As a child of the 70s, I have long considered myself a Star Wars fan, which is why I impulsively decided to follow the link to "The Best Star Wars Trivia Quiz Questions to See How Much You Really Know" at Mental Floss dot com. The quiz has 100 questions, only the first 19 of which are in the category "Classic Trilogy (Episodes IV–VI)." But that's about where my fandom ends, so I figured I'd do pretty well. And I'm happy to report that I did know the name of Han Solo's ship and Luke Skywalker's trainer on Dagobah. But then I got to question 15.

15. What is the Emperor called in The Emperor Strikes Back?

I know I'm getting old, but I don't recall a movie named The Emperor Strikes Back in the "classic trilogy." And I certainly didn't know the answer.

Darth Sidious

Again, I'm old now, but I do remember a Darth Sidious who was the Sith Lord master of Darth Maul and later (after Maul gets cut in half) Darth Tyrannus and later (after Tyrannus gets decapitated) Darth Vader. (As Luke's trainer says of the Sith, "Always two there are. No more, no less." By which he clearly means a top half and a bottom half.) Darth Sidious was the evil alter ego of Sheev Palpatine, the representative of the planet Naboo in the Galactic Senate who manipulated events to rise to Supreme Chancellor before disbanding the Senate and ruling the galaxy as Emperor. So, yeah, Darth Sidious and the Emperor are the same person, but technically speaking, since Sidious wasn't introduced as a character until the fourth Star Wars movie, The Phantom Menace, no one called the Emperor that in any of the "classic trilogy" films, especially one that doesn't exist. (Point of fact: the prequels played so coy about Palpatine/Sidious's future as "The Emperor" that I have often wondered if Lucas expected contemporary audiences to be unaware they were all the same person.)

So I call bullshit. But what else should I expect from a piece of Internet clickbait in the post-truth culture in which we now live, where every major technology and media company has turned their content engines over to poorly curated supervised LLMs that "hallucinate" up to half their facts? The fault is clearly mine for expecting reality to live up to my fantasies of living in a more civilized age.

Happy May 4th to those who celebrate.

Comments (0) | Leave a Comment | Permalink | Tags: internet movies star wars trivia walter

19/2589. Vice Squad (1953)
Another day-in-the-life police procedural with hints of Dirty Harry. Edward G. Robinson plays a police captain willing to play a little dirty if it gets a cop killer off the streets. I liked it very much.

20/2590. The Enchanted Cottage (1945)
You know those movies where the girl who is supposed to be "ugly" just has a bad hair cut? Literally this. To be fair, it's supposed to be a fantasy for romantics, which I am not. But c'mon, try a little harder, Hollywood.

21/2591. Please Don't Destroy: The Treasure of Foggy Mountain (2023)
This does not get great critical reviews, and I get it. Plenty of people claim to love The Enchanted Cottage, and comedy is extra subjective. But this is funny. It's not after an Oscar. The silliness is the point. And I enjoyed it.

22/2592. The More the Merrier (1943)
I'm usually lukewarm on screwball comedies and romantic farces, and I'm especially tepid on Joel McCrea, but Jean Arthur and Charles Coburn are once again as delightful as they were in The Devil and Miss Jones. It's a winner.

23/2593. Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret. (2023)
I repeat once again that I am a sucker for coming-of-age stories, especially ones that feel so relatable to my own era, when I read this book. I'd've liked it even without Rachel McAdams. (But I also did like Rachel McAdams.)

More to come.

Comments (0) | Leave a Comment | Permalink | Tags: movies

Seeing that this blog doubles as my personal diary, I feel I need to make note of the passing of Friend Michael, killed too young by cancer.

Rummaging around my archives for a pic of Mike to commemorate the sad occasion, I found this, taken (probably by James) in the parking lot of Medieval Times in Lawrenceville in June 2013.

Talking comic books and acting like big dorks. Yeah, I think pretty accurately encapsulates our three decade friendship.

Thanks for the good times, Mike.

Comments (0) | Leave a Comment | Permalink | Tags: death friends georgia james lawrenceville mike superman

7/2577. More Than a Secretary (1936)
I keep confusing this movie with Skyscraper Souls, which was the last movie I watched in 2025, probably because both are about a professional woman who falls for a cad. In this one, Jean Arthur gets her man, but he's really not worth it, Jean.

8/2578. Cinema Paradiso (1988)
A very well told story about the early life of a man who falls in love with cinema itself. I read there's a director's cut that adds a bunch of story about the man's later life, but that could only possibly make this worse. Sometimes less really is more.

9/2579. Only Angels Have Wings (1939)
Jean Arthur again (TCM's Star of the Month), here with Cary Grant in an adventure tale about the early days of flight. Very entertaining.

10/2580. The Love Light (1921)
Less entertaining. It's kind of a silent version of The English Patient if that movie had been duller and taken place in the shadow of a light house. The last reel, with its a kidnapping and shipwreck, may have been necessary for a "happy" ending, but as much as I dislike The English Patient, it certainly knows that some endings shouldn't be happy.

