In defense of the new one, the Kirk method of ship maintenance is pretty much what's practiced in the US fleet today.

I liked the space battle in the current version better precisely because when the shooting starts, it's all about hitting the other guy with as much firepower as possible as quickly as possible.  War's not a chess game most of the time.  It's about sneaking up behind the other guy and killing him in a way that…

By peasants, you mean the people who started the war by cutting up stewardesses with boxcutters to take over airliners full of civilians and crash them into buildings full of civilians?  Or the people whose idea of fighting a war is hiding behind their own children while shooting at American troops because they know…

@avclub-28d8cc41b12fb1b6164f7d0ca09ab2fa:disqus My personal guideline for a deserved face punching is when the punchee says something not only so extremely out of line and inappropriate that the puncher is reasonably driven to an extreme reaction, but when the punchee is clearly making the objectionable statement in…

Take out the 'almost' and I'm there.

I don't even think there's really "sides" here, everyone seems more or less in agreement with the basics: piracy isn't great, but neither are the current and proposed laws (I hadn't even though about the pretty much unadulterated evil that is the enforcement provisions of SOPA for a while) that protect content. …

Absolutely agree; I remember the case a couple years ago of the Steinbeck heirs squabbling in the Supreme Court (I believe it was thrown out, but still) over who gets to control rights he signed away in the 1930s.  When it's corporations involved instead of actual heirs, it's even more ludicrous and sinister seeming,…

I always thought just the parts of For the Love of the Game, where they're actually playing the game extended to 90 minutes with the rest of the movie deleted would have been great.

Don't know if Major League is the best, but it's definitely the most quotable.  Charlie Sheen alone:

Like most arguments that around passion, there's self righteous douchiness on all sides of the downloading debate.  Sure, not everyone who protects copyrights does so for reasons related to the preservation of the purity of artistic vision and you won't get far on the AV Club defending anything corporations do, but…

What do you call a reasonable price?  i think iTunes is pretty reasonable already for the stuff they carry.  Most TV seasons seem to be $25 or less, and if you buy a couple individual eps for a couple bucks each, it counts toward completing the est of the season.  Sure, it's more than $0, and if you're accustomed to…

Other than taking my wife to the airport Hilton as soon as I get off the plane (a family tradition), seeing this will be the first thing I do next time I'm in the States, hopefully in two weeks.  Then again, it's 'merica, so this might be out of theaters to make room for Ass or whatever's coming out in late April.

Yes.  His review of Battle: Los Angeles should be required reading for every action produce, writer, and director under the heading, "Don't make a movie Roger Ebert would write this about."

This thread about how Roger Ebert's opinion on something he himself freely admitted was well outside his expertise is the most thoughtful and compelling thing I've ever read about video games, and that in itself is, to me, his genius.

I got a bunch of letters about some Metallica I had downloaded way back when on the original Napster.  I had only listened to two of the songs, decided they sucked, and deleted them to make room on my gigantic Creative MP3 player (this was a LONG time ago, when you had to make those kind of choices).  I threw out the…

I used to download because, hey, free stuff, right? Also, it used to be the only way to get a lot of stuff I like. Now, you can get pretty much anything you want legitimately, and it's pretty obvious that if we don't pay people to make and distribute the stuff we like, they'll stop making it. So, I pay up, even if…

Sometimes people need things to be called to their attention to even discover they are interested in them.  There's a lot of history to explore, even for people who are fairly serious about it, and there's always something more to learn.  If films like this help shine a light on events that are familiar to some but…

Oh, come on, Lena Dunham's weird tits is what makes this show unique.  Without them, this show would be nothing but a bunch of really good looking girls being horrible to everyone, making bad decisions, getting fucked by every guy they meet.  And if there's one thing we don't want, it's a show about that.

Prometheus and Tron:Legacy are both a lot better if you play them with the sound off and just play music and drink.

I'm looking forward to this as well, but after Tron:Legacy and Prometheus, I think the key to enjoying modern science fiction action movies is not to get too excited based on promotional materials.