Interesting - I'll have to see if I can catch this movie. I wonder how "ham-fisted" the depiction of racism is in cultural context; I spent a couple of months in Trnava, Slovakia, and even in that brief experience, I found racist attitudes toward Romani to be pretty shockingly explicit and omnipresent.

The patient isn't as bad as the brother.

I always think of "murse" as a contraction of "man-purse."

Watched Broken Flowers last night and enjoyed it heartily. Bill Murray, depression, scenes of extended and tooth-grinding awkwardness: what's not to like?

I've only ever read Wives and Daughters from Gaskell, but the BBC adaptation of North and South (from 2004 or so?) was a pretty decent one, aside from Northern English accents being only halfway comprehensible at best.

AGD Interactive has done some nice point-and-click interface remakes of the first three King's Quest games as well as Quest for Glory 2 (free downloads at http://agdinteractive.com/g…. KQ1 is pretty faithful, with a couple tweaks, while 2 and 3 are more different. I've enjoyed them a lot.

Baumtorte
is delicious.

Europe can be considered a subcontinent, as can the Middle East (minus Egypt).

Caucuses?
Really?

If you guys need a proofreader…
…I'm available.

The big problem…
…is that Wagman-Geller is an excellent researcher?

I decided not to.
It's not really that important.

Not sure which thread of Napoleon apologia this belongs in…
Maybe Fishhead's… I kind of liked that Napoleon really wasn't all that likable. He kind of deserved to get crapped on a bit, or at least it was pretty obvious why he got crapped on. That was refreshing. He was just a weird kid, no "heart of gold" stuff.

Sincerity ("")
I generally take "sincere" to mean (a) not a phony record-label-created pop star created by The Man to suppress real music but also (b) not hipsterish or douchebaggy like those A.V. Club types.

And, though its goodness has little to nothing to do with her presence, she was in "The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford".

Sounds great.
So: Film Year 2008 > Film Year 2007 so far, is what you're saying.

Ron Paul…
…is a Republican.

Wow, I scored two exclamation points.

Don't you mean…
…that Tankian is no MORE restrained on his own?

I've only seen the movie myself…
…but I think you may be short-changing it a bit in light of the detail of the novel. I thought some of the things you highlight - Briony's suspicion of Paul Marshall, the ambiguity of whether she has succeeded, as an elderly author, of atoning for her childish sins, and so forth - came…