Todd Rivers!
Good to see Todd Rivers getting more horror work after the debacle of Garth Marenghi's Darkplace (Kudos to Channel 4 for finally showing it a couple of years ago, though). Unfortunately, The Devil's Chair looks even more creakily low-budget…who'd have believed it?

Nothing to do with Fleming - in the book the casino is in France. Blame the producers.

Hah! Beat me to it! This must happen.

I think the torture porn phenomenon is better considered as more of a part with teenage/early 20s culture than cinema culture. Why drink shots and get hammered at a bar when you can enjoy a lesiurely drink and conversation? Why listen to metal/hardcore/whatever at eardrum-punishing volumes when you could listen to…

Yeah, that Pixies gig at Ally Pally was really good, and I was standing near the back. So I was surprised to see a Pixies reunion gig as Kyle Ryan's worst. I guess the year's touring in between did them a lot of good.

Yeah, so my comment was about the orangutans. Obviously.

Well, not any more there aren't.

A Youtube conversation recently picked up by the Guardian:

I'm afraid it's "jumps" Leppo. Otherwise where's your "s"?

Have to say I was disappointed by the Stomper Comment Trilogy. I felt there was really only enough material for one two-to-three paragraph comment. Still, if I were in the same position, would I turn down a lucrative three-comment deal? I can't say.

Travolta's playing the Robert Shaw part. Denzel Washington's playing Mattau's part. Tony Scott is directing. And even though I won't bother to see the new version, its existence vexes me.

Christopher Hitchens thinks the character was based on Anthony Haden-Guest (who appears in the book of How To Lose Friends etc.). It was probably an amalgamation of the two.

I'm going to make a really bad movie about a silver chalice.

If you liked American Gods, I'd recommend checking out Tim Powers, if you haven't already. Last Call in particular.

Yeah, I thought Naked and Secrets & Lies were good too, but I thought they succeeded in spite of themselves (in the same way The Graduate overcame its horrible staginess to be a good movie). I can't really explain why.

Sorry ice-nine, it's not. Both are Celtic languages, though. You might be thinking of Scottish Gaelic.

The book for Starship Titanic was mostly written by Terry Jones, though. Adams was writing for the game at the same time, and decided he couldn't do both, I think.

To be fair, Keith's newswire article in June was where I first heard of this film. So the AV Club did get me into this movie. Although I haven't seen it yet, of course.

@Backwards Man (particularly apt name for your question)

The paeditrician story got more overblown with each re-telling. The reality is fairly mundane: