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It's interesting that Trump's actions indicate he doesn't think he needs to win voters over anymore; he'll just suppress mail-in ballots, sue to keep them from being counted and contest the results with the Supreme Court -- except his behaviour in that debate was a flailing, frantic, fretful, fear-driven attempt to drown out any words about the pandemic he isn't managing, the taxes he's been caught evading, the debt he's incapable of paying, the criminal charges he doesn't want to be facing.

Except... if he thinks his measures will work, why isn't he as smug and indifferent to the business of campaigning as he was in 2016 when it didn't matter whether or not he performed better than Clinton or won more votes? Because this time, he desperately needs to win for the presidency to protect him -- and he knows that his voter suppression efforts aren't working, that he won't have any contestable results with the way he's polling, that his smears against Biden's cognitive function or supposed radicalism aren't succeeding, that his search for "suburban housewives" isn't penetrating and that this is an election he isn't winning.

Biden couldn't say more than two words to Trump before Trump shouted him down and Biden doesn't have the Elizabeth Warren severity to put Trump in his place. Biden could have spoken about it when addressing the camera, a maneuver that confused and baffled Trump into silence because he doesn't seem particularly aware of the viewers at home at this point -- but Biden chose not to attack Trump while talking to the people, instead trying to connect with them and leave Trump out of the conversation. Had he criticized Trump while looking into the camera, Trump would have interrupted him further.

Biden is just not a confrontational speaker in a debate. His gift is emotional connection. And he wouldn't have been able to criticize Trump for more than a few syllables at a time and he won't unless future debates can mute a speaker who doesn't respect the rules by shutting down their audio feed while filtering out their voice in real time.

By morning, the Biden campaign had received a whopping $25 million dollars within a mere 10 hours of the debate's conclusion. Trump made an extremely strong case -- to support absolutely anybody else.

Chris Wallace is being rebuked, mocked, condemned and declared a failure for his failure to control Trump. I don't like Chris Wallace. I don't like anyone who works for FOX News. Please remember that when I say that Chris Wallace was trying, and in my worldview, trying counts and I can excuse any failure, even a FOX News failure, if the person was making every effort and simply didn't succeed.

One of my favourite books as a high school student was STARGIRL, about a manic pixie dream girl who calls herself Stargirl, and Leo, the boy who falls in love with her but wishes for her to be more 'normal' which leads to Stargirl dumping him and leaving town. As I get older, I am suspicious of manic pixie dream girls who exist as salves to male egos rather than women with their own goals and inner lives, but Stargirl did have her own goals and inner life and left town and Leo to pursue both. There was a recent movie adaptation and I found it an interesting failure.

I watched it on Disney+. And I enjoyed it. Stargirl was embodied beautifully by singer Grace Vanderwaal, playing Stargirl as a teenaged girl who does not grasp the hierarchy and social structures of high school and is determined to ignore them in the most pleasant manner possible. Vanderwaal's Stargirl is full of enthusiasm and liveliness and creativity and fun and she falls for the male lead, Leo, at which point the movie seems to fall apart.

Leo in STARGIRL is a bland, inoffensive, indistinct, innocuous teenaged boy. The movie fails to explain why Stargirl would be attracted to Leo, what he has to offer her when he's not as much fun and not her equal in any area and Stargirl provides all the ideas and labour and Leo is simply present. Why would she like him?

I went back to the original novel and discovered that Leo is just as indistinct and undefined in the novel. But it works in prose because STARGIRL is a novel written in first person. Leo is the narrator. Leo is a blank template upon which a high school boy could project his own personality. Why does Stargirl like Leo in the book? It's unclear and that's deliberate; it forces the hypothetical male reader to become Leo in reading the book and the reader has to ask himself why Stargirl would like him and what he himself would have to offer such a vibrant person. STARGIRL as a movie, however, can only offer a third person perspective and Leo is an empty persona. This largely faithful film adaptation fails to amend Leo from the novel to be suited to the very different format of film.

I think Leo needed to be someone who could bring some technical skills to Stargirl's various social stunts. Someone who could take her more eccentric and bizarre ideas and make them practically achievable. There's a sequence where Stargirl buys and repairs a bicycle for a boy who crashed his bike; in the movie, Leo should have helped her take off the rust and patch the tires while Stargirl would repaint it. Instead, in the movie, as in the book, Stargirl does all the work and Leo doesn't offer anything. Live action is not prose.

This is a post about the comic book INSUFFERABLE, by Mark Waid which you can read online for free and in its entirety here: http://thrillbent.com/comics/insufferab … apter-1/#1

The Stars: In the late 90s and early 2000s, the top superhero comic book writers were (and arguably still are) Grant Morrison, Mark Millar and Mark Waid.

Grant Morrison is an eccentric visionary of crazy cosmic ideas who wrote JLA, NEW X-MEN and ALL-STAR SUPERMAN. Mark Millar is the hypersardonic and action-oriented writer of CIVIL WAR, ULTIMATE X-MEN and THE ULTIMATES and also creator of WANTED, KICK-ASS and KINGSMAN.

