Wagner/Orff? I'D listen to a band that could somehow successfully combine the composers of TRISTAN UND ISOLDE and CARMINA BURANA. Which isn't probably very many at all.

Good Lord
…this book had the most sandwich-eating of any book I've ever read. I mean, I liked it, but seriously every three pages someone was eating another damned sandwich, for no reason.

Mendes' stage version of CABARET is great—on record and in YouTube clips, at least. Except for replacing "Why Should I Wake Up?" with "Don't Go," because what the hell was that about.

I wondered that too. A straw pretty much means "drink this," right?* My guess is it tastes distinctly of sugar water that's been stored in a plastic bag for several months.

For some reason I've always felt that the change in the meaning of the title—in Moore it's metaphorical, taken from the quote "Who watches the watchmen?" but in Latin; in the film the second (I think) group of heroes is actually called "The Watchmen"—is symptomatic of the entire adaptation. Everything is less subtle…

I had no idea who she even was until I looked up her stupid songs. I wasn't aware that she was too indie to have an entire last name.

I forgot about JAMES AND THE GIANT PEACH when I was bitching about Dahl adaptations. Never mind.

Sorry, I was thinking of the Karen Orzolek songs from the TV spots (and apparently the film itself). THOSE make me want to kill myself. The Arcade Fire song is pretty good.

I didn't see it (a depressingly common refrain of mine), but I was strongly put off by the trailers. Which is entirely due to those damned songs that accompanied them, which made me want to kill myself. It's totally not a fair reaction, but there you are.

I haven't seen it—can anyone tell me, is FMrF an actual Dahl-esque adaptation of a Roald Dahl book? I like both CHARLIE AND THE CHOCOLATE FACTORY movies well enough for what they are, but neither of them are remotely like Dahl—a pity, because Dahl is one of my favorite writers (though I like his short stories even…

@Felt Pelt: Yes, that's possible—if I were forced to come up with an actual meaning for that sentence it would be something like "Apatow films appeal to the cultural elite because they reflect that elite's own problems and therefore flatter them by lending those problems legitimacy and weight." Mine's not much better,…

This is a 2009, not '00s, list.

My Armond-White-hating epiphany was when I read that, apparently, the Apatow films "[flatter] the privileged egotism of our culture's ruling class." The epiphany was that none of the words in that sentence mean anything.

Come on, THE GOODS had Craig T. Robinson as a DJ named DJ Request, who will always play the exact opposite of whatever you request. That's worth…a dollar fifty, at least. Or maybe I just find passive aggression funny.

My favorite part of THE SPIRIT (which I saw for free at school) was when Gabriel Macht punched Samuel L. Jackson in the face like thirty times in a row, for about forty-five seconds. When I saw that in Ebert's review I knew, without a doubt, that I had to see that movie.