ThaOGDreamWeaver

So, The Batman - all near-as-dammit-3-hours-of-it is here, and a very nervy first post(?)pandemic trip for me. Kudos to my local flick pit for using the I WEAR THE MASK TO PROTECT THOSE I LOVE tagline, and the usher who'd retrofitted theirs into an actual Bane mask. Curtains up: Bat-spoilers ahead.

It does. But that list has a bottom. Possibly even a sub basement. A locked one, with the stairs removed and a sign saying Beware Of The Leopard.

I'd argue it's a spoof in the same vein as Shaun: it lampoons all the conventions of cape movies (eg: Jeff can fly, but what if you're afraid of heights - or only took Hover at L6?), relocates it to a different environment (DC in the bad old days) with people who behave differently in that scenario (Cypress Hill and NBN, the wonderful Marla Gibbs as his mum, and James Earl Jones and his stunning hair pulling unexpected physical comedy chops). And yet, it works perfectly as a cape movie - better than quite a few I can think of. I wouldn't suggest a remake, but with a little script polish and modern FX... @Techwright - haven't seen Undercover Blues, but love Tucci and am already grinning at the thought. Will hunt it down. (BTW: he's currently playing at being a slightly slicker Bourdain on CNN/BBC's In Search Of Italy. Do not watch when hungry.)

Groening: “It’s a true honor to announce the triumphant return of Futurama one more time before we get cancelled abruptly again.”

Steve is your classic 40s fisticuffs hero in Cap America, plus a few extra little Brooklyn moves. Still feels more StJ. By Winter Soldier, he feels a lot more like a trained SHIELD agent with a range of techniques at his disposal - StJ, Fighting, maybe a couple from Speed, Flight, Jumping. Probably Natasha's doing. Noticeably they're all explosive groundfighting and fast-returns, keeping weight very central, rather than big (over)reaches. Nothing really showy / Bruce Lee style like the higher MA showpieces. Whereas SuperPeggy behaves more like a Shield/SS tank with a couple of Fighting/Jumping moves (and maybe Sands Of Mu or Flurry), short jabs mixed with big swings and haymakers, plus chucking bikes, Hulk-ing trucks, very much out front and at'em.

I'm kind of enjoying my Radiation Armour tank toon - though I might choose something other than Titan Weapons if I reroll. As well as, well, being a pretty decent Tank, you get a whole suite of handy debuffs (2 x -Defs, -ToHit, and -Regen), and a combined mini-nuke/group heal (Ground Zero). Still in my late twenties so I haven't tested it against Recluse yet, but more than holding my own against the likes of Arakhn. I can definitely solo quite happily with it - a Scrapper or Brute might get things done faster. Stalker loses Beta Decay for Hide, which makes sense if you don't WANT to constantly aggro people, but makes you less of a walking nerf machine.

So, this happened. ...no spoilers for guessing this is a spoof (well, the movie-in-a-movie for Judd Apatow's The Bubble, about a bunch of actors stuck together during COVID filming. I'm kinda hoping it doesn't take off as a genre, but Gillan, Pascal, Duchovny and Serafinowicz are in it, so... maybe?) I have opinions on spoof movies. Some of them I like - most of Jerry Zucker's stuff (Airplane!, Police Squad, quite a few others), some of Mel Brooks' (Young Frankenstein, Blazing Saddles), some cult oddments like Meteor Man and Mystery Men... ...but best of all, the Pegg/Frost/Wright Trois Saveurs Cornetto trilogy - World's End, Hot Fuzz, and Shaun Of The Dead. Because although they're taking the mick, they play by the rules and work as fine examples of the genre. But just throwing stereotypes and lifted characters at a wall and seeing what sticks... maybe not so much. What do you lot think?

Soy la Tejedora de Sueños, y apruebo este mensaje. ¡Viva Machetelrond!

