The importance of nurture has obviously been exaggerated in the past, but I don't see how it could have zero impact. My parents raised me in rural isolation and deprived me of TV while providing plenty of nice fat Victorian novels. While I did go to public school, this made it kind of hard to relate to my peer group,…

See, I had a similar reaction, but what I actually like about that photo is that, confronted with her aggressive quirkiness and young-at-heart teen-slut ensemble, Mr. Cooper has the sense to flinch in pain (don't tell me that's not a grimace) rather than pretending to be charmed.

Beard = wacky stoner friend who inspires hero to do wacky shit that results in convoluted setpieces.

In the Loop
It just hit my town, so it doesn't feel like a summer movie. But it was pretty great. I saw it with exactly three other people in the theater and expect it to be gone this time next week.

The definite article thing is a postmodern prank designed to subvert the process of alphabetized cataloguing while insinuating that FD and The FD might as well be the same film. Also, it's a bold strike against the tyranny of over-long colon-ated (colon-ized?) sequel titles. Having been forced to type shit like Night…

I used to like Devon Sawa. I admit it. I even watched the "reflective, philosophical" alternate ending on the DVD. (Didn't Morgan and Wong from the X-Files do the first film? It had a similar quality to an XF episode.) When they ditched their "bittersweet" ending (after a bad test screening) in favor of one where the…

Or perhaps the title is meant to suggest that this is, in fact, the FINAL Final Destination sequel.

Agreed on DL, one of my favorite books and films ever. The Marquise de Merteuil would have made an excellent Heather, though, if they'd had high school in those days rather than sending girls from the governess to marriage at age 15, so there's certainly some conceptual overlap there.

I read somewhere that Ang Lee recruited his fake hippie extras here in Vermont. Yeah, that's a surprise.

I saw Shorts (for free, not exactly of my own volition). It was more fun that I expected. I haven't seen many recent kids' movies to compare, especially live-action ones, but at least it had psychedelic colors and some random weirdness, and it wasn't shoving its cuteness or blandness in my face.

There's a classical conservatism rooted in deep pessimism about human nature that has produced lots of great art — think of Jonathan Swift, Samuel Johnson, even Jane Austen. Special pleading and smugness, however, have never produced any art worth the name, be they right-wing or left.

Best Ken Russell flop ever: Crimes of Passion, with Kathleen Turner and Anthony Perkins. Surprise: she plays a whore! But a whore who's a good girl by day, just like in Belle de Jour.

Yeah, I would see this for Sam Worthington. That is the profound lesson Terminator Salvation taught me. I'm sure he's worked on the accent since then.

Well, according to David Denby's review, the Nazis are complex and interesting characters, so I'm guessing it's only as rabble-rousing as any WWII movie needs to be to get across the point that, y'know, Nazis are bad.

I like NBK, but I have only seen the director's cut. It was over the top and deliciously insane, sort of like Freeway with a bigger budget.

The worst part is the ending:

I hate the idea of rating a movie on anything but its merits as I perceive them. The whole reason NOT to get rid of critics like White is that people can have reactions that are diametrically opposed and completely genuine. When a movie scores 100 percent, I worry that it's really lovely, flawlessly made and perfectly…

I don't think a dissenting view is enough to make you a contrarian. A contrarian is someone who spends at least as many words critiquing the critics who liked the movie as he or she does trashing the movie itself. Other critics' love or hate of the film becomes a symptom of their intellectual bankruptcy or even a…

I've only skimmed the books, but I recommend skipping straight from the first to the fourth one. Stephenie Meyer's notion of what's sexy is seriously fucked up in classic 18th-century gothic style, and it's pretty entertaining. Sure, there's no explicit sex, but the whole thing is still pervier than Anne Rice. It kind…

I like those articles they write on Box Office Mojo analyzing why movies performed well/badly after the fact. It's funny, because the same factors they use to explain a movie's failure (lots of chaotic action in the commercials, say) would probably have been cited as reasons for its success if it had hit #1. Not…