I guess I would argue that the filmmaker's goal is almost always transcendental. They want to transport your mind and they use their skill to make it so. Involuntary responses - love, desire, disgust, fear, thrills - are the effect of almost all art, film being the most visceral.

Cognitive Film Theory studies suggest that you're missing a lot by watching movies on laptops. Filmmaking developed to manipulate viewers with a large screen and its techniques capitalize on the brain's involuntary responses to changes in a large field of vision. You simply aren't having the same responses in your…

If you think about what your brain is doing when watching a movie you'll realize that your movie watching experience is different between laptop and movie theater. Research has been done that shows you enter a near REM state as you watch a movie in a theater. That doesn't happen if the movie image doesn't encompass a…

…what a lovely way to show how much you love me.

I nominate the Preamble to the Constitution from Schoolhouse Rock to be our national anthem. "We the people… in order to form a more perfect union…"

I think it's even more relevant that he was a survivor of the Holocaust. His mother was killed in Aushowitz, he was totally separated from his family, he lived undercover with a Catholic family, and then had to live in the countryside, going from town to town trying to survive. On the Wikipedia entry, it has a quote…

If I haven't been misinformed, Carol Kane is the Granddaughter of Helen Kane, the real life boop-boop-de-boop singer that Betty Boop was modelled after. Helen Kane sued for the use of her likeness but the laws weren't in her favor then. I've always wanted an interviewer to talk to Carol Kane about her Grandmother. Was…

I like cheese and camp and soap opera, but I just can't take some of the nonsense on the show. Forget that there's not one redeemable character, but when the Law Professor corrects her team with the words, "ALLEDGED murder," I'm just about done. There's no "alleged" to a death that has someone's throat cut while…

I'm a High Anxiety fan. Neither my wife nor I can ever say, "I got it," without immediately going to, "I got it… I got it… I…don't got it!"

Another forgotten classic is "Sometime in the Morning." Pure pop romance, and it fueled my daydreams of having a girlfriend - someday. ("Your love has shown me things/I never thought I could see." - sigh. That sums up early love for me in every way.)

Sorry if I missed anyone else talking about it, but for me The Orphanage is one of the scariest movies of all time.

I think the Cosby situation has really mixed us up. I had a hard time coming to terms with it because the question wasn't, "Did Cosby rape a couple of women," it was "Is Bill Cosby perhaps the most active rapist in American History?" That was a hard chasm to leap for me at first.

Is that the only thing that one deserves to be judged on? Gandhi slept naked with young girls and there's no way to fully understand what the hell was up with that. Isn't there a balance of one's worst and best actions?

You sure can see that America's Puritanical roots run deep and still sprout. With CK we're all speculating about if he really did do something, if so, what was it that it he did, and what is the proper punishment for whichever particular crime he may or may not have done.

The inferior covers came about because that was the way the music business worked at the time. It was not uncommon to have 2 or 3 versions of the same song by different artists in the top 20 at one time. So, when rock and roll started selling, lots of performers did their standard cover in hopes of also scoring a hit.…

Gotta disagree with your history in the first paragraph. Rock and Roll was not a phenomenon of one race - it was the marriage of black and white music styles. So, when Rock and Roll first emerged, 1953- 54, it was the melding of rhythm records and dirty honky tonk (with a little big band showmanship on the bigger…

I think you might be on to something. That's an idea worth pursuing.

I'm glad that's your take, but I've seen some lightly coordinated efforts to have the song banned from holiday play because of that line, saying that it supports rape culture. There's a vocal minority out there that sees it as something horrible.

Just a quick fight back against the prevailing myth that the line, "What's in this drink?" in Baby, It's Cold Outside is in any way a reference to the drink being spiked with a roofie. People said, "what's in this drink," as a way of saying the drink is hitting them hard, and usually in a very positive way. If they…

I thought it was interesting when she dismissed Paris as the place that came up with Margarine — When she and Ted were first sparking, he was super impressed that she knew the origins of margarine and it made her feel great. Now, it's just another bullshit fact trying to get in the middle of her non-existent love life.