Michael Hopcroft

Although I'm tempted to do it myself, I was wondering if anyone had already done the neavy lifting involved in writing up the Christian Bale version of Batman from Batman Begins. Gadgets included, probably Superheoric rules.

Re: Batman Begins

Re: Batman Begins Saw it today. Absolutlely glorious. I don't know what I can say that hasn't been said already, but they got Batman spot-on RIGHT. Batman is the one superhero who should scare the pants of everybody on either side of the law -- and in this movie he does. Liam Neeson is the greatest live-action Bat-villain EVER. He seems dangerously sane, cruel certainly even from the beginning but rational -- until his true motives become apparent and it becomes clear just how ruthless and sociopathic he is. Jonathan Crane also turns out to be quite effective. The best thing, though, is that it's a movie about two great issues: 1. What is justice, and how does it differ from vengenance? 2. What is worth saving, and how far will you go to save it? There is one other notable thing about the movie -- Batman is a force of nautre, a character who changes everything he touches with his presence. When we first meet James Gordon, he is almost past the brink of despair -- an honest man trapped in a seemingly hopelessly cxoirrupt world. When we meet Lucius Fox, he is a lonely man whose talent has been buried and forgotten and who is where he is for lack of anywhjere elkse to go. When batman comes into their lives, he changes them forever, giving them new hope, fresh purpose, and cauyse to hope for their futures. The contrast with R'as al Ghul, who has not only lost the capacity for hope but is determined to crush it in everyone he meets, is glaring.

Re: King Kong Trailer Online Quite correct, Susano. Nosferatu and The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari were the two films to come right out of post-World War I Germany that invented the horror film as we know it today. They were silent, which meant that there was no language barrier between these films and a worldwide audience. Nosferatu was intended to be a near-straight adaptation of the Bram Stoker novel Dracula, but since nobody bothered to get the approval of Stoker's estate names and locations had to be changed. To this day the true identity of Max Schreck, the actor who play the vampire Count Orlock (sp?), is a mystery. The other great horror film to come out of Wiemar Germany was The Golem, which had it not been distributed worldwide would porbably have been obliterated from cinema history by the onrushing Nazis. Fritz Lang also contributed a spectacular silent adaptation of Faust, telling the story of the legendary magician who sold his soul to Mephistopholes in exchange for power. And thus the huge debt all film buffs owe the Weimar Republic.

Re: NGD Scenes from a Hat You run out of coal to power your armored suit. NT: Signs that your high school music teacher is out of his mind.

Re: King Kong Trailer Online Werner Herzog's Nosferatu the Vampyre did not survivie being dubbed very well. The German-langauge version is quite effective, with Klaus Kinski as a great vampire. And his fangs were in the most efficient place to suck blood.... The relationship between Herzog and Kinski could often be desribed as a cold war, punctuated by occasional thermonuclear exchanges, yet it produced such remarkable films as Aguierre, the Wrath of God and Fitzcarraldo. The speical madness of a man who would build an opera house in the heart of the Amazon jungle where nobody would be there to hear the performances describes both Herzog and Kinski quite well.

Re: King Kong Trailer Online To a film buff, that's like saying Romeo and Juliet is "only a teen revenge drama". King Kong is the monster movie. It is the gold standard against which all other gigantic beasties are measured. Can you imagine Jack Black in the famous exchange: Cop: "Well, looks like the airplanes got 'im." Producer: "No, it was Beauty killed the Beast."

Re: King Kong Trailer Online One of Roger Ebert's bugaboos about things like the Godzilla movies was "size constancy". Once you have established the size of a creature, it should not change unless there is a story reason for it to grow or shrink. Since we only got about threre shots of Kong, is it just me or did he appear to be three different sizes?

Re: Fantasy ala Bonaparte And a winning general who undertsands what it takes to hold a fighting force together is frequently adored by his followers. Pre-Napoleonic military management was often done with no rgeard whatseoever for the welfare of the soliders. How good rations a regument got, for example, frequently depeended on how much its quartermester was paying for food and how much he was skimming into his own pocket. One of Kipling's poems colorfully describes duch a charatcer: He's a bleedin' robber -- and he keeps canteen! How did he get his buggy? Gawd, ya needn't ask -- He made forty gallons out of every cask! Soldiers must be well supplied with food and other essentialt to be effective. Napolon understood this almost intituively with his famouns quote "An army marches on its stomach.". It is ironic that supply is finally what did him in in the invasion of Russia -- la Grande Armee starved and froze to death during its long winter retreat and Napoleon only have about one fifteenth of the men he went in with by the time it was over.

Re: Thought Experiment 1: Azumanga Champions And if Chiyo-chichi actually appeared in the game (probably in such a way that only Osaka could see him) things would get even weirder. This would be even funnier if Osaka was the only one who knew about the detachable pigtails and was the only one who had actually seen Chiyo fly, even after the group is endowed with superpowers. It would be a super-version of the Snaffulupagus effect -- the character reports incredible things which nobody else has seen, and thus nobody else belives, but that are in fact absolutely true.

