...and Matt Drudge is acting like an idiot!

The headline story on his page right now is about the press embargo on Steven Spielberg's War of the Worlds. The Supreme Court decision taking away private property rights has a tiny red link just above that, but it's not screaming as much importance as whining German movie critics merits.

The WORST Supreme Court decision ever, bar none, and a summer blockbuster movie is what's considered the more vital of the two.

There's a lesson here but this is the sort of thing that's better for others to connect the dots on.

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America is DEAD! Supremes rule cities can destroy your home to make room for shopping mall

The notion of liberty - and this has especially been true with the notion of liberty in America - is based on the concept of personal property. That you and you alone know what is the best use of the land and possessions that you own, so long as you do not interfere with the right of others to do the same with their own.

No more.

The Supreme Court has ruled that cities can seize and destroy private homes and businesses to make way for private economic development.

Meaning that if you have a small business, and there's an even BIGGER business (like Wal-Mart) that wants to build a store where YOUR business is, the town you live in can side with Wal-Mart and destroy everything you've done with your own business, just so they can build their store.

This is the kind of thing that makes it seem pretty damn sensible to run out and burn a flag in protest. Why not? There is no more America.

Let this country crumble into ruin. I don't care anymore. Not when IDIOTS like the five justices that voted in favor of this are so damned blind that... THIS JUST SUCKS DONKEYS BALLS TO NO END, YOU KNOW WHAT I MEAN??!?!!

This may finally be what drives too many people up against the wall for the last time. That's the only silver lining I'm seeing to this. It is finally "that time", if you've ever read Claire Wolfe's stuff. Because if government can side with big business to take away everything you have, what is there that's really left to lose? What might that drive some people to do?

When property rights are dead, America is dead.

'Nuff said.

"The moment the idea is admitted into society that property is not as sacred as the law of God, and that there is not a force of law and public justice to protect it, anarchy and tyranny commence. Property must be secured or liberty cannot exist."

-- John Adams, Founding Father, 2nd US President

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Sauron has an Eye in the sky...

All together now: "One Ring to rule them all, One Ring to find them, One Ring to bring them all, and in the darkness bind them..."

That's actually the star Fomalhaut at the center of the picture, 25 light-years from our solar system, as seen through the Hubble telescope. NewScientistSpace.com has more about this cosmic "Lord of the Ring".

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Anti-flag desecration law takes huge goose-step forward

Well, the House of Representatives voted 286-130 to give itself the constitutional power to ban flag-burning and other acts against the American flag.

Dear God in Heaven, this is so scary a step, I've no idea where to begin.

Since it's so fashionable to put things in the context of the Nazis lately, I'll go ahead and say it: after reading this article, and the power and veneration that some want to ascribe to our flag, it sounds too much like die Blutfahne. See what Google will come up with for that term, and tell me that this isn't the same. It's a government imbuing a piece of cloth with mystical power, making it an object of worship instead of a symbol for something.

Maybe it's just as well: what the American flag symbolizes went away and died a long time ago already anyway.

Growing up as a Boy Scout I learned how to respect the flag, how to fold it properly, everything about its history and the things better men than I'll ever be did to keep that flag - and what it stands for - proudly waving for the sake of those yet to come. I'm damned ashamed that we've let them down. And I never thought the day would come when my own cherished American flag would start to become a symbol of fascism.

No, I'm not gonna take that back.

Ironic, that the American flag is now being "defended" by the same people that raped it of everything it used to stand for.

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Few quick notes...

The biggest post (I think) that I've ever done to this blog will be up sometime either today or tomorrow. Have been working on it for the past week or two. Wish I didn't have to do this, but some things need to be said, and I've got to be thorough. Going to set some things straight and call the bluff on some people.

On the HAPPIER side of things, within the next hour or so I'll be doing my very first "pod-cast" thingy, talking with an entertainment editor about Forcery. The link to that will be on this page as soon as possible.

The "blooper reel" for Forcery should be online tomorrow morning sometime. It's a real scream!

Ummmm... that's all I can think of at the moment.

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They're coming to dunk YOU! Southern Baptists want 1 million baptisms in 1 year

This is just so wrong. Totally, completely wrong. This misses the mark bigtime on what we're supposed to be doing as Christians. From the Associated Press via Yahoo!...

Baptists Aim to Baptize 1 Million Members

By LUCAS L. JOHNSON II, Associated Press Writer Mon Jun 20, 5:06 PM ET

NASHVILLE, Tenn. - The annual meeting of Southern Baptist Convention will help kick off what may be the denomination's most ambitious outreach effort ever — baptizing 1 million new members in a year.

Headquartered in Nashville, the 16.3 million-member faith is the second-largest denomination in the United States, behind the Roman Catholic Church. Yet the number of new member baptisms has declined in each of the past five years.

"We have been playing it too close to the church," said President Bobby Welch, who will speak at the opening of the two-day convention Tuesday following a satellite address by President Bush. "Southern Baptists have to reconnect themselves with the communities and the needs of the people in the communities."

Welch said complacency among Southern Baptists is a big part of the reason for the slide, and it's an issue he plans to address in his speech to an expected crowd of about 9,000.

After he was elected president last year, the 62-year-old Welch began preparing for the baptism initiative with a bus tour of the United States and Canada to show "the convention is concerned about being involved in everybody's life."

Out of that tour came the baptismal theme for this year's convention, "Everyone Can."...

This right here is the biggest failure of modern Christianity. Okay, I'll even say of the modern world. Of human nature since the dawn of time even. But that doesn't mean the body of Christ has to emulate it. I'm talking about this whole fixation on "strength in numbers". See, the Southern Baptist Convention is making the mistake of equating prominence in this world with spiritual success. Maybe even with righteousness before God. In all brutal honesty it's pretty disquieting that they're even considering doing such a thing from this kind of motivation. Baptists - of whatever flavor - have traditionally been ardent believers in the individual's place before God, not how that individual contributes to a carnal collective. It's partly the reason why (believe it or not) Baptists have also usually been the ones most in favor of separating church and state. But now the Southern Baptist Convention is taking the position that individuals do not matter, only how much strength that individual gives to the churches as a corporate body... for the convention's sake, not the individual.

If this isn't the sin of pride on a grand scale, I don't know what is.

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$60 oil but altering refineries still too sour for petrol industry

Crude oil is at a record high of $60 per barrel right now. I've seen serious speculation that $70 may not be that far away. When that happens it might not be that bad an idea to start studying those wonderful "Mad Max" movies for important tips like how to wage war for a tank of juice and how to go out into the wasteland to learn to live again...

Here's what I can't figure out: some credible analysts are saying that we are fast approaching (if not already reached) the point of "Peak Oil", when demand will vastly outstrip supply. But Peak Oil is a position based on current production, with what is available now to keep supplies constant. For the most part that's dealing only with "sweet" crude oil: meaning the oil has a low (less than 5%) sulfur content. That's what most of the refineries operated by oil companies are set up to crack. In contrast, so-called "sour" crude - which has a much higher percentage of sulfur - isn't being refined that much at all, and by most indications there's plenty of the stuff that can be readily tapped and pumped.

The problem is, refineries that process sweet crude can't handle the sour crude. At least not without a lot of upgrading and modifications. It can be done, but it's a step that major oil companies have been loath to take as yet. And when you think about it they've got a vested interest NOT to upgrade the sweet refineries: increasing the supply means cheaper oil. Which means they stand to make less profit than they are now. It would also be expensive in the short term to make the modifications.

But with the price of oil skyrocketing, what choice do they have but to start tapping and processing the sour crude, if they are going to still make a profit at all?

There is still oil to be pumped, although sooner or later (and better it be sooner) we're gonna have to switch over to something more plentiful, like corn oil or propane or hydrogen cells. Such energy alternatives would be a lot cleaner too. Not to mention more energy-efficient. The only reason petroleum-based products are still used now is because crude oil has bragging rights on being the fuel that was first most abundantly available. Now we know there are other options to choose from. Between here and there we're looking at a transitional period that, if we are approaching Peak Oil, we've got no choice but to start refining the sour crude, regardless of immediate cost concerns.

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The Doctor is IN: new Who rocks!

