Chap at the top is claiming “Christianity is part of European identity” but the image contrasts the pagan religions of Europe 2,000 years ago (you can throw in the Celts, Romans and Greeks too) on the left with Christianity which has it’s roots in various Middle Eastern religions (Judaism, Zoroastrianism, etc) on the right.

“Elaha” (ܐܠܗܐ) is the Aramaic for “God” and “Alaha” (ܐܲܠܵܗܵܐ) is the same word in Syriac (both languages used by the early Church), which is similar to other Semitic languages like Hebrew (Elohim) and Arabic (Allah).

Welcome to thr Bizarro World of Tory politics. We’ve got an Environment Minister who doesn’t care that the rivers and overflowing with excrement. The Housing Minister hasn’t overseen much housebuilding. And on and on.

I’m conflicted as I love the original but there’s things that could be improved (a Scottish Spaniard? A French Scotsman?) and Highlander 2 torpedoed the franchise, it only really recovered to some extent with the TV series. So if they have new stories to tell, I’ll give it a go.

I’ll be really surprised and disappointed if it doesn’t get a cinema release.

But either way it’s good news for movie theaters in a summer season that’s finally heating up but still running far behind last year (down 19%) and pre-pandemic norms (down 36% from 2019).

And with Deadpool and Wolverine inbound the momentum should be maintained.

Perhaps it’s no surprise that the summer has got off to a slow start as the writer’s strike pushed the schedules back.

An M. Night Shyamalan Experience!

That said, this doesn’t look so bad and I’ll give it a go.

I’m definitely in for this - always up for Donald Glover and that trailer looks fantastic.

A friend gave me a Soylent Green t-shirt for my last birthday so I can be suitably clad for it.

Wacko (1982}

Comedy slasher horror parody. It was one of the few horror films I was allows to record and watch on VHS and it has a special place in my heart but I haven’t watched it recently as I fear it will disappoint but it’s time and I wonder what everyone else would think of it in this post-Scream era.

There were a lot of attempts to cash in on Star Wars, most were far more blatant than BG - I remember watching The Black Hole in the cinema as a kid and being struck by how much it drew “inspiration” from Star Wars (which was OK with me as I was desperate for more). My favourite is still Battle Beyond the Stars.

And Silent Running? I do love that film and can definitely see the DNA of Huey, Dewey, and Louie in R2. However, Lucas drew elements from all over the place, like Flash Gordon and Kurosawa, it’s the way he managed to weave all those threads together that was the impressive feat and the cash-ins just took their inspiration from Star Wars (and a bit of the Magnificent Seven).

I like what they’re doing - the previous films went big with sprawling high stakes adventures, whereas this gets back to the feel of a lot of the comics where Hellboy rocks up somewhere to combat some evil menace. If this approach works (smaller budget quicker turnaround - shooting started in March 2023) they could make a more sustainable franchise building up to something big. The team also looks solid - the director of Crank with Mike Mignola and Christopher Golden co-writing. So I feel pretty optimistic.

I’d be very surprises if someone wasn’t working on at least a t-shirt design right now.

Once again, I am tapping the sign for people to go watch the two hour video by Shaun on the subject.

Good call, here is a link.

I am/was likely far too old to be in the target demographic for Pottermania but they never worked for me. They always felt a little… safe, reactionary even as they drew on a long tradition of British boarding school books without really addressing or undermining the genre tropes or even using it as a means to examine that culture. It then wasn’t a surprise to find out the author had some questionable views didn’t seem a great surprise to me.

Also, calling Tennant a “Harry Potter actor”, while true, feels like a calculated insult to a man who has played Doctor Who, The Purple Man, and Crawley.

I’m not sure it’s a “calculated insult” but it did read a but oddly (I assumed initially that it was referring to someone else). I presume the writer or their editor went with that angle because because his having appeared in the Harry Potter movies is relevant to an article and fitted the wider context of JK Rowling falling out with HP cast members. I’m not convinced it was the right approach.

“I’m a massive idiot” is a defence strategy one could deploy (and one I’m keeping in my back pocket just in case) but it may not be a good one.

Now that’s scary.

I’ve been using Quillpad as a Google Keep replacement as it does things like checklists better.

Indeed. Lemmy/Mastodon integration isn’t the best, so we’ll see if it punches through.

I read the link, I still don’t see the relevance to a post about a Japanese woman arrested for driving a suitcase. It’s not the kind of topic to attract trolls. We sometimes get some Hexbear shenanigans in political posts but you can’t bang that in every thread unless you are going to claim this is Magic Elephant Dust.