The part of this film that stays with me is Gambon's terrifying performance. It's the only time I can recall when someone's acting made me feel queasy.

She seems to be just another illuminati puppet. Her personal background info on Wikipedia, if it is accurate, spells it out pretty clearly. The iconography in the Born to DIe video is crude and blatant. She lives in a trance state. Naturally, her first appearance will be on SNL. It's just one puppet after another on…

It's refreshing to have a show with no premise and bare characterization. The vacuum feeling is a plus. It exists in the same space as the commercials.

Pink Floyd is just a great serialized television drama. It starts off with some excellent character development, and the early albums are solid episodes that catch your interest. Then there are some uneven episodes, where the show is trying to find its voice. Then there are a several classic mid-season albums, which…

Not all high-school drop-outs turn out to be dicks, but some do.

I'd say that the sports world's symbolic connection to the Obama/Tea Party years would be the NFL and NBA labor disputes.

Normally, I don't go for for broad sociopolitical connections, but watching this totally took me back to the ugliness of Bush/Rove America. The hateful energy in that stadium was the same energy in the lead-up to the Iraq war, the same energy on display at the 2004 GOP convention, where John Kerry was gleefully turned…

I can't wait for the springtime review of the penultimate episode of Whitney's first season. Followed by the next week's discussion of the season one finale, with analysis of how it stands up as an individual "episode of television," and how it functions as a meditation on the themes of the first season arc, with…

Borders was great. I was a "bookseller" there during the golden period, 1998-2000. The staff was fun, we actually wanted to hang out and party with each other. The assistant managers were laid back. Only the general manager was a coffee addicted, corporate obsessed, book-loving nut. Everybody else was cool. In-store…

Saw this movie tonight, it was quite funny. The plot didn't matter too much, and Paul Rudd's "affability" has been overemphasized in the press. The perspective was clever, and there were a whole series of thoughtful moments that fleshed out the generic framework. It was a totally goofy, contemporary version of Hannah…

I liked the opening stand up bit, the giraffe and the lion, about people who don't realize the difference between another's personality and a reaction to themselves.