Here's the prizes from Hamilton Books that, due to my laziness, have finally been decided on.

Yesterday morning I had free passes to a 3D screening of The Smurfs so we figured that was as good a time as any to find out if my wife can handle the current 3D. It was actually a lot funnier than I expected (Hank Azaria and George Lopez had the best lines) but there were some depictions of cartoon violence in the real world that really made me uncomfortable, particularly some stuff with Azrael. Adults should be able to laugh at enough to tolerate and maybe even enjoy it, but I will warn you: it's a movie that's afraid to go more than five minutes and not have an action sequence.

Then we went to the Fright Night Film Festival (courtesy of my mother-in-law) and we sat in on a screening of Cross because a guy we know has a small part in it. They played it from the Blu-ray, which would have been fine for the size of the auditorium except the sound mix was screwed up and the middle channel was washed out. They switched discs and it was better but still hard to follow dialog during scenes with music. Anyway, the premise is that Brian Austin Green has inherited a supernatural Celtic cross and he leads a sort of A-Team of vigilantes. Michael Clarke Duncan is a gangster using his men to kidnap women who are determined to have descended from Egyptian gods so that their blood can be collected and used to power a staff created and used by Ra's daughter. It's got a light touch, the action is great and my generation that grew up with 80s action shows featuring people operating outside the law and Indiana Jones movies should be right at home with it.

I watched the newest release of The Crater Lake Monster, that's had it's video cleaned up. Now that I can see everything much clearer, it's even more evident that it's not Crater Lake. Crater Lake is a big ass lake inside a crater, it's not some lake out in the middle of the woods.

It's funny how silly some of the Star Trek movies are after all. So far Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country and Star Trek: First Contact are the creme of the crop.

I find this statement to be entirely inaccurate.

Which part do you find inaccurate? While I don't agree with the comment about how silly they are, hands down my 3 favorite Star Treks are II, VI, and First Contact. I don't have a particular order, it seems to change as I watch them again.

VI and First Contact are my favorites, after II

Thanks, Hamilton Books and GoldenWheels! I saw Damnation Alley in theaters as a kid and wonder how it's held up. I only remember a couple scenes.

The part about creme that didn't involve pt 2.

About to go see Captain America, got 2 free tickets when I bought Iron Man 1 & 2 on BR ($10 each). My DVD obsession almost didn't allow me to do this since they were the 1 disc versions...

This is my feeling, too, though I admit I can find enough to like about even the weak ones that I like 'em all. What I appreciate most about The Undiscovered Country is that it's one of the few Star Trek movies to have a socio-political commentary. That's the stuff that I always enjoyed most about Trek and I think those are the kinds of stories it does best. Plus, I love Christopher Plummer as General Chang.

First Contact was basically the most badass TNG ever was. Picard toting a rifle, sporting his hunting vest, Worf gets to do some fun stuff, and while I know a lot of fans decry the depiction of the Borg (particularly adding the Queen), I thought it played great as zombie/horror.

For my money, The Search for Spock and Insurrection are probably the two that I think get overlooked too often. The Search for Spock is all about the original crew's loyalty to one another, and I love seeing their solidarity tested like that. There's something rewarding about it. I admit Christopher Lloyd as Kruge isn't nearly as great as Ricardo Montalbon as Khan or Plummer as Chang, but for me the soul of the original series shines brightest in this movie.

As for Insurrection, I really had two problems with it. Firstly, I felt that Admiral Dougherty should never have become wishy washy in the end. It would have been a stronger story had he been driven by ideology. Secondly, in all honesty, my biggest problem with it in 1998 was that it wasn't First Contact II. It's its own movie and it took me several years to realize I hadn't judged it for what it was, rather than what it wasn't. Once I took it for what it sets out to be, I found I enjoyed it.

MinLShaw, I was about to ask what you thought of STII when I was dazzled by your deft apostrophe usage in the phrase "It's its own movie"--in these days of grammatical massacre in FB and other channels, I applaud you, sir!

Hands down, the most satisfying compliment I can recall receiving in a very long time. Typically, my adherence to spelling and grammar conventions goes unnoticed.

As for The Wrath of Khan, it's a terrific movie and my only real complaint about it is that it bothers me that this is often held up as the Alpha and Omega of Star Trek storytelling. To be fair, that infatuation is not confined to the realm of fans; the assorted screenwriters, producers and directors who have followed that film keep coming back to try to recreate it--typically with unimpressive results (looking at you in particular, Nemesis). I get tired of hearing "The best villain since Khan!" every time a new Star Trek script is written.

This is an external issue, though. It struck me while rewatching The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou last September for the Criterion Challenge just how similar it is to The Wrath of Khan--both, of course, owing to the template Herman Melville established in Moby Dick, upon which they both draw heavily. It might be fun to watch both those films back-to-back and see how they play together.

Trying not to derail the thread, but its/it's is my #1 grammatical pet peeve, even though I know it's a difficult issue (it's also the single most annoying "autocorrect" on the iphone.). I mention Facebook because I think these days of social media, forums, etc. have a lot of people writing who never wrote before who either don't know the rules or, worse, don't care. My status update today about usage had one person agreeing, commenting how she's driven crazy by "bad spelling and grammer [sic]."

