they're trying to make this look mature and edgy, with completely random, pointless, and over-the-top swearing and violence. The character design is inexplicably terrible (and I imagine everything relating to Beast Boy turning into animals will have absolutely horrible CGI) and the dialogue is worse than anything Zack Snyder has ever written. It also looks really low-budget, as in, I think the trailer for Godzilla: King of the Monsters cost more to produce than this entire show did. I understand a TV series exclusively for a streaming platform can't have that big of a budget, but this looks like an Asylum Films knockoff of actual superhero media, even down to the text that appears in the trailer. If this achieves notoriety when it's released I suspect it will be thoroughly lampooned by stuff like Deadpool or Teen Titans Go!

Incredibles 2. I thought it was amazing and better than anything else I've seen in a theater this year.

Solo is really entertaining, despite a few really eye-roll-worthy moments and overall bad pacing. Alden Ehrenreich did a great job as Han, and Lando and Chewie pretty much steal the movie. The fanservice is there but not overly intrusive most of the time, unlike Rogue One (which is much worse than this, in my opinion). I absolutely love that Lando has an entire large closet just full of capes.

I absolutely love the new X-Wing design and it's probably the best Star Wars set of the year. Maybe it's just me but I think it looks even better than the UCS one or either Sequel Trilogy version. The Jedi Starfighter looks really good too and I'll probably get it first because it's actually cheaper than every other recent Jedi Starfighter (of either variety) that LEGO has made, while also being the best-designed one of them.

Ready Player One. Highly recommend this one in theaters just on the basis of how amazing the visuals are, but it is a very well-done movie, carrying on the proud tradition of Spielberg adapting mediocre books into great movies. It also has MechaGodzilla fighting The Iron Giant and a Gundam so, you know, there's that. Side note, given that a sizable majority of this thing is inside the virtual reality world, would it be considered eligible for any Best Animated Feature awards?

Annihilation. It's on Netflix now in most of the world, which is a shame because it absolutely deserves to be seen in a theater. It's mostly slow-burn and weird, building up to a complete mind screw of a climax that is just wonderfully done but will leave almost everyone confused. It does make a lot more sense than the book, which is also brilliant but differs greatly in plot and has such a strange final 50 pages I cannot describe what even happens in it.

I got a COBI P-51C Mustang scale model today for $30, with 250 pieces. It's a very well-designed, high-quality model, and not at all derivative of LEGO. It's a design they would never touch and at least half the piece shapes in the set are unique to them, although they are very compatible with LEGO parts. I'll upload some pictures later if anyone wants, the figure is pretty ugly but seated inside the cockpit he's kind of hard to see. The plane itself is quite a bit larger than expected, it's approximately 11 inches long with a 13-inch wingspan, and it comes with a nice display stand with a printed plaque. Just a few of the details are stickers, but unfortunately, three of them are over a large number of parts. For a scale model that I'll probably never disassemble I don't mind, but for a LEGO-like product it kind of hurt to put those ones on. COBI makes two different P-51 Mustangs so, to clarify, this is the model I now am the proud owner of. https://cobi.pl/en/small-army-ww2/aircrafts/north-american-p-51c-mustang,art,8751.html

Baby Driver. One of the most enjoyable movies I've seen from the past few years, I really need to check out Edgar Wright's other filmography... it should absolutely win the Oscar for Best Film Editing, by the way, this thing is brilliantly put together.

Blu-ray release date has been announced, it's March 27th.

I tried to build 17101 Creative Toolbox today, only to discover both of the new motor parts are missing the actual spinning axle hole needed to attach anything. I suppose it's possible to slide an axle in anyway, but it's still an irritating modelling error. The medium motor doesn't have a plug either, but that doesn't bug me as much.

Logan. I didn't love it quite as much as most of the Internet seems to but it is a fantastic movie, and ends the X-Men franchise so well I wish they would give the main series a rest and just make more interesting spin-offs like this and Deadpool. But no, we're still getting another prequel in November...

New gallery is up now, it doesn't look like you can upload LXF files to it anymore, just images. The LDD microsite is under a different name (lego.com./en-us/ldd) and all links to the old one redirect to LEGO's homepage or LEGO Life. Also, for some reason, 4 MOCs I made at least four years ago have appeared in it with a posted date of August 2014, a point at which I didn't even have LDD. I have no idea how this is possible.

3600 piece Bugatti Chiron? I'm intrigued. If I could read German I could probably get some more useful information from Zusammengebaut's Twitter feed. I expect something even better than the 42056 Porsche set for how much this will probably cost.

The old gallery is still there, as is the promise of "a new gallery coming soon" on the LDD microsite...

I hate to double post but I just noticed the "send to LEGO.com" button has been completely removed...

The bar isn't too wide, the problem is that it naturally connects a tiny bit off-center. If you scaffold, say, a 1x4 panel exactly under it, it can attach properly. Also, the large Nexo Knights canopy has the same issue- it's easier to deal with that, though, because it has studs on top and it's very easy to snap it back onto the grid.

The new gallery hasn't rolled out yet, which makes me think they'll officially release a modified version of 4.3.11 with that and this was an accident. LDD is running normally for me with nothing coming up on the loading screen at all, so I won't mess with anything until this weird situation resolves itself.

Not that I'm disagreeing, but I do think LEGO has a reason for making a lot of minifigure-scaled Creator sets... and I bet that reason is something like "kids like sets that can work with minifigures AND have alternate model instructions provided." Now, I can't stand the modular sets, it seems like a stupid gimmick and it makes all of the houses really boring in their design, but the idea of adding more playability to make buildings more interesting to kids is solid. That said... I'll be sad if we only get minifigure-scaled models from here on out, this is the only theme besides Technic that makes things in different scales or just normal buildings.

Should we still be expecting this thing to drop in the next week?

I found the pictures, I really like the builds except for the new Falcon... the new color scheme and the weird shape of the nose don't do it for me, and it's incredibly expensive... Otherwise it's a great little lineup of sets, I'll certainly be getting that TIE Fighter.

I want the new slide and staircase elements from LEGO Friends, all the animal heads from Elves, the kite-shaped tile piece from the brand-new Elves sets, the 1x1x1 2/3 brick with 2 studs on the side, the 2x2 plate with a 45 degree angle, the windshield from last year's Batmobile set and this year's Creator Rocket Rally Car, the strangely shaped windshield first introduced in the 2016 Black Panther set, and the Technic pull-back motor. This isn't really a part, but I would really like for them to fix the bug with the dual-molded minifigure legs and to fix the 1x1 cone and 2x2 macaroni elements so they accept Technic axles all the way.

Prehistoric animals, you say? I don't even buy City sets any more, but I am definitely intrigued by that.

Did we settle once and for all what color the Rally Car is?

Found the images on Twitter. Love the forklift, can't really tell much about the others but the Volvo is certainly interesting. I really can't get a sense of scale for any of these other than that one... also I understand distortion and everything, but I swear those are 3x7 dog bones on the arm of 42082.