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The bit about Chris Moyles was the highlight because i am of the opinion that Chris Moyles is a Twat.

At last! A topic upon which Perterwolf and I can agree about.

In fact, when the Atlanta PBS affiliate started showing Tom Baker Doctor Who as omnibus TV movies on Saturday nights in 1984, I described it to everybody at school as "Remember Land of the Lost? Doctor Who looks like that."

I spent a year at the University of Illinois roundabout then, and I was amazed to find PBS showed old Dr Who from my childhood six nights a week at 7pm! This was before you could get 'em on VHS or DVD and the BBC had never repeated them, but I managed to watch virtually all of Jon Pertwee and most of Tom Baker. Bliss!

I don't think I've seen Land of the Lost - I think I'm mixing it up in my memory with Valley of the Dinosaurs and Land of the Giants.

Blast you sir! How dare you sully my irrational prejudices and grammar-snobbery with your pesky facts.

I always assumed that when 'Tharg' wanted to plug something, they just made up letters like this asking for whatever it was. They always had strange and unbelievable made up names like Aldo Palumbo, and latterly Floyd Kermode. Obviously not real people!

Horrible idea. bad name, bad slogan, just......bad.

So, whats with this....

Look at the tagline on the "Syfy" logo, ThryllSeekyr.

D'oh! I only just got that too! :?: Brythonic?

I thought it was excellent. Just a teensy hint of 'smug-looking-down-at-the-thickoes-cos-I'm-so-clever', but since I'm clever too, I don't actually mind!

And I didn't like the way he kept focussing on the swooping camera to speak straight at the telly audience - seemed to take a lot of the naturalness or spontaneity from it.

But "Toilet roll? yes. Toilet brush? yes. Toilet book? No" - brilliant!

Unfortunately this was never properly explained in the film, that Blake and Jupiter has got together after the attempted raped becoming Laurie's father.

I must disagree - we see Laurie's flashback twice, the second time Jon allows her to see the WHOLE story - when her step-dad says something like "you went with him even after what he did to you...". Don't remember the exact words, but I think I'd always assumed she was conceived in the rape - the film clarified something I'd missed in the book!

you like to keep your cash options open.

Not getting the prog has NEVER been an option! I'd rather live on beans or turn the heating off and wear thermal vests rather than ditch my weekly thrills! And ultimately, subscribing saves you money, so I'd say go for it!

I've always thought the essence of the story is the very reason why it could never really happen, or should be advocated as a governmental system. Such a totalitarian regime in reality would inevitably be horrendously corrupt and fascist in nature, because people are like that.

Judge Dredd works because the judges, and Dredd in particular, hold themselves to even higher standards of behaviour than the citizens. They rule, but without any of the perks - wealth, sex, luxury etc - associated with it. In other words, nobody minds a dictatorship, as long as you absolutely trust the dictator to act in your best interests. Trouble is, even if he does, his successor rarely will...

I've no idea of the specifics, but, generally, when you create something from whole clothe it's common that you'll earn a percentage any money that that material earns (sometimes that's simple a nominal amount and sometimes it's fairly generous). Watchmen was a peculiar thing - the rights are held by DC, but the contract stipulated (IIRC) that once they stop reprinting the material it would return to Moore and Gibbons. Course DC have never let it go out of print so the rights have never been returned; which is one reason Alan Moore is hacked off at them (another is to do with the badge merchandising which, iirc, AM was supposed to get some money for as tie-in merch but DC claimed that stuff to be marketing material, and, therefore, exempt from the contracts).

I'd imagine there's a decent amount of money to be made - partially from the straight forward movie rights (which AM has asked to be passed to DG) and from things like tie in merchandising (mind you, the movie merch may only earn money for the movie company) and, also, from the higher profile the book has been getting (that money is almost certainly contributing to AM's funds)

(All of the above is subject to my faulty memory, any resemblance to real persons, alive or dead, is purely coincidental except for satirical purposes, your home is at risk should you fail to keep up payments and the value of stocks can go down as well as up.)

-pj

Aha, thanks for that - I get it now! It hadn't occurred to me that the original contract would give him a permanent cut, even though he may not "own" the rights.

Brings to mind the time I saw Neil Gaiman doing a reading/Q&A at Waterstones some years ago. Although the event was to promote Stardust, inevitably the first open question was "will there ever be a Sandman film?". NG replied that he had no control over the rights, but that whenever the project was kicked about by DC and the studios, they often sent him a copy of the treatment or draft script as a courtesy, or to pick his brains. He finally had to ask them to stop after version 11 I think - which began "Tremble, puny humans, before the power of the Sandman" He said he never bothered to read the rest of it!

My cousin sent me this link: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article ... chmen.html

Presented without comment...

-pj

I find this a little confusing - if Alan Moore doesn't hold the rights and thus cannot prevent these movies being made, what money is he donating to Gibbons? Did they offer him payment as a courtesy? Any idea how much we're talking about?

are you drunk again?

Hey, Dan Dare isn't dead! He'll be "returning soon" - Tharg said so! But he really don'tdare, and that's fact.

Welcome!

well I've followed those links and what a relief! I actually thought for a moment that everything I believed may be wrong, but then I see the arguments and the source of them and am reassured it's just another right-wing conspiracy crackpot theory. Rush Limbaugh? Fox News? I wouldn't believe those guys if they told me the sky was blue.

For s start, nobody's suing anybody. those links say that this Coleman nutjob "wants" to sue Al Gore, and the article from Blind Fascsist Weekly,sorry the 'Business & Media Institute' says that he "advocates" suing those who sell carbon credits. I don't think any lawsuits exist, as no serious court of law would entertain them. As for the numbers, he says he's got "30,000 scientists, 9,000 Phds" - not sure what kind of scientists the other 21,000 are. I wonder how many of them are paid or funded by the oil, energy, car making industries?  

Nowhere does he actually explain why this is "bad" science - he makes ridiculous claims eg, that you could put "any data" into Prof Mann's climate graph and get the same 'hockey stick' graph! And when the 'interviewer' asserts that CO2 Can't be harmful because " it's no different from water vapour - it's just a substance that's out there" I nearly fell off my chair laughing.

At least the 9/11 deniers can't do much damage, but this sort of insanity is preventing us from doing something as a race to curb our destructive tendencies.

Sorry Peterwolf but even for you this is bullshit of the highest order. I'll go on believing proper scientists, thank you very much.

I do however believe that we will never be able to curb our emissions enough to change things, but that's just pessimism, and that carbon trading is a scam, but that's just human nature.

there are now 30,000 plus and growing by the day scientists who are launching lawsuits against Al Gore so that the matter will be debated in a court of law because there is no alternative.

Can you point me towards more info on this? Seems bizarre, and it's not something I'd heard of. Is there really a class action brought by 30,000 scientists? What is their legal point, what do they want?