The problem with RT is that "What a brilliant masterpiece!" and "This movie has several flaws but is worth seeing for (actor X's great performance/the stunning visuals/J Petrille's lingering nude scene)" both count exactly the same towards the movie's score. I use RT as a clearinghouse for links to reviews that might…

Yeah, but that was an extra cherry on an already loaded sundae. The only reason he was trying to set up a new country west of the Appalachians was that his American political career was entirely finished. Hell, it was already in shambles even before the duel, because of his well-earned reputation for opportunistically…

There was also a complex etiquette of deliberately missing, a sort of "show duel" where both sides could deliberately aim wide of the mark (usually well overhead) and walk away well-satisfied with proving their overwhelming manliness. One of the reasons Aaron Burr became such a notorious figure was that Hamilton's…

From the linked article:

My dad used to have a geography textbook from the 1790s that had a diagram of the Solar System with Herschel's original name for the just-discovered planet. I'm kind of sad that we don't still have a Planet George.

Except billionaires. So, nothing.

So…you didn’t hit the like button, then? What a strange, angry little person.

Do you mean the other way around? Because that seems uncharacteristically subtle for Joffrey. He's more likely to imperiously order the Kingsguard to do it, then indulge in some enthusiastic snivelling when the elite bodyguard hand chosen by Tywin Lannister develops selective deafness. Whereas Tywin seems likely to…

I don't know. The guy in the bag seemed pretty egalitarian: "I like all the many kinds of rape! And whores, too!" But to me at least, Daario seemed to have the definite air of someone who finds it really easy to convince himself that "no" means "yes, please."

Also, kudos to Peter Dinklage for letting them (in a bit of especially unsubtle direction) play up the visual absurdity of his height. The cruelty of it makes it easy to understand why he empathizes so much with Sansa, despite their utterly disparate personalities.

I like subtlety. I like teasing out layers of meaning and subtle movements of plot in a story. I like nuanced and ambiguous characters. It probably says something about my character. I’d like to think that it speaks to my refined aesthetic sense, one that distains the more brutish, coarse, and overt dramatic…

@avclub-9b972ab65a176d0a3aabf71ea0c01ffc:disqus An absolute monarch only has as much power as he can convince people he has. Joffrey has done precious little to convince anyone. Remember, he wasn't the one who took down Ned Stark—that was Littlefinger. Sure, he ordered Ned's execution when everyone had politely agreed…

Ned, rest the poor guys soul, never had the viciousness to pull off life in King's Landing. Tywin doesn't have that problem, and although Ned wasn't exactly an idiot, he didn't have Tywin's incisive cunning. I think it's safe to say that Grandpa Lannister has plans to keep his dearly beloved grandson in line. Given…

You mean Theon? Sorry—he's just too uninteresting for me to give a damn.

The gift and curse of this show is definitely its sprawl. All that melodrama couldn’t fit on a smaller stage, but with so many storylines, we’ve basically spent the last two episodes putting all our planes in an orderly holding pattern as we line them all up for landing. Seriously, how many things have actually…

In what may be the youngest case of "I loved it before it was cool," I may be the only kid in the world who prefered The Empire Strikes Back to Star Wars during its first run. (It's also one of my few examples—I'm normally the last person to hear about anything, and generally find myself getting into things just as…

I’m not entirely sure what you mean by ‘good’ here. If you mean “good” in a moral sense, I never considered even for a moment that she might be. It was pretty clear from the get-go that she was interested in little but her own ambition. If she ever seems kind it’s only because it’s easier to control someone that…

@avclub-97b57a5f2af6e3b6b300af28894502f6:disqus : I wasn’t actually attempting to suggest that Sansa had any real reason to be happy—quite the contrary: her sufferings are so disproportional to her childishly venial sins as to be viciously laughable. If I’m harsh with my assessment of Sansa it isn’t because I think…

Nope. I’m not buying your “ugly people shouldn’t marry pretty people; it violates the natural order of things” theory. As someone whose own place is quite a bit away from the supermodel end of the attractiveness spectrum, you don’t need to tell me that women, like men, are more likely to initially notice the…

I’m afraid I’m going to have to strongly disagree right back. “He is a Lannister,” is a rather bland, shallow assessment of an enjoyably deep and complex character. Being a Lannister is just one of many facets of his personality, and even the nature of the Lannisters themselves is more sophisticated than you make out.…