Velox

So last night we had to put our family dog to sleep. =/ He's been kinda sick for a while, but in the past week or two he got exponentially worse. If ever was the idiom "skin and bones" appropriate, it would be for him, from a combination of problems--particularly in the past week. He started eating more than he ever had, but still kept losing a lot of weight. Yesterday he was unable to keep anything down at all, so that was when we decided it was time. The weirdest thing is that I honestly have no memory of a time when he wasn't here (we've had him since I was ~8), and now to have him just gone... Such a familiarity and feeling of normalcy is now simply gone. At least it's good to know he didn't ever have to suffer much. It was really only the last day when he seemed like he was in any pain, even though we knew for a while that it was getting near the end (slower, thinner, less energetic, etc. but never really seemingly in pain). I also just feel really bad for my sister, because she's in Chicago and wasn't able to say goodbye in person or anything, and he was kinda her dog more than anyone's until she left for college/PhD. Anyway, yeah, just kinda a sucky day. Will take a while to get used to/accept. =/

;-; that would be brutal. (though I did love that part of the episode)

Yeah, he was Ted's old boss way back in...season 2? But the customers didn't like his building design, and that's when Ted stepped up and showed his own designs, which the customers loved (after which Ted became his boss). Ted tries to fire him, but things keep coming up (it's Druthers' birthday, then his dog died, etc.) and he ends up at one point allowing Druthers to sleep on his couch. Finally Ted fires him, giving him a heart attack. I believe that's the last time we see him until now.

Yeah, I really would've liked to see talking eagles, too. I didn't include it though because they only showed up at the very end, so I think it's slightly plausible (though I kinda doubt it, unfortunately) we could see more of them in Desolation.

“Platonish” And Why It Was Such a Great Episode (some spoilers to follow) “Platonish,” season nine, episode nine of How I Met Your Mother, is my favorite episode in HIMYM’s recent history. Without a doubt it’s my favorite episode so far this season (and apparently I’m not alone in thinking that, either, as it’s the highest rated episode so far this season on IMDb), and it’s one of my favorites from the past couple seasons. There’s been a few disappointing episodes the last couple seasons of HIMYM. Not that they were horrible by any means, but they weren’t—in my opinion—quite up to the quality that so many episodes have been in the past (and I definitely am not as disappointed with recent seasons as I know some people are—I’ve always enjoyed every single episode, even if occasionally not as much as others). That changed last Monday. “Platonish” is really the epitome of why HIMYM is the great show that it is. It brought me back to past HIMYM episodes and seasons, and the reason why HIMYM is so amazing. It brought many laughs, and it also brought me close to tears. Which is the thing I have always loved about HIMYM—it’s not always just about the comedy, but it’s about the story—their story. The comedy isn’t the most important part, it’s the characters. Which leads me to the next thing that was so great about this episode: the characterization. HIMYM does such a great job of characterization—especially in past episodes/seasons—and I was so relieved and overjoyed to see that again in this episode (not that it was completely absent in recent episodes, but I felt at times it wasn’t as good as it’s been in the past). For the first time, we really get a great look into the character of The Mother. We know some of her awesome interests, we know how she gets along with Ted, we know some of the things she likes and hobbies she has…but we’ve never really known her—not until now. This episode shows us what an amazing person she is. She does an amazing thing for Barney, and you can just see the level of her care for other human beings—he’s a complete stranger, and she could just go “get away from me, creep” or something to that effect (which would be totally justified, especially since she heard him call her a “target”), but she doesn’t. She decided to help him. Which really just speaks volumes about her character. It’s easy to push people away who you think are weird or acting wrongly. It’s easy to just ignore someone and later talk behind their back about how troubling their actions may be or something like that. And that’s exactly what she could have done. She could have gone home to her boyfriend, tell him how she met someone that troubled her today (or even not mention him at all), and just go on with her life. But she doesn’t. She doesn’t judge him or condemn him—she helps him. She sees that he’s having troubles, that he’s hurting, and she tells him what he desperately needed to hear, and you can see where he is now, in a large way due to her. This is really where HIMYM differs from other sit-coms. It’s not just about crude jokes and bringing in laughs from the audience. It’s about the characters and their stories. And, on top of that, it’s (overall) a lighthearted show (it is, after all, a comedy), which makes it just simply fun to watch like a comedy should be. But it’s so much more than that, too. And if that wasn’t enough this episode, we got Hammond Druthers back again. It’s no secret that Brian Cranston is an amazing actor—if you’ve seen just a single episode of Breaking Bad you know this—and he definitely doesn’t disappoint here. His character is always a great addition to the story, and in this episode particularly. Now, at the end, Ted’s character is still basically where we left off, but I didn’t have an issue with that—it was mostly one big flashback, and this time it was mostly about Barney and The Mother, and it gave us so much of them. Overall, I thought this episode was amazing. It wasn’t perfect—not at all—but it had some great moments, and it had, essentially, everything that makes HIMYM such a great show: funny moments, heartbreaking moments, serious moments, amazing characterization, and great guest stars.

