Author | Lightnews

Benjamin D. Hutchins @zgryphon.bsky.social · 1h

I can't help but picture the drop pod being launched by someone throwing an enormous, sparking knife switch while yelling "Let us PROBE them, my brothers--FOR THE EMPEROR"

1 1

Benjamin D. Hutchins @zgryphon.bsky.social · 2h

Why am I watching cooking videos when I'm not allowed to eat? Do I WANT to have a psychotic episode?

(OTOH, it's giving me some good ideas for when the embargo lifts...)

Benjamin D. Hutchins @zgryphon.bsky.social · 2h

Despite playing Cyberpunk 2020 since high school in the late '80s, it took me until seeing the €$ symbol on an ATM in CP2077 to realize that the Eurodollar is literally supposed to be a conflation of the Euro and the US dollar. I think I like dollarpounds better. :)

1 1

Benjamin D. Hutchins @zgryphon.bsky.social · 3h

(Robert Wise died not long after the completion of the DVD Director's Edition, IIRC, so if they did in fact re-cut it Yet Again for Blu-ray, he wouldn't have ben directly involved, but they may just have re-cooked the digital scenes like Paramount said they wouldn't do. That's in character. :)

1

Benjamin D. Hutchins @zgryphon.bsky.social · 3h

oh wow. I wonder if that means they fixed the original director's cut after all, or if it's Yet Another Version altogether. The history of all the different ways that movie's been released over the decades is insane. :)

Either way, that's pretty cool.

1 1

Benjamin D. Hutchins @zgryphon.bsky.social · 3h

update: it's in the crockpot

1

Benjamin D. Hutchins @zgryphon.bsky.social · 3h

So, all of that digital remake work would have to be done again from scratch to create a high-definition version of the director's cut, and at the time I read about it, Paramount evidently didn't reckon it was worth bothering.

1 2

Benjamin D. Hutchins @zgryphon.bsky.social · 3h

I'm not sure. The last I heard, there couldn't be a hi-def Blu-Ray edition of the director's cut because of a supremely bad stroke of timing--they digitally re-rendered a bunch of the SFX shots JUST before the hi-def standard dropped, so it's all in SD resolution and can't be remastered up.

1 1

Benjamin D. Hutchins @zgryphon.bsky.social · 3h

I watched the original version so many times as a kid that the new audio tracks in the director's cut DVD edition really threw me off. All respect to Robert Wise, a legendary director, but I could never get into that version as a result, unfinished though the original is.

1 1

Benjamin D. Hutchins @zgryphon.bsky.social · 3h

Although my favorite PA announcement in sci-fi is still the robot voice from the early Enterprise scenes in the non-directors's-cut versions of ST:TMP: "Attention. Launch crews. A travel pod is now available. At Cargo 6. Travel pod available. Cargo 6."

1 1

Benjamin D. Hutchins @zgryphon.bsky.social · 4h

ah, the second-best PA announcement in the trilogy (after "Stand by. Stand by. Stand")

1 1

Benjamin D. Hutchins @zgryphon.bsky.social · 15h

"Hello, I love you, NOW GET LOST!!"

3

Benjamin D. Hutchins @zgryphon.bsky.social · 19h

Today I learned that the notorious sexploitation film Ilsa, She-Wolf of the SS was filmed on the abandoned set of Hogan's Heroes, which had been canceled several years prior. I say that means it canonically takes place at Stalag 13, after Col. Klink and Schultz were sent to the Eastern Front.

Benjamin D. Hutchins @zgryphon.bsky.social · 20h

"not much to report today. super low energy"

1

Benjamin D. Hutchins @zgryphon.bsky.social · 21h

Better to reign in Hell than to serve in Heaven. For everything else, there's Florida.

2

Benjamin D. Hutchins @zgryphon.bsky.social · 21h

And has now flounced back once more to run for the Senate next year.

The man is a political genital rash.

1

Benjamin D. Hutchins @zgryphon.bsky.social · 21h

Our state constitution is dumb. It imposes term limits on the governor and members of the Legislature... but not LIFE term limits. You have to sit out for one term and then you can run again. Which he did, and, mercifully for once, lost. And then flounced off again.

1 1

Benjamin D. Hutchins @zgryphon.bsky.social · 21h

Paul LePage made the same threat when he hit his term limit as governor and saw that the Republican candidate was unlikely to be elected to replace him. He then flounced off to Florida... until exactly the day he would have to re-establish Maine residency in order to run in the NEXT election.

1

Benjamin D. Hutchins @zgryphon.bsky.social · 21h

theatrical poster for the 1979 Disney live-action sci-fi film THE BLACK HOLE

2

Benjamin D. Hutchins @zgryphon.bsky.social · 1d

Huh, cool. I'll have to keep an eye out the next time I make a run to the DXL down there. (They closed the one in Bangor way back when the chain was still called Casual Male.)

I hear they have good hot dogs. At Costco, not the big+tall store.

1 3

Benjamin D. Hutchins @zgryphon.bsky.social · 1d

If I can summon up the energy, I think I'll make a pot of beef stew for my mother, even though I can't have any myself yet. It's definitely beef stew weather.

1 2

Benjamin D. Hutchins @zgryphon.bsky.social · 1d

(nod) Some weeks this is the best a person can do these days.

2

Benjamin D. Hutchins @zgryphon.bsky.social · 1d

Huh, I didn't know there was a Costco in Maine. Only Sam's and BJ's up this way.

1 1

Benjamin D. Hutchins @zgryphon.bsky.social · 1d

Oh, they're out? When I got my flu shot, the lady at the walk-in clinic told me the COVID and pneumonia shots weren't out yet, and they'd let me know when they were. I'll have to give them a call tomorrow.

1 1

Benjamin D. Hutchins @zgryphon.bsky.social · 1d

welp