“Tom Hanks’ american innocence figure tires me, but his genuine passion for history makes him very interesting and sympathetic to listen to.... And communicating through pen and paper is a nice trait. The world of fountain pens and chosen inks and papers is vast and fascinating, and deserves more appreciation.”

It’s so much better as a Christmas movie than either It’s a Wonderful Life or White Christmas.

I guess we didn’t exactly see Eddie Izzard’s character die in the first one, so it’s possible he’s around to chase them with a rifle in the sequel.

A fair number of times Daffy is actually the more sympathetic character, like Sylvester. He’s the emotional mess but also sincere, he wants to be taken seriously but like most of us he is overmatched by forces beyond his control. I disagree that Daffy is a sociopath — you always know what he feels and what he wants.

It is the same stuff, but people modify this to taste all the time so it is OK to lower the sugar content by dropping the sweetened condensed milk. Or cutting the amount of cream of coconut and using more unsweetened coconut milk. The main point is to make something creamy and coconutty with at least a bit of spice,…

Fake or degraded nutmeg extract kicks off esters like you get in Hefeweizens, which include bubblegum in their profile.

Cheap or synthetic nutmeg is a big reason.

It’s so much easier than eggnog and it is totally fine to modify it to taste, from all coconut and nondairy to subtle coconut flavor and lots of dairy, supersweet to barely sweet at all. I think a lot of recipes are determined by the size of cans of ingredients, but there is no reason to use a full can of cream of…

Based on interviews I’ve read with the young leads, I suspect part of the casting for the adult roles involved finding actors who were patient with kids. I am sure they did not want anyone like Jim Carrey or Mike Myers in Grinch and Cat in the Hat, or some method freak who refused to ever drop character off camera,…

The four hobbits, for starters. Although in their possible defense, it may well be a situation like Lucas and the prequels, where actors were given lines with no real clue how from the director what they were supposed to be going for. There are a bunch of the supporting characters that are in the same boat. There are…

I think a huge problem is also that it is hard to find kid actors who aren’t ruined by doing 100 commercials and bit parts in sitcoms by the time they are seven, or else grew up watching Disney TV and Nick at Nite and whatever the British equivalent is.

It’s an interesting difference from Home Alone, which was filled with bits designed to draw in smirky teens and adults. Culkin is so much more polished and capable in Home Alone than the kid actors here, but that level of polish probably would have broken the movie’s relatability for kids. Not to mention all of the…

I think the Lord of the Rings movies suffered a lot of the same problems as the Potter movies, only with even stronger fan expectations taking the place of an ever-looming author.

I don’t think it was obvious back then, but Soderbergh would have done a great job as the Potter director. I’m sure they wanted a guy who could handle all of the train scheduling without any crashes, which is why they picked Columbus, but it’s clear years later that Soderbergh can not only deliver interesting movies,…

Look out! She’s lurking behind that stack of magazines!

I’m sort of astonished they had such a tight restriction on special reports, considering how it was so soon after the Cuban missile crisis and only 13 years after the assassination attempt on Truman.

Over 54,000 head in 2018:

He is also not related to G Love.

That is wrong, but it doesn’t matter now that term must be retired after 2020 did its thing to Mr. Philbin.

There never was a compelling reason why there were three of them, it just seemed like somebody thought three was a change from one. Three isn’t inherently bad like, say, 26 would be, but there needs to be a plan for how they will work.