@Gorg: Agree on Carol Lay. I thought "Story Minute" was one of the best indie strips around—inventive, fun, nicely crafted—but her recent stuff doesn't seem as interesting.

@ortenzia: Darin Morgan was the first name that came to mind. His work for "X-Files" and "Millennium" is some of the best TV writing of the '90s—funnier, darker, and more consistent than, say, Charlie Kaufman, at least to this viewer's eye. Since then, nothing: I even tracked down the teleplay for his unproduced…

Wow. Thanks for the tip.

It also lacks "KHAAAANNNNN!" Which is the only novelty sound I'll ever need.

Hey, Mirkin's great. Although my favorite commentaries are the ones where the writers are wildly defensive ("The Principal and the Pauper") or have stories to share about, say, Lawrence Tierney ("Marge Be Not Proud"). The Conan-centric commentaries are great, too, although these days they make me a little sad.

Commentary tracks can be a bit hit and miss. You're often better off going with one that has a couple of key players watching the movie together—e.g., Bryan Singer and Christopher McQuarrie's commentary track for "The Usual Suspects," which is great. Although my favorite movie commentary track is probably Nicholas…

I honestly think that if "King Kong" had been edited down to two hours and twenty minutes—and God knows it could have been—it would have been seen as an "Avatar"-level game-changer. As it stands, I still like it plenty, although even I tend to skip straight to Skull Island.

The production diaries for "King Kong" are some of my favorite special features for any movie. If the docs for "Lovely Bones" are half as good, it's definitely worth a rental.

For the sake of full disclosure, I should also mention that I saw this movie with Mrs. The Information—and she hated it. Unlike me, she walked in hoping to see a good movie, and by the end, she felt disgusted and jerked around by what she perceived—rightly—as a story that was both manipulative and incoherent. Which…

Fiasco
I perfectly understand the hate directed at "The Lovely Bones," but I went into the theater expecting a magnificent train wreck, and that's what I got. It's the most satisfying fiasco I've seen in a long time: a movie with a great director and evidently limitless resources that is utterly misconceived from…

Chungking Express…
…contains about eighteen of my favorite shots of all time. My favorite may be the shot of Tony Leung's missing flip-flop floating out from behind the couch in his flooded apartment, but I also like Faye Wong on the outdoor escalator, and the shot of her from the knees down as she leaves the bar at…

I love "Twin Peaks" so much, but these days, that just means the pilot, the last episode, a handful of iconic moments (the Tibetan method, most of Albert's scenes, Cooper lying on the floor), the first half hour or so of "Fire Walk With Me," and the soundtrack. That's still enough, though, to make it one of my three…

Based on what I've read so far—and I've been jumping around a lot—I'd definitely recommend it. It's sensitively written, balanced, and moving, although I can see why the family disliked it. And its use of the original cartoons to tease out autobiographical subtext from the strip—there are scores of them scattered…

The Phantom Tollbooth
I loved it growing up, but it was only on rereading it recently that I understood how it's really a handbook on how to be alive—on the importance of curiosity, words, numbers, music. It's also a cautionary tale for adults: it's only after you've held a desk job that you can fully understand the…

I've just begun reading the new biography of Schulz by David Michaelis, and it's almost unbearably sad—Schulz got everything he ever wanted, but could never fully enjoy it, and was troubled all his life by a kind of interior loneliness. Charlie Brown isn't exactly a self-portrait, but sometimes it's alarmingly close.

@Sunglasses: Agree about Peanuts not really being a kid's strip—although obviously I loved it growing up. One of the most striking things about reading the recent Schulz biography by David Michaelis is realizing how much the Peanuts of the '60s was revered by adults: it was embraced by college kids and the…

Hospital shootout tracking shot
Since it isn't included above, here's a link:

http://www.xenite.org/tolki…

Do Balrogs have wings?

"Here we have an ordinary square."
"Woah woah—slow down, poindexter!"