The original comic was illustrated by Moebius, who also provided some production design on the Fifth Element; a film which is heavily "inspired" by the Incal.

So much so that Moebius and Jodorowsky allegedly sued Luc Besson.

I liked how they worked in elements of his original costume as components of the experiment (the gauntlets and the headband).

Power Man's Original Look

It's a little goofy, but it works.

I'm definitely not a film student (or a student of films). I'm not really savvy enough to confirm this guy's thesis about what Snyder is doing wrong.

But one part rang massively true for me -- when he talked about Avengers Age of Ultron and the farmhouse scene. Honestly, I didn't like Age of Ultron all that much, but that scene stuck out as a good one. From being a fan of Joss Whedon's TV shows, I think he is a master of making characters that we get invested in. We identify with them or see elements of friends / family / whatever in them, and that makes it much more rewarding to watch them do amazing (or even mundane) things.

That farmhouse scene in Age of Ultron was a really good example of that. And I didn't feel anything like that, at all, for any of the characters in Batman v Superman.

I don't know that Whedon's very character-centric approach is necessarily a whole lot better for creating extremely compelling storylines either, but I think it can cover a lot of blemishes in that department.

Well I'm glad she added that Pokemon Go has a fairly reasonable model, I feel like that was the strong hand of Nintendo.

If you take away location differences, which there is a glaring issue with at the moment. Two players in the same reasonably supported area, the major difference in needing to spend money is how much you want to walk and that's the core of the game.

So if you want to play the game as designed (with no false limitations), you can generally play for free.

She's also not wrong that because of all that, I actually was inclined to make a purchase, it was small and I spent it on the non-expendable upgrades but I've been pretty anti-freeium in the past, so it was a big step for me to give such a game money.

I think Pokemon Go has certainly obliterated that 1-2% pay money statistic. I'm positive reports will eventually show it had a much higher stat.

It's not a saint, you can still gain a sizeable advantage by spending a lot of cash and these elements are still very much targeting the addiction of whales (expendable, short durations, element of luck with egg hatching). But it is a refreshing change for how they treat the "other" group of players.

"Don't play on playground equipment when your parents are cheap bastards and buy 10 year old second hand shit after sunlight and the elements have degraded the plastic to a point where a hummingbird fart will pulverise it to dust, Edward."

Give Hong Kong Express 2814 a try...a bit more ambient, but the elements are there.

According to separation of powers... and the roles defined for each branch.

Parsing words is fine.
Persons vs people is moot. People = multiple persons. Unless your intent is to give a right to a single individual, you're always dealing with people.

The flip side is that if the 2nd amendment only protects militias and their armament, then it protects militias. So you are free to start a militia and get armed.
(Again, by 1791 parlance, well regulated meant well adjusted. There is no prerequisite for government regulation re the 1791 English it was written in.).


"well, they wrote X, but clearly the intent was to also cover Y and Z" doesn't work when :
- Y and Z did not even exist at the time of X.
- Y and Z did exist, and the writers chose not to include them.
In either case, you end up legislating from the bench.

It's a simple matter to make a new law covering Y and Z. There is no need for a court to jump the gun. Just find the case by the classic scope, and inform the legislature of the circumstances so they can take it into consideration. Heck, there is no guarantee that the legislature even wants the scope expanded. They could even want it contracted.
If it becomes a complicated matter with parties arguing - then it clearly needs debating and would have been inappropriate to decide elsewhere.

As a republic, the people are the state, and the state has all authority. The government exists strictly to record, execute, and enforce the state's will, by the state's authority (govt. has no authority inherent to itself).
The legislature is the channel that codifies the state's will. No other functional element serves that purpose. To codify something, it must go through the legislature. Else it does not carry state authority.

-scheherazade

You don't think that Trump won't make an unfair system even worse? Do you know what kind of scam operations he runs? Read up on Trump University, and if you don't think a mind like his won't immediately start eroding the as of yet intact elements of our government, then I have a bridge in the bay area to sell you. Not to mention that Scalia is not my definition of 'bright' by any standard. Bloviating quasi intellectual douchenozzle, sure, but not exactly a contributor to constitutional scholarship.

Hillary will be a boring drag; an uninspired and predictable apparatchik, but not remotely as harmful as the narcissistic psychopathy that's absofuckinglutely going to get us into severe confrontations around the globe that a Trump administration would bring.