Mark Waid reformatted traditional superhero stories with modern wit and high adventure pacing and hyperdramatic turns of plot and comedy with science adventures in THE FLASH and FANTASTIC FOUR, hilarious comedy in DAREDEVIL, spy thrillers in CAPTAIN AMERICA and some brilliant creator owned material with detective stories in THE UNKNOWN and POTTER'S FIELD and dark superhero horror in IRREDEEMABLE and INCORRUPTIBLE.

The Partners: Grant Morrison and Mark Millar were friends in the 90s. Morrison was renowned for his fourth-wall breaking work on ANIMAL MAN in the 80s and his BATMAN: ARKHAM ASYLUM oneshot. Millar approached Morrison for advice on breaking into the industry.

Morrison saw Millar's talent and collaborated with him in order to get Millar hired. Together, they co-wrote SWAMP THING and THE FLASH and worked together on project pitches that led to Millar becoming a comic book star on THE AUTHORITY, THE ULTIMATES and SUPERMAN: RED SON.

The Breakup: However, on the last three, Millar took sole credit and did not credit Morrison's contributions to Morrison -- which apparently upset Morrison, especially when he had consulted extensively, offered ideas and plot points and even ghost-written an issue of AUTHORITY for Millar. This ended their partnership.

Grant Morrison's writing is eccentric and bizarre with peculiar ideas Superman fighting an angelic invasion of Earth, an intelligent virus that transforms into an addictive drug to mind control mutants, Batman creating a backup personality for his brain in the event of a nervous breakdown -- matched with an upbeat, gleeful joy for all the wild ideas of superheroes and a grand, epic scale of action.

Mark Millar's style is very action-oriented with a dark sense of comedy (a homicidal 10 year old superheroine) and while his post-Morrison writing has lacked Morrison's mind-expanding ideas, Millar has shown a gift for crafting comics as visual concepts perfect for film pitches that led to WANTED, KICK-ASS and KINGSMAN becoming box office hits.

Insufferable: Grant Morrison often gives interviews describing the inner workings of his mind and how he believes he was visited by aliens to impart their concepts to humans via the medium of comic books and how this had nothing to do with the hallucinogens he'd ingested and how he finds that far too many comic book writers think only in terms of reiterating superhero tropes and old continuity. Mark Millar relentlessly hypes his brand with his film pitches in comic book form and makes constant reference to hobnobbing with celebrities and studios to present himself as a film producer first and a comic book writer second.

The Response: Their mutual friend, Mark Waid, remarked in an editorial that he found arrogance to be obnoxious and annoying.

It is very interesting to read INSUFFERABLE because despite these origins, the actual characters of John (the older insufferable) and Jarod (the younger insufferable) have shifted from their real-life counterparts.

John in INSUFFERABLE is not a Grant Morrison-like eccentric genius at all; he is a troubled, sad, withdrawn, driven, tactical and while he is clearly a better crimefighter, he has no false modesty and can back up any and all of his boasts. He does, however, relentlessly chastise his former partner for any shortcomings. He is not full of lunatic concepts; all of his ideas are tactical approaches to fighting crime.

Part of me wonders if Waid made this choice deliberately because, as Waid concedes in his editorial, "Ideas are not a series and jokes are not a character," perhaps thinking that a pastiche of Grant Morrison would be a limited character template. The rest of me wonders if Morrison is so bizarre that any attempt to pastiche him would be hopeless. In addition, Waid has declared, "Grant and I have always been the best of friends," so it's possible that Waid's stated vitriol is for Millar and Millar only.

Jarod is certainly more like Mark Millar than John is like Morrison. Jarod is primarily fixated on how his superhero exploits will create a splash in the news and on social media, a marked criticism of Millar concocting superhero comics largely in terms of how he can market them for notoriety and he is relentless in trying to assert his former mentor's irrelevance.

Having a fictional character mimic the showboating Mark Millar is significantly easier, but it's intriguing that Waid largely confines his (forgiving) contempt towards Jarod. Waid presents Jarod as a talented but self-destructive oaf who is crippled by his inability to act on anything other than his anger towards his former partner while John is the more stable and responsible half of the equation.

But regardless. Waid has really hit on something. INSUFFERABLE is a great superhero comic with two hilariously dysfunctional people who are forced by circumstance to work together long after they realized they could not stand to be around each other. Their broken partnership is a joy to watch in the face of rising supervillain threats. And throughout the entire series and right to its finale, Waid's therapist's philosophy rings true. Waid was upset by his friends. He was offended. He was hurt.

But : "Why be mad?" Be constructive. Be creative.
http://thrillbent.com/comics/insufferab … apter-1/#1

This sounds cool! I love/hate how SLIDERS has had to be such a do it yourself proposition for fans. We have to make our own DVD sets with episodes at the best quality available and in the right order. We have to make our own episode guides. We have to make our own magazines and our own interviews. We have to make our own media tie-in novels. We have to make our own twentieth anniversary reunion special. We have to make our own screen accurate replica props. We have to make our own scandalous behind the scenes tell-all revelations.