I don't know what D+ is like in the US, but in the UK it has the Star section. That's the likes of AHS, Walking Dead, Y:The Last Man, Sleepy Hollow (fun gore but still gore), Pam & Tommy, and a surprisingly fine selection of cult movies that would be educational for kids - like Ready Or Not (survival horror), OneHourPhoto (Robin Williams on fine supercreep form), The Omen (parental relationship issues), Borat (abuse of Americans), Grosse Pointe Blank (abuse of a high-end TV) and The Favourite (abuse of Rachel Weisz and a sponge. If you know, you know.) On top of all that, they're doing Moon Knight. ....so, yup, their parental controls are pretty good. Individual passworded profiles with individual ratings settings. I would have added a log to the kids' profiles and login history to all of them, but that's just me. EDIT:At the risk of an "actually", Disney has had side gigs like Touchstone for edgier stuff for years, and added FX, Searchlight, and 20th Century Fox in the News Corp buyout. They also had... Miramax. Which did make some fine movies. But the business part of Whollyodd wasn't family-friendly, probably never will be. I'm not thinking of trying my luck again there - one asskicking like that is enough for one lifetime, and one less creep to deal with doesn't clean up Burbank. Though at least I'd feel a little safer in one sense.

Propellorheads & Shirley Bassey - History Repeating

Rush - Cygnus X-1

I re-registered after reading this thread, found they still hadn't created a Mac client, left again.

Bravo! Mine's not quite as good, but I'm enjoying being Harvey The Wonder Hamster. (Rad/Titan tank. Huge body shape, min height and legs, max most everything else including head scaling. And if there's any suggestions for scaling his head up to be more proportionate, let me know.) And yes, he does have a bio: having been bitten by a radioactive human, Harvey rapidly developed in size, strength, intelligence, phenomenal powers, and a paranoid fear of accordion players. Strange aversion, but there you go. The Righteous Raging Rodent Of Rhode Island is rapidly making a name for himself in his quest for peace, justice, and jumbo-sized millet sticks.

It's kind of an underused sandbox for writers, since, well, comic books kinda do the job pretty well. However, being a Squirrel Girl nut, would recommend picking up her "origin story" novel Squirrel Meets World - which I would very, very much like to see filmed. It's a "new girl in new high school" YA-ish thing, but heavy on the comedy, Pratchettesque footnotes and asides and multiple perspectives. People might actually be put off by it being a Marvel tie-in, but very much not a knock-off for the money. In the Serious Novelist category, you don't get much more serious than Salman Rushdie. Or do you? I'd never read the guy's stuff, only the news about him - and still haven't read any of his more contro stuff: not really the kind of thing I like relaxing with. But a friend recommended that Haroun And The Sea Of Stories would be up my street... and it is. Think Neil Gaiman rewriting Yellow Submarine for a bhangra crowd and you're close. From there, I went right back to Midnight's Children - only his second book. Without saying much - more than a bit X-Men, but I suspect Sens8 owes a lot to it. Something that may be somewhat familiar to users of this board right now... Bob Rodi's What They Did To Princess Paragon is about writers and their fandom. PP is a fairly obvious WW knock-off, and sales of her books are falling. So, as per usual, she gets re-imagined with a new style, new plotlines, and a new girlfriend. (The book's from 1994, btw, so it's before Straczynski's take on the series, New 52, etc etc). While the reboot reinvigorates the series and grabs headlines, one "traditional" fan - the wonderfully named Jerome T Kornacker - is more than a little upset. You can guess what happens next, but it's a fun once-and-done, and confirms a few of the things you darkly thought about writers and editors. It's also not aged that well: given what's happened with Reddit, Twitter, and armchair culture warriors generally, it'd need a reboot of its own. Finally, if you're a WW fan, you might well have run across Jodi Picoult's Love And Murder arc. If you'd like to move across to her less capey stuff, Leaving Time might be a good place to start.

John Parr - St Elmo's Fire

Kenny Rogers - The Gambler

Blue Man Group ft Venus Hum - I Feel Love Still need this outfit btw...

Siouxsie & The Banshees - Peekaboo

Iron Maiden - Fear Of The Duck Dark (Live at Fortaleza, Brazil)

Weird Al Yankovic - Harvey The Wonder Hamster

Iron Maiden - Writing On The Wall

Johnny Cash - God's Gonna Cut You Down

Black Sabbath - War Pigs

They had to do it. It was the law. But whoever took that or was there at the time and didn't leak it must have had either the willpower of the Gods or one of Feige's robot cybertanks parked on their lawn. Probably both.