Dang man, congrats!! That's really amazing. Good luck with the rest of your novel! ^^

I bought the "Firefly - Main Theme" from the Firefly soundtrack last week, then made the first 30 seconds of that my ringtone. Great song.

The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey - Extended Edition (review/commentary here). Watched it twice over the weekend--really a great film. Can't wait for Desolation of Smaug.

Been listening to The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey soundtrack a lot today. Currently on "Out of the Frying Pan."

Yeah, it's definitely worth it for the appendices alone, but considering you get two new songs in the extended version (which I think really solidifies the Tolkien feel, as songs are always very important in his works), I might say it's worth it for the extended scenes alone haha. I think so? You can see a new gallery of images I took here. The Hobbit's case is definitely thicker, though (perhaps just due to not having time wear?), and the box as a whole is thinner, which you can see here. The Hobbit also has an indented image on the front, which you can see here. It's definitely very similar, though The Hobbit feels a little stronger, but perhaps just due to the fact that it's new. =P The DVD set is ~$25 on Amazon (Blu-Ray is about the same, unless you want 3D, which makes it ~$40), and features 13 extra minutes of the film, if that's what you were asking (not as much as LOTR, but hey).

Gallery of images here. So Friday evening the extended edition of An Unexpected Journey came. That night I skipped NaNoWriMo and watched the film. Saturday and Sunday I watched the Appendices, and Sunday night I re-watched the film again. (Also quick note: this is the DVD version, so number of disks may differ between this and Blu-Ray/3D/etc.) Man, I love this movie (original review here--my opinion hasn't changed all that much, though overall I think I actually like the film better than I did when I first saw it). Unfortunately I haven't seen it in about a year, because I didn't want to purchase the DVD until the extended edition came out. But it was definitely worth the wait! The extended/new scenes are great bonuses, just as they were in LOTR (I actually hadn't seen the theatrical versions of LOTR until after I had seen the extended editions about a billion times, and I always felt like so much was missing). It's perfectly understandable why these were not included in the theatrical version, but I'm so glad they were put in for the extended editions. Of course, similar to the movie, if one is expecting the book of The Hobbit exactly, you'll be disappointed. But what I love about Peter Jackson's Hobbit is that he explores many details of Tolkien's world and tries to bridge the gap between The Hobbit and LOTR. Is it necessary? Not at all, or else Tolkien would have done it that way. But I do think it's incredibly fun and interesting to see things fleshed out more. I know the story of the book well, so it's just great to be able to see Jackson's adaptation, including the addition of things created by Tolkien and things Jackson and his team created--again, it is, after all, an adaptation, and in my mind, a great one. A brief breakdown of the extended scenes: More of Erebor. You get to see a little more of Erebor and its wealth, as well as more tension between the Dwarves and the Elves--an offering of gems is made to King Thranduil, but taken away once he tries to take it. Slightly more of Smaug. Not much at all, and I didn't even notice this edition until I read it on another site, but you do see an extremely quick flash of his silhouetted body. Which, on that note, this is one thing that I never minded when seeing the movie--a lot of people wanted to see more of Smaug, but I actually liked this choice better. I definitely wanted to see more of Smaug because of how excited I was to see him, but in this scene, the unseen Smaug works better, in my opinion. But to each his own. More of Hobbiton. This was one of my favorite additions--we get to see quite a bit more of Hobbiton (which is now permanently built into the hills in New Zealand--I definitely need to visit that before I die). We see a party much like Bilbo's birthday party in Fellowship but this time Bilbo is a child, and at one point hits Gandalf with a wooden sword, which is completely adorable. Later, you see Biblo walking through the marketplace in Hobbiton as he's shopping and trying to avoid Gandalf. I love Hobbiton, and having these scenes was great. Probably more of the Dwarves in Bilbo's house. I couldn't tell you what they were, but the scene did feel slightly longer--perhaps just my imagination. A lot more of Rivendell. All very short scenes, but there's quite a few of them. There's more of the Dwarves eating, including one of my now-favorite scenes where Bofur stands up on the table (quite rudely) and starts singing a pub song (which is actually a song from The Fellowship of the Ring that Frodo sings, who says he learned it from Bilbo. I believe it's Jackson who explains in the Appendices that it's up to the viewer to decide if Bilbo learned it after Bofur sung it, or if Bilbo had taught it to Bofur before--I like both ideas, really). I just love songs like this, and hope to see more in the next two movies. You also see more of Bilbo exploring Rivendell (including looking at the image