I haven't been able to finish Sapphique, the sequel to Incarceron (yeah, it's YA; cool setting, though). Somewhere very close to the end, I put it down and couldn't pick it up. Some interesting plot stuff was happening, but I couldn't take the author's tic of trumping up every chapter's action so it ended on a…

I don't know why I care about obviously fake found-footage movies sticking to the conventions of "realness" established by The Blair Witch Project, but I do, and the soundtrack was a terrible choice and the ending a worse one. Why use the fake-footage conceit at all if you really just want to make a conventional…

And once people become faux-stars, they start selling and endorsing shit — fashion and jewelry lines, diet plans, energy drinks. I can see someone buying Liz Taylor's perfume, but who's buying Bethenny Frankel's?

Haw. Jean-Jacques Rousseau salutes you from purgatory.

SPOILERS, in case anyone actually reads this:

I like how the two lead actors aren't obviously "likeable" in any way, shape or form, nor do they have cutesy quirks. Way better than the stereotypes of The Walking Dead (which did pull me in with the first episode, but characterization wasn't a huge issue when you had some guy waking up after an apocalypse).

Many similar scenarios, for sure (also, cutting to a photo of the girl alive and happy after her death is announced). But the mood and execution are completely different. Just look at Michelle Forbes' realistic reaction to the news of her daughter's death versus Grace Zabriskie's justly famous over-the-top one. And…

They did the same NBC saturation for Seinfeld's Bee Movie, which I had the misfortune of seeing.

I just started watching Breaking Bad, and from the first episode, it became my crack. I watched seasons 1 and 2 in a week or two and am pissed they haven't announced the release date of season 3. I think it was the tight focus on the two main characters and Cranston's incredibly committed performance. And never has my…

No, that would be Joss Whedon.

Baby Mama? Nah, not romantic. Sex and the City? Nah, not critically acclaimed (or particularly romantic). No Strings Attached had popular and moderate critical success despite being pretty crappy. At least it had a few jokes.

Hostel I really is pretty lean on the torture and looks like an art movie next to Hostel II, which is cartoonishly full of torture and also heavier on the ham-handed political allegory. But both are exercises in teasing the audience with more horror than you actually show. (In II, despite all the on-screen bloodshed,…

A metal torture elephant and a medieval rave! And some lethal pine trees. And Gary Oldman. The rest is pretty forgettable, though, and it was probably too cheaply made to be a genuine flop.

I gotta read these books. I just don't like buying hardcovers.

I watched Limitless. I picked the top grosser. Hurrah.

True. Critics at the time found it almost as crazy as they found Wuthering Heights, for all those reasons. But Jane Eyre seems a lot tamer to us now.

Watched Amanda Seyfried fucking Jesse Pinkman on season 4 of Big Love, then went and saw Red Riding Hood.

Rango was in a class by itself, in my view. Below Pixar quality but better than reasonably entertaining kiddie stuff like Despicable Me.

I see a lot of movies in theaters, and I'm genuinely confused by how positively people seem to respond to extremely simple, familiar stories. I still haven't gotten over the experience of seeing Sandler's latest, Just Go With It, in a theater full of people who were all laughing uproariously. Or the experience of…

Rick Moody's latest novel, The Four Fingers of Death (which also received a D grade here, I believe), features a long, long, LONG subplot about an intelligent lab chimp who falls in love with his female keeper. It really sounds quite similar, except no bestiality ensues and (thank God) the plot doesn't occupy the…