Not only did Spock’s “I apologize for my outburst” make me laugh, it made me think he would get along rather well with one Captain Raymond Holt.

The whole opening sequence of Temple of Doom absolutely slaps.

Absolutely, the “Starts fine, takes strange turn mid-movie” is pretty accurate for the movie. It feels like the script never had an ending and they were ad-libbing their way through it. I am largely forgiving of a lot of ills, but I will say that infamous jungle-jeep-monkey sequence leaves a very sour taste in my…

...

Add in, a nine-season series of the same character just limped across the finish line, so maybe the core fanbase wasn’t that hungry for more Flash right now.

I think that is a factor. At that point, the closest to a “weak” Pixar movie was Cars, and that one was fine. But after Toy Story 3, there was definitely a sense of shift in quality, I think. Yes, still some very good entries, but no longer the same sense of magic from them.

When my son was between, like, 3 and 10, if there was ANYTHING that was remotely child-friendly in the theaters, we went. I saw some real garbage in the theaters because it existed.  But this was the early aughts-- movies were cheaper, at home options weren’t as plentiful, there hadn’t been a worldwide pandemic... I…

I think it speaks to how starved people were for good DC Superhero content at that point that merely putting Clark in the rough vicinity of the Superman costume was enough to elicit this much joy.

I remain astounded that we’ve lost more Babylon 5 actors than we have for all the Star Treks combined.  

I’d say that you could EASILY do a pretty faithful adaptation of the Robot books— Caves of Steel especially is very cinematic and would be easy to adapt. Foundation is a lot of conversations-about-things-happening-elsewhere, usually with an explanation of how the problem they think they have is already resolved.…

I love the Arctic Cops. Like, sure, there’s a station in Camp Barneo just waiting in case there are arctic crimes.

I remember seeing a video review that argued the real problem is Man of Steel’s flashback structure is all wrong. Namely, we’ll have a seen in the “present”, then flashback to something of Clark’s youth, and back to the present... but the thing we flash back to doesn’t add to or echo what’s happening in the present.…

Definitely I think Choices Are Being Made that are tied to the realities of producing television. Such as, if you contract Jared Harris for the season, you want to write things where you give Jared Harris something to do.

Yes and no, but... I think sometimes that “good writing” is recognizing that the better adaptation involves being less faithful to the source. Not always, but sometimes. (Case in point, the movie Adaptation, which took the assignment of writing an adaptation of the nigh-impossible to adapt book The Orchid Thief, and…

I’m only not in the grays because a couple years ago Jill had a one-day fire sale on approving folks.  But, yeah, the system makes it nigh-impossible for someone who hadn’t been approved when the graying system was implemented to “earn” themselves as a trusted account.

The first season was a very good season of sci-fi television, but a terrible adaptation of the source material. But a faithful adaptation of the source material would have made for terrible television, so that’s probably for the best.

Love and Thunder was simply more of what lots of people apparently loved in Thor: Ragnarok but the appetite for the formula of relentless switches between action and comedy scenes seems to have waned a bit.

I will update those capsule reviews/rankings when the Hugo nominees get announced (supposedly in “early June”) after I read them. Maybe on the July or August version of this monthly book post, depending on how many of them I have to read.

It’s been deeply weird, especially with the Hugos. And also the Nebulas not even getting an article here.   But the actual Nebulas were a good batch of winners!  And maybe sometime soon, we’ll get to talk about the Hugo finalists.  Maybe.

Didn’t you get your check?  I thought we all did.