I don't necessarily think Fett's backstory is a bad one: it's better than that of some Star Wars characters. It's just been both handled too little, and handled poorly when it actually gets touched on.
Think of it in thumbnails: Boba Fett, the only mercenary on almost-equal footing to Darth Vader, is more than just a…

2012's "Mr. Bean plays the keyboard part for Chariots of Fire" sketch was one of the highlights of the enjoyably bizarre opening ceremony.

Back when there was still a record store at the mall, I picked up a copy of Owen Pallett's album "He Poos Clouds," thinking that it was a Final Fantasy-related album (an understandable mistake, considering that Pallett's pseudonym used to be Final Fantasy).
It's a brilliant "chamber pop" album, but its resemblance to…

I know it's become a deep cut over the years, but nobody's yet paired the Rio Olympics with Peter Allen's yacht-rock keyboard jam, "I Go to Rio," yet. The Pablo Cruise version is best known but doesn't have the extended piano soloing.

Fun fact: Conan O'Brien was actually pursued to star in a revival of "The Music Man" during his NBC years. However, as this was before the era when stars could have a "designated standby" to perform some of their shows weekly, he was unable to be available for the eight shows a week the revival was going to run, so…

Depends what direction they go in the movie with the character. One of Flagg's less-well-noted traits is that he is always charismatic but never cool, and typically appears in a guise a decade or two behind the times. In "The Stand" novel he manifests as a Vietnam-era hippie, and in the film as an Eighties mullet man.…

And… roll the Game of Thrones end credits music.

Rainn Wilson. Not even kidding, I think Wilson could genuinely play King well in an actual biopic.

Hedwig and the Angry Inch is a very brave choice, but I suppose the movie (which takes place in its own weird little tragicomic universe) counts as a comedy more than the stage show, which can vary from laugh riot to sobering tragedy depending on who is in the lead role.

New Groove pulls off a really unusual trick: can you make something that is, in sense of humor, concept, tone and even cast, undoubtedly a stoner comedy… but make it without any drugs or drug references, and with a PG rating?

It also has a really good performance by Peter Serafinowicz, one of those few actors who can simultaneously do grandiosely hammy and deadpan. (It seems to be a British thing… Matt Berry has that kind of vibe in most things he's in, both over-the-top and completely deadpan; and I associate it strongly with Dickensian…

It's wonderful to see Nintendo embracing its past this way- although as the proud owner of a Raspberry Pi running an insanely-overstocked RetroPie, I think I'll be passing on this.

Axler's column reads like a Steve Martin prose piece from just before he gave up absurdism to move into intellectualism full-time.

To me, the sound of video game summer vacations will always be the cheesy, dated, slightly homoerotic "Sonic R" soundtrack. I remember having graduated fifth grade, with my N64 and my barely-running Windows 95, and having the Sonic Classics collection on CD-ROM. I spent so much of that summer doing three things:…

Cousin Eddie's Island Adventure is ALMOST justified by the fact that we get to look at Sung Hi Lee for 90 minutes.

Punk icon turned Buster Poindexter turned eighties character actor David Johanson used to tell his "Broadway Story" on late-night shows, a series of shaggy-dog bits of this nature about his alleged debut in a Broadway show.

Honestly, get the kids and teens from "The Goldbergs" on ABC and make a special with them, and I'd gladly watch them bust ghosts. With today's child actors being groomed mostly for Nickelodeon and Disney, it's nice to see young performers with genuine, unvarnished quirkiness.

Lesbian has never really been more derogatory than "gay," the way that something like "dyke" has. The difference is, lesbian refers less to an act or a way of being than it does to a community. Much like "a friend of Dorothy" implies a specific sexual/romantic bent but also implies the existence of a gay male…

Alison Bechdel's "Fun Home" and "Are You My Mother" are fantastic slices of American Gothic. "Fun Home," in particular, always feels like what "American Beauty" tries and fails to be.

Broderick and Lane were a fantastic pairing, but here's some "what might have been" for you: Broderick brings Leo Bloom a loveable schlub quality, but he's very milquetoast. Brooks had written the role for a more musically gifted actor who could play both the put-upon nerd and the live wire, Martin Short. (Short and…