I feel six years is just right for SUPERGIRL. I'll miss it, but after a shaky but enjoyable start, SUPERGIRL has been a winner for just about every season except the awkwardness of Season 3 when it fired its own showrunner for sexual harassment and fumbled its way to the finale. SUPERGIRL has been so topical, so aware of the world in which it is watched, so earnest in its social justice values -- and I would have worried that SUPERGIRL continuing for a SUPERNATURAL-length period could have overstretched its earnest statements into formula -- a bit like how THE FLASH and ARROW had Barry and Oliver deliver an inspiring speech about something or other every year whether they had anything inspiring to say or not.

No idea what's going on with BATWOMAN or how they can possibly make the show without a recast Kate Kane, but Javicia Leslie is awesome so I'll support her in anything despite my reservations.

THE FLASH lost its way in Season 3 and I don't think it can find its way back because what made THE FLASH a unique TV show was that it was so ridiculously fast, telling stories in 1 - 2 episodes that other shows would tell in 1 - 2 seasons. But with Season 3 and 4, THE FLASH started slowing down its pacing. Without the speed, the characters feel thin and the villains feel disposable and the central theme of the show (speed) is absent and there has never been anything to replace it other than Barry and Iris being cute and Ralph Dibney being funny and now we don't have Ralph Dibney. It's a shame, but it does speak to how Andrew Kreisberg was a pretty great showrunner even though he was rightly and correctly fired off his show for sexual harassment.

Hopefully, SUPERMAN AND LOIS will do well, GREEN ARROW AND THE CANARIES will be picked up, LEGENDS will have a few more seasons and BATWOMAN will... uh, well, like I said, I'll watch Javicia Leslie in anything.

In the comics, THE BOYS features most superheroes as having the public image of the Avengers and Justice League, but in reality, they are serial killers, rapists and sadists with total immunity to prosecution. The Boys are a covert black-ops squad charged with supposedly 'policing' the superheroes, but the only way to police them is to kill them and The Boys start with low level heroes before making their way up the chain, except the methods they use to infiltrate and assassinate make them as monstrous as their enemies. It's all played for dark comedy and it comes to a pretty definitive and bloody conclusion.

I didn't enjoy it. But I respected it because THE BOYS forced a lot of later superhero writers to ask themselves: why is Superman a good and kind soul? Why doesn't Tony Stark abuse his wealth and power? Why isn't Captain America a jingoistic nutjob? Why are the Avengers a solid peacekeeping operation instead of a fascist regime? Why isn't Batman a murderous sociopath? In a post-BOYS era, writing these characters as they'd generally been written before but with actual reasons for their moral standards became a very important challenge.

Writers like Geoff Johns highlighted how, much like Tom Welling on SMALLVILLE, Superman lived a high celebrity and action fuelled lifestyle -- but he would generally go home to his wife or his parents at the end of the day for a family dinner and would till the land, care for cows, write newspaper stories. Even Garth Ennis, who created THE BOYS, found himself treating Superman with respect when writing him in three issues of his HITMAN comic where Superman declares, "I'm not a warrior. I'm not a soldier of any kind. I'm simply doing what I can to help." Journalism is part of Clark's public service, empowering people with knowledge. Superman rejects Max Landis' proposition that he is to rule the Earth or save it. Superman is not above the Earth, deciding its fate or dictating its course; he is a citizen of Earth. He is a man of the people.

Writers like Ed Brubaker and Greg Rucka had written Batman as a sociopathic isolationist who became so brusque and abusive that Alfred quit as butler and moved in with Robin. But subsequent writers like Grant Morrison highlighted how Batman, from his very early days, has been a teacher, mentoring the Robins, Batgirl and more and ultimately built a family around himself that would ultimately bring him back to being a man with great compassion for the weak and a nobility that makes him the equal of any superhuman. Writers like James Tynion IV and Scott Snyder would capitalize on how Batman had an instinct for building family (and publishing lines).

Writers like Mark Millar, Brian Michael Bendis and Matt Fraction changed Tony Stark quite a bit. In the 90s comics with Kurt Busiek, Tony Stark was written as a very blandly heroic, milquetoast hero. Millar, Bendis and Fraction gave Stark the Robert Downey Jr. arrogance and bombast, but they also highlighted how at the end of the day, Stark doesn't actually have any superpowers. Now-disgraced writer Warren Ellis also added to Tony Stark's persona a sense of guilt: Stark used to build weapons that were stolen by terrorists and killed millions; he is now ashamed and forever seeking redemption, hence his curtailed misuse of his privilege and money.

Captain America didn't really need too much adjustment after THE BOYS, but the comics took more care to have Cap frequently at odds with SHIELD and the United States government, at times going to all out war. But the seeds were actually sewn back in the 80s issues of DAREDEVIL by ridiculously jingoistic writer Frank Miller. Miller, like Ennis with Superman, seemed to find something greater in himself when writing Captain America.

An issue of DAREDEVIL has a corrupt general trying to steer Cap away from investigating an illegal supersoldier program, telling Cap that Cap's "loyalty" should have him defer to any order from any US Army commander. Captain America replies, "I'm loyal to nothing, General, except the Dream," a line that has defined the character since then with writers like Mark Gruenwald and Mark Waid making it clear that Captain America represents the American ideal and never the American government.

I've always liked Geoff Johns as a writer especially on Superman. A writer like Garth Ennis declares that superheroes like Superman are absurd because their decency of character is completely at odds with how people with power behave in the real world and creates superheroes that are more realistic. Why would a god on Earth work at a newspaper?

