That's not from smiling.

Similarly, Jimmy Webb's "All I Know" for Art Garfunkel is beautifully overwrought melodrama like an overblown sequel to "Bridge over Trouble Water." It's sheer camp.
Five for Fighting's cover of "All I Know" is much more restrained despite having a gratuitous saxophone; it proves how good of a song "All I Know" is,…

Wizard of Oz not only has a different song list but a totally different plot than the Broadway show that came before it. That show had very little resemblance to the Oz story we know or the Oz Baum wrote; it was much more in line with the nonsensical pageants of Victor Herbert.

Ever listened to his solo albums? He recorded four albums (the earliest was only released a few years ago) in the wake of Rocky Horror, and they're extraordinarily hit or miss, because Curry couldn't quite figure out who or what he wanted to be as a recording star. The suits seemed to want him to be a roaring,…

I've been watching "Channel Zero" on Syfy, and it's actually pretty good… but its subject matter, setting and quality level almost negate the need for a new IT. The Tim Curry movie was mediocre and highly imperfect, but you're not gonna do IT better than "Channel Zero" is basically doing IT right now.

I want so badly for him to embrace his comedy and dance skills in addition to his wuxia-revival work and become some American equivalent to Jackie Chan: a good-hearted but not self-parodic action comedy star.

Two of the recurring plot points throughout the show are "God exists but is not all-powerful, and may not even be the only divine creator," and "God is wrong." It's made complicated by the fact that God manifests himself during the show as both the absent divine creator and as a physical, human being who walks the…

I've been waiting for a low-budget Urinetown film for YEARS, with Will Arnett and Will Forte as the Officers, Alec Baldwin as Cladwell and Ana Gasteyer or Maya Rudolph as Pennywise.

The stage musical sets the most memorable portions of the film in a world more inspired by the books. It actually proved somewhat controversial; a scene where Mary Poppins animates the children's toys, having them sentence the Banks kids to death by firing squad was considered "too cruel" and "too scary," so it was…

I like the Neil Gaiman theory, where Mary Poppins is essentially the embodiment of Existence itself- when God was young, Mary Poppins raised Him.

The highest of dog whistles isn't really a dog whistle anymore- it's just increasingly open knowledge that the Heirarchy of Disadvantages goes poor, then non-white, then foreign, then wrong religion, then gay, then disabled. Future generations will dispense with the bigoted parts and just hate the poor for being the…

Nah, it's Sutton Foster these days.

When I was in college, the arts building was opposite a gastropub that served various alcoholic drinks as take-out. There was no hiding it- students would just sit in the front row of their lectures and drink openly, often becoming very drunk throughout the class.

There was a nice McDonalds a little way from my house in the 90s. The kind with a hip, urban design (from when urban meant cosmopolitan big city, and didn't dog-whistle "black"), two or three stories, lots of chrome and glass. There was a large TV on the second floor that always seemed to be showing the sleaziest 80s…

I didn't realize how bad Ted Turner's colorizations were until I saw the low-budget colorization of "Forbidden Zone" and realized how much better it was, despite being done with zero resources or clout.

I think the same thing but about next year's "IT."

McDowell's Walken-like willingness to appear in anything that asks him to cameo is strangely endearing, though it's certainly tarnished his reputation. His cameos as "A British Person" on South Park and as Mad Mod on Teen Titans are indelible parts of my childhood.

You see porn face, I see DreamWorks face.

Nelson Muntz.

Danny Elfman's Spider-Man theme is really cool when you're hearing it, but it falls into his late-period tendency to rely on percussive patterns and rhythmic riffs more than strong melodies. In my head, I associate the "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory" overture more with Spider-Man than the otherwise forgettable…