And I think, had Ian lived, Joy Division would have taken a similar path.

Yeah, I read that too, but then they made the 'American Cemetery' joke (a riff on the joke told about MCA, 'the music cemetery of America'), the drug stuff reminded me of Casablanca (not that stuff wasn't going on at other labels, but the stuff here really resembles old Casablanca anecdotes) and the label worried…

Yeah, I was going to add to my initial comment that it could very well have been the way the performance was mic'd. Cool that you were there, and I am jealous.

I wanted to jump in the Podcast and yell at them Re: Big Short. I rarely disagree with them outright but I think they're totally wrong about that. Otherwise it was an interesting discussion.

Re: Cheap Heat, it was a great episode this week. Good thing you covered it this week instead of last week, which was pretty much the worst the Podcast had to offer: Rosenberg completely checked out, Shoemaker directionless without Rosenberg, Greg mostly absent, tons of non-wrestling digressions, and both main hosts…

I'm hoping the exec intros mean we might see more of these guys in the future. Neil Bogart did throw me for a bit of a loop since it seems like American Century is based (a bit) on Casablanca.

— Mike Torello in Crime Story
—Jack Crawford in Manhunter

Star Wars is awesome, but Annie Hall is the greatest romantic comedy ever made. So at worst this is a tossup.

On your third point: it would help the show loads if, simply, Richie weren't going on a drugs-and-booze downward spiral. Removing that element, I think, would start making it less Tortured White Male Protagonist (which I agree is its biggest problem so far, and I also hope they gradually spend more time on the…

'But the roasting, along with the visual cue of who all of these important men are, feels like overkill, a drawn-out way for Vinyl’s creators to swing their dicks and remind us how much they know about music'

'Ghost' on Apoptygma Berzerk's 7 is one of the better tracks on a great album; no idea why they buried in on the CD.

Seriously AVClub should be a fan-theory-free zone. We're better than this!

Well, sure, Shakespeare's been a broader influence on culture, but I don't appreciate artists based on how many phrases they (kinda sorta) add to the lexicon. If anything that illustrates how Shakespeare's influence borders on the hegemonic.

Me too, but not John Webster jokes that imply he's a psychopath. Duchess of Malfi wipes the floor with anything Shakespeare wrote!

Quentin Tarantino and Roger Avery winning Best Original Screenplay for Pulp Fiction in 1995. Tarantino knows it's going to be his only award; threatens to talk a lot, decides to say nothing. Avery needs to pee. Generation X gets its first Oscar.

I agree with you on Saving Private Ryan. I disagree on Shakespeare In Love, which actually made me dislike Shakespeare for awhile.

But does Regina King Love reefer?

Bill Duke Random Roles, please.

It's a fun adaptation; Lear gets old man strength and kills a couple of dudes at the end. It's also closer to the source texts–Shakespeare's ending is pretty much his invention.

There's actually a fairly substantial problem with the question: the version of Lear performed in 1820 wasn't Shakespeare's, but one of the adaptations with no Fool and a happy ending (one of Garrick's texts, I think). Shakespeare's Lear is gone from the stage from Tate's adaptation in 1681 to I think 1823. This is…