Avatar Rights, The Patch that was the Pub , and Lego Batman, Lego Batman!! - Welcome to the column that is happy to report that we are alive and in one piece (not pieces) known as Dare to Play the Game.

I’m still here. Aren’t you glad? Don’t answer that. After a rather rough two weeks, I hope to return to a fairly normal column with fairly normal jokes and fairly normal news which don’t involve me huddled on the floor with my thumb in my mouth and my body in the fetal position. It’s not a pretty picture and I don’t want to repeat it.

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The Godfather films changed storytelling forever. Films before that time, mobster or otherwise, had some very simple but unshakable rules. There was always a fairly clear distinction between the good guys and the bad guys. The good guys always win in the end, and the bad guys always succumb to justice before the final credits. For perhaps the very first time, we were given characters that we knew in our souls were evil men. They killed. They broke laws. They manipulated everyone around them through fear and terrorism to bend to their wills. Somehow, now they are the film’s core heroes, if you will. When Vito is shot, we cheer for Michael, who discards his contempt for his family’s criminal image and comes to his father’s aid.

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