Whatever the lineup is when a band achieves peak critical and commercial success, that’s the “true” lineup and best incarnation of the band. It doesn’t matter how many of the members in that lineup are founders, or if several members have come and gone since the founding prior to reaching that peak success.

I think the Beatles’ influence goes beyond pop music — I remember watching a documentary where Russian Beatles fans seriously argued that they played a role in ending the Cold War by contradicting Soviet propaganda about Western culture by virtue of being awesome. It felt like overstatement, but the documentary…

Liberal comedians punch up and conservative comedians punch down. Trumpies think Trump is funny because he insults people with less power and influence than himself. We just see cruelty.

The Mother couldn’t have died from COVID. Ted was allowed in her hospital room when she was dying. She didn’t have to die alone, the way hundreds of thousands of people are in our timeline.

“Calvin” wasn’t really an enrolled student at the high school, he just kind of hung out there. There are no truant officers out looking for him. There’s no Calvin Klein in the local phone book, he has no known address, and he has no parents or legal guardians in 1955. A high school kids’ casual acquaintances of eight…

I mean, it’s obviously the original series finale, right? The Black Lodge sequence is one of the most horrifying things ever put on film and I’d love to hear MacLachlan talk us through it.

I was reading the letter expecting him to complain about his wife being insufficiently enthusiastic about wrapping him like a mummy. But that’s not his conflict! In fact, the wife allowed him to contract a leather artisan to speed the process up. His conflict is that the artisan briefly assumed that a guy buying…

This is a good example of how George Lucas spent much of the 80s and 90s worrying about the wrong things in his films. We don’t need to see how Vader gets from Cloud City to his Star Destroyer so quickly. The original cut gives us everything we need to imagine how he changes locations, with plenty of wiggle room in…

Obi-Wan or the Emperor would also have been interesting choices for different reasons.

I don’t think this is a valid criticism. Yes the pearls-in-an-alley murder scene has been depicted countless times in every possible medium. That’s because it’s a fundamental part of the mythology. A Batman adaptation that doesn’t address it in some way is not really a Batman story.

Yeah there will be a flimsy impeachment of the next Democratic president, followed by a prompt acquittal in the Senate. Impeachment will be rendered a symbolic vote of no-confidence going forward. That alone doesn’t mean the system is broken.

The old-timey Brooklyn accent did appear in period films of the early talkie era, and later. We don’t have a lot of film with synchronized sound from the 1900s to the 1920s, but we do know how this era was usually portrayed in film when those days were still in living memory, and it involves people from Brooklyn…

There are a few thousand children in cages who disagree with your statement that “these times are better.” Yes, if you’re a gay person there’s a lower probability that your favorite sitcom will make cheap jokes at your expense. We’re also living through a devolution into fascism and the rule of law is crumbling before…

I take it you’re a dog person?

That first Bay Transformers movie feels as restrained as 2001: A Space Odyssey compared to the many sequels and spinoffs.

And this is probably why they’re shutting down the series — the idea of McGregor returning as an older Obi-Wan is cool, but the existing canon boxes them in to one storyline: Obi-Wan hangs around his hut in the desert, and occasionally takes out a stormtrooper or bounty hunter who sniffs around the Lars homestead.

And the same is true of Life of Brian — it recreates ancient Judea with far more detail and authenticity than the average pious New Testament adaptation. It’s remarkable that two of the silliest movies ever made also take such great pains to recreate their historical setting, and that was mostly Terry Jones’ doing.

They could recast Apu with a clone of Gandhi for all I care — this show ended for me around 2001 and I’ve seen maybe 5 episodes from the last 15 years or so. They were all bad.

I don’t think the ambiguity over whether Angela is a god is really all that important to the story, or even particularly ambiguous. The answer is obviously “yes, she’s a god with all of Dr. Manhattan’s powers.” It’s the only ending that works on a thematic level.

Brad tried to adjust to James’ style by betting aggressively on Daily Doubles and Final Jeopardy. He just kept getting the answers wrong. A little-discussed element of James’ domination was that, while he did expose the reality that the whole show all kind of comes down to those four opportunities to double-up…