of Sauron fighting Isuldur behind the shards of Narsil that you see in Fellowship). You also hear Elrond and Gandalf discuss the quest, and the White Council scene is extended as well. The Goblin King. This is quite possibly my favorite new scene, because the Great Goblin sings a song based on the text in the book. It really adds a bit to his (and the goblins as a whole) character, and on top of that it's just a really fun song. It's out of tune and very goblin-y and torture-filled, but I still loved it. "Down in the Deep of Goblin Town." There's various other small bits added to the goblin scenes, too. There may have been a little more of the pale orc, but I can't remember anything specifically. Probably a few other small scenes I missed. I'm really only disappointed with two things: 1. That the "Riddles in the Dark" were not extended. There's more in the book, and I completely understand only having the ones they did in the theatrical version, but I just wish more had been added in the extended edition. This was my single favorite scene of the whole movie (I mean seriously, Andy Serkis just did such a supurbly amazing and fantastic job--Martin Freeman, too), and I would love to have seen a longer version. Ah, well; and 2. I wish that the "Misty Mountains" song was extended. The song in the book is much longer, and I just absolutely love the melody in the movie. I wish they could have made it longer. One thing that I thought was a little funny was how the extended edition is kind of similar to the Fellowship extended editions. Both mark their half-way points (Disk 2) in Rivendell, both have the cast running from goblins in the second half of the film, both start with Hobbiton. . . . Not a bad thing at all, IMO, but yeah. Overall, I love the extended scenes in An Unexpected Journey, and I still love the movie as a whole. I still couldn't help to feel that some of the time the digital effects were a little much. I'm not sure exactly how to explain it, but LOTR just felt so real to me, and in The Hobbit, some things seem more obviously digital. Maybe it's just nostalgia or something, but yeah. The movie also seems to have a constant struggle between being a kid's movie and not. The movie is by far much darker than the book, which I didn't mind, but there's also moments that it seems so close to the feel of the book that it feels much more kid-ish. LOTR seemed to have a much more consistent tone throughout the movie. It had light-hearted (Hobbiton, for example) and comedic moments, yet those scenes didn't seem to change the overall tone at all as it sometimes did in The Hobbit. I also would have loved to have more focus on the dwarves individually. Viewing the Appendices, you can see just how much detail and depth they went into creating individual personalities for every dwarf, but I didn't feel like enough of that went into the film. Yeah, they're still more fleshed out than they were in the book overall, but just knowing how much work they put in to making each dwarf a singular character, it made me want even more for them to be more individualized. However, considering the sheer numbers, I do have to commend them for the job that they did, because that's an extremely hard thing to do. Doesn't mean I don't wish they could've been fleshed out slightly more, though, especially in the extended edition (which they were, but I wanted even more =P). I still wish the dwarves could've had their colored hoods and instruments, I still wish the troll scene could have been a little closer to the book (though I do like some of the changes they made), I still wish the stone giants were just in the distance (though this doesn't bother me too much at all), I still wish the tree scene at the end would've been different . . . but overall I do love the film, especially the extended edition. I have yet to watch the film commentaries, but I suspect I will soon enough--the Appendices, as I've said, were really great to watch, though. Part 7 (which is actually two disks, instead of the usual one--parts 1-6 were covered in LOTR) is titled "A Long-Expected Journey" and covers a lot of pre-production; includes a great introduction where Jackson explains how the film came to be and how he came to be director once again; the actors' boot camp and various other training; the shooting of the film and the various sets; pick-up shooting; and more. Part 8, "Return to Middle-Earth" further details the development, design, and production of The Hobbit, and explores in-depth the background of the main characters and the casting for said characters. There's a section on creating the dwarves as a whole, and how Jackson wanted to do for the dwarves what Tolkien did for the elves, and really go in-depth to their past and history and life. It also shows the concepts, creation, and design of the various sets (both physical and digital), and lastly, there's a look at the songs of The Hobbit. The first disk of the movie also has "New Zealand: Home of Middle-Earth" which is a cool look into the various places in NZ that were used for the film. I always loved watching the Appendices to LOTR, and The Hobbit was no different. I would definitely recommend this five-disk set--the extended edition of the film is amazing, and all the special features/appendices are just really great and interesting, too. And now, back to NaNo. . . . ~ Velox

