massey

I agree, Nolan never really ever made a Batman movie, he has stories to tell that involved Batman and worked because they were good stories with a good character basis.  Little of what he did actually violated the Batman canon or the character as it developed over 50+ years previously, which helped a lot.  The Superman films pretty much decided they'd throw away all but the most superficial elements of the character's history.
 
It really takes someone who not only understands but likes the characters and their history to do them justice.  When they do you can get something really fun and respectful to the story.
 
Ultimately, I just cannot understand why you'd look at a wildly successful cultural icon, want to tell that story, then throw everything way and invent it yourself.  What's the point?  Its like making a movie about Santa Claus where he's a burly mercenary that has man-eating reindeer and throws bombs wrapped in Christmas paper.  Sure, you retained some of the elements, but why did you even bother calling it Santa?

Incidentally, Indiewire's scathing review of Suicide Squad included the following note"
 
And all I could think of was "Well, at least they got one thing faithful to the comics..."

I am completely shocked at this news. Who would have thought something like this could happen in our culture of entitlement?

The layout reminds me of the program ads in TV Guide when I was growing up. It just needs a blank space for the local affiliate information and time/day.

Was there?
 
I must be in the minority who hears the concept behind the Suicide Squad and is just filled with lots of meh.

If by "misleadingly presentd," you meant to type "not misleadingly presented at all," then I agree! The rate is per million, and not absolute. Since there are fewer blacks than whites, it can be both true that more whites are shot by police, and that the rate per million of blacks being shot by police is higher than whites!
 
If by "sad part" you mean that it's sad that most people are killed by friends and relatives, that is certainly a sad thing. (So, blacks by blacks, whites by whites, Albano-Greek Americans by Albano-Greek Americans, etc.) Murder is always sad. You know what else is sad? Being shot by police is sad. The police are supposed to be there to protect us, and we should really make some kind of effort to prevent it.
 
Obviously, there are cases where police-involved shootings are all but inevitable. It's the cases where it's not --you know, twelve-year-olds with toy guns, unarmed men pinned down by several officers, law-abiding citizens pulled over in "driving while black" type encounters. That's where there's an argument for oversight.
 
Or we could just smear them all with guilt by association. That works too. For a certain value of "works." 

It's not amazing at all. We understand that police-involved shootings emerge from circumstances in which police confront civilians. Confrontations don't just happen, like weather. There are realfactors, if sometimes misunderstandings, which lead the police to make the decision to shoot. In most cases, police shoot people who were cruising for some kind of bad outcome. With the caveat that this kind of argument can lead to, "Oh, sure, we executed him for a murder he didn't commit, but you know, he drove over the limit all the time," we can have some sympathy for the police.
 
Here is the problem that some Americans keep dodging around: Police killed almost five black people per every million black residents of the U.S., compared with about 2 per million for both white and hispanic victims.
 
These circumstances are, of course, no novelty. When I say, "you Americans," I have absolutely no reason to be smug. Substitute "First Nations" for Black; iand you're good to make exactly the same kind of criticisms in Canada. (Actually, it's a lot worse, if anything.) Australia? "aboriginal." New Zealand, "Maori;" in the United Kingdom, it has been a struggle of generations to get "Irish" out of this category, and central Europe has a persistent problem of police maltreatment of Roma and Cinti. Sweden? Lapps and Finns. North Germany? Poles, until ethnic cleansing, fortunately, he said, with intentional irony, segregated the populations. (Notice that while Christian north Germans notoriously have unfortunate reactions to Jewish Germans, the nature of the abuse of that minority has been very different in character.) China? Uighurs. Indonesia? Ethnic Chinese. Japan? Ethnic Koreans. The Philippines? Muslims.
 
Here, in fact, is an acceptable generalisation: it happens everywhere.
 
In particular, in regions of the United States with small and segregated visible minority populations, the same patterns of discrimination emerge against whites with visible markings of "white trash" status, and no-one is less happy about it than the people identified by their neighbours as "white trash." 
 
So  do we explain this global phenomena, from Greenland's icy plain to the meth-addled trailer parks of Oregon, in which some police use force disproportionately more readily against members of low-status visible minorities than against members of high status majorities? The best explanation is that police forces are sometimes ineffective in preventing bullies from joining the ranks. Those bullies exploit opportunities to escalate situations, and in some small number of cases, those escalations go badly awrey, leading to a number of unnecessary killings.
 
How do you address these problems? Well, for the neighbourhood in which Bill Gates lives, the answer is obvious. A policeman who is dumb enough to harass Bill Gates daughters hears all about it when he applies for his next job, at 7-11. (Notice that the way power works in society, Bill Gates doesn't have to ask for this, or even want it. It just happens, because who wants someone on board who has pissed Bill Gates off?) Oh, and also Bill Gates' nephews and nieces and --you know what? Just to be safe, let's not pull over any teens in expensive cars in this neighbourhood.
 
