No Lynda Barry? True, her work may be mostly fiction, but I would argue that One! Hundred! Demons! and What It Is are at least as "autobiographical" as some of the works you've listed here. I think her overall importance and influence in comics is hard to ignore.

I don't think Hammer's been written out of the history books—just Chang's particular book. Dan Charnas's THE BIG PAYBACK (which I would nominate for the next great hip-hop tome, following CAN'T STOP WON'T STOP) devotes a lengthy portion to the nearly simultaneous rises and reigns of Hammer and Vanilla Ice, and their…

Aside from its insulting snobbery, that program description is also embarrassingly ignorant, since "childhood fears, human frailty and the threat of the unknown" are pretty much the basis for every horror movie ever.

A young, thin & be-haired Polito plays a newscaster. I doubt I would have even caught it but Stern & Co. point it out on the DVD commentary track.

CHUD
You forgot it.

Comeback
I take polite exception to the idea that Royce's comeback started with Slaughterhouse—I think a lot of fans (myself included) got excited about him again when he put out the Bar Exam back in 2007. You know you're on the right track when Primo co-signs your mixtape.

Yeah, the name is basically terrible. My first visual image upon reading it was this:

Worth a look
I've actually managed to see this movie twice already, and while my opinion of it more or less coincided with Nathan's on the first viewing, I have to say it improved greatly on the second.

The Wild Bunch
The biggest hypocrisy with the Wild Bunch rating fiasco is that the restored "Director's Cut" was actually the original theatrical version of the film—it played in theaters for a few weeks before Warner Brothers recalled the prints to make trims—a version that had already been rated R in 1969.

Back to OP: funnily enough, I just finished listening to every Moon-era Who album back-to-back the other day. I love Moon and certainly believe that the music world was better off with him in it, but I don't think there's any denying that the Who were sliding downhill even before his death.

Define "classic"
I don't mind reviews and recommendations of older "classic" albums, as long as they're not obvious choices. There are plenty of great old obscure records that deserve attention, but I'd rather not see this column turn into a dumbed-down metal primer. Anybody who doesn't know…

My perspective is certainly skewed since The French Connection is one of my favorite films, but I found The Seven-Ups to be a pretty lazy and hacky re-tread, mostly. Even the things I did like about it—the opening credits, the vivid locations, the car chase—were direct lifts from the first film.

The beginning?
I hate to be the one to point this out, but 1970 was nowhere near the beginning of Altman's film career. He had been directing a wide variety of stuff for nearly 20 years at that point. Besides all his television work, he had made more than a dozen films of various formats: short subjects,…

Yeah, Wattstax is the tits. Maybe not the best introduction to Stax per se, but you don't have to be a Southern soul aficionado to appreciate the hot-ass music.

Thanks Noel!
I swung by one of my favorite record stores yesterday to see what they had in the bargain racks. I found "Don't Say No" for a dollar and bought it with this review fresh in mind.

At least Sugar is getting his due here, however belated. Harvey Fuqua's death last week apparently didn't merit a mention, and the guy wrote and produced a handful of the most popular songs of all time.

Wolfman, I realize I sort of conflated Ford's style with his thematic concerns in my post. However, the story a director chooses to present and the way he chooses to present it aren't exactly unrelated. A mature, nuanced idea can easily be devalued or altogether lost amidst overacting and thundering music score.

I don't think the argument that Ford was constrained or restricted by the times really holds up. Ford pretty much always worked in the same mode, regardless of what his contemporaries were doing. He liked his drama BIG, and directed accordingly.

New BillWatterson art
If anybody like Tasha is curious about what Bill Watterson has been up to, he contributed some original art for an album/stage show my friend put together last year. There are a few samples on the band's myspace page:

Porky's
PORKY'S is not without its charms, but it was already a cheap foreign cash-in on ANIMAL HOUSE. That would make SCREWBALLS and its ilk all 2nd-generation knockoffs.