"They… they drove a dump-truck full of money up to my house. I'm not made of stone!"

There *MUST* be a handful of Republicans who, like the Comedian from Watchmen, see the current Republican agenda for the giant alien psychic squid that it is.

The Simpsons taught me fucking vast swathes of stuff about literature, film, art, and American history and culture: I can't overstate how much cultural knowledge that show could teach kids.

I have soft spot in my heart for Chandler's indignity at Ross's putting 'I'm gay as the day is long' in Chandler's internet profile or whatever it was.

When I was a kid, if I'd seen a film and knew something bad was going to happen to the characters, I'd feel so bad for them watching it subsequently: for instance, when Simba's all happy during the first half of The Lion King, he has no idea that he's going to spend years thinking he's responsible for his father's…

We forget just how capable kids are at handling stuff - I don't think they ignore the dark stuff (maybe toddlers will), I think they are just more capable of compartmentalising the horror from the light-hearted bits.

I really hope this is right.

What connection are people making between the frog-fly creature and Laura?

I'm maybe being a bit literal in my interpretation, but I took, 'Drink full and descend' to mean 'Have a lot of garmonbozia and become manifest on this plane'.

To be fair to Lost, people would have hanged, drawn, and quartered them if the answer to 'What's the origin of the monster?' was 'A nude slender-woman vomited him into existence, or at least into our existence, after a nuclear test'.

"David, now that you've finally shown us the episodes, I am not so much disappointed as I am blinded with rage."

My understanding is that Stuart Townsend had his doubts about his own suitability, and that the parting was sad but amicable.

No - it was Lucas's friends Gloria Katz and William Huyck who provided that I think. Most of the snappy humour in A New Hope is them; the more wizardy weird jokey stuff like 'Who's the more foolish?' is Lucas.

I hate this kind of assumption: Kasdan was a big part of what made Raiders of the Lost Ark, The Empire Strikes Back, and Return of the Jedi classic films. We've so little information - why assume he's the one in the wrong?

Empire was bigger financial risk for Lucas than any of the new Star Wars films will be for Disney - if it had bombed, he'd have been financially as fucked as he was before American Graffiti, and FOX would have control of his potential golden goose.

One example of superb dialogue being improvised is an argument for some improvisation - it doesn't make Kennedy or Kasdan hypocrites, or wrong, necessarily, for wanting a less free-wheeling approach.

That's an odd way of spelling, 'can't be as good as Rogue One, an absolutely fantastic film'.

HOWARD: "His best friend's a talking bear."
KATHLEEN KENNEDY, SOMEHOW UNAWARE THAT CHEWBACCA IS A FORTY YEAR OLD CHARACTER: "Howard, you've done it again!"

You're not technically wrong, but I think 'complicit' has too many heavy connotations to use when talking about a media hypothetically not investigating creative differences during the making of a space adventure film.

LORD/MILLER: How could you Alden? After all we went through.