Think about it. Yesterday the Russians put out a sabre-rattling presser about a US destroyer in the Black Sea (its international waters). Under Obama or Clinton, I can be pretty confident that any ruffled feathers will be smoothed and that things won't escalate. With Trump, if he has a bad morning because the viagra didn't kick in on time, or Ivana talks back or whatever, god knows what his decisions would be.

So, let's stop pretending "the friend zone" is solely the realm of socially stunted, fedora wearing, Menanists. That's tired old internet group-think.

What it really means is being in a relationship in which there's a perceived benefit by both parties to maintain close social contact, yet the depth of emotional attachment is unbalanced.

At it's worst, one or both parties in the relationship may be acting in a manner that disregards the others feelings. Maybe one person is pushing way too hard or one is taking advantage of the other. But this negative element doesn't have to always be the case and is more a sign of emotional immaturity.
Plus, I have news for you...YOU were also emotionally immature in a relationship at some point. Maybe you still are but it's working for you so you don't take notice.

Our emotional side and our logical side don't always see eye to eye. Because of this, we're all in danger of finding ourselves really attracted to someone who doesn't return our feelings. How this plays out between the two parties depends on their unique combination of personality, personal awareness, empathy, self respect...and so many other things.

So, if you're in a relationship like this, there are lots of good logical ways that you can approach the situation that may be really hard given your non-logical, emotionally driven, perspective. There's lots of good advice that can be given too if you know someone involved like this. And it's probably better addressed sooner than later.

But disregarding people's humanity and drawing them as stunted and potentially dangerous monsters....says more about you than it does the person in "the friend zone".

@Zawash -- all true. And yet, just because Calvin and Hobbes and Bill Watterson are/were awesome, it doesn't make IP and copyright rules any more sensible.

My opinion: those respectful and well-done parodies and homages (say, Pants are Overrated's Hobbes and Bacon) are fair use. The person/people that drew Calvin peeing on things? Fair use also. There is a big difference between "tasteless" and "should be illegal".

Selling car decals with those images is different, because then you're treading all over the "not for profit" element of fair use. However, tracking down tons of small-scale infringers on that, or even worse, average people who simply buy the decals/shirts/whatever and likely don't know or care to know about IP and copyright laws is ... a losing battle at best, and punitive towards *fans* of the IP at worst.

There are many many examples of going to idiotic (IMO) lengths to protect IP. Disney suing local bakeries for drawing some character in icing on top of a kids birthday cake. Metallica suing Napster, University internet hosts, and even individual downloaders of their music. Teachers being sued for playing a clip of a TV show, movie, or song as part of their lessons. Etc. etc.

At some level, copyright is a good thing. Or at least a necessary evil. But the litigious zeal with which IP and copyright are "protected" these days seems like we've lost sight of the "art before commerce" element that is a huge part of why Calvin and Hobbes was so awesome. And why IP is something worth protecting (within sensible limits).

Price of Persia made a large profit, but would you say it was a good movie? RE movies have done well, but I would say you would find most critics panned them badly. They certainly were not really related to the early RE games, other than biomod creatures and zombies. I wouldn't put the RE movies in the exact same category as Street Fighter, they aren't THAT bad.

I would also say that Milla had somewhat of a fanbase simply from the Fifth Element, Dazed and Confused, Zoolander, and The Messenger. I wouldn't say huge, but I was a fan of hers and I suffered through the first couple of RE movies simply because she was the female lead.

As far as games based on movie franchises, I would say mainly only Star Wars and LotR games have been really successful, although an argument could be made for the Lego games (Harry Potter, Batman, etc). There are some others that have been decent, but nothing spectacular I can recall off the top of my head.

As far as the worst conversion from game to movie, I would say it's a 3-way tie between Doom, Wing Commander, and Street Fighter.

I have a pretty good grasp on the assassin's creed storyline, ignoring some of the story bending needed to obtain said artifacts and create gameplay elements that are quickly dismissed in the sequel.

From the looks of it, they did a good job finding an interesting time period (1478+) while allowing the movie arc to start early enough to make plenty of sequels. The game is quickly running out of the past already.

The animus interface looks stupid though.

