Mutant Homecoming: Disney Acquires Fox

First it was Spider-Man. Now it's the X-Men and Fantastic Four. We really don't need another megacorp, but as a fanboy, this is exciting.

Justice League

• Not as bad as I expected
• Not as good as it should have been
• Objects on screen are as fake as they appear
• Why is The Flash dressed like The Tin Man?
• DC 2017 = Marvel 2008

He Lives

I’m have come here to chew bubblegum and cut taxes... and I’m all out of bubblegum.

Thor: Ragnarok

• Funniest MCU movie yet, but not as funny as Deadpool
• Best of the Thor trilogy
• Move over Hulk Smash! Hulk Talk!
• Another day, another Doug

Alien: Covenant

Humans be stupid.
Synthetics be crazy.
Continuity be damned.

Game Over, Man! Game Over!

Bill Paxton dead at 61. Private Hudson, you will be missed.

Rogue One

I see dead people.

Bug Hunt

Is this going to be a stand-up fight, sir, or another bug hunt?

PFC Hudson, Aliens

If the bugs are seven feet tall, then a bug hunt is a stand-up fight.

Thirteen days. That's how long it took me to hunt and kill this one. A WPF GUI on top of a .NET wrapper on top of a C++ wrapper for CLIPS.

After overhauling the internal representation of the primitive data types in CLIPS, successfully passing the regression tests, and successfully upgrading the CLIPSJNI demo examples, I thought upgrading the .NET examples would be fairly straightforward. But two of the examples were periodically crashing.

So I went back through past revisions trying to find the point at which the code stopped working. I finally got to the point where the removal of a single unused slot from a struct caused the crashing behavior. Not good at all since this was now likely a corruption issue.

As I delved further into the issue, it became clear that this was a problem related to both running CLIPS in an embedded mode and the CLIPS garbage collection routines. Debugging the issue in Visual Studio was also a huge PITA for a variety of issues, so when I reached the point at which it was clear that the issue was unrelated to the WPF and .NET code, I created a C++ example that produced the same behavior running with MacOS.

That was day thirteen. Once I had the program in Xcode, that's when the magic happened thanks to these diagnostic tools:



With the Address Sanitizer enabled, I was able to immediately determine where the initial issue started and based on thirteen days of scouring the code, quickly implement a fix for it with a half dozen lines of code. So thanks to the fellow who originally told me about these Xcode diagnostic tools. It looks like there's some similar functionality for Visual Studio, just not as easy to use as checking a box.

Hannibal Lecter vs. Michael Corleone Presidential Debate

LECTER: Rather than focusing on my culinary tastes, we should be focusing on my opponent's mob ties.

CORLEONE: Rather than focusing on my business practices, we should be focusing on my opponent's cannibalism.

The Visit

Combines everything that's wrong with M. Night Shyamalan movies with everything that's wrong with found footage movies. Surely there's some twist to this movie getting 64% on Rotten Tomatoes.

Captain America V. (Batman V. Superman)

Not even close: Captain America: Civil War.

It's hard to understand how Warner Brothers turns out fantastic animation based on the DC source material, but has no clue how to make a live action adaptation.

Superhero Realism

The Rawness on Why I Hated the Dark Knight:

There are two problems with this movie’s “realistic” angle. First, Christopher Nolan seems to think “realistic” is simply another word for “boring.” Almost everything that makes the Batman character fantastic and larger than life is excised, probably because Nolan finds these elements silly and unrealistic. Batman’s fighting style is toned down so that he’s not doing any high-flying gymnastics or flashy martial arts, just a visually dull fight style consisting of extreme, incomprehensible close-ups on repetitive body blows, elbows and arm grabs. And even worse, these fights are all shot in the dark with lots of quick cuts, which I guess is somehow supposed to increase the realism through incoherency.

We have a boring Batmobile with no bat insignias, oversized scallops or anything that indicates it’s supposed to have a Bat-theme. Because driving a cool-looking bat-shaped car would just be too ridiculous. Joker can’t have permawhite skin like the comics because that’s also unrealistic, so he just wears sloppy face paint.