A writer like Geoff Johns, however, acknowledges that it's absurd that Superman has a day job -- but then he embraces it, reinforces it, creates new reasons for it -- because Geoff Johns understands that superheroes are myth and myths are always ridiculous. It is the ridiculous part of the myth that embeds it into the imagination along with the meaning behind the absurdity -- and realizing that ridiculous myths endure long after the realistic creations have been set aside.

Superheroes would not be as rich and meaningful as they are today without THE BOYS comic books. And we should grapple with all the questions raised by THE BOYS. But ultimately, I don't believe that we should make superheroes more like us, as bitter and as angry and as cynical and as corrupt as ourselves. We should not make Quinn, Wade, Rembrandt and Arturo argumentative, cynical, chaotic, abusive, violent or indifferent in order to reflect our own failings. We should not kill them off one by one to demonstrate how we too would perish during sliding. We should make ourselves more like them; we should adopt Quinn's resourcefulness, Wade's empathy, Rembrandt's love for life and the Professor's wisdom.

My favourite actress asked me if I've been watching THE BOYS and I told her I haven't and won't.

I don't want THE BOYS taken out of existence and I respect that it's got a lot of talent -- but I've read THE BOYS comics and to me, that is not what I am looking for out of superheroes.

In my mind, there are four definitive scenes for superheroes. The first is SPIDER-MAN: INTO THE SPIDER-VERSE when Miles Morales asks Peter Parker when he'll know if he's ready to be Spider-Man. Peter replies, "You won't. It's a leap of faith." Later, spurned to action, Miles climbs atop a skyscraper, throws himself off and finally swings, dispensing all his fears, doubts, insecurities, neuroses and weaknesses to realize his potential and everything he has to offer. A superhero represents the height of human achievement in a form unique to each person. A superhero reminds us of our ability to overcome our failings and be empowered by the best of ourselves.

The second superhero defining scene to me is in the recent CAPTAIN MARVEL movie where Yon-Rogg (Jude Law) tells Captain Marvel if she really wants to prove she's a true warrior, she will fight him without her powers unarmed to show she's mastered her emotions. Captain Marvel blasts him in the face and knocks him on his ass but leaves him alive, informing him, "I have nothing to prove to you," and then sends Yon-Rogg back to the Kree homeworld as a messenger to inform the empire that Captain Marvel will be ending their tyranny. Superheroes have great power, but at their best, they use their power precisely, employing precisely the amount of force that is needed and not a hair more.

The sequence of Captain Marvel being inundated with images of Carol Danvers' various defeats throughout her life only for Carol to summon to mind her memories of getting back each time is also good but didn't involve superpowers or superhero duties.

The third definitive superhero scene to me is in the "Green Arrow and the Canaries" backdoor pilot of the final season of Arrow when Mia Smoak dives through the air, lands in a crouch on a rooftop and nocks an arrow to her bow, displaying ferocity, determination and a physical acrobaticism and athleticism that arouses an intense desire in me that compels me to immediately lift some weights before hitting the treadmill. Superheroes should stir something in audiences to encourage them to eat healthy and work out, in my view.

And the fourth definitive superhero scene, for me, is in "Crazy For You" (Season 1, Episode 12 of THE FLASH) where a married couple are trapped in an overturned car struck by a powerline. The Flash extracts the husband first, then returns for the wife only for the car to explode. The husband collapses at the sight of the burning car with his wife inside only to realize she's behind him, rescued just in time by the Flash.

The first time I saw this episode, I was with a girlfriend who remarked that this teaser of the Flash saving two people had no bearing on the rest of the episode. The couple don't return for any subsequent plot function. They aren't involved with the teleporter villain of the week. They don't ever appear again; they are never even mentioned and could have been cut from the story with no impact on the rest of the episode. What was the point? The point is that a superhero's main role is not to beat people up; superheroes SAVE people. They save them from car crashes, fires, floods, earthquakes, volcanoes, urban sprawl and severe weather.

I've never seen THE BOYS, but I've read the comics and I know for a fact that the characters of THE BOYS weren't created to do any of the above. I hope people enjoy THE BOYS. But for me... thanks but no thanks.

I am not sure McConnell has the votes. He may. And for optics, Democrats need to fight it, although I can’t see how they could stop it.

But I don’t think they need to win this fight. Let Trump and McConnell put a Conservative majority on the Supreme Court. Democrats can use that to show how that majority will ensure an end to health care and women’s reproductive rights unless a Biden presidency and a Democratic Senate can add more judges to rebalance the Supreme Court. Ginsburg’s sad passing and threatened legacy have led to a swell of fundraising gains for Democrats.

Republicans can win this battle. They probably will because right now, they have more power. But there are more Americans than there are Republicans. There are always going to be more Americans than there are Republicans because Americans care about each other and Republicans only care about power.

(The views of ireactions do not reflect those of the Sliders.tv community.)

Nothing is a lock. And nothing should ever be a lock. America is the birthplace to the finest ideals in human history, the belief that all are created equal and that we are one and that the loyalty of its citizens is not to an office or a politician or a leader but to the Dream.

