I mean, fundamentally all entertainment is 'whitewashed' insofar as it is rendered palatable for a mass audience - unless we're talking about A Serbian Film. Everyone has an existence that is unique and special to them, yet they're still reduced to the Hero's Journey or any other writing trope once they're depicted on…

I did enjoy that the evil aliens are literally referred to as 'the Other'. Edward Said would have a field day with this film.

I think the point is that their characterisation does not begin and end at their sexuality, rather than that their sexuality is ignored. Which is something I want, since so often sexuality is just the last token in the bag of traits that writers seem determined to throw out, once they've already exhausted "the woman"…

Word.

I mean…on Twitter, I guess? Even an incredibly popular Broadway show is still, by definition, a minority position. Musical theatre isn't exactly the Superbowl.

This is my general principle, as well. I've never listened to cast recordings for a show I haven't seen and I don't understand people who do.

Of course, they wouldn't actually want that to happen, since no viewers means no ratings means no show means no pay-cheque. But at least they get to claim the moral high ground and put those uppity fans in their place..

Given your name, I thought for sure you'd mention: "Cut off the corners from all books, tablets and picture frames; in the future, there are only octagons."

There's a difference between being 'pro-Russian' or sympathetic to Russia and being a 'pro-Russian separatist'. I'm not saying that there no separatists in Eastern Ukraine prior to the crisis, but they really weren't worth commenting on until Russia decided to use them as a human shield for its geopolitics.

Again, at the official level there's really no such thing as 'pro-Europe' or 'pro-Russia'. Yushchenko was probably the last actual 'pro-Westerner', but even that stance was more down to political posturing to distance himself from the Kuchma Administration than deeply-held principles.

This is sort of the EU's fault; they insisted that Ukraine could either move towards EU membership or EEU (Eurasian Union) membership, but not both. To be fair, the EEU is so opaque, ungoverned and essentially rigged in Russia's favour that there's no way that Ukraine could subsequently meet the EU's membership…

They fall across a very particular dichotomy of (usually AIDs-based) misery porn and sub-Skinemax soft porn. Either it's an hour and a half of hot people fucking or an hour and a half of hot people fucking and dying.

Not to mention the unpardonable sin of having Mean Girls II but not the original.

What is Russian nationalism in the Ukrainian context? There are ethnic Ukrainians who speak Russian and there are ethic Russians who speak Russian. When Putin intervened, he did so to defend 'Russian-speakers', not Russians. Yes, there is a clear geographical divide between Eastern and Western Ukraine in regards to…

The last time Yanukovych ran for president in 2003/2004, he tried to rig the election and would have gotten away with it if it wasn't for determined civic disobedience, so it's somewhat disingenuous to appeal to his democratic credentials.

"the very existence of pro-Russian separatists in the country is completely ignored"

This is the future calling to say: really? The wife is a bitch because she wants the husband to admit that he ran away from her and the children during a disaster? Something which he repeatedly refused to acknowledge? If the husband had owned up to his actions right from the start, she wouldn't have to 'ambush' him in…

I actually hated, hated his Hoffman 'obituary' (as it ostensibly was), which was more interested in grandstanding on the late actor's corpse than paying him any respects.

Actually, it's much more often "I'll read the review at AV Club, lament that the reviewer's grade doesn't match my pre-assigned sight-unseen grade for the film (with bonus points if the grade isn't bad, just less than the perfect A+ I'd already decided the film deserved), and then proceed to complain that the reviewer…

I do enjoy the unintentional irony that people who complain that Dowd is predictable and predisposed to dislike films are similarly and predictably predisposed to dislike his reviews the moment they read the byline.