Who exactly was clamoring for this film to be made?

Well, keep in mind that for the creators (and likely, viewers) of this show, New York City consists of everything below 86th street in Manhattan (excluding Chinatown), Williamsburg, and South Brooklyn down to about 15th street (excluding Red Hook and anything east of Ft. Greene.) Which is basically all white.

I wouldn't call it a bad movie, but it's populated entirely by unlikeable characters (including Dunham) that just makes it not that much fun to watch. Which would be OK if there were a deeper message somewhere in there - but the message just seems to be "shallow people are assholes."  Got it, check. Not sure I needed…

The whole way the Casino Royale scene was set up showed they never actually talked to someone who knows how to play poker.

Yes!!  I was just thinking about that - no recollection of what it was called, but I remember being in my early teens and watching it on late-night showtime or cinemax or one of those channels.

A Lannister always pays his debts.

I'm not sure I would describe his performance in JFC as insufferable, more like… nonexistent.  There's withdrawn and then there's blank slate, and Fletcher went with the latter.

I'm very pleased to see this being reviewed, I may have dust off my old DVDs and watch along with Todd so I can follow.  I think his review raises an interesting question for me though - if this series were launched today, would things have gone differently and HBO have stuck with it longer?  As Todd points out, other…

My problem with the show was that the prize money was so pathetically low. I think the most you could win was what, $5000?

He was out of rehab long enough to cut a new album?

I actually work in advertising so… no. I'd rather hang out with other people.

I was just about to post that I'm surprised Death Race 2000 didn't make the cut - granted it's pretty ham fisted (but then again, so are all of these) but it's also a lot of fun.

An interesting bit of trivia - this movie was also the reason for the creation of the NC-17 rating. Apparently the MPAA wanted to give it an X rating, and since X was more or less universally reserved for porn, there was a sufficient uproar that they created an entirely new rating. Which basically was intended to mean…

@avclub-852592f4c36e6055df929d9b31a8290e:disqus I agree that the ending was pretty great. I just wish they had spent more time in the tower itself, and resolving the fight with the Crimson king. I recently re-read 1-3 and they hold up fairly well. It's kind of hard to compare since I first read them while I was still…

And co-starred Gary Busey's son.

I'm surprised to see how much you like 7. It was nice to see the story propelled forward, as you said, but this was after the whole meta-Stephen King character was added, which essentially ruined the whole series for me. And the way they quickly dispatched the Crimson King and then just kind of ignored everything…

It's a great adaptation, and really true to the book - with the minor exception of leaving out Beorn. I had actually sort of hoped that Ron Perlman had been cast as Beorn based on that bizarre mashup trailer that was in the article, but now I'm doubting it.

My thoughts exactly.

Agreed. The full run of DS9 is on amazon instant watch (free if you have amazon prime!) and I've been rewatching the first season recently. It holds up much, much better than Season 1 of TNG does - you could tell the writers had a much better plan for where they wanted to series to go; it differentiates itself from…

Likewise, congratulations on an excellent series of reviews. I've been looking forward to Trek Thursdays for quite some time now as a result.