Defenestrator

You know, I didn't think that movie was as bad as the critics made it out to be. Maybe I had low expectations for it going in, but I saw what M. Night Shenanigans was trying to do with the material. Granted, I didn't think the movie was great or anything, but I enjoyed it.

And I can completely understand why people would hate it.

I had to look up "The Visitor," and while I have no doubt it was a bad film, it doesn't appear to have had any actor of note in it.

Showgirls is awful, but you can't tell me a cast with Elizabeth Berkeley was good.

And no amount of looking at Halle Berry makes Catwoman watchable. (I also don't think she's a very good actress, despite having one of those Oscar statues.)

"Battlefield Earth" stands out because it did have a pretty decent cast, a huge budget, and a pathetically bad script.

And I just thought of another one:

The Cast: Kurt Russell, Peter Fonda, Steve Buscemi, Pam Grier, Bruce Campbell, Stacy Keach
The Result: Escape From L.A.

So...if you were a pirate, it would be a pretty good place to start your career.

Who's with me?

I already claimed "Six Demon Bag" on Victory. I'm full of wind and fire and all that sort of stuff.

No. Cliches are cliches because they've been used too often that they become dull. There are plenty of ways to bring tension and drama to a pregnant woman beyond throwing something in the screenplay that's been done in just about every TV show or movie with a pregnant woman about to give birth. After watching 60 seconds of a TV show, I should not have been able to predict the next big plot twist. It's sloppy, lazy writing.

Cliches? In this show? More likely than you think!

I turned on the show for about 10 minutes, and a woman was about to give birth and Dr. Blood Moongood (Good Bloodmoon? Moon Goodblood? Whatever) was there. I turned to a friend of mine and said, "I bet the baby is breach." Sure enough, a few minutes later, BINGO! Breach baby.

Ugh. EVERY SINGLE TV SHOW/MOVIE DOES THIS. Writers are horribly stuck in such conventions.

I didn't watch much more, as I really didn't know what was going on.

No, it is illegal. Period. End of story. Having copies of things, digital or otherwise, that you did not purchase is piracy.

Now, is the FBI going to bust down your door and arrest you for it? Probably not.

Unless you're selling those file copies to other people, of course, then you're going to get noticed.

Because everything's funnier with monkeys.

It's one of the unbreakable laws of the universe.

Only "Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull" has managed to violate that law.

There are definitely ways to film large battles on the cheap. Keep most of the shots nice and tight on the actors and worry about a few larger establishing shots. LOTR went big at pretty much every moment it could, but they had a $300 million budget for about 10 hours of footage.

I have no idea what that means because I've only finished the first book, but I am excited by this.

The bigger question is whether or not HBO is willing to pony up the money to produce and do some justice to the more difficult scenes to get on the screen (i.e. big battles). I liked how they got around the battle scene from the first book, but you're not going to be able to cheap out like that for the rest of the series.

Then she sounds like a smart businessperson.

But that isn't what happened in Kirby's case, so it's rather irrelevant.

I work without a contract, too.

I get paid for things I do at my current place of employment.

Kirby did work for Marvel and created characters while receiving a weekly paycheck.

That is the very definition of work for hire, regardless of whether or not he had a contract.

And like I mentioned before, I have no doubt Marvel treated Kirby (and many other creators) like garbage, but that's not the issue in the legal dispute.

But as stated above, the case was fundamentally different. If Kirby had solely created all these characters and THEN brought them to Marvel for Marvel to publish, this case would have had a similar outcome as the Superman case. Siegel & Schuster were not working for DC when they pitched Superman to the publisher, and even though they sold the copyright to DC, variances in our atrocious copyright laws have allowed the Siegel & Schuster heirs to get their legal victories.

On the other hand, Kirby was working for Marvel when he started drawing all of these characters.

That's work for hire.

Similarly, anything I create for the benefit of the company I'm currently working for doesn't become mine when I leave.

Now, you could go on and complain about how Marvel basically treated Jack Kirby and his legacy like garbage for a VERY LONG TIME and have a legitimate beef, but that still doesn't mean Kirby's heirs are due any money.

Or an annoying 7-year-old.

Caine doesn't really do much currently unless it's Christopher Nolan on the other end of the phone, but there was a time that guy would do anything for a paycheck (see also: Jaws IV: The Revenge). He was always a solid actor, even in bad roles.

As far as Neeson goes, he's been hit or miss. I wouldn't call "Batman Begins" or "Taken" a varying degree of nothing.

Stop giving them ideas!

For the Gamera episodes, this is not a bad thing. These are some of the very best MST3K has to offer. As the article says, the movies are perfect for ridicule AND the writers were just hitting their stride for high levels of hilarity. It also didn't hurt that these movies were previously used during the KTML season, so they got to take another crack at the material (with much better results).