To celebrate my birthday on Friday, I finally watched Hud, which was awesome. Wittiest screenplay I've heard in a long time, a quartet of actors at their best, and oh that lush James Wong Howe photography.

Or in the same vein, there's the Pokemon Christmas Bash. Exactly as awful as it sounds. "Nobody Don't Like Christmas," as sung by Meowth, is a particular favorite of my friends and I:

I haven't read The Rabbi's Cat, but I really enjoyed Sfar's Vampire Loves and would love to see his movie(s).

This is completely, depressingly true. The total lack of respect for foreign (read: interesting/good) animated films both in terms of U.S. distribution and Academy recognition is disgraceful.

Well, prepare for a whole lot of dowagers' monocles to fall into their tea cups again!

I'll just quote William Holden in Sunset Blvd.: "There's nothing tragic about being fifty. Not unless you're trying to be twenty-five."

Well, THIS looks awesome. Count me in for one ticket, 6 months from now. Yay Pixar and Scotland.

I love the People's Choice Awards. Always gives me a nice place to direct my floating anger.

I assume you mean Cox : Night Ranger :: Hopkins : Radiohead.

Thank you! I was just about to say that. Besides, the oft-forgotten Manhunter is the best Lecter movie of all. The people must know!

Queen of filth, queen of putrescence! Boo! BOO!

The most disappointing thing about this: Carrie-Anne Moss, who once showed such potential in Memento and The Matrix, is now reduced to shit like Fireflies in the Garden.

I called that one, friend-o!

I'm totally up for this. Looks like the "fucked up," funny movie Cody promised, and what's not to like when Patton Oswalt's around?

Yeah, the funniest part of this is Swardson's reaction to his movie's failure. Nooo, it's not because the movie sucked — it's because critics suck! And the audiences suck! Everything sucks but Nick Swardson and his very subjective, possibly very funny movie.

I think the consensus is that the decline began in seasons 10-11, and that by 12, the show was decidedly much, much worse. "Skinner's Sense of Snow" is a good choice, by the way — I still like "I see you Scotsmen are thrifty with courage, too!"

My vote goes to Season 12's "Trilogy of Terror," which holds up surprisingly well (even if it does have a pointless, brief Frankie Muniz cameo). "Linguo… is dead."

"Nice little episode" seems like an effective description. Nothing much of consequence here, and never very hard-hitting, but unlike last week's episode, it wasn't offensively stupid. So that's an improvement!

You don't say! Well, I'm glad they made up.

I think what offends me most here is "female, male, and transvestite nudity." It's almost like the state of Utah doesn't know what transvestites are — just that they're probably somehow sinful. What an intolerant, icky, ignorant state government.