It was entirely unnecessary  because Athelstan won't do anything that will end up killing a couple of children. I think that is an ultimate dilemma for him, that he is a paragon of Christian virtue (even other monks looked up to him) in a Medieval world.

Was really hoping this was going to be a full cast a capella performance.

Wasn't the Western supposed to be revived in, like, 2008? What happened to that?

Does anyone still think of Russians as unattractive? I thought that was just a weird Cold War thing.

Aleksander Toad-zhenitsyn would have been more fitting.

It is pretty remarkably how Russian Tina Fey doesn't look.

Beef barbeque? Is that, like, pulled beef? Or do they think that if they slather a dead animal in sauce like a child it automatically becomes "barbeque"?

What a fantastic representation of the romanticized and sexualized Other! I'm so glad to see AnOther switch from fashion to cultural anthropology.

Most analysts refer to themselves as "China watchers". The lack of real conflict means there isn't quite as much of an industry built around it, and most of the best analysts focus on economics anyway, and so it is pretty hard to find anything really substantial. Still, it is a fun game to play, and Harper's ran a…

Oh. I've never seen The Shield.

I wouldn't say Bo "weeded out corruption" as much as say that he "made sure all the corruption was of benefit to himself".

Poor Arbiter
Inadequate Chancellor
Incompetent Justiciar
Shameful Gavel-banger

I actually really like Charlie Chan. He's a great character: he never engages in action, he is always listening to people, he avoids theatrics, he is always deliberate and maintains a veneer of passivity and deference while always being several steps ahead of everyone—especially his white associates. If you take out…

Actually, serious time, because this is more intriguing and less silly than it seems at first. You have probably heard about the last mayor of Chongqing, Bo Xilai, whose fall from grace is one of the few leadership crises the CCP hasn't managed to keep from leaking to the popular press.

Damn it China, you already took our manufacturing jobs and you will soon take our #1 GDP spot, can you at least leave us our action heroes and cliches?

"Our way is the vintage way".

I am not arguing that the original trilogy isn't better, I think it definitely is. But it has been unfairly burnished, and the prequels unfairly tarnished, in pop culture.

CGI isn't bad in and of itself, in fact, used well it is excellent (Gollum in Lord of the Rings and the dreamscapes in life of Pi being  good examples). The blowback against it is because a lot of people use it badly—a poor CGI sequence, like the Agent Smith Dogpile in the second Matrix—is excruciating, but so is a…

There may be a universe where John Malkovich as a pirate is a fair substitute for Hugh Laurie as a pirate, but its physical properties are unknown and its theoretical existence is a matter of debate within the academic community.

I think pop culture's verdict on how bad the prequels were has vastly outstripped how bad it actually was. Phantom Menace is the only one that could be called "juvenile self parody", Episode II is pretty fun (Christopher Lee!) and Episode III is legitimately good. All three movies have significant flaws, but going by…