Americans have never fully lived up to that, but every time they have committed to the founding ideals that every person should be able to live out their full potential if they put in the work, they have prevailed. I am so proud to be a neighbour to a country that produced the life-affirming philosophies and spirit of equality and decency espoused by Superman and Captain America and Anna from the movie FROZEN. No other nation could have could have created them.

America is in a bad place right now. But Americans have never failed to accomplish anything so long as they have done it together. Americans have never been defeated so long as they've been united. And I don't believe they will be defeated now.

I don't know that for a fact. I can't prove it because what convinces me that a new dawn is coming is based on polling statistics.  Polling statistics don't necessarily reflect on-the-ground difficulties and polls have margins of error and the incumbent president is empowered to exercise his corruption to the fullest extent of his office. There are serious problems ahead. Massive, taxing battles that will cost us dearly. Success is not assured. I don't know that you'll win it. But I hope it. And I am counting on it.

(Yes, I'm intentionally quoting some of my (reluctantly) favourite Americans.)

(I cannot emphasize enough in the name of Quinn's cat, Wade's teddy bear, Rembrandt's afro and the Professor's three piece suit that the views of ireactions do not reflect those of the Sliders.tv community.)

Yes.

**

Trump inexplicably bragged to Bob Woodward that Trump knew the virus was deadly and a pandemic was real but lied about it in public. Woodward has released the audio recordings. https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/pol … 768376002/

In another piece of bizarre Trumpian projection, Trump blamed Biden for failing to lay out a national mask mandate. https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/pol … 814307002/

It’s a nonsensical accusation because former Vice President Biden has no authority to enact a national mask mandate because he is not currently president. It’s like under the bluster, Trump already considers Biden president and has accepted defeat.

But I wouldn’t get comfortable. With the USPS slowing the mail and gerrymandering and voter intimidation and roll purges, it’s going to take a landslide for Democrats to eke out a win.

I want to explain how Jerry clearly had no respect for SLIDERS until 2002 or so -- but it occurs to me that I should stop holding Jerry O'Connell -- and myself -- in contempt for what we did or didn't do between the ages of 20 - 24. And instead focus on what we are doing today. In that spirit, this is Jerry's Screen Rant interview from September 7:

Well, I believe in America. I mean, I just read the entire SECRET EMPIRE storyline on Marvel Unlimited where Captain America is rewritten into a HYDRA agent who believes that the Nazis originally won WWII until history was altered and he only just got his true memories back. I felt great relief when the original Captain America was restored and returned to take his counterpart to jail and found the story a pointed commentary on the modern era. I believe in what it had to offer.

And I believe that, ultimately, Trump's efforts to curtail and prevent the vote will backfire: that DeJoy will be too intimidated by a House investigation and his prominent and likely criminal profile to stop mail-in voting anymore than he already has and that the measures to bypass his interference will be successful. That Trump's efforts to seize the ballot boxes before the votes can be counted will be curtailed due to his own ineptitude and effective legal challenges from the Democrats who are already preparing for it. That Biden's victory will be so obvious and thorough on Election Night that counting the mail-in ballots becomes a formality rather than a blue shift. That cooler heads will prevail. That Trump, demoralized and boxed in, will flee in terror and abandon his efforts as he has so many failed business ventures.

Admittedly...

I don't know that things will work out. But I hope it. And I have faith in the ideals of this country and the people who live in it.

**

In other news, the Trump campaign has gone from a $1 billion war chest that Obama worried about to having $200 million left in the bank despite being six to ten points behind Biden. How could they have spent so much and had so little to show for it? The answer: Trump has been using campaign funds to pay his own legal fees, to hand massive amounts to his family members, and spent little of his campaign budget on the actual campaign. In addition, his fundraising has flatlined badly because he refuses to engage in the 90 minute Zoom sessions that have allowed the Biden campaign to rise and catch up financially.

https://slate.com/news-and-politics/202 … -cash.html

I think you have a point about the economics of audioplays. Amazon is a giant. Yet, Amazon Audible operated on a peanuts model for THE X-FILES. Rather than commission new material meant for the visualess format of audio drama, they used comic book scripts that need visuals to function. Why use something so unsuitable? Probably because they only needed to pay a small fee to writer Joe Harris to secure the material and didn't have to hire a writer; the director, Dirk Maggs, had to adapt the scripts to audio as part of his existing duties.

Amazon Audible hired David Duchovny and Gillian Anderson and many of the series' performers -- but they had replacement actors for Annabeth Gish (Reyes), Robert Patrick (Doggett), Nicholas Lea (Krycek), Steven Williams (X) and Jerry Hardin (Deep Throat). Not soundalikes -- just replacements. And the budget was so small that there were no rehearsals. The actors recorded it as they read it for the first time. It was like someone had assembled the play from the actors' voicemail messages. It sounded disconnected and detached.

Amazon clearly didn't see much earning potential in THE X-FILES and didn't want to invest in getting all the actors or a script suited to the medium or even a readthrough.

But I do think SLIDERS could work on audio as part of an initiative to create audio drama for a mainstream audience if NBCUniversal wants to try tapping into the podcast market with a small streaming service and a subscription fee that is low in cost but would be affordable for a high number of subscribers.

