Amentep

Huh, so thats a cranefly. Ive always know those as mosquito-hawks. The text was pretty funny. Mosquito Hawk seems to be a colloquial term that - depending on the region - can mean a Crane Fly, a Dragonfly or a Damselfly. Funny pictures though. Crane Flies used to creep me out when I was a kid and thought they were giant mosquitoes!

Curse of the Headless Horseman (1974) The plot description is that a group of kids trying to help a friend who has inherited a ranch run afoul of the curse of a murderous headless horseman. The reality is that a guy studying to be a doctor is willed a "ranch" which he has to make profitable in 6 months or lose it to the "ranch's" caretaker. The ranch is, actually, a small ghost town serving as a tourist attraction (complete with shoot-out show!). The guy's friends, a bunch of hippies, travel along and decide to live and work in the town communally to make it profitable in 6 months. Their plan seems to involve sitting around and folk singing most of the day, randomly wandering around, putting on a sub-vaudeville review for themselves, getting a local singer to sing to them and generally not actually doing anything towards making the "ranch" profitable. Meanwhile, the "Headless Horseman" comes and...doesn't really do much. The first night he sprays some blood from a knife on one of the kids. Later that kid is mysteriously shot by a real bullet! Only its in the arm and he's okay. Later the Horseman shows up with the worlds fakest looking severed head (which actually changes between shots) and splatters blood on a girl who runs out into traffic and is hit. He sprays blood on another girl, then is caught and revealed to be one of the kids. Seems he found what he thinks was gold and wanted to scare everyone off. Only now all of the guys seem to have guns with real bullets and all want the gold and all shoot themselves. We are left to believe that the Headless Horseman is actually GREED. All of this and quite possibly the worst, most intrusive narration in a film ever (which also completely fails to illuminate the film at all), plus shots that randomly shift from day and night, horrible and long sections of film comprised of bad folk singing, characters who seem to randomly appear and disappear from the town with no explanations (and often appear in the same local twice; for example after getting blood on his shirt the kid gives a girl named "Yo-yo" his shirt to clean (because even in communal living, the girls do all the house work). Yo-yo is sitting in front of one of the buildings on the "ranch" and yet after he gives her his shirt, the kid walks not 10 feet and Yo-Yo is clearly in the background again, now standing by a covered wagon!) An awful, nearly unwatchable film.

He sure is Tony Jay Kresselack was a great part. "Promised? Promised?! I made you no promise..." I was saddened to hear when Mr. Jay passed away.

FRANKENSTEIN CONQUORS THE WORLD aka FRANKENSTEIN VS BARAGON. In the last days of WWII, German scientists studying the Frankenstein Monster's immortal heart are forced to send the heart to Japan for study. Japan's scientist study the heart in Hiroshima until the atomic bomb is dropped. 16 years later a weird boy is found by scientists studying radiation victims. Turns out the heart has rebuilt a body for itself, but keeps growing until the new monster is gigantic - just in time for giant monster Baragon to attack Japan! Really wild giant monster movie from Toho, loosely based on an idea that Willis O'Brien (King Kong) had tried to develop for the screen. Has some good stunt work and split screen work in the final battle.

THE MANSTER, early 60s sci-fi horror Japanese-American co-production about a foreign correspondant who falls afoul of an obsessed scientist who experiments on him turning him into a mutating killer! Pretty well done considering the time and budget; a variation of the Jeckle/Hyde story. Fun, interesting and alternatingly weird and goofy.

You forgot that it's also an awesome classic with two masterful performances and kickass directing. Are we talking about the 1972 original (with Michael Caine and Laurence Olivier) or the 2007 remake (with Michael Caine and Jude Law)? Because they're supposed to be vastly different films...

Playing Sacred at the moment. I'm now at the part I stopped at last time...

It seems so likely that Michael is the spy that I keep trying to think if there is anyone else it could be so that it'll be a surprise when it happens. I thought it was an okay episode overall; got a lot of information but it pales in comparison with last week.