Minorities, though? They don't live in Bill Gates' neighbourhood. They don't look like Bill Gates' nephew. They don't have this power. Again, because it is not possible to emphasis this enouogh, it does not matter which minority, which neighbourhood, because I could be talking about the slums of Ulaan Bator or Algiers as esily as St. Paul, Minnesota. Blacks in Minnesota, about Irish in Yorkshire, or Koreans in Osaka, it doesn't matter. The solution? Internal checks. No one likes being sat down in the office and asked "What the heck happened there?", but and take it from personal experience in one sector at least, unless you enjoy really long lineups at the checkouts, it sometimes has to be done. The problem lies in pushing the institution into making the effort, and sometimes this takes pushing.
 
But let's get back to the whole bit about being puzzled. There is, of course, an alternative explanation for the problem: these minorities, as minorities, had it coming, because they're all like that. That's why I've placed heavy emphasis on the fact that this is a global problem, that the culture and country of origins (never mind "race") of the discriminate minority is pretty clearly irrelevant. A  group can be a low-crime majority in one country, a model minority in a third, and a trouble-making underclass in a third tends to demolish the notion that we are talking about something intrinsic to culture or (God help us), "race." It's a nexus of class and visible markers! It's something we've known since kindergarten! Bullies are good at spotting people they can bully, and the people who can be bullied are the people who can't fight back!
 
There is one further and particularly uncomfortable aspect of this, which is that we tend to externalise categories like "bully." It's of a piece of that whole "banality of evil" thing, where the belief that "I am a good person" serves to allow the self-perceived "good person" to participate in horrible crimes, since they can't be horrible, on account of their being a "good person." Sure in our goodness, we wander off and make ourselves feel a bit better in a situation by bullying someone. Someone who, we tell ourselves, "had it coming." To my shame, I've been there. I'm pretty sure everyone has. 
 
This is a universal human problem that demands constant and uncomfortable self-reflection. Do we feel uncomfortable when we are press on it! Of course we do! And, hey, you know who is really good at pressing this button? Bullies! It doesn't matter! The issue isn't that the other guy is being mean to us for a little "harmless" ribbing of poor Brenda! (I mean, some hypothetical individual who isn't a professor in New York these days, God, I'm sorry. . . ) The issue is that we did it, and we should probably stop and think about it before we do it again.
 
And, you know, some twelve-year old with a toy gun gets shot down in a routine police encounter. 

Wait, this is news...there is a French guy, who has disdain for America? When did this happen!

It's a sadly uninformed opinion. I'm not sure he knows what Fascism means, and there is a certain irony in a guy who directed Die Hard and Predator griping about "hyper masculinity"

Oh, one more thing to destroy my geek cred.
 
Most of the time, when people ask for help building XYZ character from some show or book they read, I have absolutely no idea what they're talking about.  They aren't saying "help me build Spider-Man" or "help me build Deadpool".  They're asking for help making something from anime, or some webcomic, or a book series, or some cartoon.  And nearly without fail, I've got no idea what it is.
 
To be fair, I also don't follow modern music or TV either.  I don't know who the Jersey Shore people are, or any other current TV show.  My girlfriend had to tell me who Beyonce was, and I don't think I'd know any current musicians if I bumped into them on the street.  So I'm just generally culturally ignorant.  One nice thing about approaching 40 is that I don't have to give a crap about any of that stuff anymore.  But it also flows over into geek life.  I tried listening to the latest Weird Al album, and I didn't know what any of the songs he was singing were supposed to be.

Mostly horror. I have read both sci fi and fantasy in the past, but it's been a long time. I like the occasional alternate history book, but not too often.

The future's not set! There's no fate but what we make for ourselves!
 

Getting the actress cast as Captain Marvel to appear in an episode (or series of episodes) of AoS, with the aim of weaving her pre-origin story into the scripts of the television series, would be a production logistics nightmare. Marvel has repeatedly explained why the films and the tv shows won't be crossing over with each other, storywise or character-wise, no matter how much narrative synergy there appears to be. This most recently came up when people began asking how the AoS series, with its introduction of the Inhumans/Kree, will impact the MCU films, and vice versa. Short answer: it won't.

Perhaps as a fundraising measure he could offer to teach people some of his business and real estate skills for a princely sum. 

Right, but he actually went on record he was upset that he didn't get to spend time with the strippers... says he is game for a cameo in anything Marvel.

...and if he loses, there's always bankruptcy.

