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He decides not to build an oil refinery after all.  But does Mac go back? That's left open to interpretation (but I imagine so).

What the hooting heck was I spoilering here?

Just caught up on four weeks of Progs and have to say it's been a cracking variety of thrill power.

Dredd has been top of the pile for me but also particularly enjoying Sin Dex and Bad Company.

It is all good stuff but top marks to Tharg for a blistering variety in the art. All brilliant, distinctive in their own right and superb story telling. We are spoilt.

the closer the prequels get to Episode IV, the less I like them, and the more they seem to think that leaving the pieces exactly where we find them later is the same as creating a satisfying story. 

One of the many sins of the Hobbit movies - and if you watch any of the extras you can see that cast and crew have all been pre-programmed to say the same phrase - is this obsession with making it fit "like the last piece of a jigsaw".  Really? Did we need Legolas' dad to explicitly tell him to go "seek out a ranger?".

I may be misremembering but I'm pretty sure I got the info about Obi-Wan and Vader and a lava pit from a poster magazine - probably around the time of Empire Strikes Back.

And again, my wrong headedness thinks  it was a poster magazine around the time of Star Wars that explained that Stormtroopers were clones before we knew they were clones (but not really).

I can't recall SITH appearing anywhere other than poster magazines originally either - but I may be doing Alan Dean Foster's Star Wars novelisation (and his Kaiburr Cyrtsal sequel) a dis-service with all of the above.

Looks good to me except existing Spoiler Tags are not working.



And the Underware thread (about page 18 of off-topic) is locked. I'm sure it never used to be. Can it be unlocked? ;o)

Well, the UNDERWARE thread is still there (about page 18 of off-topic).

But please make the SPOILER tags come back. They've all gone off.

Stop quoting the spoiler please - I'm doing my damnest to ignore it!

Only just got round to reading the end of this 23 issue run (the open for business trade and two issues that followed it; signed by Al himself at Glasgow Comic Con).

And it was fucking great.

Fantastic characters, great dialogue, cracking action  and really clear storytelling in the art.

I read no other Marvel stuff so every now and then I had to stop and imagine a little bit of what went on in a crossover title but that genuinely added to the fun.

And if I have seen a better page of comic story telling than "Kick... Splode" I'm a Dutch man

So apparently it's moving to the Concert Hall next year so everything will be under one roof.

CCA will still be 'a hub' showing films and stuff In the run up.

Sounds like good news to me - especially for those who were stuck up in the art school.

Excelsior! As they say.

[EARTHBOUND]

EARTHBOUND

I had been wondering if Roy Dotrice's character had been simply written out but he turns up here with Christopher Lee.  Good to have a bit of conflict on the Command Deck.

Aliens in suspended animation turn out to be [spoiler]really nice people actually.[/spoiler]

We finally get a bit more talk about heading home (or why they don't) and some lovely model work.

Great stuff, even if the final reveal was no suprise to anyone who has ever... well, no suprise to anyone ever, really.

My Mrs hated it. Absolutely. I ended up having to justify the comic to her afterwards.  But fuck it, it's only a film. She's still a keeper.

That was great.

The computer effects that made Star Wars into the mega bucks spinner weren't available for Tv...

Computer effects were not really available to movies in the seventies either.

Oddly I think the production design, certainly of moonbeam, still holds up. Haven't hit any silver caped aliens yet though.

What has been slightly disappointing are some of the optical effects for swirly space anomaly things and force fields. You can almost see the coloured light shining through greaseproof paper.

But so far, so spiritual and philosophical. They almost don't care about the resolution of the threat and tend to finish episodes with a "Makes you wonder, doesn't it?"

Finally caught this tonight and, despite really liking the first one, this did absolutely nothing for me.

I'm in a bit of a bad mood at the moment which probably doesn't help but it just all seemed very flat and in engaging.

And why cast Eccleston and give him nothing to do but fight with make-up?

[Black Sun]

What a lovely box set this is.

Up to Black Sun - science isn't going to be this series strong point is it? But I can live with that.

As an aside, when did the term Black Hole come into common parlance?