dcp, re "Diane Duane's Romulans (My Enemy, My Ally) and John M. Ford's Klingons (The Final Reflection) much better than anything in TNG and DS9 canon. Have you read them?" No. I read other Duane Trek books, but managed to miss that one. I'll go looking for them.

I've been excited for it, but I became concerned when I heard it got a PG13 rating.

Wasn't that the case for T2 as well? I seem to remember something about Edward Furlong being too young to go and see it. Although that might have been in the UK, where I think it might have had a 15 certificate.

Friends and I are having a Terminator movie night in preparation for the new release. We'll be watching Terminator and T2. Not sure about the third, as friend has objections to it. I can't remember it well enough to be sure why.

The new Terminator movie blows shit up real good but is otherwise pretty much crap.

Aw, I though it blew shit up real good and was pretty good otherwise. I don't think it necessarily succeeded in being as deep as it wanted to be, but I thought it was effective tonally. It focused more on the characters and worldbuilding than plot, though.

I just wanna drool over Sam Worthington.

If that means they need to indulge in some man-loving, well, these things do happen.

NATLBSB.

I've been excited for it, but I became concerned when I heard it got a PG13 rating.

The problem is with the premise, unfortunately.

I blame Christian Bale, because if he'd been cast in the role that was originally written for him, there would have been a point to telling this story. But noooooo, he had to be all "I wanna be John Connor and do my scary Batman voice again only this time without a mask!" and now instead of an interesting story about an original character in the Terminator universe, we've got a completely boring story about John Connor doing exactly what we've been told he's going to to in three other movies and 2 seasons of TV. Yaaaaaaaaaaaawn.

There are also several MAJOR continuity mistakes that make me want to sit down with everyone in Hollywood and explain verrrrryyyyy slooooowwwlllllyyyyyyy about time travel and internal consistency and the proccesses of cause and effect. Possibly with flow charts.

Because if anyone had sat down and actually thought about the timeline for ten seconds, they'd have realized that the thing that's driving the entire plot COULD NOT HAVE WORKED THAT WAY. As it is, bad movie. No biscuit.

Listen, and understand. That terminator is out there. It can't be bargained with. It can't be reasoned with. It doesn't feel pity, or remorse, or fear. And it absolutely will not stop, ever, until you are dead.

As I read on another site, The Terminator is about the inevitability of death. Sarah Connor is living a carefree life, and is suddenly faced with Death, and only after she becomes pregnant is she able to defeat death.

Similarly, T2 is about John Connor entering adulthood. Only after he gives up his protector and confront Death on his own does he grow up.

And then McG's Terminator is about blowing shit up real good.

So, The Wrath of Khan is about how you can't cheat death. And then Star Trek is a romantic comedy, where the couple meet and they hate each other at first, but by the end of the movie they get married. (Although the marriage is only implied here.)

I thought Wrath of Khan was about how obsession destroys the obsessed. All that "to the last I grapple with thee; from hell's heart I stab at thee; for hate's sake I spit my last breath at thee" stuff. Which makes it a whaling yarn, when you get down to it.

Here's something I'll have to add to my "must see" list:

Hubble's Last Visit To Be Relived in 3-D

Eight pairs of eyes were trained on the Hubble Space Telescope on Tuesday as it was released into orbit after spending a week berthed in space shuttle Atlantis' payload bay. Seven of those stares belonged to the crew of STS-125, who worked to upgrade the satellite during that time.

The eighth captured the view for the rest of us: an IMAX 3D camera.

The 70 mm camera, best known for producing the large format movies that museums and science centers project on giant screens, was flown on the orbiter to document the fifth and final crewed mission to service the telescope for "Hubble 3D", to be released by Warner Brothers in the spring of 2010.

"The main story is to showcase Hubble and its fantastic legacy," described Toni Myers, producer and director of "Hubble 3D", in an interview with collectSPACE.com. "It's sort of the life of Hubble."

"A big feature of the film will be this repair," she added.

Paul Bettany is Naked Chaucer to me. He is charming in that.

He's WONderful in that. We use his intro "Tha one, tha only--Sir Uuullllllrich von Lichtenstein! God I'm good!" frequently in our family. We make our own fun. Borrowing heavily from pop culture.

But he was amazing in M&C, too. Pretty much every time he's onscreen, really. His chameleon abilities are pretty startling when I think about it.

I've now seen a couple of reviews saying that Salvation is awfully grim and depressing for a summer action flick, not like the previous Terminator movies. Now, I didn't see the third one, so maybe it had a lot of musical comedy numbers, but: huh?

That Sherlock Holmes movie looks less terrible to me than Star Trek did. But still fairly terrible. I was trying to work out why, and... both seem to exist because someone thought "Let's do a hip new version of those characters!" Rather than because someone actually had something to say about them. Batman Begins and Casino Royale and Galactica all were interesting reboots because they were trying to take as serious look at those characters. It wasn't just a mess of "Look, some things are the opposite of what you expect! Isn't that surprising and cool? But then some things are exactly the same, for no particular reason! Whee!"

Anyway... yes, in the stories Holmes can be quite athletic. Watson describes him as "an expert singlestick player, boxer, and swordsman."