Ha ha, thanks for your sincere and thoughtful replies.  I was actually joking, as it seemed like Phil went out of his way at least three or four times to downplay the quality of the art, as if he didn't want any of us to accidentally think that he approved of it.

Hey, Phil, how come you didn't say anything about the art?  Was it good?

Empire of the Summer Moon is next on my reading list, but I am just finishing up The Captured by Scott Zesch and you are not kidding.

Have you seen the size of the popcorn they sell now?  It take way more than 90 minutes to finish!

GALAXY QUEST!

NO, I AM COOKIE SPARTACUS!!!

Just saw this last night.  Disregarding Johnny Depp, it mostly reminded me of The Mask of Zorro, but not as good.  I would have enjoyed it about 500% more if it hadn't tried to be so fucking cute with the framing devices, scrambled chronology, etc.  I have nothing against those techniques, but in this case they seemed…

Crossover!  The Bat is hurtled through time, arriving in the year 3000, where he teams up with the New Justice Team and drinks 100 cups of Fry's coffee.

I hope this time they use Bat-Mite!

Seriously.  I never get tired of this picture, it makes me laugh every time.

But this film has more donkey sauce.

And no more odor than a hot biscuit.

The infamous Kane curse.  The circle is now complete.

Ah, the FRENCH!

As far as I can tell, that's a different prospect, at least when it comes to his genre writing: there is no way in hell that his thousands of words of Western, science fiction and other pulp novels would still be in print, much less in matching leatherbound hardbacks, if he hadn't founded a religion that treats his…

The most galling was a collection of Neil Gaiman's stories (I forget the title, it was published within the last ten or fifteen years) that included a few one-page descriptions of projects he had toyed with writing but decided he probably never would.  I'm not a Gaiman hater, but I'm also not so enthralled by him that…

Didn't you get the memo?  George Michael told us to "explore monogamy" in 1987, and it's been that way ever since.

Yeah, I have no problem blaming Lucas' writing and direction for the awfulness of the actors' (most of whom have been good in other films) performances.  Hell, even Jake Lloyd's screen test (a special feature on the Episode I DVD) is better than what ended up in the movie.

This is a great idea.  Especially looking forward to the SM2 write-up, but they all sound worth reading.

That's a good one, but I thought for sure it would be this one:
http://www.youtube.com/watc…