arch_8ngel

The critical distinction versus TPM, is that Ron Howard directed Willow, and Bob Dolman wrote the screenplay (evidently it went through 7 drafts to get to the final script, and other than some TV writing, he didn't really have any other credits at the time - Willow was his first movie, and certainly looks to be his best by far). George Lucas "created the story" that it is based on and provided Lucasfilm as the production company with ILM for the practical effects. No matter how terrible of a director George Lucas is, the technical excellence of his effects company is top notch and always has been. "What happened", I think, is Lucas getting enough authority to do things 100% "his way" versus being in arrangements where he let better directors and better writers do a lot of the work of the final product. The guy is great at the broad strokes of interesting and epic stories, but is pretty darn bad at the final execution where people are involved, versus the model building and practical effects.

In case you can't tell, I LOVE this movie. I LOVE both versions of the video game (NES and arcade). And I definitely regret never buying the action figures as a kid (and pretty sure I always pretended that my LEGO Black Knight's Castle was Nockmar) Willow and Madmartigan are probably my all-time favorite duo. Sorsha is SMOKING hot, and a deserving crush for young men the world over. For a kid General Kael is one of the scariest physical presences in a swords-and-sorcery movie, only rivaled by Dagon in Conan the Destroyer. The level of world-building is incredible for how casually all of the fantasy elements are introduced. (all sorts of mystical things "just are" in a way that makes sense in the context of the movie and the world they live in) The two-headed fire breathing monster is incredible. And the entire things holds up WELL and it fits into a comfortable viewing length to get through in one evening with even young kids maintaining interest. EDIT: also, once I learned more of the behind-the-scenes, it was mind blowing to find out that Warwick Davis was only 17 when we played Willow. (and only 11 when he played Wicket in RotJ)

You're right, it's BETTER than Lord of the Rings. They get an awesome swords-and-sorcery tale wrapped up in a reasonable amount of time, in a single sitting. 10/10, one of the best!

Yeah, back-in-the-day they tended to have rigid cardboard trays inside the big sets, but I've seen a move away from that, at least with the larger sets I've had lately. But storing unopened LEGO is a better use of most hall closets than storing sheets and towels

Sage advice. If you have a place to keep the boxes, LEGO are investment-grade If you can afford it, and even remotely think you'll want it, almost always worth buying and tucking away for later, since the resale value is so strong. Definitely kick myself for not going whole hog on the Ghostbusters and Scooby Doo sets.

I spent a recent visit to my mom's house rebuilding all of my old castle sets with my kids. I had both of the "big" castles from the flat-baseplate days (crusaders and black knights) as well as a couple of the big forest-men sets, and a lot of little sets in between. Incredibly, my mom had saved all of the instruction manuals as well as the box for Black Knight's Castle, and we ended up only missing maybe 8 parts total (already ordered them from Bricklink to finish it out). The look of awe on my kids faces seeing those castles come together and open up... and then plug together with the technic studs was just great. About a week ago we finally built, as a family, the Saturn V that I've had sitting in a closet. I'm still waiting for them to be a year or two older before we break out Voltron, though.

I have only played 1, 2, and 4, but from my perspective Re4 is definitely borderline (due to less-limited resourced) but is still "survival horror", as reinforced by the first scene where a revving chainsaw shows up. Re1 done in the Re4 engine would be the perfect balance, IMO. (though the camera angles from Re1 definitely make for a few iconic scenes) Surprised to not see Alone in the Dark mentioned, since that series on the PC is one of the earlier entries to the genre.

R. Lee Irmy sums it up for you here. All about keeping heaven packed with fresh souls

We are talking about populist leaders... practically by definition they cater to what they perceive to be the lowest common denominator. It isn't a reach to think that some of them really are just that bad at what they do.

Those are "+" to the total, not versus the previous day's daily increment. They could have chosen better wording, but both the chart and the numbers are accurate for what they actually represent.

I guess I'll read it, but I can wait for it to be dirt cheap second-hand. I enjoyed the first book well enough, but once the story gets moving it was pretty easy to see Cline's crutch of bludgeoning you with nostalgic references to hide what was otherwise fairly mediocre writing. I did, separately, enjoy what was done with the movie, though.

Hanlon's Razor.

US Citizens retain the right to vote in federal elections no matter where they happen to be a permanent resident. In some states they even get to vote in state elections. https://travel.state.gov/content/travel/en/international-travel/while-abroad/voting.html Presumably a consequence of being taxed by the US government no matter where you live in the world...

And even when he does, he is photographed as one of those twats that hangs their nose out of the mask...

Sure. Just pointing out, from a LEGO economy standpoint, $0.10/piece is the typical benchmark for "fair" pricing on a set and much lower than that has people buying sets just for the parts.

$250 for a 2600 piece licensed set is pretty decent.

Yeah, I'm pretty conflicted about those sets. On the one hand, they have some neat figures and features. But on the other... I don't really understand the point. The builds themselves look like a larger-scale version of the Heroica board game, but it seems like it is supposed to be a playset rather than a "game". The TV/Nintendo set, though, looks fantastic. Will definitely buy that one.

They are also students, not employees with a contract that maintains their employment.

It's not tricky at all. Their requirements, regarding uniforms, are almost certainly clearly spelled out in their contract.

If you, as an employee (player) decide not to wear the uniform as dictated by the employer (the team / NBA) -- then they can decide to enact any penalties the contract between the employer and employee allows for. Maybe they will, maybe they won't. But I would strongly suspect that the contracts between players and teams, at that level of money being involved, give the teams and the NBA a pretty wide latitude to penalize players for not wearing the dictated uniforms.

Within reason, an employer can make an employee uniform anything they want and they can require the employee to wear it in the performance of a customer-facing job. In this case, the employer (NBA) is deciding what they allow on the jerseys (employee uniform) while customer-facing duties (games) are being performed.

The government isn't preventing them from saying/doing anything. It is an issue between employer and employee.

As a kid in the target age group at the time, and with movies as cheap as they were in that time period, I had no complaints

There was a period of time when 0% balance transfers and cash-loans from credit cards were available while high interest savings rates were still high enough to beat the fixed-fees of the transactions. But then those got squeezed from both ends (minimum fees went up, and savings interest rates went down). Then dawned the age of people running massive balances on cash equivalent purchases, where they would buy a thing that could easily convert directly into cash, to pay of the card, with the end result being racking up massive cash-back points on credit cards that might pay up to 5%-6% cash back on certain categories (or all categories for the really juicy deals). The really sweet deal was when the US Mint was letting you buy boxes of dollar coins at face value, with free shipping. I knew of a few people that were visited by the secret service to figure out what they were doing with the substantial currency purchases that were routing straight back into the bank. They didn't get into any trouble, of course, but some of them were pulling it off for mid-5-figures per month in purchase volume from the mint before the well ran dry.

Just imagine if he had seen the Las Vegas scene from 2049...