I thought it was a reference to the game Risk. Actually it doesn't matter tho, because anachronistic references are part and parcel of TPB.

Late in responding, but I have seen Lemora. Had the DVD for awhile too, in our quest to own every vampire film ever made. Jilli would like the Gibson Girl vampires; otherwise not much worthy there.

On a related note, I am this close to buying Jinx's tshirt that says "and then Buffy staked Edward. The End."

Goldman's book

Nope, this one is about how The Great Waldo Pepper nearly killed Robert Redford's career, stuff about all his screenplays prior to print (1983), ranty stuff about TPTB (stars, execs, producers, etc) a great exercise in screenwriting and a whole lot of snark.

Yeah, Reiner is a raging lefty and was a protester during Viet Nam.

Is that the one with the rant about how people in movies never look in their wallet before pulling out money to pay taxis? And all of his examples of how that would go down in real life are about Mel Gibson? "This is a dollar, you Australian asshole!"

That's in the second volume, Which Lie Did I Tell, which I just read a few weeks ago. To be fair, it's less a rant and more like, "When you're watching a movie, do you really want to watch characters get stuck in traffic/tie their shoes/count change?"

I'd always assumed the "land war in Asia" line was a direct reference to that quote from Montgomery.

ION, Todd Alcott examines Batman & Robin and, to everyone's surprise, finds a few tiny problems.

[Mr. Freeze is] a brilliant doctor, and he's already figured out a cure for certain stages of this deadly disease, but that is not enough to attract funding for his research. He's developed the technology to build a freeze-gun, but the patents for that device are not enough to attract funding for his research. He's staged dozens of robberies in order to steal hundreds of diamonds, but the value of the diamonds themselves are not enough to fund his research. He's figured out how to turn a telescope into a giant freeze-gun that could potentially destroy the world, but again, it's a dead end -- no funding could possibly come from gigantic-freeze-gun technology. No, to build the giant freeze-gun and hold the world hostage -- this is the only way to get the funding he needs to continue his research to save his beloved wife.

I always figured Vietnam, too. Moscow is west of the Urals, and thus is in the Europe part of Russia.

That's an astute and hilarious assessment of Mr. Freeze. He's a lot like certain people I know in real life. Just can't catch the break that's hitting them in the face.

Moscow is west of the Urals, and thus is in the Europe part of Russia.

It would be so much simpler if everyone would just admit Europe should never have been a continent in the first place.

Of course, you couldn't really say "Never start a land war in Eurasia."

Moscow is west of the Urals, and thus is in the Europe part of Russia.

Is that where the dividing line is? Huh. In my head (and this was probably only ever in my head), I always put the dividing line as a vague line drawn between the Barents sea and the Black sea, which puts Moscow in Asia, but makes St. Petersburg part of the hazy gray area. In my head.

Perhaps *I* do not always have the grasp on geography I imagine myself to have. In my defense, it's better than most USians' grasp.

It would be so much simpler if everyone would just admit Europe should never have been a continent in the first place.

Of course, you couldn't really say "Never start a land war in Eurasia."

Or what megan said.

Yeah, pulling out my giant atlas, and looking at the section on Europe, it draws the line where Plei does - at the Urals. For me, I knew Ukrane, Belarus and the Baltics were all in Europe, but East of that was where I though Asia started.

Which includes all of Russia west of the Urals.

I think, looking at a map, part of my confusion comes from Asia Minor - Turkey and the 'Stans are all in Asia, and so I always imagine the entire Caucasus are in Asia (which my atlas puts firmly in Europe - the Caucasus are the dividing line between Southern European Russia and Asia Minor.

I'm much less confused now, but I'm still feeling the effects of retroactive confusion.

If it helps Sean, not everyone agrees on how many continents there are. The French, for example, teach that there are five (hence, the five Olympic rings). The funny thing is about that (to me) is that Europe is a separate continent, but the Americas are one.

t /still bitter about losing that question when playing Trivial Pursuit with my relatives.