I must mention here a classic radio interview Michael Madsen did with local Buffalo DJs Shredd and Ragan a few years ago. First they commented on how he had a great voice and should do animation, at which point he went into his version of Cinderella ("Yeah, Cindy, pick up that broom... sweep that floor... oh, yeah..."). Talk then turned to The Natural, which was filmed here in Buffalo at the old Rockpile. He remembers it well because his wife tossed his suitcases out the hotel window.

See, he had hooked up with a Buffalo weather girl named Maria, and while she was in the hotel room shower who should show up at his door but... his wife. "Oh, Honey, hi... oh, she's just a friend, the shower in her room was broken, it's nothing... what are you DOING here?!?" And that's when the suitcases went flying out the window The best part for us locals was about a year later, Maria came back into the market to work as a  TV reporter

If the Jewish god can stop the sun, the Egyptian ones can do things to it too

If this was a joking matter I'd ask if Asylum was hiring

But, being out of my depth, I'll just ask if editors can get a directing credit (or even a writing one) if what comes out is different enough from what went in. Although, now that I think of it, for a documentary most of what a director would be doing is arranging the footage, so... I'll go away now.

The second. Was it a good enough experience with enough of a pay check to do twice, or is it something no sane person would say no to the first time or yes to the second?

I remember a convention panel where the audience was trashing TNG, at which point someone at the table finally said, "Then why do you all WATCH it?" To which the reply was it was the only SF on TV

Next Gen started bad, got interesting, then faded. Arguing it's not "Trek" is fair, and people like David Gerrold did bail from the show after the first season because Roddenberry wasn't letting them do their thing. However, would you have felt the same if we had gotten Phase II in the 70's, which was basically Next Gen but with all the original cast except Spock?

Actually, it would be fun to do three mummy movies in a row following in the footsteps of the two Dawn of the Dead shows. Watch the 1932, 1959, and 1999 films.

There use to be more direct to video releases like this back in the day, when VHS was priced for rental and not retail sales. Charles Band and Full Moon come to mind- if you can sell every video store in the country a $50 copy of your film, that's a good hunk of change. Doing it in this era of Netflix and $10 DVDs has to be harder (and a number of those films were much better then the non-Trey Asylum crap!)

No, it's actually enjoyable which is why it wasn't forgotten. Naturally maybe not for you, though

That's the nature of books, everyone is going to have their own mental image of how things are suppose to look. Hell, it's easy to assume the characters look the way you want them to despite how they're described (as a kid I ignored all descriptions of skin color, leading to confusion when seeing author approved artwork of certain characters later ^_^)

A couple people have released "official" commentaries to movies they've made via iRiffs, in one case because the studio refused to use the one they had recorded. I'll assume the episode coming this weekend is your official commentary for it, though?

1.The Dark Tower books 1-3, written and read by Stephen King. Damned hard to find now, as they've been replaced by new versions read by someone else, but much better imho so try and find the old cassettes. Actually, anything read by King is good (such as Bag of Bones)

2. The Golden Compass by Philip Pullman. Actually, all three books in the series plus the two short companion stories. All the dialog is done by actors, with the author reading the narration. Works incredibly well, and while I may not have ended up liking the actual books if I had started with them I love these.

3. John Carter of Mars series by Edgar Rice Burroughs. The narrator is a guy with a great southern accent, who really captures the character.

4. Dragonsinger and Dragonsong by Ann McCaffrey, narrated by Sally Darling. I can just listen to these over and over, especially Dragonsinger. The first few Dragonrider books are also fun, with the same male narrator doing the original trilogy and Dragonsdawn.

5. Dealing with Dragons (and 3 other books) by Patricia Wrede. This mocking of fairytale conventions is done in the same style as The Golden Compass, with a narrator and actors. Lots of fun.

There's a reason Lucas stopped being a producer, unlike Spielberg. He just wasn't good at it (or, at least, the movies didn't make money) unless Indy was involved.

As for the nostalgia, well, DIF has started tackling the classics so we're reminded of them. I'm hoping they do Willow, to see what went wrong. Personally I think the Moses and Hobbit ripoffs just got it off on the wrong foot. Having that upfront got the audience looking to see what else they were going to steal from instead of getting involved in the story. By way of contrast, Excalibur starts with something new and we're immediately involved and wondering how this is going to become, if it is, the Arthur story we know. Ladyhawk as well starts by focusing us something new (our main character) before bringing in the fantasy parts that may or may not be borrowed from elsewhere.