La Cosa Nostra still outsizes any Russian syndicate in men and money in the United States (It’s a different story in Russia, obviously). Albanian syndicates are apparently the new rising power in organized crime in NYC. I actually think they get briefly mentioned as rivals in The Sopranos. Of course, questions like “which group is more powerful,” can be very complex in the world of organized crime, which is generally a lot less organized than movies make it appear.
I agree that in the context of the show, you’re probably exactly right about what happened. Presumably if the Russian had lived, there would have been some sort of further problems with him and the other Russians.
In the Sookie Stackhouse books, a fairly big deal is made about Claudine hoping to assend to a higher plane and become what we call an angel. Then she dies in a manor different from on the show. A lot of readers assumed she be back as an angel, but a few books post-death and that still hasn’t happened yet, nor does it seem likely at this point.
Well, there are the scenes with primitive goa’uld living in the waters of their original home planet. They are pretty much born evil. Daniel Jackson wasn’t “evil” per se, just a bit, shall we say, confused (as in losing his mind). When O’Neill was in the sarcophagus over and over he hardly changed at all. (But then, I blame his acting skills; rather lack thereof.)
Then there’s Lord Yu, who used the sarcophagus constantly (like for his nightly bedtime) and he was actually the nicest of the goa’uld. Until he went flat out bonkers and needed what I’d call hospice care. He was far gone. So I’d say it doesn’t make you evil, but it fraks with your mind to the point you can’t function anymore as a rational person.
And moving on…
One if Cosby’s first lines in Cosby Show to his wife is “Why did we have 4 kids?”
“Because we did not want 5.” Well, they DO have 5.
Same thing happened in Doonsebury. Joan Caucus definitely had both a son and daughter when her character was first introduced. But while her daughter later became a regular character (and she had another son who also became a regular) her original son disappeared and was never mentioned again. And at one point, Joan even referred to herself as the mother of two children.
I got the impression that the only reason there is an army of slayers ready to activate in modern times is that there are all descendants of the original slayer.
The first time I saw the rather disappointingly 1983 vampire movie The Hunger*, I was puzzled by the lab monkey subplot that seems important – like it might lead Dr. Sarah Roberts (Susan Sarandon) to a cure for vampirism, or at least a way to treat some of the problems suffered by humans who become vampires – but is abruptly dropped just a few minutes into the movie.
I figured this must have been something that got more time in the original Whitley Streiber novel but was chopped up for the screenplay. But I read the (not very good) book, only to find that the screenplay was actually completely faithful to the novel on that point. The lab monkey subplot is introduced, seems important, and is then completely dropped and never referred to again.
*It takes itself waaaaay too seriously for a movie about bisexual vampires.
Wasn’t Catherine’s research into blood diseases the reason Miriam contacted her? If so, it served its purpose of bringing the two main characters together and then it had no further purpose in the story.
Yeah that’s pretty much it. They are experimenting on a monkey who grows increasingly violent, eats his mate, then grows old and dies, very quickly. The same thing is happening to Bowie’s character (he needs more and more blood and gets careless) and he’s actually the one who goes to visit Sarah. But she just thinks he’s some “ridiculous old crack” and he ages 20 years in the patients’ lounge waiting for her while she ignores him, and when she sees him leaving it freaks her out and she then goes to see Miriam to apologize.
She’s already grooming Bowie’s replacement (violin girl) but Bowie’s character f***s that up so she decides Sarah can be next.
I read the book because the end of the movie made no sense to me. But the ending isn’t the same, at all. So I’m still flummoxed.
Sister Vigilante’s description of the monkey experiment is correct, but Miriam (Catherine Deneuve) doesn’t know anything about that experiment. She seeks out Dr. Roberts at a book signing after seeing her on television talking about sleep disorders and aging. Dr. Roberts doesn’t mention the monkey experiment at all while she’s on TV, she’s talking about human patients. So while Miriam knows Dr. Roberts specializes in medical research that may allow her to help Miriam’s husband John (David Bowie), she is unaware that Dr. Roberts is involved in a current study where a monkey displayed symptoms very similar to John’s. Dr. Roberts never brings up the connection to Miriam or anyone else, not even after realizing that John is rapidly aging.
The plot of both the book and movie would have been exactly the same if the stuff about the lab monkeys had been cut altogether.
The Nicholas Cage version of The Wicker Man begins with him stopping a mother for some minor infraction. The daughter throws her doll out the window. When Nick goes to get it, the car explodes and Nick watches the child burn to death.
Later his former girlfriend comes to him and shows him a picture of her missing daughter, who looks exactly like the girl who burned in the car explosion.
He goes to the island and there are proportionally many sets of twins there.
I’m not sure how this could have ended, but I wondered of the possibility of Nick’s former girlfriend having twins. But that was not the direction the movie went with.
I don’t think the original Slayer was meant to protect the entire world from evil. I think she was meant to protect one particular tribe from monsters. Over the centuries, as the demonic horde was pushed back, the Watchers expanded their remit to farther and farther lands, until we get the international organization of the TV show.
Presumably, Slayer potentials were also originally only born into that one tribe, and were not yet a global phenomenon.
Because what happens if your superhero not only rejects the call but actually turns on you? Heck, wasn’t one of the big fears at one point that a slayer might actually get turned, creating a supervamp that no one could stop? Giving out powers to someone you can’t completely control is always a risk.
Heck, there’s my question: why does Spike (and assumedly other vampires) kill the slayers rather than turning them? Sure, it might not always be practical, but surely it would have come up at least once or twice.
I also wonder why reensouling vampires isn’t used more often, at least with the worst cases. It doesn’t seem to matter whether the vamp is present for the actual ceremony. And while I assume it’s possible that the human soul would lose out to the demon soul, you’d think it would still slow the vampire down.
For that matter, The Original Series had a lot of interesting characters, but few of them (Harry Mudd, the Romulans, Klingons) were ever heard from again. They probably could have done a really good job exploring, let’s say, how well Khan did after he was exiled to Ceti Alpha V.
