Having apparently failed to learn the lessons of history—and specifically the lessons of the history that happened the last last time someone tried to adapt Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials series for the screen

This always seems relevant when Columbo enters the conversation:

When Orson Scott Card’s face popped up, I thought, “Huh. Wonder if, ya know, his awful views will be addressed here ... and if so, how?” I imagine that must have been a conundrum in the writing of this — he certainly made an impact on the sci-fi lit landscape, and it would be glaring to leave him out — but I know…

Time was that Scrotal Recall was called Scrotal Recall and was well-reviewed... but then changed to the less-off-putting (and decidedly way more bland) title Lovesick ...

Brad Bird and the filmmakers have stated that this isn’t set in our reality, and that there’s no clear “when” that they are. It’s a pastiche of 50s, 60s, 70s, and 80s aesthetics and tech.

If you wanna talk about high-tech pizza delivery in a cyberpunk dystopia, Neal Stephenson’s your huckleberry.

The body horror of the force-fed, exploding-off-screen bunny in the teaser has completely put me off this one. That’s a trigger for me (as is anthropomorphic food). Bleargh.

I like Joe Pera’s take.

Additional: I haven’t watched the video and don’t know if this is addressed but...

Despite its flaws, and despite I really can’t stand to watch Mel Gibson in anything anymore, I do love the way the twist/climax is handled in a specific way...

(((SPOILERS FOR A DECADE-PLUS-OLD MOVIE, PLUS A FEW OTHERS)))

So when the alien…

The entire sequence where the family goes into town to take their mind off the UFO stuff on the news is (intentionally) hilarious. From the cranky bookstore owner to the TMI pharmacist to the from-another-movie-altogether-but-still-mesmerizingly-weird army recruiter, it’s the moment the movie makes clear that it won’t…

I’ve seen this film exactly once, in the theater. It was one of the few films I wanted to walk out of, I thought it was so bad.

Or rather inept, derivative, slapped together, and just plain uninvolving. I didn’t believe any character. I couldn’t believe Tommy as an Irishman, let alone an Irish bomb-making mad-genius…

Just have the team pop into an alternate universe before the snap. Ha, how ya like that, Grimace?

TMBG were on WTF with Marc Maron, and chat about making kids albums (and touch on some of the above points) from 37:22 - 40:46:

Anthropomorphic food is where I draw the line. It’s Pixar, so the dumpling boy (which is a phrase that disturbs me greatly) will be given the expected photorealism. I can handle the Gingerbread Man in the various Shrek films; he’s like a wise-cracking piece of cardboard. Or maybe it’s because a dumpling is much more…

Well said!

THIS. THIS, I sing from the mountaintops.

I’m not a big reaction video watcher (really, at all) but peeked at Tyrone Magnus’s reaction vid for TLJ. One of the first things out of this mouth was he couldn’t believe Luke didn’t get to have a badass lightsaber fight.

Also, a friend of mine felt killing off Luke was a…

How closely have you followed TMBG’s career? They made kids albums, sure, but in addition to all the other adult albums they’ve been constantly cranking out. 5 of their 20 studio albums are for kids, and they’re more and more sporadic now. Have you heard their latest “adult album”? There’s some dark stuff on there,…

Confession: this movie is a bit of a trigger for me. Specifically, anything involving being force-fed excessive amounts of food,“sentient” food, or being force-fed said“sentient” food. (I’m talking about Watson’s hallucination of the enchanted pastry cabinet.) It was goddamned horrifying and disturbing to me then, and…

Absolutely. You’d have to teleport in an almost-sphere (open on top, completely enclosed on the bottom) that would account for subterranean considerations as well.

I was in Seattle 17 years and I still live in the Puget Sound region. I’m no civil engineer, but Seattle would be nigh impossible to wall off, I’d think, thanks to Puget Sound and all of its connected/abutting waterways.