Oh wow, this is only now getting wide release?

I haven't watched it since the beginning of the second season, I think, but this interview with the costume designer from back when it premiered totally sold me on the costuming approach.

That Man Nap song. Like, yeah, sort of a throwaway song, but still so much thought behind it—with that sort of cock rock/glam metal as the epitome of performative masculinity and thus perfectly suited for the subject matter, and also Man Nap = almost an anagram of Panama (which one assumes was completely intentional).

Eh, compare it to Flight of the Conchords then; I don't think the meta-commentary in the songs makes any difference in the "are these all hallucinations or is this a genuine musical" debate. (And I often find the fourth-wall breaking in the songs to be some of the weakest bits; they often come across to me as the…

There have been plenty of songs centered around non-Rebecca characters in non-Rebecca plotlines, haven't there? Less so, maybe, now that Greg's left, but even in just this episode we had Darryl's nonreciprocal friendship song.

Rebecca is supposed to be 27 (having met Josh at 16 and known him for 11 years, according to this episode) and I imagine Nathaniel isn't meant to be significantly older, right? So I call bullshit on Rebecca being surprised that Nathaniel would be into Harry Potter; it would be weirder for someone in that age group to…

Better or worse shout-out than the throwaway line in Mad Men where Ted Chaough calls Claremont a "good spot for smoldering wreckage"?

The Breast sounded boring as shit to you???

Just finished The Way of All Flesh, which was fucking fantastic and I'm not sure what can follow it. I guess Erewhon would be the most natural choice?

From my limited knowledge of British TV channels, I'm assuming this means that Jimmy Carr will be the new host. Which wouldn't be the worst thing ever as a sort of novelty act for an episode or two, but would completely rob it of the warmth/humanity that Mel and Sue bring and what is the point of GBBO if it's not,…

I'd be curious to see a version where the adult actors' ages were closer to the adult characters' ages in the books (i.e. Snape/Lupin/Sirius should be in their early 30s when they first appear, not their 50s/40s); it maybe wouldn't change much for the younger kids watching the movies, but it probably would change some…

I get the feeling that at least one of those three films was directed by Quentin Lee, so: I can't remember what generation Chinese-American the protagonist was (and idk if you're using "immigrant" by the dictionary definition or in the broader sense), but The People I've Slept With has a female lead?

Yeah, I think your interpretation is basically correct; I read the original novella super recently, and the physical transformation is pretty unambiguous—-Hyde is described as appearing smaller and younger and apparently different enough to be totally unrecognizable to Jekyll's friends in face-to-face interactions. So…

This mostly just makes me sad that we'll never see the Nicolas Winding Refn-directed, Keanu Reeves-starring Jekyll that was apparently almost a thing, because god, can you imagine?

I take it you are not a Member of the Tribe? Because, yeah, very different, although they share the tendency to be male fantasies rather than actual people. The Shiksa Goddess type is, I think, sort of dated anyway—-I suspect the Gen X and younger Philip Roths would be fetishizing Asian women rather than WASPs. (I was…

That may or may not be true re: the intentions behind The Godfather—-it's been a few years since I've watched the movie or read the book—-but I pretty much guarantee it's not going to be the takeaway of the average teenager watching The Godfather for the first time, especially when there are so many lines about Being…

Eh, I think even if you're not familiar with the particular war, the "former soldier who has seen some shit but is downplaying his experience" is a familiar enough figure in pop culture that you could figure it out.

Oh man, this movie. I took Russian as my foreign language in high school, so I ended up watching this at 15 (not in class, obviously), which was also around the same time that I was obsessed with The Godfather, The Departed, etc. and accrued, like, a shit-ton of internalized misogyny*. Brat seemed super badass, but I…

I mean, if it didn't register for you, I'm not going to try to say that you're wrong for feeling that way, and based on the box office performance, it looks like it didn't register for a lot of people. So I should clarify that when I say it succeeds at the following, I really mean that it succeeds in my heart of…

You're definitely not alone. There was a brief period last year in which I watched Snatch, RocknRolla , and Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels and was convinced that I was on the verge of discovering some Fundamental Truth of Guy Ritchie movies, which…maybe not so much, looking back on it. But I think Man from…