It’s not just the required familiarity with the old horror films (both Universal and Hammer), it’s that Young Frankenstein and Blazing Saddles were so stunningly irreverent when compared to all the other film comedies that were available at the time. Even the Exorcist is a scary movie, it’s pretty tame by today’s…

the movie won’t stand as “hilarious” on its own - it’s only funny in reference to something else.

Ignore what Joel says. He obviously has a critics flavor for movies instead of the eye of the audience. As a fellow Hook fan, I’m in your corner.

the pacing is slow (especially a New Hope)

It is likely that it has been copied so often it seemed unoriginal to you.  This is a big problem with classic movies, especially comedies.

For the most part, I don’t think it’s fair to call out older comedies. Comedy is about subverting expectations and expectations grow and change over time, often heavily influenced by the comedy that came before it.

The books actually talk remarkably little about skin tone, but what little does get mentioned describes the Two Rivers folks as having darker complexion. They’re probably not intended to be black (the Sea Folk are much darker) but probably Mediterranean-looking. Rand is specifically called out a few times for not…

Daniel Craig gets to weaponize the “end of the movie” quip in Casino Royale by actually saying “Bond. James Bond.”.

Planet of the Apes (1968) comes to mind:

Sometimes the obvious answers are obvious for a good reason.

“this audio has not been made available to the public at present.”-

Here’s a translation of the four audio clips, the earliest one first. It’s hard to capture the tonality, and I’ve tried to go for accuracy rather than cleanly flowing dialogue, and it’s rather chaotic at times, but something close to this:
CLIP 1:
Kinnaman: I’m ashamed for how I behaved afterwards.

Zak Penn writing this points to a better comparison, I think — Penn was one of the people who came up with Last Action Hero, which is also about a person programmed for entertainment learning about his subservience to the “real world,” and has plenty of “amusingly reproduced cliches” in its action-comedy. That movie…

What we really should be doing in most of the US.

Sure. Kill the top soil, compact the ground, let it absorb the heat of the sun and dry out the ground as water rushes off the compacted dirt that is no longer soil.

Very simply, unless you live in a drought-prone area don’t water your lawn and don’t weed it. It produces oxygen and supports small wildlife. To be even more ecological, get some exercise with a push mower.

Aisha Jordan and Lifehacker editors, you really should retract this post.

Um...no. Unless you want to contribute to the excessive flooding that all ends up polluting our waterways and devastating our aquaculture.

The only place I can see this as being somewhat acceptable would be a play area for kids if a native plants/xeriscaped doesn’t support a hardy enough ground cover. I’m lucky enough to live in the northeast where grass just needs mowing. I don’t water it or use chemicals on it.

Yeah, let’s just cover all of our lawns in plastic. This is definitely better *rolls eyes*