I think that's pretty normal at two years out. Nobody does any research this far in advance, polls at this point are basically asking "Which Republican's name do you know?" and then two years from now, we all vote based on whose hair is better or who made the stupidest face recently.

As a bit of long term planning, I think only that last one is fully accurate. There's a certain amount of defeatism there, yes, but really, it's useful even if your state just tends to go to the opponents more often than not. In that case, you'll end up spoiling them more often than the other way around.

The difference there is that there are Smashing Pumpkins and Hole songs that are actually quite good, despite their lead singers' batshit personalities. There was a time when you could even be a fan of those bands without it being personally embarrassing to your family and friends.

It's a testament to how far Love and Corgan got down the rabbit hole that the cartoon satanist in pancake makeup, subject of persistent "ribs removed for self-fellating" rumor, comes off like the reasonable one.

I think we're just going in circles here, but I'll give it one last go.

No, I get that, but my point is that in this particular case, user reviews are already useless. Cameron himself is framing the whole thing as an us v. them philosophical debate where a good review simply means "I agree with this film's position" and a bad one means the opposite.

The thing is, this thing isn't really intended or usually framed as an actual movie, where creative choices are made to develop characters or tell a story. I would bet that very, very few of the voters are evaluating it in those terms, even if actual critics sort of have to try. But I'd argue that serious critical…

It's also a function of him coming tangentially from the superhero genre, where characters are frequently motivated by raw nobility and nothing else. Constantine smokes and says bad words, so despite the literally millions of people he has to have saved by now, he's still super naughty, despite being more…

I prefer to think M is like Bond, and it's actually been the same character through all the recastings. He was working through some things, and she doesn't care to discuss it with you any further.

I was happy to see him, too, but I'm not sure putting the star of one of the most edge-of-your-seat gripping finales ever in the conclusion of this final season's glacially paced shitshow is really a comparison they should be inviting at this point.

Agreed.

Okay, but then why taunt him? It's petty, pointless and incredibly risky, given the circumstances.

Every example you have there is from a single pay-cable channel, so it seems like something of a stretch as a generalization, even just about "shows that have been popular over the last dozen years."

I actually find the show's frequent and unsentimental use of death to be one of its more refreshing attributes. There are literally thousands of shows from the past and present that didn't and don't kill of characters for non-story related reasons like protecting the actors, fear of upsetting a successful status quo,…

Yeah, I actually don't think most of the people at the highest level care at all if the movie is good. At best, it's a third tier priority, which I imagine look something like this;
1.) Make a pantload of cash.
2.) Build the franchise
3.) Be good

I like movies a lot, but if my father had spent 60 years painstakingly assembling the world's most incredible collection of airport romance novels dating back to Kitty Hawk, I would spend an afternoon marveling over the effort and the pop history, and then I would absolutely tell him to sell those fuckers and leave…

I'm going to give the Gemma/Chuckie scene the benefit of the doubt and say the joke was intentional.

My American primary school used E in a roughly analogous way. Whereas F was for the kids who fell asleep or spent the day rubbing boogers on people, E was for the kid who thought 2+2 = blue but still worked hard and turned everything in. It stood for effort, and also "Jesus Christ, this really does seem to be the…

It's because it allows Gary to be the one to make the ultimate choice to let himself be sacrificed. If Gary's a complete scumbag, he says "Fuck You" when John half-heartedly offers to draw straws, and John's left to basically hold him down and force the demon into him.

I agree with you more or less completely, but I think that it in practice and taking into account the non-internet parts of America, if you encounter someone arguing that there is only one proper way to celebrate the Christmas season, that person is overwhelmingly more likely to be Christian than not.