I'm likely alone on this, but I think Rises is the best of the trilogy. For some reason that I've never quite been able to articulate, I found BB to have an underwhelming third act. The action on the train seems off and the plot seems a bit too implausible. Dark Knight seemed a little too self-indulgent and it suffers from being an obvious middle film (the ending isn't that great).

Come to think of it, I don't think any of the Batman films are that great.

Before Gravity at the IMAX I had a rare (for me) opportunity to watch this trailer in 3d and it looked awful. Really gimmicky 3D and the fast action bits were very disorientating and indistinguishable.

Remember those holograms that would occasionally get put on the front of a VHS tape or toy package? You would look at them one way and a part of the image would show, changing the angle show another part. It reminded of that, a completely artificial representation of 3D. The dwarves stand on a cliff rock like they're on a part of the screen that is a pop-up book.

Needless to say, I'll be going to the 2D normalovision showing again, and hoping that someone, somewhere managed to reign in PJ's taste for the excessive.

Re: it opening in China.

I'd put money down that someone deliberately changed the cause of the Kessler effect in the movie as a strike on a satellite by a Chinese missile (as happened in real life) to a Russian missile, just so that the movie was more consumable in that massive market.
(And also that their Tiangong station is actually up there and completed, though the film does takes place in a near future when the shuttles are still active beyond STS-135.)

Anyhow, nice review Dorkman.

I still can't entirely believe it's happening....

I know nothing about Kaufman, but just reading that article has me interested. What an accomplishment that would be? Only... I can't really imagine it being a 'prank' (almost 30 years is little too long for it to have much relevance). The article mentions that his father had recently died, was there some conflict between them that would have motivated him to stay hidden all this time?

On another note, and speaking as someone who has two brothers, I'm struggling to imagine how I would feel not really knowing for certain whether one of them was alive or dead, and having someone come up to me claiming that my brother is actually alive, after almost 30 years, is either in really poor taste or potentially a source of becoming actually quite hurt - but then, maybe the relationship between the brothers here was always a weird one.

Depending on the time, I'd love to join this one. From X-Wing to Force Unleashed

Well, I've only seen it the once and didn't notice anything especially egregrious about that scene. I thought Bulloch's performance was pretty great throughout, it seemed like a real, genuine character - her voice would break a little when she raised it and the range of emotions that played out on her face on her journey home and in her eyes was exemplary.

Do you really mean it was awful, or was it actually just less awesome than the rest of the movie?

Wait, back up a bit, what is the archeological evidence you speak of? Just that you've said that there is evidence quite a few times so far, and yet I'm not sure that you've actually ever pointed towards it or mentioned the specifics.

What I find fascinating was that Christianity sprung from the belief that Jesus was the promised Messiah, and yet the people that came up with the prophecy and were waiting for the messiah don't believe he was the messiah and still don't. I always thought this was somewhat of a red flag.

And I love how the guys that came up with this monotheistic, Abrahamic god lark were initially polytheists (like most early civilisations), which is completely at odds with the biblical story.