Requiem Repeats
Oh, and I've seen Requiem For a Dream about 4 or 5 times. The first viewing I had to stop during the infamous "meltdown" sequence because it was just too harrowing. Now, especially after listening to the excellent commentary tracks on the DVD, I can distance myself from the misery of the characters…

the road to awe
I was traveling and missed the theatrical release of this, sadly, and there are few films I'd like to see more with the proper full-cinema treatment. Best I could do was wait up late at night, turn off all the lights, and crank up the DVD on nice big screen. Close enough.

Wells (and chickens)
I think you've done an excellent job in placing Wells in his historical context—I remember reading War of the Worlds not long ago, and while the prose stylings I would rate charitably as "middling to fair" (my favorite rating for anything), the ideas still pulse with a life almost their own.

thank you, not i love you
Mr. Rabin, your post manages to summarize, albeit from a different angle, one of the big beefs that I have with how people relate to popular culture these days—oh, and touches on a blog post Noel made—about expressing preferences.
Yes, art can be an intensely personal experience. I know when…

CLEARLY
The filmmaker for this delightful subject was too overwhelmed by the kick-assedness of it all to shape it into a coherent film. Or is it his homage to the ramshackle, DIY-aesthetic of Backyard Wrestling idiocy to not make the movie about it all that good? That's fitting, right?

NO MAPS FOR THESE TERRITORIES
Highly recommended viewing for Gibson fans. Gibson speaks quietly on a variety of interesting topics from the back seat of a car. His comments on the ubiquity of mass media, drugs, and so on, are all very stimulating.
I haven't finished, but I think Spook Country is much stronger than…

NEKO LIVE
I'm vaguely grumpy when it comes to seeing live shows, just can't be arsed most of the time… however, I was very, very happy to have grabbed my little brother to see Neko tour for Fox Confessor… not only is that album a knockout, her voice really is as powerful, if not moreso live and in person. Easy stage…

good sample
These entries are helped greatly by having a sample song to hear… now I'm fairly keen on tracking this one down. Thanks Josh!

regarding Growers
…this is one of the real ones, not the "I love this band, but I can't seem to love this album at all, so I assume it'll get better with time"-type growers. I've had this album for about a month or so now, and it definitely appreciates. Slower tempo, sure, but just as much to sing along to as any NP…

where did this come from?
And more importantly, how soon is it arriving in the dungeon of forgotten bargain bin DVDs, where it belongs?

EW's coverage of reshoots
Apparently this movie just didn't test well enough at all in its original form, and the Wachowskis were brought in for 'splosions! …So maybe the film in its original form might have had the balls to go where the released version only hints? Or maybe it was just sort of boring.
With these days…

one of the best written MYOF entries
Good work Nathan, structurally this is easily one of your best MYOF entries. You start off with an engaging and relevant quote, and then proceed to build support for your thesis while describing the story and history of an interesting film. And even some classic AVC Walken support,…

hard to argue
that point, actually. Straw Dogs can't seem to stay out of discussions here at the AV Club, and that in itself is most certainly a high recommendation all by itself. It's a difficult movie, to be sure, but definitely worthwhile and I think deserving of its share of praise (and division). Because let's be…

MERV MANNERS
"He was from a generation that separated the social from the personal, so that he could talk for hoursâand engagingly soâabout sports and movies and the issues of the day, without ever ruffling any feathers."

Fleischers!
There is certainly a joy to early animation, particularly when it's as well done as the Fleischers' work. You can find their Superman DVDs in bargain bins everywhere—Wal Mart, Best Buy, et al. Barebones, sure, and not the best transfers, but don't let the shitty covers fool you, the animation is definitely…

interesting
Bauhaus is one of those bands where the name registers, even if no salient details about the band or their music itself does with me. But hey, an AVC permanent hall of famer? Worth a butcher's.

i've heard of them before
but come on, kids, can't we attempt real band names anymore? "You Say Party! We Say Die!" isn't even trying (or trying too hard… isn't it all the same for hipsters?)
Even the pop/rock band-naming tendencies of the late nineties was better than this. I refer to bands that took a random noun and…

ANY AND ALL ROBOT JOX REFERENCES
are hereby heartily encouraged and commended, Mr. Rabin.

spiritual cousin to the jackson five
..or something like that. They may not really sound like the Jackson Five, but on this album Junior Senior sure as hell feels like Jackson Five, or at least feels like how you remember Jackson Five sounding like.
Okay, poorly constructed comparisons aside, this is a very, very fun…

master class… but is it really retro?
Watching the DVD last night put me in the mind of Amy Winehouse's Back to Black album, what with a very old school Motown sound combined with lyrics like "what kind of fuckery is this?"—it's a tickling sort of cognitive dissonance. The Good German might look meticulously period at…