By blowing up the machine that was keeping the portal open, and killing all the invaders that were already through.  They didn't know the machine had a force field around it, and we don't know if the force field would have stopped a nuke.  Theoretically it's a valid tactic, if it stops global Armageddon.  You don't even have to reveal to the public what happened -- just suddenly there was a nuclear explosion and then it was over.  Maybe one of those big space dragons exploded, who knows?

Goldblum as Grandmaster = Awesomeville! 

Rumor has it Donald Trump may have a cameo in the next Guardians of the Galaxy film...
 

Meanwhile in the DNC...
 
"We've analyzed the attack, ma'am, and there is a danger. Shall I have your personal shuttle standing by?"
"Evacuate? In our moment of triumph? I think you severely overestimate their chances!"
 
I have no idea who's going to win in November. None. But I'm reminded of the line: "First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they attack you, then you win."

The makeup of political parties is not uniform, particularly in our system.
 
You can have a 45 year old white union worker in Ohio, a 70 year old black guy in Alabama, a 28 year old gay fashion designer in San Francisco, and a 60 year old Jewish grandmother in NYC, all Democrats.  There's a strong possibility that none of them like each other.  Republicans have the same type of divisions.  The survivalist in Montana, the church mom in Kansas, the executive in Manhattan, all Republicans but very little alike.
 
I think what has happened over the past 20+ years is that Bill Clinton, always one to choose political expediency over, well... everything else, moved to the right on economic and military issues.  NAFTA.  "The era of big government is over!"  Sex scandal?  Let's invade Bosnia.  The Democratic Party has gradually moved away from supporting that 45 year old Ohio union guy.  When was the last time the national Democrats really pushed for any legislation designed to help blue collar workers?  You can say Obamacare, but that was really targeted at lower incomes.
 
It used to be that the Dems were the party of ivory tower intellectuals, black people, the poor, and the blue collar working man.  Since Clinton (and arguably, it was happening before), they shifted their focus.  They've been much more concerned with gay rights (and now transgender rights,but that's a real small percentage of voters) than they have with representing Joe Sixpack.  The Democratic Party is a lot more likely to appeal to college educated Millennials than it is lower-middle class workers.  "Raising the minimum wage" doesn't appeal to you if you already earn $15 an hour.
 
So what has happened is this group of people, former Democrats, are now looking for a place where they belong.  Because of the Republican Party's support of "traditional values", these guys have found a home.  Joe Sixpack doesn't really like welfare moms, and isn't necessarily wild about abortion or gay marriage.  The Republicans aren't doing too much to help him economically, but at least they have the same social beliefs that he has.  The Dems weren't doing anything monetarily for him either, and he really doesn't feel at home with social justice warrior types.  So this group has shifted over to the Republican Party.
 
Now the Republicans are just as diverse a group as the Democrats.  From rich bankers to conservative Christians, they have lots of different beliefs.  And in the post-Reagan years, they had a good balance going, but it was usually led by the pro-business group.  But since Obama took office, there have been fractures in the party.  Establishment Republicans were happy, because income tax rates have stayed low, and business profits have been high.  Tea Party Republicans were angry, because the deficit is growing.  But Establishment Republicans have never really cared about the deficit that much (big businesses often run big debts).  It was just a cost of doing business.  And the new Joe Sixpack Republican was suddenly VERY concerned about immigration.  Most Republicans didn't care too much about that, historically, because they like cheap labor.  A bank executive isn't worried about Pablo from Mexico taking his job.  But Joe Sixpack the truck driver is very worried about it.
 
This tension has created the RINO accusation (Republican In Name Only).  The accusation that you weren't conservative enough on whatever issue the accuser cared about.  There are now a very large group of Joe Sixpack Republicans who don't really care about cutting taxes on big businesses or on the rich.  Now Donald Trump comes along, and he's screaming a bunch of very populist ideas.  He's proposed a lot of un-Republican economic strategies.  He's not appealing to the Wall Street Republican group.  He's appealing to Joe Sixpack.  Isolationism, building a wall, imposing tariffs on foreign goods, these are old school Democrat policies.  He's not a traditional Republican.  He's a populist.  It just so happens that changes in the Democratic party in the past 20 years have sent all the people who populism appeals to over to the Republicans.
 
There's an economic dividing line in American society.  In the last few years, I've gone from "struggling to get by" and crossed over into "I suddenly have a decent amount of extra money at the end of each month".  I crossed the dividing line about a year ago.  I'm by no means rich, but unless I do something really stupid, I will be very comfortable in a few years.  I'm now much more concerned with what the higher tax rates are.  I used to be a moderate Republican (raised socially conservative, and conservative in my personal life, and I always wanted to have lots of money), but I'm certainly not a populist.  And now I'm finding that Hillary Clinton may be closer to my beliefs than anybody else.  She's pro-business, won't raise my taxes, and she's a ball-buster in foreign policy.  It's a very weird feeling, having the parties switch positions underneath your feet.  I still don't really like Hillary, at all.  But Trump is Huey Long.

