I like the wights because they're pretty much straight-up horror. Tolkien almost never went into detail about that kind of stuff—we never get to see the inside of Minas Morgul, or find out how exactly dark sorcery works—so it's nice to get a taste of it with the wights. That poem that Frodo hears the wight reciting…

I haven't finished reading AFFC yet, but I'm kind of enjoying it so far. Probably nothing will top Storm of Swords, of course, but I like how Martin's decision to step away from the nobles at the center of the story gives a good view of the fallout from the game of thrones. He paid lip service to it in previous books,…

"Book 6 felt like nothing happened."

They tried to have him do that a little bit in the first one, but the results were head-clutchingly awful, because of both the writing and the delivery. Exhibit A:

Yeah, "Aenema" is my first go-to when I'm pissed off, too. It may be the best "fuck the world" song ever written. That litany in the middle where Maynard lists off "fuck you's" to basically everyone he hates is always cathartic for me.

Um … yeah. Another vote for "The Rocketeer."

This. This this this. Seriously, everyone wringing their hands about how this film is advocating puritanism and censorship are building one heck of a straw man, since that's not at all what the filmmakers are saying in this interview (can't say about the film itself, since I haven't seen it).

I'd say they're advocating for not allowing 12-year-old girls to grow up thinking that it's the norm (as opposed to a kink enjoyed by a minority of people) for men to do things like choke and spit on their sexual partners.

I'm still not seeing Crowe as Noah. When I hear Crowe's name, the first descriptor that always springs to my mind is "beefy." Noah is not beefy.

That escalated fast. Like, really fast.

Please. Any self-respecting non-shit-giving movie has to have Harrison Ford in it.

That weekend sounds like the absolute worst. Sorry, Buzz! I know you'll make it through okay, not that that makes any of it suck any less. Assuming that it's not deeply offensive to your sensibilities, I'll pray for you.

The big story of the weekend for me was finishing Lev Grossman's The Magicians as soon as I woke up on Saturday morning. It broke my heart, and I loved it. It actually made me cry, which hasn't happened to me with a book in years. Quentin and Alice's relationship tore me up inside.

You and me both. I loved Great Expectations immediately. I never minded the sentimentality or the on-the-nose characterization. It's a Dickens novel—what do people expect?

I loved season 4, though I didn't really know what to make of the final sketch. I mean, I think I get what they were going for (maybe?), but it came out of absolutely nowhere.

Between this and We Need to Talk about Kevin, Lionel Shriver seems to have a penchant for pompous, self-congratulatory Author's Notes. The more I read her writing, and the more I read about her, the more delusional she seems about her own importance. Maybe if she spent more time revising the self-indulgence out of her…

I dunno, have you read any of Phil Nugent's other AV Club articles? Dude's pretty insufferable.

The problem with the astronaut framing device is that it's actually a callback to the best part of the book that doesn't work outside of the book's context. It's an illustrated short story where Miller lays out a vision of what hell might be like: an astronaut stranded in orbit around the earth, with no way to get…

Wow, love for "Shrek 2"? I think that's the first time I've seen anyone on these boards say anything nice about that movie, ever.

I found The Lost Continent to be absolutely insufferable. It wasn't nearly as smart or funny as Bryson seemed to think it was. The entire book is him going to diners, tourist traps, and cheap motels and passing judgment on everyone he sees. de Tocqueville he ain't.