Yeah, and he (the ILM guy) said that whoever had done the wiring at Apogee was clueless, and they had to re-wire the entire ship, which was a difficult job.

Often because of budget. At least in STVI, the creative team had wanted a new-design Klingon ship, but the studio would not approve it, so they had to recycle the Bird of Prey yet again. I was pretty tired of it by then. (It was probably the same story with "Generations" as well, but that's just a guess as I never…

The refit is my absolute favorite (fictional) starship. The attention to detail is just fantastic. The design seems timeless. I mean, if you asked someone who didn't know, I doubt they would guess that the thing was designed in 1979.

I thought Matt Damon brought a great deal of sympathy to the role. His character was already living a shitty life, and then he was dealt an extra-shitty hand. I felt bad for his plight, and so I rooted for him.

I remember an interview with Stan Winston or one of his team regarding Aliens, where he says that he was riveted by Alien right up until the end, where the xenomorph is revealed to be "a guy in a suit". He was disappointed that such a groundbreaking film had to resort to such a conventional approach at the end, and…

The scene with Ripley & Newt locked in the medlab with the facehuggers is amazing. One of my favorite horror sequences of all time.

Came in to say this. It was good enough for the 1986 SNL parody!

THANK YOU, I was wondering why nobody here has called that out. Apparently the episode was not quite as predictable as some are saying. :P

I've liked all of the Julia Roberts spots for Nationwide. Really, they are a master class in marketing compared with the two previous Nationwide campaigns — the World's Greatest Spokesperson in the World, and what I think of as "What's in the [white] booooxxxx?" I always felt like the Roberts ads succeeded in making…

This film owns for one reason: the incredible, single-take shot in the zero-G hub in the Mars spaceship. THAT is what everybody should remember!

In one sense the characters often bugged me, because they frequently didn't act on their best impulses, needlessly suffered the abuse of family, or were just plain assholes. Then I would think, "Ah…so they're just like real people."

Time also had a way of slowing down for whoever was reading the book! [rimshot]

FISH ARE FRIENDS, NOT FOOD!

GREAT film, but a bit unknown, and so a great candidate for "Watch This".

One of my favorite episodes of the series was the flashback where Finch was testing the Machine's capabilities by playing blackjack in a casino. The Machine would send him simple texts saying HOLD or HIT. And later when Finch was walking outside, it kept sending him HOLD texts, which Finch initially perceived to be…

Some episodes have opened with "Machine flashbacks" of recent time periods — i.e. previous episodes — which are de-facto "Previously on…" segments. But you're right, I was sort of impressed that they did not do that in this episode, especially after such a long pause between new episode broadcasts.

Once Finch went rogue with his Irrelevant missions, he could not risk traditional communication methods. Texts would be observed, traced and deciphered by Control's operatives. There was an episode where Finch explained why and how he had to have the Machine obfuscate the Numbers in that particular way.

I loved All is Lost, but two things really stood out to me as being inaccurate dramatic license: One, the satellite phone would be water-resistant, and two, the boat would have an EPIRB. These inaccuracies grated on me, because a filmmaker could account for them and still make a compelling story. After all, sailors…

Wil Wheaton drew back the curtain a bit when he was fired from Arena (which, by the way, was a fun show that really made me appreciate Wheaton as a writer). I can't remember any of the details, but the gist of it is that the producers were unscrupulous and careless — as in, they literally did not care about the show,…

Actually, it's the Fightin' Cephalopods: http://www.printfection.com…