I'm going to spoil the ending of Wolf Creek 2

I don't know if I can be blamed for that though, given that Greg McLean already sort of pre-spoiled the ending. How? Simple - Wolf Creek 2 has the exact same ending as Wolf Creek. Not in the broader 'one survivor, Rapist Crocodile Dundee is still out there' sense, but in the specific details of what happens.

A horribly brutalized guy is found at the side of the road.

Explanatory text lays out that at first the guy was suspected of being involved in the crimes, but then the cops let him go, baffled as to who might be committing all of these outback murders near Wolf Creek.

Shot of Mick walking away from the camera.

But I'm not here to just talk about shameless self-plagiarism. There's some plot nonsense to address as well. The violent acts that Mick commits in Wolf Creek 2 could not go largely unnoticed the way they did in Wolf Creek, and it would be nearly impossible for the police to fail to catch him.

The Hundred-Ninety-Fourth Greatest Panel in the History of Comics

Every zookeeper's worst nightmare, captured in a single image. So insightful, the 1940s.

And then, The Simpsons Gave Up

Remember cross-section jokes on The Simpsons? Fun little bonus gags whenever the show wanted to do an interesting camera move? Whether it was Shiva running the core of the planet-

Aliens buried next to a wishing well-

Or between the floors of the house-

The Hundred-Ninety-Third Greatest Panel in the History of Comics

This is one of the reasons I love presenting panels without context. Attached to the preceding panels, this is just an ordinary punchline to a fairly lame gag strip. On it own, however, it's a perfectly preserved exhibition of madness.

Bravo, creator of Lala Palooza!

A character who, as usual, doesn't not appear at any point in this strip.

The Simpsons - Next-Level Nitpickery

Please try to enjoy this frame from a recent episode of the Simpsons:

That's right - it's a blue moon on the 17th of a month. Which is, of course, impossible, since a Blue Moon is the second full moon in a single calendar month.

Why am I so annoyed by this error? Because it's so obvious a mistake and so easy a fix. There's no reason for the wrong number to be there beyond a complete lack of attention and interest in doing a good job.

The worst part? This isn't even an attempt at a joke, like a 'Smarch' calendar, or having the observance for a weird fictional event show up on the calendar. It's just yet another example of the main characteristic of late-model Simpsons: the habit of everyone working there to simply say 'you know what? Good enough, I'm going home.'

The Turing Test Made Me Sad This Week

So this past week there was a bunch of news about a liar claiming that his program was the first to ever beat the 'Turing Test'. Of course, anyone with access to Google knows that this is nonsense - chat programs have been as or more successful than this particular contender for years, and none of them can reliably convince people that they're talking to an actual person.

Still, all this talk about AI conversations got me nostalgic for Watson, the computer that cheats at Jeopardy, and while reading about him/her/it I was referred to a page about Cleverbot, one of those chat programs that people discuss fondly when talking about attempts to beat the Turing Test. So I decided to boot it up and see what happened. This was the result.

Two questions. The thing lasted two questions before breaking. I know there's no reason to expect that cutting-edge AI would be found for free on the web, but wow, that's just sad.

The Hundred-Ninety-Second Greatest Panel in the History of Comics

I hate to go all Alan Moore on this thing, but I really don't see the need for an explanatory paragraph establishing this story. If there's anyone on earth who looks at this image - Nazis attempting to kill Dollman as he rides a pigeon (or perhaps trying to kill a pigeon that Dollman is coincidentally riding), using a bow that they had for some reason - and isn't completely on-board with the rest of the story, what could you possibly write that would turn that opinion around?

Seriously, people of 70 years ago, just cut the text and make the bird even bigger. People of the future will thank you for it.

Adventures in Fake Journalism: Community 503

So Community's gone, it seems. I'm sad to see it go, since that fifth season was just incredible from beginning to end. A true return to form, which suffered only from a truncated length that robbed the creative staff of the time necessary to build touching character arcs. Still, it had some amazing sequences, including Vince Gilligan's VCR game host, Chang's ghost story, and of course, the bear dance. It also had the subject of today's post, a series-high episode about a certain "Ass-Crack Bandit", who went from one-time joke back in season 2 to the subject of an extended David Fincher riff.

Which, naturally, brings me to the fake journalism about that character, which - spoiler alert - is some of the best fake journalism I've ever encountered.

So let's get started!

The Hundred-Ninety-First Greatest Panel in the History of Comics

Tiny man, full-sized gun. You win, Doll Man.

24 Death Count - Season 9, Episode 6

So, after three long episodes of Jack not killing anyone at all (but wounding two protesters) he led a full-on assault on a group of gun dealers tonight! Which, naturally, led to a few deaths!

4 - Shot.

How to ruin your own movie: The Victim Edition

Michael Biehn made a movie! He wrote it and directed and starred in it, then cast his wife as the female lead, because hey - he's the one making the movie. That alone makes giving it a look, since it's fairly common for a character actor stalwart to produce a film they're passionate about appearing in, they almost never just go ahead and write/direct them as well. The main character is even named Kyle, because Michael obviously wants us all to know that he knows why we're watching the movie, and he's okay with that.

It's not a bad premise for a movie, either. Biehn plays a loner who lives in a cabin in the woods, assiduously keeping to himself, and attempting some personal improvement with the assistance of self-help tapes. His life is turned upside down when a woman in tattered clothes shows up at his door armed with a horrifying story - her best friend has just been brutally murdered by a corrupt, drug-snorting cop, and now that cop and his partner are out to silence her for good! Hell, Michael Biehn's probably in danger just for hearing the story. If that weren't bad enough, when the cops turn up looking for the woman, they have a very different version of events, in which she's a dangerous criminal on the run from the authorities. Also, apropos of nothing, there's a serial killer on the loose in the area.

As anyone can see, this is a potent formula for drama. Who is on whose side? What dangerous secrets are people hiding away? With everyone's life on the line, who can be trusted? Michael Biehn certainly built himself a potent starring vehicle - except for one fatal flaw.

Race with the Devil's Amazing Moon

So I'm watching Race with the Devil for theAvod, and there's a plot point requires part of the action take place during the apex of a full moon. Then something amazing happens. We get a look up into the sky, and what should appear, but-

The noon-day sun, processed with the least-convincing day-for-night treatment this side of the mod squad. Even accepting that this is supposed to be an unusually bright full moon-

That's still unacceptable. I know that there were any number of reasons that might have kept the production from getting their own footage of the full moon (short schedule, rain, lost footage...), but this was the 1970s, and I refuse to believe that stock footage libraries didn't exist yet. How much could a single shot of the full moon have possibly cost?

This is a movie where trucks explode and fly off of bridges. Come on, people.

The Hundred-Ninetieth Greatest Panel in the History of Comics

Even Doll Man regularly killed goons? Dear lord, what happened to superheroes?

Oh, right. The government.

The Hundred-Eighty-Ninth Greatest Panel in the History of Comics

I don't know if this would work from a scientific standpoint, but damn, is it satisfying to watch Doll Man strangling a tarantula with a length of yarn.

Predator Math!

While posting about AvP's terrible tagline, I realized that I'd never bothered to post anything about one of the movie's most baffling plot points - the drill team.

As the premise is outlined by Lance Henriksen, we learn that the Antarctic temple is 2000ft below the ice. Let's be charitable and assume that's the base of the temple, rather than the top, so the guys don't have to drill an extra hundred feet - it's a big temple, after all. When they arrive at the proposed starting point for their excursion, they discover this-

Someone has already drilled the tunnel for them, using-