I don't mean to say that all Seagal and all JCVD films are terrible (I posted here recently that I kind of liked Sudden Death), just that those two quickly settled into the same kind of dull crime pulp that Raw Deal is.

I get my name and Social Security number tattooed on the inside of my thigh, just in case my naked corpse washes up on a beach somewhere.

Question: You are given the task of redesigning your nation's flag to "better reflect recent history." How do you accomplish it?

When I was young, I used to occasionally have flying dreams where I would become aware that I was dreaming but I didn't have much control over where I went. I would just fly like Superman over wilderness landscapes.

So, in 1995, when I was messing with Visual Basic (it's a thing old people used to do after the hula hoop but before Fark), I wrote a program to play sound files at regular intervals, then recorded myself encouraging myself to fly and set it to play all night. Sadly, it didn't really generate any awesome flying dreams.

This partially explains my earlier post in another thread as to why I am not an Internet billionaire.

Question: if you could/had to live in another era at least 40 years earlier than present day, when and where would it be?

As Trey said, that's the joke. Thruout that letter, Paul is telling the Thesselonians, "Take heart about those 99 problems you have, because when Jesus comes back, he is going to whip ass and take names, and the bad guys are going to die in a fire. And that is gonna happen soon. Word to your mother."

And then 2000 years went by.

II Thessalonians 2:8.

The Plinkett test is NOT a good test for all characters. Plinkett's point was that the characters of Phantom Menace were fundamentally different from those of the original Star Wars. What he doesn't note is that the reason for that is that the characters in Star Wars are all stock characters: the peasant boy who yearns for adventure, the wise old wizard, the loveable rogue and his big oaf sidekick, the plucky princess, the black knight....

Characters who cannot be summed up in a discreet set of traits can either be flat and lifeless or complex and fascinating.

But Fury IS a stock character. To date anyway, he's the gruff but good-hearted coach. We could easily have gotten a "win one for the Gipper" speech toward the end of Avengers.

I've talked that title over with him, because it's not all about me. It's about the ducks.

And the aircraft carrier crashing into cruise liners.

And Steven Seagal in Godzilla makeup.

And John Malkovitch inside Andy Serkis doing a NIN cut of "Convoy".

And you guys.

...squashed into the Cindy Brady corner of a split screen.

With the time constraints, I'm afraid we might lose a lot of that. But I have a solution: SPLIT SCREEN!

No. The books I read are mostly non-fic and classic fic.

I was fine with Lisbeth being a cipher, so that didn't bother me. And I quite liked Mikael and Erika's relationship. I thought that was sketched out deftly; it just wasn't the main story.

My only problem was the twist.

In a way, it reminded me of Smilla's Sense of Snow...

Independence Day (I refuse to call it ID4; that doesn't make any damn sense) has slowly grown on me. I didn't get why my friends like it at the time, but it has a kind of trashy, goofy charm that also makes me kind of like Starship Troopers and RoboCop, altho RoboCop is more solid.

I saw Battle: Los Angeles this weekend and also Fincher's The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo. I agree with Trey that the former was not bad, considering that it's basically a first-person shooter video game about nameless, faceless aliens invading Los Angeles and needing a bad whipping by a squad of plucky Marines and professional streetwise tough gal Michelle Rodriguez.

The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo was not what I was expecting. It was good, but I expected more of a thriller aspect, with some chases and a bit of action. Instead, it was kind of a straight up mystery and ended up leaving me with the feeling of an episode of Murder, She Wrote that had been rewritten for HBO and stylishly produced.