I can’t figure out if Shaun of the Sheep is a weird joke.

You’re thinking of Planes, the quasi-Cars spin-off made by Disneytoons. Cars has remained with Pixar (including the Mater shorts and the upcoming TV series)

It’s rumoured that the deal that led Disney to buy Pixar included the proviso that the sequels Disney had threatened to make with an outside company (Toy Story 3, Monsters, Inc. 2, Finding Nemo 2) would be stopped and Pixar would get control of the characters back but those sequels would be replaced by Pixar’s own for…

That’s what held me back from loving the film too, even though I was thinking “Batman and Robin are spoofing The Matrix Reloaded fight scene against a bunch of Agents with Batman ‘66 fight sounds on the screen and they’re also fighting gremlins and daleks? Was I the focus group for this film?”. But I’d still have…

The ‘Who’s the (Bat)man’ song? But it was great! The use of the ‘66 theme in the chorus! The lyrics!

“... the premise is that horrific people are entertained by watching cruelties among children. Which is rather close to what the readers and viewers are doing”

That and When Romance Met Comedy. We're guaranteed at least one great piece about pop culture a week.

As someone who works in a cinema now - and has done for 20 years - we now switch the films off if no tickets are sold. Wouldn’t have really been feasible until digital became the norm about a decade ago because you’d have to start a 35mm print (just as we’ll start a digital playlist) with ads and trailers attached…

Eh. If this is rubbish the first one will remain great. If the second one is half as good it'll still be a lot of fun. I think it's worth the risk to do another one. 

I think the new twist is that rather than get to ten like he's been discussing for a few years (Hollywood was number nine), he's now saying it might be best to quit while he's ahead. 

I think he’s spoken before about doing ten films *but* that Kill Bill Vol. 3 wouldn’t count as it’s part of an existing film - much like he counts Vols. 1 and 2 as one film in his filmography.

There’s a part of me that would love it if, maybe in a few years, they brought The X-Files back for one last hurrah and give it a definitive ending. But it’s had three endings so far and all have been their own kind of bad - The Truth was an anticlimactic mess, the second film was inert and ended on that awful shot of…

That's undoubtedly what's going to happen. Some disgruntled Film Twitterer or Letterboxder is going to publish a review somewhere to bring it down for the petty kudos. 

Wouldn’t it be the other way around? Film 10 seconds of footage, stretch it out for a minute. You can make a 2 hour film with 20 minutes of footage.

“Time to lean, time to be mean"

1. Snarky article about current figure of hate

You (and Handlen) might be right about III. It's been a long time since I saw it (even though I always intend to after I watch Khan). 

I feel bad for Katherine Waterston. She's talented as hell but is stuck doing thankless work here (you can see she works with what she has, at least in the first one, but what she has is basically nothing).

Hunger Games came the year after Potter finished - I think Tom here was concentrating on those they came and went during Potter’s decade in the sun.

I guess you could make an argument that Star Trek IV - VI average out better than I - III. Though as one set has the greatest film as its centre and the other has the worst, it might just break even.