Fantastic interview.

I am a big defender of Undertow, which I absolutely loved but seemed to have left critics lukewarm.  He does Southern Gothic well.

Most definitely anti-.  Anderson's also been trying to adapt Pynchon's Inherent Vice, which has nothing nice to say about Scientology-esque cults (I mean the "Golden Fang").

I don't know how common-knowledge that spoiler was, but it was the original description of the film as it was being passed around in the production stage.  That it appears to be… a very different sort of movie is what's driving a lot of conversation around the 'tubes right now.

I… am cautiously optimistic.  This actually looks not-bad.

I have to be honest: I'm waiting to see how things pan out.  There are many things I love about the show so far, but (as I mentioned in a thread above) there are times I wonder if they really are going to follow through on the complexity of the problem they've set up for themselves.  I like the fact that Amon's…

Look, it's well and good to say you "can't engage" with someone due to perceived slights, but you may want to re-read what you wrote in your first few comments.  If you're going to have a thin skin about insults, you need to holster your own gun for a bit.

@sarapen:disqus : nah, nothing like that.  I was responding to your comment that "you might as well laud Akira for having a non-white protagonist."  We do, in fact.   That's why the whole white-washing thing was an issue in the first place.

@sarapen:disqus : but isn't that the whole argument about 'whitewashing' Akira in the would-be remake?  People were upset that they were casting it with white actors, when the original clearly aren't supposed to be.

No, we can make this a point of objective evaluation - there is quantifiable data here whether you agree with the significance of that data or not.  At this point in the series  we have 1. more information attached to the specifics of the main plot in A:TLA, 2. more complications attached to that main plot; 3. more…

Whereas ATLA did an excellent job in the first half dozen episodes of framing the story, explaining the stakes and demonstrating why these things should matter to the audience, right now the actual story of Korra is very weak.

Yeah, that's how I read it, too.  Given the names, cultural references, etc. I assume that none of the characters in the series are white.

I watched the first episode or two on my laptop, then switched over to catching it on Nick and (annoying commercials aside) the quality is so much better that it really demands to be seen on a large, high-def screen.  There's a lot of little detail I was missing or not appreciating on my computer screen.

In season 2, the Lion Turtle unlocks Korra's unknown Avatar ability to finesse complicated sociopolitical issues in a post-industrial era.

Scenes like that are actually keeping me on board with the sometimes-queasy politics of the show so far.  Every time I start wondering if the creators have a handle on how unsympathetic some of the benders' arguments are, they throw in a scene like that to remind us that, yes, they're aware the Equalists may have a…

The slo-mo shot of Equalist agents in the crowd pulling up their masks was so nice I watched it twice.

But it would be unprecedented for a crew on this show to decide to “coast”—it flies in the face of the culture of hip hop dance.

Cut away!… I'm not a fan.   Anyway, my point is that Ernest predated the Cavemen's ad campaign-to-television move.

It’s all well and good to use sitcoms to sell advertising, but making a television show based on advertising that could then be used to sell different kinds of advertising? That simultaneously crossed a line and blurred the increasingly wobbly line separating advertising from entertainment.

Less non-PC than reflecting some really dated attitudes.  For example, we still have a lot of gay-panic humor in our comedies, but I can't imagine something as flat-out uncomfortably dated as the Blue Oyster bar making it into a contemporary comedy.