Why if the Golden Ticket contest is "world wide" are all the winning children white?

Because Roald Dahl only wrote about white protagonists.

Most of the characters are bland, but not Johnny. He's extreme. Whenever he comes onscreen, punk music blares, he does a Mountain Dew commercial stunt and starts making out with one or two chicks

So, they've turned Johnny Storm into Poochie? Go team Hollywood.

I had to read that post way too many times (considering the word "Storm" is in it) to make it about F4 and not Charlie And The Chocolate Factory.

My question was "Why is Johnny Depp channelling Carol Channing?"

BWAH!

So, Fantastic Four? Really not so good. It had its moments, but took sooooo looooong getting to them. Batman can take a while going through the how-he-got-there part. These guys? Went to space. And came back. There was no need for that to take an hour.

I wholeheartedly agree. I mean, yes, it could have sucked more than it did (it's no Catwoman), but dear LORD I don't think it could have been any more boring.

One of the people I saw it with liked it, but she (a) likes that sort of thing and (b) had never heard of the F4 before, so the 90 MINUTES OF EXPOSITION were less pointless than they were to the rest of us. Seriously, if you know even the broad strokes of these people's origin stories, there is no point in seeing this movie. (Unless maybe if you know and love them so well that just spending time with them is all you want. But if you want to see them do anything, this is not your film.)

Oh, Gris, I've been counting down to the gay cowboy movie for a year.

And didn't Anne Hathaway have some shocking movie coming out where she was going to be doing full-frontal and girl-on-girl? I know I'd heard something about that.

Whoa!

I met a girl on a cruise who looked a lot like Anne Hathaway. She was really pretty.

The Globe too found FF boring. And, you know, whenever you have a movie with "fantastic" in the title, the risk you run of bad pun reviews is high.

I just watched The Deep End [... ]I was expecting a bit more punch, but instead the plot kind of...fizzled out.

You mean the part with the fistfight in the boatshed? Or that sudden moment where Super Mom cracks and finally has to ask her son for help? Can you describe what felt fizzly to you?

Mostly the part where Alec dies and the movie just ends. It felt too...pat. There was all this momentum building up that didn't pay off in the way I was expecting.

I realize it's a movie, thus, sort of promising a payoff. But I found the ending, after the buildup, to be much like life. And though it bothered me, it did so in the way life events do so. I didn't "like" it, but I found it true.