Stephen King in his author's note to Revival name checks Great God Pan, I think, as having an ending more darker than the one in his book.

Semi-spoilers for a twenty-year-old movie not popular enough anyway: I hate the plot of a large group of people acting out an elaborate fiction for the unknowing moral or ethical benefit of one person. I can suspend my disbelief fine, and it depends on how it's done, but it just comes across as too implausible.

Just to let you know and not to diminish your bad experience at all, at least you weren't going in and out of the States. This woman, an American citizen, had a particularly rough time of it: http://www.latimes.com/opin…

Well, upon further reflection, it may not have been my fault after all, though I don't want to get (further) into an adversarial fight, which the insurance system puts you in. As for the driving, I think it should be taken into account that they don't count the thousands of times you didn't get into an accident, if…

I don't remember the knife in the chest and throwing someone on a grenade. He doesn't shoot people with bullets, if I recall.

I'm not a reader of the comic books, so I don't care about and have knowledge of how the character is supposed to be, though I know he isn't supposed to be how Eisenberg played him. I liked that he Jokerized it, and Eisenberg committed to that performance.

The movie's pre-opening credits scene is a dream, when you see him waking up, as he you see after the desert dream. It's his anxieties writ large as nightmares. I read his killing people in the second dream to mean that he's worried about keeping his code when the apocalypse comes, like he fears it will, and/or his…

I thought the tenement recreation sketch was mocking the sanitization of those guided historical tours, where you only learn about their households without knowing the time-appropriate attitudes and beliefs of the complicated people in them. That weird commercial, I couldn't stop laughing at the best couch gag I've…

I had the thought that out of all the big players in the White House—including Trump himself—only Bannon seems to have a political ideology he's firmly committed to. So between the white nationalist who wants to burn down the government, and the very conservative Christian VP (who has proven that Republican principles…

Got into a fender bender that was my fault today. No one hurt and both cars more scratched than anything else. The other driver seemed to take it well and told me not to have a bad day, but this isn't my first accident after decades of driving, and I always feel like a failure afterwards, like people feel when they…

Hype and knowing criticism beforehand produces bias. Just as I thought Logan overrated because I was expecting a great movie, I may have graded BvS on a curve because I was expecting a dreadful one. By giant studio tentpole pictures, it's not as bad as others. I'm looking forward to Wonder Woman now.

Dawns of Justice and Ape Planets, Beauty and the Beast, Handmaid's Tale (the book)

I did see it, and thought it overrated, though it was directed well and had some gorgeous cinematography. I actually liked the heist set pieces—they were exciting and taut—but I felt the script and characters too slight and cliched, with the intent of commenting on downtrodden Americans in the Great Recession not…

You know what this means, right? Quit your job, get hired by the AV Club. Start out as a Robert-DeNiro aged intern.

Jeremy Turner's (and Thomas Newman's) music for the fantastic Five Came Back, which I just finished ep. 2 of. A reminder that even propaganda can be art. But the music is stirring and beautiful.

Counterpoint: Hollywood movies are too enamored of and dependent on violence, heists, rock songs playing over them both—that all of it just earns a shrug from me. If a trailer really wants to wow me, it should be a movie with none of the above.

David, a grad student in literature, really should have known E.B White and the New Yorker.

Only teasing my man. Keep on liking whomever you like.

Saw that; much more realistic.

I don't know the number of free articles. Presumably you can read more under the private setting on your browser. The actual subscription isn't expensive. The intro year offer is about a buck a month, I think, and then it's six bucks every two months, I think. I pay a like 20 bucks for a year or something.