Well, as someone who likes both performers, I'd have to say that Ferrell's dramatic movies allow him to be more "still"- the first ten minutes of Stranger Than Fiction involve him going through his morning routine, hardly exaggerating the character's OCD-like tendencies at all (though the onscreen graphics DO…

Killiam even did that Carrey mannerism where he sort of contorts his torso like a whip, and then snaps his head at the end. The dude has clearly watched a lot of Jim Carrey movies.

Yeah, I'm surprised they didn't have a second cousin with a split personality and one thumb.

This list includes Benghazi, so it's a better list than the one of Obama's failures on SNL.

Thanks to my dad, I have an autographed copy of Michael Chabon's Telegraph Avenue. I wasn't that surprised to get the book, as I alerted my dad (who lives in Denver) to the presence of a Chabon signing at The Tattered Cover. But I saw the autograph, which included the phrase "Keep Writing!" And I realized that my dad…

Yeah, but the psychic links and giant walls are just lifted from anime shows that were themselves a slightly different take on kaiju movies. The whole sequence that flashes back to the Japanese character's childhood is the sort of storytelling choice that pops up in all kinds of anime, too. Basically I think that 2014…

Considering that one of the next scenes with those two characters has them sharing a single set of pajamas in the same bed, I think you might be on to something there.

To be fair, it seems like there's a similar difference in the books. If I recall correctly (and I might not), Tolkein generally refers to the Hobbit baddies as "goblins" (with a few mentions of orcs), and in LOTR he's mostly talking about orcs and Uruk-Hai. So they could be different yet related species.

There's one option del Toro hasn't tried yet

When I watch Pacific Rim, I don't get the sense of self-importance that you attribute to the movie. It seems to be doing something awfully close to what Edwards is doing, but it's mining anime for tropes as well as monster movies. I don't see much "genre cleverness" even attempted there- it's just del Toro creating…

It would be a movie that a certain segment of the readership would claim was "criminally underlooked- the scenes with the humans are nothing special, but there's this dream sequence in the middle with a girl running from a giant monster that's worth the price of admission by itself."

Hey, if nighttime shots is what it takes to make CGI robots look like actual objects while holding a shot for longer than two seconds, I guess that's what it takes. Hopefully the tech in the sequels will change that.

Also, they both have instantly-recognizable visual styles that still manage to cover a wide variety of subjects- it's easy even for amateur film critics to spot a Hitchcock or Spielberg imitation.

My favorite bit of innuendo in The Lady Vanishes comes from the two cricket fans being forced to share a room. Three young women who have reserved the luxury suite walk past, and as they watch the women go up the stairs, the men have this exchange:
"They might at least have given us one each."
"What?"
"The rooms, I mean."

Oh, I'm sure it doesn't exist, but it's fun to talk about it like it does.

Well, it's no worse than "Without Nirvana we'd never have Live or Creed."

Any song with Ludacris in it is generally too fun to be someone's worst song.

And there's a subtext coming from the fact that his origins weren't that humble compared to many fellow rappers- his mother was a college professor, his father was not always present, but was still a part of his life and not dead or in jail, his upbringing was solid Chicago middle-class, which really comes across in…

Also, Snoop Dogg. I wonder if Snoop has been doing all the weird "Snoop Lion" stuff for the last year because he's got some great verses stored up for Detox and is afraid of what Dre will do to him if they come out in any other form. So now Snoop's got to go invent a whole reggae career while he waits for Dre to stop…

Things I Miss From The Brief Period Where It Seemed Like Every Other Hit Rap Single Was Produced By Kanye West: Soul and Motown samples.