Antpark

23 hours ago, DonSal1976 said:

Ok everyone, my update. To start with, nobody is stealing or robbing or closing or anything like that. Drama needs to stop. There have been some issues which are currently being resolved by a wonderful staff at paradise comics as we speak and hopefully everyone will receive their late books in the near future. The people at paradise, especially Kristina, are working tirelessly to fix any issues that were slowing down the process of submissions. There were some issues (yes paradises fault) regarding organization which have been seemingly resolved. They are very determined to help customers and solve any outstanding book issues. Thank you to them, we are all human and mistakes will be made but your positive attitude in trying to right the wrongs explain why your awesome comic shop has survived as long as it has. Every book that was submitted by a customer was submitted that same month to CGC, that is what I was told and I firmly believe that, given the liability and insurance issues regarding this sort of stuff. That strongly, strongly leads me to have issues regarding the legitimacy of CGCs turnaround times. I spoke to 2 separate employees at CGC and was told that they could not help me in any way whatsoever except to give me the shop owners contact info. They just repeated that there was zero time delay on their end and that all books (modern) only take 4-5 weeks. Sorry, but 2 plus 2 does not equal 3. I have a strong suspicion that they are processing books out of order but of course they will not admit that and I have no proof. Either way, the fact that the books I sent in in April are still not back are in no way 100% paradises fault. There is some blame to go to CGC whether they choose to admit it or not. The one thing that I will be taking away from this entire scenario is that while I begged and begged CGC to help resolve the issue they repeatedly (not maliciously) refused to help. I’m sorry, but for a multi-multi million dollars company to list off a contact email and say there is nothing more they can do for me is quite disheartening. Hopefully this helps anyone out there waiting on books. You should all hopefully be getting them back sooner than later. 

Why would you expect CGC, or any company for that matter, to give you information about an order that's technically not yours? They may be your books, but if they were submitted by Paradise Comics, then it's their order, not yours. The CGC reps are right not to divulge any information and to tell you to contact the comic shop. It's no different than if you were asking about the order of another person -- it's none of your business.  I'd be extremely concerned if any random stranger could just call up and get information about any order they wanted to.

When you talked to the store (Kristina), why not ask her to call CGC and find out? Better yet, have her conference the 3 of you and you can hear for yourself, all from the comfort of your own home.

Season 3 is off to a great start so far. I like how they seem to be bringing the group back together to focus on a single, common objective. I've always enjoyed the group dynamics when all/most of the characters are together, rather than the 1-, 2-, or 3-person stories that spin off the main plot.

I like how Eliot is taking a more active role in preserving and defending his kingdom.

And Margo. She's my absolute favorite - one eye and all

I enjoyed the majority of it as well.

I'm really over the whiny Strucker kid though. I was hoping he might take a lick or get his handed to himself and maybe learn some humility.
No such luck though.

Actually, I hope next season they move away from focusing on the Strucker family altogether. I think it was a good way to get into the story and establish the world, but now that it is, I find them an unwelcome distraction. I know the Dad's speech (when he got the Mutants organized into fighters vs others and led the defense against the assault) was supposed to be moving, inspiring and uplifting, but I found it just . . . meh. And every time the kid opened his mouth I was hoping his Mom would grab him by the ear, powers or no powers, and tell him to get over himself, sit down and stfu. 

I liked all other aspects of the show and will be interested to see how the new dynamic plays out next season.

23 hours ago, F For Fake said:

I've been waffling on what to do. In addition to the flame being broken, the peg also doesn't sit perfectly in the stand, so she kinda leans to the left (her right.) It's not drastic, but it's there. And the same with the broken piece. I've already fixed it, and it's not perfect, but you literally can't see if when the statue is in place because it's directly behind her. But even if I can't see it, I KNOW that it's broken, and that kinda drives my OCD mad.
 

So I am going back and forth on it. I have until the 16th to decide. I'd love to have this statue in perfect shape, but prices have already blown up on eBay, well past what I paid. But if I keep it, with the break I don't expect it'll ever be worth what I paid for it, if that. 

If you're anything like me, you'll eventually replace it, it's only a matter of when and how much it will eventually cost you. Bite the bullet and replace it now with one that isn't broken. Instead of being able to enjoy the beauty of the piece, every time you look at it you'll always remember that it's broken and it will bother you. As the price to find a replacement gets more and more expensive, you'll start kicking yourself for not replacing it sooner.