Back on the sci-fi topic, I hate to admit I spent a lot of Sunday catching up on Chuck instead of padding my list. This is a resumption of my Make Your Own challenge because I really want to try to get caught up before the new season starts. Good news is that my brother-in-law and kid seem to have gotten hooked yesterday so I finally have some watching company.

It's/its is tied for me with you're/your. I'd just as soon they use "ur" instead of the wrong one. I cannot abide the notion that outside of an English classroom anyone should care about such things.

Going into the home stretch of the challenge, I see several check marks I still need that I'm not sure I'm going to get. I found it odd to see the 1940s the only required decade still unchecked. Gonna have to explore Netflix, because I don't have anything from the 40s in my library. I'm pleased that so far I've been able to abstain from Star Trek and make myself instead whittle away at my massive To See list.

syfy/sci-fi

Your/you're is definitely another annoying one.

I realized after my last post that I said I was going to talk about sci-fi then didn't, and couldn't edit my post from my phone.

My big goal of the challenge was going to be B5, but I realized early on that I was going to be hard-pressed for time and concentration so instead I've been picking off standalones here and there. I'm watching good stuff and checking off some to-watches, but I'm getting a little concerned that I'll ever watch B5 before I die.

Farscape was also a stretch goal, but the BD news makes me slide it back a little further on the shelf.

Wow! I'm amazed you do not have *anything* from that decade! There are some genuine classics from those years. Shame on you!

I'm down to 4-5 sci-fi/fantasy titles in my unopened pile and should be able to watch them before it's all over. I have a couple which will fit the animation challenge so I'll hold them over since most of my unopened animation is TV shows. That way I'll have a couple more movies to break up the half-hour stuff.

I managed to re-vamp my checklist to eliminate all duplicate entries. With the exception of the 3rd and 4th languages I added there are no titles appearing more than once on the "official" portion of the list!

How? I thought all they run now is "Ghost Hunter" type shows and WWF. At least that's all I ever see when running channels. I thought they changed the name because they no longer ran sci-fi and it would be false advertising to still call it the Sci-Fi channel when there was none to be found.

I see bad movies during the daytime, or at least on the weekends.

There weren't a lot of sci-fi movies made in the 1940s. Which classics are you thinking of? Science fiction didn't really become a viable film genre until the 1950s. The best ones from the '40s that I know are DR. CYCLOPS and two cartoons, Popeye in "Rocket to Mars" and Bugs Bunny in "Haredevil Hare" (which intro'd Marvin Martian). I haven't watched anything for this challenge from that decade yet either. I found a "List of science-fiction films of the 1940s" on Wikipedia and it's not very extensive (and probably not very accurate or complete either). Some are serials, many are horror films with vague sci-fi elements. Other than DR. CYCLOPS and MIGHTY JOE YOUNG (which may just barely be sci-fi), I don't know that I'd call any of them classics. And they don't even include the cartoons! Or CAPTAIN MARVEL! Here's the link:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of...s_of_the_1940s

I've seen about 12 from that list but only have about four in my collection to choose from for this challenge, one of which I saw for the B-movie challenge. I think I'll go with some eps. of FLASH GORDON CONQUERS THE UNIVERSE, which I always thought was 1939, but IMDB also says is 1940. Or choose a fantasy film that's not on the sci-fi list, like THIEF OF BAGDAD (1940) or A THOUSAND AND ONE NIGHTS (1945). (Any other significant '40s films in that genre? SINBAD THE SAILOR doesn't count--it was just a routine swashbuckler.)

It's true that there's a dearth of sci-fi in the 40s, but there are plenty of fantasy films, so I went with Between Two Worlds, an M.O.D. from the Warner Archive. It's a remake of an earlier film, Outward Bound, about a young couple who die and find themselves on a cruise ship bound for the Hereafter. The story is saccharine sweet and the destinations of the characters are easy to figure out, but I'm a sucker for John Garfield movies. This should have been in the putative Garfield box that WHV announced in 2007.

Yeah, the '40s was bigger on ghostly fantasies and afterlife stories; see: HERE COMES MR. JORDAN, A GUY NAMED JOE, STAIRWAY TO HEAVEN (aka A MATTER OF LIFE AND DEATH), BLITHE SPIRIT, THE GHOST AND MRS. MUIR, DOWN TO EARTH, THAT TOUCH OF VENUS, PORTRAIT OF JENNIE, and a bunch I'm forgetting. Heck, even IT'S A WONDERFUL LIFE would qualify. And I MARRIED A WITCH (the inspiration for "Bewitched") belongs in there somewhere. Not to mention numerous ghost stories that would better fit in the Horror challenge: THE UNINVITED, THE UNSEEN, DEAD OF NIGHT, etc.

Here's 75 films from the 1940s
http://www.imdb.com/search/title?gen...e_type=feature

If you have the Invisible Man, Frankenstein or Dracula Legacy sets from Universal, you'll have some in there. There's also a bunch of public domain films that can be seen online, either on youtube or archive.org

Hmm, I have the Frakenstein Legacy Set. I think I may have used Son of Frankestein for my 40's checklist item.

Also, Jean Cocteau's Beauty and the Beast qualifies for the 1940s and Foreign Language entries on the checklist, and the Blu-Ray is half-off right now in the B&N Criterion sale, along with The Thief of Baghdad.