Finished The Walking Dead Vol.2: Miles Behind Us, by Robert Kirkman yesterday, and Summer Knight, by Jim Butcher, the day before. Both were definitely great books. Haha, sweet. I hope you enjoy it, and I look forward to hearing what you think. ^^ A Clash of Kings is great, too. I'm excited to read A Dance with Dragons over Christmas break, since I recently purchased the paperback.

Olympus Has Fallen. Definitely a very entertaining movie, for me. Yeah, there were quite a few plot holes and various other things wrong with it, but overall I still definitely enjoyed it. Probably because it was exactly what I expected--a fast-paced, action-packed, suspenseful movie. And that's exactly what I got. It's kinda sad that a lot of the bigger issues with the plot could have been avoided extremely easily, though. For example, the whole Cerberus plot-line was, essentially, quite unneeded at all, really--take it away and the movie wouldn't be much different, as long as a couple other things were heightened/expanded. The suspense and the stakes were high enough without it (especially if they made a bigger deal out of removing their troops/moving the fleet, which they should have), and the payoff from that was ultimately a let-down. Probably the biggest thing I was disappointed with, though, was that it wasn't the movie adaptation of Transfer of Power, by Vince Flynn, even though the plot was very similar in many ways. It's kind of funny, too, because Antoine Fuqua was originally signed on to direct the first Vince Flynn movie, Consent to Kill (now cancelled; the first movie is going to be American Assassin and directed by Jeffrey Nachmanoff), and Gerard Butler was at one point considered for the lead role of Mitch Rapp. Similar character, similar plot, and the director was at one point going to make a Vince Flynn movie. It's just a shame it wasn't simply a novel adaptation, as I liked that plot more, too. Ah well.

Yeah, definitely. I just watched the last episode earlier this evening. I always loved the show, but these past few episodes in particular have been pretty great. "Razgovor" was amazing. The more we see of her, the more Shaw is becoming one of my favorite characters.

I re-watched Public Enemies last night. Not a bad film overall, though I find I didn't enjoy it as much as I did a couple years ago when I first saw it. Maybe my tastes have just changed slightly, but really, it is a pretty depressing film. I also thought it had a lot of potential that it could've used but didn't. John Dillinger himself I felt wasn't fleshed out enough, though I don't know much about the actual Dillinger so perhaps that's just how he was, or what's known about him. I think it also suffered from trying to tell so much in the time it did, so it spent less time on character than it did just making sure to address a certain number of moments in his life. My favorite part of the film had to be Melvin Purvis (particularly Bale's portrayal of him), though I wish that he, too, had had more screen time, specifically for his character. I liked seeing some things about him, though, like how he definitely wasn't okay with some things his fellow FBI agents did, and he struggled with some of the things that he did allow but maybe didn't completely approve of. I think the last scene is particularly effective in showing a bit of Purvis' character, after the death of Dillinger and his reaction to that end and what that end cost (and the foreshadowing of this questioning his work when Dillinger tells him "you ought to get yourself another line of work, Melvin" earlier in the film and you can see how effected Mevlin is by that). And last week I re-watched Spy Game, which is a more fun film to watch, in my opinion. I particularly love all the "training" scenes, with Redford teaching Pitt various spy craft.