It's funny how the mind works sometimes -- I bet if you had bought the statue knowing it was already broken and that you'd have to fix it (and paying accordingly), then it wouldn't drive you as crazy. At least that's how it would be for me.

It was a repeat. I'm guessing it was because of the College Football Championship game that was on that night.

16 hours ago, mattn792 said:

17 hours ago, paperheart said:

hopefully Dark Phoenix will be the next to go

+1.  1 thousand that is.

So I see the Season Finale is next week.

Any idea if next season going to be a full season or another short one?

Thanks for the reminder!

I'm thinking that after seeing the end product of what was kept & what was changed with Ron Howard's reshoots, they decided to have Howard reshoot the remaining portions in order to have a cohesive look and feel to the movie. At least that's my hope anyway.

4 hours ago, Bosco685 said:

“The bizarre decision not to have Superman included in the marketing stopped ‘Justice League’ from potentially hitting $100 million opening weekend,” the insider said.

Riiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiight. Keep telling yourself this.

4 hours ago, fantastic_four said:

If he really believes Disney's success with critics stems from the fact that they're less ambitious in the breadth of film diversity they pursue relative to Warner Brothers then he's either deluding himself or just trying to delude fans--hopefully it's only the latter.    All I hear from that statement is that they're going to keep throwing some semi-random string of strikes and wild pitches out there, and I as a fan won't know if I'm going to be swinging at what they're throwing me or hastily scrambling to dodge it.  

I really can't believe Tsujihara chose to frame the difference between Disney and Warner as breadth of film offerings versus depth.    The only conclusion you can draw from that is Warner's going to continue to slap a bunch of crepe out there while Disney continues to focus on higher quality for what goes into each film in a way that only a "less ambitious" studio like Disney can.  

Exactly. They promoted the guy who wouldn't take extra time to make sure JL was as good as it could be which leads me to believe they'll be less concerned with producing quality films and more with short term weekend cash grabs. Quantity over Quality, I guess

How refreshing to see a thoughtful, well-stated response of an opposing viewpoint that doesn't degrade into name calling and other insults -- and on Twitter, no less!

Bravo, Mr. Gunn

Quote

 

While his track record on the X-Men films has been shaky at best, Dark Phoenix star Sophie Turner seems to have the utmost faith in Kinberg. Speaking to Empire Magazine, Turner praised Kinberg as the best director she's ever worked with. 

 

“Simon has been the brain behind X-Men for years, and it’s really exciting to have what feels like one of our own rise up and take hold of the franchise, and direct it in the way that he sees it,” Turner said. “I have to say he’s one of the best director I’ve ever worked with. He’s so passionate and collaborative.”

Turner went on to describe the film as a “dark, gritty drama,” adding that the aim of the movie is to make a unique impact in the superhero genre.

 

“We are revolutionizing it. We wanted to create a whole new genre of superhero movie.” According to the magazine, Dark Phoenix will take place in 1993 (ten years after Apocalypse), and that Jean's powers will have reached such a godlike state that they develop a separate personality within Jean (sound familiar?). It's also revealed by Empire that while "The X-Men go cosmic," the film won't be the interstellar caper that many were probably hoping for, but a very "personal" story.

"Once I got the --script though, I realized that not only were we telling this amazing superhero story, but we were also telling a very personal story as well," Turner said. "One which required research into mental health issues. Because that is a big part of what drives the story. I mainly drew inspiration from multiple personality disorder and schizophrenia, as it is really about duality, this movie.  Darkness and light - that's all within her. This sense of being a completely other person and her struggling with that."

 

Alarm bells start going off any time I hear stuff like this. It usually means they've changed the characters and/or story and not for the better. They started saying similar stuff before Apocalypse and the result ended up being less than what I thought it could have (or should have) been. 

3 hours ago, Bosco685 said:

3 hours ago, Gatsby77 said:

In his random sample of 100 negative reviews at Rotten Tomatoes, the author found only 6% were prior users there, with 61% being new users (who signed up specifically to register their disapproval of The Last Jedia) and 33% having no profile anymore (meaning that they signed up to down-vote The Last Jedi and deleted their account).

If anything, this shows there were people so fired up they wanted to post their point of view on what they just saw. At least we know from the Rotten Tomatoes team it wasn't bots.

