It's kind of astounding that a show that is building towards a series of stories we're familiar with, and has shown us ten episodes ago where this particular season is ending up, can manage to pack in this many genuine surprises.

War of the Worlds had a pretty good featurette on pre-vis.

I was interested in The Unknown Known based on the subject matter, but then Morris was on the Colbert Report a week or two ago, and they showed a clip of the film. The style of filmmaking really annoyed me. There was this very obtrusive background music (Stephen quipped about it being horror movie music, which was dead-on) and Rumsfeld's talking head was jump cutting around to different positions in frame, seemingly at random. I can't stand that style of editing in a documentary, and the music just seemed lazy. Is that indicative of the whole of the film or did they just pick a bad bit to sell it on?

Do you think the aggressive orange/teal grading is something that we're stuck with forever, or in ten or so years are movies from this period going to look ridiculously dated?

Every scene with Gina Torres was beautiful and heartbreaking. I so love the character they created with her, she's a fantastic addition whenever she's on the show.

Though that reminds me, I was surprised to see Jack and Bella actually smoke marijuana on camera. The only network show I remember watching that featured marijuana use was That 70's Show, and they had to be all coy about that with their language and were only able to have the post-toke scenes with them sitting in a haze. Was it allowed just because they were using a vaporizer or have the rules softened on that sort of thing?

If Brad Bird is involved, I'm so on board for Incredibles 2 that I'm practically a boat captain. If Brad Bird is NOT involved... then the world is a dark, terrible place and there's no hope for future generations.

The procedural nature of the first half of season one bothered me a little too. I let them get away with it because the characters were so compelling and the storylines were stronger than what you typically see in Law & Order or CSI or whatever. But I'm very glad they're moving away from it.

At the same time, that kind of thing IS what Jack Crawford and his team DO, so it needs to have some presence. I think the way season 2 has handled it so far has been pretty perfect.

I don't necessarily agree with this. I think Hannibal does a good job of hiding the menace from anybody he doesn't want to show it too. He's clearly an imposing, intelligent figure, but most people I've known with PhDs (not that there have been many) give off a similar aloofness.

Man, this is my favorite show on TV right now, and I'm in total agreement on Mads Mikkelsen. I think this is easily the best Hannibal Lecter material to hit the screen, Silence of the Lambs included. Don't get me wrong, great film, but I really love this show. As Doc says, very smart psychology presented in a gorgeous package, it's amazing to look at. It manages to maintain the perfect balance between a grounded reality and the totally absurd, over-the-top macabre. And while I single out Mads, the whole cast is fantastic. So psyched for season 2 tonight.

The thing is that this show shouldn't even be GOOD. NBC produces a Hannibal Lecter prequel. It's such an obvious, shameless cash grab that it almost makes you angry. Then they cast Mads Mikkelsen as Lecter and I sat up and took notice, decided to watch it, and the pilot had me hooked. It's so easy to write it off if you haven't seen it, but it's worth checking out.

That's true assuming Ben Affleck's role in the movie is mostly as Batman. Put on a gruff voice, have a chin, and look like a badass when you stand in the corner with your cape wrapped around your shoulders. Costuming and cinematography will do most of the heavy-lifting, and Zack Snyder has proven himself to have impeccable taste with regard to those areas.

But if they do something like Bruce Timm did with the World's Finest crossover on Superman: TAS and have a significant subplot involving Bruce Wayne and Lex Luthor... I dunno, that feels iffy to me. Nolan's films pretty well nailed the Bruce Wayne public persona, and if you slot Ben Affleck into that type of scenario I don't see it working. I'm going in optimistic on this one, and I hope I'm pleasantly surprised, but I have a very hard time envisioning Ben Affleck working in the Bruce Wayne role.

Jeremy Irons makes total sense as Alfred, and I can see Eisenberg being an interesting Luthor in any number of unexpected ways. Affleck's still the big question mark for me. Fortunately I'm suffering from serious superhero fatigue and thought Man of Steel was a pretty dull, ineffective movie, so I'm not super invested in this. But they're getting me curious with all these left-field choices.

I'm pretty surprised by Dorkman's reaction. It's still far below the level of quality Lord of the Rings set, but I thought Smaug was a marginal improvement from Unexpected Journey, overall. It takes many more liberties with the source material, but I knew that going in and decided to accept it and try to enjoy the story they opted to tell. And actually, so help me, I was really enjoying it for a minute there. To me the whole opening totally delivered on the promise of a Hobbit adaptation; a LotR prequel that's a little lighter in tone and is more just a fun fantasy adventure movie.

And I felt that way right up until the barrel sequence. That's when the film started to lose me hard, and the ratio of entertaining to infuriating kept getting progressively worse as the film wore on. But that was true of the first one as well, I just think the best here is better than the best there. It doesn't become an awful, unwatchable mess until the Dwarves muscle their way into the climax, much later than Unexpected Journey did (about the time they left Rivendell, by my reckoning).

Really most of the bad stuff is only bad because it has no place in this movie. The barrel sequence taking place in Tolkien's Middle Earth is retarded, but if Jackson had put it in the next Tintin I would have fucking loved it.

Not a great movie, but adequate. Far from the worst I've seen this year, and not the worst of Peter Jackson's Middle Earth, either. If I watch it again it'll be for the commentary in a year, then probably never again, but it wasn't garbage.

SPOILERS

The vibe I got, and thus my personal canon, was that she was lying about being the Moment's interface and it was actually Bad Wolf Rose. Made sense to me, given that she saw how torn up Nine was about his actions in the Time War and had the power to do something about it for a brief moment when she was a God.

Anyway, loved the special. Some of it didn't work as well as it could have, but over all it was pretty great. The fanboy in me wishes we'd actually seen Davison, (C) Baker, McGann, and Eccleston, but that would have really crowded out the story. Squealed when Capaldi showed up for a second.