Last Action Hero did have one of the best villains I've ever seen in a movie, with one of my favorite movie lines of all time.

Villain shooting at Arnie, who's hiding behind cover. Blam! Blam! *click!*
Arnie, emerging from cover: "Ooh, did you just make a movie mistake? You forgot to reload the damn gun!"
Villain, smiling: "No, Jack. I just left one chamber empty" Blam!

It should be noted that the Clone Wars television series (when it is a wartime drama and avoids the political aspects of the war) is exceptionally well done, and a pleasure to watch. Lucas is not involved in the day-to-day on that one, and they've created quite a team. I am, therefore, cautiously optimistic about the new series.

I definitely agree with you on the marketing point. There are many movies which are marketed as ridiculous, but are far better. "Kung Fu Panda" 1 & 2 were far more serious movies than they were marketed as. "Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs" was marketed as nothing but slapstick, but was in fact a classic disaster movie. There are so many more movies that people would see if they actually knew what they were going to get.

Contrary to what the the left-wing guardians of the entertainment tell you, “black and white” doesn’t mean “dumb” or “simple.”

This is one of the reasons why I love the 'Kung-Fu Panda' series - it makes it clear that evil is, every step of the way, a conscious choice. In the sequel, the villain is dumbfounded that the hero has faced all the same loss (and even worse) that he did, and did not choose to do evil. The villains in both movies are given a chance, at the end, to stop and turn from evil - to continue to fight is their own choice. It's the difference between 'explaining' and 'excusing', and it is refreshing that there are some who still understand this.

With Netflix streaming and DVDs, I can raise my children on good stories, regardless of when they were made.

The populations of public and private schools are completely incomparable. In private schools, every student is there by choice. The parents had to be involved enough to apply to the school, and the children had to meet certain criteria to be accepted. This population, therefore, already excludes most children of uninvolved parents. This population also does not include special ed children, or emotionally disturbed children. Once there, the schools have the authority to hold students to certain standards of academics and behavior, and have the ability to remove any students who do not meet this criteria.

Any public school which was given the ability to pick and choose students and actually enforce standards would immediately see every performance measure skyrocket.

Voyager did, however, have one of the most unashamedly pro-life episodes of any show I've ever seen. In one episode, Chakotay goes on a technology-enhanced-pseudo-native-american vision quest to speak with his father. His DNA was stolen by a Cardassian spy who had used it to impregnate herself. The father tells him that when the women of his ancestral tribe were raped, the children were welcomed, because the crime was not their fault.

Let us not forget, however, that as soft as she often was, Janeway did have her nasty streak. On one occasion, for example, she tied up a crew member from a renegade Federation ship and held him in front of killer trans-dimensional beings to get him to talk. I didn't hate the series as much as many others. I didn't love it either, though.

My favorite show, though, remains Deep Space Nine. While Picard drank tea, the entire crew of DS9 subsisted on Klingon coffee, most of them taking it double strength. It also had the best characters, and brought back the great tradition of getting drunk and singing.

I enjoyed the second one somewhat, simply because I'm such a huge fan of Jeff Goldblum. Without him, I don't think I would've given it a second thought.

The third one, however, I did enjoy immensely. It was just plain fun, and didn't take itself too seriously. Most days, that's exactly the sort of movie I need.

I especially love when the danger comes to a head just as Barney says "This is gonna be great!"

If this were taking place here in Buffalo, I'd just get a bucket of suicidal wings from Duff's and load it up on a trebuchet.

The character of Sam (Spike) Witwicky was an important one in the original Transformers story - though in the original he was simply the son of a mechanic, Sparkplug Witwicky. In the original, there was no real backstory, the two were simply saved by the Autobots from a Decepticon attack on the oil rig on which they were both working. They became friends and allies of the Autobots, and instrumental in their dealings with humans.

If memory serves, focusing on the human characters was partially a result of the astronomical cost of the CGI work (with the equipment of the day, it took 36 hrs to render each frame). Certainly, the special forces troops and the plot line with John Voight were some of the high points of the flick.

Having the character made sense, though you could argue about casting. Personally, I never understood the animosity towards Shia, but to each their own.