[races off to set up "Schwanzstückachu" gimmick account…]

I stand corrected, and shocked. I thought I'd even read something that corroborated my statement, beyond what seemed like an uncanny resemblance.

That reflects a lack of studio confidence, and desire to cut losses — whether driven by bad screening audience/focus group results, or just the mood of the studio execs.

That's a really good question. Nine times out of ten a "runaway budget" movie has some big star salaries weighing it down. I can't imagine Omar Sharif's cameo cost all that much. Was it just an Apocalypse Now or Don Quixote-style location-filming money pit?

Well, that's rolling the clock back even a little further than Zorro, and I'm not sure how successful it really was in "blockbuster" terms, however well it may have done in proportion to its budget.

Or at least a letter, I suppose…

There are those who believe they've survived until the present, as an explanation for sightings of "Bigfoot" and similar creatures. The case of "Zana" — a hairy "wildwoman" captured in the Caucasus in the mid-1800s — was a particular favorite to explain in terms of a surviving Neanderthal, though recent genetic…

Only within a comically narrow set of circumstances — which fits with the "regular schmucks" theme that hosflac mentioned. Arguably everyone has a "superpower" within some comically narrow set of circumstances.

"Blond Viking guy" is perhaps best known as the model for "Vigo the Carpathian" in Ghostbusters II. I believe he was originally supposed to have an actual scene or two in that, but they were ultimately cut, leaving him only in the painting.

The only thing I can attribute its box office failure to is lack of marquee power — as the later Ballistic: Ecks vs. Sever showed, Banderas can't really carry an action movie, and he's really more of an audience surrogate observer here than an ass-kicking action protagonist.

The Sphinx and The Bowler have something resembling actual superpowers, and The Shoveler is half-way credible in shovel-to-hand combat (anyone who's read All Quiet On The Western Front will recall that shovels were the favored weapons on WWI trench raids), but yes, "lesser superheroes" is a real stretch.

The A.V. Club:

Agreed. On the one hand, the writers gave themselves a pretty clean slate to start the new season with. On the other hand, they really haven't seemed to have much idea what to do with Jones since mid-Season One. If it was his idea to leave, I sympathize totally. If it was the producers/writers, then I hope they are…

Bluly is the warmest month…

A chariot pulled by cats? I guess Freyja was used to sitting around for hours and then suddenly getting dragged off abruptly in some random direction.

They do sneak into various "newsfeeds" (thus earning those scarequotes). Arguably this app just masks the symptoms while letting the underlying condition further deteriorate.

The Keep, in spite of being an utter mess, has two of the most gorgeous visuals I've seen in film — The one fleeting scene of Glenn's character riding his motorcycle away from the border checkpoint, and the longer, amazing pullback from the German soldier who has crawled down the tunnel. The story about Veevers…

That's in the inevitable porn parody…

Just a little too late for the marketing tie-in that could have saved them from bankruptcy.

Worked well enough for Lucas. The audience is another matter entirely.