Basically, it's not an issue here because while anime characters are culturally Japanese (they speak Japanese, bow, eat with chopsticks, etc.), many times they also live in countries that are clearly NOT Japan. The ambiguous cultural status of the characters lets the writers put them in a variety of both familiar and exotic situations (i.e. going to a public bath vs. going to a high school prom,) which creates interesting tensions.

You see this a lot in anime like the Gundam series in which battles take place over several different countries on earth, as well as across space colonies, and yet everyone involved in the war, whether they have Japanese names or not, acts pretty damned Japanese all the time. Yet, the series incorporates non-Japanese elements as well. The building architecture of the Zeon space colonies, for example, is clearly European-inspired.

So Japanese people are used to the ambiguity of the "nationality" of their anime characters. I don't think Japanese people will have any problem with Scarlett Johansson unless the movie doesn't stay true to the character itself.

Now if a non-Japanese person had been cast to play Ryouma Sakamoto or some other real-life Japanese historical figure, I think there would be a pretty big reaction.

Not true.
The time release elements in real drugs are ususally better than in the generics.

The GOP has had problems since at least 2008, and they keep building up and up on the same issues.

The problem is the party is sort of stuck, and the split that it desperately needs would hurt it. Fox and the right wing talk radio aren't really on the classic GOP (of the Reagan and prior eras) side. Fox and talk radio and the social media that surround their viewers/listeners has shifted very far to the right. So much so that Reagan would in no way win the nomination today. Today's far right Republican party sees governing, and negotiating with the other side of the isle as a weakness. They don't want a representative democracy, they want a theocratic dictatorship while calling it democracy.

A party split is needed though. They need to split the two elements of the party from one another. Let the Tea Party form on it's own and let Fox and talk radio follow it. They'll find that the mass media is still far more central and closer to them than what they've been led to believe via Fox and talk radio, who accuses it of being far liberal. The party would be hurt for a couple election cycles, but as people start to wise up, they'd come back to the GOP from the Tea Party and the Tea Party would eventually become a footnote. As it stands, leaving the Tea Party elements in it will destroy the party in full.

The GOP keeps trying too hard to appeal to the far right element of it self and abandoning the central core. They are appealing to the hate mongers and bigots rather than the compassionate conservatism that Reagan at least pretended to have (though didn't).

I still think that McCain made two major errors when he ran. First was stepping too far to the right of where his voting record was while running. Had he stuck to what his record showed, he would have stood a semi-decent chance of winning... had he not made a second major fatal error and that was putting a batshit crazy, way far to the right, person as his VP candidate. Even if she wasn't crazy, or had a brain, she was far too the right for most Americans. Now, even if he had stayed true to himself, and used a centrist VP candidate he may have lost as Obama tapped into something... and I don't think anybody saw that coming.

Then the GOP embraced the hatred of Obama too much. Obama could cure cancer and they'd decry it as a bad thing, he can do nothing right so far as they are concerned. They should have toned that down. They also messed up the messaging on Obamacare. They should have embraced it, noting that they invented it, and tried to pass the same thing into federal law 3 times prior, twice under Bush Sr and once under Clinton and each time it was the Democrats who wouldn't take it. Showing how the Democrats embraced your idea would have shown, "look, we were right the whole time. We could have had this ages ago but the Democrats said 'No' and now they realized we were right." Rather than take the high rode though, they rode the crazy train of hate, and pushed more and more to become obstructionist.

Now side note, obstructionism works. Many Republican and non-affiliated voters, blame Obama for the lack of progress, though none of his ideas really got to be tried since they were bound and determined to obstruct everything and have done everything they can to ruin the Nation so they can blame him for the state of affairs, knowing full well most Americans don't know Congress controls the purse and pretty much all things related to it.

Anyhow, then Romney too shifted far to the right of what his record as Governor showed, and again went with somebody who's too far to the right (who oddly enough is now seen as too establishment by the Tea Party element) as a VP candidate... though Obama's popularity, and the popularity of Obamacare would have made it hard to overcome... though again, if the GOP had handled Obamacare properly, as their invention, then Romney would have ridden that strongly as his state used the previous Republican led efforts to create the same program, to do so on the state level. He could have ridden the fact his state had it before anyone else... again they let hatred of Obama override the logical move.

The party in the end is too afraid to do what it needs to do. It's too afraid of the short term losses and doesn't realize that the far goal is obtainable.