Got this for my sister for Christmas and it was just as good again. The Spanish Civil War analogy works really well for Firefly, actually, especially considering the anarchistic leanings of the show (distaste for government, believing a world without free will is unnatural, etc.)

I thought it was quite good.

One of my favorite songs: both terrifying and unimaginably beautiful. I play this at least three or four times in a row.

Bowie covered "Nite Flights" (although you're right, it's a very limp version).

That scene was pretty damn funny. "Do you know what she did?!" "I'm beginning to get an inkling, yeah…"

I started crying really hard at the scene between him and Mark. Jack may have been a sex offender, but clearly loved his family and it was really painful watching that past being ripped out of him by the media (I watched ahead to find out the end, but I still hate Kate's guts more than anyone on the show for…

Roger Ebert wrote that the psychiatrists speech was the worst part of Psycho. Luckily, thats followed by Norman Bates as his mother, watching the fly grinning (and its fucking terrifying).

I've heard the self-importance critique of The Great Dictator, but I find the ending speech to be not preachy but deeply moving - Chaplin delivers it with a lot of passion, and it just kind of works.

As much as Mickey Doyle is typically asking for someone to put a bullet in his head, he's a pretty smart manipulator; he just goes with whos winning at the time, and because he has a self-preservation streak, he'll keep running those distilleries until, oh, 1933.

I actually love Charlie Utter more than several of my aunts.

Oliver's genuine esteem for Claire pays off nicely in the fifth season.

These last few episodes put Nate through the ringer, even as he channels his grief into complete self-destruction.

It's weird how many movies he's actually really damn good in, but people just think of him as Sean Connery as himself. A Bridge Too Far, Indiana Jones, Finding Forrester (somewhat formulaic movie, but the acting and writing are good when you get past "YTMND").

Really? I remember her being gorgeous in Jacob's Ladder.

I'm at work and can't look it up right now, but is Elizabeth Pena hot in this?

I think the Ryan/Jenna dynamic can be interesting, but yeah, Jenna is by a lot of standards awful, so it's hard to care about her or want Ryan to end up with her - Amanda was crazy, but seems a lot more like someone Ryan would actually date.

I just watched her in season 1 of Deadwood (with no idea she was in it), and she was awesome.

I ended up being impatient to wait for it to air tonight, ended up watching it online; the tension ramped up and defused constantly in this one, like a balloon expanding and deflating. This is a good example of TV filled with cliches (small town full of secrets, red herrings, gruff and obsessive cop) that makes them…

I loved The IT Crowd, but Black Books is much closer to my black, auto-didactic heart.

Being that I also have a father with severe anger issues (though never lapsing into physical abuse), I can sympathize with Keith, though I'm a lot more like David in personality. I think the poor guy had no idea how severely in denial his father was about his awful, awful behavior.