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Wow, that was a sad end to the week - Jack Palance, Diane Coupland and Alan Fletcher.  A lot of yer watchacall icons of their professions there.  They all made me smile more than once.

"Is it just me or does anyone else get a knot in their stomach as they click on this thread? "

Bizarrely, I was just about to type exactly the same thing.  Everytime I see this thread at the top of the list, I actually dread opening it.  "Aw shit, who is it this time?".

I'll watch any old cack, but I can't watch this.  

I'm am now officially begging to be the amongst the first to die.

Link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gTVwgvqhwn8" target="_blank">Innsmouth howsaboutye...

An awesome trailer to be sure.  But I'm convinced that this is the only way to communicate the creeping horror of Innsmouth...

Link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XFo4jbqe_2Y" target="_blank">Something fishy

Is it wrong that I want to marry the person that made that Lego diorama(rama)?  For be they man, woman or unspeakable televangelist, they truly are my soulmate.  The woman who currently thinks she has that position is deluding herself - I could never truly be happy without someone who doesn't mix Lego daleks with zeppelins.

Christ, how long was I staring at the the OGC one before I got it... No visual imagination, that's me.

For the record, I adore them all.  I think that the Prequels are all appallingly badly made films, but I honestly don't care.  

There's an odd balance in the Prequel Trilogy, where Phantom Menace is wonderfully ambitious in terms of original design and fresh approach, but an utter disaster of a film, through to RotS, which is much better in terms of basic execution and crowd-pleasing, but hasn't got a shred of originality to its name, a turgid exercise in join-the-dots.  

Personally, I prefer the magnificent failure of TPM to the other two, but if all three had been more like the exuberant first 30 minutes of RotS I'd have been a lot happier all round.  

The one thing, the only thing, I can't forgive is the manner of Padme's death.  I've tried to justify it to myself, but I just can't - somehow we go from confident, accomplished leader and warrior to just giving up and dying of a broken heart, despite being physicaly healthy, having just giving birth to two healthy babies, surrounded by powerful firends and allies.  I just don't, can't, buy it - it's a pathetic cop out and highlights a dire lack of imagination.  I'd take a bucketload of midichlorian counts and a half hour of Jar Jar fart gags over that rubbish.

That said, like a diehard fan of an endlessly relegated footie team, I unrepetently love all six, and will continue to line Lucas' coffers for many years to come.  I've started down that dark path, and forever will it dominate my destiny.

The 'twist' was vague and underplayed, but it was there.  I'd put in Spolier tags, but I think George spoiled the whole thing a long time ago...

During the overlong Opera House scene, Palpatine hints that his own Sith Master, the ludicrously named Darth Plagueis, was capable of persuading the hated Midichlorians to actually create life, and that he learned this power shortly before offing the old codger in his sleep... with the clear implication that Palpatine (or possibly Plagueis, it's not clear) himself is responsible for Anakin's Immaculate Conception deal... in effect, he is Anakin's father. He might of course be talking bollocks, just to reinforce his role as Anakin's default father figure, but the implication is there.

It's not a bad idea, and at least gives the midichlorain/Virgin Birth drivel in Phantom Menace some vague relevance to the -ahem- 'plot', and it would be good plan for Palapatine as he in effect subverts the Prophecy of the Chosen One by causing him to be born at a time and place of his choosing.  

The problem, as with the entire Prequel Trilogy, is that the execution of this 'revelation' is so turgidly piss-poor that no-one notices, or cares.  It's also undermined and danced-around in the rest of the multimedia fest, so as to become so vague and contested as to be pointless.  

There's a lot of entertaining stuff buried in those movies, but it's lost in a sea of crappy direction, cardboard perfromances and literally unspeakable dialogue.  

See now I want to see a sort of Double Impact thing where Hugh Grant plays Johnny A and John C in a time-travelling caper, probably involving a bounty on Nergal's head and the accidental introduction of tobacco to the Garden of Eden.

Then again, how do you baffle a vegetable?

The depiction of The Devil is the best I've ever seen in movies, managing to brilliant convey true evil by making him gloat and whistle smugly.

Damnit, now you've made me want to see it.  

Simon Pegg as Constantine?  Interesting idea, wonder if he could pull off suave?

I often thought that a young Dennis Waterman might have done the trick, and there would have been feem toon fringe benefits to boot.  

I also like Waterworld.

I too admire Jeanne Tripplehorn's bum.  Or body double thereof.  Nah, Waterworld's good stuff and wrongly maligned -  worth the trouble for the sets and vehicles alone.  But far too long.  Like Riddick.

Dredd is a fascist bully boy to some degree, but he's much more complex than *just* being the poster boy for fascism.

It's interesting that Dredd's almost-a-good-guy status derives from altering his position on a programme of apartheid after 50 years of enforcing it,  supporting one democratic referendum, burying one old dear and arranging for another get killed in the line of duty, and visiting his niece at Christmas - set against decades of brutality and repression of "his" citizens and others (for our consderable enjoyment!).  

There's no denying that Dredd's heroic and self-sacrificing in his defence of "his" city and its laws, and he's by far my favourite comics character (caveat: when written by Wagner), but he's still not a very nice man propping up a not-very-nice regime.  The alleged satire is far less a part of the main strip these days.

As garageman says, the "subversive" elements of the strip seem to me very much a conscience-salving  elastoplast over the fun of an ageing head-cracking authority figure with his hi-ex and Eastwood/Arnie quips, now heightened by the humanising of Dredd that's taken place since "A Case for Treatment" (although after Prog 2008, I now find myself dating that back to Lopez).  

With the notable exception of John Cassavettes is Dead, do many people really enjoy Alan Grant's explicit "Judges are horrid" stories for both Dredd and Anderson?  

Is a big element of Judge Dredd really the satirising of police states, and was it ever?

By the by, and sorry fpr the double post, but I've just spent a fantastic 15 minutes digging through the Moorcock forum... a great place for a good read.  Moorcock gives real and considered answers to questions I've been wanting to ask for  up to a quarter of a century!  Compare and contrast with the self-serving madness of ByrneRobotics.