I dunno, I like Watchmen, League & From Hell (and Top 10 and Promethea and a bunch of other stuff from Moore). Not sure that I can say I like one better than the other; I will say Watchmen (like V for Vendetta) is very much a reaction to a time and place that don't necessarily exist anymore. I read about some of the stuff Mystique was supposed to have done recently and it raised an eyebrow. I'm kind of curious, given that there is skrull-paranoia around (given the upcoming Secret Invasion story) if her actions are going to be tied to that (either in having been replaced by a skrull at some point prior to her weird actions or by having her figure out who some skrulls were and reacting to that). Its just hard to say at this point (although it seems Cyclops' recent actions are rather suspicious too...a "licensed to kill" X-group? )

Greetings new poster developer type people, Annie and Brian!

Well it couldn't be any worse than the last Toejam & Earl platformer they made... >.> With the Shining and Phantasy Star lines already being used, does Sega have any other notable RPG titles? Or maybe its Eternal Champions RPG...

If the universe falls on my house, my insurance isn't going to cover it, I can tell you that much. The rest...not so sure.

Well Jean Grey is popular... ...BUT she's died several times already. It always seems like characters who've died die a lot more if they come back. And in fact there's some belief that she's already come back... For anyone who hasn't seen them: http://rss.warnerbros.com/watchmen/

What does that even mean? Even without some external/man caused catastrophe (giant asteroid, magnetic poles reversing, atomic war, minature black hole being created in a particle accelerator, etc) the solar system will only last so long; if we stay on earth (and assuming we're still there for the event) we'd be vaporized when the sun turns into a red giant (and frankly if we were just in the solar system we might still have some issues).

I think...for whatever reason it seems like very few actors (or perhaps its the writers problem?) seem to be able to pull off emotionless anymore (this used to kill me all the time on Star Trek shows with the Vulcans going around and emoting all over the place). As far as T:tSCC is concerned, I got to say while I liked some of the concepts in the show, and I liked some of the cast, I just couldn't get into it. A lot of it just seemed...silly to me. A bunch of running around and gun pointing and posturing and not a lot of plot or character development. Mind you I didn't watch every episode, but nothing in the episodes I saw really wowed me.

Did not know that. Just remembered there was a comic thread, searched for the name, found a thread and responded to it with some new stuff. Guess I've spent too much time on boards where they don't want you to start a new thread if an old one exists... *** Anyhow I'm not really worried they'll kill Mystique; I guess its possible but she's such a hugely popular character it seems to be the kind of thing that would really agitate fans and such (mind you maybe that's why they do it; agitating fans seems to be the only reason most companies kill characters anymore).

There's not a lot of information about Goners that I recall other than it being a supernatural thriller he was working on. Universal has the option on it and AFAIK has yet to see a draft they liked enough to green-light it (Joss has been - movie wise - in draft hell with this and the now dead attempt to do Wonder Woman). Tim's not had a lot of success with non-Joss shows, it seems, having had several cancelled (Wonder Falls, The Inside, Drive) without filling out their run.

Joss and Eliza Dushku are doing a new series called Dollhouse next season on FOX. Tim Minear and a few other people who worked on other Whedon shows have come on board, but I'm blanking on names atm. Shows plot revolves around Echo (Dushku) an agent (known as a Doll) for a group that wipes the minds of its agents and programs them with new memories/skills particular to each mission. Echo, however, begins remembering things despite the mind wipes... ObTopic: I actually like Atlantis better than SG-1 to be honest (but watch them in syndication so am a year or half-year behind at least). Not wild about some of the upcoming spoilers I've heard for Atlantis either. Any word about the 3 Stargate series? Last I'd heard planning for it was scuttled by the strike...

I haven't read All-Star Superman (which much like All-Star Squadron has an inappropriate acronym... ) but reviews and people I've known all seem to think its really well done. Its supposed to be a modern take on the Silver Age Superman stories, as seen by Grant Morrison. I know a lot of people who read Berserk too, but I just don't have the money to follow a lot of manga anymore (the translations of Junji Ito's work is about all I'm getting anymore).

