If you’re eating Bambi’s mom, that’s some 80 year old meat.

Bit of a stretch? Seriously? Rich men. North. Of Richmond. Could he be talking about his Uncle Buck in Lakeside who owns three brand new pickup trucks?

I have been hearing about superhero fatigue for years now. And I understand. I have superhero fatigue myself (with exceptions for occasional good efforts). But the genre continues to thrive financially while I become less and less interested in seeing costumed mascots punching CGI lights. I know the day will come when…

You really think superhero movies will be a distant memory in 20 years?

So what you’re saying is many producers sent the pitch back to its grave, but none of them put a stake through its heart?

Yeah, right. He’s incredibly worried by the affect on fertility rates of, let’s see, <1% of the population, many of whom still choose to have children either naturally or via widely available reproductive technology.

Your memory is correct. It has plenty of things to recommend it, especially Gary Oldman and some ingenious visual work by Coppola, but overall it doesn’t work and has a distractingly terrible performance by Keanu Reeves. And even if one is in the minority and likes the film, I can’t see any reason to put it #1 except…

Blomkamp has Zac Snyder Syndrome. He knows how to shoot a great scene but has no idea how to tell a story.

I meant misguided in the sense of believing that detailed statistical analysis of things like passive voice frequency will make anyone a bestselling writer other than as a trivial aid that you can figure out yourself from numerous free sources on writing tips. There is also some naivety around using people’s work…

Absolutely agree...and publishers do! A friend once submitted a 150,000-word fantasy manuscript and had the publisher recommend filling out more description when the characters slept at an inn for the night.

You may not know it and it might not be important to you (not criticising!), but anyone in publishing would know it and they wouldn’t need to number-crunch. And while word length is not important to how good a book is, it’s hugely important to how well it sells. Unfortunately.

Yeah. This screams ‘misguided author wannabe doesn’t think through ramifications of personal project and how it will be received in light of the AI aspect of the WGA/SAG-AFTRA strike’ rather than ‘publishing conglomerate trains AI on authors’ works to replace authors’.

I look forward to Smith’s debut novel: 75,000 Words in Order of Vividness.

But, but he was the Scorpion King!

Thank you and I share your concern.

‘It samples a good song.’ — Modern music criticism 101

If I were to want to harm an actor, would that make me a Cumberbash?

Disney has assured the actors that they have no intention of using this technology that they paid for. They just want digital keepsakes of all their background actors for sentimental reasons.

My understanding is that for chestburster scene, John Hurt was the only actor aware of what was going to happen.

Sherlock Holmes and Dr Watson are going sailing. It is a beautiful, clear night so they unfurl their bedrolls on the deck and go to sleep under the stars. In the middle of the night Holmes wakes Watson up: “Watson, look up at the stars, and tell me what you deduce.”