I truly laughed out loud, snorted noticably at my workstation (snamw'd?), actually. My original post is fussily laid out, with parenthetical asides and making clear my position on the serial comma. I think shanrulez was the perfect palate cleanser.

I agree, Iron Man is a top shelf superhero movie. I was only saying that the character is not quite as popular or iconic as those other heroes.

I completely agree, but as I mentioned above, I don't really blame the director. Marvel took a way more active role, and even Favreau wasn't happy with the result. When he's been allowed to make films his way, they've been pretty awesome. It seems like once a movie studio/IP rightsholder tastes success after a good…

The thing that strikes me with Favreau as a director is that he rises to the challenge of achieving a tricky tone, when everything hinges on the tone of a film. Elf and Iron Man could easily have been busts, critically and/or commercially. How many sappy/manic holiday films have come down the pike only to land in the…

Have a seat right over there, Laronvas...

But... Will it blend?

If it had been 20 minutes long, it would've been a masterpiece of the music video form! But with all that unnecessary dialogue and exposition that no one paid much attention to either before or after the film was released, I don't think I could sit through it again.

As a child, I was terrified of The Wizard of Oz; the flying monkeys, the red smoke, and especially Margaret Hamilton, who was no less scary in black-and-white as the mean neighbor than in hideous green witch makeup. The worst part was, it was televised every year, and my family watched it religiously!

In my original post, I actually do use the term 'bullet hell'... what I meant by 'bullet heck' was not to avoid the term as offensive, but to imply that the game was not of the incredible difficulty of, say, a Cave or Treasure shooter, more like their precursors, like R-Type or 1942. I'm not great at the more…

The Valles Marineris plays a prominent role in Rick Moody's (so-far) excellent The Four Fingers of Death. Serendipitous timing, io9!

It's also the name of Slate's movie reviewer (I think she also does some work for the NYT), whose movie review blog I used to follow before she picked the Slate gig.

I'm reading the Nausicaä manga, but I'm having a hell of a time locating a copy of volume 3. I've ordered it through Amazon and Barnes & Noble, from third parties each time, only to later receive notification that a copy was unavailable.

Great point about trying Super Mario 64 with the 3DS' analog pad... I can't wait!

I recently saw TRON Evoloution and it drove me batshit crazy... it never made any attempt to make me care what happened to its paper-thin characters, meaning the constant stream of attempted catch phrases and witty rejoinders fell, leaden, to the floor. I love great visuals, I love genre fims, I love a good (and even…

I don't think there are many, but I have one (can't think of what it's called, just that it's impossible on such a small screen (and it's really more of a bullet heck, like R-Type).

tl;dr

What a great series, hopefully it will have the staying power of Tolkien, Lewis, Baum, despite it's challenging thematic material. I have Pullman's The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ on my Kindle but I'm in the middle of Rick Moody's The Four Fingers of Death currently.

Man, you'd better clear your calendar if you're reading the first of the Wheel of Time and A Song of Ice and Fire series. I've loved George R. R. Martin's magnum opus so far, and the next one is Actually. Coming. Out. How is the Wheel of Time so far?

Such a great book. It's rare for something didactic to reach the level of art, but it seemed to me when I read it that Understanding Comics managed it. A great, great book, which really transformed the way I look at comics' creation and the act of reading them. It's one of those books you really want people around you…