Yeah, the way you thought it was pointing initially was much stronger just as a standalone wrap-up, and a finale to a show that concludes by appearing to cop out, forcing its audience to assume it's going to continue with these characters, and then DOESN'T cop out, leaves the finale in a strange sense of non-committal…

I love that now Mr. Van Der Werff's review of the season finale is completely moot, since the entire point of that review comes down to "I was excited to see them do something crazy like an anthology thing with a new cast every season, but now it looks like they're going to continue doing ordinary shit with this…

As you stated, it's funny how many of the favorites this year are technically 2010 movies. If you eschewed all the ones that had wide releases SOMEWHERE before 1/1/11, it seems like it would end up being "TREE OF LIFE plus whatever else I happened to love."

It has this level of balls-out Grand Guignol madness and humor that a guiltily well-meaning celebrity like Jolie could never put out. She has to make this as grim and verve-less as possible, because she doesn't have a personal stake, so she would struggle to find the humanity involved.

Good lord. Bill O'Reilly showed this on his show and got a chuckle out of it. If Bill O'Reilly can laugh at a joke involving Jesus, SO CAN EVERYONE ELSE.

I keep expecting this to happen with me and BREAKING BAD, but it never does. I'm interested, sure, I'll watch it, it's a good show, but I'm absolutely not emotionally invested in the slightest. It took me something like four months to get through the entire shortened season 1. I started season 2 the other day, and…

I will read the rest because I love Tom Petty, but now I just want to know more about where you live and where this warehouse is in Denver because I heart Denver (well, one heart for Denver, two hearts for my beloved Aurora) and I love talking to random people on the internet about Denver.

I genuinely enjoy "Booty Wurk" and "Best Love Song" for the same reason: their odd time signatures. "Best Love Song" especially seems to just be randomly swooping without having any idea of where it's going, to the point that it's sort of mesmerizing, much more so than had it been in full control of its faculties.

After having been watching and mostly approving of the quality the last month-plus, I finally had other people in the room to watch it with me, and we got this dud, which ended up sort of brutally sucking the air out of the room, outside of Weekend Update (of all things), which had us laughing pretty steadily.

Finally I disagree with a TZ review. I remember thinking PEOPLE ARE ALIKE ARE OVER was the perfect example of the 'wham' reliant-on-the-ending Zone twist, and I loved the hell out of it back in the day.

To be fair, the 1949 version of "The Fountainhead" is pretty much right what you're looking for. While gorgeously filmed by King Vidor, it's a godsmackingly stupid paean to being unreasonably stubborn for no reason. It's highly recommended, or reverse-recommended, whatever.

The Trans-Siberian Orchestra is an interesting case in that I thought it works well in that video, but seeing them live (I used to work at Pepsi Center in Denver and they did two shows in a row) is a cheesy, interminable experience. Something about seeing them do it in front of you just makes it seem simultaneously…

We spent the whole night laughing at the constant cutbacks to the kids, and arguing over whether the older son looked more like Lars Ulrich or Joe Elliott from Def Leppard. Man that was some kind of hair. EDIT: Now I've got it, he looks like Budnick from "Salute Your Shorts", especially in that screencap.

CARNIVALE and DARIA are very close to my heart, but PLEASE DO FRISKY DINGO. I'm endlessly baffled by people who love ARCHER but refuse to spend five hours watching his even-more-superior first serious, a show that I literally quote daily and constantly, and I would love for it to get the exposure here.

To be fair, the existence of YouTube has severely devalued the experience of seeing videos on television, and as a result, has taken away much of the cultural cachet that they used to hold, he's not wrong about that. He's also not great. I mostly just like him in posse cuts like Travis Barker's "Let's Go" or the…

Music as a whole is much more intermingled these days. As niche and cliquish as the internet and such inspires people to get about their music, the distinction was much clearer and more segregated in Run-DMC's heyday. It's all very, as you said, amorphous now, and honestly, I can't think of many people in my personal…

Considering "indie" is ALSO used as a catch-all for anything involving instruments that isn't Nickelback, I'm gonna say we yeah.

Yeah, I find Tyler Perry movies watchable amusing on the whole, but you hit on most of the reason I watch them, and the definite reason that I describe Perry as one of the foremost auteurs of our time (because "auteur" has no positive or negative connotation, it's merely a descriptive term), because every movie's…

As someone born in 1988, I'm of a generation that just overshot the Muppets' supreme cultural relevance, and I have lots of friends who love them a lot more than I do, so I'm far from an instant convert. This is a film whose aims were so low-key, I can't imagine anyone thinking this is a "masterpiece" because it's not…

Sam Adams gets all the points because anyone who loves "Speed Racer" is alright in my book.