Haha, thank you. Still going okay so far, though I definitely have slowed way down. Hoping I can have another spurt of activity this weekend or something. Sounds cool! I look forward to hearing about it. Yeah, definitely; and thanks! There'll always be a chance to re-write or re-work certain things you don't like, but you always gotta just get it down, which is the harder part for me. Lol, I don't blame you. Kinda got into a ranting/rambling mood for a bit there. . . .

Happy birthday, Jasonnnn!! We really need to hang out again soon. Hope your birthday is an awesome one!

So I’m doing NaNoWriMo this year. I wasn’t sure I was going to because 1. I wasn't sure I wanted to commit to a large project this semester; and 2. I wanted to start working on a new novel idea, but that idea was far from ready to be worked on during NaNo (I didn’t even have character names yet, much less any sort of character profiles at all, or a lot of information on the world [as it’d be fantasy], plot, etc.). But then one of my friends from school convinced me to, and I’m so glad she did, because these past few days have been awesome. I've been writing a lot more than I have in a long time and it feels great to just be writing again. Even if I cringe every few minutes at what I just wrote, it's great to be making progress. I just passed eleven thousand words, which is basically half of my total word count last year (yeah, only got a little over 22k last year, unfortunately). Which makes me really excited—only the third day, and already I’m half of where I finished last year, so I’m actually really hopeful to “win” this year and get the full 50k. Both Friday and Saturday I was able to get 5k words each day (I’m really lucky NaNo started on my day off—Friday—and I didn’t have much going on Saturday), which is definitely more than I have ever written before. I’m not sure I’ve even ever written 5k words in a single day, but I definitely haven't done 5k two days in a row. And better yet, I've just been really excited about writing again. Yeah, getting all 5k was hard, especially the last couple hundred words, but even so this has really just made me excited and happy to be writing again. I'm having a lot of fun with it, and I can't wait to keep going. So we’ll see, but I’m feeling really good about this year, and even if I don’t finish I hope to make a significant dent in my novel—if not actually finally finish it. I’m continuing the one I started last year, since I haven’t worked on it much since. Of course, even if I do finish it, it will need a lot of revisions, but still. I’ve had this idea lying around for over four years now, so it’ll be good just finally get it completed so I can move on to more projects. It will need much, much (much x1000) revising, but . . . still, the hardest part (for me, at least) is just writing that much on a single project. That always seems to be my problem, really. I often start a project but never end up finishing it because I either lose interest or gain more interest in another project. Even if this novel isn’t my favorite story idea any more, at least I’ll have actually finished a novel. How's everyone else doing so far? I hope NaNo is going well for those that are participating—whether you’re doing everything by the book, being a “rebel” (hey, they have an official forum on the NaNo forums specifically for “rebels” and technically I fall into that category since I'm continuing my novel from last year), or doing your own thing instead of NaNo but using NaNo as the backbone—the important thing is just writing. --- As for Halloween stories, The Ambage recently released a small collection of Halloween-themed stories: Crooked Ways (image links to larger size) (amazing artwork by 55555) The paperback version is less than four bucks, and you can get a free Kindle version if you buy the paperback from Amazon. It includes stories from myself, Nuile, GSR, Zox, Zarayna, and 55555. If you're interested in purchasing it, you can buy the paperback here or here, and the Kindle version here. Please consider supporting your fellow BZPers. ^^ Thanks in advance to anyone who does! --- Otherwise, life is going pretty well, just been busy with school and stuff but trying to be more active here. Notable things that've happened since Summerish (though none of this was lost in the data loss, since I just wasn't very active and never updated my blog =P): Re-fell in love with Firefly (about a month ago I had a Firefly/Serenity marathon [after purchasing the Collector's Edition of Serenity], followed by a commentary/bonus features marathon, going back and watching the episode commentaries, film commentary, and various bonus features. Yeah, I kinda love this show/movie). Watched the first season of Buffy the Vampire Slayer a couple weeks ago and also fell in love (I'm restraining myself from watching any more until after NaNo). Had an Avengers marathon (watching it and all the films leading up to it) back in late August before classes started after completing my DVD collection of the Avenger films. Fell more in love than I already was with them. Will be writing an entry that ranks them from best to worst (in my opinion, obviously) soon (hint: Avengers is #1). In general just fell in love with Joss Whedon's work. Started work on a collaborative writing project (four intertwined novellas) with some friends from school; super excited about that. Best book I've read since summer: The Ocean at the End of the Lane, by Neil Gaiman. Started re-reading some of The Dresden Files, by Jim Butcher, which are amazing books and re-fell in love with them, too. Pre-ordered the paperback of A Dance with Dragons, by George R.R. Martin, which came this past Tuesday; I'm really excited to read it come Christmas-ish over winter break. Watched the second half of the final season of Breaking Bad as the episodes aired. Man, "Felina" and "Ozymandias" were such amazing episodes. That show in general is just pretty incredible. Glad to see the forums are back. Yay. ~ Velox