Quote

Rotten Tomatoes Denies 'Star Wars: The Last Jedi' Low Audience Score Is Fake, Says 100% Authentic

Quote

In response to others taking credit for Star Wars: The Last Jedi's low audience score, Rotten Tomatoes has decided to set the record straight.

 

For those unaware, there's a big disparity between The Last Jedi's critics score (currently 93%) and the audience score, which sits at 55%. There were some in the community who decided to take credit for manipulating that low score, but Rotten Tomatoes spokesperson (and Fandango vice president of communications) Dan Benson cleared the record up, saying that score is 100% authentic.

 

“We have several teams of security, network, and social database experts who constantly monitor reviews and ratings to ensure that they are genuine,” Benson told Forbes. “They haven’t seen anything unusual with The Last Jedi, except that there has been an uptick in the number of written user reviews submitted. Aside from that, everything is normal and we don’t see any unusual activity. We looked at The Last Jedi compared to other blockbusters and it has been consistent with those past films.”

 

Benson explained that The Last Jedi has a "comparable number of reviews to The Force Awakens" but can't nail down why there is such a chasm between the critical score and the audience score.

 

 

“I can’t explain why there’s such a disparity,” Benson said. “How we take this is that people are super passionate about this movie. On the positive side, our site is popular, and it has become an important platform for debate and discussion.”

 

What Benson can say though is that no Facebook group or slew of bots is the reason for the score, as that can be solely attributed to the fans and their reactions.

 

“We’ve been working around the clock to get the numbers right," Benson said. "Authenticity is very important to us. We have security teams, network teams, database teams who work so hard, it’s a little disheartening for them to see people make such [accusatory] claims without knowing the facts."

 

 

Take this with a grain of salt. It's doubtful anyone there is reviewing the reviews and the only thing they're likely to be monitoring for are spam/junk posts. 

Consider, if you will, their account creation process . . . .

voila

It doesn't have to be "bots" in order to tank the rating.
"Hell hath no fury like a disgruntled fanboy."
They could easily create fake accounts to post "legitimate" bad reviews, bot or not.

1 hour ago, fantastic_four said:

A defense of it I heard on Reddit is that if we wait until the end to off Snoke then it's a complete re-hash of the original series where Vader offs the Emperor at the end.  Here Johnson gets Snoke out of the way earlier, which means we get to see Kylo Ren in control of the Empire First Order for the rest of this film and presumably the next one, something we never saw Vader do.

I'd really like to see Kylo Ren go full villain in the next one. Maybe with the loss of his remaining father figures/mentors, he goes full on dark side. Up to now, I felt as though he's been sort of dark side "lite". Like "dusk" or "twilight" instead of totally dark. If he's going to be the antagonist of the story now, I want a reason for the Galaxy to fear him. Everyone feared the Emperor and especially Darth Vader. Right now, I don't necessarily fear Ren as much as I feel sorry for him.  

They don't even need to make him power hungry or insane either. Something like a misguided sense of Peace, Law & (First) Order. "Pax Romana was achieved only after the Republic was conquered" kind of thinking. 

43 minutes ago, Bosco685 said:

FINALLY got to see this movie. WOW!

And now I get it about all the soundtrack comments. It brought back so many super memories.

Charlize Theron is just one bad lady!

Couldn't have said it any better.

12 hours ago, NamesJay said:

And in my opinion the Adam West version of Batman was done to perfection as well. I wouldn't want a creator coming in who doesn't have respect for that interpretation.

 

Same here.

The last time they tried to do over-the-top camp, we got Batman & Robin

4 hours ago, JiveTurkeyMoFo said:

Okay, but none of this addresses the very basic premise that Luke gave up on trying to rescue/save Ren or on confronting Snoke.  He gave up on training a new generation of Jedi because he came to believe their way was ineffective...Okay, I'll buy that, but he also gave up fighting evil entirely.  He let his sister risk her life to run the Resistance, abandoned his friends (Lando, Han, Chewy, etc.)  and he retreated to the back-end of the galaxy to get away from it all.

That's not a hero.  And if the moral of the story is that you give up when the odds seem long, or that you shouldn't even bother because you can't really destroy evil, well...WTF kind of lesson is that?  

"The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing."   Which is exactly what Luke does: nothing. 

