For me it's the "[Someone] turns a page" chapter, which is amazing.  For such a short chapter, it captures a lot of what he's trying to say about boredom in a much more effective, almost visceral way.  I love it.

I don't know if it had many weaknesses (I could have done without the long scene of Ethan Hawke describing his new novel, but that's about it), and I don't have a problem with crimes against realism - realism is overrated.  Some of the setups were a little artificial, and that's fine and necessary, because it's a…

It might be a difference in Almodovar taste.  Of his 'resurgence' stuff I didn't much care for All About My Mother but loved loved loved Talk to Her.  I thought Bad Education was just bad, and The Skin I Live In was okay, but nothing to write home about.

And very good operas, at that!  The Cunning Little Vixen may not be grand epic high opera, but it's so damned fun and musically inventive.

You're right: it's a pretty terrible movie.  I've seen it about a dozen times.  I have no idea why: it's not like it ever gets better.

Part of the problem is that, while other Slavic languages have simplified over time, Czech had to be reconstructed after near-elimination, and grammarians who tried to put it back together used a lot of old Slavonic to patch up the holes.  So it carries a lot of vestigial grammar that other Slavic languages have left…

Need more time with it.  I've only listened through twice, and I think there's a lot more slow-burn material on here than usual.  I like the production but - given how much I loved MBDTF - I'm finding a little monotonous so far: good for each individual song, harder to digest back-to-back-to-back.  I'm thankful…

@avclub-1982161d0fe636d1caabd47a2ac23e12:disqus : For what it's worth, I'm not defending the critical hullabaloo (I like the film quite a bit), just noting for the record that there was one.

I like it quite a bit, but I think I prefer Gerry of his death-trilogy films (and we'll pretend Last Days doesn't exist, and replace it with Paranoid Park).

Sorta-kinda: there was a bit of a critical hullabaloo over whether the film was morally irresponsible.  Some of that discussion here.

How does this compare to - if you've seen it - the excellent Vanguard segment on Uganda?  That's a wrenching hour of television, and I'm wondering if it's worth seeing this to expand on their work, or whether it's mostly repetition.  It's hard to sit through as it is.

Hey, I bet if this movie were about a hot lesbian activist, you'd be all over it!

SMUG isn't so bad….  One of the major NGOs working on behalf of the LGBT community in the Czech Republic is called STUD, which comes from the Czech word for "shame".   Oddly, though: if you google search for "Czech gay STUD", you get an entirely different set of hits.

Can I split the difference?  I think he was a talented writer whose pretensions sometimes got the best of him.  i.e. he was the proto-Aaron Sorkin.

I think I disagree with you on this: funny enough, one of Apocalypse Now's Oscar competitors was another palme winner, All that Jazz, which edged out AN in both nominations and statues (and ATJ won the Editing award, which otherwise made it the major contender for Best Picture).  I think it probably came a bit closer…

Was 1955 the year of Carmen?  Both Preminger's Carmen Jones and Cacoyannis' Stella (also based on Carmen) were in competition.

@avclub-176578e8de25dd19442a4b21a008357f:disqus : nah, I don't think they have that much in common.  I like both movies well enough, but whatever On the Waterfront is, it's not the kind of kitchen-sink realism that Marty's going for.  Kazan has pretensions of Greek-ish Tragedy and Big Social Issues in an almost…

Imagined capsule review by D'Angelo:  "Marty is pretty well-written and I can't find any glaring flaws.  Score: 43"

The cookie thing, though?  Ugh, it makes me sick to my stomach…  I remember the scares when I was a kid (razorblades in candy apples!), but to see someone pour herself into a batch of cookies that have to be dumped out… it's like a total rejection.   Oof.

Yeah, that I definitely don't understand.  Beck's lyrics are solid throughout the album, but the lyrics on "Little One" are some of the best he ever wrote.  "Cold bones / tied together by / black ropes we pulled from a swing", and the sustained image of a collapsing boat adrift ("in a sea change, nothing is safe")……