Yeah I read half of Sinestro Corp (as I'm reading trades for GL, but was buying GLC by issues...why I don't know). Justice League relaunch started good but the current Kingdom Come storyline is *really* taking its time to build to anything. I keep hearing good things about the current Captain America run, and probably should break down and check it out.

You know, I don't think any our old P&P games ever really got into flight (we tended to run a bunch of low level campaigns with um...frequent character turn-over >_ But we tended to fudge the rules all over the place anyhow, so even if it had come up, I'm sure we'd have fudged it.

Yeah I loved Bubba-Ho-Tep. Mind you, as you might be able to guess, I'm a sucker for mummy movies. Too bad about the sequel, Bubba Nosferatu not getting made. >_

Yeah the "dynasty" aspect of Clinton is a bit worrying to me. If she wins the presidency that would mean a period of 24-28 years where the US was run by 2 families...

There were claims against comics (led by Dr. Fredrick Wertham) as early as 1940 (William Moulton Marston was one of a group of psychologists hired to attest that National Periodical Publications aka DC Comics before creating Wonder Woman). The publication of Wetham's Seduction of the Innocent in 1954 led to congressional hearings about the comic industry. While SotI took on superheroes - notably, Batman (suggesting a homosexual relationship between Bruce Wayne and his ward, Richard Grayson) and Wonder Woman (lesbians and bondage) - it was mostly railing against crime comics and horror comics (which were generally aimed at older and adult audiences). At the Senate Subcommittee for Juvenile Delinquency hearings led by Estes Kefauver, an ill William Gaines, publisher of EC comics whose horror titles - Tales from the Crypt, Vault of Horror and so on - are still talked about today, testified. Unfortunately he was on medication that made his presentation a disaster. At the same time the "kid friendly" comics companies, National/DC, Timely/Marvel, MLJ/Archie, Harvey, and Dell (IIRC) basically used the scare and congressional hearings to build the Comics Code Authority. The Code had guidelines for "acceptable" material for what could be in a comic book, and most of their provisions were directly aimed at taking out EC Comics and Lev Gleason (whose crime comics had drawn the ire of Wertham) who were then dominating comics. With the CCA in place EC ended up unable to publish comics formated books, dropped their horror line for a failed "new initiative" of code approved books and moved MAD into magazine format where it could avoid code regulations. Lev Gleason got of the business in 1955 with no real alternative for him. Wertham actually thought the CCA was a paper tiger, unable to protect children from the evils of comics. He also thought TV was evil as well. **** The "cat woman" who beat up Wonder Woman in Alex Ross' Justice series is a version of Cheetah, one of her oldest advesaries. **** So the real reason I'm posting is to see what everyone is buying & reading. What's interesting out there? I'm still getting a lot of books but am seriously considering switching to trade paperbacks as I'm no longer able to get to the shops regularly anymore. Major superhero publishers DC and Marvel in the US are gearing up for more "major storylines" again. DC is giving us Final Crisis from Grant Morrison and J. G. Jones with very little actually coming out about what the series is going to be about. Grant, no stranger to hyperbole, has said the series will be "The Lord of the Rings of the DCU". Marvel's entry is Secret Invasion by Brian Michael Bendis and Leniel Yu, with the Skrulls having infiltrated the earth's government and heroes in a bid to take what they believe is theres after the destruction of the Skrull Empire in Annhilation. At the moment I have no plans to buy either... Nonsuperhero titles seem to be making some headway in the market (westerns seem to be doing okay, and horror related comics still seem to be selling well). Translated Manga are still selling like hotcakes to comic fans and non-fans alike. Translated Eurpean comics seem to have lost steam ever since the disasterous DC/Humanoids deal. But Marvel is pairing with French publisher Soleil, so maybe things will right on that front. So anyhow, whatcha reading?