Four and a half: the infamously large and ridiculous Broadway musical in the eighties (that killed horror musicals dead until the 2000s), and then the vastly improved rewrite that premiered Off-Broadway a few years back and is now commonly performed.

I don't know for sure if Cartman loves Stan, but the fact that his perverse idea of sexuality is a queer one has been pretty explicit for ages now.

She grew up into Tina Fey.

When I turned three or four, my birthday gift that year was the entire first run of "The Nightmare Before Christmas" action figures, which were fantastic. Years later they've added figures for the entire cast- maybe when my kid turns a certain age someday, if they dig the movie as much as I did, I'll gift them the…

Ever notice Belle is apparently one of, if not THE, only educated characters we meet in the story? The Beast and Gaston are both illiterate, but the Beast chooses to humble himself and admit that he never learned so that Belle can teach him. Even Maurice has a mechanical knack but no real "book smarts;" he's clearly a…

The funny thing is, you get the clear impression in the film that Gump is, if not "mentally challenged" to the level of medical retardation, at least a bit of a dullard. In the book, Gump (who parallels the intelligent but uneducated Huck Finn) is probably an untapped genius, but is a hick through and through. It's…

Irma Vep, the Charles Ludlam play? If you're familiar with that, what are your thoughts on BBC oddball "League of Gentlemen?"

What people don't often realize about "Beauty and the Beast" in connection to Disney is how so much of the stuff people like about it comes directly from the Disney Renaissance needs of the "well-made play:" nothing happens without a reason, all main characters must either grow or regress emotionally, every cause has…

Linnea "Squiggly" Quigley.

Despite his overall squeaky clean nature, I suspect "raise the dead" docks you many, many points.

He'd fit in quite well in this sort of Bangsian fantasy setting, especially as a sort of ambiguous figure.

Only because it's taking you with it.

I always felt like the "Born to Run" album feels like a suicide note, and the "Nebraska" album feels like a man who's already dead.

Suede and the Velvet Goldmine soundtrack are the essential albums for mid-90s glam rock. And "Trash" should be the theme song to some fanmade Marauders spinoff movie on YouTube, with young, shaggy-haired Sirius and Remus and James running around being very British-coming-of-age.

I fall in between: to me, there are only a few essential Springsteen albums. "The Young, The Innocent and the E Street Shuffle," "Born to Run (deluxe edition with Hammersmith Odeon live disc)" and "The River, with "Darkness on the Edge of Town" as my honorable mention.

An assumed name that is both based on two different Monty Python sequences, and is the kind of punny real name that would make a Batman villain cringe a little.

Counterpoint: Robin Hood's origin and true identity are much more flexible than that of, say, Batman. I'm not saying it's one hundred percent necessary to establish every time, but its interpretation does a lot to paint who this particular Robin Hood is, and set the tone for his adventures.

If he could do an accent, there's no better Little John than Dwayne Johnson. I wonder if they're wrapping the now-familiar "Moorish member of the Merry Men" into Little John, or if they'll have an Arabic fellow as well?

Jaime Pressley, please, while she's still got it in her!

I'm willing to cut some slack, because of all Alan Menken's collaborators, and he's worked with plenty now, only Tim Rice comes the least bit close to Ashman in terms of what he brings to the table. Granted, it's a somewhat distant sensibility, as Ashman was primarily vernacular and character based, while Rice comes…