The Children of Men soundtrack is awesome, and so is the score. Fun Fact: composer John Tavener is a descendant of Renaissance composer John Taverner.

Double Indemnity IS a hell of a film, but it hasn't got anything to do with Faulkner (Raymond Chandler adapted a James M. Cain novel).

Dwight's "penis museum" line was transcendent. The funniest joke of this entire season, and I don't even know why.

It sure doesn't have a damn overture though.

Holy crap, I read Have Spacesuit, Will Travel when I was younger (say, 10) and had no idea it was by Heinlein.

I mentioned DFW's writing above, but yeah, his suicide felt more like that of a friend than a beloved writer. I think it's because I read and loved Supposedly Fun Thing (pretty much the most personally revealing book of essays imaginable) first, and felt like I knew him better than any other famous person I can think…

Whenever anyone mentions Kicking and Screaming, I think they mean the Will Ferrell movie (because I'm a damn philistine, I guess), and I'm like, why is anybody still talking about that movie?

Oh, also A Potrait of the Artist as a Young Man, though I expect that's rather a cliche, and David Foster Wallace himself.

Dostoevsky seems to be a common one—Notes From Underground showed me basically everything I hate about myself. And David Foster Wallace said the same thing about Smerdyakov.

Or maybe, just more songs whose titles start with the word "I've."

This article is almost literally exactly what I thought about the movie: the "I've Got You Under My Skin" part was awesome, and everything else was stupid and boring.

"Mr. Cellophane" is the worst song from the musical (which I love), but he did okay with it and with the part. Didn't really like the film version as a whole, though (especially the unnecessary "everything is in Roxie's imagination" conceit, plus Renee Zellweger and Richard Gere sucked).

And more lingering shots of the hat!

This movie "Ondine"
better be scored with Gaspard de la Nuit or I'm gonna be PISSED

Female snipers = GENDER EQUALITY?? I think yes.

I wish my name were Todd, because then I could say, "Yes, my name's Todd. Todd Blankenship." Oh, also I wish my last name were Blankenship.

Well I hope to God there's not more than one essay on menstrual taboos in Blood Meridian. That specific example wasn't really the point; I just meant that if 90% of that kind of criticism is junk (as both you and others who would know have contended), it's not worth it to me to wade through it to get to the good stuff…

I'm not saying Heart of Darkness isn't racist, at least a little bit, but my problem with Achebe is that he wants to discredit the book on that account. He admits (in "An Image of Africa") that Conrad is a great stylist and talent but still calls the book "deplorable" and criticizes its prominence in academia, etc.…

That's fine in a "here's where the author was coming from" or "here's the intellectual and social climate in which the work was written" sense, because obviously no-one would deny that those things matter. What's bad is when they overwhelm or replace discussion of the text itself. Because if ultimately criticism is…

West Side Story is either the best or second-best musical of all time, but that's not quite the same thing, and it's mostly because of the score anyway.