It's starting to drag a bit on the second page, and I get the sinking feeling on the third we'll really drop the ball.

I recognized this problem even as a teen, whenever something really moved me. I left the theater after ET vowing not to see it again as a repeat viewing I just know wouldn't live up to what I had just experienced. I said the same thing after reading the first volume of Piers Anthony's Bio of a Space Tyrant, so my taste was questionable

That said, I think most things hold up for me when I go back to them as in many ways I'm still a kid. I told my sister when she adopted my niece that I would be able to relate to the kid on the same emotional and intellectual level, and that is proving to indeed be the case. The low budget stuff like Land of the Lost holds up because at the core it's well written and the bad acting is part of the "charm".

Actually, now that I think of it, this type of problem affects books much more then movies. Coming back to an old comfort book after a decade or two of expanding your horizons lets you see the real subtexts or bad writing that never jumped out at you before. With a two hour movie you can keep that initial happiness at seeing an old friend going until the credits, but with a book that might take you a few days things are going to work into your thoughts and get you to re-examine the story more closely.

(Going back to Piers Anthony is damned hard)

Well that is the advantage of knowing where things are going when you start, and having the author running things. Heck, it wouldn't surprise me if the series works out better then the early books as far as foreshadowing goes.

(I've thought about how I would try and adapt the Dragonriders of Pern books, and there's just some major continuity errors between the first and second books that have to be dealt with. And I'd ignore everything after The White Dragon )

Haven't read or seen it, but I hope it's a smash hit and leads to other series being adapted. Raymond Feist's Rift War books would make a great series, and David Eddings' Belgariad has a nice pacing for TV and young teen leads.

For the second time my first run through of a film listening to you guys was while watching a video of the film merged with the Rifftrax. This led to a rather fun bit of timing. Near the end in the big fight on the ship one of the soldiers who has just boarded shoots a pirate in the head, at which point Kevin Murphy starts singing "I shot the guy who shot the sheriff!", to which Chris on Down in Front immediately replies "No, it's a different guy."

Anyone suggest Freaks yet?

I'm glad you would never do that, Teague, as to do so would be very unprofessional

But fans don't like it when groups change direction either. I'm a huge Rush fan, and while they're still producing great new music and you can always identify a song as having that "Rush" sound, they've experimented and not everyone has followed them on their different journeys. Hell, look at Genesis- few who really love their big hits in the 80's are going to even be able to stand the early stuff, even though there's a sort of natural progression ('Wind and Wuthering' and 'Duke' are probably my favorite albums, with 'Selling England by the Pound' and half of 'Genesis' equally as good)

One group I really like is called Autumn. They did two albums of very witchy music, with songs like 'When Lust invokes the Curse' and 'The Witch in Me' and you got the feeling the female singer was off to a coven meeting right after leaving the studio.  For their third album, 'My New Time"... they changed completely. More like Evanescense, less goth, and musically was totally different. However, the singer didn't change her style and thus helped you accept the change and I liked the album quite a bit.

Then naturally the fourth album had a new singer and there's nothing remaining of what made them special

In both they put the monsters where they couldn't be seen (in the dark/underground). I'm sure others have done something similar. For example, in Friday the 13th you never see the killer just his camera POV until the end, but that was done for surprise ending reasons and not budget.

Don't see why I should transform into a plane when my natural state is so kick ass

Getting back to the actual movie, I was surprised there was no mention of the theory presented in an earlier episode that Pitch Black was based on a rejected Alien script.

I'll freely admit ignorance with regard to Norse myths and the Marvel version of Thor (and it may be that the movie is totally consistent with the comics), but Neil Gaiman in 'Sandman' had Odin fearing final battle as everyone was going to die and while fighting is good living forever is better Naturally he also had Thor hitting on women by saying that if they rubbed his hammer it would get bigger, so I'm not sure it was a fully accurate take on the characters regardless.