It’s actually pretty smart. I never got why so many concert films are released after the tour was over. A concert movie is basically an advertisement for the show; why not get it out there when people can actually buy tickets to go see it?

Also, calling pollen “toxic” is a huge exaggeration. It can certainly be antigenic, but that’s the fault of our flawed immune system, not the trees. They aren’t out to poison us.

Again, readaptations and remakes are different. Did Gerwig have to pay Armstrong anything to make her version? No. (She also didn’t have to pay for the source material because it’s public domain. But you can still have to pay for rights if you are really remaking a movie even if it has a public domain source; Mel…

Do you have many examples of remakes using the same script? I mean...maybe Gus van Sant...but where do they do that? It isn’t like a play where if there is an adaptation it requires permission from absolutely everybody, you need rights from the estate of the writer of the source material, and maybe the rights to…

Wow. And that’s just now. Bizarre that this would happen just as I was thinking about it!

The notion of a Crichton/Patterson written book is hilarious. Obviously, the Crichton part is just taking some idea he wrote down in a notebook before he died, but Patterson is infamous for not really writing his books but by writing an outline to be completed by “assistants”.

Maybe she’s an ace.

The original shippers wrote fan fiction where Spock and Kirk give in to their “obvious” attraction to each other, so yeah, wishful thinking can go a long way.

Remember how that financier weasel Martin Skreli bought that secret Wu-Tang Clan album and kept it private? After he was convicted of securities fraud he had to auction it off, but I don’t know what happened to it after that.

You can join AARP at age 50! I did (you can get great discounts at Denny’s!) , although I’m unlikely to be able to retire until my 70s.

Well, some people (mostly Japanese, and mostly women) do live close to 120 years, so it is possible. The oldest man on record made it to 116.

Maybe he can make another Master & Commander film, maybe one based on the final book, Blue at the Mizzen, in which Jack Aubrey finally gets made Admiral (and thus has the right to fly a blue pennant on the mizzenmast of his ship, hence the title).

No. A remake specifically has to buy the rights to use the script of the previous film. It may rewrite the script considerably, but it is still based on that script. Villeneuve’s Dune is not based on Lynch’s script in any way but is based on Herbert’s novel. Again, nobody would claim Ethan Hawke’s 2000 Hamlet was a…

In theory, but not so much in practice. For example, consider Joel Schumaker’s Flatliners (1990). A fascinating concept (medical students investigating near death experiences) with a tedious execution. It was remade in 2017 by Niels Oplev, yielding again a fascinating concept with a tedious execution.

The new Dune isn’t a remake of Lynch’s film any more than a new adaptation of Hamlet is a “remake” of previous ones. Something that goes back to the source material (and could have been made without the prior movie existing) isn’t a remake. That being said, in a lot of ways I actually prefer Lynch’s version, as…

This is great! I love A.S. Byatt! Oh, wait, this isn’t a remake of the adaptation of her novel about Victorian poets in love originally filmed (to mixed reception) in 2002 with Aaron Eckhardt and Gwyneth Paltrow?

Reminds me of the prudish priest in Cinema Paradiso who watched movies for any kissing (which he demanded be cut out from the showings in his town).

Only parasites eat things bigger than them!

And really, is swimming the English Channel really a “sport”? It’s not like there were other swimmers she was racing against. It’s an impressive feat of endurance, sure, but that a sport does not make.

Why not? She declared herself a Skywalker, which is basically Star Wars royalty, right? And even if you disagree with her self-identification, she’s certainly a Palpatine, so she’s literally of imperial blood.