Yes, definitely. Man, I love the music from Serenity (and Firefly, for that matter) so much. David Newman and Greg Edmonson are great.

Good luck, man!! As you know, I plan on participating too (at least as much as I can)--I'll enjoy talking to you over Skype and encouraging each other. ^^

Kraggh you are a horrible human being and all your opinions suck. >:C (not really) Actually, I agree with quite a few things here: 1. I do have to disagree here. I wouldn't say it's the funniest thing I've seen or anything like that, but I do think it's often funny. However, I think it's also funnier if you watch the series in order. For example, I watched a random episode with my sister a few years ago before I had started watching the show and didn't really care about it all that much (wasn't horrible, but...not something I wanted to watch 5 seasons [what they were on at the time]). But I ended up watching it anyway and fell in love. The main thing I love about HIMYM is the characters. It's not just your run-of-the-mill sit-com (geh, I hate Two and a Half Men and other shows), but it gets you invested in the characters, so you'll both laugh and cry ("you" being me, here. =P). I was disappointed with a few episodes this past season, but yeah. I think it's funny because of the characters, so if you get invested in them and enjoy them, it'll be funny, but otherwise, maybe not. *shrug* 2. This I definitely have to disagree with. Is he the greatest director, or the greatest character-writer? Maybe not. But I do think he is pretty amazing. But he also has a very distinct..."style" or "fan-group" might be more appropriate. The first time I saw The Avengers, I wasn't all that impressed. But once I got invested in the Marvel universe, and started watching the past movies (which I hadn't, with the exception of Iron Man), I started to become super excited about The Avengers and the Marvel movies in general, and when I saw it again, I absolutely loved it and now it's one of my favorite movies. Before, my favorite movies (and I mean, they still are my favorites) were the Dark Knight Trilogy, but once I stopped expecting that type of movie for every superhero movie, and started really liking the more light-hearted Marvel films, I liked The Avengers so much better. Obviously I’m not saying this is the case with you or even necessarily the case with me. I’m just trying to figure out why I wasn’t impressed at first, and why now Joss Whedon is one of my favorite writers/directors. =P Because he is. The Avengers is one of my favorite movies. Firefly is one of my favorite TV shows (quite possibly my favorite American TV show [Sherlock still takes the top slot]) and Serenity is one of my favorite movies. But again, the first time I watched Firefly, I really liked it, but it wasn’t “one of the best shows ever” for me. But I came back to it, and instantly fell in love. I recently watched the first season of Buffy and fell in love with that, too. So yeah. Totally fine if you don’t like Joss personally, but I do. ^^ 3. Again, must disagree here. =P But that’s because he’s got a lot of character depth, IMO. If you watch the series in the order Whedon intended, you can really see his character growth, from when how he was during the war, and how he changed after. And how he’s constantly changing because of the people around him and whatnot. I don’t always like everything he does or agree with everything he says or anything like that, but I do really enjoy seeing him. I think my favorite character is River, but my second would be Mal, followed by Jayne. 4. Once again, must disagree. =P But that’s probably just a matter of tastes. I’ve only seen him in Firefly, Castle, and Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog, and out of those I think his best performance is definitely Firefly because he did show a lot of different things, and I thought the character he played forced him to force himself as an actor. I recently watched the episode commentaries (the ones that had them, anyway), and the commentators would often comment on Fillion’s performance in one scene or another, and I always agreed with them. He had some really fantastic moments as an actor on that show, I think. In Castle, he definitely plays a very specific character, and if you don’t like that it’s understandable. He does have some great moments there, too, but for the most part I think the show requires less range than Firefly did. 5. Eh, depends if you mean the books or the TV show. I think the books are amazing, and Martin is a fantastic author. As for the TV show . . . I kind of have a love-hate relationship with it. =P It’s pretty good, though, in my opinion. I definitely don’t like a lot of things about it, though. 