What is this Twit thing you speak of?

As much as I respect and admire the original work, I'm not bothered much by these prequels because I can easily ignore them and the likely impact they will have on pop culture (read: not much). Unlike, say, the Star Wars prequels, the impact of which is impossible to avoid no matter what tiny corner of nerddom I try…

I imagine it is because he is adored by the same overall demographic that loves science fiction. There are other similar cases. For example, Lucy Lawless became a "sci-fi icon" purely on the basis of her stint as Xena.

Looks like baton twirling with a sword. Very pretty to watch, like a kata, but I doubt this is in any way connected to actual blade combat techniques.

The dictionary defines Science Fiction as "Fiction based on imagined future scientific or technological advances and major social or environmental changes, frequently portraying space or time travel and life on other planets". The word "imagined" pretty much says it all.

All genre labels are rapidly losing their usefulness. Part of the problem is that so many authors are blurring genre lines with their work, which I think is actually a good thing. Similarly, creators like to take a new trend that starts out clearly defined (steampunk, cyberpunk, splatterpunk, etc.) and try to expand…

Lord of the Rings is pure fantasy and makes no pretense of science, so there is nothing to "get right" in the first place, is there?

Magic is any phenomenon that can't be explained by science. Your definition of it seems strangely narrow, guaranteed to fail to apply to most of the tropes of space opera for no good reason. It is this "If it (merely) looks like science then it must be (valid) science" misconception that leads the general public to…

the real question is why the Observer would tell Olivia what he did?

Yeah, clay catgirl was cute. The others, not so much. *shrug*

I agree with all of these, but with caveats on two of them, and would go so far as to say that none of them strike me as rules so much as bizarre restrictions, the source of which is certainly a mystery to me.

SF has always been about stuff that could conceivably happen, but probably wouldn't.

I think it is because Brad Pitt is visible without a digital, animated head replacement, and recognized as Brad Pitt in every conceivable way, during significant portions of Benjamin Button.

It is disheartening to see that Hollywood producers feel their mandate to entertain is somehow in conflict with "getting it right" scientifically.

I don't understand what it means to restore a black and white film in its "original color". Am I to take it to mean that someone had access to color photos of every scene and hand-colorized the entire film to match, frame by frame?

When it comes to the kind of acting work Andy Serkis does, the Academy can't decide how much of the performance you end up seeing on screen is the actor's original performance and how much of it comes from the animators who tweak it, sometimes heavily, afterwards. The work of the animators is not like that of make-up…

So "his kind" were a lost tribe of people who wore panda costumes? How strange.

I thought the tendency to fall asleep had more to do with chemicals being released (or not released) in the male brain immediately after an orgasm. Maybe that's a myth too? *shrug*

Yes they are still around. But I seem to recall their fans pitching the shit-fit on their behalf when the first movie came out. Since then, as far as I can tell, nobody has cared.

I never got to see Robotech as a kid and I feel terribly deprived because of that. However, I tried to watch it as an adult and couldn't get past the very strong sense that all the characters either looked like children, sounded like children, or acted like children, even though they were all supposed to be in their…