Or, in other RPG terms, he wants to be that Chaotic Stupid player who uses “It’s my character!” as a pretext for ruining the fun of everyone else at the table by doing things like stealing from the party, ignoring plot hooks, backstabbing friendly NPCs, etc. Which is a phase a lot of us older gamers went through when…

Not sure I can argue—I’m definitely crying.

Yeah, somewhere between the miniseries, the David Lynch theatrical cut, and the “Alan Smithee” extended cut of the 1984 version, there’s a pretty perfect version of Dune out in the Platonic ether somewhere. Lynch’s version has a fantastic aesthetic (though you’re right, all the planets end up being a little bit…

I’m a white guy in Charlotte who voted against Carmichael in the primary because of 287(g). I’m not saying that to brag, I’m saying that because fuck Pat McCrory, who’s just bitter that his pandering to NC’s red counties failed to win over any real friends while totally pissing off lots of people in his hometown,…

And all of that can be awfully fun. But the movie does a very good job of hewing to its nightmare-dream-logic while you’re watching it. Can you pick apart the inconsistency or incoherence of the “rules” that seem applicable to the film, or pick apart the rules that the characters derive from their experience (and…

Funny how the nostalgic pop culture of the 2360s looks a lot like the public domain of the 1980s.... :D

I haven’t seen it in ages and ages and ages, but I did really like Soderbergh’s movie with Jeremy Irons back in the day. No idea whether you can still watch it anywhere, though.

THANK YOU!!!

A former female coworker accused him of asking everyone within hearing who put a pubic hair on His Fruit From the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. God is claiming this is nothing more than a political hit job.

Because it’s not like The Empire Strikes Back had Luke surviving exposure to subzero temperatures on Hoth with nothing but novice training. Or Revenge of the Sith featured Anakin surviving dismemberment and third degree burns over 110% of his body, granted with the benefit of full Jedi training, but let’s be honest…

Considering that in Alabama, Republican candidates have a history of blowing out Democrats by a margin of 10-30% (assuming the Dems even run anybody), I would have been okay if Jones had lost by less than five percent. I don’t mean I would have been okay with Roy Moore going to the Senate, I just mean I would have…

Maybe that depends on what kind of plane you have to fly? Maybe if you ask around you can find an airline that’s looking for pilots who are good at eating chili and watching TV?

I’ve long loved his soundtrack for Soderbergh’s overlooked and underrated Kafka, a blend of Eastern European folk sounds and harrowing, weird ambient soundscapes. Not sure if it’s still available, but definitely worth picking up if you can get it.

Ironically, though, the Suchet version of MOTOE is kinda bad. As much as I love his version of the character, the moralizing they added to that version subverts the beauty of the twist-in-the-twist that makes the original sorry such a beaut (I don’t want to spoil anything, but I think it’s okay to say that people…

“Who Goes There” is in many respects a rewrite of Campbell’s earlier “Brain-Stealers of Mars” (1936). The story, which can be found online if you must, isn’t as good as the title.

There was an enormous amount of anti-Communist sentiment in the 1930s—that was one of the core principles of fascistic movements throughout the decade. And John W. Campbell was notoriously right-wing in his views, though whether he felt that as deeply in the ‘30s as he did in the ‘50s is something I don’t have a ready…

Only if places like my hometown of Charlotte, NC can be islands of American territory, sort of the same way West Berlin was an island of NATO-allied territory deep within the Soviet Occupation Zone.

The writer, Richard Matheson, is criminally underrated as a horror genius.

Okay, so I kind of agree with the overall point about the writers coming across as... young...; and yet The Jetsons and Greatest American Hero are weird hills to plant flags on. The Jetsons was pretty terrible and Greatest American Hero wasn’t good.

The Sex Pistols not only declined to show up, but John Lydon wrote a pretty fantastic letter telling the Hall what the band thought of the whole affair.