I've been rewatching the series and just got to one of the ones I missed the first time round, "Fire"— the first time they tried bringing in an ex-girlfriend of Mulder, Phoebe Green the British police detective. They didn't push the jealousy angle quite as hard— there are several scenes of Sculley observing their…
Hob
hobhob--disqus
I'm not sure it was anything specifically about Clinton, so much as just that a Democrat won and was fairly popular. A lot of John Birch types thought that the ascent of Reagan was a permanent revolutionary event. They could tell that Bush Sr. was not really an appropriate successor - a lot of the "fake Republicans…
The physicist who was the science consultant for Sunshine talked about that some in this interview— basically said there's not necessarily any correlation between how much of a scientist you are and how pedantic you are; both types can be found either in or out of the field.
The guy who gave Tom Cruise that warning hated him and had set up his post-op experience to fuck with him (leaving him alone and making him navigate around the room with strings, having only rotten food in the fridge, etc.). It's not hard to imagine that he greatly exaggerated the danger of taking off the blindfold…
I wouldn't be bothered so much by the Nerf gun nuts at my job if it weren't that 1. those things are fucking loud, and some people like to just stand there for five minutes shooting them again and again as fast as possible, so all I can hear is CLAK! CLAK! CLAK! CLAK! CLAK!… and 2. they don't pick that shit up off the…
I've seen it, and your first two paragraphs are totally on point. Kieslowski definitely did not think that the whole Communist apparatus was populated by people with strong fundamental political beliefs, or by any one personality type.
It's really not. I mean, Witek (at least in two of his lives) may not be the bravest person, but I don't think the ending is saying at all that nothing he does matters— just that no matter what decisions you make, some things will be outside of your control. The things he did up to that point still mattered and…
It's been years since I saw it but I definitely got a different impression than D'Angelo did, to put it mildly.
Bilquis is based on the Queen of Sheba, who shows up in two books of the Bible. Various non-canonical Christian and Muslim traditions gave her the name Bilquis and speculated that she married Solomon, and/or was the narrator of the Song of Songs (hence the sex-goddess aspect of Gaiman's version).
That's pretty nice. McShane might look a little old for Low-Key, though; I thought Shadow was supposed to assume he was more or less his own age. Also not sure about John Noble— he's great but I can't imagine seeing him as Hinzelmann and not immediately knowing there's something weird about that guy.
Shadow will always be "young, unknown Vin Diesel" to me, maybe just because I read the book not long after seeing Boiler Room. Manu Bennett has a really interesting face though.
They totally marketed it as a prequel, and even if they hadn't, it'd be incredibly obvious to anyone who remembered the previous movie. There's a bunch of Norwegian guys, they dig up a big circular spaceship and a frozen creature. The previous movie has other characters finding a bunch of dead Norwegian guys who dug…
Well. I agree that the movie works best if you take the monster seriously, but… people are capable of some pretty heinous irrational shit, you know? You don't strictly need to be possessed to decide "I've been super angry about my life and my responsibilities for a long time without complaining, now I'm gonna start…
It's harder to see this from 50 years later, but Marvel in the Silver Age was all about the tortured souls, at least compared to DC and to their Golden Age precursors. Peter Parker was a loser, Fantastic Four bickered all the time even about stuff that had nothing to do with being turned into weird forms, the Hulk was…
It's not that weird; he's always done a mix of prestige stuff and whatever pays the rent, and although he's been in about 150 movies he doesn't always do 5 movies a year and sometimes even goes a year without making one— the list is just that long because he started 66 years ago.
There was at least one other Lambs callback in this episode, sort of: when Lecter, in the middle of conversation with an unsuspecting victim, just impulsively sticks out his arm and impales him with a utensil. In the book it was Benjamin Raspail, and it was in the heart rather than the brain, and it was during…
It's great that the first part is just him digging his hands into the sand. Such a tactile image - most everyone knows what wet sand feels like - and it's something mostly done by kids, which fits Strange's personality and the playful ad-hoc way he comes up with his magic ("oh these are 'Horse Sands', so I guess I can…
They gave each other some lines based on things the other person had said in real life, but it's still the case that all the stuff about Wally is very closely based on Shawn's life and career, and all the stuff about Andre is very closely based on Gregory's life and career. It's not hard to look up all the things…
True. He also talks much less than Andre.