Oh man, Geoff Dyer is criminally under-recognized. Out of Sheer Rage is one of the flat-out funniest books I've ever read combined with a deeply philosophical viewpoint. It's not a combination you find very often. Then there's But Beautiful, which is either a collection of essays on jazz or an avant-garde novel on…

Yeah, but Erik's assertion is about side characters who become "the most high profile presence on the screen." Frasier was never ever that on Cheers. Getting a spin-off means you're popular, but it doesn't mean you're the center of the original show. That's like calling Gomer Pyle the center of The Andy Griffith Show…

Well, I do think her performance builds throughout the movie, and that final monologue she gives is heartbreaking and astonishingly delivered. And I can definitely see why you would find Shawn the weak link. He's mannered and actorly in the role in a way that none of the other cast is, and he's not trying in the least…

Sheldon Cooper definitely, but does Frasier really qualify? He was the star of Frasier from the beginning, and on Cheers, as good as he was, he never became the center of it.

That's a great example.

This film is beautiful and deserves more recognition. The opening alone is brilliant, with the cast wandering up to the theater one by one through the crowded street, to the casual conversation inside the theater as the guests settle in, to how subtly it slides into Chekhov before you've even realized it. Then it just…

This is the first time I've checked into the show since the season premiere. What exactly is the story on him wearing a helmet?

". . . rarer are the regulars who are present from the get-go and who, over
the course of a show’s run, eventually unseat the established lead as
the most high-profile presence on the screen."

Yeah, after Felicia's Journey and Ararat, I was kind of over needing to see new Egoyan films. Maybe the problem is that his thematic territory—the ways in which the past haunts and twists us—is pretty limited, so it's easier for him to become repetitive. While Woody Allen has also dealt with a fairly static set of…

I'll agree with you on one thing: Exotica is a great film. I think The Sweet Hereafter might be a little better, but really, there's no going wrong with Exotica. Or there's no going wrong with it as long as you're down with slow, highly mannered films.

I just figured it was the attorneys' way of legally saying they were disgusted with the lies of their respective clients.

Nice.

Who is this article aimed at? Presumably the average AV Clubber, if they've ever given even a passing thought to The Bachelor (and I'm someone who actually watches the show), has already figured out what's being said here. What's more interesting is how much the writer, in calling the show fake and manipulated, still…

I do like sports. That's why I hate SportsCenter. It's non-stop bloviation masquerading as insight. It's anchors who've been taught that their shtick is more important than just reporting the stories, recapping the action, and so on. To be fair, I gave up cable around three years ago, so maybe things have improved…

Somehow edited out of the original nursery tale:

Fake Annie Clark is his constant.

So what happened in the last half hour? During a commercial break, they showed the crew setting up the next sketch, which looked to be a SportsCenter set. But when they came back from commercial, they went to the SNL band playing for half a minute, then went back to commercial. And then it was The Shins' second…

Oh god, please don't issue a challenge to the writers.

I've read everything by her except for the new memoir and her YA novel(s?), and The Passion is easily her best. Everything else is extremely variable in quality. Plots are often hard to discern, and the writing, while always lush, sometimes veers into such abstractions that it turns almost meaningless. But then I…

Is finishing a book a victory?