You're a @avclub-220a7f49d42406598587a66f02584ac3:disqus ; I'm sure you deal with indeterminacy much more frustrating than this, heh.

Mostly agree; I remember reading something where Farhadi said that he wanted the audience to play detective, so that's why he generally avoids cheats like flashbacks: do you really remember what you think you saw at the beginning of the movie?

I don't think A Separation  is asking us to judge "who is more to blame" - that seems to run counter to the whole point of the movie, no?  There's ambiguity in who the daughter will chose as her guardian, and rightly so, because it's a hell of a choice for her to have to make.

I haven't seen Blow Up, but I can't imagine it's half as confusing as its source material.  Cortazar's short story hurts your brain from the very opening paragraph, where language itself gets implicated, and the normal grammar and syntax go to hell.  It's pretty great.

The first half of the movie, they're not married.  The second half they are.  The movie's exploring different possibilities with the characters, and it's more or less telegraphed at the cafe when the roles switch.  It's one of those movies I respect more than I actually enjoyed.

There was a helicopter in the pilot, wasn't there?  Rick sees it while riding through Atlanta on horseback.

Ugh.  There were so many things I wanted to like about this episode, but they kept undercutting it with bad writing and bad direction.  The direction during the farm siege in particular: it's hard to know how much danger people are in when we can't figure out where they are and what's going on around them.  Having a…

Boring episode (as expected), but I was genuinely surprised by Michael's comment when Mondo was on his endless whine-fest: the "I have kids" comment.  Surprised because he doesn't bring up his children very often but, for all the complaints about Michael's whiny nature, that comment really cut deep.  I'll give him…

Yeah, I enjoyed 30 Rock more than Community tonight.  There were some clunkers in 30 Rock, but the punchlines were coming quickly and sharply enough to make up for it.

Absolutely.  Ditto with the hazy geography of the body, and the things they encounter there ("Let's go, horse thing!")

Ugly is far, far darker, though.  One of the implications they've raised from the very beginning is that poor naive Mark is slowly integrating in a class of monsters who will eventually take over and kill him, but he's too much of a bleeding heart to realize it (or care) that he's laying the ground for his own…

Mostly okay episode, but the best part was the art design for Twayne's insides, which was pretty unique.  Also: Mark is officially 'Lesbian Hair' from now on.

@GhaleonQ:disqus : I think it's the tightly-wound formality of Racine that I find a little off-putting.  As poetry for reading, the stuff is frequently magnificent; but it's also stiff and a little cold.   Shakespeare's much more enjoyably earthy.  If we're going with the French classical writers, I'd much prefer…

Funny thing about that: Chekhov really resented the whole 'realism' thing.  He famously complained that Stanislavsky staged a 40-minute version of The Cherry Orchard's last act, where Chekhov had intended a zippy 15 minutes.  'Quiet desperation' is very true, but for Chekhov it typically comes with slapstick and…

Touché

No disagreement there.   There was an article in The Independent a few years back arguing that it's easily the 'greatest play of our age', and I think that's about right.  I do enjoy Stoppard a lot, but I feel like he's never quite duplicated that kind of power again.

I'm surprised it took this long for anyone to suggest Beckett, but more surprised that no one's thrown out Brecht, or Strindberg, or even Ionesco, etc.

Heh, at least Shaw always had himself to look up to himself.  But I find most of his dramatic work not particularly good; @avclub-e053e4f47a7ccbc51be254596e483d7c:disqus 's comment ('corny') is spot-on.

Not a huge Racine fan - I read him in the original - but it's more a taste thing, that I don't care for much for classical theatre.   Stoppard, I love, but he has only one play that rises to that level (Arcadia).  Ibsen's more influential than good, once his weakness for melodrama sets in.  Synge I don't think holds…

Chekhov = the greatest playwright since Shakespeare.  Discuss.