Amentep

Prince Valiant (1997) - based on the famous comic strip by Hal Foster, the movie (directed by Anthony "Waxworks" Hickox) is a bit of a mess. Scenes are linked by comic panels and narration and I have a feeling that wasn't intended - it makes it feel like a lot of the connective tissue of the film was cut or never shot. Based on the credits, there are definitely scenes missing from the final film. Plot follow Squire Valiant who is tasked by King Arthur to escort Princess Ilene to Wales while Arthur's knights go north to demand the return of Excalibur from the Scots not realizing it was Vikings (working with Morgan Le Fay) who took it and framed the Scots. Valiant gets caught up in the larger story all while the better known knights are busy. Famously the director was locked out of editing the film by the German producers (and according to actor Warwick Davis, perhaps with cause). But its a fun enough low fantasy Arthurian run-around. Ron Perlman, Davis, Joanna Lumley and Udo Kier are all kind of wasted (ie not given a lot to do given their talents) but welcome additions to any cast. Katherine Heigl probably gets the best bits as plucky Princess Ilene while Stephen Moyer is appropriately square-jawed and heroic for the Valiant of the film. (Sorry, can only find the German version of the trailer, which kind of makes sense given in the US the movie hasn't had a release since VHS and sunk at the theaters). Space Truckers (1996) Stuart Gordon directs the story of John Canyon (Dennis Hopper), independent space trucker - one of the last independent cargo haulers in the solar system. Circumstances force him to take a 'no questions asked' haul to earth. Along for the trip are Debi Mazar as Cindy whose mom is having an operation on Earth and will do anything to get back there and Stephen Dorff as Mike a young trucker who just got his license who forces his way onto John's job. Gordon's Robot Jox famously got a threatening letter from the producers of Robocop over the name (it was originally titled RoboJox). But really this film is more in tone with Robocop in its satire of politics and big business and the intersection of same with the average working joe (in this case, long haulers as opposed to Robocop's police officers). Its a fun film considering some of the more lurid aspects of it that aren't dwelled on too heavily (particularly in the middle section). Lots of people to spot in the movie; besides Hopper, Mazar and Dorff, you get Charles Dance, George Wendt, Vernon Wells, Shane Rimmer and in a small role, Barbara Crampton.

I watched all the Short Treks. They were...okay? 15-17 minutes doesn't give a lot of time for good or bad, I guess. Probably not a recommendation though when the one that sticks out in my mind the most is the one that revisited scenes from TOS because of the nostalgia factor...

Never seen the show, but you have to remember that while the US had 1054 fatal* officer involved shootings in 2021, that was for a population of ~332 million. When you factor in LA's population, LAPD would statistically only account for 9 of those. So odds are high Fillion's character wouldn't be shooting and killing people left-and-right. *couldn't find the number that included non-fatal shootings with officers, so the number of people shot would be higher.

That artwork is such a template for 70s US comic art. It really was the start of a new day when he began working in the industry. Adams also fought for creator recognition in credits. And he stood up for other creators including helping with the efforts to get DC to recognize Siegel and Schuster with respect to creating Superman

Neal Adams - hugely influential comic book artist, co-creator of Ra's Al Ghul, publisher of his own comic line (Continuity comics) and ran his own advertising business. His work with Denny O'Neil revamped Batman, Green Arrow and Green Lantern and arguably ushered in Batman's rise to popularity post the 66 Batman series (at one point Batman and Detective comics were such low sellers, DC was considering cancelling them in favor of a single Batman Family giant). He also had a run on Marvel's X-Men that predicts a number of things that would show up in the later Clairmont and Coc krum revamp of the characters.

I still like my pre-release Star Trek Into Darkness theory better than the actual movie, too. I probably think too much about these things.

I haven't watched the episode yet (or the first season of Picard), but read the spoiler and my first thought was... But not having seen it, perhaps I'm more charitable without context.

That path tends not to end well. Probably more of a Roadside Picnic thing and the aliens just stopped over for lunch not realizing what they left behind. I know someone who has arachnophobia because as a kid they saw a giant spider (not Australian giant, just normal giant) and stepped on it not realizing it was a normal sized large spider carrying an enormous egg sac which, upon bursting, birthed hundreds of baby spiders that proceeded to crawl up said individuals leg and over their body. You should have told her that you were arachnophobic and asked if she could teach you to get over it...eh? Know what I mean? Know what I mean? Nudge nudge. Nudge nudge. Know what I mean? Say no more...know what I mean?.

I don't work in IT, but this is more or less what I'm dealing with right now. People who want to skip steps so they can get to what they want 'faster' but not realizing that skipping the steps will prevent them from getting what they want, and then trying to put the blame on our office that they didn't get what they wanted. Which only happened because they skipped steps.

