benteen

Yeah, I've said for a long time the best thing that ever happened to Marvel was NOT having the rights to Spider-Man and X-Men initially. It forced them to push characters like Iron Man, Captain America, Thor, Black Widow, etc. Now those characters are bigger than ever. I have no doubt that if they had had access to all of those characters, Spider-Man and Wolverine would have been the main focus of an Avengers movie and despite joining the team in recent years in the comics, those two are NOT Avengers. Agreed that there are a lot of great X-Men storylines other than Dark Phoenix. I wish they would do some X-Men in space stories as I've always enjoyed those a great deal. Especially the Brood saga. The Brood might be too close to the creatures from Aliens but now Disney owns Aliens too. To me, X-Men and Batman are the comic series with the best storylines. I remember IGN doing a Top 25 storyline for Batman and it was amazing.

It's fascinating when you think of comic books. The popular characters have all been around for decades. It feels like it's impossible to create a brand new comic character that can be as popular as some of the decades-old legacy characters. Deadpool is probably the newest of the big characters and he's been around for almost 30 years.

The person who killed his mother AND his son. Not that Bjorn ever seems particularly interested in his children or even remembers them. He also let Hvitserk live and go to Ivar. It's staggering just how much of a miserable failure this show made Bjorn as a king. To the point you wonder how he ever became a legend to begin with. The only thing he was this season is a legendary failure.

Great posts, Avaleigh! No reason to feel bad. I didn't realize that was a fantasy at the end either.

The housekeeper and her husband weren't in the right either but at least they weren't hurting people like the Kims were. The message might have been about capitalism and class but the message came across as the poor can be just as terrible as the rich. Ultimately I think this is another undeserving and overrated Best Picture winner which will be quickly forgotten.

To me, that's not good enough (in regards to Joon-Ho not explaining anything). I honestly don't know why this family, who have skills to lift themselves out of poverty are living in poverty. Joon-Ho just says to the audience audience "Poor=Good and Rich=Bad." Even that doesn't make sense because the actions of the Kim family in this movie prove that they don't deserve their recent spate of good fortune. Maybe Mr. Park is a corrupt individual who screwed over people on his way to the top. As far as I'm concerned, this movie didn't show me anything to back up that assumption.

With the discussion of True Grit here recently, I wanted to post that Charles Portis, the author of the novel True Grit, passed away at the age of 86. I never saw the original True Grit but I loved the Jeff Bridge/Hailee Steinfeld version of the movie in 2009. I also read the Portis's True Grit novel and I have to say it was GREAT. I would recommend it to anyone here. Charles Portis also wrote four other books (one of them, Norwood, was also adapted for the big screen). I have purchased his other books but regretfully haven't gotten to them yet. https://www.washingtonpost.com/arts-entertainment/2020/02/17/true-grit-author-charles-portis-our-least-known-great-novelist-dies-86/

So is that a crime worthy of death?

Why do the Kims deserve what the Parks have? From what we see of the Kims, they are bad people who don't deserve good breaks. It seems the only crime the Parks committed was being rich. Maybe Mr. Park cheated his way to the top. If he did, we never saw it and him being rich doesn't mean he deserves what he and his family got in this movie. The Kims are supposed to be so smart yet they are living in poverty? Why is that? Again, the movie never shows us. We're apparently supposed to sympathise with them because they're poor. But their conduct in this movie doesn't lend itself to sympathy.

Really enjoyed this episode and I agree that things are definitely picked it up. Enjoyed the story they are building up here. I LOVE the planetary design. Today's FX is so far ahead of what the 80s and 90s Star Trek had to work with when it came to designing planets and it enhances the experience of watching. I also enjoyed the Elnor character and his interaction with Picard. I also thought this was the first episode where I felt like Stewart WAS Picard instead of just playing Picard. Especially the scene where he chewed out Elnor for killing the Romulan senator. I know I shouldn't have been surprised by her appearance as she has been advertised for months but wasn't expecting Seven of NIne there. The world-building might be a little forced for Star Trek but it's definitely getting interesting. Not really impressed with the Romulan villains although Peyton List was a little more interesting. I'm mixed on Picard's crew other than Elnor. Raffi is still annoying. Rios character is still ripping pages out of the BSG bible to develop his character and I'd like to slap that cigar out of his mouth. Not an anti-smoking thing but because it REEKS of TV cliche. I was liking Allison but find her character to be another annoying manic pixie girl. I have a hard time buying Picard becoming a neutered recluse that he's been since Starfleet told him no. It's the same problem as Luke in The Last Jedi.

