OK, but what's so special about the Roman Empire that the Engineers would send an emissary to correct their behaviour? What did the Romans do so differently from the Hellenists, Persians and other empires that preceded them? And why would the Engineers send only one guy, to the most backward corner of the empire, such…

I have huge respect for Martin Sheen, and his performance as the Illusive Man. But from a story standpoint, the ME series went completely off the rails when Illusive Man was introduced to the plot. The character stuff was still great right to the end, but the plot made no sense.

Uh-oh, the Eight Deadly Words?

More specifically, if men are going to remove women from the process of creating new life, they can't neglect to nurture their creation.

The guy was a horrible officer, but he sure as hell fell on his sword in as epic a manner as possible.

First time I saw this was heart-wrenching. My favourite character in her greatest moment of triumph and redemption—and then it's all snatched away.

To this day this is one of the few movie scenes that brings tears to my eyes.

"Well, personally, I kinda wanna slay the dragon. Let's go to work."

Seconded. Shishio really was the strongest.

Re: Disclosure—Some of my friends' coworkers suggested his workplace put their whole office in Second Life, so that people could log in and see if he was in his office based on whether his virtual office door was open or closed. He responded, "or for a tiny fraction of the bandwidth and processing power, you could…

Aw no, really? You basically explained why the ending of Immortals pissed me off so much.

I wish we could have seen more of KStew's Joan Jett in The Runaways. But Joan Jett's life story seems to go "I'm a teenaged girl who wants to be a kickass rocker chick! I'll join a band of other kickass rocker chicks and be successful against the odds! And when the band breaks up, I'll stick it out on my own and…

Robert J. Sawyer is very optimistic. Although he does tend to use transhumanist eucatastrophes in his epilogues a lot.

I did like new BSG as a character drama for the most part. It tended to fail a lot when it clumsily tried to comment on topical things in our world. And I despised that ending. As one reviewer noted, "I think the first time someone gets an infection that could have easily be cleared up with antibiotics, they'll really…

I generally agree with your points, but just two comments:

First thing I thought of too. The story behind that (Duke was supposed to have died originally) is here: [www.joeheadquarters.com]

I had high hopes for the first one. I watched Stallone's last Rambo movie and last Rocky movie, and I thought both were good conclusions to their franchises. So I thought he'd make a great tribute to 80s action flicks.

Come on, American 80s action movies were the most homoerotic things to be put up on the big screen. Yes, more than Purple Rain. Ruthless Reviews sums it up nicely: [www.ruthlessreviews.com]

Yeah, I'm no fan of Norris' beliefs, but I respect his rights to have them. (Although every time I read about him saying something stupid, I look up the fight scene from Way of the Dragon where Bruce Lee kicks his ass.)

The Starship Troopers film implied the Sky Marshals provoked the bugs in the first place. I'm assuming your explanation is from the book, which I haven't read in years. But I do remember wondering how a society that so thoroughly integrated military service into political life would function without a constant…