I had this conversation somewhere else but his part on Scorpion is not that big or important - if they'd wanted to, they could have got him. Roz from Frasier plays a character that does much of the same sort of thing so he could have sat out an episode or two. so something must be up either with contracts or him not…

except for the bit where absolutely none of that follows at all.

I had to look that word up - I had no idea there was another word for lorgnette! I have learned something today.

The trailer does a kind of bad job at letting you know what the film is like - it wants to suggest that the film is all about the sex but really now you've seen the trailer you've seen the one sex scene. I'm sure theyd defend their choices of quotes like SEXY and EROTIC as being about the atmosphere or something but…

She's one of those actors that make everything they're in just a bit worse.

I'm extremely well aware of that, yeah.

Yeah, Singh is more localised to India than Khan as you suggest. I was kind of just going 'huh' because Khan is also a common name in India too. One of thsose kinds of things that needs formal logic or something to avoid misunderstandings.

I think that's right - I had a quick look at wikipedia cos I know very little about Star Trek. Looks like Gene Roddenberry had a friend called Kim Noonien Singh and named the character Noonien Singh after his friend. Then he had him take Khan as a title. Apparently another character guesses that Singh is a northern…

although 'Indian' is an umbrella term that encompasses a lot of different groups, and Anglo-Indians like Michael Bates was are included in that. Obviously the point you're making is correct - the makeup they used in the show is absolutely and unequivocally inexcusable and unacceptable nowadays and the show is very…

Well, so is Khan. It's more interesting maybe because Khan is often a Muslim name and Singh is often a Sikh name.

Well there are theories that Greece was much more heavily colonised by Asians and Africans than Western scholarship has traditionally been willing to accept.
personally I don't know enough about the archaeology, but I would think it was highly likely there were more brown people there than our 19th century ideas…

I don't quite understand the couple of hundred miles bit tbh. Or what Alexander has to do with it. That doesn't really signify anything given the different numbers of people who would have migrated from all over to different parts of Greece and the Middle East before those times. (Alexander was what, 350 years before…

I saw an all-female Richard III once.

there's a couple that should definitely go the hyphenating route.

Spacey?

Oh OK, I must have misheard/not been paying attention - I remember her saying Swedish and quarter Hawaiian and could easily have missed the quarter Chinese part.
That makes way less sense for that actor than being 3/4 Swedish would. So if that's the case I take it all back and the film is much more stupid and badly…

I agree it should have been cast differently, absolutely. I'm not really trying to defend it because the very idea of the character exemplifies the problem - if you write a character that could be played by various people (genetics are weird) so that you can cast someone white, that's pretty bad.

I was reading something the other day about Ellen Page saying that she felt she's only being asked to play gay characters now she's come out, but she also said things were improving slowly with eg Zachary Quinto playing a straight character in a major franchise. I guess you have Neil Patrick Harris, Matt Bomer - white…

For Our Consideration: Why the Dirtbike Milksteaks' Comment Remake doesn't deserve your hatred

I watched Aloha because Netflix and to give it its due Stone's character is also described as three quarters Swedish, or something. I know someone who is Swedish with a Japanese grandparent and she is blond & blue eyed and very Nordic looking. (Not that Stone is that either, but she is apparently actually half…