It's not that the magic bean principle "doesn't count" in fantasy stories, it's that the scope of the bean tends to be broader. There is still an upper limit to what the audience will generally accept. If the Fellowship arrived at Gondor to find them packing laser guns and speeder bikes, or the example we often give of aliens invading Hogwarts, those would be unacceptable because they are not reasonable extensions of the established "magic bean." As it is, Harry Potter comes dangerously close to violating its magic bean in Azkaban with the introduction of the Time Turner. A LOT of people find that objectionable even given the blank check of the existence of magic, because the magical world should be COMPLETELY different if time travel is a thing.

I personally, as I'm pretty sure I made clear during the episode, don't think introducing the TK suddenly in the third act would be more acceptable. But it might as well be introduced in the third act for all the use it serves to the story in the first two. Johnson using his screenwriter powers to go back to an earlier page and have someone mention it is not the same as integrating it into the story. He wants to have his cake and eat it too -- to have a villain with telekinetic powers without actually having telekinetic powers affecting the story or the world in general. That's lazy worldbuilding, and lazy storytelling. It would have been possible to make the two magic beans both aspects of the same overarching magic bean, but that would have entailed making TK part of the story instead of just a magical gun the kid can wave around for a few minutes at the end.

Watch it first.

He also said he recognized the problems with 2 and promised 3 would be better. He's got no qualms about shitting on his last film if he thinks it'll trick you into paying for his next, which he will happily lie about.

um wat

Ah, the score was Zimmer. Somehow I missed that. Explains why I felt like I'd heard the score before, even though I knew I hadn't.

One of my best friends from high school finally recorded a demo of a song he wrote and performed. I say finally because the last time he wrote a song was probably back when he was 17, and I've been hoping he'd pursue it ever since. This one he did after nearly a decade of touring full time as a drummer with various rock and pop stars, so it's considerably better produced. I don't know what his conscious influences were, but to me it sounds like a cross between Maroon 5 and Eric Hutchinson. I wasn't involved with this in any way, I'm just proud of him and dig the track.

EDIT: Download the track itself here.

Jimbo: this thread is not actually about GHOSTBUSTERS 3. That was just a snappy title. It's about the loss of Harold Ramis.

I wouldn't be who I am without GHOSTBUSTERS, and GHOSTBUSTERS wouldn't be what it is without Harold Ramis. I'm way more upset about this than I would have expected to be.

Finished the season. My pithy soundbite: Season 1 was a drama, Season 2 was a melodrama. It all got very silly very quickly and the occasional

Still:

SPOILER Show

Yes, the U.S. release has her speaking with a "neutral" but weirdly-cadenced accent.

HAHA I WAS RIGHT

I love that this is turning out to be a sneakily Lovecraftian (Chambers, but still) story. It's VERY much in the vein of those kinds of stories, which often take the form of a first person narrative relaying a brush with the supernatural, though they might not realize it at the time. They're often straightforward suspense stories that suddenly take a turn for the eldritch. The Call of Cthulhu, for example, is actually three stories about the Cthulhu cult, one of which is a pure detective story about a detective who disrupts an occult ritual in the bayou -- it's only when put together with the other stories that the supernatural, cosmic import of that event becomes clear.

My guess is that there will be a supernatural incident, but it will be just oblique enough that the audience can choose to accept it or not based on what they prefer -- just as, it would seem, Cohle and Marty chose to accept it or not, respectively. Cohle accepted the truth and pretty much went nuts, devoting his life to drowning the knowledge in alcohol, unwilling to kill himself because of what he now knows waits on the other side; Marty chose to quail away from the cosmic revelation and live a life of "sanity" -- which in weird fiction is basically synonymous with denial of reality's true shape.

$10 says this is the basis of their oft-referenced falling out -- we've seen that they're already fundamentally different people and can barely stand each other as it is, and yet we know as of ep5 that they remained an effective team for 7 years. It seems to me the only thing that could finally force them to part ways would be an irrevocable, concrete split in what they choose to accept as reality.

EDIT: The one bummer is that they only get to play that hand once. From season 2 onward everyone will know that it's a weird tales show, not just a police procedural.