I can imagine NBCU Audio Originals as a brand headlined by SLIDERS, KOJAK, SEAQUEST, THE MUNSTERS, EUREKA, FARSCAPE and WAREHOUSE 13. I can see it as a low cost, high volume subscription service for podcasts. $5 a month. Entertainment for the commuter with earbuds or car stereo or for listening at home. Actors recording from home with equipment and sound blocking gear sent by courier.

Jerry and John shouldn't and wouldn't work for free. But if this hypothetical streaming service offered them a small upfront fee but a percentage of subscription gross based on the number of listens to the SLIDERS audioplays, they might sign for a year's worth of audio recording sessions with the caveat that if there is a second year, they need to be paid their usual rate upfront.

The human element is very present in the animated films ANASTASIA and TITAN A.E. (both by Gary Goldman and Don Bluth). The characters have a lot of physical interaction with their surroundings and each other, circling, pacing, touching, recoiling. They have most of the nuances of live action actors.

But this is achieved by the directors' process of hiring actual performers to act out the scripted scenes in front of them which they film and record -- and then they use it as reference when animating the characters to add in the body language and physicality that they see in the human performers.

This is pretty slow and unaffordable for most TV animated projects.

I regret to say I don't see this moving the needle. Trump supporters will either declare that Trump is right to call veterans names or deny he said it or claim there was some nuance to his statement that twists it to say that veterans aren't treated well. We've all seen Informant claim that Trump's inauguration crowds were huge or that Trump didn't mock a disabled reporter and was merely gesturing or that Trump isn't a white supremacist and merely respectful of history and Informant isn't even stupid, just determined to guard his cult.

I want to believe what Biden says about most Americans being decent, but the truth is that 40 per cent of them feel validated by their current president and while 40 per cent is less than most, it's alarmingly close to half.

I'm not aware of these other definitions, but because it's you, I'm sure it's some juvenile sexual euphemism of which I know nothing but it's likely something you'd catch and remove from one of my screenplays because it'd be distracting to a large number of readers.

I feel like Margot Robbie's insistence on an R-rating and the title BIRDS OF PREY really harmed the success of the film. I like Slider_Quinn21's vision of a more DC Extended Universe oriented Harley Quinn movie. But I like the BIRDS OF PREY movie exactly like it is except that it has the wrong name and it has a few expletives that, if cut, would have allowed teen girls to watch it in theatres. I didn't even realize this was a Harley Quinn movie because of the title until my cineplex changed the marquee and online ticket listings to read HARLEY QUINN AND THE BIRDS OF PREY. Teenaged girls who would love to imagine themselves as Harley Quinn or in Harley Quinn's girl gang could not see this movie. It hid itself from the audience to whom it would have meant the most and even if they could find it, they wouldn't be allowed to see it.

With BIRDS OF PREY, Margot Robbie insisted on keeping a title and a rating that were ultimately irrelevant to her content, simply because she had a vision of Harley Quinn in an R-rated movie called BIRDS OF PREY. And it was pointless and self-destructive and I just do not understand this person at all and neither could the movie theatres which changed the name of the movie in their listings.

I think any real movement in the polls is variability in enthusiasm among voters who have largely made up their minds. The question is whether or not they'll be able to vote. Slate.com has released a guide on the best way to vote in each state: https://slate.com/news-and-politics/202 … guide.html

In 2016, the main problem with Democrats was that voters who disliked Trump and Clinton equally and went with the lesser known politician. In 2020, those voters who dislike Trump and Biden equally are going with the one who is inclined to save them from COVID-19 rather than pretending that it'll magically disappear with no federal response.

As for those who support a president who's collapsed their economy, destroyed their jobs, attacked their health care and intends to let them die without lifting a finger to help them -- they're in a cult of personality where their fealty and independent thinking have been subsumed to following their chosen leader rather than see that they voted and will vote again for someone who has betrayed them. It insulates them from seeing the horror of their situation and so they march in streets unmasked, call Dr. Fauci a fraud for telling them hard truths and claim a gunman who shot unarmed man was acting in self defense when he fired on those trying to disarm him. (By this logic, a murderer can only be charged for his first kill and the rest of his body count doesn't count at all.)

Then there who see Trump clearly and will vote for him because they are fortunate to benefit economically from Trump. Such supporters have seized upon the COVID crisis to extract more wealth from the poor.

The rest see Trump for what he is: someone who will inflict his views on people with coersion, rhetoric, attacks drawing on improvised fantasy -- and they admire that because they too go through the world shouting down anyone who disagrees with them, seeking to defeat them with volume and grievance rather than facts and respect for subjectivity.

Informant called you and me liars for viewing the Marvel Cinematic Universe as a success for releasing 13 hit movies in eight years and viewing the DC Extended Universe as a failure. (The DCEU is airing its finale on a streaming network.) He admired that Trump didn't need facts, information, teamwork, curiosity or any need to update his views based on information, even unwelcome information. Informant likes a bully. A lot of Trump supporters do and might feel diminished by a pandemic only to be fired up by a convention that pretends the pandemic doesn't exist and encourages them to do the same.

