drmka9

There's still a protocol and chain of command, though, and Lewis messed with both of those. I honestly don't think it would bother me if they had established her as having any EVA history or abilities. And truthfully, it doesn't bother me all that much. It's just the largest of the differences between the book and the film, and both interpretations are great. I think I overall prefer the book, but the film is still one of the best I've seen in some time.

I understand why they had Lewis do the final EVA, but it really undermines her character for me. She's a tough-as-nails former-military commander, there's no way in hell she'd pull the EVA specialist off the most precise EVA they have to make. Lewis essentially puts everyone else at risk because of her own guilt, and it's a shitty way to end an otherwise great character. I get why they did it, but the overall changes to the ending bugged. More so, I think, because in the book Watney explicitly says "Now, if this were Hollywood, here's what would happen...but this isn't Hollywood, so now here's what actually happened." It seems like they threw out a large chunk of why people loved the book so much. And I love the film, so I don't want it to sound like I thought it was terrible, I just wished it had skewed a bit closer to the source material on some things.

I really liked that Watney didn't have a wife, or girlfriend, or kid, or anything else. They risked everything to try to rescue him for him, not to bring back someone's dad/husband/etc. It actually makes it a bit more poignant for me. And there was actually one romantic subplot, but it was kept well in the background (as it was in the book). It was a body double. Damon was up for losing weight, but the shooting schedule made it impossible. One of the little nods to realism that just hit me was that they did actually show Watney's teeth getting grimier/yellower towards the third act.

I'm still digesting it, but I think I really liked it. While I loved the book, I'm glad the screenwriter streamlined some of the incidents and removed others entirely. The changes at the end bugged a bit, though. Most of the time, the sky on Mars looks yellowish, I believe. It does turn bluish at sunset, though. I don't think you'd generally see the clear blue sky in the middle of the day, as shown in the film. In certain photos from Mars, though, NASA will adjust the colors to look more Earth-like...that seems to be the aesthetic the film went for.

I've kind of figured that the Triskelion was off-limits to the helicarriers. Zola's algorithm would likely try to weed out the non-HYDRA SHIELD agents, and, at the Triskelion, there'd be too many of them in one place for the HYDRA agents to escape the line of fire.

From what I've read - and this is really only from one source, so take it with a huge grain of salt - Marvel knew AOU was going to have heftier criticism lobbed at it before it was even out of the gate. No one behind the scenes was really happy with the film, particularly the forced changes from the committee, but there wasn't time to reshoot. It wouldn't surprise me if this was fallout from that situation. I'm also not sure how much of a committee they really need, at this point. The "original" franchises have just about wound down, and none of them are particularly independent of one another anymore. It'll be interesting, though, to see how interwoven the newer franchises end up being without a committee behind the scenes.

The issue wasn't whether or not RDJ could play Tony, but whether RDJ would be sober and out of trouble enough not to sink the film. A number of people went to bat for him. Howard was one of the people who fought for RDJ, and was annoyed when his salary didn't keep pace with Downey's. He was replaced by (the far superior, IMO) Cheadle, but not without some issues. RDJ has stood by just about everyone else in the MCU, though. Not long after the Avengers came out, the actors had some serious negotiations with Marvel to amp up their salaries a bit. Despite having a contract that guarantees him more money than God, RDJ threw his weight behind his coworkers in the negotiations.

Both, kind of. Natasha is the diminutive of Natalya/Natalia - like Mike for Michael in English. She's also used Natalie as a cover.

TWS is my favorite of the Marvel films, but I tend to start checking out in that last third. I like the Cap/Bucky fight and the Agent 13/Rumlow standoff, but everything else feels a bit superfluous. The face-changing tech made more sense in the original cut, but it comes out of nowhere in the theatrical version. I still kind of wish the female council member just happened to be the one badass who'd try to take down Pierce, with Natasha coming in after the fact.

From what I remember, it had a lot more to do with the Avengers being released and everyone fangirling over Loki. Marvel wound up demanding that Loki be given more of a storyline, and Malekith's plot (the actual film plot, in other words) was cut drastically. It makes some sense, given the bigger picture of the MCU, but it's a shame TDW wound up so uneven as a result of the meddling.

I've never really thought of box office poison as an active thing, if that makes sense. It's just the opposite of "I enjoy this actor and will even see a shitty shitty film if they're in it." For someone like Reynolds, as an example, I don't think he has enough personal fans to overcome being in a terrible movie. It's not so much that he sinks the film, he just can't salvage it.

