Hey, some of my best friends are polychromatic.

@edked: He's also great in Barry Lyndon.

I was watching Aliens the other day, and realized that the opening and closing scenes use the Gayane Adagio, which is the same piece of music that Kubrick uses at the beginning of the Discovery sequence.

Dave, stop…Stop, will you? Stop, Dave…Will you stop, Dave…Stop, Dave. I'm afraid…I'm afraid…I'm afraid, Dave…Dave…my mind is going…I can feel it…I can feel it…My mind is going…There is no question about it. I can feel it…I can feel it…I can feel it…I'm a…fraid…

Objectively speaking, nothing that any futuristic movie ever predicted is nearly as cool as the Internet.

When Kubrick feels like turning up the suspense—like the scene in which HAL kills the other members of the crew—the movie becomes unbearably tense, which implies that the slowness of the earlier scenes is entirely deliberate. (Although I have to admit that I'd be slightly happier if the Star Gate sequence was, say,…

@Area Asshole: That's utter nonsense! I thought that by now every intelligent person knew that H-A-L is derived from Heuristic ALgorithmic.

@Trurl: I've definitely seen this movie with people who had no idea that the apemen were actors in suits. (A friend of mine, after the bone scene: "How did they get a monkey to do that?")

Keir Dullea, gone tomorrow.

E-mail
The Pet Shop Boys released a song called "E-mail" in 2002 that opens with a sample of the old dialup modem sound. (You know: EEEEEEEE-OOOOOO-EEEEEE-GHGHGHGHGH. Or similar.) Anyone born after 1995 probably has no idea what the hell I'm talking about. And not just because you've never heard of the Pet Shop Boys.

"Hell Money" is a solid C episode—not especially memorable, but decently shot and acted, and there isn't anything about it that makes me want to claw my eyeballs out. I've actually rewatched it a surprising number of times, mostly because it's on the same disc of my Season 3 box set as "Pusher" and "Jose Chung."…

Robert Wisden
So great as the villain in "Pusher." It probably would have been a fine episode with any actor, but Wisden really sells that role.

"Ghost in the Machine" is pretty weak by the standards of the first season, but compared to much of the latter half of the show's run, it's a masterpiece.

The use of green in "Field Trip" is brilliant as well.

"Paper Hearts" is definitely one of my top five standalone casefiles. Other possible nominees, aside from "Pusher," would be "Ice," "Eve," "Quagmire," and "Fire" (not the most popular choice, I know, but I still love it).

@Fun With Bears: I'd have trouble choosing between Gilligan and Darin Morgan as the show's best writer. They're very different as artists—Gilligan was much more comfortable working in television, for example, than Morgan ever was—but what sets them apart from the rest of the crowd, I think, is their ability to combine…

@bondfool: Scully's helpless anger—at both Mulder and Modell—when Mulder first pulls the trigger is one of Anderson's best moments in the history of the show.

Pusher
This is my favorite episode of the entire series. I love it, I think, because it has everything—an unforgettable villain, wonderful Mulder/Scully interaction, a terrific sequence of plot points, and a lot of wit, humor, and suspense—and it also loves and values the form of the show itself. Darin Morgan is…

I thought his takedown of Rick Moody was pretty amusing, actually. But if you're going to call another novelist the worst writer of his generation, you really should do something better with your own time than serve as Tim Kring's ghostwriter.

@wolfmansRazor: I remember those reviews, too. Maybe we had the same edition!