Can I get a candidate who isn't either a crazy loudmouth or a corrupt snake?
 
No?  Crap.

I think that, in this case, "Dracula versus Nosferatu" is a more apt comparison.

The makeup of political parties is not uniform, particularly in our system.
 
You can have a 45 year old white union worker in Ohio, a 70 year old black guy in Alabama, a 28 year old gay fashion designer in San Francisco, and a 60 year old Jewish grandmother in NYC, all Democrats.  There's a strong possibility that none of them like each other.  Republicans have the same type of divisions.  The survivalist in Montana, the church mom in Kansas, the executive in Manhattan, all Republicans but very little alike.
 
I think what has happened over the past 20+ years is that Bill Clinton, always one to choose political expediency over, well... everything else, moved to the right on economic and military issues.  NAFTA.  "The era of big government is over!"  Sex scandal?  Let's invade Bosnia.  The Democratic Party has gradually moved away from supporting that 45 year old Ohio union guy.  When was the last time the national Democrats really pushed for any legislation designed to help blue collar workers?  You can say Obamacare, but that was really targeted at lower incomes.
 
It used to be that the Dems were the party of ivory tower intellectuals, black people, the poor, and the blue collar working man.  Since Clinton (and arguably, it was happening before), they shifted their focus.  They've been much more concerned with gay rights (and now transgender rights,but that's a real small percentage of voters) than they have with representing Joe Sixpack.  The Democratic Party is a lot more likely to appeal to college educated Millennials than it is lower-middle class workers.  "Raising the minimum wage" doesn't appeal to you if you already earn $15 an hour.
 
So what has happened is this group of people, former Democrats, are now looking for a place where they belong.  Because of the Republican Party's support of "traditional values", these guys have found a home.  Joe Sixpack doesn't really like welfare moms, and isn't necessarily wild about abortion or gay marriage.  The Republicans aren't doing too much to help him economically, but at least they have the same social beliefs that he has.  The Dems weren't doing anything monetarily for him either, and he really doesn't feel at home with social justice warrior types.  So this group has shifted over to the Republican Party.
 
Now the Republicans are just as diverse a group as the Democrats.  From rich bankers to conservative Christians, they have lots of different beliefs.  And in the post-Reagan years, they had a good balance going, but it was usually led by the pro-business group.  But since Obama took office, there have been fractures in the party.  Establishment Republicans were happy, because income tax rates have stayed low, and business profits have been high.  Tea Party Republicans were angry, because the deficit is growing.  But Establishment Republicans have never really cared about the deficit that much (big businesses often run big debts).  It was just a cost of doing business.  And the new Joe Sixpack Republican was suddenly VERY concerned about immigration.  Most Republicans didn't care too much about that, historically, because they like cheap labor.  A bank executive isn't worried about Pablo from Mexico taking his job.  But Joe Sixpack the truck driver is very worried about it.
 
This tension has created the RINO accusation (Republican In Name Only).  The accusation that you weren't conservative enough on whatever issue the accuser cared about.  There are now a very large group of Joe Sixpack Republicans who don't really care about cutting taxes on big businesses or on the rich.  Now Donald Trump comes along, and he's screaming a bunch of very populist ideas.  He's proposed a lot of un-Republican economic strategies.  He's not appealing to the Wall Street Republican group.  He's appealing to Joe Sixpack.  Isolationism, building a wall, imposing tariffs on foreign goods, these are old school Democrat policies.  He's not a traditional Republican.  He's a populist.  It just so happens that changes in the Democratic party in the past 20 years have sent all the people who populism appeals to over to the Republicans.
 
There's an economic dividing line in American society.  In the last few years, I've gone from "struggling to get by" and crossed over into "I suddenly have a decent amount of extra money at the end of each month".  I crossed the dividing line about a year ago.  I'm by no means rich, but unless I do something really stupid, I will be very comfortable in a few years.  I'm now much more concerned with what the higher tax rates are.  I used to be a moderate Republican (raised socially conservative, and conservative in my personal life, and I always wanted to have lots of money), but I'm certainly not a populist.  And now I'm finding that Hillary Clinton may be closer to my beliefs than anybody else.  She's pro-business, won't raise my taxes, and she's a ball-buster in foreign policy.  It's a very weird feeling, having the parties switch positions underneath your feet.  I still don't really like Hillary, at all.  But Trump is Huey Long.