Natasha's kind of a weird sticking point: I really can't see her siding against Cap, especially with the other side being Stark-led. But she might have a lot of issues separating Bucky from the Winter Soldier - if she even believes that the two should be separate - and find Cap shielding him intolerable. She did try to hunt him down before Cap was ever in the picture. I'm also not sure the sides will stay all that stagnant, either. There's always potential for switching and double-crossing.

I've been hearing that from a bunch of sources.

They're also identifying the Winter Soldier stuntman in those photos as Sebastian Stan, when it pretty clearly isn't. Even when an actor does their own stunts on film (as many/most of the MCU actors do), stunt people are usually the ones who run through it over and over for safety checks and getting the scene set (lighting, framing, etc).

It took me a second viewing to realize that the leader of the rival posse was Bradley Cooper - and yes, that Bradley Cooper. He apparently grew up in that area and is the same age as Adam.

Take a look at Shoes of Prey. They make custom shoes for a pretty reasonable price (the flats I just made were about $139) and offer tons of options.

I've seen this line of reasoning in a few places, and it bothers me a bit. Back when I was in high school, my parents blindsided my siblings and me when they announced that they were getting divorced. Even though they said they had just grown apart (and, decades later, maintain that there was no infidelity), all of us kids - middle school through college-aged - blamed the parent that wasn't around as much. Neither was actually to blame, but we wanted there to be a definite reason why the divorce was happening and it was easy to point a finger at the parent who was always busy with work and other things. In Herjavec's case, there could easily be other factors as many have assumed. But given how busy he's been in the past few years, I don't find it out of the ordinary that his kids would side with their mother even without a factor like infidelity.

Part of the issue with cooking pork is cooking it properly, temperature-wise. Until recently in the US, pork was only cooked to well-done, making it tricky to keep tender. A few years ago the cooking recommendations changed to allow a medium temperature, which is still higher than what most cuts of meat are cooked to. Someone that doesn't cook pork often would likely have difficulty cooking it perfectly and to temperature. I think that's likely part of why Ludo was such a jerk about Tarik overcooking the pork.

You'd be surprised. Very few chefs are comfortable working as both a savory chef and a pastry chef. That's one of the reasons why I enjoy MasterChef UK's Michel Roux so much - he's a savory chef that handles (and enjoys) desserts. Of the four mentors on The Taste, Nigella's the only one who seems to enjoy dessert stuff. I know Anthony's said that he has almost no sweet tooth, and I think Marcus and Ludo are pretty similar. The guest chefs all seem to be savory chefs as well.

To be fair, even Jen's mom called her a "disaster in the kitchen" back in the auditions, IIRC. I do think there's a big discrepancy between how the mentors/producers view the show and how the audience views it, though. In an interview one of the mentors - either Marcus or Ludo, I can't remember - said that he generally prefers working with home cooks as professional chefs come in feeling that they already know everything. Home cooks are more open to learning and receiving advice. I'm not sure that's ever really come across on the show.

I think it depends on each mentor and contestant. Both this week and last, Ludo said he was going with what Jen wanted to do and it wound up looking like while she had the initial idea, he made sure she was using proper technique and that the proportion of ingredients was correct. Marcus, on the other hand, seems to have had more input into the actual flavor profile each time. While I love how generally non-snarky the contestants are on this show, I cracked up at Tom's immediate reaction to being told he had a red star: "What, worse than nothing?"

I had heard originally that they wanted one of the kids to be a girl to be able to touch on girls' fashion and interests in the '80s. Since then, though, I've heard some vague references that Eric Goldberg wasn't thrilled with the idea of being portrayed in a television show. I have no idea how true that idea is, though, as I really haven't heard anything directly about that.

There was one episode - I think the first season finale - where Barry admits that he isn't nearly as cool as he tries to portray himself. It's kind of a nice running characterization with him. I've been playing it off-and-on for a few decades and still haven't heard most of the questions. One deck has something like 6000 questions, and you can (or could, at one point) buy additional decks.

I give them a bit of a pass on the music side of things, just because it seems like it'd be nearly impossible to coordinate getting the rights to the 'right' song for any given story. But I was also a little kid in the '80s, so most of the pop culture from that time blends together for me. I'm sure something like this set in the '90s would be jarring for me.

I'm also wondering if, once they made it to the final, they also realized that the whole experience was almost over. Suddenly realizing that you're going back to your normal life and you won't be seeing your new friends every day must be bittersweet, and this group of contestants seems to have gotten really close. (From a quick look on Twitter: Dina and Rachael refer to each other as "my future wife," Cig and George are talking about setting up shop together, and almost every contestant posted a photo of themselves with blue eyebrows in support of Keaghlan, who had some really nasty insults hurled her way.)