1. Yeah, the funny part is that the monster is probably actually the most likable and human character in the novel.

Of course, but I'm just saying it's hard to call it "over-rated" based on the prose. Nobody's going around calling Shelley a precursor to Nabokov. The reason the book has developed the reputation it has is because of the exploration of its ideas, which were incredibly timely but have also managed to remain relatively t…

I can't imagine Williams truly liked the film versions of any of his work . . . it was borderline impossible to do any real justice whatsoever to his plays with the Hays Code in effect. Some get closer than others, but . . . . Does the book mention if he liked any of the films based on his work?

Isn't that the point, though? It is intended to be a novel of ideas, not a masterpiece of prose. The ideas it raises are far more interesting than the text or story structure, but . . . . they're intended to be.

I have all day off tomorrow, so I want to:
- get our Christmas tree
- buy my family's Christmas present
- finish this assignment for my programming class and at least get started on the next one

Yeah, Brown still has a career, he still makes millions of dollars off making music, his albums still sell (just not quite as well as they did before the assault). He didn't even go to jail; he just got community service/probation/counseling. The greatest consequences of his behavior are that he'll probably retire…

He also followed his ex Karreuche Tran home from a club earlier this year and banged on her door at 3 in the morning, to the point where she was at least contemplating getting a restraining order which . . . isn't assault, but doesn't really make me feel too confident that he's learned how to develop healthy…

Yeah, let's be real here—yes, there are differences in how people react to black celebrities and white celebrities committing crimes, but that's not nearly as simple as "White men are given a free pass and black men aren't." R. Kelly was given a free pass. Mike Tyson was given a free pass. Terrence Howard was given a…

Probably because the Kelly case is the only one of those that happened in this century. And because Kelly has settled lawsuit after lawsuit for sexual harassment and assault both before and after the tape incident for which he's most famous—including one as recently as five years ago.

It's also incredibly disingenuous to suggest that race is the only reason anybody would try to take down R. Kelly for this behavior . . . when the fact that his victims were black and thus easily marginalized (and also young and thus easily marginalized, and female and thus easily marginalized) is one of the very…

Oooh, ooh, personally I think all of those men are scumbags! What do I win?

The people who are praising Sheen for being brave are in all likelihood not the ones decrying Brown's behavior. There has been plenty of discussion of Sheen's abuse here (including as it relates to his HIV diagnosis) and there will be plenty more.

"Attempted murder" isn't a "more severe" term than domestic abuse, though. Domestic abuse is an umbrella term that includes all kinds of behaviors, including rape and homicide. (I think around a third of all female murder victims were killed by a domestic partner.)

But they went all the way back to 2011! That has to count for something!

Ive done some (spotty, by no means conclusive) research, and I suspect that the past wins out just because Hollywood used to make so many more movies than they do now—a lot of films were only expected to run for a week or so before they were replaced with something else. I think probably the overall number of…

Or Vivien Leigh—Gone with the Wind was arguably Hollywood's first real brush with large-scale fandom and adapting a book whose obsessive fans had very specific ideas of how the work should be translated to screen, plus she was in the adaptation of Williams' A Streetcar Named Desire when he was probably the most…

Given the state of Hollywood, where it feels like half the stuff out there is an adaptation from another medium . . . it might be more productive (and shorter) to make a list of actors who haven't been in any adaptations. (Or, more entertainingly, of those who have been in multiple adaptations but were terrible in all…

As a former English major, I'm going to point out that it doesn't really matter whether or not the movie's creator intended those readings—they exist whether or not the creator intended them, but . . . what makes you think they weren't intended?

I was also a little bemused by that. Yeah, he's got the bulk of the screen time in The Martian, and I have no doubt it's hard work both to put in the hours that requires and to deal with the stress of knowing that the film's success rests almost entirely on your performance. . . but it's not like the role required…

Or, if we go further down the "Jewish story" road, Max is a bit of a Wandering Jew figure, too.