Well, at last, earlier today I finally got to watch some of the episodes of the new Doctor Who series from the BBC.

It still ain't got American distribution though. Not even BBC America, which is the obvious place for it to go if not on the Sci-Fi Channel (and they really, shoulda, oughtta look at getting the rights to this). I've been wanting to watch it for some time but unless you're actually living in the United Kingdom the only way to feasibly see it is download it from a "torrent", which for some reason seemed like too much effort to even learn how to do in order to just download a TV episode. Yeah I'm somewhat of a neo-Luddite, or a Mennonite: I have to be able to trust anything technological before I actually use it for anything. But I really wanted to see this now 'cuz last night was the season finale, so for the past couple of days I made myself learn all about file torrents and the like. Am trying out a few clients but right now it's a tossup between BitTorrent and BitComet, and of the two BitComet was the one I actually used earlier this morning to get the files. Turns out it was far easier than I thought to not only download the stuff but to look for them. Think I've found a whole new toy to play with :-)

But maybe more on that later. Let's talk Time Lord.

Fan of the Daleks that I am, I downloaded Dalek and last night's finale The Parting of the Ways, and Bad Wolf is streaming in right now. I've no doubt that the next few days will see the other episodes from this season filling up my hard drive...

...because this new Doctor Who show kicks serious boo-tay!! And you know, maybe it WAS a good thing that the show has been "on hiatus" since 1989: because this is a Doctor that's completely faithful and sincere to the spirit of the original series, but also EXTREMELY fresh in style and production. It reminds me a lot of Sci-Fi Channel's Battlestar Galactica, yeah it's THAT kind of good.

I just wish that I'd caught more of Christopher Eccleston as the Doctor before this weekend, because after just two episodes he's already my all-time favorite regeneration (speaking of which, BBC has said that this is the same Doctor as the one we previously saw in Tom Baker, Sylvester McCoy and the rest, including the Paul McGann one that was in the Fox TV movie). Eccleston's Doctor is like Tom Baker pumped-up on amphetamines chased down with a shot of Jack Daniels. He's manic, but also extremely focused on wherever fate or the TARDIS (his somewhat-trusty time machine) lands him. I want to see more of him in the worst way. Unfortunately after I finish downloading all of these other episodes that will be IT for Christopher Eccleston 'cuz last night he bowed-out after just one season, did the traditional "regeneration" scene that had the Doctor changing into a new form played by David Tennant. I hope Tennant plans to stay awhile, 'cuz according to Whovian lore them Time Lords only get 12 regenerations, and he's on life #10 already (let's not even get into that whole Valeyard mess awright?)

Anyway, watching these two episodes was a real pleasure. Dalek had the Doctor and his lovely companion Rose (played by Billie Piper, and the Doctor always winds up travelling with someone - usually a comely young lass - from Earth) materializing in an underground bunker beneath the Utah desert of 2012. Seems that Henry van Statten, an insane industrialist who "owns the Internet" has also been collecting alien artifacts that crash on Earth. The prize of his collection is a Dalek, still alive deep within its life-support armor. I won't say anymore lest it lead to excess spoilerage but Dalek was at once something very outrageous, hilarious... and heart-touching. It was a COMPLETELY different tale than what I would have expected from a Dalek-centered story, but it really delivered the goods. It also made a little bit of Doctor Who history, since I don't think there's ever been THAT good a look at the actual Dalek creature ever before.

I need to watch the episode immediately preceding The Parting of the Ways before I can really appreciate the season finale, but it was the same level of high-quality that Dalek had been, if not ratcheted up a few notches more. The BBC had been putting trailers on the official Doctor Who website in the days leading up to the episode's airing (or "transmission" as our Brittish brethren like to call it) that hinted at something - massive - that would be revealed. That turned out to be the Emperor Dalek: one of the most grandiose and obscene creations in more than forty years of the Who saga. Again, no spoilerage but I have to make note of my favorite thing in the entire episode: it takes place 200,000 years in Earth's future, aboard an orbiting space station that beams out television shows to human colonies. One of them is The Weakest Link hosted by a robot named "Anne Droid"... voiced by none other than Anne Robinson herself! Now imagine Anne Robinson with a particle beam cannon in her mouth and when she tells you "goodbye!" it's goodbye for good... heh-heh.