I don't want to believe that's all Americans. I confess that I think poorly of Americans because I see most of them as Trump and Informant. But in recent weeks, I listen to Grandpop and I don't see you that way at all. I see this:

Biden has not done anything to piss me off in three whole weeks and he keeps doing everything I ask him to do in my fan mail including requesting the release of Tara Reade's documents, reminding the world that he has a stutter, adopting the Green New Deal in all but name and handling crazy people with calm.

(Biden emerged from a limo in Pittsburgh carrying three boxes of pizza for some firefighters at their station. A heckler standing atop a truck started screaming at Biden about how Biden was going to eliminate fracking and decimate the oil and gas industry. I feared another crazed eruption of incoherence from Grandpa Joe, but Biden merely looked at the man sternly and called out, "Don't jump!" Thank God. Let's see if Gramps can make it one more week without blowing his stack and then it'll have been a month.)

I realize that it is obvious to you, Grizzlor. But it's not obvious to me. I am not a pollster. I am just very agitated about this race and I appreciate Cohn and Silver explaining the numbers because I wouldn't otherwise understand them. I'm not Temporal Flux; I'm not good at EVERYTHING.

Chadwick Boseman has passed away.
https://variety.com/2020/film/news/chad … 234753232/

It's deranged that the Republican National Convention was effectively a superspreader event on the White House lawn with few masks and zero social distancing. Trump is so desperate for the adulation of crowds that he's prepared to kill the people who would vote for him. It's literally diseased.

Mary Trump, his niece, remarked that Uncle Donald talks as though Joe Biden is already president and Trump is trying to unseat him, an interesting bit of projection on Trump's part.

Well, since winning the nomination, Biden (and Sanders and Warren) have assembled a platform. The platform is to create industry that addresses the climate crisis with the belief that Americans can earn a good living by entering newly created professions that will produce zero-waste energy and ecologically sound transportation, manufacturing, infrastructure and technology -- and also exercise the Defense Production Act of 1950 to produce COVID-19 medications, vaccines, tests and protective equipment. Medicare for all senior citizens, student debt forgiveness, increased tuition grants, police reform (but not defunding), a public option to Obamacare (but not Medicare for All), a return to all abandoned climate change accords.

The Democrats have effectively done what Slider_Quinn21 advised. They have presented themselves as problem solvers and crisis management professionals. They are here to help and serve. They have a plan (from Elizabeth Warren) for the pandemic. They have a plan (from Elizabeth Warren) for the climate crisis. They have a plan (stenciled from Bernie Sanders) for student debt and the economy. More importantly (and frustratingly), they have declared that they are a party of triangulators and centrists who will welcome Republicans and Democrats alike.

Vox had a neat article about how Joe Biden's platform is that he likes you; that Biden believes a president's job is to like every American even if only some of them support him. https://www.vox.com/2020/8/21/21387131/ … nce-speech

Joe Biden is apparently so likable that even neo-Nazi Richard Spencer endorsed him and declared Make America Great Again a failed movement -- to the horror of the Biden campaign which hurriedly repudiated neo-Nazi Richard Spencer. But you know it's significant when neo-Nazi Richard Spencer favours Biden and declare that he'll be voting for Democrats across the board. It isn't because neo-Nazi Richard Spencer found a soul, of course. It's because COVID-19 infects neo-Nazis just as much as people of colour and Jews and neo-Nazi Richard Spencer isn't suicidal. https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics … r-BB18ktto

I'm not really sure where we stand on USPS right now. Postmaster DeJoy insists all service slowdowns were unintentional and temporary and that he supports mail-in voting and plans to use it himself -- but he's also refusing to reconnect the decommissioned sorting machines. Pelosi has declared that his capitulation is a lie and postal workers on the ground level have reported that despite DeJoy's public statements, he hasn't rolled back his changes or reinstated overtime.

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/pol … 608724002/

USPS has assembled a bipartisan elections committee to oversee mail-in voting. https://www.prnewswire.com/news-release … 16553.html

Democrats have demanded that this same committee provide weekly reports on DeJoy and USPS.
https://www.democrats.senate.gov/newsro … ccountable

USPS have launched a website to guide people in how to mail their ballots. https://about.usps.com/what/government- … tion-mail/

Democrats and the Biden campaign continue to mount legal challenges against Trump's efforts to curtail mail-in voting. https://www.politico.com/news/2020/08/2 … lan-399671

I'm not that keen on THE SNYDER CUT personally -- but it's important to remember that Snyder's approach has an audience and is very popular. It just wasn't popular to the point of earning the one billion in box office that WB hoped for. But a lot of people watched and enjoyed MAN OF STEEL and BATMAN VS. SUPERMAN: DAWN OF JUSTICE (actual title) and a lot of people wanted THE SNYDER CUT. The majority of the people who watched JUSTICE LEAGUE were not happy with it. The only people I know to enjoy JUSTICE LEAGUE are you, me, Informant and Kevin Smith. I've personally never met or talked to anyone else who had any fondness for it.

Snyder, to me, is like Bryan Singer: Singer came aboard the X-MEN film for 2000 and he didn't like the X-Men. He found the costumes, codenames, backstories and the superhero universe to be ridiculous.

