This might be why I like the Hunger Games but have been extremely disappointed by every other YA dystopia I've read (except maybe Uglies). There's a real verisimilitude to it. It really explores the cost of liberty from oppression—not just "a one-dimensional sidekick character gets killed" but "you hide your true self…

Who do you think reads all those licensed Star Wars, D&D, and video-game novels? It's not just the 18-35 year old fan demographic.

Yeah, that made me run off to check and see if Laurie McLean or her agency represented Veronica Roth. Turns out they don't. Hunger Games isn't a masterpiece, but it's a compelling rendering of imperial oppression and the high costs of gaining freedom from it. Divergent is a simplistic political diatribe dressed up as…

It's definitely a nice callback to SPECTRE from the first seven Bond films (although Goldfinger might not count).

I love Thunderball, mostly because Fiona Volpe is probably my favourite evil Bond Girl. At the very least, she's in the top 3.

Me too. I recently rewatched CR and QoS, and QoS came off a lot better than I remember it. Its opening action sequences still come across as horribly shot and edited compared to CR's, but I'm a bit more charitable now that I know the difficulties they had making the film.

Apparently every hero has to be Batman now. The first part of this essay/open letter explains it: http://www.escapistmagazine.com/articles/view/columns/moviebob/7808-An-Open-Letter-to-the-Producers-of-James-Bond

Even if AGW is complete BS, every other reason to wean ourselves off of petroleum onto something cleaner and sustainable is a good enough rationale to do it.

Translation: Gee, it's so much easier to idealize women who live far away. I can just make up some fantasy version of them because I don't have to deal with them on a regular basis, so I don't have to show any empathy or understanding for them! That would require effort and self-examination, and I'm too busy…

In this subculture of entitled whiny man-children, you're probably not the only one, no.

Wow, those prequel comics actually gave Nero understandable motivations. Kind of makes me wish they'd been incorporated into the film (even as flashbacks) so Nero would have been a compelling, sympathetic villain, not a shouty emo moron.

I realize ironically this is one of the few times Bond wore something that the villains didn't immediately look at and say, "Aha!—James Bond, British Secret Service, 007—Licensed to Kill". But Roger Moore trying to convince the general there's a nuclear bomb while wearing that red nose always seems so surreal.

OK, Sean Connery allegedly passing for Japanese is second only to the Roger Moore clown costume for Bond's most bizarre fashion moment.

Roger Moore in the clown costume is still, for me, Bond's most bizarre sartorial moment.

If you had to pick from one of those AIs, I'd pick Colossus too. It was the only one (well, maybe HAL) that seemed to understand the value of companionship—both of its own kind and between human beings.

Ooo—and during an NHL lockout. There's a lot of bored hockey fans looking for an excuse to flip over cars and break windows.

Just put a hockey stick in our hands, and a puck across the border and, by maple syrup, we'll fight.

I'd rather see Han transition into a champion of noble causes, still playing fast and loose but now helping other people in their fight for freedom, like an older Carl Gustaf von Rosen or Giuseppe Garibaldi.

There is only one reason to have snow and ninjas at the same time in a chanbara-style movie. I'm looking forward to it.