Darnnit, can't believe I came to this party this late. And after I'd been telling my wife how much I was looking forward to seeing the good Doctor in new adventures, too. Well, I won't be letting THAT happen again... thanks to the miracle of peer-to-peer file sharing :-) So if ya got one of these torrent clients on your 'puter, this is as good a thing as any to download with it. And if not, you've a damned good reason to start learning how to find and download torrents now. Get to work!

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A second helping of Batman Begins

It was a reunion of sorts last night, getting together with "Weird" Ed and Chad for the first time we've been together since Forcery's release a few weeks ago, and got to catch up with a guy named Andrew, a really cool dude I used to work with from the old Elon days (hadn't seen him in six years). I was the only one of the bunch that had seen Batman Begins already so it was sort of my own little kick to watch their reactions to stuff in the movie.

I may catch Star Wars Episode III once or twice more this summer, but Batman Begins is by far my hands-down favorite of this season. And it only got better with a second viewing. There were a lot of little details that I noticed this time around (example: (SPOILER highlight to read) the second time we see Zsaz - after the inmates are set loose from Arkham - I saw that he DOES have the "notch marks" carved in his flesh, just like in the comic books). A few other things too, like (not quite a spoiler) the explanation for that line that Batman swings around on: Morgan Freeman's character Lucius Fox is describing something a LOT like nano-tubules, so that isn't a stretch from reality at all.

Well, suffice it to say that all three of my comrades loved it. We wound up talking about it quite a bit afterward. And it was a relief knowing that we could finally wash the decaying remains that was the abortion of a Batman movie that Joel Schumacher did out of our brains forevermore amen.

Gotta talk about the music.

'Cuz right after we finished up I went to Target and bought the soundtrack CD. It's now loaded up on my 20-gigabyte MP3 player. And I've no doubt that a slew of speeding tickets is in my future when I crank up track 10 - "Molossus" - while driving my car. It's got that same "push to the limit" umph to it that "Duel of the Fates" had when the Star Wars Episode I soundtrack came out, that "Battle of the Heroes" in Episode III has too. But THIS one is actually composed with driving a car in mind: ain't no telling how much carnage James Newton Howard and Hans Zimmer are going to wreck with this 'un.

Who knows, I might just watch Batman Begins again this afternoon. It sounded like Dad might be interested in giving this a looksee and he hasn't been to a movie theater in like five years, so I might just give him a treat for Father's Day :-)

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Maybe O.J. can find out whodunnit...

The BBC is reporting that the ice-pick - still stained with blood - used to kill Leon Trotsky has purportedly been found in Mexico City, sixty-five years after he was murdered.

Fascinating, if true. I've always thought that whoever did the deed was paid in rubles. And the money trail would lead all the way up to Joe Stalin himself.

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North Carolina legislators have found something new to tax: movies

Let's be blunt: the lawmakers of this state are, for the most part, idiots.

North Carolina is one of the most heavily-taxed states in the country, or at least east of the Mississippi River. Sooner or later anything and everything here has a tax, or a levy, or a fee, or some obscure penalty attached to it. Our fuel tax makes the average price of gas higher than that of any state around us. Too many cities and counties are raising property tax rates which I've never believed in anyway: if you have to pay money for land that you own then you don't really "own" that land at all, you're paying the government a "user's fee". There's talk of raising the tax on cigarettes... which I don't smoke and don't encourage anyone to, but in this state a higher tobacco tax is tantamount to fiscal suicide. Sales taxes keep going up. More taxes are levied on things like dining and hotels. Meantime this state's governments are out of control when it comes to spending. I haven't had time to lately but first opportunity I'm going to look through the current budget proposal and report on any ridiculous appropriations... and there will be some, believe you me. The school systems here are a wreck because more money goes to administration than goes to actual teaching (one more reason why North Carolina needs a state lottery to shore up education, like what Georgia does with its game). This state's legislators aren't interested in cutting spending. They only spend more, and they never run out of things to tax to generate revenue from which to keep spending wastefully.