Yes. Luke ultimately defeats Darth Vader and the Emperor by going against everything he has been taught by Obi-Wan and Yoda. He refuses to follow his father's path by turning to the dark side and he refuses to follow what he learned from Obi-Wan and Yoda and kill his father. Luke took the best lessons he learned from the Jedi but choose his own path and it worked, culminating with Vader killing the Emperor. That's why it was so disappointing to see him become some rigid and dogmatic, obsessed with the "sacred Jedi scrolls." I liked Rey but the original trilogy already gave us a "last of the Jedi" storyline. We didn't need to see Rey repeat Luke's storyline. If Disney wanted Rey to be given Luke's classic trilogy storyline, then they should have just done a remake of the original trilogy. One of the worst things Rian Johnson did with The Last Jedi is that he made the three main heroes all much less interesting characters. I really didn't leave TLJ with a great desire to see more of them. Finn was probably the one who had the most damage done to him. JJ tried his best to repair this but Finn is often relegated to yelling out "REEEEEEYYYYYYY!!!!" constantly in the film and chasing after her. Finn is at his most interesting in The Rise of Skywalker when he is dealing with a fellow First Order deserter in Jannah.

I saw Parasite over the weekend and I was not impressed with it. I’m not sure why it won Best Picture and even the message it conveys seems confused. It’s disappointing that this is from Bong Joon-ho, the director the much superior film Snowpiercer. What was surprising is that the poor family we are supposed to sympathize with, the Kim family, are the least sympathetic characters in the movie. Why is it that this family of intelligent and clever people can’t get a job other than folding pizza boxes? The movie doesn’t even attempt to ask that. This con artist family decides to screw over a bunch of unfortunate employees for a rich family and we’re supposed to sympathize with them? It really annoyed the hell out of me that the second they got the house to themselves, they were beginning to turn the house into a shithole. As the end of the film, we learn the son is going to “work hard” despite his newfound infamy and buy the mansion. Why didn’t he do that in the first place? Him and the rest of his family have all these super skills. Why are they in this position to begin with? The funny part is, the rich family, the Park family, is more sympathetic than the poor family. Are they dumb and naïve? Yes. Are they a little elitist and forgetful, sure? But they don’t deserve what happens to them in this movie and certainly don’t deserve what the Kims do to them. Their original household staff deserved it even less. I will give the film credit though for making the poor family the unsympathetic ones. That’s how you know this isn’t an American film. In an American film, there would have been no doubt that the rich family were villains. They’d be evil, super elitist, racist, 1% ,MAGA lovers. It’s very easy to see how an American version of Parasite would have gone. But subverting expectations doesn’t automatically make for a great film and Parasite is proof of that. It’s certainly interesting and different in parts and the twist in the middle is a good one. But it’s nothing special as a movie. It’s too long and for a “dark comedy” doesn’t have much humor. Also, is this film supposed to take place in the future or be a post-apocalyptic world? I’ve seen 6 of the movies nominated for Best Picture. 1917, The Irishman, Marriage Story and Once Upon a Time in Hollywood are ALL better films than Parasite. Parasite is better than Joker but that’s not saying much. Hollywood likes a message movie but what exactly is the message of this film? That the poor can suck just as much as the rich? That certainly isn’t a Hollywood message that they usually reward. Parasite is another Best Picture Award winner that will quickly become forgotten like so many other previous winners.

In the Classic Era, when a companion was done on the Tardis, they were done. The exceptions were Harry Sullivan returning in The Android Invasion (he was part of UNIT) and the Susan and Sarah Jane returning for The Five Doctors. After Jo left the Third Doctor, she sent a letter to him and UNIT, as well as a gift in Kingdom of the Spiders, the Third Doctor's final appearance. The actress who played Barbara, Jacqueline Hill, returned in the 4th Doctor era as a completely different character.

Beverly knew him for many years though prior to her stint on the Enterprise.

One more thing on "JL"...Picard was very close to Data, Riker and Troi but you could count on one hand the number of times they called him "Jean-Luc." No one who served under him would call him JL while they were in Starfleet.