Death Note*
OK, it's Manga! with an exclamation mark, but this was a highlight of the year for me in any medium. A crazy, tortuous logic puzzle of a plot, and a central premise with enough moral ambiguity that my flatmate and I actually disagreed on which characters were the good guys and which were the bad guys.…

But to answer the question: probably because the award takes them by surprise, and they've already made their bad choices.

What? No mention of Cuba Gooding Jr? Wasn't it his idea in the first place?

Casino Royale (1967)
An absolute travesty of a film, but one of my absolute favourites. That is all.

Fourthed. Jeff Bridges is outstanding in this film. Sometimes you need to see a film like this to realise why a particular actor is still a big deal (not so necessary for JB now he's indelibly linked with The Dude, but see also Jack Nicholson in Chinatown and Gene Hackman in the Conversation).

Not with you, I'm afraid. I too prefer the book, but I thought that a) it's amazing it got made at all, and b) the adaptation was about as good as it could have been considering the length and the "meta-insanity", and that it makes for a pretty good movie.

Roth knows about it too - in this Q&A he says that Zachary Quinto would play him in a movie of his life:

Clevelandsteamer
I do actually have a friend like that. When I invited him to see a Russian film showing nearby, he asked me what it was about, then raised his eyebrows and said: "Ah. I take it there are no spaceship battles?"

john cho as sulu
Doesn't really dispel the notion that it's going to be a spoof, does it? And iowasean, while I agree it does seem odd to cast an actor who isn't Japanese, and doesn't even look like George Takei, I imagine JC's reasoning went along the lines of: "Fuck it! It's a Star Trek movie!"

B&W in IF…
The b&w parts of If… are slightly less random than they seem, as far as I recall. I think most of the b&w footage is from the parts of the film showing the younger characters, so the pecking order is established even in film stock. Haven't seen it for years, though.

Re: "Toad in the hole"
Is no one going to respond to Pete the Meat's attack on the British? For the record, we are very, very sorry about Pete Doherty. As for the eels, the endless marketing and press you've been subjected to is in the interests of the three main multi-national jelly corporations, and is out of our…

Razorlight
"And I met a girl,
she asked me my name,
I told her what it was."

Schadenfreude indeed
Kittfisto got his wish - box office was about a third of what they were aiming for. No sequels will be forthcoming. In a few months, after the muted DVD release, it will be like it never happened.

Him again
I was going to add a shout out for the opening sequence and end credits of West Side Story … and oh, look, they're by Saul Bass.

PS
I too loved the Three Investigators. But I think Jupiter Jones was a bit full of himself - and I felt sorry for Bob. I mean "Records"? Even "Third Investigator" would've been a promotion from that…

RE: patchy11
That's exactly the same edition I read. You're right, it's creepy as hell.

Re: Henry Jones Jr.
I don't think you can blame the press too much for your original impression of Tony Kaye - in the interviews with him I watched or read in the years after American History X, he came across as raving egomaniac, claiming he would get his revenge when his new film came out and revolutionised the art…

worst names in rock?
Plain White T's is a perfect name - monochrome, generic and disposable.

inevitable chime in
So no Finian's Further Miscellaneous Meteorological Phenomena?

OK, I do like Wes Anderson, but…
I'm amazed no one has linked to this article yet: