Vizzini doesn't outthink himself. He confines himself to the binary option ("It's so simple! All I have to do is divine from what I know of you, are you the sort of man who puts the poison into his own goblet or his enemy's.") when doing so is not based on the actual challenge the Man in Black puts forth. Because…

This one didn't work at all for me. It was too abstract to inspire me to write anything linear, so I didn't. Maybe it was too much turkey in my tummy, but I just couldn't find anything worthwhile to say about this one. I still wrote something anyway, of course...

Two warring forces shape the world of books:

The New Yorker piece is a clever concept, but it's not executed as well as it could be. Yes, I'm a Christian, but I'm not being critical because I'm offended or I think it's sacrilegious, I just don't think the author pulls off the humor as well as she could have. Some of the commenters here made better jokes than…

That was much funnier than the piece in the New Yorker!

"The Kennel near Canis Major"

In eighth grade, back in the early 1980s, my English teacher assigned "Alas, Babylon" by Pat Frank, a novel about survivors of an atomic war. He also showed us "Dr. Strangelove." He was a cool teacher. Maybe it was just a function of when we lived—and where (it was rural Texas)—but pretty much everyone I knew…

Yep. As a South Florida resident, I'm always frustrated by the glow at night—you can't see any stars without heading west into the 'glades or east on a boat. Sad indeed.

I'll just leave this here: Yoda Lifts an X-Wing

So am I. It was—and remains—a remarkable piece of work, capable of conveying a tremendous range of emotion. But, since I'm not going to change your mind—and all the people who agree with me won't change it, either—I'm not going to re-hash the point.

That's the point: take the risk. It worked for superhero movies, and it could work again. But you have to commit to telling the story. You make a "Frankenstein" for the ages, and people will see your sequels.

We'll have to agree to disagree. Frank Oz was capable of conveying great complexity through a puppet—and I find it more "believable" than, say, Gollum, for what it's worth, even today.

The reason they will fail is that they are picturing them as a genre—any genre. Though they've chosen action/adventure over horror, what they should be trying to do is tell great stories with characters about whom the audience cares using imagery rich and resonant enough to thrill us AND chill us. Don't turn monster…

You're being ironic, right? Because it's still a pretty amazing piece of work.

What the writers need to embrace, I'd say, is a thematic element that can, in some way, unite the different characters. Probably the simplest would be that someone—or something—is seeking a way to live forever. Vampirism gives one a long life; so does stitching a set of corpses together. Once could assume that…

Very nice piece. I love "kept him in a jar in Atlanta." Great tag line, too. Well done.

War changes bit by bit, or byte by byte,

Philae didn't bounce. It was pushed.

The "grounding" and "realism" need to come from the non-fantastical characters. What made Superman:The Movie work was that Lois Lane was real. You need a "real" Gordon and Alfred to ground the tech-y elements of Batman. Iron Man doesn't work without Pepper Potts. To make FF work, you need a grounding element as…

Will there be a Bride of Frankenstein in the mix? Because, let's face it, that's the one to do. Well, that and Creature from the Black Lagoon.