Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets From the same director who did the mostly excellent The Fifth Element, so the setting is envisioned as a colorful whizz-bang future. Being based on a graphic novel series didn’t hurt, either. This was going pretty good until the trashy Rihanna strip tease scene. A-list celebs cameos … Sci-fi and Fantasy Movie and Series Reviews, Part 12
John Carter Very ambitious offering of a story based on the excellent Barsoom book series from Edgar Rice Burroughs. The worldbuilding was nicely executed but the plot wasn’t anything unusual, but I have to give Disney credit (ew) where it’s due for making it what it was: a strange, action-filled pulp adventure. Hitchiker’s Guide to … Sci-fi and Fantasy Movie and Series Reviews, Part 11
The final boss(es) from my favorite game. I had trouble finding a decent-sized version of both the three-tier statue and Kefka, so I cobbled this together from three different images: the statues, the sun and sky background, and the crazed Kefka himself. The images are from the iOS version of the game, so the pixels … Image: Final Fantasy VI Statue of the Gods and Kefka
Investigation finds doping cover-ups in weightlifting If you found some doping and cover-ups going on, that means there’s a ton of it that is still being covered up. It’s probably everywhere at the professional level, but it’s only investigate if someone with a lot of money makes someone else with a lot of money angry. … Links of Possible Relevance, Part 35
The setting doesn’t have to be medieval period, but shouldn’t be technologically advanced. There is a mostly undetectable Functional Magic source that we’ll call tellura, since it comes from all around the earth. A rare number of people, called tellurics, are born with the ability to sense tellura more fully, and utilize it. Think of … Someone Steal This Video Game Idea: High Fantasy Open World Magic Puzzler
If you’re a working stiff like me, you will have seen a printout of the moral alignment chart tacked up in the break room somewhere, assuming your co-workers have a base level of humor. The printouts feature characters from a fictional universe (I refuse to use the word “fandom”) and the characters’ perceived alignment. If … What Is God’s Moral Alignment?
My Hero Academia: Heroes Rising MHA has great animation values in the first place, but this movie added to it with some richer scenery and fight dynamics. You know something’s going to happen when a group of superheroes in training are away from their mentors on a remote island, with a “what could go wrong?” … Sci-fi and Fantasy Movie and Series Reviews, Part 10
Metal/jazz drummer Sean Reinert, died last January. He played on my favorite album of all time, Cynic’s Focus, as well as other runners-up albums, like Death’s Human and Aghora’s self-tilted. I first heard his playing at a local show in Northborough, I think at the Trinity Church. As is the standard procedure at punk and … Sean Reinert Tribute
Hawk, the Slayer I don’t know how this got greenlighted, and I don’t know how Jack Palance fell into getting involved. He probably owed someone a favor. A few funny moments here and there, but a stock, poorly-executed, sword and sorcery plot with the most non-reactive protagonist since Dar from The Beastmaster. You can watch … Sci-fi and Fantasy Movie and Series Reviews, Part 9
Around Thanksgiving one year, Seth (Buzzgrinder editor) came up with the idea of “foodifying” band names, and the resulting graphics we used for the post are below. I did the Photoshop work to screw with the band logo’s, and most of the band name bastardizations were mine. Had a hard time figuring out who Lunches … Punny Band/Food Names
This is ambiguous for a reason. Those of you who hold the proper awareness and bias would be able to understand the details. The moving images we’re seeing seeing didn’t come out of nowhere. All the opposing sides were previously hedged away from each other by geography and a veneer of civility, which began to … How It Goes
Attack on Titan, Season 1 One of the only kinda-horror series that I can tolerate, and actually enjoy. The setup with the titans is pretty basic and not a lot is spent diving into their lore; most of this first season’s runtime exposes the structure of Paradis’ military and military police. Humanity here is not … Sci-fi and Fantasy Movie and Series Reviews, Part 8
I left this comment on a recent post over at Jill’s blog: I have a theory* that we’re not really designed to hold opinions on large-scale events and the players involved. It has nothing to do with level of intelligence, it’s really a curse of information technology (starting with the telegraph) combined with our natural … It’s Entertainment All the Way Down
I created a page of all the stories I’ve posted here at jaydinitto.com—really just the “Story” category archive page. The default is to show an excerpt of the post on archive page, but I wanted to show the whole post content. Unfortunately, that’s not a option in the WordPress admin console, and WordPress’ miasma of … How to Show Full Posts on WordPress Archive Pages
Edit: I retitled this as “Part 7.5” because I had two Part 7 review posts. I can’t count. 2012 Total apocalypse p0rn to cash in on the 2012 Mayan calendar nothingburger. Totally implausible equality fingerwagging speech near the end; dude would’ve been tossed off of a glacial cliff if it happened in the real world. … Sci-fi and Fantasy Movie and Series Reviews, Part 7.5
In Soviet Russia, glasses move you! The very last scene of Tarkovsky’s Stalker has Monkey reading a book while a voiceover (presumably) announces what she is reading, which is a poem. She then closes the book, looks at the three glasses atop the table next to her, then uses telekinesis to move the the glasses. … Stalker (1979) Final Scene Explanation
The topic of the Ship of Theseus experiment came up in the last few days, from two sources independent of each other. Why not post about it? My solution involves three different concepts of ships that exist simultaneously, which we will call Rose, Sina, and Maria. Ship Rose is the concept of Theseus’s ship as … Ship of Theseus Paradox Solution
Taken from this video. Be sure to use non-frozen cauliflower; I used frozen and I think it had too much water—see the wet spots on the parchment in the photo below. Still pretty good, but a fork was needed. Ingredients 2 cups grated cauliflower 1 cup grated hard cheese (parmesan, romano) 1 egg Directions 1. … Recipe: Cauliflower Pizza Crust
Don’t take this seriously; I’m just having some fun in an “unreasonable jerk” kind way, here. Most of these were inspired from IMDB’s top list, but their popularity isn’t necessarily why I won’t watch them (there’s a number of movies I do like that are on that list). These movies listed I hear/read too much … A List of Movies I Refuse to Watch
As I Lay Dying gets their own post because I got a lot of halfway decent photos of them, and they were a pretty good live band. This was the summer before they released Shadows Are Security, their third album—or their second album with their signature sound. They weren’t too far into their career but … Photo Dump: As I Lay Dying at the Purple Door Fest (August 23, 2004)