And now they want to hit both average North Carolina families and what could still be a major industry for this state: movies.

A little while ago I went to the theater to pick up some tickets for Batman Begins, 'cuz I'm going with three other friends this afternoon. The lady at the box office gave me a couple of fliers about Bill 622 in the North Carolina Senate, that would impose a 7% tax on movie tickets sold in this state. That's about $.40 per ticket. That may seem like chump change to some but for a family of four that's $1.60 extra they'd have to pay for an evening's entertainment. Over the course of a year that adds up. Lisa and I go to movies, on average, about once a month: figure that would be $9.60 going to North Carolina when we could be using it to buy already overly-priced popcorn (which is actually something I like). When you throw in seeing a movie four times already in the theater as I've done with Revenge of the Sith... well, you get the idea. And besides, it's just the principle of the thing: why the hell should I happily give over more of my money, even a little bit of it, when it's so well known for a fact that the state is just going to waste it too? When you have a drug addict you don't make him better by giving him more heroin, you take it away and put the guy through detox.

Imposing a higher movie tax (why should there be a movie tax at all anyway?) is just another line of coke for the druggie. It's not helping us and it's not doing the state any favors either.

Anyway, a group of North Carolina theater owners is banding together to fight this thing, and they've set up a good website that lays it all out better than I could that you might wanna check out, if you happen to live in this state. It makes the case for why this proposed tax is going to be seriously detrimental to not only the economy of North Carolina, but to families and communities as well.

When I said that most North Carolina legislators are idiots, I mean that. Some of them are pretty cool. But after meeting and talking to many of them in various capacities such as journalist, I've gotten the impression that too many of them are pretty sleazy when it comes to being entrusted with public funds. There's some phone numbers and addresses for several legislators on this anti-tax website: it wouldn't hurt to make some polite letters and phone calls to 'em and let them know that we're watching how far their hands go down into the cookie jar. We shouldn't have 'em putting it in our bags of movie theater popcorn either.

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Enough Star Wars to make you puke! Saga-inspired barf-bags at Virgin Airlines

Dad once told me that sooner or later "they're going to put Star Wars on everything" and looks like he was right. You can't make this up folks: from the official Star Wars website

All Too Queasy: Virgin Airlines' Unique Collectibles

June 14, 2005

While some Star Wars fans collect action figures or comics, others are on a quest to find unique items that most of us only notice when a plane ride gets a bit too action-packed. In collaboration with Virgin Airlines and Activision, LucasArts has released limited-edition airsickness bags to promote the Star Wars: Episode III Revenge of the Sith Video Game, available in stores now.

Available on Virgin Atlantic flights, the four designs include: Knowing Your Lightsaber, Lightsaber Etiquette, The Art of Jedi Combat and Seating Jedi and Sith. The backs of the bags all have the same Star Wars: Episode III Revenge of the Sith Video Game cover art. The collectible bags are limited in number and will be available while supplies last...

Steven Spielberg should have thought of this over twenty years ago: think about how Gremlins and Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom could have cashed in with this kind of licensing deal!

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Sony signs deal with Warners to run The Matrix Online (NOOOOOOO!!!)

Let's put it this way: Sony Online Entertainment did to Star Wars what Joel Schumacher did to Batman.

Ain't too much of a gamer but the concept of massive-multiplayer online role-playing games is utterly fascinating to me. And being a Star Wars die-hard I had to give Star Wars Galaxies a try. I was with it for a little more than a year before it got too boring. Blame SOE: they saturated what could have been a viable component of the Star Wars experience with too much visual material, not nearly enough content and NO idea what Star Wars is supposed to really be about (hint: it ain't thirty thousand Jedis running loose at the height of the Empire). I cancelled and swore that when a new Star Wars MMORPG comes out someday it better not be SOE at the helm or I ain't buying.

But even without Star Wars Galaxies, I had The Matrix Online: prolly the first videogame to use armchair philosophy as part of the action. It has its faults, but overall it's been a pleasurable enough pastime... 'cept today Warner Brothers announced they're going to hand the game over to Sony! Ooh-boy.

