kalvasflam

Running joke of the week apparently.  Can anyone identify the silhouette of the plane? 

The punchline is that the troops that is supposed to be supported are US troops. 

I guess one could make the argument that they are aggressors...  

What I’d like at the end of this film is for Bond to die.

it would set a precedent like no other.  Make the movie a worth it.  The end of the edgier Bond should be a good end.

no time to die until the last minute.

wait a minute, is she swinging from lightning bolt to lightning bolt?  like... like... like Spiderman?

what the.... can we go back to the invisible jet?

1 hour ago, Seto Kaiba said:

Especially Raffi, who is a drug-abusing waster who somehow contrives to blame Jean-Luc Picard for her being kicked out of Starfleet... even though his presence was apparently all that was keeping her from an involuntary discharge as it was.  It's so stupidly hypocritical of her.  How dare the famous Jean-Luc Picard let the consequences of her sh*tty life choices catch up with her!   

Because it’s Picard’s fault, he set standards in Starfleet so high that it made life difficult for the less capable.  Picard need to be woke enough to realize that his pursuit of excellence is causing dramatic harm to many who might be less ambitious or less capable.   
 

Especially since he had so many advantages obviously denied to Raffi like a stable family, a good upbringing, work ethics ingrained by his parents.  It’s all Picard’s fault, and he needs to admit that, and give Raffi command of a starship in recognition of the fact that he (Picard) has led a life of privilege and his success was rooted in those privileges that are denied to others who are less fortunate.

After all, what kind of communist paradise is possible if there are always those who want to overachieve and get there through privileges like knowing how to work hard and getting lucky with things like the Picard maneuver.

Seriously, the more anyone thinks about this, the more this is a brilliant idea.  Just don't know if this was little Bob or Sideshow Bob.  (Chapek and Iger respectively)

Disney needs a sea change, they know the parks are hosed for the next year no matter what happens, their worst case is to expect 2021 to be a total loss too, and part of 2022 because Covid is going to be seared into people's brains for the next generation, probably through Gen Z.  They've got to make money somehow.  Sports will come back, so their TV properties will get some traction, cause hey, locked up people has to do something.   And no one can envision major league sports going away.  Parks might break even again.  (make it more exclusive)

But the movies side of the business need traction, it's a critical part of their flywheel, the problem is movie theaters might not survive, and they need something to supplement Disney+.  They've got this potentially hot property that's going to compete with all the other hot properties sitting on the pipelines waiting for release, does anyone think Mulan has a chance next to James Bond, Top Gun, Wonder woman, the next 50 Harry Potter movies, why take the chance.  They see Apple+ buying up Tom Hanks, and the Disney people figured they better take the initiative and bet big, push Mulan out streaming, if it fails financially, well, it was going to happen anyway, they need to take a big bet.  There is always the fall back if traditional theater opens up.

Outside of that, they figure that home entertainment might get closer and closer to big screen experience, and even if it doesn't, who wants to go into a theater for the next year, not knowing who is going to have Covid.  So, they give this a shot, if it's anything successful, you can bet that Black Widow will go next.  Sure, they'll do limited screen releases when the lockdown ends.  But hey, why share money with the theater if you don't have to.  Disney will be better off without the theaters.  Then guys like Apple will follow suit.  If however, companies like Apple set the tone and give the stuff away for free, then Marvel and the Mouse is going to become a subsidiary for the master of Cupertino, and no one wants that.

little Bob Jr wants to make his mark... and $30 is perfectly reasonable considering It will be a family event for four or five people.  Besides think of it as a trial run, if successful, next will come Black Widow and others.  Disney can ditch the theaters and make Megabucks, genius ploy to get more data.

Depending on how many takers, next movie might be $24.99 or $19.99.  Everyone has a price, Disney just need to figure out critical mass, easy to go high price and then move down.

May be even easier to down tier down pricing over time if needed, $30 in first four weeks, $28 the three weeks after that $25 the two weeks beyond, and $20 for the four weeks after, and $15 for the six weeks after that.  An economist’s dream in terms of learning consumer behavior and adapting to it.

Random thought: Kyle Reese just killed a terminator.

right?  Jai Courtney just put down Robert Patrick.

11 hours ago, electric indigo said:

85 (of former 357) are still flying, and will do so until about 2030. There's currently a political debate about getting an interim fleet of 45 F-18s to replace them until an upgraded Eurofighter of the next generation FCAS can fill the gap.

OMG, that sounds like a disaster in the making.  I think the last American fighter the Luftwaffe has was the F-4.  If anything, they might be better off with the F-15X as an interim solution.  Or just get more Eurofighters.  They can be bombed up, right?

The Red Hood movie was one of the better DCAU movies, hit all the right buttons.  I don’t know about this interactive stuff though.  Hope they do a good job with it.

How many Tornados do the Germans have left?  I think the Brits have retired all of them.

