Funniest thing I've ever read in a Slashdot comment (this is clearly only vaguely an actual quote):

"I can't imagine the process that must have led to "Reign of Fire." Okay, actually, I can:

First Studio Idiot: Man. You know what's awesome?
Second Studio Idiot: Helicopters!
FSI: Um, well, yes. But I was thinking of dragons!
SSI: Yeah... Those are cool too.
*long pause*
FSI: What... what if we made a movie... that had both dragons AND helicopters?
SSI: Is that... possible?
FSI: Dude... this is gonna be the best movie ever!"

I had many reasons to like Reign of Fire, the frequent shirtlessness of Christian Bale, the lovely voice of Gerard Butler--unfortunately completely clad at all times, ditto Dr. Bashir. But I really loved the little geeky Star Wars play the Bale and Butler characters did for the kids. "hhhuuhhh-pahhh Luke. I AM your father." "Nooooo!" And then one of the kids asked, "Did you write that yourself?" And Bale said yes. Hee!

Shot of Thomas Haden Church from Spidey 3 filming, which is only spoilery if you read all the constant back-and-forth as regard to which villain he was playing and aren't sure which was true:

Oh HELL yeah. HELL YEAH!!!

Polter-Cow, he's Sandman.

The Star Wars bit was one of the only parts of Reign of Fire I actually liked.

Personally, I was hoping for more of the dragons and helicopters angle, in the sense of full-on dogfights rather than one lone unarmed helicopter with stupid people jumping out of it.

On the up side, helicopter vs. dragon would result in dragon-bits being chopped off as it meets the rotating blades. On the down side, helicopter blades don't tend to survive their meeting with dragon flesh, and helicopters don't tend to survive the loss of their blades.

So with only the one heliocopter, we were pretty much doomed to a lack of machine/animal dogfights.

Good thing people took their shirts off in that movie!!

Help me to organize my Netflix queue. What kind of movie am I in the mood for??

Help me to organize my Netflix queue. What kind of movie am I in the mood for??

From the sounds of it, something with shirtless dragons trying to hack each other up with helicopter blades.

I've been doing quite a bit of old BBC minis. K. from LJ mentioned Dicken's "Our Mutual Friend" so I put that in my queue and just finished watching it couple of days ago. This may be my favorite BBC Dickens adaptation, full-stop. Steven McIntosh is such a wispy little man, but he's marvellous as John Harmon/Rokesmith. Anna Friel and Keeley Hawes aren't bad, either. And the dude who played Headstone was fucking *scary*.

Next up: Middlemarch.

Vonnie, was it you mentioned that the Beeb was doing/has done a Bleak House adaptation? Probably that is not on DVD yet. But I have had good luck with seeing 19th C. novels on TV, and then reading them and enjoying them. Somehow, knowing the plot in advance, and in visual terms, can help reinforce a narrative throughline when the prose is busy meandering.

I have a number of obscure/art house movies in the queue, and am trying to leaven them with things that are fun, but not Will Ferrell-type. There is only so much French black-and-white dystopia I can take at one time.

I've been doing quite a bit of old BBC minis.

Have you seen The Pallisers? (I might've asked this already.) I'm trying to decide if JZ needs it. She's a huge Trollope fan.

My British boss went on and on about a BBC series called "The Palaces" before I figured her out.

We will not speak of the Korea Development Office fiasco.