From the press release on Yahoo!:

Sony Online Entertainment and Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment Collaborate for Online Projects
Friday June 17, 8:00 am ET
SAN DIEGO and BURBANK, Calif., June 17 /PRNewswire/ -- Sony Online Entertainment Inc., and Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment today announced exclusive long-term licensing agreements allowing SOE to develop a DC Comics massively multiplayer online game for PC and next generation consoles, as well as the acquisition of The Matrix Online game by SOE.

"By working with Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment we will fuse the knowledge SOE has in the online space with some of Warner Bros.' phenomenal properties," said John Smedley, president, Sony Online Entertainment. "SOE will work closely with Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment and DC Comics to maintain the authenticity consumers demand from the DC Comics franchises. We will also take steps to continue the same high level of service that subscribers have come to expect from The Matrix Online game."

"Our goal is to deliver quality content and consistently advance our key properties within the online games space," said Jason Hall, senior vice president of Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment. "We've done just that with The Matrix Online. Because of our compelling work in developing and launching that game we can now move it over to the leaders in the MMO space, SOE. We look forward to working with SOE to enhance our overall services to massively multiplayer online gamers for The Matrix Online and a new DC Comics game..."

I can see it now: players running all over the Matrix looking for the elusive 8-track tape that will tell them which profession tree they have to master while a player-versus-player battle breaks out nearby involving twenty-seven "the One"s. Acquiring kung-fu will require a couch-crafting ability and those playing as spies will have NOTHING to actually spy on whatsoever, forever! SOE is going to take this game and make it like EverQuest just as they tried with Star Wars Galaxies... and in the end the Wachowski Brothers themselves will come out of seclusion brandishing katanas to pull the plug on what is now an abortion of a videogame, daring Sony to stop them.

Or, maybe they CAN make it a better game after all. But that better be a damned big alligator that they pull out of that hat.

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Talk about the pot calling the kettle black... (Bush on Iran elections)

Found this story at the BBC about comments President Bush made about elections in Iran and couldn't help but see this fly off the screen...

Mr Bush criticised Iran for blocking hundreds of reformist candidates from running.

"Power is in the hands of an unelected few who have retained power through an electoral process that ignores the basic requirements of democracy," he said.

Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, the former Iranian president, is the front-runner against three major rivals.

So lemme get this straight...

Having two major rivals that block any earnest attempts at reform and rig the system to keep hundreds of potential candidates off the ballot at all is considered "real democracy".

But having three major rivals that do the same thing is said to "suppress freedom".

And before we strut around as an "elected official", why don't we check those Diebold machines out, eh Mr. Bush?

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Just saw Batman Begins

Now THIS is the movie I wish we had gotten in 1989!! Everything about it is just darned perfect. I can't possibly count all the smaller things that are in this movie that are taken directly from the Batman comics. Finally it's a Batman movie that's NOT focused on the villain, but focused on Batman (how the heck did the '89 one get away with billing Jack Nicholson as the Joker over the hero?). How well does Batman Begins work? During the first good part of the movie, well into when Bruce Wayne returns back to Gotham, I found myself having forgotten that this was a Batman movie at all, because first and foremost it's a movie about Bruce Wayne as a character and thenhow he acquires the look, the gimmicks, the car etc. They could have titled this "Bruce Wayne Begins" and I would have been totally happy. One of the most devious bait-and-switch plans I've seen in any recent movies, a believable city they're running around in, a music score that never overwhelms the action, NOTHING... as in not a single element of the plot... feels out-of-place or without a basis in reality. This movie could be based on true events. It could even be happening right now, you'd think. And isn't the ending of this quite the novelty for a Batman movie: it resolved this movie's story, while blowing it all wide open for plenty more to come.

Okay, gotta run, but trust me: Batman Begins is well worth the five bucks for admission (and the fifty dollars you'll spend on outrageously overpriced confectionary).

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Cinematical reviews Forcery!

Well whaddya know... our little movie is getting around! Thanks to Cinematical for the kind words.

(And of COURSE he doesn't look too much like George Lucas: the man just got pulled out of a freezing car wreck, fercryingoutloud!!! :-P)

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Mike Tyson quitting boxing to become a missionary

Iron Mike never seemed to be the missionary type. I always figured him to be Chewish.

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