6. Didn’t see. 7. Didn’t see. 8. Didn’t see. 9. Didn’t see. 10. Eh, I enjoyed it, but I don’t necessarily think it’s the greatest thing ever, but I should also probably watch it again before I ever talk about it extensively. 11. Didn’t see, but from what I have seen of it/heard/etc. I don’t really care for it either, or have any desire to see it in full. 12. Agreed! Though I wouldn’t mind seeing it again, because I didn’t hate it or anything, I basically agree with Kayru. I didn’t really care much for it, and I don’t see why everyone loved it so much. 13. Disagree here. 14. Never saw. 15. Eh, it was okay. I kind of liked it too, or at least parts of it. 16. Agreed. 17. Never saw. 18. Never saw these, either. =/ Been meaning to, though! 19. Eh, I don’t hate this that much. I need to see it again to have a strong opinion on it. Wasn’t too impressed, but I don’t hate it either. 20. Me too! So much better than The Incredible Hulk, too, IMO. 21. I did enjoy #3, though I’m not sure it’s my favorite. 22. Eh, I’ve only seen him in Smallville, but otherwise I just don’t know enough about the character. He was pretty cool there, though. 23. Yeah it’s a pretty cool idea. I guess I don’t have much of an opinion on them either way. 24. Definitely agreed. Speed remains one of my favorite movies. 25. I need to watch them again to decide. 26. Me neither. I don’t have anything against it, it’s just never appealed to me. *shrug* 27. Agreed, though I still do like him. He was great in the Dark Knight Trilogy, as well as The Shawshank Redemption and Se7en. 28. Eh, no opinion. 29. Same. I still really like Gibson (not some of the choices he’s made personally, but . . . =P) 30. Me too. 31. Ewoks, definitely. Jar Jar Binks . . . he’s okay. I never really had a strong opinion of him, and was surprised when I found out how much people hate him. I don’t particularly like him, but I don’t loathe him either. 32. This is how I felt the first time I saw it. But once I started liking the universe more (i.e. superheroes, particularly more light-hearted ones) I fell in love with it. 33. Definitely disagreed here. It remains one of my favorite films, even after watching it so many times. But hey, personal tastes. *shrug* 34. Never saw the Adam West one, but I can see how Batman Begins has an appeal over TDK/TDKR to some people. Personally, I prefer TDK and TDKR, but I do really love BB, particularly the first act of it. 35. Disagreed, because I liked the character of Ra’s more, but I can see how it could be considered putting Qui-Gon in a Batman movie. =P 36. Eh, disagreed here, though I did enjoy I-III and don’t hate them like some people do. But I enjoy the original trilogy better overall. 37. (Kayru--The Amazing Spider-Man) I wouldn't say I highly disliked it, but I wasn't as impressed as a lot of people were. It was just an "okay" movie for me, and I think overall I enjoy the original trilogy better. --- But yeah, most of the disagreements just come to personal taste. *shrug* Also, I'm planning on posting a couple blog entries soon ranking Nolan's movies, the Avenger movies, and maybe a couple other entries on films, which from this I think you might disagree with some things lol, but I'll enjoy seeing your opinions when I get them up if you decide to respond. Some of my disagreements here are fleshed out in said blog entries.

That's because it's been so long since most topics were posted in. At the top of the forum page, right above the pinned topics, click on "Custom" in the dark blue bar (you can see it in this picture between the "Start New topics" button and the pinned topics [credit to -Windrider-/The Compendium for the pic]). Click on the "Time Frame" menu and select "Show All" (it's probably currently at "Last 60 days"). The rest of the topics/page 2 should show up then. =]