12/2582. The Devil and Miss Jones (1941)
Not the one from the Golden Age of Porn. That's The Devil in Miss Jones. This one is a thoroughly delightful romantic comedy (starring Jean Arthur again) that is definitely worth watching. But be very careful when you're googling it at work.

More to come.

Comments (0) | Leave a Comment | Permalink | Tags: movies

In the Year of the Pandemic, 2020, "friend" Keith gifted me a copy of the video game The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt for PC. Keith likes it very, very much. I did not like either the first or second Witcher games, and after playing for a grand total of 6 hours, I decided I liked The Witcher 3 just as little. This is how I summed up that first experience for him back then:

So far there's only 1) a lot of talking with a bunch of characters who are all fucking assholes I want to kill (especially protagonist Geralt), and 2) me getting my ass handed to me (which isn't entirely unsatisfying because it means Gerald has died too).

Sounds like I had fun, no? But for various reasons, including a new and deep appreciation for another game from the same studio, Cyberpunk 2077, and the lingering doubt that I hadn't given it a fair enough shake the first time around, I decided I'd try Witcher 3 again on the Xbox this past week. My mistake. I made it a full 8 hours this time.

If you're unfamiliar, the game is 33% guiding your obtuse horse through bleak war-ravaged countryside modeled on the original Grimm brothers fairy tales (you know, the ones where witches pick their teeth with the bones of sugar-glazed abandoned children), 33% talking to assholes, and 33% being ambushed combat. I'll admit up front that even on the console I'm still bad at the combat. Very bad. Literally every type of enemy I have encountered in the game has killed me at least once. Some of them have killed me three, four, or more times. I'd finally had enough when the game sent me to a cave to be ambushed by a little goblin and his evil magic shadow... who together proceeded to kill me eight times in a row. With enough effort, I'm sure I could find the right tactics to eventually kill him (just like I eventually survived the mob of bandits who ambushed and killed me nine times in a row) and be rewarded with information on how to make killing him easier in future encounters. But I could get as much enjoyment from slamming my fingers in a car door, and I certainly don't look forward to whatever trick the game is planning to use to kill me next.

The only up side to this is that it appears to be a shared experience; if you Google reviews of this game, they will universally mention the lackluster and frustrating combat mechanics. That's definitely a feature, not a bug.

So if you're not supposed to play this "adventure" game for the killing, what's left? Those same reviews, including Keith's, universally applaud the storytelling. I cannot agree. Maybe I've never gotten deep enough into Geralt's quest to piss off everyone he meets, but I cannot buy in. Granted, this is a common Walter problem, especially with movies; I don't like spending any time with unpleasant characters. Does the story get great if I make it to the end? Sadly, like the number of licks it takes to get to the center of a Tootsie Pop, I'll never know.

Related side note: The characters most relevant to the story are all physically attractive (compared to most NPCs, who look like lepers who bathe in pig shit). And the cutscenes are frequently constructed with a pornographer's eye for finding ways to show these attractive characters naked. (I've never seen so many bare breasts in a video game that wasn't specifically about bare breasts.) Therefore, I'm suspicious that many of these glowing story reviews are influenced by something other than shallow characterization and the repetitive "fetch quest" plotting.

Now, I've been playing video games since before the country's first pandemic (1981's "Pac-Man Fever") which means I've played a lot of games. Maybe I'm getting soft in my old age, but with so many games available, I don't understand why anyone would spend the time to get better at this one. Keith, I don't know who hurt you badly enough that you find this kind of torture entertaining (you do know that the Internet is full of naked tits on demand, right?), but I'm done with The Witcher no matter how many they make.

Comments (0) | Leave a Comment | Permalink | Tags: friends keith video games

Netflix animation fest 2025!

110/2542. The Wild Robot (2024)
I spent too much of the movie wondering how the engineering of the robot was supposed to work, but once I got past that (or, more accurately, once I forced myself to recognize that the talking robot was just as unreal as the talking animals), I was charmed by the characters and appreciated how genuine the sentimentality felt compared to too many other tear-jerkers. A great piece of art and a worthy Oscar rival to Flow (which I still liked better).

111/2543. Paddington in Peru (2024)
By far the worst of the three Paddington movies but only because the first two are so truly great. This one remains quite watchable, especially thanks to Olivia Coleman's over-the-top surreality and Hugh Bonneville being Hugh Bonneville. (Although honestly, given the choice, I'd much rather re-watch either of the others for the tenth time than this one again.)

112/2544. Nimona (2023)
This might be my second favorite movie seen in 2025 after Kpop Demon Hunters, though I admit this is tailor-made for my specific interests. Nimona literally takes every medieval fantasy RPG-genre cliche and turns them inside out yet (mostly) avoids the cynicism that typically accompanies such deconstructionist approaches. Pay attention, Disney: this is the right way to turn a villain into a protagonist hero! I really, really liked it.

113/2545. Dog Man (2025)
Some children's animated movies manage to give something to the adults in the audience. Not this one. Though the art design is clever, the plot is just too thin (and the mute protagonist too bland) to hold my attention. If it had been an hour and half shorter, it could have made several amusing shorts. But as a feature? Yawn.