Clearly MTG was thinking Meadows was a comic book fan, and thought they might like Pat Mills and Kevin O'Neil's MARSHALL LAW book. I'm not sure how anyone can disagree but...they apparently do? I can only hope she gets defeated. I always thought - and not being a lawyer it may be that I just don't get it - that was a weird argument from Roberts as clearly the reason the record couldn't show the 'pervasive,' 'flagrant,' 'widespread,' and 'rampant' discrimination like 1965 was the law was requiring preclearance and the states had learned that those things wouldn't pass preclearance. So apparently the law working was proof the law wasn't needed? I kinda get the idea of it continuing to apply to a limited states would be viewed as an issue, but...

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I struggled with most games with inverted Y-axis, but it made sense for flight sims at least.

TOS "Shore Leave". Its a Kirk quote from near the end of the episode, IIRC.

What about those of us just innocently caught in the crossfire between you two? Now I'm in a spiral reading about terrible BG2 mods I never heard of because I never modded the game...

I spent a few minutes when I first loaded Baldur's Gate trying to figure out how to move. I thought my computer had locked-up and rebooted it. And I wasn't a kid (but BG was the first computer game I'd played since Wolfenstein 3D)

Oh there are huge gaps in my knowledge, so anyone with more rounded knowledge would beat me. Also it helps if I have reference works handy which wouldn't help in Trivial Pursuit.

I know its mostly supposed to be funny, but to be that guy... The original development for SCOOBY-DOO, WHERE ARE YOU? was inspired by THE ARCHIES cartoon (where Archie, Reggie, Jughead, Betty, Veronica and Jughead's dog Hotdog are a band) crossed with the radio serial I LOVE A MYSTERY (where former WWII Pacific theater vetrans Jack Packard, Doc Long, Reggie York form a detective agency and travel the world to help people caught up in mysteries and intrigue). The show at that time was called MYSTERIES FIVE and had 5 kids in the band (Mysteries Five) named Geoff, Mike, Kelly, Linda, and Linda's brother W.W. and a bongo playing dog named Too Much. Between gigs, the group would solve mysteries. This idea would be developed further to become SCOOBY DOO, WHERE ARE YOU, but would also be used for the most obvious Scooby-Doo clones: Goober and the Ghost Chasers (like Scooby-Doo, but with less kids, Scooby could turn invisible, ghosts were real and would usually assist in helping against the fake ghosts + the Partridge Family. No the real ghosts didn't assist AGAINST the Partridge Family, the Partridge Family just showed up a lot) - Clue Club (like Scooby Doo, but with two dogs helping solve crimes) and The Funky Phantom (like Scooby-Doo, but the dog is a normal dog and they partner with the Ghost of a revolutionary war ghost to solve mysteries) - But the Mysteries Five format is also the starting point for Hanna-Barbera's adaption of Josie and The Pussycats (the version where they tended to solve spy mysteries between gigs), Speed Buggy (three kids and their anthropomorphic buggy car stopped villains between races), Jabberjaws (where a band in the future stopped threats to their marine world with the help of their drum playing shark), and Inch High Private Eye (a tiny detective, his two friends and their dog stops criminals). Arguably Hanna-Barbera wouldn't have tried The Amazing Chan and the Chan Clan either, even if the source for the show pre-dates Scooby-Doo...

I don't think they say her name a whole lot in the show as it is, to be fair, and she only really gets one episode dedicated to her and an episode or two later she's gone.

I can't help but wonder how much the creative differences that caused Bryan Fuller to leave the show derailed the actual development of it, cascading through the seasons. The first season isn't focused as all, it commits (IMO) the writing sin of starting at event 1 and not where the story starts (the story starts with Burnham coming to Discovery; the rest is 2 episodes of pointless prologue ("What's Past is Prologue" - yes, I know, throw the rotten fruits)). For shorter seasons like they're doing, they should be taking much smaller bites of the pie. But the first season is a plotting mess, and I think it negatively impacted season 2. I'd argue the first season wasted a lot of time with Klingon politics when that was never the point of the story, really. As a result, Airiam gets no screen time and is "interesting looking crewmember #3 on the bridge" for the first season. But even if they wanted to build up that character's tragedy they could have - but they'd needed to have slowed the pace down a good bit. Which would have helped a number of character storylines for season 2, to be fair, like Tilly-Fungal May and Stamets-smothers-(not-really)-Culber or even Tyler-comes-back-and-awkwardly-reunites-with-Burnham which all just sort of become these brief and broad character bits which I'd rather have spent more time with developing rather than short-handing them in place of giving screen time to another monologue. I feel kind of bad for the actors, as I think they're getting let down in the scripts a good bit with respect to character. And its really weird seeing the main character's ostensibly main romantic relationship acting like an after thought. I like Tilly, Stamets, Culber, Jett, and Saru. I even like Burnham even if her character is all over the place. But they're not really getting a lot of character time. Another set of questions that struck me about season 2 -

Follow through on ideas is one of the weaker things DISCO does. If they spent less time trying to make these "hell yeah!" speech scenes and more time just dealing with the characters and their continuity, they may have time to follow-up on dealing with ideas or concepts that float by the wayside.

Don't use one of those either. Probably laser my eye out if I did. I'm a failure as a leader, clearly.