“Tolkien had a limited imagination” is not a fair critique! Come on. The guy invented epic fantasy as a genre of literature. He was low key one of the most influential fiction authors of the 20th century. I think it’s fine to take a critical lens to his treatment of gender and gender relations in LOTR, but I think…

Ok - the context is that Tolkien was an English professor who focused on medieval poetry and epics, and so LOTR was written in the style of a medieval romantic epic. That means it is primarily focused on men’s heroic journeys and the platonic love between men, and where women are involved at all it is primarily as…

Cut the skits and banter. Just have one of our myriad late night hosts do 10 minutes of lightly roasting the nominees at the top of the show and then go right from one category to another. If you want Channing Tatum and Sandra Bullock to come onstage together to present best cinematography that’s fine, but just have…

Had it not been for the editorial mandate that Magneto become the big X-Men villain again at the start of the Claremont/Lee X-Men book, I think you’d be looking at 40 years since Magneto was really a straightforward villain. Once Claremont made the decision to write him as a sympathetic extremist in a world in which…

For me the sketch about infant onesies that assume the baby is gay was made by Bowen Yang’s reactions. Like yes, it’s gross that so many baby clothes project adult concepts of heterosexuality and romantic love onto babies and it’s funny to point our how absurd it is with baby clothes that project homosexuality onto…

Yeah I was gonna say, SNL’s problem with Trump was that their writers suck at political comedy and they stuck with a deeply unfunny Alec Baldwin impression for 4 years, not that they were afraid to cover current events. 

Yeah it would not have been an issue at all if he pulled Rock aside at some point later in the evening and said “your unfunny joke was really hurtful to my wife and you owe her an apology; maybe in the future you should think twice before you make a lazy joke about someone’s appearance.” Grownups use their words when…

Funnily enough I just finally got around to watching The Eternals last night. It was definitely shot in a more interesting, naturalistic way than most Marvel movies, so it has that going for it, but overall it’s just not a well-made movie. The CGI is noticeably bad throughout, the plot is boring, and only a couple of…

Man the carry-on ones are just tips on how to be an asshole. Buy an appropriately sized suitcase that fits in the overhead bin (or check it if it doesn’t), learn how to pack efficiently, board the plane with minimum fuss, and be on your way. You are a gigantic prick if you’re trying to game the system to bring on…

Yeah that’s fair.

Eh, I don’t think that Pam & Tommy is some feminist manifesto and I think the writers seem a bit too pleased with themselves for making something that seems to want things both ways (e.g. condemning the invasion of privacy that took place but also giving Sebastian Stan an enormous fake penis that is played for comedy…

I don’t really get this critique. A ton of movies and TV shows get made every year about real events and real people who are still alive, very often without the cooperation of their subjects. Some of these projects are tasteful and well-done, others are cheap and exploitative, but I don’t think how exploitative a…

“Bruce Wayne does not have the dual identity thing fully figured out yet in his early years as Batman and so lives as a weird recluse before eventually realizing that both doing the most good for Gotham and maximally protecting his secret identity requires him to embrace being a public figure” has been done quite a…

I have nothing bad to say about Euphoria - it’s not really my cup of tea but plenty of people I know are really into it - but! I find it fascinating that this big hit that’s driving all kinds of cultural conversation is about teens having wild amounts of dangerous sex and drug use at a time when teens writ large are…

My guy, my dude, chief, pal, buddy, friend, broseph, etc.

My guy he publicly apologized at the time and then did a standup special that largely dealt with both the specifics of the accusation against him and more broadly the cultural moment we’re in in which our society is grappling with how poorly many people understand consent and many of us are reevaluating our opinion of…

The second season of Party Down released each episode on Netflix a day or two after it aired on Starz, which was how I came across it. Of course, this was when Netflix’s streaming service (“Netflix Instant” as it was branded at the time) was only a few months old - if it had anything like the user base it does now I…

To the extent that people care about the Oscars they care about best film, best director, best actor/actress, best supporting actor/actress, maybe people care about best screenplay/adapted screenplay, maybe some people care about best score/best song. But that’s it. There is not an audience of 10 million people who…

If people are seriously that offended by Awkwafina’s accent then boy do I have bad news for them about what a whole bunch of non-Black Gen Z’ers who grew up working class in Queens sound like.

On the one hand, that son of Batman TV show sounds terrible. On the other hand, Batman Beyond came about because WB insisted on a “Batman in high school” show and Bruce Timm managed to make lemonade out of it, so who knows.