Wasn't there a discussion about casting, before Gandalf arrived?

I'm probably older than you, MSP. I like good stories, and take them where I find them, regardless of marketing categories. Being older often gives you more practical knowledge than young people have. It doesn't give you a big chunk of wisdom that you can be enigmatic about, unless you're very pathetic.

I was responding to Peter Capaldi, but Jeff Bridges is also too old. Haymitch is in his early 40s, younger than Kiefer Sutherland.

Haymitch has to be more the charismatic but ruined type. And younger. I can't think of anybody who's right at the moment. Kiefer Sutherland keeps appearing when I think about it. Sort of like him, but not him.

I would never be able to find the quote. I think it was in one of the local weeklies that don't exist anymore. The writer was saying that she thought of Scientology as the penultimate option (my paraphrase), if nothing worked out in her life. It would be like a living suicide. That stuck with me for some reason. …

I finally saw Adaptation on HBO. I don't think Roger Ebert was right picking it as one of the best movies of the 00's. Surely everybody who has ever tried to write a long narrative has weird daydreams like that rather than actually working. Making them into a movie doesn't make them work, for me at least.

"Legitimize" is a really tricky notion. And is this psychotic or relatively non-psychotic James Toback?

There's no need to fix that, because you're establishing a bold new metagrammar.

I thought you'd gone, Bob Hope is God. Once again, that is not Bob Hope, but the Sub-genius Bob. I don't like that creepy thing grinning at me.

I'm not perceiving you as a dick at all, and I'm sorry if I gave that impression, but I think you got a couple of wrong impressions of me as well. I'm not really a fan of Eastwood. He's done some good films, actually many, but they're in a certain pattern that I don't love. Foster has made only two films before this…

That reminds me that I still haven't seen Meek's Cutoff. It's right in my neighborhood. I need to see it before it goes away.

I saw him on the local news yesterday
promoting There Be Dragons. He seemed sober, and it looked like the movie might be good. And I think the period of the Spanish Civil War still has things we should examine.

He believes he's preserving the best of creation.

You are correct, Artist. Running attacks on prepared opponents are very risky because of the ju-jitsu-y downside of giving the opponent a lot of your own momentum to use against you with simple moves like the clothesline or the back-rolling throw. The sword just makes it more complicated, not better. Broadsword…

"who's trying to get overcome"
Some of your clauses are belong to wrong.

The Paradise Lost devil needs some gravitas, if they're really using the source material. His tragic flaw is pride, not pride's lowlife cousin smugness.

The witnesses to Dickie's assault on Raylan were Dickie, the weasel that James LeGros is playing, and Boyd. Raylan's professional conduct has already put him on thin ice with the marshal service. It will be interesting to see how that works out.

Wrong both ways. Eastwood wasn't well regarded in his early career as an actor, but had considerable early credit from his movies as director.

"Potential has a shelf life"
I put that in quotes because it's a quote from an Atwood novel. It refers to a middleaged wannabe sculptor who makes his living in movie effects, but still thinks of himself as the fine artist he meant to be when he was young. If Jodie Foster was going to be a filmmaker, she would have…

I thought Doyle maybe didn't mind so much if his mother got killed by Loretta because more for him, and he couldn't be blamed. And, nice family.