When I bring up how dark, dreary and joylessly boring this movie is, people respond “it’s supposed to be realistic.” Why’s the fighting and action so badly shot and dull? “It’s supposed to be realistic.” Why’s Gotham City so bland and generic now and no longer has a unique character and design like in other Batman adaptations? “Realism.” And so on and so on.

Which leads to my second problem with all this realism: IT’S A MOVIE ABOUT A BILLIONAIRE WHO TRAVELS THE WORLD IN ORDER TO BECOME THE WORLD’S SMARTEST, MOST HIGH-TECH CRIMEFIGHTING NINJA THAT EVER EXISTED, THEN RETURNS TO HIS HOMETOWN TO DRESS AS A GIANT BAT, DRIVE A WEAPONS-LOADED MINITANK, AND CLEAN UP ALL THE CRIME IN THE CITY BY ESSENTIALLY SINGLEHANDEDLY PUNCHING IT IN THE FACE EVERY SINGLE NIGHT. AND NOW HE’S GOING TO FIGHT AN EVIL CLOWN. So please tell me…what type of mental case creates or watches a movie with a premise so clearly meant to be inherently ridiculous and then turns around DEMANDS REALISM?

Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice

Surely, I hoped, when Batman and Superman were together in the same movie, the filmmakers would come to the conclusion that there's no plausible and logically consistent explanation for superheroes keeping their secret identities hidden and they just wouldn't bother trying to create one.

How can Superman, frequently seen in the light of day by the people of Metropolis, hide in plain sight as Clark Kent by wearing a pair of glasses, while Batman, seen mostly a night by criminals, must disguise his voice in addition to wearing a mask to keep his identity secret?

Sigh. One can hope.

Unfortunately, in Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice they kept the bat voice. To their credit, it wasn't the cringe inducing, laughably non-scary, are you trying to hide your identity or do you have a cold, voice created by Christian Bale in the Dark Knight trilogy, but rather a low guttural voice created by electronics in Batman's suit. It actually made his voice sound menacing so I just went with it for that reason.

Then I saw Ben Affleck on The Graham Norton Show where he explained that the bat voice was used to protect Batman's secret identity as well-known billionaire Bruce Wayne.

Sigh.

Filmmakers, if you need an explanation for secret identities, here's the only one you'll need.

It's make believe.

Make believe there's a secret lair beneath your house. Make believe you can fly and shoot laser beams out of your eyes. Make believe that you're secretly a crime fighting vigilante.

And when you're done trying to make the implausible plausible, you can focus on writing a decent story.

Deadpool

• Funniest superhero movie yet
• Fanboy friendly
• Not for kids
• Finally, Colossus that looks like Colossus

Darth Vader Endorsement

If Darth Vader were to allow his name to be used for promotional purposes, I'm pretty sure whoever approved this product would get force choked.

Zombie Sneak Attacks

Every zombie sneak attack in The Walking Dead reminds me of this scene from Monty Python and the Holy Grail.

Terminator Genisys

Somebody needs to go back in time and terminate this franchise after Terminator 2: Judgment Day.

Fear the Walking Dumb

One of the things I like about Aliens is that the protagonists are cocky going into their first encounter with the xenomorphs ("Is this going to be a standup fight, sir, or another bughunt?"), get schooled ("Maybe you haven't been keeping up on current events; but we just got our asses kicked, pal!"), and then quickly start making intelligent decisions ("I say we take off and nuke the entire site from orbit. It's the only way to be sure."). It's a series of events that plausibly place the characters in jeopardy.

So is it too much to ask that the main characters in zombie stories aren't all Darwin Award winner wannabes? I'm not saying that the stories need to directly acknowledge and address the large body of zombie apocalypse tropes from movies, TV, comics, and books (á la Scream or The Cabin in the Woods).

But when a character is repeatedly attacked by mute, slow moving family, friends, and acquaintances, maybe it's time for that character to show some caution and foresight around people who, you know, look dead.

Just saying'.

Sir Christopher Lee 1922-2015

22 Incredible Facts About The Life and Career Of Sir Christopher Lee

One commenter nailed it:

F*** the Dos Equis guy. This is the most interesting man in the world.

Horror-ble Ice Creams

Horror Movie-Inspired Ben and Jerry’s Flavors