Yeah, I’d agree with that, even things like hospitals and cars look much cooler now than my old sets, it just feels like it has cost too much of the old fluidity - sort of like the proper sets look too good now to have a self built model put next to them. When we had a limited number of block types and colours, it was…

Canon means nothing with Star Wars:
“He was already a great pilot when I met him” doesn’t mean he was some amazing 8 year old who could win races in a self built vehicle, build a droid with 6 million forms of communication, destroy a key installation by random joystick motion and button presses... Quite how Obi Wan…

Hey, it worked for the Netflix Marvel series...

At least Star Wars was happy to be empty, but fun nonsense for a while. I think the worst thing about Star Trek is how self-importantly it is regarded by the fans. Yeah, the original series did some groundbreaking stuff like the kiss between Kirk and Uhura, but it also had some really puerile worldbuilding (which…

To go slightly off topic, I’m kind of disappointed that Lego went down that route as hard as they have. When I was growing up, it was much easier to mix and match Lego sets to come up with something new. It might have been stupid looking to any adults but as a kid it was wonderful. Now the parts for Lego kits seem to…

That was kind of the problem with TLJ for a certain hardcore audience - it tried to get rid of a lot of the really dumb world building that blights Star Wars. The Jedi order and the Sith are both such weak fan-fiction that if you tried presenting the work to adults, they’d go “this is stupid!”. I was so excited by the…

Star Wars haas always been a load of vapid fan service - remember the young Greedo in Phantom Menace where someone says “You’ll come to a bad end”? A lot of the expanded universe stuff was of that ilk, which a whole load of weak ‘rule-of-cool’ worldbuilding. The prequels doubled down on it (with the needless and…

It’s the whole marketing drive of the MCU, it didn’t just stop at the comics. Increasingly the movies will refer to things that happened in other ones by the studio.

I think there is a degree of classism involved in that. I frequently see people complaining about the wages of sports stars, but no-one calls out musicians or actors for the same thing. The former are largely from poor backgrounds, the latter are often from middle class and higher backgrounds, and tend to say the…

I would hope that were true, but it definitely came across as being about the cast in his statement. Given the general indifference of actors towards crew (one of the underlying issues in the Rust production), I’m more inclined to be cynical here though

You should check out Olympic walking events at some point if you want odd! They have to keep at least part of a foot in contact with the ground at all times and they have judges looking out for this, so you see this really awkward looking motion that is closer to a sashay than jogging, despite jogging being a more…

I’d say arbitrary more than stupid. They might be contrived, or ritualistic, but generally at the heart of them is at least some form of physical competition that involves a good deal of skill and/or fitness, so stupid seems unfair. I’ll happily agree though that they are taken too seriously (and an interesting thing…

I think it’s maybe a bit more like Aussie-Rules which has an oval pitch (invented for Cricketers to stay fit over winter) and three goals to score in, though one is worth more than the others if I recall correctly

I’d have more respect for it as a sport if it was played on skateboards or similar, so you had that hard to control vehicle aspect still there. There is so much of the book sport that can’t be replicated though that it seems pointless to try even as much as they have already!

I generally find Rowling’s world building is terrible, as it often feels like she has just thrown paint at a wall in the hope it makes for a good backdrop for the story. At her best, she maybe equals the worst of Star Trek (and for context, I find Star Trek to be a world built in coloured crayon at its best)

I don’t think you can simply equate scoring with how exciting/entertaining a sport is. Snooker runs scores up to 147* but most people would say Pool was the more entertaining because it’s shorter and more immediate. Cricket scores are well in excess of Baseball or Rounders, but again has a much less immediate hook.…

For me, the best Robin Williams performance was Awakenings. It was subtle, restrained, and if you were familiar with Oliver Sacks, it feels so much like a real person you forget it's the famous motormouth playing him. He shares scenes with De Niro and is easily his equal. Not sure how the article missed that film to…

Rewatching as a modern viewer, I think it feels like a transition point between the heavily episodic monster of the week type shows, and the entirely serialised shows like The Expanse or Game Of Thrones. There are parts that definitely feel of it’s time - there is a tremendous episode Confessions And Lamentations that…

There are still moments of B5 that still feel as exciting and as vibrant as their first watch. This was one of them (I’d also add Vir’s reply to Morden to the list, G’Kar refusing to help save Londo in the lift... but how many of them feature someone who has passed away??!?)

Tim Choate (Zathras) is another one who has gone - a minor character, but one everyone remembers fondly.

The memorial by JMS for Mira is a great tribute, but you really feel it when he writes that saying goodbye to friends only gets harder