114/2546. Klaus (2019)
I watched this animated Christmas movie only because Netflix recommended it after I watched the series of animated movies above. I admit it's got some great animation and design (and Jason Schwartzman is perfect for his part), but Christmas... bah, humbug.

115/2547. The Mitchells vs. the Machines (2021)
Despite being a COVID-era movie, the "Evil Artificial Intelligence delivered through social media conquest the world" angle of this otherwise boilerplate coming-of-age adventure story could have been pulled straight from any 2025 clickbait article. None of the characters struck me as particularly unique or memorable, but maybe I've just seen the basic Hero's Journey plot too many times. I suspect this really sparkled with its target audience of tweens, as I would have loved it if it existed when I was twelve.

More to come.

Comments (0) | Leave a Comment | Permalink | Tags: movies

Recent circumstances conspired to take away my TCM but grant me a month of Netflix access. So, at the recommendation of Friend Ken, I started at the top:

104/2536. KPop Demon Hunters (2025)
If you wondered why Google reported that 6 of the top 10 Halloween costumes for 2025 were characters from this movie, the answer is simple: it's good. Very good. So good, in fact, I cannot believe that Sony and Netflix didn't negotiate a more traditional box office release. The creators learned all the right lessons from George Lucas's usual box of tricks, taking inspiration from a bunch of long pre-existing concepts and designs, blending them into a story of good versus evil in a lived-in world, and pouring the results into a time-tested, character-first dramatic format that is comfortable and rewarding to viewers. For extra Star Wars vibes: like Fox in '77, Netflix seemed totally unprepared for the flood of demands for kids' merchandise. History may not repeat itself, but it sure as hell stutters.

As amazing as John Williams is, what Star Wars does not have is pop songs. It's no accident that the Kpop soundtrack has had a very catchy (and plot advancing) song from the fictional Huntr/x at the top of the Billboard global charts for 15 weeks and counting. A song, I'll point out, that has a one-word title:

Golden

Kudos to all involved; I hope you like printing money. (Count me in for a Derpy Tiger Funko Pop! figure, if ya'll can ever actually get them to market.)

More to come.

Comments (2) | Leave a Comment | Permalink | Tags: friends ken kpop demon hunters movies music one word wonders

When my aunt told me I had to wear a mask to a masquerade ball she was throwing on Saturday, there was really only one option.

Beware, evildoers!

Comments (1) | Leave a Comment | Permalink | Tags: batman family kelley mom walter

I was much an enemy to monarchy before I came to Europe. I am ten thousand times more so since I have seen what they are. There is scarcely an evil known in these countries which may not be traced to their king as it’s source, nor a good which is not derived from the small fibres of republicanism existing among them. I can further say with safety there is not a crowned head in Europe whose talents or merit would entitle him to be elected a vestryman by the people of any parish in America. However I shall hope that before there is danger of this change taking place in the office of President, the good sense and free spirit of our countrymen will make the changes necessary to prevent it.

Comments (0) | Leave a Comment | Permalink | Tags: fuck you america history

30/2462. Alma's Rainbow (1994)
Another '90s black indie coming-of-age movie that aired on TCM, and also quite enjoyable, assuming you like '90s indies and/or coming-of-age movies, as I do. The pacing felt a little uneven, but that's adolescence, isn't it? I found it charming.

31/2463. Scarecrow (1973)
I've said it before, but it bears repeating after his recent, tragic death: When I was a kid, I didn't like watching Gene Hackman in a movie, but as I've aged, he's become a favorite. And it was in his memory that I watched this, which had been languishing on my DVR largely because I expected bad things from his co-star, Al Pacino (who I disliked as a kid and still dislike). In many ways, it's a dark, dark buddy road "comedy" movie based on Of Mice and Men with extra homosexual rape and mental breakdowns! The version I watched seemed to be edited in such a way as to only suggest the rape, but I read online several reviews that agree that the scene was more explicit in its first-run release. I don't know if that's true or another example of the Mandela Effect.

Coke by the barrel? Yes, please!

32/2464. The World, the Flesh and the Devil (1959)
A post-apocalyptic movie in which the only survivors are hung up on the fact that white and black people shouldn't kiss. Maybe this was as progressive as Red Scare 1959 Hollywood could get, but golly, I spent the movie very irritated that race was even as issue in the empty ruins of New York City. Maybe that was the point, but it's a frustrating viewing experience.

33/2465. The Domino Principle (1977)
More Gene Hackman! This time he's a imprisoned murderer recruited by The Government to carry out a clandestine execution. His wife (who he killed for) is played by Candice Bergman, dressed down in a bad wig to look just awful even by mid-70s style standards, and his best friend, Mickey Rooney, is given a plot twist that makes less than no sense. I didn't hate it, but really, only because of Hackman's skill at portraying a grumpy everyman scrambling to get out of proverbial quicksand.

More to come.

Comments (0) | Leave a Comment | Permalink | Tags: coke movies