My friend described Bat I as "goth Springsteen," and Bat II as "fat goth Springsteen."

Jim Steinman has a major fixation with doomed romance and vampires too- some of that shows up in the song's iconography and even Bat II's album art. The video's interpretation seems to indicate that "THAT" is either drink blood or "turn" his love interest.

There's a really weird short story reimagining of the Boudu story called "Chair Person," in which an ugly couch is accidentally turned into a person, and its only knowledge base is what it has heard people say while sitting on it.

In a few decades I'd like to see David Duchovny try. "World-weary, hangdog aging man's man" has become his type since Californication.

And it's Paul Williams's fourth or fifth best movie musical score!

Is Ringu the best horror movie in the world? No, Ringu's not even the best horror movie in The Beatles.

And not even a mention of Agador Spartacus?

The whole thing was Benvolio's doing. The traditional explanation for why he disappears when his boyfriend Mercutio gets killed is that the same actor played Friar Lawrence, but I like to believe he set an elaborate revenge plan in motion, fulfilling his love's dying wish: "a plague on both your houses!"

My favorite thing about the three different versions of Scoundrels is that they are mostly the same but play character beats differently.

Was this the first major iteration of the "death by assimilation" sci-fi villain? We've had the Borg on Star Trek and the increasingly prevalent Cybermen in the new Doctor Who series.

And any theme song is an improvement over Bacharach's bizarre bossa nova, "Beware of The Blob."

My favorite "The End- or is it?" moment is the somewhat controversial "happy ending" to "Little Shop of Horrors." The plant is defeated in a spectacular explosion, all seems well, and Seymour and Audrey's love theme plays as they escape the city to the suburbs Audrey dreamed about. They even have a little garden… but…

That was a revenge play: Sammy had dissed Frank on the radio recently. Even worse, he had given insight into Sinatra's vulnerabilities and codependence. To say bad things about Sinatra was unforgivable. To paint him as only human, and a dysfunctional one at that, was unimaginable.

Frank was a perfectionist on record, but a naturalist on film. It had relatively little to do with his laziness- if he cared about a film he would give his one good take his all; if he didn't, he'd half-ass it.

The film wasn't to be the famous-ish Technicolor movie musical, but a television broadcast (the role went to Robert Goulet instead). Sinatra claimed he quit because of having to do multiple takes, but recent biographies indicate it was more intimidation, as his voice was in a downward spiral at that point.…

Not Lorre, Lawford- the brother-in-law of JFK.

Kick! Punch! It's all in the mind!

I had a discussion with friends over the weekend about what a dystopian situation would be in a matriarchal society. The scenario we came up with was a United States splintered into twenty or so self-sufficient nation-states with nearly impenetrable borders and no trade or communication between them.

If the Nineties taught me anything, it's short for Mosquito Valentine Ulrich.

I didn't read past the first issue, but the new Jughead series briefly had a very weird Picasso-by-way-of-Lane-Smith look that was ugly in just the right way.