God, what a wonderful piece of music…what a wonderful show.

It's Ligeti, you fool! Modernist Hungarian composer György Ligeti, whose music is in The Shining and Eyes Wide Shut as well as 2001 (and who had a legal altercation with Kubrick following the director's electronic distortion of his compositions in 2001). The piece in question is called "Lux Aeterna."

If he stood next to Christina Ricci (whose head is a perfect sphere) and Reese Witherspoon (whose head is a perfect inverted pyramid) they could form the UPN logo, but I can't make this joke any more because nobody even remembers UPN.

The problem here is Liev Schreiber, who is a terrible actor despite having a head that is a perfect cube.

Why the hell would he want his name taken off of Miracleman?

I'm not buying it. The movie's production design has a passing relationship with German Expressionism and Lang specifically but it's a facile and snide appropriation, put there to create the illusion of sophistication. Metropolis is an allegory, by means of silent film, of human utopian aspirations and Marxist…

No, I mean Reagan. I'm saying that the Reagan presidency indirectly inspired the cultural idiocy of the decade. I now realize that I was mis-remembering the release date of Returns. That's all.

Is anyone still reading this?

I've seen several comments on several chatboards about this movie (including, I think, the IMDB board) where people accuse Love, Actually of having "an agenda" or "a liberal agenda" because of all the interracial romance. It's fairly clear that the Brits are a bit more enlightened on this topic than we are.

This is the movie that introduced me not just to Keira Knightley, but to Keira Knightley's insane need to constantly bare her midriff (even in a film set in December, in London). And for this, I am grateful.

Yeah. I can do you one better: the Chuck Berry/John Lennon performances on the Mike Douglas Show in 1972.

All of this just galvanizes my utter loathing for Yoko Ono.

I understand what you mean. But, it's Kubrick…part of the incredible aesthetic thrill of the movie is how sublimely extreme it all is (the incredible visual grace combined with the methodical naturalism and realism, juxtaposed with the astoundingly effective surrealism).

I respectfully disagree about Shelley Duvall; I think it's brilliant casting.

I agree about Stone; same remarks apply to Ridley Scott (who was my "fantasy The Stand director" back in the day).

No. It would be a Josef Goebbels production. It would be elegantly designed (in that clean futurist style that fascists like so much, with spare 1930s fonts), and it would be full of "Fatherland" imagery with heroic soldiers, doting blonde wives, beautiful children, Mercedes and Volkswagen speeding along the Autobahn…

The went "the artistic route" with Batman (after going "the idiotic route" four times in a row and realizing that it didn't really work). They went "the artistic route" with Elmore Leonard. They went "the artistic route" with Grisham (at least once, when they got Alan J. Pakula to do The Pelican Brief).

Why? What's the matter with it?

The difference between all good conceptualizations of The Stand and all bad ones is as simple as the difference between the two editions of the book.

I want to watch this but I'm afraid I'll get angry if they don't sufficiently blame Reagan.