Imagine if the Federation was a capitalist society.  The inventor of the replicator or the holodeck/holosuite would be able to buy entire sectors.  
 

All they want is to sell a bunch of programs, it’s the ultimate razor blade model.  Would be so weird.  

7 hours ago, Seto Kaiba said:

Improvised ones, apparently... the "Federation Attack Fighter" design was originally presented in Deep Space Nine as a lightly armed civilian-use courier craft that the Maquis used as a raiding craft after being retrofitted with aftermarket weapons.

Aftermarket?    That sounds strangely capitalistic.... oh no, is the Federation being corrupted by the Ferangis?  

21 hours ago, myk said:

You mean Desslar's "why did we fight, why didnt we love one another..." or whatever he said, didn't justify your investment of time into the show at that point?  Lol...

Well, if he clarified that further by saying "love Yuki, or Starsha" then it would've been justification.  But it's all relative, Desslar could've said: "I got up in the morning and took a dump." and that dialogue would've made up for all the emo crap from Kodai. 

On 7/18/2020 at 6:37 PM, Dynaman said:

It had a very nice start and middle (I think).  It went off the rails once the CE made it to Earth.  I freely admit I might be blocking some bad plot however.

They went off the rails by the time they hit the tenth planet, episode 6 or 7?  

from the CE battleship being the absolute badass in episode 1 to becoming a look a few episodes later, to the blue tunnel of love, to the pointless backstory of CE soldiers, the entire second season was one missed opportunity after another, a pale imitation of the original.

IMO, only the Desslar side story made it bearable.  Even then they went through so many contortions to make Desslar a good guy or at least not a psychopath that it was literally painful to watch.

Kong grew, I can believe that, but Godzilla has shrunk if we are to believe that image.  In the first movie, you get a good sense of scale as Godzilla passed right under a Nimitz class.  To believe that it can now stand on the deck of the same carrier would mean this is either a different Godzilla or we have a mega sized super Nimitz class.

13 hours ago, Kyp Durron said:

Yeah, they made him very naive, and I too found that really irritating. The guy sabotaging the Yamato was also a WTF moment too, because his logic was so flawed, it was ridiculous. 

I don’t think this was referring to Kodai as much as the as incongruous and inconsistent level of power that was put in for character development purposes.  They could’ve figured out another way to advance Whiny boy who can’t fire a WMG in the plot without throwing in ten million ships to form the Giant gun of stupidity.

10 hours ago, myk said:

We've had enough of that, thanks...

I like it, with a bit of Harlock thrown in too.  Let's rip up more of the childhood heroes.

14 hours ago, DewPoint said:

There is a very big difference in how you develop equipment when under government contract and when developing equipment in house for yourself.  ULA and NASA need to plan/design the entire project, submit for review, build, test, review, etc. all the while hope your lobbyist keep the politician happy so your project doesn't get cancelled so you can get paid and keep your sub-contractors/partners paid.  SpaceX doesn't have to play those games.  They design and build like we think everyone should.

That’s true, and I for one am glad that SpaceX is out there.  They tend to get a lot of press for their failures,but that’s what ultimately allows them to succeed, rapid and repeated experimentation.  After all, their starship rocker blew up again on Thursday, and  how many rockets were lost before they succeeded on their first landing in the ocean.

They are still beholden to Government money after a fashion because that’s what keeps the lights on.  But the earlier stages was largely funded in private I believe.

What this launch hopefully will do is to either spur ULA to better things or just kill ULA altogether.  I'm fine with either result, because if there is one thing Musk has demonstrated, it's that there is no such thing as too high a barrier to entry, especially  if you have grit backed up by some money.

Better yet, if ULA dies, there is a going to be other companies that will pick up the slack.

It will be good to have an American made manned space craft again.   Whether you like him or not, Musk has revolutionized the launch business.  Without him, we’d still be stuck with the Russians or praying that a miracle happens and ULA comes through.

6 hours ago, Sildani said:

I just threw up in my mouth a little bit. 

Just a little?  I was expecting a lot. 

Does it involve smoking hot sexy green aliens???   No... not the stage after facehuggers.

Give me a Captain's Captain... a Kirk.  One who doesn't compromise his true values, which is leaving his seed across the galaxy as he explores...

The Batman movies aren’t bad, the JL new 52 were less interesting.  I hope they go back to the Bruce Timm era, if Filoni is who people should go to for SW, then Timm is the guy to do DCAU.

his Batman series and JL were pretty good.

Yeah, time to put a stick in Vader, he is done.  

6 hours ago, tekering said:

I have faith in Kathleen Kennedy.  She always hires the most competent of directors...

...and then fires them before their Star Wars films are completed.  

I have faith she will gut Taika Waititi's film, and the result will be as bland as Solo or The Rise of Skywalker.  

Or as good as the Last Jedi....