I had to do a double-take on Grievous, because for a moment I thought that was a Necron Lord (I've been immersing myself in the WH40K setting for a few weeks now). I'd forgotten how similar the two look compared with one another.

I'm not altogether surprised. I've always thought the Harry Potter universe, while fun to be in and full of interesting characters, wasn't a terribly convincing setting. For example, is the Ministry of Magic the world government for wizards? Or does it just govern the British Isles (or perhaps the former British…

That's odd; I thought the Engineers looked extremely real (and they were for the most part - they were played by actors with the aid of prosthetics). As for creature design, the only one that really bothered me was the giant tentacle-covered version of a facehugger. That just seemed like lazy design to me.

I'm still waiting for Homeworld 3 as well.

Doesn't really count. He's been writing Enderverse books pretty much non-stop for awhile now. Shadows in Flight came out earlier this years as well and Ender in Exile (which to be fair, is apparently partially composed of previous short stories) came out in 2008. Really, just look at the chronology below:

Does A Feast of Crows not count?

Decent? I think that's an understatement, whatever you may say about the rest of the film.

I liked the movie but I'm glad this was cut. I understand the logic behind it - it seems vaguely more plausible (or at least more easy to sell to the audience) than a radioactive spider, but it's not necessary and it cuts against part of the appeal of the character - that (other than being fairly intelligent) there…

I know, what was I thinking? I can't believe myself sometimes.

It's hard to make anything of it at this point but the concept has promise. The pedigree also is pretty impressive considering the three show runners appear to have earned their credits with Alien Nation, Farscape, Battlestar Galactica, and Caprica. So who knows... it could turn out pretty good.

I'm thinking it might have been a poorly implemented reference to PVP's (formerly) recurring joke where a panda would attack Brent every time he vaguely mentioned something panda-related or said a word that could be used as a pun on pandas.

Technically, China and the Russia don't have a "nuclear first strike" policy, so it's not absolutely required for all nuclear powers to have it for MAD to work.

As I recall, The Evil Dead was, at most, a stealth parody, although the later films went straight for the humor and the camp.

Well, that's what I get I guess for not actually finishing the show: I had watched the first season and about half of season 2 when it was up on Netflix but I never got around to finishing it when it got pulled from the instant queue.

"Qhorin Halfhand's frozen corpse would like a word with you. "

Fair enough. I was just getting at some of the behind the scenes details that have been discussed since the movie came out.

While I was skeptical of the simulation article a day ago, I do think the idea that we might be living in a simulation is a useful model for dealing with the "what if gods were real" question. Presumably gods, if they did/do exist, would be outside of our common frame of reference in regards to natural laws and our…

As I recall... no, not really. Which isn't a problem really, I like Jon Snow as he is. He definitely faces trauma, he definitely grows as a character, and he definitely breaks some of his oaths. But he doesn't really get "dark."

Spoilers for A Storm of Swords below.

This is only vaguely related to the topic at hand, but it always strikes me as disappointing that it's a controversy for a Chinese person to be cast as a Japanese one, when it is generally considered perfectly acceptable in the West to cast a Swede in the role of an Englishman or a Pole.