I'll second Happy Songs for Happy People. It's probably my favorite album by them, and the first that could be said to be influenced by movie soundtracks, although they have still retained a lot of their explosive guitar work. But, in my opinion, Mogwai have never made a bad album. Over time each album reveals…

"Shiny Happy People" is certainly a hateable song. Sure, I'll entertain a defense of it, but even R.E.M. fans dislike "Shiny Happy People." What bothers me about this Hatesong is that some douche from a crappy, played out pop-punk band is ripping on motherfucking R.E.M.!

This is absolutely true. I used to hate "Everybody Hurts" when it was on the radio, but when I listened to it in the context of the album, I started to understand what R.E.M. was trying to do.

It's cool to see Doctorow exercising different muscles, even if I do love his historical fiction. It's interesting to see him turning to a more introspective look at how the brain functions in light of his last couple of novels. The March had a subplot involving a wounded soldier who was slowly losing his brain…

I find that movie critics like to bash blockbusters. And while they will give fun and serviceable blockbusters generally positive reviews, they seem to balk whenever a big budget picture actually tries to do something different. I feel like this is what really hurt John Carter's reviews in addition to premade…

This film has been getting beaten up in the press, and I'm glad to see a positive review here. The trailers look batshits crazy, and that's exactly what I look for in my January blockbuster entertainment.

True, Apebraham Lincoln was pretty awesome. It's just that you're already expecting a twist, so no matter what, it's not going to have the impact of the original.

Oh, there will be fact checking. The audience will be checking whether or not the movie on the screen mirrors the really awesome one they came up with in their own head.

If I had actually tried to read the books, I think it would have gotten on my nerves. But the movies require a lot less investment of time and energy, so I didn't mind so much.

And it was actually smart of the studio to start the series in the present day and avoid a remake of the original. Any remake of the first Apes film, like Tim Burton's, would probably feel the need to include some sort of dumb twist at the end, like Tim Burton's.

I only saw the Swedish movies (they were streaming on Netflix, so I figured why not). But it quickly dawned on me that the entire series was a wish-fulfillment fantasy for the author, which actually made the movies kind of funny and enjoyable because of Larson's brazen self-mythologizing. I kind of hope the new…

But you missed the best part of the interview. When Bradley Cooper describes his character from Wedding Crashers as a "tyrant," the interviewer runs with that description and suggests that the character was in fact Cooper's "very own Satan, from Paradise Lost."

My point is, even that description passes over some of the more laughable parts of the movie, like the symbiotic relationship between the people infected by the worm and the pigs. My problem isn't really with the above outline; my problem is with the fact that the movie has to be intentionally obtuse, because if you…

As a generally rule, I think that, as a writer, if you are going to go against public opinion, then you really need to bring your A-game. The awkward shoehorning of Jurassic Park into the blurb wasn't this writer's A-game. But then again, I haven't seen The Counselor, so maybe it is an artsy film that is kind of…

But even this description is a vague outline. There's a lot left out (not that I would expect you to spend the time and energy to give a detailed description). Anyway, Upstream Color is a truly silly movie.

An interesting list. I haven't seen The Counselor yet, but it was gusty to put it up there. It might still be terrible, but at least it was gutsy. I have to take issue with Upstream Color, though. The plot of the film was so ridiculous that if you explained it to someone, they would laugh out loud. I think the…

Others have mentioned this, but the article should have better defined public intellectual. For me, this term means someone who is just as comfortable in the public sphere as he or she is within the academic world. Mailer was taken seriously as a high art author, but he could also mix it up on the talk show circuit.

Start with "A Rose for Emily." It's a great southern Gothic short story. It's also lacking a lot of his experimental prose, so it's a wonderful place to start.

I would nominate Henry Louis Gates. He may not be as widely known as someone like Norman Mailer, but he's a consistent presence on PBS and he makes the talk show circuit from time to time. He's also still working in academia, so he clearly has a foot in both the intellectual and the public worlds.

I think that the movie is in essence a big "fuck you" to Heinlein. I can understand why fans of Heinlein were upset. But I still think it's a brilliant satire.