I like imagining that Goldblum's character, shortly after the gang left college, was basically Goldblum's character in Death Wish.

Self-absorption is more of a phenomenon that happens in comfortable, tech-saturated first-world nations, I suppose. Generational considerations blur in that sense. That said, the boomers really seemed to perfect the idea in the 70s and 80s.

Yeah, but somebody has to want it.

Don't forget Woodward trying for the splittest of seconds to pretend that he cared. It's like he forgot what Dahlberg had said in the middle of his own response.

Been a while since I've seen it…was it possibly written that way? Because I do remember the senator mispronouncing Corleone at a public function, then revealing a few minutes later, in private with Michael, that he knew perfectly well how to say it.

Shame, since they changed it anyway, to a slap in the face.

Which probably reflects the way most people hate the songs they hate. And that's fine, but it's also a good reason this column could use interviewers doing something besides the agreeable panting puppy routine

Listen to the 90s station on satellite radio sometime. You'll be amazed to remember how many other songs there were to hate that you'd otherwise long forgotten.

Yeah, he kinda did that Trebek thing of giving it an inflection that indicated he recognized it was humor and people were laughing…while his words sorta indicated that he didn't get it, or it wasn't maybe his kinda humor. But it wasn't churlish or anything.

So…his son sitting in prison is an indication to you of how those liberals always get away with stuff others can't?

What's really creepy is when you guys start quoting dialogue from my wedding night.

You're not the only one. Sort of the Four Weddings and a Funeral thing, where Kristin Scott Thomas seemed vastly more appealing than the object-of-affection Andi McDowell.

Sure, but the important question is: Do you want French fries with your soda?

I think it meant: b/w is better, as is celluloid, but whaddaya gonna do. The trajectory of history is what it is.

James Coburn maybe?

Ever see The Grifters? Check out the very end of Donald Westlake's commentary track.

That moment in the car where she opens her eyes…yeesh. One of the great non-horror movie creepy moments. What's worse, the idea that she was never really asleep, or the idea that that's just how she wakes up?

That's funny…coulda sworn it was Cliff Robertson in Superman. Clearly getting it mixed up with Spider-Man. And not the first time getting Ford and Robertson mixed together in my head.

Well, I guess I mean about the shot, the moment, itself. And maybe "oblique" isn't the right word. Just, in the spirit of the article, it's somewhere between Lang keeping the act itself off screen entirely and giving a detailed look at what's happening and what it's doing to the face. If you'll notice, Altman does…

See, i think it's his regular-guyness that makes it work for him there. He's always capable of something in the eyes that kinda gives away what the rest of his genial middle American face does not. Again, don't really know his tv work (and TV in more distant decades seemed to make a place for good veteran actors as…