What's worse in all this is that Luke's actions directly influenced the transformation of Ben Solo into Kylo Ren, yet he took no responsibility for it at all, or rather, just shrugged his shoulders and said "oh well, that stinks...time to skid-daddle to a backwater planet and let my mess consume the galaxy."  Again, WTF kind of lesson is that?

I'm sorry, since we can only extrapolate from the material we are presented with, I'm not inclined to give TLJ Luke a pass based off of his hypothetical personal struggles of the last 30 years.  He should've known better, he should've have done more, and he didn't.  Mark Hamill has every right to be critical of the treatment of Luke, because no one knows that character better than him, not Lucas, not the fanbase, and certainly not Rian Johnson.

I see it a little differently and think it might have been what the filmmakers were trying to convey

That's how I chose to interpret it anyway.

Thanks for another great context Dr. X! 

Congrats to the winners! 

8 hours ago, fantastic_four said:

• When Leia first meets Rey in Force Awakens shown in the second clip below, she greets her warmly with a long, lingering hug like she already knows who she is despite the fact that it's the first time either of them have ever met.  Why did that happen given that Last Jedi is suggesting Rey is a stranger to all of the current characters?  

 

It's been a while, but wasn't this after Han had died?

I see this scene more as Leia -- being older and having had more experience in dealing with the pain of losing loved ones -- offering comfort in a maternal/parental way to the younger Rey, who hadn't and was still very affected by the events that had just transpired. 

This quote from another YouTube video also kind of sums it up for me

Quote

Leia was a General & obviously she would have known the details of the mission & who they were trying to save & bring back. Rey was a huge fan of Luke & so for sure she would have known about Leia. So even according to the evidence of the canon they were well & truly aware of each other's existence. Even if you subtract all that, she came back from a death-defying rescue mission & someone was there to comfort her from the trauma. So the hug makes total sense in both contexts.

$1040.10

I saw it this afternoon and liked it. There were some parts I didn't care for -- the ending, in particular, had more cheese than the state of Wisconsin -- but my overall experience was positive. 

After the trauma that was the prequel trilogy, I came to a realization -- There will never be another Star Wars movie (for me) that will equal or capture the same feelings and magic as ANH & ESB. Never. Period. Stop trying to compare them and becoming disappointed when they don't measure up.

I find I'm able to enjoy them more now that way. 

(Except Phantom Menace. That one's still awful).

Why do they always feel the need to include a kid? What self-respecting parent would ever bring or allow their child (regardless of age) to go on a job like this?

Yes, those were rhetorical questions, but every time I see it, it bothers me because it breaks immersion for me. I see the kid(s) and realize they're only in there because $$$

I thought I'd be excited by those early Phoenix photos, but there's just something about Sophie Turner . . . . I can't quite put my finger on it, but  I'm just not feeling it.

3 hours ago, Bosco685 said:

3 hours ago, revat said:

I agree she's probably my least favorite, but I think she's a necessary vehicle.  She's the 'straight' man, the normal human in a crazy world where all she wants to do is take of her kids, which is important.  The show is ultimately supposed to be about family, and she's the glue.  And she's been even more isolated due to her husband's 'status'.

 

If this show IS successful, I wouldn't mind them doing a prequel spinoff (at some point) about the Hellfire Club set in the 50's/60's (before the events of Xmen First Class).  It could be set in London or NYC (Were the Fenris's in Europe or America?).  Kind of like how Peggy Carter was supposed to run limited with nods to Agents of Shield and Captain America.

Or I wouldn't mind them going Godfather 2 style and just have a whole season full of Fenris flashbacks along side the current story.  The degree of difficulty and budget is higher, but it could be pretty sweet.

 

Also, is it just me, or is there an EXTREMELY high percentage of good looking people in the cast? 

They had it in the works. Then the network decided just to go with the one show.

I really would have loved to see that early period Hellfire Club.

Same here.

On ‎12‎/‎5‎/‎2017 at 6:24 AM, Bosco685 said:

'Fenris', 'Hellfire Club', 'X-Men' - they are definitely plugging all the right references.

Yeah, I noticed this too.

I thought last night's episode was great, although one thing that's taken some getting used to for me is Amy Acker's character. I so strongly associate her with the total badass she was as root on POI that seeing her be so helpless and constrained by her environment feels strange . . . but then I remind myself this is a different show and she's playing a different character. Still, I wouldn't mind seeing Mama Strucker kick some serious_ass though, maybe in just one episode .