Re: Jennifer Lopez, supervillian This reminds me of a Pulp HERO idea I had for a game set in 1940 Hollywood. There would be two rival agents wokring on opposite sides of World War II operating in Hollywood, and nobody knew who they were. Turned out they were A-List movie stars, and their duel was in a large part over how the influence of Hollywood would be used to influence America's participation in the war. Since there were persistent rumors that Errol Flynn was a Nazi symapthizer if not agent, someone like him would be the villain. The "hero" would be someone like Cary Grant (I don't believe Grant ever had any real-life connections to British Intelligence, but could you think of a cooler guy to be serving his King in Hollywood than Cary Grant?).

Re: ...and the Bird you rode in on...

Re: Sample Oddity From Gestalt-Earth

Re: Person of Steel, Significant Other of Tissue paper I think Zoot is referring to fraternal twins, which are two children concieved from two different ova at the same time. These can be of the oppsoite gender and can differ in other ways. Identical twins come about when one ovum splits into two fetuses. They are, by definition, exact genetic duplictaes of each other, and therefore are always the same gender. As a side note, I don't know how often it happens (and it would take some interesting circumstances to bring it about), but in theory it is possible for a pair of ova to be fertilized by sperm from two different fathers, resulting in a pair of twins that are, genetically, half-siblings. You would not be able to detect something like this without genetic testing of the offspring, of course.

Re: ...and the Bird you rode in on... Two questions: 1. What do they taste like, and how is the meat usually prepared and cooked? 2. How do people, especially those who ride these birds, feel about eating them? Is it considered an unpleasant thing to do? Is it the sort of situation where you will eat a stranger's bird but not your own mount? Or is it a ritual that you do eat your mount when it dies as a sign of respect?

In another thread I made this suggestion:

Re: NGD Scenes from a Hat

Re: Still walkin' the beat, 25,000 years later... Does 0 EGO for the Herdstones mean that they have no free will? Are they simply following their programming endlessly, without the capacity to be aware that their masters are gone and the laws they enforce no longer exist? Assuming they do not have the sort of minds that are susceptible to control, is it still possible to trick or persuade a Herdstone into leaving you alone? Is it possible to destroy one with a sufficiently powerful attack?

Re: Terra Fey Well, I was lucky enough to find a copy of Fables at Powell's (on the same day I picked up some other goodies like Yotsuba&! and a couple of classic Doctor Who DVDs). It is a very strong piece of work -- combining some good character bits with a lovely little bit of alternate history. I wonder if Willingham actually meant to create any parallels between the Fables and any of the real-life refugee communities in America (the Cuban exiles come to mind -- the mysterious Adversary does seem to bear some resembalnce to the way the Cuban exiles view Castro -- as evil incarnate).

Re: Pseudo-Victorian Cavalry Regiment

Re: Person of Steel, Significant Other of Tissue paper I haven't seen Smallville. Evidently this is an alternate version of the Superman universe. the msot notable thing about the series is that ti has generated more "slash" fanfiction than any english-langauge series since Blakes 7 (which was notoriosu for it). A lot of fans see homoerotic tension in the Clark/Lex dyanmic, and intensely dislike Lana because they feel she's a third wheel.

Re: Person of Steel, Significant Other of Tissue paper Intentionally looking like a fanboy moron is not as funny as it looks. Getting back on topic, wouldn't Amazon DNA be just as incompatible with Kryptonian DNA as Humans would be? The Amazons aren't alien -- they're human warrior maidens who had their physical prowess enhanced through direct contact with the Gods IIRC. The typical Amaxon will never die naturally, doesn't age, etc. That's how the Amazons can survive as a uni-gender civilization. The origins of Diana/WW are, I understand, even more magical than that -- she might be completely sterile. And if the Amazons have any sexuality at all in their makeup, then they are probably almost universally lesbian. (Yes, there is a supicious refernce to her in the non-DC Graviton City universe of Project A-ko, but then you can't get more non-canonical than a satiric anime that was originally intended to be lesbian porn).

Re: Person of Steel, Significant Other of Tissue paper I thought most people on this board at least tried to post in English. This guy seems to forget that, at least originally, the Dragonball universe was a comedy. So naturally things happen in it that are not particularly logical, like having one of the most powerful beings in the Universe be so utterly naive that he gets married in the belief that he's just going to be fed. So logic and Toriyama don't mix. And if you don't believe me, read Dr. Slump.

Re: NGD Scenes from a Hat No problem. We'll just answer each other's topics. "Nike: for when you absoltuely, positively must get into the fortress without being overheard. Now in trendy black!"

Re: NGD Scenes from a Hat "Uses our Casula Fridays policy to full advantage, particularly on Tuesdays." NT: Signs that the Japanese exchange student staying at your house learned all her English from Yukari-sensei (the homeroom teacher of the girls fo Azumanga Daioh).