You still need someone to bring all the elements together, to choreograph the voice actors, to keep your team of animators on the same page, to make decisions about style, tone, etc.  Granted there are some films done by committee - look at the Disney slump years - but it's also easy to recognize when there's a strong…

I like Oldman and I like The Dark Knight, but I wouldn't put TDK in his top 5 performances, much less top 2.  He's got a hell of a diverse filmography.

Thank cable television: the FCC does relatively little to regulate it, unlike broadcast networks.  They can't show outright obscenity, but they can get away with a lot more.

Yeah, and the show's had the best run of Asian contestants of any reality show I know.  Don't forget Ongina, Jujubee, etc.

You should compare this season to the first few clips from season one, where it looked like they were filming in RuPaul's garage with secondhand cameras. The production values have gone WAY up, fortunately without losing its goofy charm.

I'll give it a try, but I did dislike The Thin Red Line quite a bit, so I've been a little skeptical.  But I will give it a try.

Heh, that's interesting, because I had the opposite reaction: the first half of the film was disposable, but I'm a sucker for Melies and (knowing his backstory already) couldn't wait to get past all the cluttered kid stuff to the real meat of the movie. So I thought the movie was a disappointment for the opposite…

Very possible: I haven't seen TTSS yet, but I'm hoping to this weekend.  Really solid genre stuff tends to stay around long after the fluff dissipates.

Yup.  The only movie this year that I think earns instant classic status* is A Separation, which will likely do very well in its modest 2 nominations.  Otherwise it was a great year for movies that were "pretty good but not great."  Which is fine in its own way, I guess.

The show was dead to me the night they booted Yara Sofia.  She'll always be my next drag superstar.

Lucy Lawless has a lifetime pass for her advocacy during and after Hurricane Katrina (and with none of the self-serving fanfare that some others were guilty of).  I know she says she doesn't read stuff on the internet, but if she does: thank you.

Would two upper crusty English women in 1918 have spoken so freely about a gentleman’s wang?

The second episode was weaker, but god damn did it have some great reaction shots by Tina Fey.  Some of her best individual work yet.

I wondered if Project Runway was about to bite RuPaul’s Drag Race (a show that liberally bites from PR), which featured an excellent episode last season in which the queens were asked to create looks based on different types of cake.

God, I love this movie - but I've never found it to be pleasurable per se.  I was basically Wiley Wiggins' character in junior high, so the awkward and uncomfortable terror he feels at being brought into the adult world for the first time… Yeah, that was me.  I love this movie, but it brings back that fear in the best…

Because of the way the parentheses break up the sentence, I'd initially read the line from Bachelorette as

Yeah, I have to agree. I haven't seen the rest of season 2 yet, but this was the first episode this season where I thought the seams were starting to show.  They're straining for the organic flow of the first season, and not hitting it.

Fisticuffs it is, then.  I didn't like it very much, apart from the pacing and the compositions/camerawork.  But I'm not much of a fighter either, so maybe we can thumb-wrestle for it?

@avclub-f7f8eb12e0f61a9321597157c0d61791:disqus  … Heh, not sure if you follow the era that closely, but amorphous idealism was far more common than not, likewise his odd mix of political anger and cowardice.   If you read through political tracts pre-WWI, they can be a mish-mash of unrelated complaints and…

I'll give credit to Fellowes for being kinder to Branson than his political sympathies would suggest.  There's no reason he had to give us the exposition on Branson's past and (justifiable) anger against the English, or to make him a less bloodthirsty than idealistic.