Star Wars? You're really going there as an example of good filmmaking?

It started off pretty nice — more poetry than exposition, which did a good job of setting the mood. Then, it morphed into ham-fisted exposition. It was better than a lot of movies, but it was still awkward, clunky and, ultimately, unnecessary.

The voice overs in Blade Runner were added by studio hacks, not the director. The versions with them removed are much better. The opening text adds nothing and could easily have been eliminated. Haven't seen Tron: Legacy. Spaceballs was an hour and a half of my life I'll never get back. The Running Man, likewise. Like…

It only makes sense if the audience is willing to put up with lazy story telling so they get on to the fighting and jump cuts.

If anyone is interested, the music in the trailer is Lisa Gerrard. I think it may be from Immortal Memory, which she did with Patrick Cassidy.

No, that's exactly what a voice over is — ham-fisted exposition. It doesn't matter if it's front-loaded with a voice over or a crawl or if a character says it.

I'm going to go out on a limb here and express an opinion.

Or they were just making shit up. Oracles may have had some mystical or religious purpose in ancient societies, but to be an ongoing institution, you have to have a sustainable income. The Oracle of Delphi wasn't a single person — it was an institution. There were likely any number of women who played the role,…

In retrospect, a lot of TNG was pretty bad, sure. Back in 1988, though, this was pretty much it for space opera on TV, and compared to most everything else, it was really pretty good. It was worth either staying home Saturday nights or getting home by 10:30 (when they played TNG locally) to watch. (Remember, kids,…

I think a story that incorporated all of these suggestions would be epic.

The Hyperion Cantos by Dan Simmons — there's four right there.

Seconded. Fun reads.

First, Heinlein was hardly that influential. He was a science fiction writer at a time when SF was generally considered stories for kids. Also, being anticommunist at the time was hardly a radical stance; it was the general default political stance in the US following World War II until the end of the Cold War.…

Dingo, with all due respect, I have no idea what you're talking about.

It doesn't matter if everything is progressing at the same rate. It just takes one technology introduced at the right time — or wrong time — to cause a chain reaction. Now, maybe that chain reaction may be good, but the laws of entropy suggest that it won't be.

One of the scenes in that episode that really struck me is when Riker is going over Data's schematics and discovers Data's off switch. At first, you see Riker's face brighten when he realizes he has found a great trick to win. Then it sinks in exactly what that would mean. There's not a word spoken in the scene. It's…

It occurred to me watching this episode that everyone is desperate to protect April for even knowing about supernatural stuff — maybe because she's the very last normal human being left in Mystic Falls.

The only thing I ever remember from Escape from LA is the basketball game.

Escape from New York: Rescue the president, not his daughter. That was Lockout.

Still waiting for the possessed vehicles, but next week it looks like we're getting evil killer Santa Claus, which is just as good.