A lot of the X-MEN movie is making an effort to be serious, to take these absurd concepts and place them in a world that resembles our own except for the one fantasy element -- mutants -- spurring all other fantasy elements. And redressing them in a genre that Singer actually did like. So you have the school for mutants and technology and surroundings that, if they aren't like our world, exist due to mutants -- but everything else is close if not identical to our reality and with the look of a high tech military espionage thriller rather than the superhero genre.

Snyder's genre is horror. And with MAN OF STEEL and BATMAN VS. SUPERMAN: DAWN OF JUSTICE (actual title), he made a superhero film both times that used the style of a horror film, redressing superheroes in that style. Whether that worked or not is purely subjective, but JUSTICE LEAGUE suffers from Snyder's horror aesthetic having been ripped out of the film, replaced with Batman and Superman cracking jokes and pretty much every surviving frame of Snyder's film having been recoloured and brightened. The way in which a story is told is just as important as the content itself and for people who liked MAN OF STEEL and BATMAN VS. SUPERMAN: DAWN OF JUSTICE (actual title), the SNYDER CUT version of JUSTICE LEAGUE will offer a satisfactory conclusion.

I've personally never met or spoken to any of those people outside of Informant, but they exist in sizable numbers and enough of them will subscribe to HBO Max.

You could buy the Universal DVD sets separately. The quality won't be any different. Here's an eBay seller offering all five seasons. https://www.ebay.ca/itm/SLIDERS-Complet … SwqaRfLfBA

And if you're willing to buy used discs, you could get all the seasons for about $70 on Amazon. https://www.amazon.com/s?k=Sliders+DVD+ … _sb_noss_2

For Reasons, I have a Universal Season 3 set. It is the season of hell and I would actually pay you to take it away.

Snyder cut trailer: https://youtu.be/z6512XKKNkU

I'm not a huge fan of Zack Snyder, but I think that when a studio hires Zack Snyder, they should expect a Zack Snyder movie instead of a Joss Whedon movie and as much as I enjoyed JUSTICE LEAGUE (and I enoyed it a lot) -- WB, Geoff Johns, Diane Nelson and Jon Berg should have just let Snyder make the movie he was hired to make and let his team complete it instead of bringing in Whedon to change it. Would a Snyder film have been more successful? It would have at least had the benefit of standing or falling on its on merits.

I finished Season 7 of AGENTS OF SHIELD. I liked it. I really, really liked it. Despite the budget issues (hallways followed by hallways and more hallways), there was enough outdoor location filming in the first four episodes that the final nine, set in space, seemed appropriate in being set-bound. I loved the way the credits changed for each era.

I found making May into Counselor Troi from STAR TREK with empathic powers to be... a peculiar choice, to put it mildly. I don't really understand why they went that route with this reserved, physical character or how it served her despite being relevant to the plot with her ability to sense inhuman (haha) impostors.

I felt uncomfortable with Coulson being resurrected as a robot. I'm not sure the show dedicated enough time to confronting that this Life Model Decoy is not Coulson. It is a simulacrum of Coulson. It is a digital approximation. A guess. A pastiche. Admittedly, the counterfeit nature of Coulson fits in with AGENTS OF SHIELD having always struggled with the possibility that it isn't canonical to the Marvel Cinematic Universe movies, but the show doesn't really question the idea that the LMD Coulson should be accepted as the genuine article. As far as the show is concerned, Coulson is merely within a different physical form and the copied brain pattern from the end of Season 4 can be considered acceptably real.

The show definitely nods to it with the Chronicoms telling Coulson that he shouldn't be fighting for humans as he isn't even human at all, just a parody of one, but Coulson doesn't struggle with that. I'm not sure it would even be in character for him to be troubled by it, I admit. Coulson is my favourite superhero because he confronts endlessly deranged situations with can-do calm and positivity.

**

I really liked how Sousa from AGENT CARTER got a happy ending with Daisy Johnson. I wonder if / how / when the SHIELD we saw at the end of AGENTS OF SHIELD will be integrated (if at all) into the Marvel movies to come. All in all, I really liked Season 6 and 7 and I was relieved that after the endless dim hallways of Season 5, Seasons 6 - 7 were able to liven up the show a bit visually and provide a pleasing post-ENDGAME epilogue to the first five years.

It was a very good show and I will miss watching Chloe Bennett throw things around telekinetically and I will miss how the show kept reinventing itself every year, going from a children's spy show to renegade agents to facing down scientific madness in Inhumans and Hive to tackling magic with Ghost Rider and artificial intelligence with LMDs and the Framework and then space and aliens and then a season of time travel.

I think what I'll miss most is AGENTS OF SHIELD's mastery of switching from action and danger to sentiment. Season 3's grand action climax gave way to archenemies Lincoln and Hive sitting quietly in a shuttle about to burn up, contemplating the world they were leaving behind. Season 4 had the Framework version of Ward seeking forgiveness for his counterpart's crimes and Coulson delivering a speech against the Trump administration. Season 5 had Coulson confronted with the possibility that AGENTS OF SHIELD wasn't canon. Season 6 had Gemma and Daisy get high in an alien casino and blunder through a rescue mission. Season 7 had Mac telling Daisy that even if the team went their separated ways, they'd always be friends.

I hope to see Coulson again.